It took me several seconds to realize I’d stopped breathing.
The lights came on then and I squinted in the brightness, while my mind raced with the possible horrible implications of having this particular technology in the wrong hands. “Now do you understand why your country so desperately needs someone with your talents, Ms. Cooper?” asked Tanner.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said gravely. “Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do it.”
“Good,” she said. “Then let’s get started. . . .”
D
utch and I spent the next several hours being briefed on Intuit and its capabilities. I was somewhat relieved to hear that the original software was still with the good ol’ U.S. of A., but the drone carried the actual working portable prototype, so if it was placed into the wrong geeky hands, it was only a matter of time before one of our enemies figured out how to reverse engineer it. The implications were beyond frightening.
“Imagine that you are a terrorist,” said Professor Steckworth as if he’d been doing much of that lately. “You could easily sneak Intuit and the drone into any country, and fly it anywhere within fifty miles of your location. The battery on the drone is good for up to one hundred miles, or round-trip to your target and back. The software is programmed to look for whatever signature aura you input. If you are an enemy of Israel and you want to kill the Israeli prime minister, simply upload the PM’s aura off of any film footage and send the drone over the border.
“Your only worry is that the drone will run out of battery life before it finds your target, but we know with certainty that there are some solar panel technologies being developed right now that are quite lightweight. One of the next improvements we were about to make to the drone was mounting some of these ourselves to extend the drone’s range, and we’ve already calculated that it is possible to mount these on the top of the drone without compromising lift. As long as there are at least eight hours of sunlight available to charge the battery, your drone could run day and night. In theory, given the right climate, like, say, the Middle East, the drone could stay aloft for weeks and weeks.”
“How good is the camera system on the drone that was stolen?” Dutch asked.
“Moderately sophisticated,” Steckworth admitted. “But it doesn’t need to be more than that. Again, Intuit itself is highly sensitive to the color patterns of the auras of your target. It does not need especially good camera quality to recognize the pattern and instruct the drone to fly lower to take a closer look. The software would need to be within five hundred feet or so to make a positive match, and the drone is quite small, only three and a half feet from tip to tail. It is also nearly completely silent. Anyone with a keen eye would think it a large bird gliding on air currents, not a man-made drone.”
“Besides the obvious enemies of the U.S., who would want this technology?” I asked.
Steckworth leveled his eyes at me. “Who wouldn’t, Ms. Cooper?”
It took me a minute to get the clear meaning of that. “You’re telling me that even our allies would try to take the technology away from us?”
“Yes,” he said flatly.
I opened my mouth to protest, but Steckworth cut me off. “Possibly not all of our allies will attempt to acquire the drone, but enough of them know about it that it gravely concerns us.”
“You mean to tell me, countries like Canada, England, France, and Australia—countries that actually
like
us—might want to take it?”
“Quite possibly.”
I sat there for a full minute with my mouth hanging open. I couldn’t believe it. How had our world come to this?
“So the drone gets close, makes a positive ID . . . then what?” Dutch asked next.
Steckworth shifted uncomfortably. “We had the drone equipped with a nitro-piston gas-spring air rifle, able to shoot thirteen hundred fifty fps.”
I turned to Dutch. “Huh?”
My fiancé’s face was hard and not at all happy. “It’s a nitro-gasfueled gun able to shoot thirteen hundred fifty feet per second,” he said.
Oh yeah,
that
was helpful. “Huh?” I repeated.
“It shoots darts, not bullets,” he said.
I scowled. “Why didn’t you guys just say
that
?” And then I thought about what Dutch had just said. “Hold on, it shoots
darts
?”
“Yes,” said Steckworth. “But the gun was not loaded with any toxins at the time the drone went missing.”
“Hold on,” I said, putting up my hand. “It shoots
toxic
darts?”
“However,” Steckworth continued, as if I hadn’t spoken, “the actual darts outfitted for the gun were stolen from my office on the day the drone went missing.”
