Authors: Dale Brown and Jim DeFelice
The two examining rooms were austere, furnished with basic tables and some cabinets. There were two rooms with beds where patients could rest, a pair of small offices, and a storeroom. A dozen people, all women or children, were being seen by two aides, both locals whom Marie had trained. They had been open only a few weeks, said Marie, but already had seen a number of difficult cases, including many patients with AIDS.
“We are going to be involved in a program,” she said. “But for now, we send those with AIDS to the capital. We can’t really help.”
“What about the other clinic in town?” Nuri asked.
Marie glanced at Gerard before answering.
“Many people won’t go there.”
That had to be because the other clinic was associated with Sudan First. The friction between the two groups was new.
Most likely it wasn’t serious, or Gerard would not have been in the city center. But you could never tell.
“Give me a list of what you can use,” said Nuri as the tour ended. “And I will see what I can do.”
N
uri led Danny back to the car without Gerard and his small entourage. Boston was in the driver’s seat; Danny got in the back.
“Why didn’t you ask about the UAV?” asked Danny as Boston backed out onto the road.
“The time wasn’t right,” said Nuri.
“Why not?”
“Let me handle this, all right? We have to get this medicine.”
“That’ll take weeks.”
“No. They just want over-the-counter drugs mostly. I’ll fly to Egypt and buy it. It’s all simple stuff. The clinic’s a gold mine of information. If we could find a way to talk to some of the women who are waiting to see someone, we can figure out what’s going on.”
“It’s not worth waiting,” said Danny. “The longer we wait, the better the odds someone else will come and get in the way. We can take two men out pretty easily.”
The sun had set; Boston turned on the headlights and found that only one worked, and only on high.
“I know we have different approaches to things,” Nuri told him after a few minutes of driving in silence. “But I don’t think there’s any harm in waiting.”
“I agree giving medicine to these people is a good thing,” said Danny. “But we can give it to them after the operation. My orders are to recover the UAV as quickly as I can. We’re going in tonight.”
“The only reason I’m giving it to them is so we can recover the UAV with a minimum of fuss,” said Nuri. “I don’t really care about helping them.”
“That hardly cements your argument.”
“Well it’s true. Listen, if we can do it with a minimum of fuss—”
“We can,” said Danny. “We go tonight.”
Duka
I
n the end Li Han solved the problem like he solved many problems: shortly after sunset, he had Amara bring him three teenage boys, gave them each five American dollars, and told them he would give the first to return with the proper cord another twenty dollars.
Amara predicted they would have a cord by morning. Instead, all three of the boys returned within the hour. One had a cord with RCA plugs; the other two, however, had found network cables. Which building in town they’d stolen them from was irrelevant to Li Han; he paid both young men as promised.
“You should give that one something as well,” suggested Amara as the other two were paid. “Having an angry thief in the city is not a good thing.”
“Yes,” said Li Han, nodding. It was a wise suggestion; Amara had more intelligence than he’d thought. He gave the boy three dollars in consolation, then watched as Amara explained.
Amara spoke English as well as Arabic and the local lingo, but there was something else about him. He had a curiosity about him that the others lacked, and he seemed to put it to good use. Perhaps he could be useful.
“Are you good with computers?” Li Han asked him when the boy was gone.
“I use them for e-mail. The Web, that is all,” answered Amara.
“You can’t program?” Li Han booted his laptop up.
“No, I cannot.”
Amara’s accent was thick, and at times his vocabulary strained, but his grammar seemed perfect. Li Han suspected that he had been to the States or at least Europe, something rare for a Brother.
He let Amara watch as he hooked up his laptop to the aircraft’s brain. There was no response, and he couldn’t get his system to recognize it as part of a network. He tried the other plug with similar results.
The problem, he thought, might be that the UAV’s brain wasn’t powered; he made sure he had voltage flowing from a battery to the motherboard, but had not bothered to examine the network hook-ins.
“Here, watch me,” said Li Han, starting to examine the circuitry.
