Kill Decision

  “Clear!”

  She looked back at Adwele. “Okay, good. Remember, we do this slow and steady so we don’t overheat the rope. Two fingers on top of the hitch, with your control hand holding the line. Depress the Blake’s Hitch lightly, and remove the safety knots as we reach them. . . .”

  * * *

  Walking the mile or so back to the research camp, McKinney shared the load with Akida, but Adwele insisted on carrying his own pack, struggling as he went. McKinney kept a short length of throw line over her back in a European coil and turned back to watch Adwele.

  Navigating around a tree, Adwele started falling backward with the added weight. “Help me, miss!”

  McKinney grabbed his rope bag and helped him reseat it on his shoulders. “You got it?”

  “I’m good.”

  She exchanged grins with Akida, the Amani ranger who brought up the rear. They could both see traits of Babu in the son.

  They continued walking the path home. Adwele walked behind her. “My mother says you are too pretty to keep your hair short. You should let it grow so that you can find a husband.”

  “Uh, thanks for the advice, but I’m in Africa to do research. And where I come from, women don’t need to rely on a man for a living.” She pointed down at driver ants swarming in a thick line along the edge of the path. “Look.”

  Adwele stopped to watch the swarm. “Siafu.”

  “Yes.” McKinney pointed. “Do you know that almost every ant you see is female?”

  “Even the siafu warriors?”

  McKinney nodded. “That’s right. All of the workers, the warriors, and the queen, they’re all girls. The nursery workers determine the caste of the young by how they feed them, but the only time they make boy ants is when they want to create a new colony.”

  “Then they need boys sometimes, eh?”

  McKinney laughed. Adwele never missed anything. “I guess that’s true. C’mon, smart guy. . . .” She held out her hand to keep them moving. Her gaze happened on a large raven observing them from a tree branch overhead. She was surprised for a moment until she realized that the Amani no doubt held more than a few ravens. Perhaps she was only just starting to notice them.

  CHAPTER 6

  Wake-up Call

  It was hot and humid in the darkness. Another scorching night at the research station. Early December, but Tanzania’s hot dry season appeared to be coming on early. McKinney lay on her cot in a Cornell T-shirt and gym shorts beneath mosquito netting. Unable to sleep, she had rolled her shirt up and was fanning her exposed midriff with a Harvard report on social algorithms. Dripping with sweat, she listened to the sounds of the jungle all around her: animal calls and a relentless thrum of crickets.

  Way out here there was no air-conditioning. Not that they couldn’t have it, but it was frowned upon by hard-core field researchers (and grant committees). The technology that did make it out to the bush was always surprising. For instance, she got four bars on her cell phone in the Amani, but adequate medical clinics were rare.

  God, it’s hot.

  Although her windows were open, they were placed high up the walls with a thick wire mesh for security reasons, inhibiting airflow. There was also a brass whistle on top of the Pelican case next to her cot that she was supposed to use to summon the station’s several askaris in case of trouble. They’d had thieves in the night before, but since the American drone incident in Iraq, the university had doubled the security detail (presumably since a third of Tanzania’s population was Muslim, and the American embassy had been bombed before).

  She knew the cost of the added security would be coming out of all their research budgets, and she pondered whether it was another overreaction. They were far from Dar es Salaam, the old capital, and the researchers had had great relations for decades with the local Maasai tribesmen (most of whom weren’t either Christian or Muslim, but worshiped their own monotheist god, Enkai.)

  Speaking of god: God, it’s hot.

  She recalled how the big tourist hotels in Dar es Salaam deeply refrigerated the guest rooms with air-conditioning to keep out malarial Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes. She always had to bundle up like an Inuit when she stayed there, even if it was scorching outside. Right now that sounded pretty good. So did a cold beer.

  Her mind wandered, as it often did on these hot, sleepless nights—and as always it eventually gravitated to family. To her mother. And then to her father. McKinney had been in a remote region of Borneo when her mother took ill, and she hadn’t gotten back in time. The pain of that was always there on nights like this.

