Target Utopia (11 page)

Suburban Virginia

U
NABLE TO SLEEP,
Zen lay faceup on the bed. Breanna wasn't home, and had told him she might not be until sometime the next day. It was worse than when they both worked at Dreamland.

Not really. For all the pressure, things were a lot less stressful now. And safer.

He thought of getting up but knew he needed sleep. He tried diverting his thoughts, but inevitably they came back to his meeting with the President.

She was in campaign mode . . . for him, not her.

“Senator Stockard is here, Madam President.”

“Show him in, and bring the coffee, please.”

He'd been waiting at the door. He started wheeling in; she met him a few steps inside the Oval Office.

“Jeff, so good to see you. Come on in. Tracey'll bring us some coffee.”

“No beer?”

It took Todd a moment to realize he was pulling her leg. She shook her head and took a seat in front of her desk, waiting as he maneuvered his wheelchair. Her aide came in with a tray of coffee and cookies.

“Raspberry filled,” said Zen, picking one up. “My favorite.”

Raspberry cookies. They'd be worth getting out of bed for. But they didn't have any.

No?

No.

“Tracey's very good at remembering things,” said Todd, loud enough to make sure her aide heard as she left the office.

“So what vote am I being asked for here?” said Zen.

“Vote?”

“Come on, Madam President. I know you don't engage in cookie diplomacy for no reason.”

“Actually, I wanted to say that I appreciated your vote on the NSA bill,” said Todd. “Your voice was important in the committee, and it was critical in the Senate. Thank you.”

“It was the right thing to do.”

Zen picked up his coffee—black—and took a sip. Todd put hers down and plunged ahead.

“I ran into your wife the other day, and I mentioned that I thought you would make an excellent President,” she said. “I wanted to follow up on that.”

“You're not planning on resigning, are you?”

The remark caught her by surprise. She wasn't, but she wondered if there were rumors.

“No, no,” said Todd. “But . . . if I were to decide not to run again, I wonder if you would be the sort of person who would toss their hat in the ring.”

Had she said that? It didn't sound like her.

Something along those lines, at least.

“Because I for one would want to be in a position to help that along,” she continued. “I think you'd be excellent. And I think you could get the nomination.”

“You're not planning on running for reelection?”

“I'm giving it a lot of thought, and will be giving it a lot more thought,” she told him. “If I knew someone like you—you specifically—were interested in running,
that would certainly be a factor. And, candidly, I would work to make sure that you were in the best position to do that. If I stayed on for a second term, one way or the other, it would certainly help, I think, not hurt you.”

That was as close as any politician would ever come to urging someone else to run. It was an admission—but an admission of what, exactly?

That she was giving up power. And who did that?

Willingly, anyway.

But Todd was different. Todd—well, they'd had disagreements, but at the end of the day she was a strong, moral person, someone with integrity. And a good President.

“Wouldn't Vice President Mantis be the party's likely candidate?” asked Zen.

“Preying Mantis?” She made a face.

They certainly shared that opinion. Her vice president was the most despicable, lying, conniving politician he'd ever met, and that was saying quite a lot.

“I think he can be defeated in a primary,” said Todd.

“I wonder if the country's ready for someone in a wheelchair,” said Zen.

“We've already had a President in a wheelchair,” she said. “Franklin Roosevelt.”

“Yes, but the public didn't know.”

“I think the public is ready. Certainly in your case.” She rose. “Let's have another discussion in a few weeks. There are people whom I'd like you to speak to.”

“Why exactly aren't you going to run?”

“If I decide not to run,” she said, “it won't be because of a scandal, or anything to do with the job.”

“No?” He stared at her; she met it.

“I think you know me well enough on that score.”

“I do,” admitted Zen. “I assume you'd want this absolutely confidential.”

“I know I can count on you.”

“As much as anyone,” said Zen.

He really missed Breanna.

Zen rolled over, closing his eyes and trying to slip back to sleep.

