Grayman Book One: Acts of War

by Michael Rizzo

3

  April 2nd.

  Mike Ram:

  Field trip.

  This is the first time we’ll get to see what will become our new home. There won’t be much to see, of course. Construction won’t be finished for two years on the current schedule. Given the planned depth of the main bunker, they’ll spend the next three months just digging the hole.

  “What the hell…?” you hear Matthew burble into his link as he looks out of the condensation-streaked windows of the chopper, down over the gently rolling terrain beneath us.

  “First outer perimeter fence,” our pilot tells us over the rotor noise. “I hear once the remote batteries are in, the fences will just be for show.”

  “No, no,” Matthew corrects him. “The trees…”

  Roughly uniform evergreens are laid out in neat grids as far as the eye can see, giving the landscape a bizarre manufactured quality.

  “Government tree-farm,” Henderson cuts in over the link from his own bird, just ahead of us.

  “They could have gone cheap with any of the local real-estate,” the pilot comments, switching his mic to private. “The whole region is pretty much a loss since the outsourcing craze and the big crash—whole neighborhoods have gone ghost. They decided to go with Ag land. Location, location…”

  “Surreal…” Becker rolls out, still sounding rung from putting himself through the Tactical training series. He looks awkward and uncomfortable in his fresh black fatigues, like a child dressed in a suit and tie for a wedding. But he tries to make it look like he belongs.

  Matthew, for his part, didn’t buy it.

  “What the fuck were you thinking, Doc?”

  This was how we got started, 07:30 this morning:

  Becker, dragging and bleary, showing up at the pad with a crisp set of blacks and a single shiny bar on his collar, his red hair a stubble trying to recover from a boot-camp shaving that revealed a freckled scalp.

  “Major Burke… Sir…” he gave back officially, salute and all, which only made it worse for Matthew. So he tried to explain: “It was something I needed to do, sir. I didn’t feel like I could adequately serve as Tactical Support Monitor without going through Tactical training.”

  “So you enlisted?”

  “Yes, Major.”

  “Dumbest smart guy I know.”

  “Sir?” Becker did a good job of not sounding too hurt.

  “You designed friggin’ Datascan,” Matthew bit back a little too hard. “Don’t get me wrong, you’ve made a damn good Monitor, and I owe you, but you’re set up to change the whole goddamn world… not to mention what you could be worth if you went into commercial gear… Now whatever you do, the Army owns.”

  “Major, my work for McCain is under contract—I don’t own any of it,” he discounted.

  “So quit and build another one. Or something else that will make you a bazillion dollars.”

  “I can always do that later, sir,” he stood his ground. “But right now, I need to see this through. And if I’m going to do that right, I need to know what I’m doing—I need to know what you’re doing—if I’m going to ride Datascan through what happens next.”

  “Lieutenant…” Matthew rolled the rank over his tongue like he was trying to be polite about something that tasted awful. Then he tapped the name-strip on Becker’s uniform: “BECKER, S.”

  “They let you keep your name?”

  “I’ve gotten too well known in the tech circles, Major. Especially with this project. But it’s been taken care of: my family—my parents, anyway—got sunk behind the Spec Ops TR Protection Program back when I first took on the contract. I’m not endangering anybody.”

  “Except you. Dumbest smart guy I know…”

  “But all the trees…?”

  Matthew just keeps staring uncomfortably as the artificial forest-grid passes under us mile-after-mile.

  “Won’t be a problem, Major,” Henderson chimes back in to reassure. “They provide a visual barrier for anyone wanting to look in. Privacy. Thousands of acres of it. But Datascan can see through it and over it—we’ll have a satellite in geosynchronous to watch over the place. And the automated batteries SENTAR is developing will give the base the firepower of an escort group of destroyers.”

  “How many of these things are you building?” Matthew wonders, a mix of disquiet and awe.

  “Nothing like this,” Becker explains from his seat next to you. “This is the mainframe bunker. But there are already two more ‘forward’ bases digging, one on each coast. After that…”

  “Still classified, Lieutenant,” Henderson warns, pointedly using the leverage of the new rank. Becker takes his cue and shuts up.

  But Datascan has shown you the plans for the future, its future.

  “There…” the pilot announces.

  The chopper does a slow turn around a quarry-sized open pit being dug out by a dozen large movers. An assortment of trucks and other vehicles are parked by a small cluster of temp buildings at the gate that controls traffic through what must be the inner perimeter fence. There are human guards visible here, waving trucks full of fresh earth out and running sweep-gear on the empties that come in to replace them.

  The choppers kick up some of that fresh-dug earth as we touch down on the makeshift landing pads.

  They picked rural Michigan for a number of reasons.

  First, the pilot was right: it was a cheap way of getting a large parcel of out-of-the-way real estate in a somewhat depopulated region, but still close to infrastructure.

  Second, it’s fairly centered on the North American Continent, out of missile range of our Second and Third World threats, and far away from infiltration from what appear to be our more risky borders (though statistically Canada has proven to be the more popular entry point for terrorists).

  Third, if it does prove to be a target (which will be very likely if things go as planned), it will be far from population and government centers should something worst-case happen.