“It shoots
toxic
darts which are currently
missing
?” Was I the only one just realizing we had one
mother
of a problem on our hands?
“What’s the toxin?” Dutch asked in his usual calm style . . . which I found completely annoying.
Again Steckworth shifted uncomfortably, but he gave us the answer. “We created the trifecta of toxins: ricin, botulinum, and dieffenbachia.”
“You created the
trifecta
of toxins?” I said, my voice rising in pitch. Seriously? Like, it wasn’t lethal enough with just one or two?
“I’m familiar with ricin and botulinum,” Dutch said, ignoring me again, “but what’s the third one you mentioned?”
“Dieffenbachia,” Steckworth repeated. “Highly effective. Works to swell the soft tissue and inhibit the ability to deliver an antidote for the ricin and botulinum.”
“How quickly would death follow after the dart hit?” Dutch asked next while I just sat there with my mouth hanging open and a shudder running along my spine.
“In a strong healthy adult male of an average ninety kilograms . . .”
“Two hundred pounds,” Dutch whispered to me.
“It would take approximately eight to ten minutes, during which time the subject would be in extreme agony until the convulsions and seizures took over.”
“If one of our guys was hit with a dart, how quickly could an antidote be delivered?”
“It would need to be delivered in approximately ninety to one hundred and twenty seconds after exposure to the toxins.”
I scribbled a note and passed it to Dutch. It read,
Steckworth must kill at parties. Literally!
The corner of Dutch’s mouth quirked, but he didn’t write back. “You guys probably suspect the pilot for the toxin theft?”
“Yes,” said Steckworth. “He had the appropriate clearance to be admitted to my laboratory and the area where the toxins were stored, although his ID badge was not used to gain entrance and by coincidence the security cameras were not working on the day of the theft. We believe he may have walked into the building with someone who knew and trusted him.”
“I have a question,” I said.
Steckworth’s eyes swiveled to me. His expression was guarded. “Yes?”
“What were
we
going to use Intuit for?”
Steckworth blinked as if he couldn’t understand why I would ask something so obvious. “To target and kill our deadliest enemies.”
That’s what I’d thought, but it still shocked me a little to hear it out loud. “Why aren’t we trying to kill these people the old-fashioned way?” I asked next with just a
hint
of sarcasm. “You know, with a bunker buster or a gun or something less . . . well . . . toxic?”
“Against the enemies we’re targeting, Ms. Cooper, the method of death is crucial,” Steckworth said frankly. “Blowing our enemies into vapor only turns them into martyrs. They feel a sense of glory dying by bullet or a bomb. The dart we’ve developed is quite small with a very thin needle and is designed to drop off after impact. The target would experience only a sharp prick slightly more than a mosquito bite, and then within a minute or two they would become very, very sick indeed. As the toxins spread, the target would cry out in pain, vomit, lose control of their bowels, froth at the mouth, their faces and limbs would swell, and they’d convulse until they died. Their death would be as unromantic and inglorious a thing as can be imagined. Those around them would immediately suspect poison and treachery from within, which would further undermine the terrorist establishment. Using Intuit to pinpoint the target and kill them with a toxin serves our purposes on multiple levels.”
“Unless someone spots the dart and puts two and two together,” I pointed out.
Steckworth nodded. “Yes, but as I said, the dart is quite small, and in the desert, such things get lost in the dirt quite quickly.”
I sighed. This whole topic was turning my stomach. The things we planned to do to our enemies and the things they planned to do to us just sickened me, and at that moment, I will admit, I wanted to back out.
Dutch seemed to read my mind and he reached out and grabbed my hand. Squeezing it gently, he said, “It’s a dirty business, Abs. But someone’s got to step up and do it.”
I looked sharply at him. There was something in his eyes I didn’t like. Leaning over, I whispered, “Do you mean to say that if I decide to opt out, you’re still in?” Those midnight blues looked deep into mine and held firm. “Yes.” Aw, shih tzu.