Malaysia

C
OWBOY CONTINUED TO
climb, intending to use the altitude to help him build speed for an attack. There were six of them, moving tightly in a diamond, with one in the lead, then two, then three. The two aircraft on the ends split off, angling away from the others in what looked like a pincer movement. Cowboy assumed they were going to try and tuck around him if he stayed on his course.

“Ground, the aircraft just split up,” he told Turk.

“Yeah, I'm looking at it,” answered Turk. The feed from Cowboy's F-35 was being piped through the Whiplash system into Turk's display.

“They're going to come behind me, I think.”

“What they're looking for you to do is break one way or the other,” said Turk. “Then whichever
side you're on, the fighter in the lead and then the one behind will engage you head-on. The idea is to slow you down so the rest can swarm in.”

“Yeah?”

“They do it all the time.”

“So how do I beat it?”

“Come straight at them. All their attack patterns are optimized for a rear quarter attack because of their weapons,” added Turk. “If they're armed, that is.”

“You don't think these are armed?”

“We won't know until they attack. No weapons radars.”

“Right,” said Cowboy. “But they sure look like they're aggressive—they're climbing.”

Aggressive or not, neither pilot could fire until they were in imminent danger—fired on or locked by a weapons radar. So they had to wait—or hope for a direct order from Danny Freah, who was empowered to interpret the situation according to his overall mission orders as well as the ROEs, or rules of engagement. So they had to prepare themselves for combat—and yet do nothing.

“If they go hostile, target the middle aircraft,” suggested Turk. “Fire your radar missiles.”

“Not at the lead?”

“No. They're keying the attack off the plane in the middle. If it diverts, they have to re-form. It's a vulnerability in a large formation—they were originally designed to work in pairs.”

“You sure?”

“I'm guessing,” admitted Turk.

Basher Three, which was flying top cover over
the base, checked in. He was coming south. Turk told him to stay back over the base—the UAVs might split and make their primary attack here.

“You'll know by their reaction when Cowboy fires,” he said.

At the speed they were closing, Cowboy had another thirty seconds before the UAVs were within firing range.

“You think these guys are hostile?” Cowboy asked Turk.

“Hell, yes. Don't you?”

“Yeah, and they're getting close. But the ROEs are pretty specific.”

“I'm working on that. Stand by. I'm going to patch Colonel Freah onto the shared frequency.”

Danny Freah came on the circuit. His voice was clipped and formal—Cowboy realized he was talking “for the record.”

“Basher, state your situation,” directed Freah.

“Colonel, I have six unidentified UAVs coming at me in what Captain Mako says is an attack pattern. I want permission to shoot them down.”

“Do you feel yourself in imminent danger?” asked Freah.

“I feel I'm about to be fired on, yes sir.”

“Permission to engage granted,” said Freah.

Wow, that was easy, thought Cowboy. He'd expected an argument, or at least more questions.

The F-35 had two AMRAAM missiles in its larger internal bay, along with a pair of Sidewinder heat-seekers on its wings. Cowboy dialed up the radar missiles, designated the two targets, and got good locks on both. Just as he was about
to fire, however, he lost his fix—the little UAVs had initiated ECMs.

They also started a countermaneuver. The four planes that had stayed together separated into two groups. One charged upward while the other dove toward the earth.

It took Turk a few moments to figure out what they were doing.

“Dive on the ones that are hitting the deck,” he told Cowboy.

It was a counterintuitive move, to say the least.

“Why?”

“Trust me.”

Cowboy hesitated, but only for a moment. He pushed his stick in, plotting an intercept about five miles to the west, on his left in the airplane. As soon as the nose of his aircraft tucked downward, the two aircraft that had started to climb spun back in his direction.

“Roll on your wing and pull around as close to a 180 as you possibly can,” said Turk, telling Cowboy to change direction. “They'll be on your nose in about thirty seconds. You're going to want to fire right away.”

“I don't have a lock.”

“Do it. They'll get out of there anyway. Then push down and flip over. Look for the two fighters below you.”

