Damage Control
“We have a problem, Henry.”
Henry Clarke looked up from his Chateaubriand in surprise. He spoke while chewing. “Good to see you too, Marta.” Clarke gestured with his fork to his date. “Emily, meet Marta. Marta, Emily.”
The young woman smiled amiably, extending a dainty hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Marta just stared at her—cherubic cheeks and straight blond Dutch hair hanging in bangs that ended just above the eyes. “I need to borrow Henry for a moment, my dear.”
“Oh . . . Okay, I—”
Clarke nodded, stuffing one more piece of steak into his mouth. “Back in a sec.”
Marta led Clarke toward a private room in the back of the busy restaurant. Her eyes swept the place. “I’m shocked to find you in a place like this. An overpriced strip mall.”
“What can I say? She chose it.”
“Ah, I see. Was it near her school?”
“Ha, ha. You know, it’s very uncool to just keep showing up with little or no warning.”
Marta brought them into the private room as two suited gentlemen in her security detail closed the doors behind them. The room was empty. “The schedule has changed. There’s word of some rogue element loose out there that could corrupt the message. Before that happens, we need to be ready.”
“When, ready?”
“Like whenever I say. Tomorrow. The day after. Whenever means whenever. Can your people deliver?”
Clarke sighed deeply. “Christ, I thought you told me ‘have patience.’ What happened to patience?”
“We don’t have time for patience. The situation has changed, Henry. Serious people are on the move. So say good-night to your little friend and get your ass to the office. Be prepared to man a crisis center for the next few days.”
Clarke nodded. “Okay. All right, I’ll gather the troops.” He paused as something occurred to him. “This ‘rogue element’—they don’t think we’re actually behind the . . . ‘troubles,’ I hope?”
“Even if they did think so, it will shortly be moot. Let the serious people deal with that. Ours is a struggle for messaging supremacy, and we need to win.”
“About them thinking we’re behind this . . . was that a yes or a no?”
CHAPTER 17
Safari-One-Six
Linda McKinney had never ridden in the cargo bay of a C-130, and now that she had, it wasn’t something she looked forward to repeating. The cavernous space reeked of jet fuel and the hydraulic fluid and oil from past vehicular cargo. Then there was the roar of aircraft engines. But at least on that last point, the team used wireless Etymotic headphones to reduce the noise and permit conversation. The headphones were also tapped into the pilot’s address system, not that much info had been forthcoming from the flight deck. “Prepare for takeoff” had been about it.
After a while McKinney switched the headphones off, enjoying the unearthly silence. Looking around in the red-light semidarkness she could see the team sitting in jump seats to either side of the cargo bay, or moving about, checking on equipment. Foxy and Tin Man were cleaning assault weapons. She could see Foxy’s African kora sitting atop a pile of gear—at least he’d managed to salvage that from the abandoned SubTropolis facility.
Farther forward Hoov was clicking away at a laptop. The aircraft’s loadmaster was double-checking static lines and conferring with the flight engineer—who was busy moving about on other inscrutable duties. There was also some sort of signals workstation set up against the forward bulkhead, with twin flat screens showing radar and other sensor data. Two airmen in headsets sat there, monitoring and talking on radios.
McKinney sat by herself on one of the uncomfortable DayGlo nylon webbing jump seats. Like everyone else she wore an insulated gray aircrew jumpsuit to help keep back the cold, and cold it was. McKinney occasionally exhaled just to see how much vapor she could create. The cargo hold was pressurized, and she knew they had heaters, so she was unclear why they were keeping the temperature so low.
She’d spent the past hour trying to figure out their cargo. It looked like a gray fumigation tent folded and strapped onto a double-wide pallet that stood near the middle of the hold. Steel cables snaked from it into neatly rolled and bound coils on the floor, and then stretched to another, half-height pallet of solid concrete. This was apparently some sort of deadweight. McKinney guessed it was a parachute linked to a concrete weight, although the precise purpose of it escaped her. There were high-tension cables locking the concrete slab into place, along with some sort of quick-release lever. There were also a couple of pallets of equipment and supplies cocooned in plastic wrap farther forward that obviously weren’t meant to be deployed in midair, since they didn’t have static lines attached.
