Authors: Dale Brown
Rural Pennsylvania
T
ECUMSEH
“D
OG
” B
ASTIAN
shouldered the rifle, then watched through the scope as the buck made its way through the trees on the hill opposite him. It was eight hundred yards away, surveying the edge of the open field below the slope.
Eight hundred yards was a very long shot, even with the customized Remington 700 rig in his hands. Dog had shot elk at that range and come away with a trophy, but that was a different gun and many years ago now. His hands remained rock steady, but his eyes were no longer what they once were. Even as he peered through the scope, his right eye began to water and the left to quiver.
Still, he had the big animal in his crosshairs as it started down the slope.
Ten years ago he would have taken the shot.
Ten years ago he wouldn't have been here.
Bastian followed the deer through the scope. It was moving west, toward an old abandoned farm. He could swing around, cross the stream that divided the two hills, and come out in a small copse where it was likely to be browsing.
“Going to make me work a little, are you?” he said to the buck as if he were a few feet away.
The air was crisp, without a discernible wind. This piece of Pennsylvaniaâhis piece of Pennsylvaniaâwas deserted and empty, the one place on earth where he felt entirely alone and secure.
Dog reached a trail that had been cut some eighty years before by the previous ownersâa Boy Scout councilâand turned to follow it. The old blazes were faded and in many cases gone with the trees they'd been painted on. The trail itself was so overgrown in spots that only someone who had been over it many times could pick it out.
Dog could do it with his eyes closed. He'd been over it a hundred times in the past three months alone. Two blue, he called it, after the original markers. He legged down to the stream, where a rope and tree plank bridge was still the best way over the water for a considerable distance.
The wind began to pick up as he started down the trail. It shook the bare tops of the trees, gently at first, but by the time he reached the bridge, dead twigs were raining from some of the taller, crowded limbs. Worse, the wind was at his back, which would send his scent toward the deer.
He'd have to give up the hunt. Temporarily.
“You win today,” said Dog, turning around for home. He could use some tea.
There was a time when just thinking of the word “tea” sent him into the blackness, even as he insisted on keeping up the ritual. He was beyond that now, and while he couldn't say that about
many things that reminded him of Jennifer, that one thing, the one habit she had left him with, was something he was grateful for.
She would have liked the crispness in the air. Not the hunting, though. She loved to run and hike and climb rocks and mountains, but she didn't like to hunt. She always said it was because she didn't have the patience for it. And she didn't have great eyesightâshe wore glasses or contacts from the time she was a child. But she could handle a rifle with aplomb.
He thought it was more an aversion to killing for sport. So much of her work involved killing, indirectly, that doing it outside the job was something to avoid.
Dog unslung his rifle as he reached his cabin. There was nothing in the house worth stealing, and he could tell just by looking that he had no human visitor, but twice now he'd surprised bears near the back. A woman two towns over had come home one night to find a small black bear sitting in her living room. That hadn't ended well for the bear or the house, though the woman at least escaped without injury.
He eyed the side yard carefully, glanced around his parked Impala, then went up the stairs to the porch. He stooped down to look through the front window.
All clear.
Dog opened the front door, which he habitually left unlocked. He put his rifle away, then went to the kitchen to start the kettle. He was just pouring the water when the phone began to ring.
Dog rarely used the phone and wasn't about to answer it now. He concentrated on filling his kettle.
The answering machine picked up on the fifth ring.
“Daddy?”
Breanna's voice, halting, timid, crossed the tiny space of the old-fashioned kitchen like a ghost peeking out from the closet.
“Daddy, Iâwe need your help.” Breanna was stuttering, stumbling over her words, the same way she had when she was little and had to tell him about poor grades in school or some other disappointment that seemed monumental to her. “It has to do with the Sabre combat UAVs, and their AI. I know you may not want to talk to me, but if you could talk to Ray, or even Jonathon Reid, we would appreciate it. You have Ray's number, I know. Here's Jonathon's . . .”
Dog listened as she gave Reid's CIA phone number and then repeated Rubeo's number.
He took a step toward the phone, wanting in his heart to answer. But the distance was too great, the pain too much. He shouldn't and didn't blame her, and yet it was too hard to get the phone, and too hard to talk to her.
Dog stood in the empty kitchen, the walls closing around him. Water spit fitfully from the faucet as his pot overflowed.
