Kill Decision

CHAPTER 28

Linda McKinney stood at the bow of the surging workboat as humid tropical air rushed past her. She was happy to be back in Western business casual clothing. Alongside her Odin gazed through binoculars at a row of massive blue loading cranes running in a line that extended halfway across the horizon. The land ahead was essentially a concrete island edged by massive pilings and a black-and-yellow warning strip. The scale of the Chiwan Container Port boggled the mind. Onshore workers looked like specks moving among the multicolored shipping containers that rose like a Lego mountain range as far as the eye could see. Monstrous container ships rested up against the island’s geometric flanks, while high- speed cranes thirty stories tall loaded them like children stacking blocks.

A young Chinese man in a hard hat, rumpled shirt, and slacks stood some ways behind them, chain-smoking near the wheelhouse of the boat. He was looking a little sick as Evans lectured him about something in Chinese-how to avoid seasickness, possibly.

McKinney shouted in the wind to Odin. “Evans knows Chinese?”

“He had business here back in the day.”

“Your other friend doesn’t look like a sailor. Who is he?”

Odin spoke while still scanning the horizon. “Shipping agent. Old smuggling contact. We used to help his father avoid tariffs in exchange for letting us know if certain materials were moving in their ships.” He lowered the binoculars. “We scratch each other’s backs for paperwork-free favors.”

“What does he think we’re looking for?”

“Radiological material bound for the U.S.”

“Nuclear bombs.”

“Dirty bombs.”

McKinney unzipped a backpack on her shoulder that contained the pheromone canisters from Gaddani as well as the jury-rigged detector. She lifted the detector up so Odin could see. “You think he’ll notice this isn’t a Geiger counter?”

“Wun isn’t a technical guy. He’s a shipping agent. It’s his connections I need, not his grasp of nuclear physics.” Odin turned to the wheelhouse and motioned to the left.

The pilot nodded and started turning the wheel.

Odin called out, “Wun! Hey, Wun!”

The Chinese man looked up.

Odin gestured to the docks, and Wun nodded, heading up into the boat’s wheelhouse.

Before long they were cruising along the concrete coast. It was a wall twenty feet high with stone pilings every ten yards or so, faced with thick rubber stanchions laced with chains. There was no apparent way to get up to the level of the container yard. But as she looked ahead, McKinney could see a smaller dock at water level linked to the island by gangways leading up. Several men in shirtsleeves, ties, and hard hats were waiting there, waving.

Before long the engine of the workboat roared into reverse, kicking up turbulent brown water, and the pilot brought the boat skillfully to a stop inches from the dock. The waiting men were fiftyish Han Chinese, with moles and jowls, smiling and nodding as the Americans came ashore. Apparently they didn’t know a word of English, because the lead one merely extended visitor badges and gestured for them to clip them to their lapels. Another handed them hard hats and motioned for them to follow him up the aluminum gangway. Evans went first, then Odin, and McKinney followed, looping her arms through both backpack straps to be certain it didn’t fall into the water.

She glanced around and spoke sotto voce to Odin as they walked in single file up the ramp. “What if the authorities show up?”

“These are the authorities. Unofficial arrangements are a national sport in China.”

When they got to the level of the shipping yard, McKinney got a full appreciation for just how vast the place was. Interlocking flagstones stretched away in two directions to a vanishing point. The yard was a hive of activity: Vehicles and people rushed to and fro, signaling as they guided crane clamps down onto the containers, and truck tractors roared around with and without loads.

Their hosts had a white compact car with a driver ready for them. The Chinese writing on the side was a mystery, but it had a circular logo identical to one on the massive cranes looming above them. McKinney and Evans took the backseat, while Odin got in on the passenger side, nodding good-bye to Wun-who waved enthusiastically.

The driver was a grim-faced, rail-thin man who could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty years of age. He looked more Vietnamese or Laotian than Chinese.

Odin looked in the rearview mirror. “Evans, tell him to just drive around from lane to lane. Let’s open all the windows.”

Odin and McKinney started rolling window handles, while Evans leaned forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder.

“Dai qu. de kan huogui.”

The driver nodded and got them in motion, racing around despite all the truck traffic.

Evans made a steering wheel motion with his hands. “Hey, pal. Let’s not get us killed, okay?” He pointed. “ xiang ge!”

The man laughed but didn’t change his speed.

McKinney held the pheromone sensor up to the cross-breeze. “If there’s any perfluorocarbon here, even in low concentrations, this should find it.”