S
teckworth finished lecturing us on Intuit and before the next round I was allowed a short break to visit the ladies’, then returned to the conference room to find CIA director Tanner and FBI director Gaston there with Dutch and a folder.
“Do you feel up to looking at some photographs?” Agent Tanner asked.
I took my seat. “Sure,” I said. “What am I looking for?”
The director laid the folder out in front of me and opened to the first picture, of an Asian man with a very flat face and a big blue mole on his nose. Immediately I got the sense that he was one seriously bad dude.
“These are photographs of known weapons dealers with the capability to pull off the drone heist. We’d like you to look through the file and flag any that seem suspicious to you.”
I used my finger to flip quickly through the photos. “They
all
look suspicious,” I said, smiling at the little joke until I saw Dutch’s disapproving stare. “Sorry,” I said before taking a deep breath, closing my eyes, and switching on my radar to point it at the file.
I studied each and every photo, being very specific when I searched the ether around them for anything that might indicate one of the men had taken the drone. In the end I separated out two photos: one of a short fat man with a beard and mean-looking eyes, and another of a tall dark-haired man with brown eyes and a square jaw. The second man looked very familiar to me in a way I couldn’t quite pinpoint. I knew I’d never met him, but he reminded me of someone; I just wasn’t sure whom. “I’d look more closely at these two,” I said finally, pushing the photos forward toward Director Gaston.
He took them and turned them over to read the names on the back. “Viktor Kozahkov and Richard Des Vries,” he said.
I nodded. “The short fat dude is the one that feels the most suspicious,” I said pointing to the first photo I’d set in front of him. “But let me clarify that. I’m not sure he’s actually responsible for stealing the drone. He feels like he might be coming into this from the side.”
“From the side?” Director Tanner repeated.
“She means his relationship to the thief is tangential,” Dutch said, eyeing me to see if he got that right, and I nodded. “In other words, he didn’t steal the drone, but he probably knows who did and is in on the deal to sell it.”
“Lookit that, cowboy,” I told him, nodding in approval. “Three years together and you’re finally speaking psychic.”
“And Des Vries?” Gaston asked, holding up the other photo I’d flagged.
“Same thing but even more distant. I’d say at most he might have heard about the drone being stolen, but he didn’t actually take it. Still, he feels connected to this in a singular and significant way, but his connection feels even more sideways, yet equally significant.”
Gaston turned the photo back around and squinted at the picture thoughtfully. He then looked at Dutch and a sly smile played at his lips. “Agent Rivers,” he said. “May I see you privately for a moment?”
“Yes, Director,” Dutch said, getting up and following Gaston out. Agent Tanner then gathered up her folder and photographs and thanked me for my input.
“There’s just one more briefing to go before we’ll turn you two loose for the night. They should be in shortly.”
She left me then and I leaned back in the chair, closing my eyes and relishing the peace and quiet. After a while I went to the door and looked out into the hallway. Dutch was nowhere in sight. I wondered what Gaston had wanted with him, and why it was taking so long. About ten minutes after that, the door opened and two men in uniform with a whole lotta brass attached to the lapels came in, carrying several files with them. Along for the ride was a guy dressed completely in black, head to toe, with slicked-back black hair, brilliant green eyes, and a thin firm mouth set in a square but fairly handsome face. He moved with the stealth of a panther, and entered the room with an air of pernicious intensity. This is the part in the story where I also admit that he personally scared the crap out of me, which was just awesome, ’cause I don’t think I’d been scared enough for one afternoon.
The men introduced themselves, starting with the brass.
The first man, who looked a whole lot like a walrus, said, “I’m Lieutenant Colonel David McAvery.” I believe I forgot his name in the very next second.
His military buddy, who walked like a penguin, said, “I’m Colonel John Hughes.”
The MIB (man in black) said, “Agent Frost. CIA.”
Think I’d be skipping him on my holiday card mailing list.
“Agent Rivers stepped away with Director Gaston,” I said.
“We’re not waiting,” Frosty the Snowman snapped, taking his seat and looking pointedly at the brass.