Gun Metal Heart (10 page)

He studied the shuttlecock thing sitting on his palm. “Mercutio is our latest in surveillance drones. With a lithium/hybrid battery it can stay in the air for up to three hours. It makes as much noise as an electric toothbrush while consuming one-third the energy. It pivots through six degrees of freedom—up, down, right, left, forward, and backward—and it's too damn quick to see.”

The senior buyer, the general working under the name Mr. Smith, wore a salt-and-pepper flattop and a bristly mustache. He stepped forward and peered into the second case. “And this MAV? The hawk?”

Todd grinned. “Ah. Hotspur. See, Mercutio, here”—he hefted the shuttlecock—“gives us eyes and ears. And we'll demonstrate that in a moment. But his big brother, there? Hotspur?”

Todd paused for dramatic effect. “Hotspur gives us talons.”

Florence

The Hotel Criterion had only one parking place in front for guests checking in, or for taxis. Daria pulled up. Dr. Incantada made an elaborate show of getting her rheumatoid-ridden legs, then her elaborate cane, out of the car. Every eye was on her. Daria slipped out of the compact, keeping low, as if rummaging around the floorboards for something.

Dr. Incantada limped around the car to her and peered through her distorting lenses. “Are you sure about this?” she asked in Italian.

A hummingbird flitted nearby, held position a moment. No one from the Hyundai paid it any attention.

Daria said, “Yes. Trust me, Doctor.”

The high-tech designer's entourage entered the hotel, Daria tucked into the middle between the two men, arms laden with metal boxes.

A beautiful blond woman in a twinset and perky ponytail greeted them. She held an embossed portfolio against her chest. She wore pearl earrings and an understated single strand of pearls around her neck. She wore a silver bracelet.

It was identical to the bracelet Daria had taken off the watcher on the bridge.

Daria made eye contact with the blonde.

Daria's hand snapped out and captured the blonde's wrist.

“May I?” she said, and with the deft flick of her thumbnail the clasp on the comms bracelet popped open, and the bracelet tumbled to the floor.

The blonde didn't look startled or shocked. She didn't gasp or back up. She didn't complain or argue. She didn't feign ignorance or innocence. She smiled at Daria and nodded approval.

“Practiced that with garter belts, have you?”

The blonde tried to shove her leather portfolio into Daria's face. Daria easily blocked the useless blow with her left forearm and stepped into the paltry attack, right forearm rising, aiming for the blonde's ear. A stunning blow, one that combines pain with a momentary failure of the inner ear and the body's gyroscope.

The blonde refused to play along.

Daria swung her elbow and missed.

A bit late, she realized the leather portfolio had been a feint. Daria had blocked it and stepped into the fight. The blonde pivoted to her right. Daria pivoted to her left. It was as if the women were dancing around a maypole.

The blonde grabbed the lapels of the driver's jacket and pulled her in. She extended one leg, hip-checked Daria, and sent her spinning to the floor.

Daria hadn't seen the judo throw coming. Her momentum had driven her in, toward the opponent. The blonde had used her momentum against her.

Someone's elbow did crack into someone's ear. But it wasn't Daria's elbow and it wasn't the blonde's ear.

And Daria lay on the carpet of the hotel lobby, out like a light.

Sandpoint, Idaho

“This is all happening in real time,” Todd Brevidge assured the buyers. Cyrus Acton and the rest of the brass from Corporate stayed in the background, enjoying the show, but less awed by it; they'd seen the beta test runs.

“Now. Watch this.” Brevidge raised his walkie phone and spoke to the control room. “Audio, dude.”

A computer-generated rectangle appeared atop the video feed from Italy. The rectangle was long and low and bisected by a horizontal hairline.

The image itself zoomed from the white van to a Hyundai discharging four people: two men in ill-fitting, cheap suits, an older woman unfolding an aluminum cane, and a driver.

The older woman, jowly and all but disguised by gigantic glasses, spoke. “
Sei securo di questa?
”

The spiky sine wave of an audio signal appeared in the narrow computer-generated box. Words appeared, attached to the box, reading
SUBJECT
1.