The driver brought them for miles along narrow lanes dangerous with trucks racing around blind corners. McKinney wondered if the copious diesel fumes would ruin their sampling, but on they went for the better part of an hour. The team was weary by the time the car emerged at the end of the container yard to a stretch of open pavement extending several hundred yards along the sea. The damp outlines where containers had been were evident in neat rows on the stone.

As the driver turned the car to circle back, the LED counter on the detector started racing upward from zero to several hundred parts per billion.

“Whoa! Wait a second.”

Odin motioned to the driver. “Stop!”

The car stopped.

The LED leveled off at three hundred twelve. Odin gestured back to the open stretch of pavement. “Go back. Over there.” He pointed.

The driver shifted into reverse, turned around, and then headed out into the open area. Almost immediately McKinney watched the detector readout race up past seven hundred.

“It’s getting stronger.”

Indeed, McKinney could already smell the familiar peppery scent. “That’s with nothing physical left behind. Whatever was here must have been bigger than what was in Gaddani.”

They were driving along the empty dockside now. Odin looked to her. “They must have just loaded it. If we find out where that shipment was going, we might be able to intercept it. Jot down those bay numbers, Mort. And tell the driver to bring us to the shipping office.”

F ifteen minutes later they were standing in a tiny cubicle in a grungy office that smelled of cigarettes and cheap aftershave. They were crowded around Wun’s dusty computer screen, looking at a map of the vast container yard with thousands of little squares moving on it.

Wun changed some dates on the edge of the screen, and the pattern changed.

Odin pointed. “They were in Bays three thirty-six through five fifty-two.”

Wun spoke with a thick accent. “Container IDs?”

“No container IDs, Wun. Just give a printout of all the containers that went on that ship-and the name of the ship. That’s all we need.”

“Probably more than one ship.” Wun swept his hand across the yard map. “Big area.” He clicked through a few command menus, and then snorted. “Ah… big ship too.”

“Big ship-you mean they all went on one ship?”

Wun nodded. “Fourteen thousand two hundred forty-two container.” He held up his index finger. “One ship. Ebba Maersk — biggest ship there is.” A printer somewhere started spitting out paper.

McKinney leaned in. “The Ebba Maersk. That’s the name of the ship?”

Wun nodded. “Big, big ship. Half kilometer long.” He then scrolled through the list of containers in the manifest, shaking his head. “Different companies, same product and same weight. Machine tools. Six thousand two hundred three container machine tools.”

McKinney was puzzled.

Odin pointed at the description line: Machine Tools. “Kind of unusual to have so many of one thing from different companies, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “Never see before.”

Odin narrowed his eyes. “Where’s the ship heading?”

Wun ran his finger along the screen, then stopped on one line. “Singapore.”

“You have Internet access?”

Wun rolled his eyes and gave Odin a dirty look.

“Okay, fine, Wun. Can I use this for a second?”

Wun pushed back and Odin leaned in to open a Web browser. He quickly typed into the URL line as McKinney and Evans watched.

She leaned in again. “What are you looking for?”

“Commercial marine traffic is carefully tracked. Retailers and other clients need to gauge arrival times.”

Evan pushed in as well. “Ah, cool, what do you use?”

“Marinetraffic. com.”

Odin entered the name Ebba Maersk in the ship name box, then clicked SEARCH. Moments later a Google map appeared showing a line of waypoints leading away from Hong Kong and forging out into the center of the South China Sea.

Odin stared at the screen without moving for several moments.

McKinney watched him. “What’s wrong?”

“The route.” He stood up, looking straight into McKinney’s eyes.

She stared back. “You think all those containers are carrying ship-cutting drones.”

“Eighty racks per container. Six thousand two hundred containers. What is that?”

Evans answered with a nervous laugh. “That’s nearly half a million drones, Odin.”

“Okay, so, what if they don’t all contain drones? What if some contain fuel or pheromone chemicals, weapons-whatever; that could still leave a hundred thousand or more ship-cutters.”

“But what would they be cutting? The Ebba Maersk?”

Odin shook his head. “It didn’t make sense until I saw this.” He pointed at the map. “Heading through the South China Sea.” Odin opened another browser window and Googled the words U.S. aircraft carriers South China Sea.

Wun threw up his hands. “Why you search on my computer, asshole?”

Moments later the search results came up and Odin clicked on the first link from a recent article on the BBC News website. It was headlined, U.S. AND VIETNAM STAGE JOINT NAVAL EXERCISES.

Odin stood up. “USS George Washington carrier strike group out of Yokosuka. They’ve been operating here for a while. Joint naval exercises with Vietnam and the Philippines just south of the Paracel Islands. It’s a geopolitical chess game with the Chinese.”

