It was baffling. She’d just damned him to hell and back and yet here she was, practically trembling at the thought that he’d been shot right in front of her. Thankfully, it was as he’d said, nothing more than a flesh wound. The bullet had grazed through his skin and it did not leave any lasting damage.
“How did the shooter gain access to these premises?” she wondered aloud, inspecting her handiwork to be sure that the wound was well bandaged. It had stopped bleeding, and for that she was grateful.
“I have no idea,” Wayne said, rubbing his good hand over his face. “The person must have been watching us for some time.”
“And with the noise from gunfire, how come the security people did not show up sooner?”
“Yeah, I wondered about that too,” he said.
They were seated side by side on the double bed in the room she’d been shown to earlier in the day. He moved and his arm brushed against hers. She almost jumped at the spark. It reminded her of the kiss they’d just shared. Remembering that kiss unsettled her. Emily jumped to her feet and began to pace.
If she hadn’t been so lost in the kiss, maybe she would have sensed the threat sooner. Wayne had always messed with her head. She’d forgotten how fiery that part of their life had been. If she wanted to keep a clear head throughout this mission, she needed to ensure that that kiss did not happen again.
“We can’t do that again,” she said, turning to him abruptly.
“Do what?”
“Kiss.”
“Oh.”
“You know I’m right. There’s too much at stake,” she said, trying to sound firm.
“I’d forgotten how combustible we were together.” She heard a slightly wistful note in his voice and it echoed the one inside her heart. She squashed it down ruthlessly.
“What we had was over a long time ago. We need to focus on getting Kendra back and keeping you and your killer weapon safe. The sooner that’s over, the sooner we can get back to our lives. Separately.”
“Right.” He got to his feet. “If you’re able to forget that kiss we shared just now, then sure.”
“What kiss?”
He raised an eyebrow and one side of his mouth quirked up in a half-smile. “It’s okay, Emily. We’ll pretend that right this moment, you’re not thinking about how good it felt and relieving it.” He held up his hand when she opened her mouth to protest. “Let’s not argue please. I’ve had enough for one day. Why don’t we move to the living room to wait for the others?”
Emily paused then nodded. It was probably best to stop talking about that kiss. Maybe that way she could stop thinking about how his lips were soft and yet hard at the same time, or how amazing if had felt to be kissed the way he’d kissed her. Right now she needed to focus on her daughter. From the plan they’d drawn out, those that went to retrieve her should have been back by now. And even though Emily knew better than most how unpredictable a mission could be, she couldn’t help wondering if they were okay.
With a nod, she turned and walked out of the room knowing that he was right behind her.
She resumed her pacing in the living room, glancing at her watch from time to time. It was almost one a.m. and they still hadn’t returned. She thought of sending a message to Ace but did not want to jeopardize their mission by distracting him. So she paced some more.
“You’re making me dizzy from all this pacing,” Wayne said at last.
“You might not be worried about our daughter, but I am,” she snapped.
When he said nothing in response, she felt bad. She stopped pacing and turned to look at him. He was staring off into the distance, his face taut. Emily sighed.
“Look, Wayne, I’m sorry.”
“Forget it.”
“Wayne—”
“I said forget it, Emily.” He turned to look at her then and his eyes were cold. “I know how you feel about me. You hate me. I’m a monster. I know, just…let it be.”
I don’t hate you, Wayne. Was her immediate response. Even though she did not say it aloud, she was surprised to discover that it was true. She was mad at him. She did not understand his reasons for what he did and yes, she really wanted to hate him, but she found that she couldn’t. She just could not hate him.
“You’re not a monster,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“I said, you are not a monster. I don’t understand the choices you made, but…” She took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “I believe you thought they were the best choices at the time you made them.”
She saw his eyes fill with emotion at her words and then he looked away. “Thank you,” he said humbly.
Emily nodded and also looked away. Her eyes caught the clock on the wall and she felt her anxiety spike. Now she really was getting worried.
“I wonder why it’s taking them so long,” she said as she resumed pacing.
“They should have been here by now,” he agreed with her.
“God, I hope they’re okay. I hope nothing went wrong. They’ll keep her safe, won’t they?”
“Em, calm down,” Wayne said, reverting to the shortened form of her name that he’d always used. “They won’t let anything happen to our baby.”
She hoped he was right. She really did. But her gut was telling her something different.
“Come sit,” he said.
She ignored him at first then with a sigh decided that she could sit down. She sat on one of the leather chairs and tried to relax, but couldn’t. Leaning her head back, she shut her eyes and tried some breathing techniques.
She heard the door open and sat up, then jumped to her feet when Ace walked in followed by the Shadow Force team. She looked behind them hoping to see her daughter. Her heart sank to the bottom of her shoes when she realized that there was no one else with them. She shifted her gaze to their faces and the frustration and disappointment in them confirmed her fears. The mission had been unsuccessful. Without a word, she sank back down on the seat she had just vacated.