They’d been airborne for nearly an hour when McKinney noticed Odin emerge from the narrow door at the front left of the cargo hold with two paper cups of coffee. He approached and extended one to her.
She accepted it, powering on her headphones. “Thanks.” Her own voice came back to her in radio timbre. She popped the cup lid to see that he’d added a touch of creamer.
His voice came through on the headphones. “I checked your FBI file to see how you like it.”
She cocked an eye at him. “Very funny.” She took a sip. It was hot and technically coffee. It would do. “Why the hell is it so cold in here?” She motioned to the exposed ducting and vents that traced along the interior.
“I want everyone ready for an intercept the moment it comes.”
“How does freezing our asses off help that?”
He nodded toward the closed cargo door. “If we have to open that door, anyone not in an insulated flight suit is going into hypothermia in seconds. This makes sure everyone’s ready.”
“Where are we headed, anyway?”
“Need-to-know, Professor.”
“Well . . . as the drone bait on your hook, I think I need to know.”
“You want to know. That’s not the same thing.”
“What difference does it make?” She looked around the cargo hold. “Who can I tell?”
“The plane could crash. You could crawl from the wreckage and post on YouTube.”
She gave him an exasperated look.
He took a sip of coffee, then grimaced. “Northern Utah. We’ve set up an interception team at a decommissioned missile base out in the desert. Anything that approaches us out there will be highly suspect. It’s fifty miles from nowhere.”
She recalled the videos of previous attacks—most of them above urban areas filled with air traffic. It would have been nearly impossible to tell friend from foe in time to intercept anything in a city. “You’re really just going to put me out there, like meat on a stick?”
“I never said you had to actually be present.”
“That’s what being bait is.”
“Your data and your likeness, Professor. That’s all we need. That’s why we scanned your head when you were unconscious on the Otter. We sent the digital model to special effects artists, and they created a simulacrum of you out of ballistics gel. Painted it, prepared the hair, clothes, everything.”
“You’re joking.”
He shook his head. “You’ll see it soon enough.”
“But the spotter drone in Africa was sniffing for my phone—which got blown up.”
“It was sniffing for your IMEI. We cloned that—and your headset Bluetooth ID. Hoov mirrored your laptop, and they’ll set it up in a hangar there. We built a whole fake military research camp with generators, computers, the whole shebang, just in case they’re watching with satellites.”
“When did you do all this?”
“We’ve had the camp set up for weeks. We just needed the bait.”
“Me.”
“Or at least a representation of you.”
She contemplated this as she sipped coffee. “Then you don’t really need me anymore, do you?”
“Don’t get carried away. We still have to fight these things, and you may be of
some help there. Plus . . .” His voice trailed off.
She raised her eyebrows.
“You’re a loose end to some people, Professor. I don’t want to let you out of my sight.” He gestured to the team in the semidarkness of the cargo hold. “These are the people I trust. I’ve seen how they behave under the worst possible circumstances. That’s something that few people ever get to see in a person.”
McKinney looked around the cargo hold at Hoov and Foxy laughing as they ribbed each other about something. She could see Tin Man and Mooch intensely focused on checking equipment.
“You can trust your life to these people. I do every day.”
McKinney nodded appreciatively. “In case I haven’t said it before: I really do appreciate everything you’ve done to keep me safe.”
He nodded. “Just try to get some rest.”
* * *
In the cold dawn they disembarked from the rear cargo ramp of the C-130 in the middle of a vast reddish desert with sweeping mesas, stone outcroppings, and barren mountains to the north. The sky was mottled with fiery cirrus clouds. It was beautiful. It had been a long time since she’d been in Utah—a hiking trip in Zion. This place had a similar desolate beauty.