“Easy for you to say,” muttered Cowboy, but he did exactly as Turk had suggested. The Lightning II slid down on its wing, then shuddered as Cowboy fought gravity and his own momentum through the turn. It was more a swerve than a
pivot. The tail of the plane stubbornly resisted his input, and for a moment the aviator thought he would actually lose the plane; his airspeed had dropped precipitously, and his altitude dropped so quick he thought he was in a free fall. But the Pratt & Whitney F135-600 kept pumping thrust, the two-shaft power plant exerting some 43,000 pounds of force to shove the aircraft in the direction its pilot wanted. Cowboy grunted, fighting off the g forces smashing against his body as the two bandits moved magically into the sweet spot of his targeting pipers.

The aircraft shook as he fired, the doors to the bays opening and then closing as he pushed down his nose. Gravity seemed to welcome him. His airspeed jumped. He saw the other two planes some 8,000 feet below him, but he was too far off to fire the Sidewinders.

Rather than flipping over as Turk had suggested he pushed steeper into the dive, sure he would be able to close the distance before the planes reacted. But he was wrong; the UAVs seemed to disappear, and before he could react he realized they had managed to pull farther down toward the terrain, temporarily getting lost in the clutter.

Cowboy started a turn, guessing that the UAVs would be ahead on his right. The F-35's radar found them behind him, at very low altitude. He tried to turn toward them but they were already moving away. He started to follow but then saw one of the drones that had split off earlier angling toward him from above. It had worked to within five miles and was closing fast; had he stayed on
his course it would have come down right on his tail.

He lit flares and rolled right. Sweat poured from every pore in his body. Cowboy realized he'd made a mistake, leaving himself vulnerable. His RWR lit with a targeting radar—the drone was trying to get him.

It was the signal he'd needed, but it came at the wrong time—now he was the vulnerable one. Cowboy jerked his stick, tightening the turn so hard that he nearly blacked out, the g forces building so quickly that even his suit couldn't quite keep up. But the maneuver broke the UAV's grip. He saw it pass overhead, within range of his missile for a fleeting second.

Cowboy couldn't react quickly enough, and the aircraft flew off. Basher Three, not close enough to take a shot, banked south to continue guarding the base.

It was over. All six of the UAVs were gone, moving back in the direction they had come.

The pilot let out a string of curses. His radar missiles had missed and he felt like a dope, beaten by robots.

“You all right?” Turk asked over the radio.

He replied with a curse.

“It's all right,” said Turk. “They wanted to see how you would react. They'll use that for the next encounter.”

“Bastards.”

“We're tracking them. You did good,” Turk added. “You did real good.”

“Then why do I feel like an idiot?”

The Cube

E
VEN AS THE
encounter ended, the staff of experts in the Cube were analyzing the performance of the UAVs. The evidence was now overwhelming that Rubeo was right—they were using technology developed for the Flighthawks.

They had a traitor on their hands.

“Theft is not the only explanation,” said Jonathon Reid, standing with Breanna and Rubeo at a console in the front of the situation room. “They may have salvaged the C
³
automated pilot units from one of the Flighthawk aircraft lost in Africa last year.”

“All of the computer units are accounted for,” said Rubeo, who had watched the raw video of the encounter with a deeply distressed face. “More to the point—the only transmissions the elint Global Hawk recorded were brief bursts between them. They're using something similar to the system the Gen 4 Flighthawks use. We just don't know what it is yet.”

“But it's a good bet it's exactly the same,” suggested Breanna.

Rubeo scowled. “It may be better.”

“That's quite an indictment of your organization,” said Jonathon.

Rubeo looked as if he'd been shot.

“We need to find out who these people are,” said Jonathon. “And what else they have.”

“Why they're doing it would be good to know as well,” said Breanna.

“I believe I know the who, at least,” said Rubeo. “Lloyd Braxton. And it may be related to a movement he calls Kallipolis.”

“Kalli-what?” asked Reid.

“Kallipolis. It has to do with Plato and a movement of elites toward a perfect world beyond government.”

“That's crazy,” said Reid.

“That's Braxton,” said Breanna.

