Drone Command

FORTY-THREE

Still no luck.”

Ian’s charming brogue had softened recently, Myers noticed. Too long in the States. “Can’t you do anything?”

The Scotsman shook his head solemnly. “If Troy is behind a thick wall or underground, we’ll never find his tracker signal, and unless they move him quickly out in the open, he’ll be lost for a while. We’re losing the satellite feed in ten more minutes.”

Myers paced the room, hardly noticing the plush carpet beneath her bare feet. She’d lost her husband and her son, and nearly lost Pearce almost two years ago in the Sahara. She’d cradled his unconscious body in her lap as Judy Hopper corkscrewed the plane through the air, making their escape. She couldn’t bear the thought of seeing him like that again.

Her laptop dinged. She raced over to it.

“Found her!” Myers shouted. An automated search of a classified photo database finally identified the woman in the video. Ian made a screen grab and tossed it into the NSA search engine. Maybe Lane couldn’t do anything to rescue Pearce at the moment, but at least the president could open up classified government resources for them with a phone call.

Ian rolled his chair over to the coffee table serving as Myers’s desk. “Dr. Weng Litong. Yes, I’ve heard of her. She runs the PLA’s robotic-weapons development program.”

“Makes sense she’d be in the same building with the Wu-14,” Myers said. “What’s her beef with Troy?”

“There’s no telling.” Ian tapped a few keys. Ran a loop of Myers’s video showing Weng whispering into Feng’s ear and Feng’s reaction. “Whatever she said to Feng sent him up. The question remains, what did she say?”

Myers shook her head. “Too bad my video camera couldn’t capture audio.”

“Bollocks! My head is up my proverbial arse. We don’t need audio.” Ian stood on his robotic legs and rushed over to his laptop on the dining-room table. The original video clip was on his hard drive. As he pulled it up, Myers came up behind him.

“What are you looking for?”

Ian paused the video clip just as Weng’s face came into view. He enlarged the image so that the faces of Weng and Feng filled the screen. He played the video again. Watched her lean over, whisper in his ear. Her face slid behind Feng’s head then slid back into view. Feng frowned violently, whispered back. Weng nodded. Spoke again, turned aside, hiding her face.

“She didn’t want anyone else but Feng to hear what she was saying,” Myers said. “Too bad we can’t hear it, too.”

Ian grinned. “Oh, but we can.” Ian clicked his mouse and pulled up another program. A translucent square popped up in the middle of the screen. He dragged it over to Weng’s mouth and tapped a couple of keys. “That will lock the target to Weng’s mouth.”

“What for?”

“A lip-reading software program.”

“Are you serious?”

“MI5 has been using one for years in coordination with the nationwide CCTV network. I suspect the FBI uses one, too.”

Myers knew that the Brits had installed millions of closed-circuit television cameras in public areas like subway stations, airports, and street intersections over the years, and millions more were in private use. She read one estimate that there was one CCTV camera for every eleven British citizens. Like her own miniature video camera, however, those systems often didn’t have audio. Lip-reading software was the next best thing, and maybe better, since it allowed the observer to pick and choose the conversations they wanted to hear.

Ian clicked on a few icons and the Feng-Weng loop ran again with the lip-reading software window automatically tracking Weng’s mouth.

“Not sure how this is going to help unless you speak Mandarin,” Myers said.

“Not a problem. I have a—”

“Translation program, of course.” She patted him on the shoulder.

A few minutes later, Ian pulled up the transcript. “Sorry, ma’am, it reads like gibberish. But there are some useful fragments.”

Ian was right. The lip-reading program obviously didn’t function when Weng’s mouth was turned away or was hidden behind Feng’s head, but it managed to grab a few words: Zhao, Mali, Pearce, Guo, Congo.

“Those make any sense to you?” Ian asked.

“Troy was in Mali, certainly. I don’t know about Congo. I assume Zhao and Guo are names of people? Or places?”