The audio box snapped up into the left-hand corner of the wall-wide screen, lining up with an unseen grid.

Another voice from the street—someone else from the Hyundai party—said, “
Sì. Fiducia, Dottore.
”

A new audio box popped up marked
SUBJECT
2.

“There.” Brevidge grinned. “With a couple of words, Mercutio can acquire the voice prints of up to two hundred and thirty different people. Now, if this old lady were to walk into a cocktail party with hundreds of people talking, laughing, music playing, whatever; Mercutio could pick her out in under ten seconds. From her voice print alone.”

The guests nodded their approval.

“Once we have an audio print, there's no way anyone can shake us.” He spoke into his handheld. “Translation?”

Words began appearing on the audio boxes, in a tight, conservative typeface.

INCANTADA:
Are you sure about this?

SUBJECT
2
:
Yes. Trust me, Doctor.

Todd said, “And if that wasn't enough…” He spoke into his phone. “Face.”

A computer-generated frame appeared around Dr. Incantada's face. The frame zoomed off to a far corner of the screen, taking an after-image of her face with it. The image flickered a few times, then locked in place.

“Facial recognition software,” Brevidge said. “Should the lady choose not to speak again: Big deal. Mercutio never forgets a face.”

Both buyers were reacting now, as they studied the face on the screen.

Brevidge had picked his moment well. “Oh, yeah. I see you've met our guest today. Dr. Gabriella Incantada. Folks: Our competition. I understand Uncle Sam has considered putting in an order for her invention, over ours.”

Mr. Smith and Miss Jones looked none too happy about this development.

Todd Brevidge straightened his tie and gave them his best canary-fed grin. “This would be a good time to ask for the taxpayers' money back.”

Florence

The livery building had been gutted but the floors were still standing. The accoutrements of construction workers were everywhere, from paint cans and long-handled paint rollers to a bolted-down table saw to fat pink rolls of insulation, still tightly ensconced in shrink wrap. The floors were covered in sweet-smelling sawdust and wood chips. A garbage chute was set up on a second floor: a glassless window covered by a wooden frame, outside of which hung a long plastic tube, three feet in diameter and looking like a giant vacuum cleaner hose. It dove down two floors to a paint-scarred orange Dumpster in the pedestrian alley behind the building.

On the ground floor, the rehabilitation project had left no obvious or easy means of egress from the livery building to the hotel. But several shared walls had been breached on the second and third floors.

Derrick Saito silently prowled the floor, glancing quickly out through the windows in back or through the billowing shroud up front.

Owen Cain Thorson settled down, sitting on a roll of pink insulation wrapped into tight logs. He gripped his Glock in his right hand. In his left he held a badly creased, sun-faded photo of Daria Gibron.

His hands shook.

*   *   *

The blonde working under the nom de guerre of Major Arcana had carefully orchestrated the theft of Gabriella Incantada's invention. Controlling the concierge desk had been step one: They had allowed guests to check out but not check in. The Hotel Criterion was down to just one set of guests, occupying a third-floor suite.

The so-called major thought she had accounted for every contingency. She hadn't anticipated the engineer's driver pulling a stunt like that. From the way the black-haired beauty moved, she was well trained. Krav Maga, the Israeli martial arts form, the major thought.

Which meant the unconscious woman at her feet was Daria Gibron, friend of the Mexican.

The major blinked at the woman sprawled on the brown-and-gold miasmic carpet. Then grinned up at Dr. Incantada. “Cool! You made a new friend!”

The major spoke fluent Italian, and with a Roman accent not dissimilar to Gabriella Incantada's own.

“I require your case, please.”

The Serb soldiers circled the concierge desk from the left and the right, both ratcheting their machine pistols solely for the shock value of that distinctive sound. Gabriella Incantada's two technicians flinched, blood draining from their faces.

Dr. Incantada peered up through her coke-bottle glasses at the strangely grinning blonde in the ponytail and cute little sweater set.

“Who are you?”

The blonde clicked her teeth. “A huge fan of your work, Gabby. Can I call you Gabby? The case, please.”

