Collateral Damage, page 27
“Are you still interested in what we spoke of?”
“Yes.”
“Good. It happens that I know where your man is going.”
Kharon felt his throat catch. He hadn’t mentioned Rubeo specifically. The Russian was a step ahead of him.
“Where?” asked Kharon.
“He has a cargo flight landing at Tripoli very shortly,” said Foma. “I would imagine he or his people will be there.”
“No. He doesn’t do that sort of thing himself.”
“I would imagine that whatever is landing will reach him eventually,” said Foma. “So even if he is not there, it is a way to find him. Unless that is what you are already up to.”
“You can’t just follow him,” said Kharon. “He’s clever. He has surveillance gear.”
“I’m sure he has many things. Do you want to get him or not?”
“How do you know I’m looking for him?”
“I should have realized it long ago,” admitted Foma. “But only when I thought of whom your parents had been did it become obvious.”
Kharon glanced up at the empty street. All these preparations, and still he was blindsided at every turn. To work with Foma—truly the Russian was the devil.
But this was devil’s work.
“Do you want to get him, or not?” asked Foma.
“Tell me how.”
10
Sicily
Danny Freah turned from the credenza at the side of his office and held out the fresh cup of coffee to Zen. The two men had been friends since their Dreamland days, through a variety of ups and downs. Something about serving in combat together made for a deep relationship despite surface differences.
“I get the sense there’s something going on between Turk and Ginella,” said Danny. “But the kid won’t say.”
Zen took the coffee. “You sure he’s just not blaming himself for the shoot-down?”
“Well, he seems pretty convinced that he wasn’t at fault.”
“What’s that saying, ‘protest too much’?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” Freah poured himself a cup. Boston had managed to commandeer all the comforts of home: a working coffee machine, a minifridge, and two padded desk chairs. The place was still cramped, but it was habitable. “He’s had a pretty stressful few days.”
“He shot down four enemy fighters,” said Zen. “That oughta have earned him some time off.”
“I know.” Danny took a sip of his coffee, then sat down. “We had to keep him around to help test the aircraft systems—I should have sent him home. He wanted to fly.”
“Pilots always want to fly, Danny.”
“He seemed to do pretty well with the Hogs. Ginella loved him—until this.”
“Want me to talk to him?”
“Don’t you have to fly to Libya with Zongchen?”
“I have a little time.”
“Well.” Danny wasn’t sure what good, if any, that would do. But maybe Turk would open up to another pilot. “If you want to take a shot—I might be making too much of it. He just seemed, bothered, you know?”
“Uncle Zen has his shingle out.” He adopted a fake Viennese accent. “But sometimes, Colonel, a banana is just a banana.”
“I don’t get the joke.”
“Never mind. Probably there’s nothing there. I’ll talk to him and see.”
“Thanks.”
A half hour later Zen found Turk at the Tigershark’s hangar. He paused for a moment, sitting near the door, watching the young pilot gaze contemplatively at the aircraft. Zen thought of himself doing the same thing, though under vastly different circumstances.
“Pretty plane,” he said loudly as he rolled forward. He still wasn’t comfortable with the chair. It seemed to steer a little harshly and pulled to one side.
“Um, hi, Senator.”
“Fly as sweetly as they say?” asked Zen.
“It’s pretty smooth, yeah,” said Turk. “Once you’re used to it. It’s very quick. Doesn’t have the brute thrust of the F–22, but it’s fast enough. Because it’s so small and light.”
“You like lying down to fly?”
“It’s more a tilt, really,” said Turk. “Closer to the F–16 than you’d think.”
“Cockpit looks pretty tight,” said Zen. “Almost an afterthought.”
“It was, pretty much. Just there to help them test it.”
“You think you could just sit on the ground and fly it?”
“No.” Turk scowled, his brow furrowing. He was thinking about the plane, Zen realized, gathering his actual impressions. “It’s different being in the air, you know?”
