Callsign: King

25.

Somewhere over Africa

A black wraith-like shape tore through the sky high above the dark continent. Anyone looking skyward would have immediately recognized the tiny speck as an aircraft by the long contrail-the product of water vapor in the jet exhaust instantly freezing into ice crystals high in the stratosphere-but such sights were common almost everywhere in the world. Anyone watching a radar display would have seen absolutely nothing. The stealth transport plane, code-named Crescent because of its unique, radar-scattering half-moon profile, was for practical purposes, invisible.

King sat in Crescent’s communication center, just aft of the cockpit, where two pilots from the USAF Nighthawks special operations wing, were waiting for their next destination. Unfortunately, King didn’t yet know what that would be.

One of the two computer screens on the workstation showed photographic imagery from a satellite in a geostationary orbit above northern Africa. Deep Blue had accessed the feed from the National Reconnaissance Office and cued it up to approximately the moment where King’s helicopter had been shot down by a missile from one of the Ethiopian fighter jets. King wasn’t interested in the crash though; he already knew how that ended.

With the realization that he would not be able to fool another missile attack, King did the only thing he could: he cut the engine and let the helicopter fall from the sky. The plunge was only about sixty feet, and the helicopter was engineered to withstand hard landings, but even so, the impact was like getting hit by a bus. Battered, bruised, but thankfully not broken, he had half-fallen out of the crumpled cockpit and taken off across the scrubland in search of cover. A few moments later, a second missile had homed in on the helicopter and blown it to smithereens. The concussion wave had sent him tumbling, adding a few more bruises, but the ploy had worked. The Sukhoi fighters had turned for home, satisfied that, even if he had survived, the elements would finish him off.

Fortunately, King had his Chess Team phone. Rescue, in the form of Crescent, traveling halfway around the world at Mach 2, had arrived a few hours later. Now, he was tracking the other helicopter, the one that had borne Sara and Felice Carter away.

“That’s where they landed in Addis Ababa,” Deep Blue observed from Chess Team headquarters in New Hampshire. His face was visible on the second computer screen and his voice was a tinny electronic reproduction in King’s headphones. “That compound belongs to Alpha Dog Solutions, a private security firm that’s doing counter-terrorism operations under contract for the CIA.”

“Sara told me that Fulbright might be a CIA officer.”

“I couldn’t verify that. If he really is with the Company, then he’s probably NOC, and information on that is too closely guarded for me to root out with just a discreet inquiry.” The acronym stood for “non-official cover” and was reserved for intelligence operatives working deep undercover espionage missions. “Or it could just be an alias,” Deep Blue added.

King rubbed his eyes. Despite his ability to thrive under the worst conditions, fatigue was finally starting to take its toll. “What else do we know about Alpha Dog? Do they have other clients?”

“In that region, they also do site security for a number of petroleum companies. Curiously enough, it looks like they received several payments, all from different clients and all in the last three days. If I had to guess, I’d say someone was trying to hide the actual size of a very large payoff by splitting it up… Oh.”

“What?”

“The men who attacked you on the road from the airport, when you first arrived, were Alpha Dog contractors, not Gen-Y.”

“I guess they knew I’d make trouble, and wanted me out of the way.” King glanced back at the satellite feed, where a group of tiny figures moved between the now stationary helicopter and a small private jet. A few frames later, the jet taxied for take-off. “Do we know who owns the jet?”

Deep Blue consulted his own computer screen. “A shell company. I’m starting to get the sense that someone is trying very hard to cover their tracks.”

“So what do we know for sure? This guy, Fulbright, was able to call out the CDC through official channels; let’s assume that means he really does work in some government agency, but he’s gone rogue. His real employer has almost unlimited resources, and the ability to channel money through a number of different corporations. And let’s not forget, somehow they were keeping an eye on what Manifold was up to. They knew what Felice Carter brought back from the elephant graveyard almost from the start.”

“That kind of reach takes a lot of money; more money than multinational corporations, more money than most governments.” Deep Blue’s eyebrows drew together in a perplexed frown. “When I was in office, there was chatter about a… I guess you could call it a ‘metacorporation’-an entity that was secretly insinuating itself into other corporations, the really big multinationals, using shell companies and phony proxies to take over, essentially creating a gigantic global monopoly.”

“How would you keep something like that off the radar?”

“Logistically, it would be almost impossible. One person couldn’t run something so complex, and if you had a board of directors…well, eventually someone would slip up, or get greedy and break away…or they would just make bad decisions and it would all come unglued. But that never seemed to happen. There were rumors that the whole thing might be controlled from cyberspace by a sentient computer network. Artificial intelligence would be one explanation for the level of control that’s been exhibited.”

King shook his head. Global conspiracies were the last thing on his mind right now. “What does any of this have to do with Sara? Or with what Felice discovered in that cave?”

“If it involves bioweapons research, then I can think of at least one nightmare scenario. Radical depopulation. Selective reduction of undesirable elements in the population as a way of increasing control and bringing about economic stability.”

King thought about what he had witnessed in the cavern. “So, give the ‘desirable’ people the vaccine, and then turn the rest into zombies. A drone workforce that never complains, never rises up in revolt, and will defend you without question.”

Deep Blue nodded. “That’s exactly how a computer would reason. The economically disadvantaged represent a constant source of social instability. From ancient times, kings and emperors controlled the masses with distractions-gladiatorial games, circuses, daytime talk shows-but now there’s the potential to simply switch off the part of the human brain that causes discontent.”

“They already have the way to throw the switch. They just don’t have a vaccine for the ‘desirables.’ That’s what they need Sara for.” King took a deep breath. “Do we know where they took her?”

“I’ve tracked the plane ahead for six hours. It looks like they’re still in Africa-Algeria, to be precise.”

King’s screen showed an overhead view of a plane sitting at the end of a runway, and a road that connected the airstrip to a large fenced compound nearby. There were no other roads or buildings anywhere in the featureless brown landscape.

“I can’t find any records connected to that property,” Deep Blue continued. “In fact, according to the maps, it’s supposed to be a national park.”

“Money and influence. Bribe the right official, and do as you please.” King clicked on a button to zoom in on the compound. “It doesn’t appear to be built-up.”

“I’ll have the Crescent deploy our UAV and recon the area so we can determine how well defended it is. I’m afraid the rest of the team is unavailable and-”

“And the rest of the U.S. military is off limits to us now that we’re black, I know,” King said. “Tell me again why we went underground?”

But King knew why. The less people that knew about the…evils Chess Team faced, the better off the world would be. And it was just as likely that more military would get in his way, or turn this into an international incident, which wouldn’t be a good thing for a fledgling black op, especially one directed by a former U.S. President.

“I could hire some mercenaries,” Deep Blue said.

King laughed, but when Deep Blue didn’t join him, he asked, “You’re serious?”

“We have a budget for it now.”

King had some military friends that had become mercs. They were trustworthy, and a few extra guns would be nice, but ultimately, this had to be a solo mission for one very important reason. “This contagion, whatever it is, seems to be triggered specifically by a threat to Felice’s safety. If we raid the compound, it’ll probably scare the hell out of her, and believe me, you don’t want that to happen.”