  She rolled onto her side and looked at the framed photographs next to the glow of her recharging phone. A photo of her father, her mother, and two older brothers arm-in-arm. How much had she missed in all this time in the field? There was another photo of her, taken while skydiving. Her one hundredth jump, goggles on and thumbs-up in free fall somewhere over Virginia. Her jump partner, Brian Kirkland, had taken the photo. She was no longer with him. Long-distance relationships were always hard. He was a great guy. Married now with a kid.

  Should she take a teaching position at the university? Give up field research? She thought of Adwele and his father, Babu, a ranger at the Amani Reserve. Killed by poachers. How would Adwele manage without a father? He was such a bright kid. But was Haloren right? Was McKinney taking an interest in Adwele for her own selfish reasons? Trying to fill a void? That was the worst thing about Haloren: As annoying as he could be, he was disturbingly perceptive.

  An odd, unfamiliar humming sound intruded on her thoughts. McKinney looked up toward the window screen on the far side of her small room.

  But the sound was already gone.

  Jungle sounds. She lay back down and thought of large nocturnal flying insects. A Goliathus albosignatus? Goliath beetles had been known to reach four and half inches long. But she’d never seen one around the station. It would be great to catch one.

  There was the sound again—this time coming from the window on her left.

  McKinney rolled over and gazed up at the screen near the rafters. There was something just outside the window, a hum almost inaudible against the background jungle noise. And there—a shimmering in the night air. Now gone.

  The odd humming sound moved, heading to the window above her bed.

  Interesting. Maybe something rare? McKinney sat up and grabbed for an LED flashlight next to the brass whistle. Moving away from the window, she crawled to the foot of the bed and turned to stare up at the window screen.

  Certainly not a bat. She cycled through her encyclopedic knowledge of local species, but couldn’t map the sound. A consistent, soft hum.

  Then, something reflected one of the station security lights—a gleaming carapace six inches across, rising slowly above the window frame. Methodically. Like a willful intelligence.

  “What the hell . . . ?” She kicked on the LED flashlight. But the beam reflected back against the metal screen, blinding her worse than if she’d never turned the thing on at all. The object hummed quickly away.

  “Dammit!” She clicked off the light, but now her night vision was ruined. “Just goddammit . . .” McKinney pulled on sneakers and got to her feet, pacing in the darkness, trying to figure out what to do next. She was wide awake now and just stood there, listening.

  What she heard next shocked her: a boy’s voice, soft and low just outside her cabin. “Help me, miss. Help me!”

  A familiar voice.

  McKinney felt adrenaline surge in her bloodstream. She called out, “Adwele?” She grabbed the brass whistle next to her bed and looped the chain around her neck.

  His voice was unmistakable this time. “Help me, miss!”

  Without thinking McKinney unbolted her door and ran out into the gravel lane bounded by blooming bougainvillaea, dark gray in the moonlight. She clicked on the flashlight and scanned the darkness. “Adwele! What’s wrong? Where are you?”

  The voice called back from behind the cabin. “Help me, miss!” r />
  McKinney ran between her cabin and the next, calling out. “Adwele, where are you? What’s going on?”

  But the boy’s voice was receding now, heading into the jungle. “Miss, help me. Help me!”

  McKinney ran after his voice, struggling to put the brass whistle to her lips as she sprinted into the dense brush of the jungle, branches smacking her face. Before she could blow on it, she ran headlong into something laid across the path that caught her in the shins. She stumbled onto the jungle floor—but held on to the flashlight. She had it clenched tightly in her hand.

  The voice was just next to her now. Above her. “Help me, miss. . . .”

  “Adwele!” McKinney rolled over and aimed the flashlight up into the nearest tree. Sitting on a branch there was a large black raven, its eyes glowing white with reflected light. It cocked its head and opened its beak, delivering a perfect imitation of the boy she knew.

  “Help me, miss! Help me.”

  A feeling of illogical terror gripped McKinney—a nonhuman intelligence had just tricked her. “Oh, my God . . .”

  The raven flew off into the night.

  And then the world exploded. Behind her a sound so loud and sharp that she felt it more than heard it as the shock wave passed through her body, blasting through the trees and kicking up a wave of dust in a blinding flash. Setting her ears ringing.