“But why would China attack a U.S. carrier? It would start a war.”

Wun looked up at her, both shocked and offended.

Odin paused, grabbed the thick stack of printouts from the printer, and then nodded to Wun. “Thanks a lot, Wun. We’ll find our own way back to the dock. Give my best to your dad, okay?” He pulled McKinney away and started heading to the exit.

Evans was close behind. “Hey, later, Wun. Good luck with the smuggling.”

Wun looked after them suspiciously.

Odin spoke softly as they headed down a box-lined hallway. “I’m certain the Chinese wouldn’t attack a U.S. carrier group-but with drones no one would be able to tell who attacked it. Let’s face it: We don’t know either.”

“But why would someone want to precipitate a crisis?”

“You remember the Cold War? Lots of unquestioned defense spending. Don’t underestimate the tensions around global shipping lanes and energy, Professor. China is facing what they call the ‘Malacca Dilemma.’ Over three-quarters of their oil imports go through the Straits of Malacca-then up through the South China Sea. That gateway is currently dominated by U.S. naval power in the form of carrier strike groups. Which means we theoretically have a knife against their jugular-just like they do against ours. But if someone disrupts that balance…”

“You’re not suggesting there’d be war?”

“No. There’d be no definite proof who the enemy is. But it might rewrite the rule book on war. What if those thousands of containers were all weaver drone nests, Professor? Do you remember the openings on the containers we saw in Gaddani? What if that container ship is one big interconnected colony, six thousand nests strong-marked with their pheromonal scent?”

“The dock reeked of it.”

“Some were probably leaking.”

McKinney imagined the same type of drone they had seen in Gaddani-a flying ship-cutter, swarming by the thousands with the same aggressiveness they’d experienced in Colorado. “They would destroy anything that got near their colony ship-no extra programming necessary.”

Evans eased up alongside. “Then why didn’t they go ape on the workers here? Or attack the ship’s crew?”

“Maybe they’re dormant.”

Odin reacted to the suggestion. “They could activate when they crossed a GPS waypoint. Or via radio signal.” He pointed at the map printout. “How close would something have to get to the ship to get attacked?”

McKinney shrugged. “It depends on the tolerance variable set in the model. The designer could make it anything. A hundred feet or a hundred miles.”

Odin examined the printout of the container ship’s course through the South China Sea. “Once it’s out in open water…” He traced the path of the ship toward the Paracel Islands. “The picket ships and combat air patrol for a carrier group scout out to two hundred miles. But a commercial container ship like the Ebba Maersk won’t raise any alarms. That means it could get in close, and the swarm would overwhelm the George Washington ’s defenses. If it manages to sink that carrier, there’d be no way to positively attribute the attack to anyone. America couldn’t strike back, and the rest of our carriers would be just as vulnerable. Our whole naval doctrine would be obsolete. An international arms race for swarming drones would follow.”

McKinney grimaced. “Making war the province of autonomous machines.”

He looked up. “We need to stop that ship.”

Evans shrugged. “Easy. Call the navy. One antiship missile and BOOM-problem solved.”

“We’re going to need more evidence to convince someone to blow up a Danish-flagged ship, Mort. There are people on it.”

“If this drone colony wakes up, then the crew’s dead anyway-”

McKinney held a hand up to interrupt Evans but looked at Odin. “Evans is right about one thing: Warn the navy, tell them what we’ve discovered. Or get in touch with the Ebba Maersk by radio and have them turn around.”

Odin shook his head. “My crypto codes are blown. I can’t even get in contact with my own command. And I’d just sound like a lunatic to the Maersk people.”

“What about the Chinese?”

“I don’t think they’ll be too eager to sink the largest container ship in the world without provocation. If they’re not behind this, we’ll wind up getting shot as spies, and if they are, then we’ll wind up getting shot as spies.”

“Can you call someone you know-someone high up in the Pentagon?”

Odin was still shaking his head. “That’s not how things work. You saw that vocaloid, and besides almost no one knows who we are; that’s the whole point of compartmentalizing The Activity. We function because very few people in Washington know us. The colonel was my contact, and they can apparently intercept my communications with him.”

The three of them pushed through the shipping office door and out into the bustling container yard, only to be confronted by a score of grim-faced Chinese men in fairly good suits arrayed in a semicircle at a distance of thirty feet. They wore sunglasses and radio earphones. Several were holding MP5 submachine guns, raised skyward. Behind them, beyond the door they had just exited, McKinney could see several more men appearing in the reception area of the office.

They were surrounded.

Evans got deathly pale and unusually quiet.