“What happened?” she heard Wayne ask.
“They got there before us,” Asher replied.
“Who?”
“We have no idea.”
“Kendra?” Emily looked up at them. Please don’t say something bad happened to her, she silently pleaded with them.
“They took her.”
“Who? The couple she lived with?” she asked, confused.
“Whoever got there before us did not spare them,” Ace said gently. “We found them already dead and had to deal with the police.”
Emily felt like her heart was freezing over with fear. Dead? What did that mean? Someone had killed them, obviously, but what about Kendra? What had happened to her baby?
“We found this note,” Jasmine added, pulling out a folded piece of paper from her pocket.
Wayne took the paper from her and read it. Then passed it over to Emily. She opened it slowly and prepared herself for what she was about to read.
If you want to see your daughter alive again, bring the Prototype to Lincoln Memorial in D.C. this Sunday, 6 p.m.
Emily lifted her eyes to find Wayne watching her. She had never felt so helpless in her life. So totally at the mercy of another. It was a feeling she never wanted to experience again in her life.
“It’s time to go get the prototype,” Wayne said.
“But we don’t know who this person is—it could get in the wrong hands. There has to be another way.” Emily could not believe she was protesting his decision, especially knowing that their daughter’s life depended on it.
“All bets are off. We get the prototype and head to D.C.” With that, he got to his feet and walked out.
Emily stared at the door through which he’d disappeared. This was wrong. This was so wrong, she thought in distress. But she had no idea what could be done.
“We’ll find a way,” Asher promised.
“We can’t let him do this,” Jasmine said softly. “And we can’t leave the little girl in their clutches.” She
shook her head. “Damn, I hate this!”
Emily got to her feet abruptly. She needed to go to Wayne.
“Excuse me,” she murmured before walking out.
Chapter Seven
Emily paused in front of a door. Just across the hall was the bedroom she was using. She’d slept for a couple of hours and had a shower before Ace and the Shadow Force people had gone on the failed mission. She knew that this was the bedroom Wayne was using. She hesitated a moment, then knocked on the door. After a few moments, the door opened and she looked up to see Wayne standing on the other side. He stared at her for a few moments then turned and walked back inside. She slowly followed him into the room, closing the door behind her.
She saw him standing out on the balcony. He was leaning against the railing, staring outside. She walked out and stood beside him. The view was of the front of the mansion, which was well lit, though the balcony itself was cast in shadows. She leaned against the balcony railing and they stood there in silence.
“You are not going to talk me out of this, you know,” he said at last.
“Hmm…”
She felt him turn to look at her. “What does that mean?”
Emily scanned the grounds below them. She picked out a few of the armed guards patrolling the premises. If she didn’t know about the Shadow Force thing, she would have wondered why Asher Banks had so many armed guards around.
Closing her eyes, she tried to sense the environment around them. She did not get any feeling of danger. Whoever that shooter had been, he was long gone and he hadn’t left any friends behind who could pose a threat to their safety.
“Emily?”
She opened her eyes, but kept her gaze on the grounds below. After a moment she said, “Tell me about your weapon.”
“What?”
“Your weapon,” she said looking at him now. “You know…what does it do?”
“It’s an autonomous weapon.”
“You mean it can determine its target without any human control?”
She’d heard about such weapons. Actually, a group of experts were at Geneva just the other day warning the United Nations about the danger of such weapons. She’s thought it was futuristic technology even though she’d known that there were independent people working on such technology. She knew for certain that Elon Musk was working with Artificial Intelligence since he’d been one of the experts at Geneva.
“Pretty much,” he said with a shrug. “It operates like a simple android drone. It can go anywhere and reach anyone. It has DNA recognition and, when searching for a target, will hack into any system. Social media accounts, social security, birth and death records…You name it. It can search for, gather and analyze data in a matter of seconds.”
Emily stared at him. She thought of the possibilities of such a weapon and was stunned. It could change the way warfare was fought forever. Heck, in the wrong hands, it would start a damn war.
“So you’re saying that if September Eleventh were to take place today, all we need to do is get the DNA samples and we’ll be able to track down those responsible?”
Wayne nodded. “But it’s more than that. The technology also has the ability to filter out those of similar ideologies through behavioral patterns and eliminate them as well.”
“Jesus!”
“Yeah.”
“An entire race could be wiped out using this technology,” she said in disbelief.
If it got into the hands of a terrorist organization, they could decide to wipe out every American of Hispanic origin or all Caucasians for instance. Hell, it made nuclear weapons look so middle ages. Then she remembered something she’d read several months ago.
“Wait a minute. Didn’t the UN get countries to place a ban on the creation of weapons that were capable of independently determining their course of action? I mean, weapons that did not need human control?” She could have sworn she read something like that.
“Yeah. There was an attempt and several countries signed up for it.”
“But not all?”
“No. The US didn’t and neither did Israel, China or Russia.”
“So you mean to tell me that there are some labs out there, just like yours, where such technology is being developed?”