  McKinney sucked for air and rolled onto her back to gaze fifty meters behind her at the research station.

  Where her cabin had been there was now a raging inferno amid shattered wooden beams. Large pieces of fiery debris were still raining down, crashing into the trees. McKinney struggled to sit up—and to process what she was looking at.

  An explosion.

  Whistles were sounding in the research station now. Shadows of people running against the flames, shouting as the alarm went up. She was having difficulty comprehending what had just happened.

  And then she felt a sharp sting in her right side. When she raised her hand to it, McKinney’s fingers encountered a metal dart protruding from her T-shirt, and before she could react, she fell back onto the jungle floor. Warm syrup now seemed to be moving through her veins, and as her head lolled to the side, she saw a human form dressed in black, its face hooded, coming toward her at a crouch. Some sort of pistol in gloved hands. Black goggles over the eyes.

  Curious. It was the only emotion she could seem to muster as a second hooded form in black approached from the other direction. A gloved hand grabbed her flashlight and turned it off. Someone forced one of her eyes open wide and put two fingers against her throat as if taking her pulse.

  A calm voice nearby spoke softly. “Odin to Safari-One-Six. Touchdown secure. We are Oscar Mike to extraction point.”

  McKinney’s eyes focused on a sturdy climbing boot kneeling inches from her face. A brand-new Hanwag. She’d always wanted Hanwags. That was a damned fine boot. Her vision began to fade.

  In fact, it was the best boot money could buy. . . .

  CHAPTER 7

  The Activity

  At some point McKinney became aware that she was strapped into an airplane seat, a stethoscope pressing against her shirt.

  A man’s voice close by: “Breathing normal. Pulse steady.” The stethoscope went away. “Blood pressure one-seventeen over seventy-six.” The sound of Velcro tearing and she felt pressure release from her left arm. “She’s stable.”

  Another man’s voice. Deeper. “Thanks, Mooch.”

  McKinney saw she was now wearing a gray flight suit, but she focused on her wrists. She was literally strapped into an airplane seat—her hands secured to the armrests by plastic zip-ties. The dull roar of turboprop engines throbbed around her. The window shade was down, so she couldn’t tell if it was day or night. She gazed forward at the dimly lit cabin. A couple of empty rows ahead of her, then a bulkhead. She sat in the aisle seat on the right side. An asymmetrical layout—two seats right of the aisle, one seat on the left. Some sort of commuter plane. The height and dimensions of the cabin seemed familiar. Before she realized it, she heard her own voice say, “A Twin Otter.”

  That deep voice again, somewhere close by. “You know your bush planes.”

  She was still fuzzy, answering the unknown voice reflexively. “We used to jump from DHC-6s.”

  “Why’d you quit?”

  “I promised my dad. After Mom died.” McKinney’s eyes wandered to the seat just across the aisle to see a trim, well-proportioned man sitting there. He had gray-blue eyes with a sun-worn face partly concealed by a Red Sox ball cap and a long black beard and mustache. The hat made him look like a rookie trade from the Taliban league. Otherwise, he was dressed in faded jeans with a weathered cameraman’s vest overrun with pockets. The man looked vaguely Mediterranean . . . or perhaps Central Asian? Or maybe he was just really tanned. It was hard to tell. His accent was perfect Midwestern American.

  Oddly, he was now whispering soothing words to a large raven that stood on an armrest next to him. The man carefully removed a small transponder from around the raven’s leg as he spoke to it. The bird responded with soft keek-keek sounds and fluffed its throat and head feathers into punk-rocker spikes.

  Woozy as she was, McKinney suspected the bird to be a hallucination, so she focused on the bearded man. “What happened? Has there been an accident?”

  He glanced at her as he stroked the raven’s head. “No, everyone’s okay. You’re safe now.”

  “I remember an explosion.” She winced and grabbed her side. “Why am I in so much pain?” There was a stabbing sensation in her ribs. In fact, her whole body felt bruised.

  “That’s the Naloxone—it blocks opioid receptors.”

  “Nalox . . . why was I . . . what . . . ?” She was having trouble thinking.