R
UBEO'S PEOPLE HAD
prepared a short PowerPoint summarizing Braxton. A poor white kid from the hardscrabble area of Oakland, he'd won a scholarship to Stanford at the tender age of fifteen, graduated at eighteen, and gone across the country to MIT to work in their famous robotics lab. Two years later after winning numerous awards for work combining AI with robotics, he was recruited for a Dreamland project that adapted the physical design of the original Flighthawk to make it more suitable to combat conditions. He stayed to work on projects ranging from the unmanned bomber to nanotechnology. The ability to work across such a broad spectrum of areas was the rule rather than the exception at Dreamland, but Braxton was a standout intellect even there.

What was unusual were his politics, or more precisely his antipolitics. They were as unconventional as his mind. And he wasn't shy about sharing them.

Braxton had flown in the back of several Megafortress test beds Breanna piloted, and she had interacted with him in any number of debriefings and planning sessions. They'd chatted numerous times at parties and other social occasions. He constantly intermingled thoughts about Plato and philosopher kings with g forces and artificial intelligence.

But that wasn't why Breanna remembered Lloyd Braxton.

He'd had a huge crush on Jennifer Gleason, who at the time was not only the number two scientist at Dreamland, but was engaged to Breanna's father, Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian, the commander of Dreamland.

Crush didn't begin to describe it. Even obsession didn't quite capture his behavior. Braxton did everything from asking to be assigned to her projects to slyly following her around the base. Things reached a peak when Jennifer came home to her on-base apartment one night and found him inside.

Colonel Bastian—he hadn't been promoted to general yet—had him escorted off the base the next day.

But even though the incident was reported in his employee file, Braxton retained his top level security clearance. Not only that, but he was hired almost immediately by DARPA, the Defense Department's equivalent of Dreamland, and later by the CIA. It wasn't clear what he'd done—most of the CIA projects were so highly classified that even Reid wasn't familiar with what lay behind
the nondescript names they were given—but it was obvious that they had to do with artificial intelligence and its application.

Since then, Braxton had left government service five years ago to start a firm in Silicon Valley. Contrary to what his background might have predicted, the company made toys—high-tech racing cars for boys that tied into games on iPads, and a miniature balloon-based UAV that kids could fly in their backyards. The toys didn't sell particularly well—he was underfinanced, having found it impossible get backers—but the technology the toys exploited was considered so valuable that four different global companies bid to buy the entire company. Braxton cashed out with over ten billion dollars—not the biggest payout in Silicon Valley history, but up there. And it didn't hurt that Braxton not only got all the money, as he lacked partners, but paid no taxes on the money, thanks to an extremely clever set of maneuvers that included his renouncing American citizenship and moving his company's headquarters overseas.

In many ways Lloyd Braxton had lived the American Dream. Starting from conditions that could be best described as horrible—his mother was a crack addict—he had become a billionaire. But along the way he'd developed a massive contempt for others who weren't quite as smart as he was. It was an extreme arrogance not just toward other scientists, but toward the human race in general.

After selling his company, he founded a think tank called Kallipolis, a reference to a mythical utopian island ruled by “philosopher kings” in the
ancient Greek philosophy espoused by Plato. Ostensibly designed to advance Plato's teaching that the world should be run by the best and brightest, in practice it preached Darwinist anarchy, where the “rabble” were to be left to fend for themselves while the “best” were equally free to do whatever they wanted. Seminars were held on the best way to leave behind the ties of government authority, which amounted to everything from taxes and speeding laws to banking regulations designed to prevent terrorism.

Kallipolis wasn't simply against intrusive government, something most people could agree with. The think tank and the circle that developed around it found no legitimacy for any form of government. Governments were anachronisms left over from the days before high-speed communication, lightning-fast transportation, and high-tech computing. Borders were archaic, and meaningless to the wealthy and intelligent elite. Which of course Braxton and the people associated with Kallipolis were.

The group claimed governments had no right to arrest anyone or defend their borders. According to Kallipolis—or at least the speakers and organizations it gave money to—the best people should divorce themselves entirely from government and the rest of the human race. Only when they did that would humankind evolve to the next level.

