Callsign: King

27.

King hung suspended beneath the fluttering cells of a black stealth-parachute, falling gently out of the African night sky. He had decided to infiltrate the remote compound using a high-altitude, high-opening (HAHO) jump, instead of the high-altitude, low-opening (HALO) jump that Chess Team usually favored, for the simple reason that HAHO would afford ample opportunity to adjust his plan as circumstances on the ground dictated. As King glided across the sky, with the prevailing wind at his back, and now some sixty horizontal miles from where he’d left a perfectly good airplane, he watched the real-time video feed, supplied by the Predator drone that was presently circling the target, and relayed to the display in his night-vision goggles.

For all he could tell, the compound might have been abandoned. There was no sign of a security force. In fact, more than twelve hours of surveillance by the team’s personal satellite and UAV had shown no exterior activity whatsoever. In a way, that made a lot of sense. If Deep Blue’s idea about a global metacorporation was anywhere close to the truth, then absolute secrecy would be imperative. The more people that knew about something-whether mercenaries hired to protect it or food service workers brought in to feed everyone-the more chance there was for that cloak of secrecy to slip away.

King just hoped that Deep Blue was wrong about the whole thing being run by a sentient supercomputer; the last thing he wanted was to run up against an army of killer robots.

Still, if it came to that, he was ready. Slung from one shoulder was a FN Herstal SCAR H heavy combat assault rifle, outfitted with the FN40GL enhanced grenade launching module. His load-carrying vest held nine spare 20 round magazines of 7.62 X 51 mm ammunition for the rifle, along with five M433 high-explosive dual-purpose grenades and five M576 “Beehive” buckshot rounds, either of which could be used in the FN40GL. For more intimate acts of violence, he also carried a SiG P220 Combat pistol outfitted with a suppressor, and a black KA-BAR straight-edge knife. He also carried a satchel full of C-4 and detonator caps, useful for everything from door breaching to large scale demolitions.

The prodigious weight of his combat load was partially offset by the switch from the traditional Kevlar and porcelain plate body armor, to an experimental dilatant liquid body armor suit, which he wore under his black BDUs. The garment, which looked and felt like a neoprene wetsuit, utilized a shear thickening fluid, sandwiched between two layers of durable Kevlar fabric. When a ballistic projectile struck the garment, the fluid instantly became rigid, preventing penetration and dispersing the energy of impact, but under normal circumstances, it allowed a full range of movement and relatively little discomfort to the wearer. King also sported a black hockey helmet, which had been augmented with dilatant filled pads, to afford protection from both bullets and impact trauma.

It was never possible to be prepared for everything, but King didn’t think there was much that his unknown enemy would be able to throw at him that he couldn’t deal with, even killer robots.

He checked the UAV feed one last time and then switched his goggles back to night-vision mode. The display didn’t change that much. He was very close. He steered his chute into a corkscrew spiral and a few seconds later pulled hard on the toggle wires, flaring the chute to drop feather light onto the roof of the villa.

Despite Deep Blue’s best efforts, King knew absolutely nothing about what lay just below his feet. The house had been heavily insulated, resisting every form of remote sensor scan, and because it wasn’t supposed to exist, there were no architectural blueprints on record. King was going to have to search the house, room by room.

He chose to make his entry through a second-story window on the west end of the house. He rigged up a hasty rope belay, with one end tied around a vent pipe on the roof, and lowered himself down the side of the house, just to the right of the enormous opening. The curtains were drawn on the other side of the glass, but his goggles did not detect even a trace of light from beyond.

King scanned the glass visually and then swept it with a portable RF detector. The latter device was designed to pick up even the smallest fluctuations in the ambient electrical field, such as might come from alarm sensors and security cameras, but the needle on the meter did not quiver. Cautious nevertheless, he tapped the tempered pane with the hilt of his KA-BAR until it finally cracked. He carefully pulled away the broken window in large sections, pushing them into the house’s interior rather than letting them fall to the ground outside, and then crawled through.

The space beyond was enormous, and King soon realized that it was the sitting area for what was essentially a small apartment, or perhaps a guest suite. As expected, the room was unoccupied. In fact, it was completely devoid of furnishings and looked as if it had never been used. But the sensitive optics of his night-vision device did reveal a strip of bright light streaming in from under the exit. He switched off the night vision, and pushed the eyepiece up onto his helmet, where it would continue to transmit live video to Deep Blue. With his P220 at the ready, he eased the door open.

Beyond lay an empty hallway, illuminated by a single overhead light, blazing from a decorative fixture. Three doors, similar to the one through which he had just passed, lined the hall before it opened up onto a broad staircase landing. King stole forward and opened the next door down the line.

As soon as he entered, he knew that Sara had been in this room. He could smell the distinctive fragrance of her favorite soap and hair care products. Because of her SDD, Sara had to be very picky about perfumes and other scents in her bath products, and that unique combination of organic ingredients was unmistakable. But his excitement was short-lived; Sara might have been here earlier, but now she was gone.