  “It was necessary to counteract the sufentanil. You’ll be sensitive to pain until it wears off.”

  She shook her head in an attempt to wake up and finally succeeded in focusing her vision on the raven. The large black bird was apparently real, and it was studying her right back. The memory of the raven outside her window returned to her.

  “I remember a bird. And an explosion.”

  “That was Huginn you saw. This is Muninn.” On her confused frown he added, “Norse mythology. The god Odin had two ravens, Huginn and Muninn—‘thought’ and ‘memory.’ They flew across the land bringing him news of the world of men.”

  “And they do that?”

  He opened his hand to reveal a tiny transponder bracelet. McKinney could see what appeared to be a grid of copper leads on the surface of the device.

  “Plenoptic camera. Called a ‘computational’ camera in the trade—lets us change the focal length after an image is taken, remove occlusions through synthetic aperture tracking. Lets us clearly view surveillance subjects through light cover—window screens and foliage.”

  “How long have you been watching me?”

  “Long enough to know you wouldn’t hesitate to help Adwele.”

  “Your raven manipulated me.”

  “Huginn saved your life. Spotter drones can be difficult for us to detect, but he has a knack.”

  “Spotter drones? Who are you?” She tugged at her restraints. “And why the hell am I strapped into this chair?”

  “You call me Odin.” He spoke next to the raven. “Muninn, eat. Go on.”

  The bird cawed, and hopped away toward the back of the plane.

  McKinney gave him a look like she’d entered a madhouse.

  “Your restraints are a precaution. Some people react badly to the drugs. Get hysterical. Never a good thing on an airplane.”

  She tried to keep her voice calm, despite her mounting temper. “I’m not hysterical.”

  He studied her, then cast a look at someone behind them. “Mooch.”

  She heard movement, then the swip of steel being drawn as a handsome, neatly groomed man in his twenties with cocoa brown skin leaned over her. He looked of South Asian/Indian descent, and wore a crisp white galabi
a and white taqiyah skullcap. A stethoscope hung around his neck. He deftly slipped a razor-sharp killing knife through both her wrist straps. In a moment she was free, rubbing her wrists as “Mooch” disappeared again behind her.

  McKinney looked around the whole cabin now that she could turn around. Half the interior was cargo space packed with metal cases and electronics equipment. Another bearded man, with pale skin and wild brown rock-star hair, sat one row back. He looked possibly Albanian or Russian with a soft, slightly rounded face and wide-set eyes. He wore faded jeans and a heavy metal band’s T-shirt covered with Arab script. He also had tattoos of horses and fiery skulls running the length of both forearms. He was unaccountably tuning a kora—a traditional West African stringed instrument. Behind him sat a rather plain, olive-skinned woman in a maroon hijab and sari. She was holding a copy of Small Arms Review but had looked up to meet McKinney’s gaze. The woman nodded and went back to reading.

  Beyond her was a twentysomething Eurasian kid with hipster glasses and a soul patch. He wore khakis and a dark green pullover, along with a headset and mouthpiece. He was busy at an electronics console in the cargo area.

  “Who are you people? Where is this plane headed?”

  Odin extended his hand to the row behind him. “Foxy, pass me the Rover.”

  The Albanian man sighed and set aside the kora to dig through a satchel on the floor. “Take it easy on her, boss.”

  “The Rover, please. Thank you.” In a moment Odin came back with a ruggedized computer tablet. He tapped the screen a few times, then held it up for McKinney to see. The device was already playing what appeared to be black-and-white aerial footage, a view from a thousand feet up, orbiting a jungle village.

  McKinney recognized it. “The Marikitanda Research Station.”

  “FLIR imagery taken from an MC-12 about twenty minutes ago.” He pointed with his scarred, calloused hand. “See this?”

  “My cabin.”

  “Right. Watch.”

  McKinney saw a luminous human form run from her cabin. This was apparently infrared imagery, highlighting heat sources. She watched herself sprint into the jungle, where she was soon lost beneath the dense canopy. Moments later an object streaked into the frame and impacted on her cabin—whiting out the screen.