“Good question. Let me try a couple of searches.” Ian ran a search program that sought links between the names Feng, Zhao, and Guo. Myers popped a K-Cup into a Keurig brewing machine while she waited. “What would you like to drink, Ian?”

“Oil,” Ian finally said. “And blood.”

“Excuse me?”

Ian strode over to her with a sheet of paper in his hands. “It appears as if Feng and Zhao were both close relatives in the oil industry. Feng was his uncle. Tea, if there is any, thank you.”

Myers pulled another K-Cup for tea and popped it into the brewer. “Was?”

“Zhao Yi is dead. Killed in an elevator accident in Mali in 2015.”

“What’s that got to do with Troy?”

“Zhao was heading up the Sino-Sahara Oil Corporation in Bamako, Mali, when he was killed.”

“Where Troy was. If Zhao was connected in any way to Mike Early’s death—”

Ian nodded grimly. “My thoughts exactly.”

“But it was an accident, right?”

“A particularly violent one, apparently.” Ian knew that Pearce wouldn’t leave any evidence behind unless he wanted to send a message. Otherwise, an apparent accident made perfect sense.

Myers took a thoughtful sip of coffee. Troy never told Myers about any kind of revenge killings after Mike Early’s death, but she knew Pearce had killed Ambassador Britnev for his role in her son’s murder a few years earlier — a violent, foolish act on Troy’s part, but one for which she was eternally grateful. Troy’s fierce sense of loyalty was only superseded by his thirst for justice, particularly for those to whom he was loyal.

“And this Guo person?”

“Nothing’s come up yet. Maybe it’s not a person, or not a person easily found.”

“Like a special operative?”

“As good a guess as any.”

“There were Chinese special forces operators in the desert. They’re the ones who killed Mike and Mossa.” Myers had never met the fearsome Tuareg chieftain, but she felt she had after Troy’s colorful and emotional description of him.

“Then there’s the other link, if any. If Guo was an operator involved in their deaths, Troy would have taken him out, too.”

“So if Weng fingered Troy for the deaths of those two men, it still doesn’t make sense that Feng would grab him, does it? It’s a ballsy move just to get revenge.”

“Revenge, honor, hate. Pick one or all. Feng knows there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“You don’t think Feng would hurt Troy, do you?”

“Why not? What would President Lane do about it?”

“Nothing, at least for the moment.” Myers had already spoken to Lane. He recounted his conversation with President Sun. He was apologetic but firm. He wouldn’t leave Pearce behind, but Pearce needed to sit tight for now. Time was against them. They both knew Pearce would agree. But then again, time wasn’t exactly Pearce’s friend, either, Myers realized.

“What about the CIA?” Ian asked. “Pearce was one of theirs. Could they mount some kind of operation? Kidnap a Chinese agent, offer a trade?”

“Troy isn’t one of them anymore. He quit the Company, and they don’t forget that kind of thing. And when it comes to the Russian and Chinese security services, the CIA never wants to go to the mattresses.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry, a Godfather reference. ‘Going to the mattresses’ means going to war. The spooks never want to play roughhouse. Spying is a gentlemen’s game despite what you see in the movies. More like hide-and-seek, not MMA cage fighting. If the CIA snatches one of theirs, then they snatch one of ours, and back and forth it escalates until some real damage gets done. Best to avoid that kind of thing, or so they believe.”

“But if Pearce is a private citizen, then shouldn’t he be afforded some kind of diplomatic protection?”

“Did you forget why he was really there? If they suspect him of spying, he won’t have any protection.”

“He’s in for a rough time of it. President Lane understands that, certainly?”

“Of course he does. If I was president, I’d be forced to leave Troy in Chinese hands, too. At least, until everything else got sorted out.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Ian conceded, as he took a sip of hot tea.

“But then again, I’m no longer the president of the United States, am I?”

“Sorry, ma’am, I’m not following you.”

“There’s a phone number I need you to get for me. It’s a long shot, but it just might work.”