  “Welcome to Michigan Command, Gentlemen,” Henderson goes theatrical as he issues us into an armored mobile CP that’s been set up as a caged conference chamber.

  “Chilly…” Matthew grouses, subjecting himself to a sentry sweep as he comes through the entry lock. The machines clear us, and Henderson orchestrates the seating arrangement.

  Richards and Dr. Mann are already seated, having taken the ride in Henderson’s chopper. Miller and Collins are here as well, though you expect their transport accommodations were more comfortable.

  That leaves you, Matthew, Becker and Manning. The lack of any of the international participants is glaring.

  The chamber is sealed. No prying eyes or ears or wires for this, a meeting in the middle of Rural American Nowhere.

  “There’s hot coffee and tea,” Miller tries to set us at ease. Manning is the only one who helps himself.

  Dr. Mann flips open a notebook and sets up a holoscreen on the steel table we sit around. The Datascan graphic glows in the air above the table top.

  “I thought this place was caged,” Becker protests.

  “New proxy-ware, Doctor… Lieutenant…” Mann tells him (unsure now of how to address him). “The AI has loaded a minimal version of its OS along with the files necessary for this presentation. It exists independently from the mainframe netlink.”

  Becker’s eyes go a bit wide at that, like it suggests something significantly more than Mann’s tossed-off explanation. It may just be that someone has apparently mucked with his creation without his knowledge. But you remember him telling you: Datascan can exist—in some form or other—anywhere that will support its core operating system.

  A globe appears in the air, rotating, hi-lighting a series of national borders in blue: the US, Canada, the EU, the Russian Confederacy, China, Japan, Australia, Israel. Then a larger number of other, smaller nations flash in green: Mexico, Greenland, select parts of Southeast Asia and Africa, a few small fragments of the Middle East and South and Central America, a handful of Atlantic
and Pacific Islands. Yellow comes next: More Africa and Central Asia, South and Central America. Finally: Red—these are pretty much exactly what you would have expected.

  “Welcome to the Current World Order,” Miller narrates. “A fairly neat division of Coalition and Allied Nations, at least in name. Arrayed against a persistent threat from so-called ‘terror nations.’ The green nations represent neutral or supportive parties—in other words, low-threat zones. Yellow nations hang in the balance—it isn’t clear how they will tip, given the prevailing political and economic weather. But strategically speaking, this is hopelessly simplistic, as there’s no way of containing our enemies within national boundaries. The best this map shows us is the political climate. This is the battlefield I will be fighting, primarily. Yours, unfortunately, looks more like this:”

  The neatly-colored map of nations dissolves into something that looks like an enhancement of city-lights from space: shimmering clusters and spatters of a million points of light all over the globe.

  “Now this is only a simulation,” Collins jumps in quickly. “We won’t have the actual tagging profiles in place until we get Datascan fully online.”

  “’Tagging’?” Matthew suddenly perks, looking uncomfortable.

  “Show him,” Collins tells Mann. Mann reaches into his coat pocket and comes out with a plastic casing no bigger than a pill and sets it on the table. He looks back at Collins for permission to proceed, gets a nod, and pulls the case apart. A fleck of something that could be metallic or plastic falls out. It’s no bigger than a flake of ground pepper.

  “Nanotech RFID chip,” Mann explains. “We call them ‘tags.’ You all have them implanted.”

  Manning visibly squirms in his seat.

  “It’s okay, gentlemen, they’re harmless, and for your own safety,” Henderson tries to reassure. “They allow us to track you by satellite anywhere in the world. Every piece of equipment you carry has one as well, just in case something gets taken during an Op.”

  “We started instituting this program to track our troops over a decade ago,” Collins fills in. “The part that was lacking to make the program truly successful was a system capable of adequately tracking all those bodies and all that gear in real-time 24-7.”

  “And Datascan fulfilled that need,” Becker concludes, though not proudly.

  “More than that, son,” Collins praises. He nods at Mann, and the globe shifts again. There are fewer points of light now—though still countless thousands—but they are clustered into patterns of blues and reds in some of the hottest parts of the world.

  “Datascan can track quite a bit more than our own troops,” Henderson gloats.

  “What the hell…?” Matthew starts getting it. You look across the table at Richards and catch his eyes for an instant. He doesn’t seem to be sitting too comfortably either.

  “We began tagging civilians in hot zones several years ago,” Miller takes it up like it’s his responsibility. “We started with the potentials we rounded up in sweeps, then characters who made our travel lists, and those who showed up in intel reports. It doesn’t take much to slip a tag in somebody, just brief physical contact, like you’d get during a routine security search. The political upside is that we could start actively releasing suspects en masse from our detention centers—we could simply keep an eye on them from space, watch what they did, who they associated with. Much more practical and effective than trying to detain and interrogate them all. And at that point we were managing a few thousand tagged individuals. But once we saw exactly what Datascan could do for us, we started wholesale tagging, starting with anyone we could encounter in a high-risk zone. We’ve got several hundred thousand tags in place already.”

