Kill Decision

CHAPTER 24

Linda McKinney spent her days wandering Lalenia’s ranch in the warm, dry weather, using a hiking stick for support and as protection against stray dogs. Her strength had returned, and she could walk a considerable distance now. It was surprising how such a small hole had nearly drained all the life out of her.

But what life was left to her? Where could she go? She’d been recovering in Mexico for two months, and now it was almost March. She couldn’t help thinking that there was no clear path home. Had they declared her dead? she wondered.

She thought about the antidrone team-or what was left of it. Foxy had flown off to Mexico City-gone to connect with informants, or buy weapons, or sell the plane-nobody would tell her which. Tin Man had gone away to get specialist treatment for his leg injury. Meanwhile Odin and Mouse spent most of their time together, running around the area on shadowy business. She didn’t see Odin much.

Was this her life now? An expat American hiding in rural Mexico? She wondered when the hunt would resume. Or if it would resume.

In the meantime she walked. As she did, McKinney studied the ground. It was a habit she’d formed after a decade of field research. She had lately been monitoring Argentine ants- Linepithema humile. She noticed a trail of them and followed the tiny species back to its nest. Much smaller than weavers, they were nonetheless the most likely to give weavers trouble in the future. The reason was simple: They’d evolved into a single supercolony that spanned continents-trillions of members and possibly millions of queens. They were the Wal-Mart of ants-existing like a single, vast multinational corporation. Their numbers outstripped all others. Even far more ferocious ants simply could not kill all the Argentine ants, and eventually, their food sources were eaten out from under their mandibles.

The Argentine ants were reducing biodiversity. Other insects could not survive their onslaught, and the birds who ate those insects were also starting to suffer-and on up the food chain. Humans weren’t the only ones capable of wrecking their ecosystem by succeeding too well, apparently.

And yet somehow McKinney’s enthusiasm for swarming intelligence seemed greatly diminished. It wasn’t academic anymore. How long until the weaver drones started appearing elsewhere? She tried not to think about it.

Instead she kept walking. While wandering the edge of an orange grove, McKinney heard a familiar caw and turned to see one of Odin’s ravens on a nearby fence post. It examined her curiously. She noticed it wasn’t wearing the wire filament headset or transponder. “Hello, Muninn. How are you today?”

The raven spread its wings and puffed up the feathers around its head, caw ing and hopping along the fence wire.

She stood in front of Muninn and leaned on her hiking stick. “Where have you been?”

The raven cocked its head at her.

In a moment Huginn landed next to Muninn on a nearby fence post.

“Hello, Huginn.”

The birds both caw ed in response, but then the first one started preening the new arrival, as the second one emitted gentle keek-keek sounds. It was as though he were caressing her.

“I guess this is a holiday for you two, then? A little jaunt down to Mexico?”

McKinney decided to leave them alone and returned to her walk along the edge of the orchard. The ravens started to tag along, flying in bounds overhead, and then across the road into a nearby peach orchard. They were both walking around the branches and took great interest in a squirrel that was gathering up rotting peaches that had fallen. One of the ravens apparently decided to have some fun and tugged at a peach on a branch until it broke off and rolled down onto the ground-where the squirrel immediately descended upon it.

McKinney watched in fascination as the ravens let out more clicking noises and hopped around the branches with apparent delight. They seemed to be… feeding the squirrels for the fun of it.

Soon bored with their game, they flew off, heading toward a copse of trees in the distance. McKinney watched them go, only to see them circle back and caw at her loudly. Another dip of the wings, and they headed back toward the distant tree line. McKinney watched them go again, this time more closely. The birds were clearly communicating with each other as they flew. It was fascinating to watch.

Another glance down at the Argentine ants, and McKinney decided to take a break from swarming models. She slipped beneath the fence wire and headed across a pasture toward the copse of trees a couple of hundred meters away. She could see the ravens sitting on a tree branch there, until one of them descended, presumably to engage in more mischief.

She remembered when she’d first arrived at the Ancile base in Kansas City and started exploring the halls. Muninn had sounded the alarm. Now they seemed to have accepted her. It surprised her how good it made her feel.

She considered this as she headed into the trees along a narrow but well-worn path. The ravens caw ed about something ahead. McKinney wondered whether she was being foolish for heading down this path on her own, but the presence of the ravens was oddly comforting. They didn’t sound alarmed. It was their normal voice.