“What are we doing?” asked Amara.
“We are looking for a break. A cut wire, a bad solder connection. It’s a guess,” Li Han added.
He quickly found a small unattached wire. Unsure where it had been attached, he narrowed down the possibilities until he found what looked like a match to the broken solder on a small post near the transformer section. This was some sort of last minute patch, something added possibly to allow the network connector, though it was impossible to tell without a schematic.
Solving the connection mystery gave him another problem: he had no soldering gun. And he suspected that would be a hell of a lot harder to find than a network cable.
Li Han went upstairs to the common room and looked over their supplies. There was a large medical kit with syringes. Filled with morphine, they had been stolen some weeks before from an aid group.
He squirted the drug out. Amara eyed him curiously.
“Do you have a lighter?” Li Han asked him.
“No.”
“Does anyone?”
“Swal smokes, though it is forbidden.”
“Get the lighter from him.”
Amara went over to one of the youths sleeping on the side. He woke him, then had him walk to the opposite side of the room. They argued a bit—Li Han could tell the boy was lying about not smoking. Amara insisted. Swal, who was bigger, pushed him and started back to the nest of blankets where he’d been sleeping. Amara grabbed him; Swal shoved him violently across the floor.
Li Han put down the needle. With two quick strides he was halfway to Swal. He took his Glock from his belt and raised it just as Swal pulled his arm back to swing at Amara.
Swal froze. He held out his hands. Amara said something to him. Swal reached into his pocket slowly, then took out the lighter.
By now the others were awake, and staring at them.
“Translate, Amara,” said Li Han. “When I ask for something, I want it immediately.”
“But—” started Amara.
“Translate!”
Amara did so.
Swal nodded that he understood. When his head stopped bobbing, Li Han put a bullet through his temple.
“We will have no traitors in our group,” said Li Han. He held out his hand. “Now give me the lighter.”
SOCCOM Headquarters, Florida
B
reanna thanked the major who had shown her to the secure communications area. The sergeant waiting at the console handed her a handset, then walked to the other side of the room to give her a little privacy, pretending to fuss over something there.
“What’s the situation, Danny?” she asked, holding the phone to her ear.
“We’re going to go in tonight to the building where the UAV is,” he told her.
“Good. You spoke to Jonathon?”
“Yes. He made quite a deal about our being discreet. Don’t worry,” said Danny. “I should mention that Nuri wants to hold off until the morning. He thinks he may be able to make a deal for us to get it back without any bloodshed. But that may take at least another day, probably two or three.”
Under other circumstances, Breanna might have been inclined to wait. But given what Reid had told her the night before, the decision was easy.
“Get it back now. Go in ASAP.”
“I intend on it.”
Breanna hesitated. How much should she tell him?
Her inclination was everything. But if something went wrong—if he was captured and started to talk, that would make things worse.
“Call me as soon as the operation is complete,” she said. “Danny—this one’s important.”
“They always are.”
Duka
D
anny Freah checked his weapon and his watch, waiting for the signal from Boston. Boston and Sugar were approaching the front of the target building from opposite directions, aiming to cut off any reinforcements from the nearby warehouse. Both had grenade launchers on their SCAR assault guns; their job was simply to delay any response from that direction until the Osprey could swing overhead and back them up. The aircraft’s Hellfire missiles and chain guns would make short work of the building and anyone trying to take them on.
The rest of the Whiplash team, six men, were all with Danny. Once Boston and Sugar were in place, the two teams would move up to the north side of the warehouse. They’d plant charges on the sides, and at a signal, blow themselves a doorway.
Whiplash used a patterned explosive string that was designed to act like a can opener on a metal wall. The explosive in the device was metered and focused in a lenslike pattern that peeled down the top of the panel as it blew in.