One of the Asian men motioned for them to put their hands in the air. “If you please, Mr. Odin.”

McKinney turned to Odin. He nodded encouragingly but without much conviction. She felt her heart sink. She wasn’t used to seeing him caught off guard.

Several men rushed over to them, patting them down as a white, unmarked panel van rolled up nearby. Even more armed men in suits got out. One of the men grabbed the paper printouts of the Ebba Maersk from Odin. Another grabbed the backpack from McKinney.

She felt fear rushing through her again. Were these Chinese government agents? She, Odin, and Evans were, after all, in the country illegally. But the quality of the men’s suits began to put doubts in her head. Corrupt officials, gangsters-there was really very little difference.

The men roughly and very intimately frisked her, while another man pulled her hands behind her back and secured them with plastic zip-ties. They then marched all three of their prisoners to the panel van and pushed them inside.

Evans was looking more angry by the minute. “This is why I fucking hate you, Odin. I had a life, man.” He closed his eyes in a hard squint as if having difficulty coping with his anxiety.

Odin shook his head, muttering. “Zollo… zollo… zollo.”

“Don’t even pull that bullshit with me right now.”

They were all lying on the corrugated metal floor of the van with several men standing over them holding small black submachine guns. The van accelerated, sending the prisoners sliding. One of the guards kicked Evans.

“Ow!”

McKinney rolled over to look at Odin. “Odin. Who are these people?”

One of the other guards stomped on McKinney with his expensive dress shoes. The effect was less than he’d probably intended, but she kept quiet.

Odin just stared ahead, unreadable. She’d never seen him like that, which worried her more than anything else.

They didn’t drive long-just a few minutes. Given the size of the container yard, McKinney felt fairly certain that they couldn’t have left the premises in that time. Sure enough, when the van stopped and the guards opened the rear doors to drag them out, she could see that they were in the vast, empty section of the container yard where the weaver drone shipment had departed. There was nothing but empty pavement and silent shipping cranes for hundreds of meters in every direction-and the water of the Pearl River Delta close at hand. There were fewer men now-but still about a dozen. And they were all armed. McKinney, Odin, and Evans each had two men haul them by the elbows toward the water’s edge. McKinney felt her adrenaline spiking. This used to be an alien sensation-facing imminent death-but she was starting to become familiar with it.

The men stopped at the dock’s edge and pulled McKinney and the others upright with their backs to the water. From this perspective McKinney could now see a sleek, midnight blue Sikorsky S-76 helicopter parked not too far away in the vast empty space, its idle blades drooping. The chopper was facing nose-away from them, and one of the suited Asian men approached it holding McKinney’s backpack. He rapped on the fuselage, then handed the backpack to someone inside.

In a moment a suited Caucasian man stepped out of the chopper and approached with a casual confidence. Well before he reached them McKinney recognized him.

It was Ritter-the man who had pretended to be a Homeland Security agent all the way back in Kansas City. McKinney glanced over at Odin, but he seemed to be in his own world. That truly frightened her.

Ritter stopped ten feet away and nodded to Odin. “You got off with a warning as a professional courtesy, David. A warning you ignored.” Ritter nodded to the lead Asian man. “Get this over with.”

Odin spoke calmly, seemingly to himself. “White. Two through five. Red. One-two.”

“Apologies, but I’ll need DNA evidence.”

McKinney felt her heart race as three of the Asian men produced long, sharp-looking stilettos and walked toward them.

Evans shouted, “Oh, God! No! No! Wait!”

McKinney was speechless, mouthing silent words.

A howling sound came in on the breeze-and a thwack as a fist-sized hole blasted through the nearest man’s chest. The men to either side of her shouted, dropping her. She pitched forward onto the cement.

Odin shouted as he tumbled next to her. “Stay down, Professor!”

There were shouts in Chinese and she could see expensive shoes scrambling every direction across the pavement, and a thick rivulet of blood oozing toward her. Now there were short bursts of machine gun fire, followed by several more incoming high-pitched whines and thwack s. Screams. Men shouting, “Bie touxiang!”

McKinney craned her neck to look up and saw several suited men dead on the ground at the center of blood spatter trails. Other men groaned with terrible wounds; still others were kneeling, hands in the air, as Odin shouted at them,

Odin turned and shouted at Ritter, who was fleeing toward the chopper. “Stop, Ritter! You’ll be dead before you reach it!”

Ritter was still a good hundred feet from the Sikorsky and something ricocheted off the pavement between him and the aircraft. He slid to a stop, his hands raised to the surrounding world. He turned around to face Odin, a look of considerable concern on his face. “It was the mission, David. Nothing personal.”