Before long she came to the edge of a stream that flowed over rounded stones in clear ripples and reflected the trees above in still pools. Standing there on the bank, his back against a tree, was Odin.

He was grimly concentrating on the water, lost in thought. He finally looked up in alarm as she snapped a branch with her foot.

His surprise truly surprised McKinney. “I thought you had eyes everywhere. Your trusty companions seem to have failed you.”

He frowned and looked up at the ravens on branches above. “Someone’s apparently getting a little too used to you.”

She walked up to him and looked out at the water. “This is nice. I didn’t know this was here.”

He nodded.

She noticed he held a mirror and scissors. “What are you up to?”

“Shaving the beard.”

McKinney put on an exaggerated, shocked expression. “Really? That thing must have taken you ages to grow.”

He nodded again.

“Doesn’t look like you’ve made much progress. Hard to part with it?”

“I guess it is. But it was for a mission I spent too much time on.”

She studied his face and walked up to him as he tried to look into the tiny handheld mirror.

He stopped for a moment. “What?”

She extended her hand, and when he hesitated, she took the scissors from him. “I can see better. You want it all off?”

He nodded.

She started clipping through his beard and realized there was some gray in the black hair. This close to him, she realized what a formidable man he was. His jaw solid.

His face was still stern.

“You okay?”

“They’ll be sending assets after us eventually, and I don’t want to attract them here. Which means we need to move on.”

“To where?”

He seemed at a loss. “That’s the problem. I’m trying to figure out a way back for you.”

“What about you? You’re still going after these people-aren’t you?” She kept clipping, and now she was starting to see his real face for the first time.

“I have no choice.”

“Have you uncovered anything about who’s behind this?”

“That’s the other problem, but it’s my problem.” He looked at her. “I’m sorry you’re involved in this.”

McKinney continued clipping. “You saved my life. You don’t have to apologize to me.”

He absorbed the comment silently.

She stepped back a step and gripped his jaw in her hand, turning his head side to side. His beard was quite short now-at shaving length. McKinney couldn’t help but notice how handsome David Shaw was. It was the first time she’d really seen his full face. “You look a lot better without that beard.”

She let go, and he checked her handiwork in the mirror, rubbing a hand along his jawline.

He knelt down to pull shaving cream and a folded straight razor from a kit in the bag at his feet. As he stood she extended her hand.

“Let me.”

He eyed her warily and gestured to the straight razor. “You know how to use one of these?”

She nodded. “I used to date a swimmer.”

He gave her an odd look.

“Don’t ask.”

He reluctantly relinquished the razor and took off his T-shirt to hang it over a tree branch. McKinney noticed scars crisscrossing his back and shoulders. What looked to be old wounds along his ribs, another one above his right shoulder blade. His lean, muscular frame flexed easily as he splashed his face with water.

He turned to face her, and she could see more scars along his chest, one leaving a hairless trail along his right pectoral muscle. He had almost no fat on him.

Odin noticed the look on her face and nodded toward the razor she held. “You gonna be safe with that? ’Cause I’m full up on scars already.”

“I’ll be fine. I didn’t know you’d been so badly hurt before. Are all these combat wounds?”

He shrugged. “Comes with the territory if you stay long enough. I’ve been luckier than most.”

She pointed to the nasty scar tracing along his chest. “What was this?”

He looked down. “Training accident in Texas. We were dropped into trees. I got impaled on a branch.”

He saw the look on her face.

“Ah, you were expecting it was from a knife-wielding terrorist?”

She nodded. “I guess I did.”

He applied some shaving cream to his hand from a can and started rubbing it along his jaw and face. “That’s this one over here…” He gestured to his side.

She laughed then got the razor ready, holding his jaw. “Don’t make me laugh.” She looked into his gray-blue eyes as she made the first swift swipe of the blade. He didn’t flinch. “How can you go back now, David? Do you even know who you’re going after yet?” Another sweep of the blade.

“I can’t sit by and let someone build an army of autonomous killing machines. We all know how that ends.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“Maybe, but at least I will have tried.”

She was rapidly clearing away his beard. His face was even more attractive than she’d first thought. She studied him for a moment more.

Or maybe her view of him was improving.