Finally he shut the water off and found the lid for the kettle. The igniter on the burner had long since stopped working. Taking a match from the box he kept nearby, the sturdy hands he had
counted on earlier when hunting shook so badly he nearly missed the striker patch on the side of the box.
South China Sea
T
HE MOMENT OF
victory was also a moment of high vulnerability, for it was a moment not only of imbalance but also hubris. Vanity was a great weakness, seductive and difficult to overcome.
And yet, Braxton couldn't help but feel a swell of satisfaction as he steadied the two Sabre UAVs for a landing in the lagoon of the atoll two miles from the tug. It was a moment of triumph years in the making, and not simply because he had found a way to defeat Rubeo and the scientist's military masters. He had defeated the brightest brain trust of the most powerful nation in the world. His triumph was one of historical proportions. He stood on the precipice of a new age, a time when nations no longer mattered. From this day forward, individuals were their own sovereigns; democracy had evolved to a higher level.
At the moment it applied only to a select few, but eventually the shackles of world government would be thrown off by all. Braxton had no illusions. Governments, from the biggest to the smallest, would fight the new age. History was
not on their side, but there would be many casualties. He aimed not to be one.
The computer flying the two aircraft indicated they were nearly at stall speed. Braxton watched as the computer settled them into a gentle landing on the calm water of the lagoon. Unlike his craft, these weren't optimized to survive a water landing, but he'd programmed the flight computer to compensate as much as possible. The Sabres skipped along the surface like stones, slowing gradually as they came toward the beach. He'd planned on them landing on the sand together, but an unanticipated change in the wind caused the first Sabre to slip into the water about twenty yards before the sand. The second aircraft continued on its own, hitting the sand and continuing about thirty yards up the gentle slope before spinning right and flipping over. The cameras he had posted on the island showed that it remained intact despite the crash.
Braxton logged out of the computer and got up from the workstation. Opening the hatchway to the deck, he was surprised by how muggy the night air wasâthe computer room was kept at a constant sixty-seven degrees.
“We'll rendezvous at Point North as planned,” he told Fortine, who'd come over from the cargo vessel to wait for the next step.
“Do you need help?”
Braxton shook his head. “No, we're more secure by keeping a low profile. Talbot and I can handle it,” he said, nodding at the sturdy seaman who was standing near the rope to the launch below. “We'll meet you as planned. It shouldn't take very long.”
Malaysia
T
HE
W
HIPLASH MOBILE
command center had arrived and been set up by the time Danny Freah returned to Tanjung Manis Airport. The self-contained trailer, delivered via MC-17, had an array of high-tech gear, but perhaps the most critical piece of equipment was a fully automated coffee machine that ground whole beans and brewed a cup of coffee at the touch of a button. Danny had two cups as soon as he got back from the reef.
The coffee wasn't much of a luxury, but it was the only one he permitted himself as he reviewed the mission with Turk, who landed shortly after he did.
Ray Rubeo's assessment that the Sabres had been the aim of the plot all along did little to assuage Turk's guilt over losing the aircraft. The fact that the scientist believed there was little Turk could have done to prevent their theft had no effect either. He watched the videos glumly, and gave monosyllabic answers to Danny's complicated questions on tactics and the aircraft flight characteristics. Rubeo wasn't sure when the aircraft were taken over and was hoping that Turk could help narrow the area. But instead of analyzing the situation, Turk seemed only capable of berating himself.
“Look, you had nothing to do with it,” Danny
told him finally. “But the more you blame yourself, the more it keeps you from doing your job now. We have to figure out where to look for the aircraft. And then we have to get them back. And that's what we're going to do.”
“Yeah.”
Danny watched Turk examine the flight map. He was still young, still a kid, and yet he'd been through so muchâeven before Iran.
“Come on, lighten up, Turk,” Danny told him. “Believe me, if Ray Rubeo says you had nothing to do with it, you didn't.”
“Yeah . . .”
“He's not exactly Mr. Personality, but there's nothing about those systems he doesn't know. If he says you're not responsible, you're not. Breanna doesn't think you were, Reid doesn't, and I sure as hell don't. Get your head back in the game.”
“Yes, sir.”
T
URK REWOUND THE
map of the incident, struggling to accept what Danny had said. He was right about Rubeoâthe scientist didn't mince words for anyone, or make excuses, even for himself.
So, back in the game.
