“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 thwacks. Screams. Men shouting, “Bié tóuxiáng!”
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.”
CHAPTER 29
Improvise
Ritter contorted his body and pounded his feet into the wall panel. “Goddammit, David! What you’re doing is insane! You can’t stop this. You’re too late.”
Odin stared at the ocean passing below. He was now in the copilot’s seat, headset on, examining his map of the South China Sea. “You’d better hope we can stop it.”
“You’re the reason they activated it early. It’s already too late. What you’re doing is pointless.” Ritter nodded toward the instruments. “We’ve only got a four-hundred-mile range. We won’t have enough fuel to get back to land.”
“We’ll be landing on the Ebba Maersk.”
“No! You won’t. Goddammit, that’s what I’ve been . . . you won’t be landing on the ship. What sense does it make to throw all our lives away?”
Odin turned slowly in his seat to face Ritter, as did McKinney and Evans.
Foxy spoke into his pilot headset. “That doesn’t sound good.”
Odin nodded toward Ritter. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, if we approach that ship, we will die. Anything that approaches that ship in the next seventy-two hours will die.”
“Do you know how to stop it?”
“There is no way to stop it. That’s the whole point. They take care of it.”
“Who’s behind this, Ritter?”
“I don’t know! My job was to make you stop looking. But if you turn around, I’ll help you find out who’s in charge. I swear it. Just turn the chopper around.”
Odin turned forward again. ??
?Sure you will.”
Ritter’s face contorted, and he started kicking the wall panel again. “Goddammit, turn around!”
“What’s that ahead?” Foxy pointed at a wisp of black smoke on the horizon.
Odin nodded. “Make for it.” He turned back to the others. “Get ready.”
“If you get too close, they’ll knock us out of the sky.”
Evans stared at Ritter, the man’s panic starting to rub off on him. “Maybe we should listen to him, Odin.”
“Mission’s not done yet, Mordecai.”
Evans sighed. “Fuck . . .”
The smoke on the horizon grew rapidly into a black plume, and then to a smoking ship wallowing on the waves.
Foxy brought them in low and fast as they passed over a two-hundred-foot-long fishing trawler crawling with what looked like black vampire bats the size of surfboards. The nets were torn apart on the booms, and the wheelhouse was engulfed in flames. There were burn holes in the steel hull. Bodies and debris floated in the water all around it. The ship was clearly sinking, its bow almost in the waves.
The black-winged drones swarmed over the surface of the vessel, showers of sparks flying up as they cut the ship apart even as it sank. Clouds of smaller drones hovered above them—and then rose to give chase to the passing helicopter.
“Heads up, heads up!”
Foxy leaned the chopper forward, increasing speed. “I’m on it.”
The smaller drones fell back behind them.
McKinney stared at the carnage, trying to come to grips with what they were heading into.
Ritter just groaned. “I told you. And this is nothing. We need to turn back.”
Odin nodded toward the horizon. “The colony ship must have left these behind.”