She leaned close to scrape away the last of the beard along his chin, edging around the slight cleft. She looked at his lips and then up into his eyes. She was an inch away.

And then she lowered the razor and kissed him. Almost immediately he began kissing her back. She dropped the razor, and they were immediately locked in a passionate embrace.

McKinney felt his powerful arms as he pulled her close to him. It had been a long time since she’d been with a man, but now McKinney realized she’d been attracted to him from the start-but especially so now. As she ran her hands over him and smelled his scent, she saw the kindness in his eyes. How he was letting her in, and how much she wanted to be let in.

They made love on the edge of the stream, at the base of an ancient oak, and as she kissed the scars along his body, his calloused fingertips ran along the scar of her own wound.

He spoke softly in her ear as she felt him within her.

“I lied to you.” He searched her eyes. “I’m glad you got caught up in this, Linda…”

The ravens observed curiously, perched on the branches above them.

H ours later McKinney and Odin lay in the bed at the hacienda. Having made love again, she felt spent, and calm for the first time in many weeks. Odin was a considerate lover. She turned to face him in the low lamplight, her arm across his chest. McKinney ran her fingers along his cleanly shaved chin. He looked like a different man. No longer the Taliban warlord or the ZZ Top drummer. “My God, you’re handsome.”

“There were arguments about who was going to get to rescue you. I had to pull rank.”

“Rescue me? I’m in more danger than ever now. Some rescue.”

He grabbed her close and kissed her forehead. “We’ll figure something out. We have to.”

She rested her face on his chest. “You said something by the creek that I’ve been thinking about.”

“What’s that?”

“About autonomous killing machines. I hadn’t thought about it until now, but if machines based on insect intelligence are widely used in warfare, it could remove evolutionary safeguards that have been in place for millions of years. Among the creatures on earth only certain species of ants engage in unrestrained slaughter.”

“What about the Holocaust? Or Hiroshima?”

“But that came to an end. People didn’t continue the killing. And they didn’t kill everyone who surrendered. Mammals aren’t predisposed to murdering their own species; they engage in a primordial fight-flight-posturing-or-submission process that naturally inhibits killing. But replacing that with an insect paradigm: That means killing without exception. It could begin a self-destructive pattern that circumvents millions of years of evolution-in particular the safeguard that prevents humans from engaging in unlimited intraspecies slaughter.”

He sighed deeply. “That’s why I have to go back.”

“Why we have to go back.”

He glanced down at her.

“There’s no one who knows more about these things than me. You know it, and I know it. And it’s not negotiable.”

He let a slight grin crease his lips, but then he said nothing.

“Besides, you remember back in Kansas City you had all those experts searching for a pattern among the drone attack victims?”

“Expert Three and Expert Five.”

“Yes. Back then we still thought the drone builders were outsiders, but now we know whoever’s behind this is inside the defense complex-or at least they have access to all the same data your team did. Maybe more.”

“I don’t see how that gets us closer.”

“The Web is a lot like the pheromonal matrix of an ant colony; popular messages get reinforced, less popular messages fade away. That creates a data trail that others can follow. That got me thinking about all this data being gathered on everyone-purchase records, calling patterns, social media, and e-mails, everything. What if the systems that these private security firms built to analyze that data-to keep us safe-actually did the opposite? What if whoever’s doing this is using that data to select targets?”

Odin leaned up on his side, looking at her. He nodded slowly, pondering what she’d said. “Meaning maybe we shouldn’t have been searching for patterns between the victims but instead on who was watching their data trail just before they died.”

McKinney nodded. “That might lead you to whoever’s behind this.”

“But that means the surveillance complex. NSA, telecom, consumer data-tracking firms. All our access was cut off when they discovered my team’s existence…” His voice trailed off as something seemed to occur to him.

“What is it?”

He turned to her. “There’s a man we need to see. A very bad man…”

E ight or nine miles outside the town of Reynosa, Mexico, and close by the U.S. border, Mouse, McKinney, Odin, and his team members stood at the bottom of a finished mine shaft hundreds of feet belowground. It was a concrete-lined elevator room brightly lit by fluorescent lights. Yellow wire mesh surrounded the cargo elevator that had delivered them here. The ceiling was mounted with what appeared to be an overhead rail system for hauling cargo down a nearby corridor. The elevator operator pulled the doors closed with a thunderous rattle. Its electric motor kicked in with a whine, and it began to rise to the surface, leaving them behind.