Close by stood another C-130 cargo aircraft, this one painted in commercial livery—red stripes with a big A on the tail. It was parked near a fuel tanker truck on a rough dirt airstrip with the crew milling about doing routine maintenance. A Hughes Model 500 chopper was tied down in the distance. She’d ridden in one of those before on a heliskiing trip in Alaska. This one was painted bright red with an Ancile Services logo.
About a half mile to the east she could see a collection of buildings and sagebrush ringed by tattered-looking chain-link fencing and rusted Restricted signs. There were new antenna towers and satellite dishes there amid old corrugated tin buildings, a massive concrete bunker, and rusting pipelines and conduits. The whole area was peppered with dozens of heavy vehicles.
A new Jeep Rubicon approached them trailing a cloud of dust. Odin nodded at the Jeep’s driver, a buff-looking Asian—possibly Thai or Indonesian—as it rolled to a stop in front of them.
“Troll, how we looking down here?”
“We’re one hundred percent operational.”
“Good.” Odin caught a red object tossed at him by Hoov. Odin turned and offered it to McKinney. “Ski mask. Please put this on while you’re on the ground, Professor.”
She unfolded it. A cheap drugstore ski mask, red with white trim. “What for?”
“I don’t want any drones sneaking in here and recognizing you before we’re ready.”
Troll opened the Jeep’s doors. “We’re not transmitting yet, Odin.”
“Doesn’t matter. Better safe than sorry. This has taken a lot of preparation.”
McKinney realized he was right and pulled the mask on. The fabric was scratchy. She was ready to rob a liquor store now.
The team piled into the Jeep, with some of them standing on the sideboards as they headed into the nearby camp.
The place was a mixture of decay and modernity. Among the rust-stained, inscrutable concrete blocks sprouting twisted pipes and the buckshot-spattered outbuildings there were also parked heavy vehicles leveled and raised on hydraulic jacks, most with civilian markings. They were spread out in a way that would make it difficult to destroy them with a single bomb.
Scary that she was starting to notice these things—to think this way.
Odin nodded at the passing buildings. “White Sands missile facility. In the fifties they’d launch test missiles from here on a trajectory to Nevada. That’s what the old track railings were for. And the heavy bunker.”
They were passing teams of people now, most in civilian clothes, but some of them in gray camouflage uniforms and tan boots. They drove past a hangarlike building, inside of which was parked a Humvee with a bank of four missiles in a hydraulic rack launcher, pointing up at a forty-five-degree angle.
“AIM-120s—just in case.”
“I thought you were trying to catch this thing.”
“Like I said: just in case.”
They drove toward the center of the makeshift camp and passed more heavy equipment. There was a large satellite truck with several dishes aimed to the south, a mysterious trailer with a steel mast that rose at least a hundred feet above it, the top clustered with cameras, receivers, microphones, and other objects. A large white radar dish also spun circles on the back of a flatbed truck with a command van close by. There were several military-like cargo trucks with huge off-road tires, piled with equipment and crates, as well as a Unicat passenger van parked to the side. She’d ridden in one like it on a long, grueling trip across West Africa. There were also several official vehicles—or at least they were marked that way. She recognized the two Bureau of Land Management Ranger Police SUVs and a couple of smaller U.S. Forest Service trucks. There was also a large semitruck with a full-sized shipping container on a flatbed trailer—dozens of thick cables leading out of it over to another equally huge generator truck, engines rumbling.
They finally pulled up to an off-road craft services van where cooks were busy serving an institutional breakfast buffet, of all things. There were dozens of people milling around here—both men and women. McKinney counted over forty people, and she knew she missed some.
“My God, this is quite an operation.”
Foxy nodded. “Everyone thinks this shit just happens. War is logistics. And paperwork.”
The Jeep rolled to a stop near the chow wagon. Everyone piled off, headed toward a serving tray. Odin called after them. “Guys!”
