Kill Decision

CHAPTER 10

Linda McKinney stared out the window of a clerk’s office at a U.S. Army air base in Wiesbaden, Germany. At least that’s what they told her this place was. It was night, the offices deserted. The runway quiet. Blinding vapor lights illuminated the snow-blown tarmac outside. Inside Christmas decorations hung from doorways. Photographs of children and unit logistics awards studded the desks.

The phones were dead. Tapping keys and pressing line buttons achieved nothing. They were inert. Likewise with the computers. All the hard drives appeared to have been pulled, and there were small locked safes beneath each desk. Every drawer was locked too. They had things battened down tightly.

McKinney parted the window blinds so she could see the tarmac more clearly. Uniformed servicemen rushed about in olive drab parkas as wind gusted around them. Young Americans of diverse ethnicity, pointing and talking as they pushed pallets of equipment on hydraulic jacks. Occasionally laughing as their breath stabbed plumes in the cold air. Their words were inaudible through the double-paned glass.

None of it seemed real. Everything had happened so fast. Right now in Tanzania it was the hot dry season-a time for getting research finished before the spring rains. Here it was snowing. She pondered the fate of her weaver project now that the government had abducted her. It had taken her years to get the funding.

She realized she was being selfish, but she couldn’t resist a bout of self-pity. Yet, it could have been far worse. If Odin and his team hadn’t rescued her, she’d be dead, and there would have been no project, period.

So her work was being misused by someone to attack the United States. Over a hundred people were dead. She recalled images of the carnage-photos of burned bodies-not the sanitized video from the news, but graphic images of the grievously wounded. What had been in the headlines as terror bombs all these months had ultimately been traced back to her own research. And now, after a short flight to the Tanzanian air base at Morogoro, they’d boarded a waiting, unmarked Gulfstream V jet and flown seven hours here to Germany. She’d sat almost the entire way in brooding silence. Mercifully they left her alone with her thoughts.

Not even twenty-four hours had elapsed since she’d been lying in blissful ignorance on a lumpy cot in Africa. Hard to believe that that humid, cramped little cabin, along with everything in it-along with her foreseeable future-had been incinerated in a flash. None of this seemed real. Not even the room she stood in.

McKinney thought back on all the times she’d experienced this feeling of sudden, surreal dislocation, of everything being torn up. Heading out into the unknown. That was her entire childhood. Her dad worked as a chemical engineer helping to design oil refineries-a job that had taken their family around the world. It had given her diverse life experience at an early age. As an outgoing, curious girl, she thrived on it, gathering insects, plants, and friends from every continent to add to her collection-a collection that grew into a lifelong fascination with the people and creatures of this world. To this day she maintained friendships from her years in South America, Eastern Europe, Africa, Australia, Asia.

Her childhood experiences taught her one thing above all: that the world was not filled with danger. Danger was there sometimes, but it wasn’t the norm. The common thread she’d found in every culture was that the majority of people were decent and simply wanted to raise their children in peace. That basic desire was what linked us all.

Which was why America’s recent, all-encompassing fear puzzled McKinney. She felt like someone who’d returned from a long, inspiring journey only to discover that an old friend had gone crazy-paranoid. She barely recognized what America had become.

And now that old friend was telling her that her work was somehow the latest threat.

And how was any of this her fault? She’d been doing primary research on the natural world. Are we afraid of ants now? Ant society went back a hundred million years-kind of hard to view it as a pressing emergency all of a sudden. And how on earth were we supposed to contain knowledge-especially in a world where others were rapidly eliminating America’s technological edge? This wasn’t something that could be stopped.

She heard a knock, and the office door opened behind her. She didn’t bother to turn around. In a moment the bearded “Odin” came up alongside her. He also parted the blinds and looked out.

“Your plane will be ready soon.”

“My plane?”

“You’re headed back to the States.”

She nodded, brooding. “I see.” They hadn’t exchanged a word since their chat on the Otter. She’d been too shocked, too amazed. But in the intervening hours McKinney had begun to process some of the implications.

“I need to call my father as soon as possible to let him know that I’m okay. These phone lines are all dead.”

