Unleashed

by Patrick McLaughlin

  *****

  With his last sip of coffee for the night, Craig opened up the secure channel to Langley to initiate Operation Hard Look.

  “Time to let the bloodhound run,” Craig announced to his team and the operator at Langley. The motors started simultaneously, the sound of a hundred bees.

  Although his Virginia-based, remote pilot was extremely capable, he needed their eyes until the UAV ascended twenty feet and performed its initial assessment of its surroundings: obstructions, altitude, wind speeds. Once measured, the drone rose softly from its stationary hover like a butterfly and then shot out into the darkness.

  With their mission vehicle airborne, they were now “live” and fully-activated. “Come out to play my little friends,” Craig said as the sixteen-armed drone vanished before them.

  Before the cold set in, Craig had changed from his civilian clothing to four layers of desert camo to ready himself for the long night to come. With a mittened fist, he grabbed the mic and said, “Langley, our eyes are now your eyes.”

  The Air Force virtual pilot flew down the valley until he found the chasm on the eastern edge of a mountainside — or approximately two kilometers south of the position where the other Special Forces team components were now all headed in their weaponized Humvees. At this point, the pilot decreased the UAV’s speed while increasing altitude to twenty-five hundred feet to reduce the possibility of detection, then continued on to the tip of the interior of the gorge.

  “Hard Look eyes now open and aware,” said the pilot, who then found a suitable altitude offering the least wind in order to conserve energy.

  Craig bounced violently as Mikey drove the Toyota across the rugged terrain, all the while struggling to both control and view the tablet on their way towards the rendezvous point at the opening to the ravine. There the team would reunite and they would once again be at full, assault-force readiness. Looking at the tablet between spine-shattering jolts, Craig could see what the pilot viewed from above and they would both soon see what Sentient images provided.

  “Lieutenant, lighting up Hard Look,” Craig said as he opened the lens of Sentient.

  For the first seconds the images were a blur and then instantly they burst into shocking clarity. The first of the continuous images exposed three huts tucked tightly into a crease of the ridges far below. Only one dim light, less than a spark from a lighter, shone from behind a clothed window opening in the largest of the structures.

  “Hard Look, opening array to start the sweep now,” reported the pilot.

  At once the pilot released the joystick, locked the drone into position, and took control of the Sentient camera. “Flow beginning but, Hard Look, we have a problem.”

  Craig, never taking his eyes off the screen, had already realized what had gone wrong and came back firm: “Acknowledged, too much living matter to look at!”

  In all of their testing of the Sentient, they had certainly been successful in acquiring data from live test subjects, but they had never attempted acquisition for more than one live biological target in close proximity — and certainly never in a dense group. Down in the huts were eleven human figures and, making things even more interesting, dozens of goats and sheep surrounding the buildings. All Sentient was sending back was a milky soup of data from all the mammals combined. There was absolutely no usable information offered up to them to distinguish and identify the mission target!

  “Hard Look! Call request for next steps to get Good Look. We have four minutes until we must close our eyes,” the pilot/cameraman stated, referring to the drone’s limited battery life. “Requesting suggestions on where to look right now in order to see,” Langley continued, with a faint whisper of desperation in his voice.

  Craig maintained his cool, even as he was having the shit beat out of him each time the truck hit a boulder or ditch. They were now only two clicks away and according to plan, they should have already identified Good Look. He closed his eyes and allowed his thoughts to flow, randomly seeking the one piece of information he needed to set them back on course. With a familiar “AH HA,” he picked up the handset and delivered the solution to the pilot. “Hard Look, listen closely, we have one chance at this and you must follow my every word.”

  Craig took a breath, slowed his speech, and began.

  “The scientist who designed the Sentient told me she had a boyfriend — a professional surf photographer. One day, she talked about him using the “Al Servo” mode to shoot high speed objects, like surfers moving across a wave. Al Servo incorporates a type of artificial intelligence used in photography to predict the speed and distance of a moving object. The camera uses algorithms to predict where the subject will be in the future, and I think we can use it here, as it effectively “locks onto” to the subject to track and anticipate its next position. We can use it to tighten up on one inhabitant at a time. Do you follow me? Right now, I imagine you are using some level of auto mode. We need to change this. Are you ready?”

  “Yes, sir,” the pilot replied.

  “First, look for a setting that lets you shift from single to high-speed continuous.”

  “Affirmative, sir, set on continuous.”

  “Now, look for the Al Servo selection option,” Craig directed, as he hoped to God the scientists kept the same name Canon used.

  Craig knew Sentient’s autofocus capabilities were partially based on commercial, professional-grade camera equipment. Canon’s technology allowed sports photographers to lock onto a single, fast-moving car on a racetrack, while essentially ignoring everything else. It’s how photographers could get an incredible shot of one bird in a flock of hundreds as they flew by.

  Just then, they went over an unseen drop and Craig’s head hit the roof of the cab. “Okay Langley, you should have one small square in the middle of the viewfinder,” Craig said as he felt for blood. “I will assume you do unless you tell me. This is important: whatever is in the square will lock into focus when you press halfway down on your virtual shutter release button. Can you do this?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Tell me when you find it and at once engage it.”

  “Sir, found it, ready.”

  Craig watched his tablet screen.

  “Hold, hold, got it!” the pilot announced.

  “Good, you should now be able to lock one by one on the individuals in the huts. The livestock shouldn’t be a problem; now find Good Look!” Craig screamed into the microphone as the minutes of remaining power slipped away.

  “Begin now and move fast.” Craig watched the images on the screen of the tablet return to lifelike resolution. “Select one at a time; Sentient will decipher the data stream the second it views each of the individual human silhouettes.”

  Craig and the pilot both read the data as it registered, looking for a match against a reference sample on their displays.

  “Got ‘em!” they both shouted together.

  Craig cracked his only smile of the day and slid the tablet into a pouch beneath his seat. His hand then reached for ammo pouches and other essentials wrapped in Velcro, which stuck to his Kevlar-plated vest as designed when he slammed them across his chest. Only one more mission directive remained: to apprehend alive, if at all possible, the al-Qaeda leader code named Good Luck, who they had identified and was now within their reach. As they approached the ravine, the rest of the team came into view and rocks flew as the Toyota skidded to a halt. Craig, loaded for bear and at his peak of emotional and mental awareness, jumped out from the truck with weapons in each of his hands.