What exactly this next level was remained to be seen. Braxton never said explicitly. But he had hired a ghost writer to write a science fiction novel, privately published as an enhanced e-book,
that depicted a unified world ruled by a small, brilliantly intelligent elite.

“Proles”—about ninety-nine percent of the population—lived in peaceful harmony, tending to robots and computers designed by the elite and manufactured by other robots and computers. The peaceful harmony was enhanced by ecstasylike drugs that heightened the pleasure centers of the brain.

In the book, things went off the rails when one of the proles stopped taking his medicine. Unlike standard sci-fi fare, where the rebel prole would have been the good guy rebelling against a jackbooted society, in Braxton's book he was the bad guy, hunted to the end and eventually killed.

Asked by a reporter whether the book encapsulated his philosophy of life, Braxton demurred. “Fiction is fiction,” he'd said. “Things happen in fantasy that don't in real life.”

But his portfolio of investments—carefully researched by Rubeo when he suspected the connection—suggested otherwise. Braxton bought out a number of small high-tech companies, and was rumored to have purchased land offshore. He had also become very media-adverse; a thorough search of Web news turned up no articles on him in the past eighteen months, and no public statements by him in the past twenty-four.

“T
HIS IS A
new sort of threat,” said Breanna, “an extragovernmental organization stirring up trouble in a foreign country. We've never faced this before.”

“There are precedents in the nineteenth century,” said Rubeo.

“Is he capable of funding all this without backing from China or Iran?” asked Reid.

“It would appear so.”

“The Islam connection,” said Reid, referring to the fact that the 30 May Movement in Malaysia was Sunni Muslim. “Maybe Saudi Arabia and some of the Gulf states are helping.”

“Braxton doesn't care for religion,” said Rubeo. “It's the opiate of the people, to borrow the phrase from Marx. He despises religion nearly as much as governments.”

“It's hard to believe private people could put this together,” said Reid. “And why?”

Rubeo gestured at his computer. “If you want to read their manifestos, be my guest. In any event, he is certainly capable intellectually of guiding the construction of this technology. He had access to the data. And he has the money to pull it all off.”

“I think we have to lay this out for the President,” said Breanna.

“Agreed,” said Reid.

“Y
OU TWO ALWAYS
present me with interesting problems,” said the President when they reached her via secure video a half hour later. She was in her private office at the White House, due to leave for Air Force One in an hour. She was heading that morning to a NASA facility in Texas to unveil the start of a manned mission to Mars.

“Regardless of what the intentions are here,” said Reid, “the technology is impressive, and in the wrong hands will present considerable problems. Used as terror weapons, these aircraft would be difficult to stop.”

Reid detailed more of the possible links to Dreamland, which had already been suspected and outlined. The connection to Ray Rubeo and his billion-dollar companies—even if it was indirect—would undoubtedly become a weapon for the administration's political enemies. Rubeo and his company's lucrative contracts had lately become a target for critics. There was absolutely nothing untoward going on, but the secrecy the firms operated in and Rubeo's prickly and hermitlike public personality made for easy speculation.

But that was a matter for the future.

“The Chinese are not directly involved?” asked the President.

“We believe not,” said Reid. “But I would have to assume they will grow more and more curious. We can't rule out a situation where they cut some sort of deal with either Braxton or perhaps the Malaysians to capture the technology, as they did with Iran and the stealth drone.”

“So, Breanna, Jonathon, what are we proposing?” asked the President.

“We want to pursue them,” said Breanna. “Wherever that may take us.”

“We're not sure who is protecting them,” explained Reid. “And the Chinese carrier task force that was north of the area has moved south. We'll
try to avoid a confrontation with them, but we can't make any guarantees.”

“Avoid confronting the Chinese, if at all possible,” said the President. “I have enough problems with Congress. But get to the bottom of this. And if it's our technology, get it back. I'll deal with the Chinese, and Congress, if it comes to it.”