“You’re not fully grasping the situation.”

“Look, Odin-or whatever your name is-I need to call my father.”

“Isolation protocol. Until further notice, in accordance with Title Ten of the U.S. legal code, you’re prohibited from all contact with anyone on the outside.”

She stared at him in disbelief but tried to maintain her composure in the face of mounting anger. “There’s no reason to treat me like this. I will gladly tell you everything that I know about my research, but you need to realize that I’ve just disappeared in an explosion. My family needs to know that I’m okay.”

He shook his head. “That won’t be possible. The U.S. State Department reported Professor Linda McKinney missing after a bombing in East Africa. The attack was believed to be retaliation for Karbala.”

“Oh, my God…” McKinney felt tears coming on, but she didn’t want to seem weak in front of him. Her voice sounded clenched, barely in control. “The death of my mother nearly killed my father. You have no idea what this will do to him. Please, just let me-”

“I know that you actually dying would have been worse. And since Foxy and I risked our necks to save you… you’re welcome.”

McKinney paused to get her voice under control. The anger helped. “I’m grateful for you saving me, but there’s no reason why I can’t-”

“There are hundreds of reasons.”

McKinney stared at him, and then shook her head. “No. I will not permit you to make me feel guilty about this. I wasn’t researching biochemical weapons, I was studying the natural world. How people misuse basic research isn’t-”

“Rationalization is a useful survival instinct, but it won’t make any difference with me.”

McKinney glared at him. She felt the walls closing in.

He let a moment of silence pass. “I’m guessing you have questions.”

McKinney took another deep breath to calm herself. “Where am I going?”

“You’ve been attached to a special access program. Our mission is to identify the source of these drone attacks. We think you can help us predict the behavior of these things, which may help us get ahold of one intact-along with all its source code-which could lead us to its creators.”

She searched for a reasonable reaction to unreasonable circumstances and came up empty. Nothing in her broad life experience had prepared her for this.

He studied her, and after a moment his hard expression softened a bit. He motioned for her to sit down on the edge of a nearby desk. “Can I get you some water or a cup of coffee? Tea?”

She shook her head as she leaned back onto the desk.

He sat across from her and folded his arms. “Let me explain how I found you. Maybe that will clarify why you don’t want to reach out to anyone you care about right now. The people behind these drones are desperate to remain anonymous. It’s that anonymity which prevents us from focusing our firepower on them. They will do literally anything to keep it that way-that includes hurting people you love to get to you.”

She nodded slowly. “Okay, I understand. This is just all very strange.”

“Do you know what a ROM chip is?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“It’s a read-only memory chip. Stores machine code, logic that controls electronic devices. A few months back an FBI forensics team at the scene of a Texas bombing dredged up a small piece of wreckage floating in a golf course pond. It was part of an enemy drone that had self-destructed at high altitude over Dallas.”

McKinney recalled the news from some months back. “I remember-the oil company executives. That was a drone attack too?”

“All nineteen of them have been. And there were a dozen others that didn’t succeed.”

“My God.”

“That piece of wreckage the FBI found included an off-the-shelf circuit board with a ROM chip attached. DOD eggheads put the chip into a logic analyzer and decompiled its machine code into human readable form. It was advanced stuff-visual intelligence algorithms. Cyber defense folks searched to see if anything similar was out on the public Web. They got a match to code on warez sites in both Russia and China-but the compiler fingerprint for the executables pointed back to the United States. Again, this isn’t my specialty, but the cyber warfare folks can extract culture codes, MAC addresses, debug time-stamp formats and compiler paths embedded in executables. That led us back to a project at Stanford University’s Vision Lab.”

“You mean those researchers who were killed.” McKinney was starting to focus on the problem at hand. It felt good to absorb information. It kept her mind off her own troubles.

“Right. That Stanford team included Russian, Chinese, and Indian foreign nationals-any one of whom could have leaked the code overseas.”

She gave him a look. “Or an American could have sold it.”

“Either way. I used proxies to let the Stanford team know their code had been stolen and posted on warez sites-to see if one of them would report back to a handler. That worked to some degree, and we were able to follow the trail to a server in Shenyang, China-where we also discovered your weaver ant software model. That’s why I came for you.”

