Biowar

63

The path toward Tommy Karr’s locator took Puff/1 over the helicopter wreckage, and Malachi slowed momentarily to let the sensors get a good look at the site. It took all of twenty seconds, but it threw off the ReVeeOp’s rhythm; the slow aircraft just couldn’t synch with G*ng*f*x. He started flipping through his Mp3 index to find a better beat, heading down toward the golden oldie section before settling on Beck.

The helicopter seemed to have been taken down by a shot on the rear engine area; that argued for a heat-seeking missile. Several bodies lay near the wreckage. The guerrillas had split into two groups. One continued to harass what was left of the Thai Army unit moving in the direction of the border. The other, about a dozen men, shadowed toward Karr’s locator.

“We got what we need,” said Telach from the Art Room.

“Yeah, roger that,” said Malachi, pushing his speed control back up to max, such as it was. The robot airplane had a tendency to nose down slightly as the engines revved, but he was 12,000 feet above ground level and had plenty of room to deal with it. Careful not to overcorrect — the drone would gallop up and down like a roller coaster if he did — Malachi pushed his joystick to the right, nudging the remote aircraft into an arc aimed at giving him a good position between the guerrillas and the NSA op.

“Satellite has those guerrillas getting close,” warned Sandy Chafetz, Karr’s runner. “I’m losing sat coverage in about ninety seconds.”

“Roger that. I’m still about zero-three minutes from the area,” said Malachi. “If I can find my rhythm.”

“You’d better find it,” snapped Telach. The Art Room supervisor was edgier than normal, not a good sign.

A blue dagger marked out Tommy Karr’s position near an open area beyond a small hill. Malachi started to swing south of it, toward the red dots that the computer had used to mark the guerrillas’ position as they followed.

The marked positions were actually about 205 seconds behind real time. That was the overhead imposed by the system as it transposed data from one set of sensors to another, integrating the satellite information with the other inputs, in this case primarily the robot aircraft. A three-and-a-half-minute gap didn’t seem like much, but a well-conditioned runner could cover more than a half-mile in that time, and even an armed soldier in rough terrain could move a quarter-mile without breaking much of a sweat. For that reason, Malachi would rely on Puff’s native sensors as his primary indicators once he was inside the target area.

The ReVeeOp pushed Puff/1 through some unexpected turbulence as he continued on course. There was some speculation among the jocks at Space Command — the Air Force unit that controlled some of Deep Black’s remote aircraft — that the next generation of remote gunships would be designed to stay airborne for twelve to eighteen hours and that there would be enough of them to provide global coverage twenty-four/seven. The idea wasn’t necessarily popular, however — blanket coverage on that order would require even more automation than currently employed, which meant computers, not ReVeeOps, would be controlling most of the flights.

Malachi had a better solution — space vessels with rail-guns, fueled by plasma gases heated in reentry. That looked to be ten years down the road, at least.

He’d be in his thirties. Ready to hang it up.

Wow.

“Got some action coming out of that village toward our guy,” Malachi told Sandy, going over to Puff’s sensors. “Uh, three, four people. One of ’em with a gun.”

“Yeah, we’re looking at it,” said Sandy.

“You want me to stay on them or check out the guerrillas?”

“Line up a shot,” said Telach. “I don’t want to take any chances.”

“May be one of the people who were with Karr earlier,” suggested Chafetz.

“You sure?” asked Malachi.

“Just line up the shot,” said Telach. “We’ll make the call.”

Karr heard someone calling to him. He thought the voice was coming from the Art Room; he snapped up, put his hand to his ear.

No, it was outside, a real voice — back from the village.

His Marine.

Karr heard something else, the light fanlike noise of a robot gunship. The Art Room had obviously tracked him here.

They wouldn’t know Gidrey was on his side.

“Gidrey!” he yelled. He pushed himself to his feet. Blood flew from his brain and he felt himself tremble.

“Karr!”

“Stay where you are,” said Karr.

“What?”

“Stay there.”

“I got some help.”

Karr took a few steps toward Gidrey, his balance precarious. How the hell could he tell them Gidrey was on his side? With his radio out, there was no way to communicate with them.

Of course there was. He knew there was. He just couldn’t remember it.

Marie Telach stared at the large screen at the front of the Art Room showing the radar image from the belly of Puff/1. Karr was between two groups of people. The one to the south was almost definitely a guerrilla force; they were now about a half-mile away. To the immediate northeast, less than a hundred yards from him, was a second group. The vegetation made it impossible to use the optical camera to see them.

They had the synthesized view in a window in the comer. The northeast group wasn’t on it.

Friends or foes?

One of the people who’d been with Karr earlier was missing from the synthesized screen. But there was no way to know until it was too late if he was with the other group.

It wasn’t the computer’s call anyway. It was hers.

Karr had to be protected at all costs.

“Marie?” asked Sandy.

Better to kill allies or even friendly civilians than to lose her man.

“Malachi, target the group at the northeast.”

“Got ’em. I’m locked.”

“Fire on my signal,” she said, staring at the screen.

Karr could hear the Puff/1 banking above them, undoubtedly ready to shoot.

He had to talk to them somehow.

He pulled out his handheld computer. The unit had to be plugged into his com system for instant messaging and serious downloading; at the moment it was just another handheld — albeit one on steroids.

They’d see it, though.

“Yo, Marine,” said Karr.

“What?”

“Catch,” he said, throwing the computer in the direction of the shout.

Malachi moved his thumb back and forth across the red button at the top of the thick joystick controller, waiting to fire. The target designator was locked on, the gear constantly computing the exact angle as the gunship circled overhead. He had the option of giving a verbal order but liked the old-fashioned trigger better; it was faster.

He leaned toward the screen, waiting for Telach’s order.

The group was moving toward his man.

Something flickered on the infrared feed.

“Fire,” said Telach.

But Malachi didn’t. Karr had thrown something toward the other group.

“Magnify object,” he told the computer.

Grenade?

No. Karr’s handheld computer.

“Don’t fire! Don’t fire!” yelled Telach.

“I’m with you,” Malachi said, drawing a breath and staring down at his hand, making sure it obeyed.