“Yes. It’s a race to see who would be the first to do so. Actually, China is far ahead in this and a couple of months ago, a swarm of drones attacked a Russian air base in Syria.”
“Which means the technology could be duplicated.” She could see the possibilities. If several of these bots could be created, and if it was possible to get them to work together as one, it would be like having a killer squad of bots.
“Which is why my creation is so important,” he said, his eyes shining with excitement. “I used the Shadow Force formation. So each bot can work independently or in a team of eight. They can go for covert operations and eliminate the targets. Once they identify the targets, they can be in and out in a matter of seconds. Literally.”
It was brilliant. Damn scary, but brilliant.
“Why are you working on something so…so damn lethal?” She could not wrap her head around it. A swarm of his creation could work as weapons of mass destruction. How did you protect yourself from that?
“We are not the only ones working on this, Em,” he said. “But we need to figure out a way to defend ourselves from such future attacks. That is what’s at the crux of my research. I was working on a defense system as well.”
“A defense system?”
“Yeah. If our country ever got attacked by such weapons, how do we protect ourselves? In working on the technology, what I was actually doing was developing a defensive system in the case of such attacks.”
She knew one thing for certain. “We can’t let your work get into the wrong hands.”
He looked away from her and stared out at the grounds. She could feel the despair radiating off him.
“You think I don’t know that?” he asked in quiet frustration. “But we had a deal. They were supposed to keep her safe.”
“Who, Kendra?”
“Yes. They said nothing would happen to you two if I just completed the research. They would keep you both safe. They lied, dammit, they lied!”
The depth of pain in his outburst shook her. After several moments, Emily gently touched his arm. The muscles were taut and she realized the effort it was taking him to keep his anger in check.
“Who are they, Wayne?” she asked softly. When he did not reply, she prodded, “Are they government folk?”
He gave a terse nod.
She withdrew her hand and gripped the balcony railing they’d been leaning on. She stared out, watching the guards walk the grounds. She had no idea what time it was, probably somewhere close to morning. It occurred to her that she should probably get some sleep, but her mind was all over the place. There were just too many things that she didn’t understand. Too many things did not add up. For instance, the government had several high security research facilities, why would they entrust something so sensitive to Wayne’s lab? Why did they not restrict him to one of their facilities and get him to work on the project in a secure environment? It just didn’t make sense. She asked him to explain.
“It was safer to have the research done in my labs. That way, it could remain a secret and also, if things went sour, the government could deny all involvement.”
That made sense, especially if the other countries were trying to get a restriction on future development of such weapons.
“I agree that all bets are off,” Emily said thoughtfully. “The government did not keep their part of the deal. But, we are not going to give up your work just like that.”
“What are you saying, Em? They’ve got Kendra. How do we get her back? It’s the only way,” he said, shaking his head.
“No, it’s not. We are going to find a way to get our baby back without destroying the world,” Emily said firmly.
Wayne gazed at her intently, as though trying to read beyond her words
. She held his gaze for several moments, then he inhaled and let his breath out in a sigh.
“I don’t know, Em. I just don’t know.”
“We’ll find a way, Wayne. You have to trust that we will.”
They had to find a way. Of course, she was fresh out of ideas, but she knew with bone-deep certainty that they could not afford to give up that weapon. They would have to rescue their daughter without that option.
**
Saturday, 6:45 a.m., Department of Defense, Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia.
“We have an emergency on our hands,” General W.D. Carter, the Air Force Vice Chief of Staff said to the other men around the table. “The Convention on Lethal Autonomous Weapons is taking place in a few days and we may potentially lose custody of the prototype.”
“What the hell happened?” General James G. James, Army Vice Chief of Staff, asked.
“I thought we had the girl in protective custody to ensure that shit like this did not happen?”
General Carter stared into the piercing dark eyes of the Vice Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Teddy B. Hanson.
“Alma and Dick Cutts, the couple who were charged with protecting the girl, were attacked last night. Sadly, they did not make it,” he informed them.
“The parents?” General James asked.
“Negative, General. They did make an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve her.”
“So the girl is in the hands of hostile forces. This means we have nothing on the man,” the admiral said.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Do we send in a special operations team to retrieve the girl? My people will be in and out of there in no time, you know that, W. D.” This was from General Fabian Dakota, the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps.
“I know that, Fabian. But we can’t risk being identified with the project. As far as the world is concerned, this is a privately-sponsored project that has absolutely nothing to do with the United States government and we need to keep it that way. Sending in the Marines now will give the wrong signal.”
He looked at each man as he spoke and saw that they were all in agreement. Each of them was part of a Special Task Force charged with looking into defensive technology against lethal autonomous weapons, such as drone swarms. China was already ahead in the development of such offensive weapons, but the defensive side was still pretty much in the test phase. Which was why it had become important that this project was not only completed but kept safe from further compromise.
Silver Shield Security Box Set Page 105