The Whiplash team members were armed with SCARs configured either as submachine guns or as submachine guns with grenade launchers. Each wore special lightweight body armor that could resist anything up to a .50 caliber machine gun bullet at fifty yards. Their smart helmets had full face shields whose screens could provide either infrared or optical feeds from the cameras embedded at the top; the circuitry also provided some protection against sudden bright flashes—handy when using flash-bang grenades during an assault. The helmet com systems connected them with the others in the team, MY-PID, and a dedicated Whiplash com channel that connected with Room 4.
There were still only two men inside, both at the south end of the building. If they resisted, they’d be killed. If they surrendered, they’d be bound and then left after the operation—they were of no value once Whiplash had the UAV.
Danny flexed his fingers, waiting for Boston to check in. The air felt cold, even though it was well into the fifties. His stomach started to churn—that always seemed to happen lately, the acid building right before the action.
“I have someone moving inside the building,” said Turk, watching from above in the Tigershark. “Uh, going to the north, maybe that front door.”
“What’s up with Building Two?” asked Danny quickly, asking about the nearest building, which was roughly seventy yards away, diagonally across the road.
“No movement. Guy is definitely heading for the door in Target Building.”
“Copy,” said Danny. “Boston? Sugar?”
“Yeah, I copy,” said Sugar. She was huffing, obviously running to get in position. “Hang on.”
“Subject at the door,” said Turk.
Danny switched his view to an overhead feed from the Tigershark. He could see Sugar moving up to take the man when he came out, Boston covering her nearby.
“Team, get ready,” he told the others. “You hear a gunshot, move in. Blow the panels and go.”
“Subject is outside,” said Turk.
The circuit was silent. Danny waited, acid eating at his stomach. The Tigershark, orbiting to the north, lost sight of the front of the building.
“Down,” huffed Sugar finally. “He’s down. I bashed him on the back of his head. Went down like a bowling pin.”
“Truss him and drag him away from the building,” said Danny. “Tell me when you’re ready.”
More waiting. The acid started creeping up toward his windpipe.
“I’m good,” she said finally.
“We’re good, boss,” added Boston. “Go for it. We got your back.”
“Teams up,” said Danny. “MY-PID—what’s the other tango inside the target building doing?”
“Subject is immobile. Appears to be sleeping.”
The explosives were set. The team backed away, just far enough to stay clear of the blast.
“On three,” said Danny, reflux biting at the back of his mouth. “One, two . . .”
Room 4, CIA Campus
J
onathon Reid pushed the sheaf of papers across the conference table toward Ray Rubeo.
“This is the white paper,” Reid said. “Is the program discussed here feasible?”
Rubeo frowned.
Perhaps it was because of the hour, Reid thought. It was not yet 5:00
A.M.
But Rubeo himself had suggested the time.
The scientist always frowned. In fact, he seemed to be in a perpetual bad mood. He was a genius—his track record at Dreamland alone was proof—but he was a sourpuss even so. He gave the impression that he walked around in a different universe than mortal men. When he spoke to someone, it was as if he was coming down from Mount Olympus. How he had ever managed to get along with the Air Force command, let alone the bureaucracy of the Defense Department, was unfathomable.
Rubeo’s company was one of the Office of Special Technology’s main contractors, and among other things was responsible for building the highly secure facility they were sitting in. Rubeo had enormous influence at the Pentagon, but how he managed to deal with the generals there without being knifed—literally—Reid would never know.
The scientist turned the paper around and looked at the title. He frowned again. He turned over a page, looking at the names of the authors.
The frown deepened.
He turned over another page, reading a sentence or two of the executive summary, then flipped into the body of the paper, seemingly at random.
The frown seemed to reach to his chin.
Rubeo turned to the references at the back.
“It would have been nice if they had at least got the citations right.” He pushed the paper back toward Reid.
“So your opinion?” asked Reid.
“About the paper? Or the possibility of the program you’re referring to?”
“The latter, Doctor.”
“Of course it’s feasible,” said Rubeo. “The individual elements are trivial. The main difficulty is designing a tool that can interface with unknown control systems.”
“Layman’s terms?”
“Hmmmph.”