“You seem to have glossed over the part where the Stanford team got blown up.”

He paused. “It’s possible no one on the Stanford team was a spy. Their project lead-an American-discovered that their network had been compromised-and he managed to trace the source of the theft. That turned out to be a gold mine of intelligence for us, but he was careless. Apparently whoever is behind this detected his trick, and the next time the team got together they were on the receiving end of a laser-guided bomb.”

McKinney narrowed her eyes. “He was careless? Did he even know what he was dealing with? Did you warn him?”

“There wasn’t time, Professor.”

“Your tampering got them all killed.”

“This is a war. There will be casualties.”

“Don’t beat yourself up.”

“For all I knew, they might have been involved with these drone attacks. If so, tipping them off would have given them a chance to scatter and cover their trails.”

“How can you be sure I’m not involved in these attacks? Oh, that’s right-I’m a white chick, so I must be innocent. I did grow up all over the world, you know. I could have been turned to the ‘dark side’ in some madrassa.”

“Are you finished?”

“I hope the rest of your mission has been more inspired than what you’ve told me so far.”

He eyed her with some irritation. “I made a mistake with the Stanford researchers, and I had to get to you before the drone builders did. I am responsible for getting the Stanford team killed. I know that. We’re doing the best we can, Professor, with incomplete information and very little time.”

McKinney sighed and held up her hands. “I didn’t mean to imply you don’t care about those people.” McKinney searched for some sense in what was going on. “But there are thousands of swarming algorithms around. Why would these people choose mine? I’m hardly the world expert on swarming intelligence.”

“Maybe it has something to do with weavers in particular. Aggression. Maybe they chose yours by chance, or convenience, or some connection we can’t see yet. But what matters is that they did take yours. If you know anything about the strategies of America’s geopolitical rivals, then you’d know that swarming is a central theme. Whoever used this visual intelligence software to give a drone eyes is also planning on using your software to make them into a cohesive military force. An anonymous swarm that will prevent us from bringing our firepower to bear on our real attackers.”

McKinney stopped short, then fixed her gaze on him. “Did you just say they were planning on using my swarming algorithm? I thought you said my weaver model had already been used?”

Odin showed no emotion. “I told you what was necessary to bring you under U.S. jurisdiction with as little drama as possible.”

McKinney felt the rage building. “Jesus!” She paced angrily. “I get it now. You pile the guilt of killing a hundred people onto my shoulders so I’ll meekly submit out of remorse for all the suffering I’ve caused. You manipulative asshole!”

“Professor, calm down. It doesn’t change the reality of the situation.”

“What else aren’t you telling me?”

“A great deal.”

“You admit it?”

“This is a life-and-death struggle. There’s no time for social niceties.”

“Like honesty. How convenient that must be for you. That’s the problem with all these wars you people keep getting us into.”

“As a biologist, you, of all people, know that conflict is a fact of life. Competition is the mechanism of evolution.”

“There is a great deal more to evolutionary biology than survival of the fittest-although that’s all anyone seems to remember. One of Darwin’s contemporaries was Alfred Russel Wallace, who had even more profound lessons about evolution-that humans are social creatures. That we coevolve with other species as part of a fabric of interwoven and interdependent life-forms. The world isn’t entirely about competition and dominance. And species that cooperate with others succeed better than those who do not. That’s what civilization is, cooperation.”

“And if there’s not enough for everyone, who gets to live? Who gets to reproduce? How is that decided in the wild?”

“We need to aspire to being more than just animals-because unlike animals humans have the capacity to destroy the earth. In fact, we’re already destroying it-and what you’re doing isn’t helping.”

Odin glowered at her. “It’s not necessary that you like me, Professor. But I can tell you from personal experience that every population has a criminal element-people who will do anything to gain and keep power. Whoever’s behind this, they are such people, and they’re building a robot army that will follow their every command. I’d like your help in stopping them.”

She stared at him, then finally turned away. It had felt good to vent, but that didn’t change the reality of her situation. “So what are you, then? CIA?”