Dr. Incantada studied her. She glanced at the strange Israeli woman at her feet. The engineer looked more annoyed than frightened. She looked down at her case. It was a classic doctor's bag, flat-bottomed, pebbled leather, with a single arced leather handle and twin straps over the top, to either side of the handle.

She considered her options.

*   *   *

They had agreed that Diego would stay outside and keep an eye on everyone.
Skorpjo
likely knew what Diego looked like. Daria could make the approach to the hotel more quietly on her own.

Diego scored a pair of binoculars from a tourist shop. He stepped into a restaurant and walked back to the men's room, then picked a lock to get upstairs and onto the roof. From there he could watch the Hotel Criterion and Daria's back.

He was watching her back now, all right. It lay unmoving on the lobby carpet, at the feet of Dr. Incantada. Diego couldn't tell from his angle if Daria was breathing.

He adjusted his cowboy hat, lipped a silent prayer to St. Jude, and reached under his denim shirt for his Colt .45.

 

Twelve

Sandpoint, Idaho

The Pentagon contingent stared at the computer-generated image of Gabriella Incantada. They realized that the timing of the American Citadel demonstration had been no coincidence. There was a reason they'd both been spirited into Canada, east across the continent, and then back into the United States, despite the very strict rules of the U.S. State Department regarding business dealings with American Citadel Electronics, LLC.

Todd Brevidge was enjoying the theatricality of the show. “Mercutio's optics have already been demonstrated. Now that we have Dr. Incantada's face on file, Mercutio could follow her anywhere.”

Brevidge waited a second for the guests to absorb this.

“Its audio capability also has been demonstrated. Combine the face-recognition software with the voice-recognition software, and Mercutio becomes the ultimate bloodhound. We could follow Dr. Incantada into that huge crowd outside the cathedral, right now, this very second, and she'd have no possible hope of eluding us.”

Mr. Smith and Miss Jones eyed each other.

Mr. Smith caught Brevidge's attention. When he spoke his voice was a guttural Southern drawl, a raspy blend of cigarettes and a career screaming at soldiers. “Dr. Incantada promises the same thing. And her price is a hell of a lot more reasonable.”

Brevidge forced a laugh. “Well, sure. Cut-rate prices for cut-rate material. You get what you pay for. Our product is expensive. But what it delivers—our nation's safety, our enemies' heads on spits while our pilots sit in comfort, far from the enemy—is worth the price.”

Miss Jones raised an eyebrow. “Dr. Incantada made much the same argument. But again, at two-thirds the price.”

Brevidge was about to counter, but the man they were calling Mr. Smith cut in. “You're controlling the drone's movements from here?”

“Yes and no. Our chief engineer and his pilots, in the booth behind you, have given the Mercutio you see on this screen a task. He told it to study the automobiles and the people in that alley in Florence. We also have a truck-and-trailer parked just outside of Florence for the transportation and maintenance of the drones. The truck has two more pilots, who can control the drones as well. Either way: if this was Fallujah or downtown Tehran, you'd have birds in the air but pilots who are safe and sound.”

The Pentagon brass seemed to approve.

Todd waved toward the screens. “For this mission, my chief engineer can override that task and zoom Mercutio number one into a specific target, like the white van, or a specific person, like the old broad with the cane.”

Miss Jones stepped in. “‘Mercutio number one'?”

“Ah!” Brevidge held up one finger, so pleased that someone had pounced on the line he'd laid out for them. “Did I forget to mention: this Mercutio doesn't fly alone.”

He lifted the walkie phone. “Snow?”

And the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling plasma screen split instantaneously, morphing from one huge Florentine image into eight images, four across, two deep. Each showed the alley or the architecture of the southern side of Florence, but from differing heights and differing angles.

“We didn't send one Mercutio for this demonstration. We sent eight. And the data stream from all eight merges at a dedicated satellite and bounces right back. Which means the voice-recog and face-recog data that one micro-drone has, all eight micro-drones have.”

“Folks?” Brevidge patted down his silk tie and pivoted on the heel of his shoe. “I said Mercutio is a bloodhound. That's not quite accurate. It's a pack of hunting dogs.”