Rubeo took hold of his earlobe, as if pulling it might turn a lever inside his brain that allowed him to speak in plain English. “The difficulty is re-creating in software the flexibility of the human mind, and at the same time enabling that software to use the benefits of its computing power.”
Rubeo paused. Translating his thoughts seemed several times more difficult than working out a complex mathematic problem for him.
“A man can drive a car,” he continued. “He can fly an aircraft. He can shoot a gun. He can fire a missile. The same man can do all this. If you have the right man. If he has the proper training. His software, if you will, is designed precisely for this function. To duplicate that is not a trivial matter.”
“Can we duplicate it?”
“Of course. The question is whether it’s worth the effort. And, as these authors point out—somewhat sloppily, I might say—whether it’s worth the risk.”
“Is it?”
Rubeo reached for his coffee cup. It was filled with hot water—probably some sort of health fad, though Reid didn’t ask.
“Why is this important?” Rubeo asked after a small, birdlike sip.
“I’m not sure I can tell you. I don’t know all the facts yet either.”
The frown became a smirk.
“Doctor, have you worked on a program similar to this?” Reid asked.
“I’m not sure you understand, Mr. Reid. The ultimate goal of any advanced artificial intelligence regime implies this ability. Creating an autonomous intelligence in and of itself implies that you have mastered the prerequisites for this. A program that can learn to fly an airplane can learn to do other things.”
“So the program used to guide the Flighthawks could do this?”
Rubeo raised his right hand to his face, running his index finger along his eyebrows. It almost seemed to Reid that he was underlining some thought behind his cranium.
“Of course not,” said Rubeo finally. “Those codes are strictly limited. There are difficulties with propagating the intelligence in an autonomous manner such as what’s laid out here. I don’t want to get too technical for you, and you’ll excuse me, as I don’t intend to insult you, but there has to be a certain amount of space for the program to function. Constraining it—well, it might work, but not as intended.”
“Have you worked with something like this?”
“Mr. Reid, you will recall that my curriculum vitae includes heading the scientific team at Dreamland. We had many, many projects under development there. More specific, I cannot be. Even with you,” added Rubeo. He took another sip of his water.
“Can I speak to you in confidence?” Reid asked.
“You have my confidence.”
“What I mean, Doctor, is can I ask you some questions without them leaving the room?”
“It would depend on the questions.”
That wasn’t good enough, Reid thought. Yet he needed a candid opinion. And he wanted to discuss the issue with someone like Rubeo—with anyone, really.
But what if Rubeo felt obliged to talk to someone at the Pentagon or in the administration about it? What if he saw it as a moral issue that had to be aired?
Reid wanted to be the one to make that decision. Assuming it had to be made.
But he needed to know. Perhaps he could back into the answer without arousing Rubeo’s suspicion.
“If another government had this weapon—” Reid started.
“I doubt anyone has this ability,” said Rubeo flatly. “We would see it in other weapons.”
“So no one is this advanced?”
“The Israeli drones can’t do a third of what the early versions of the Flighthawk could handle,” said Rubeo. “And I would use that as a measuring stick.”
“What about us?” said Reid. “Could we do it?”
Rubeo took another sip of his water, then set it down and leaned forward on the table.
“Have we done it?” asked the scientist.
“I don’t know,” admitted Reid. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
“I see.”
“I’m concerned about the implications,” explained Reid.
“As well you should be.”
“Can safety precautions be built into it? The paper says that they would be ineffectual.”
“
Potentially
ineffectual,” said Rubeo. “I can’t make a judgment without knowing much more about the specifics of what we’re talking about.”
Fair enough, thought Reid.
“There would be physical limitations, depending on the hardware. And different contingencies. I’m sorry to be vague—the portability issue is not trivial, but it can be overcome. Conceivably.”
“If it were up to you, would you allow such a weapon to be used?” asked Reid.
Now Rubeo’s lips curled up in the faintest suggestion of a smile—a rare occurrence.
“I don’t make those sorts of decisions,” he answered. “In my experience, it is a very rare weapon that, once created, is
not
used.”