“I told you, we can’t discuss what I am.”

“You’re asking that I blindly follow orders. I’m not allowed to know from whom-and you’ve already lied to me. What you’re asking is that I be an obedient machine. Isn’t that what you’re trying to stop?”

He gritted his teeth in frustration.

“This is a matter of trust. I don’t trust you, Odin. You’ve given me no reason to trust you. How do I even know you’re who you say you are?” She gestured to the office around her. “And as if the U.S. military has never done anything immoral or unethical. Convince me. Convince me, or throw me in prison-because I’m not going to help someone I don’t trust.”

He ran his hand through his long, unruly hair. “Christ, you’re a piece of work. The file said you’d be difficult.” He exhaled in irritation. “Fine. We’re an elite intelligence unit of the U.S. Army.”

“Special Forces.”

“No. Special Forces is publicly acknowledged to exist. We don’t officially exist.”

“Delta Force…”

“Look, no. Not Delta Force. That’s a counterterrorism unit. We go in before them. Alone and quietly. We uncover the reality on the ground. That’s all I’m trying to do, Professor.”

McKinney eyed him suspiciously. “What’s your rank?”

“What does it matter?”

“I want to know who I’m dealing with.”

“I’m a master sergeant.”

“They sent a sergeant? I would have thought that tracking down the drones attacking America would have rated at least a lieutenant.”

“What is this, a class thing?”

“No, but it occurs to me that officers go to officer training school, where they presumably learn how to manage groups of people and complex operations-where they learn ethics. I mean, I study bugs, and I went to school for half my life.”

“For your information, I gave up all possibility of promotion to serve in this unit. Everyone in my unit is a sergeant-and we’ll stay sergeants our entire career.”

She was confused.

“Commissioned officers receive their commission from the Congress. That means the civilian government is answerable for their conduct. Noncommissioned officers answer only to the military high command. Our rank has to do with government exposure.”

“Meaning you skip around the globe breaking laws, and they’ll disown you if you’re caught.”

“Meaning I’m the guy who has to solve problems whether there’s an international legal framework for them or not. And for drones, there is not.”

McKinney felt convinced he was telling the truth, if only because the answer made her mad. “No uniforms, apparently.”

“Blending in is what we do.”

“Did it ever occur to you that the presence of American units like yours in foreign countries is precisely what’s causing these drone attacks against us?”

“And you really think the world would be a peaceful place if we left it alone?”

“I wasn’t arguing that the world is filled with unicorns and rainbows. I’ve spent a decade in the Third World. I’m no stranger to corruption and lawlessness in places like Africa. In fact, I’m godmother to a boy whose father was murdered by ivory poachers. So, I get that civil society needs to be defended by people with guns-but those people cannot be above the law. And you just described to me why you’re a sergeant-in order to better skirt international laws.”

“Okay. You don’t trust your government. But if you think drones in American hands are frightening, imagine them controlled by North Korea, or Burma, or narco-traffickers, or Dominionists, or AT amp;T. If you want to lobby for some international legal framework for these machines, more power to you-but until you civilians sort this shit out, I and my team have to deal with it. It’s not a fucking theory with me, okay? I’m concerned about whether humans will be combatants on future battlefields, or just targets. It matters a whole goddamned lot to me, maybe even more than it does to you, so I’d appreciate you setting aside your objections and pitching the fuck in.”

McKinney was taken aback. She had apparently managed to get under his skin. Finally. She nodded. “All right. Okay. Just laying my cards on the table.”

“Thank you.”

Foxy, the wild-haired Albanian man with the heavy metal T-shirt, ducked his head into the office. “Knock, knock. Sorry to interrupt the high velocity data exchange, but you need to see this, Odin.”

“What is it?”

“Cable news. They found something in Pakistan.”

“What?”

“Drones.”

“Goddammit.”

Odin cast a look to McKinney, and then nodded. “No time like the present, Professor.”

They headed toward the door.

Odin gestured to the Albanian soldier. “Professor, this is Foxy, my two-IC. If you need anything, and I’m not available, you talk to him.”