They all turned.
“Eat. Shit. And get back to the plane. We’re on standby until further notice.”
Aye, ayes rippled through the group.
McKinney got out as well, straightening the eye holes on her ski mask.
“Professor.”
She turned to see Odin motion for her to follow as he headed into a corrugated metal hangar across the sandy roadway.
She caught up to him. “Hey, I could use something to eat.”
“In a second. I want you to see something.” He led her out the far side, through a large rolling door to a series of olive drab military tents. Odin led her through the open flaps, where several rather fashionably dressed people were placing computer monitors and chairs, and hanging maps. Natural gas heaters were keeping the tent warm.
An attractive woman with blond hair did a double take at the ski-masked McKinney, but Odin barked, “Ignore her. Keep working.”
The woman immediately resumed what could only be described as set dressing.
Odin stopped and McKinney came up alongside him.
Two young men were adding finishing touches to what was a frighteningly real reproduction of herself—complete with hair and eye color. It was a simulacrum of her sitting at a desk, hands on her own laptop keyboard. Her twin wore a green polo shirt and jeans. One of the special effects artists was using an airbrush to touch up her neck, while the other one concealed wires beneath a mat on the ground.
“This is creepy as hell.”
The men looked up at her. One of them smiled. “Thanks.”
“What are the wires for?”
Odin answered. “Body heat. We know the spotter drones use IR, so your decoy needs to match the thermal signature of a human being. Between that”—he pointed at the iPhone sitting on the desk—“your cloned phone, your malware-infected laptop, and your physical likeness, we should be able to lure this thing in.”
One of the artists pointed. “Odin, check this out.” He plugged a wire in, and McKinney’s twin’s fingers clattered on her keyboard.
“Ha!” Odin chuckled. “Nice touch, Ian.”
McKinney’s mouth was dry just looking at her sacrificial twin. “When does this all start?”
“A few hours from now, I’ll have your laptop ‘accidentally’ log on to a mobile broadband tower overlooking Interstate Seventy, at the top of that hill.” Odin l
ooked out at a distant antenna tower surrounded by fencing atop a nearby ridgeline. “That should let them know you’re in the United States. And where.”
“And what do you do if something comes?”
Odin studied the sky. “Let’s get some breakfast. . . .”
CHAPTER 18
Firestorm
Falling asleep in the cargo bay of a C-130 was like trying to catch some shut-eye on the undercarriage of a passenger train. Even after three hours she hadn’t managed a wink. McKinney stared out of one of the few round porthole windows, crystals frosting its edges. She could see a wide, barren canyonland below of eroded basins and distant brown mountains in the moonlight. The plane looked to be about twenty thousand feet up. It was a crisp, clear winter night.
Odin glanced over at her and spoke into his headset microphone. “We’ll give it another twelve hours, and then change crews at Hill Air Force Base.” His expression suddenly changed. He stopped and touched a hand to his headphones, listening to something she couldn’t hear in her radio.
She searched his expression. “What is it?”
“Something is here.” Odin turned to the others and circled his hand. “All units. All units. Bogey approaching White Sands Base at three o’clock.”
The radio crackled. It was Foxy’s voice—coming from farther forward in the C-130’s payload bay. “No unidentified radar contacts, Odin. The sky and ground are clear.”
Odin looked to Foxy across the pallets and the length of the cargo hold, talking on radios even though they could see each other. “Negative. I just got a transmission from Huginn. He’s got a positive contact.”
McKinney looked around and noticed she hadn’t seen Odin’s ravens on board. She gave him an incredulous face. “Huginn and Muninn are talking to you.”
“Yes.” Odin grabbed his rucksack from an overhead stowage rack and rummaged through it to produce a ruggedized tablet computer. “They’ve been on the ground at White Sands Base for over a day. I’m in contact via satellite radio.”
“You’re talking to your ravens over a radio?”