“You always were a goddamned snowball. Even back in OTC. Did you even read the terrain? You really think I’d enter a place without overwatch? Without an exit plan?” Odin raised his bound hands behind his back as far as he could, and then brought them sharply down against his spine. The PlastiCuffs snapped, freeing his hands. Odin leaned down to pick up one of the fallen stilettos as he looked to McKinney and Evans. “Get up.”

McKinney struggled to her knees, by which time Odin had reached her. He cut her bonds, then moved to free Evans-who looked shaky on his feet.

“Jesus Christ, Odin. I fucking hate working with you.”

Odin grabbed one of the fallen MP5 submachine guns. He motioned for McKinney and Evans to follow him as he walked toward Ritter, who still had his hands raised, peering into the distance.

“Where are they? In the crane tower?”

Odin kept the gun trained as he frisked Ritter with his free hand. “Further.”

Ritter eyed the wooded hills in the distance. “They’re very good.”

“They’re the best.” Odin frowned, having come up empty. “You surprise me.”

Ritter looked feckless. “It seemed unnecessary. David, this accomplishes nothing.”

Odin pushed Ritter along. “Is your pilot armed?”

“He’s just a pilot. He doesn’t even know why we’re here.”

“Move.” He turned. “Evans!”

Evans was examining a wet spot in the crotch of his pants. “Yeah, what, asshole?”

“Grab a gun and meet us in the chopper.”

Evans sighed, still obviously angry, but trudged back to a nearby dead man.

Ritter opened the chopper door, and the pilot looked up from his logbook. Apparently gunshots hadn’t alarmed him. He was a clean-cut Caucasian with a military bearing and buzz cut blond hair.

Odin pointed the gun. “Don’t be stupid, and you’ll live. We’re going to Xiaonan Shan trailhead, right on the hilltop, there.” Odin nodded toward the forested hill overlooking the container yard, about a mile away. “There’s a park on the summit. Land in the grass.”

The pilot nodded grimly. “I have a wife and a young-”

Ritter just laughed. “That’s funny.”

“No one’s killing anyone as long as you do what you’re told.”

Odin and McKinney got into the back of the nicely appointed commuter chopper. There was carpeting, wood trim, and a plush leather bench with four seats, along with two swiveling captain chairs, in addition to the two pilot positions. McKinney, Evans, and Odin slid into the bench seat, while Odin nodded for Ritter to sit in one of the captain chairs, where he was in the same line of sight as the pilot. McKinney noticed her backpack on the floor nearby. She opened it to find the pheromone detector and canisters of perfluorocarbon still inside.

The engines started to whine to life.

“Whistleblowers never get rewarded, David. They get punished.”

The engines gained speed while they exchanged stares. They soon lifted off, rising over the vast container yard.

Ritter gestured to it. “That’s the modern world down there. Automated. Why should war be any different?”

“Because war can destroy us.”

Ritter sighed. “It’s going to happen. They need to invalidate the traditional military. They need to show that it’s obsolete-and that requires a demonstration. You know that.”

McKinney narrowed her eyes at him. “Who the hell are you?”

He ignored her. “Listen to me, David. We shouldn’t be fighting. Men like you will always have a place.”

“I already have a place.”

The chopper was rising toward a lush hilltop festooned with banners covered in Chinese script. The summit had a circular road with a swath of grass. It was the only obvious landing zone, so the pilot brought them down, causing a couple of park visitors to flee for cover from the wind.

Moments after they touched down, several people with long, black nylon bags slung over their backs rushed to the chopper. As the doors opened, McKinney smiled at the sight of Foxy, Ripper, Smokey, and Mooch. Over the sound of the idling rotors Odin shouted to the pilot, “Out!”

The man looked incredulous until he saw Foxy and Ripper with. 45 tactical pistols at the pilot’s and copilot’s doors. He unbuckled and quietly exited the chopper while Mooch and Smokey climbed in back, unslinging their rifles. They also appeared to have small nylon enclosures for the ravens-each bird behind a screen mesh. They passed these inside. In a few moments Foxy had taken the pilot seat and Ripper the copilot’s. They pulled on headphones as they did.

Foxy raised the throttle and the big chopper lifted off smoothly from the top of the hill. “Man, I love Sikorskys. This is the way to travel.”

Ripper spoke in her headset, looking back at Odin. “Where we headed?”

Odin picked up the map of the Ebba Maersk from the printout sitting nearby and handed it to her. “South. Out to sea.”

She examined the map. “We won’t have the range to get out there and back again.”

Odin just stared. “I know.”