Foxy extended a calloused hand. “Pleased to meet you, Professor. Wish it was under better circumstances.”

“You and me both.”

Odin led them down a tiled institutional hallway. They soon arrived at an austere recreation room at the end of the deserted office wing. There, on sturdy sofas, sat Mooch, Hoov, and the woman she’d seen earlier wearing a maroon hijab and a chocolate brown abaya. There was also a Caucasian man, short and stocky, with a thick reddish-brown beard-possibly Scotch-Irish. The group was staring at a television bolted at an angle to the drop ceiling. The woman was leaning back with her sandaled feet up on a coffee table. She nodded to McKinney.

McKinney nodded back.

When Odin entered everyone stood, but all eyes were still glued to the television, where an American cable news channel was showing video of a workshop filled with aircraft components-wings and fuselages. Odin studied the screen.

Foxy spoke over the anchor’s voice. “Found a workshop in good ol’ Karachi. Reverse-engineering operation for American drone wreckage. The story is that whoever ran it was behind the attack in Karbala.”

“Who found it?” Odin was watching the screen impassively.

“Pakistani military. Maybe ISI. They tipped off CIA.” Foxy pointed at the rough, leaked video footage. “There’s a Predator tail. A few pieces of Reapers in the back.”

Odin turned to him. “I call bullshit.”

Foxy nodded. “No doubt.”

McKinney looked at him with surprise. “Why do you think it’s fake?”

“Too perfect. One of our drones commits an atrocity, and a week later we find a barnful of evidence that we’ve been framed by insurgents?” Odin shook his head, accentuating the length of his beard. “I’d say it’s an influence operation. Even if it’s true, most people abroad won’t believe it. Foxy, work your connections at CIA. Try to find out who’s hypnotizing the chickens. In the meantime, we proceed under the supposition it’s an IO focused at a domestic audience.”

Foxy frowned. “What if it’s the real deal? Shouldn’t we send someone to examine the site?”

“Too risky. They’ll be closely watching whoever goes there. If the same extremely careful people carrying out the drone attacks Stateside are behind the Karbala attack, then they probably intended us to find this orgy of evidence-which means it’s worse than useless; it’s a deception. And if they weren’t behind Karbala, then this has no bearing on our mission.”

Above them a Ford pickup truck commercial had come on, depicting trucks towing improbable loads up improbable inclines in improbable ways.

Odin made a slashing gesture across his throat, and someone muted the television. He placed his hand on McKinney’s shoulder. “Everyone. Cornell University professor Linda McKinney is now a member of this team. You are to defend her with your lives. From this point onward, you will refer to her as Expert Six or simply as ‘Professor.’ Is that understood?”

The team members nodded.

“Professor, this is my team. You’ve already met Foxy.” He pointed to the woman in the maroon hijab. “Ripper. Human intel. Pay no attention to her outfit. She’s about as Muslim as a Vegas casino.” He pointed at the Eurasian kid who worked the electronics board on the plane. “This is Hoov. Signals intelligence-our knob turner.”

Hoov displayed mild impatience. “He means commo-I trained with the 704th-”

“Hoov, this isn’t your goddamned high school reunion.”

Hoov nodded and closed his mouth.

Odin gestured next to the handsome Asian Indian man whom McKinney recognized as being the one with the stethoscope-and who had cut her loose on the plane. “Mooch, team surgeon.”

McKinney and he exchanged polite nods.

Odin now pointed to the red-bearded man she hadn’t seen on the plane. “And this is Tin Man. Human intel.”

Odin turned to McKinney. “We’ll hook up Stateside with the last two team members, Troll and Smokey. They handle signals and human intel.” He grabbed the television remote and killed the TV. “All right, listen up. I want you all ready to ship out the moment the tail numbers on the C-37 have been repainted.” He looked at his watch. “Make good use of the time en route to examine every bit of intel we got from last night’s operation. I want detailed reports and recommendations when I get back.”

McKinney glanced at the others, then at Odin. “You’re not heading back to the U.S.?”

Odin shook his head. “Hoov and I will catch up with you all later. There’s somewhere I need to go first.”