He crept back into the hallway and tried the next door.

Here too there were the distinctive odors of human occupation, though none as evocative as Sara’s fragrance. But unlike the other suites, this room’s inhabitant was still there. A gray-haired Caucasian man sat calmly on a sofa in the front room, intently studying the display on a smartphone and evidently oblivious to the intrusion.

King checked his impulse to simply dispatch the man then and there, and instead cleared his throat. The man looked up and what little color there was in his pale face drained away.

“Put the phone down and keep your hands where I can see them,” King instructed in a level voice

The man complied without saying a word.

“Very good. You get to live a little longer. Now, who the hell are you?”

“It seems like I should be asking you that question.”

King triggered a silenced round and a neat hole appeared in the upholstery, three inches to the right of the man’s shoulder. “Try again.”

The corner of the man’s mouth twitched into something that might have been a smile. “I see your point. The name’s Graham.”

“Better. Elaborate a little.”

Graham spread his raised hands a little wide, gesturing at his surroundings. “This is my house.”

King cocked his head sideways. “See, that just makes me want to kill you even more. But as long as you keep answering truthfully, you’ll keep breathing. Now, here’s the important question, and don’t screw this one up. Where can I find Sara Fogg?”

“She’s working in the research laboratory. It’s in the subbasement, but you won’t be able to access it.” Graham thought a moment, and then added. “I can take you there.”

There was a scratch of static in King’s ear as Deep Blue initiated contact. “King, I’ve run a facial recognition program on him and matched him to a file photo that’s almost thirty years old. His name really is Graham-Graham Brown. He’s American, born in New Jersey. Made a small fortune gambling, and then made an even bigger fortune on the stock market. He seems to have had an uncanny ability to predict trends, even in a down market. He’s also a notorious recluse, and pretty much vanished from public life in the 1980’s.”

“Roger,” King answered, subvocalizing. He then waved the P220 in Graham’s direction. “Graham…Brown is it?”

The other man’s eye twitched ever so slightly, but that was the only indication of dismay at having been correctly identified.

“You must have been a hell of a poker player back in the day,” King continued. “But if you’re trying to bluff me now, it will cost you everything.”

“I never played poker. It’s a game of deceit. I prefer to deal in mathematical probabilities. But I do always play to win…Mr. Sigler.”

It was King’s turn to hide his dismay. “Cards on the table, then. You’ve tried very hard to have me killed Graham, and that makes me a little cranky. So, take me to Sara and don’t do anything stupid.”

“As you wish. I’m going to stand up now.” Graham waited a beat, and then lowered his hands in order to push himself up from the sofa.

“Is there anyone else here?”

“Mr. Fulbright-I believe you know him-is in a room down the hall. Miss Carter is in the laboratory with Dr. Fogg.” As an afterthought, he added: “And the flight crew for my Gulfstream is in the coach house.”

“None of your Alpha Dog mercenaries running around?”

Graham offered a bitter smile. “No, more’s the pity. I prefer not to have dogs in the house, but I can see that perhaps it would have been a good idea.”

King gestured with the gun. “Lead the way.”

Graham eased past King and moved to the exit. As he followed, King keyed his mic. “Anything else you can tell me about this guy?”

“Nothing current,” Deep Blue answered. “But his disappearance coincides with the emergence of the metacorporation. It’s conceivable that he’s responsible for creating the AI that’s behind it all.”

King offered a noncommittal grunt but said nothing more as he followed the silver-haired man down the hall to the staircase landing. They descended in silence and made their way to the elevator foyer where Graham pressed a button to summon the car. As the double doors slid aside, King made a point of holding the P220 to the base of Graham’s neck.

They filed into the empty car where Graham pushed a button marked SB1. King noted that there was also an SB2. “What’s on the bottom floor?”

“That’s the computer room,” Graham answered, disinterestedly. “It’s easier to keep them cool down there.”

King made a mental note of that. He also noted that, despite Graham’s earlier assertion that King would be unable to access the subbasement without his help, there hadn’t been any visible security measures.

The brief vertical journey ended and the doors slid open to reveal a large room rendered in sterile white and stainless steel. Graham raised his hands and waited for a signal from King. “I did what you asked, Mr. Sigler. Are you going to kill me now?”

“Don’t tempt me. Out. Take me to Sara.”

Graham nodded slowly. “Right this way.”

The silver-haired man took a step out of the elevator, and then suddenly threw himself to the right, out of King’s line of sight. King squeezed off a round, but was a fraction of a second too slow. And even as the pistol twitched in his hands, he realized that Graham had told another lie. Fulbright wasn’t sequestered in a room on the second floor; he was standing twenty feet away, aiming a pistol at the elevator’s sole remaining occupant.

Before King could do anything to stop him, he fired.