  “Shit…” is about all Manning can come up with. Matthew goes pale, simmering. Becker looks sick—he’s actually sweating.

  “This is why you’ve got us out in the middle of nowhere?” Matthew accuses. “To drop your world-class human rights violation on us?”

  “Stand down, Major,” Richards warns, but without much heart.

  “He’s right, sir,” Manning jumps in. “No way this will fly. They’ll nail us up…”

  “It’s unlikely the tagging program will become a public issue,’” Henderson downplays. “It’s highly classified, and the implanted tags are incredibly hard to detect. And right now, all we’ve got is a way to track an ever-growing number of people. That’s all. And you never know: maybe the chips could help us find victims in a natural disaster or something someday. But if something goes down… Datascan can actually keep satellite records and rewind back to an event—like an attack—and see who was there, where they came from, where they went, who they were with. Even if the targets mart themselves, we can still link them back to their cells, their supports, their recruiters...”

  “But what about family?” Matthew criticizes. “Or even the off-chance that some unlucky bastard hangs clueless with terrorists?”

  “That determination can still be made onsite during operations,” Collins defends.

  “We crash in and see who shoots back?” Manning jumps back in.

  “There’s much more available than that,” Miller plays in. “Possession of weapons linked to attacks, bomb residue, other forensic evidence. You’ve all seen how good Datascan is at scene analysis.”

  “We’re not going to simply jump every potential target at will, gentlemen,” Henderson sooths. “Nor will we leave it purely up to Datascan to determine who we do act against.”

  “So—what?—we leave it up to a committee?” Matthew spits back.

  Henderson grins again, this time even worse than before.

  “Funny you should mention ‘Committee,’ Major…”

  On cue, the hologram dissolves the geographic globe into a familiar graphic: the UN Globe-and-Laurel symbol rotates smoothly in our midst. Then it morphs, just a bit: in a shimmer of light, there’s a sword vertically down through the globe. And beneath it appear the letters U-N-A-C-T.

  “This isn’t something we can do alone, gentlemen,” Miller preaches the well-worn line solemnly behind the new logo. “We need global buy-in to pursue terrorists across borders. And participation equals a say in what we do and don’t do.”

  “’Un-act’?” Matthew tries sarcastically to pronounce.

  “’Yoo-Nact’,” Miller corrects him, a hint of annoyance buried under his practiced diplomacy. “The United Nations Action Committee on Terrorism.”

  “Which is what?” Matthew pushes.

  “Nothing, at this point,” Henderson admits. “But that may change, sooner rather than later.”

  “The UN already has a CTC,” Becker weakly protests.

  “Which is what?” Henderson mimics Matthew, but maintains the cool smug. “A bunch of nations handling the problem their own way, while their diplomats hold meetings to discuss vague plans that never materialize because there is no real unity? A military force made up of uncoordinated fragments donated by member nations to limply police the world?”

  “And you think you can pull them together into something that actually works?” Matthew manages to keep his ridicule within professional tones.

  “No,” Henderson admits without losing a bit of his smugness. “I think Datascan can.”

  The chamber is silent for a few seconds, the suits and dress uniforms on one side of the table seemingly waiting to gauge the response of the black fatigues on the other, with the Datascan UNACT graphic floating in the air between us.

  “The proposed agreement we’re drawing up will be strictly limited to timely retaliations against current and verifiable terrorist activity,” Miller puts it in diplo-speak. Then he translates: “They hit us, we hit back. And preferably we hit them before they do too much damage—I want us to be as proactive as we can be without appearing to be on a publicly unacceptable offensive.”

  “’I do not move until my enemy moves,’” you quote an old Chinese martial adage, “’and then I move first.’”

  Miller raises an
eyebrow. Henderson smiles. The Datascan graphic does a barely-perceptible shimmer.

  “The point is: We don’t have to spend days, weeks or even years looking for a target that we ID’ed on flimsy or ‘classified’ evidence, then either blow them up from a distance or take them out in some unseen raid, leaving the enemy ample fodder to claim we missed or killed innocents. We can track and hit immediately—catch them with the gun still smoking, as it were—and present it with clarity to the media. Clear evidence of the target’s activities going in. And no fuck-ups coming out the other side. Just clean and spectacular, gentlemen. They strike at us, we annihilate them before they know what hit them.”

  “And we’ll have the UN mandate to do it,” Collins adds in with a taste of ironic satisfaction.

  You catch Matthew’s eyes—he’s probably re-running the conversation we had over beers way-back-when, when Doc warned us this was coming. He just didn’t know they’d sell it by secretly marking everyone on the planet so they could be watched by his baby from orbit. And Becker’s looking like he really doesn’t want to be wearing that nice new uniform anymore.

  “So… where does this go from here?” Manning asks cautiously, after a few more seconds of edgy silence.

  “We wait,” Collins tells us. “No more bullshit wet-ops like Berlin—that’s not what we’re about. Our next live mission will be a timely response to an active threat.”

  “We need to, as Captain Ram put it, let the enemy make a move,” Henderson reflects. “Then we move immediately, show them what we’re about. And I’m betting we won’t need to wait very long.”