Mouse, whose prosthetic legs were concealed beneath jeans, walked confidently past several tough-looking Mexican men carrying assault rifles. They were dressed unaccountably in suit coats, silk shirts, and slacks. They nodded to Mouse as he brought the team into the corridor beyond.

They’d driven several hours north from Kalitlen through cartel-controlled territory to arrive at an innocuous-looking maquiladora marked by signs as Scholl Manufacturing. Mouse had guided them past several layers of concealed doors and smuggler security to arrive here.

McKinney glanced around as they continued down the corridor to a locked gate a hundred meters away. The overhead rail extended the entire way. “I thought we were crossing the border.”

“You are.”

“But we’re miles away from it.”

“That’s what makes this so reliable. Welcome to the safest tunnel into the U.S. Seven hundred feet belowground and sixteen miles long.”

“My God, sixteen miles?”

“Don’t worry, Professor, you won’t be walking.”

“Did the cartels build this?”

Odin took her by the arm to keep her moving. “Not important. What’s important is that it’s one of the most reliable routes into the U.S., and if someone were to smuggle something or someone truly dangerous into the country, this is the route they’d use.” Odin nodded to the men around them. “These men would let Mouse know. They work for him.”

“Mouse is running an illegal tunnel into the United States?”

“Better a tunnel we know about than one we don’t. If you shut them all down, the cartels just dig new ones.”

“The more I learn about the sausage-making that goes on, the less I want to know.”

They’d arrived at the steel gate. Mouse pulled it open with a clang and ushered the team into a dark, ten-foot-diameter circular tunnel perpendicular to the corridor. The tunnel ended just a few yards to their right, but to the left echoes hinted at a vast emptiness. Rails extended off into the darkness, and a seven- or eight-foot-wide and thirty-foot-long bullet-shaped fiberglass railcar stood in front of them alongside a concrete platform. Aside from its lack of windows, it looked like a tiny commuter train.

Mouse opened a breaker box on the wall and started slamming switches. Section by section a control console on a raised platform came to life nearby with dozens of glowing buttons. This was clearly a sophisticated operation.

McKinney noticed power conduits extending along the walls. A gentle hum started to reverberate along the tunnel. And a moment later the railcar rose several inches.

She nodded to herself. “You’re running an illegal maglev train into the United States.”

Mouse was now poking at switches on the console. “The economics might not scrub for passenger trains, Professor, but they sure as hell do for Schedule One narcotics. Quiet too. No seismic disturbances for the good folks in McAllen, Texas.”

Her technical curiosity was getting the better of her as the solid gray doors opened with a hiss, revealing a Spartan but serviceable passenger and cargo area. “How fast can it go?”

Mouse looked down his nose at her. “It can go nearly two hundred, but you’ll be doing one-twenty. That should get you Stateside in about eight minutes.”

McKinney couldn’t help but be impressed. Any concern she had that they’d be climbing into concealed truck compartments to cross the border had disappeared.

Mouse unslung a light rucksack from his shoulder and opened it. He passed Odin what looked to be a stack of black passports in plastic bags. “Canadian-two for each of you in case your initial cover gets blown. Some credit cards too, but go easy on those. I can’t guarantee the numbers are still active. Oh…” He reached into the backpack and revealed packets of twenty-dollar bills several inches thick. “Some operating cash.” He zipped the backpack and handed it to Odin. “The guys at the other end will hook you up with a passenger van registered to a Toronto reality television production company-along with a couple video cameras that’ll give you cover for action just about anywhere.” He stopped to look at the team.

Odin, Foxy, and the rest of the team embraced him one at a time with slaps on the back.

Foxy looked saddest. “Mouse, man. We owe you. Again.”

“You don’t owe me. Just complete your mission, and earn your damn paycheck.”

“Wish you were coming with us.”

He laughed good-naturedly. “Fuck that. I got my own war to fight. Find the bad guys and get back safe-and keep the professor here out of trouble.”

McKinney hugged Mouse too.

He studied her with his one eye. “You remember what I said.”

She nodded. “I will. Give my best to Lalenia. Hopefully we’ll see you both again.”

He saluted as they all entered the railcar, and the doors closed behind them.