What the hell happened out there?
He played the tape over, watching the positioning of the different aircraft and guessing what they were doing. He compared it to what he would have done, and to the literally hundreds of exercises he had with the Sabres.
“I think I know where it happened,” he told
Danny. “They should have nailed the target on this maneuver here. See how they crisscross? That's not programmed, and it doesn't make sense. So it's right where they closed for the attack.”
Turk reached for the keyboard and brought up a sitrep screen showing the positions of all three aircraft about sixty seconds before the moment he was focused on.
“See this maneuver here?” he told Danny. “That's purely spur of the momentâthey're not preprogrammed to do that. They're talking to each other, and the move makes a lot of sense. The enemy UAV dives. That is preprogrammed. He pretends to be getting speed, hoping they fly by him. But they're working together, and they won't do that.”
“And they're not under the enemy's control yet?”
“No, because lookâhere they make their move and get two bursts off and then stop firing. Because they lose the target. Except they shouldn't,” added Turk, reexamining the encounter. He brought up the gun camera view from Sabre Three. “He should still be firing there . . . I wonder if it has to do with the weapons radar being on.”
“How?” asked Danny.
Turk shrugged.
“Let's see what Rubeo thinks,” said Danny.
A
S USUAL,
T
URK
was baffled by his interaction with Rubeo. The scientist stared straight into the
camera above his video screen as Turk told him what he'd realized. Rubeo didn't even blink.
Breanna was sitting to his right. Turk could see her shoulder in the corner of the frame. Part of him wanted to talk to her directly, to say something like,
See? I'm more valuable than you thought. What would you have done if they killed me like you wanted?
Another part of him thought that would be pathetically juvenile. Besides, he was winning just by being here.
He caught her face as she rose. It looked white, drawnâTurk, surprised by how old and pained she appeared, stopped speaking.
She glanced at the camera, then quickly turned away. What was she thinking?
Remorse, maybe?
If she apologized to him now, in front of all these people, would he accept it?
“The attack radar mode was switched on only at that point?” asked Rubeo.
“Yeah,” he said. “They don't use it until they're close because the other aircraft can home in on it more easily.”
“It may have masked the command transmission,” said Rubeo. “Or initiated it.”
“Yeah,” agreed Turk, struggling to get his mind back on the subject. “It may have had something to do with the weapons radar going into targeting mode.”
“So you theorize that the returns from the radar are actually instructions,” said Rubeo.
“Um, I don't theorize anything.”
“Possible.” The scientist began talking about
wavelengths and transmissions and data feeds. Quickly lost in the technical discussion, Turk glanced over at Danny Freah, who shrugged. It was hard to stop Rubeo once he started explaining something.
“I'll spare you the actual technicalities,” said Rubeo finally. “Your insight does track with some of our thinking. The question of more immediate import is where they went next.”
“They had enough fuel for five hundred miles,” said Turk. “They could reach Vietnam, or eastern Malaysia.”
“Or any of a dozen places in between,” said Danny.
“The best theory is this archipelago,” said Rubeo. He brought up an island group three hundred miles north, near Vietnam. “The Navy will be starting the search of the area at daybreak.”
“I think that's too far,” said Turk.
“You just said they had fuel for five hundred miles,” said Rubeo. “And your estimate is a little short. Besides, this is the only place with airfields that we're not monitoring.”
“They were landing the other UAVs in the water,” said Turk. “I just think that they'd want to be closer. Near the intercept. Because, what if something goes wrongâwhat if the Sabres get shot down? You want to recover them. Easily. Five hundred miles away? Anything could happen.”
Rubeo played with the lobe of his ear, considering.
“We have several search plans under way,” said Reid, speaking for the first time since the session started. “And we do believe that the UAVs must
have been operated from someplace closer. We have a possible location for that station.”
“They had that many bases?” Danny asked.
“It would make sense to have several,” said Reid. “They need to move around, and be sure of having a safe haven.”
“We have circumstantial evidence on this one,” added Breanna. “A link to Braxton's business holdings.”
“So where is this?” asked Danny.
“A container ship and tug that have been sailing in the vicinity for several weeks,” said Breanna. “It's currently anchored about fifty miles north of where the aircraft were last seen.”
“We should check it out immediately,” said Danny.
“I'm glad you agree,” said Reid. “How soon can you put together a mission to do so?”