Zen knew very well. “It’s not easy to explain, is it? People always asked me about flying the Flighthawks. It was . . . hard to tell them, actually. Because you don’t think about it when you’re doing it. You just do it.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re not really separated from the plane. You don’t think of yourself as separated,” added Zen, correcting himself. “Because if you thought of it that way, you’d have less control.”
Turk nodded. Zen turned and looked at the aircraft. It was rounded and thin, a beauty queen or model.
“Big difference between this and the A–10,” he said.
“Oh yeah.”
“What’s that like?” asked Zen. “I never flew one.”
“Oh. Uh, well, it’s a really steady aircraft. It, um, pretty much will go exactly where you want. Very physical—compared to the Tigershark. In a way, for me, it’s kind of closer to flying the Texan.”
“The T–6 trainer? The prop plane?”
“Yeah, I know. But for me, that’s kind of the parallel.”
“I learned on a Tweet—the T–37. Great aircraft.”
They traded a few stories about flying the trainers, solid and sturdy aircraft, perfect for learning the basics of flight. The planes were more forgiving than the flight instructors.
“There’s nothing like feeling the plane move where you want it to move,” said Zen finally. “Truth is, I could never look at a Flighthawk without feeling just a little bit of anger.”
“Because of the accident?”
“Yeah.”
Zen wheeled toward the Tigershark. “Flying was different once I lost my legs,” he said, talking more to himself than to Turk. “At first, I did it more or less out of spite—I had to prove to the Air Force, to everyone, that I was still worth something. They didn’t want me to come back. But they couldn’t exactly bar me. They could keep me out of a cockpit, obviously, because I couldn’t fly an F–15 or an F–22, or any real fighter. But the Flighthawks were different. My hands were still good. And my reflexes.”
“It must have been tough,” said Turk.
Zen slid his chair back to look at Turk. “Truth is, I was really, really angry. That helped. It gave me something to overcome. I like a fight.” He laughed gently, making fun of himself, though he wasn’t sure Turk would realize that. “How about you?”
“Like to fight? Well, I shot down those airplanes.”
“Not that kind of fighting.”
Turk pressed his lips together. He knew what Zen meant—dealing with the bureaucracy, with your superiors when they were being unfair or stubborn or both.
“Whatever you say is between you and me.” Zen nudged his wheelchair a little closer. “Doesn’t go out of this hangar. Nothing to your superiors.”
“You’re investigating the Sabres—”
“But not what happened with Shooter Squadron. What did happen?”
“I didn’t see anything on the hill,” said Turk. The words started slowly, then picked up speed. “I came across the ridge, checking. I had a good view of the kids there—”
“Kids?” asked Zen.
“They were definitely kids. There were all sorts of references on the ground. I could tell they were short—there was a bush, some vegetation. They were definitely kids.”
“You were moving at a hundred and fifty knots?”
“A little slower.”
“But you know what you saw.”
“It’s burned in my brain. If it was the Tigershark . . .”
Turk’s voice trailed off, but Zen knew what he was thinking: the Tigershark’s sensors were far wider than the A–10E’s, and would have captured a full 360 degrees. The computer would have examined the figures for weapons. There’d be no doubt.
Something else was bothering Turk. Zen didn’t know him very well, but he knew pilots, and he knew test pilots especially.
They were always sure of themselves. Granted, Turk was still pretty young. And back-to-back incidents like the ones Turk had been involved in had a way of shaking even the steadiest personality. But Turk was pretty damn positive about what he had seen.
So what else was troubling him?
Turk looked at the expression on the older man’s face. He was serious, contemplative, maybe playing the engagement over in his mind. The recorded images from the A–10 had been inconclusive. That didn’t help Turk.
Still, he knew what he had seen.
Didn’t he? He couldn’t repicture it in his mind now. With all this talk . . . maybe they were right.
No. No, it was just Ginella undermining him, trying to get him back.
Or had he really missed it? Had his eyes and mind played tricks?
“You think they’re right?” Turk asked Zen. “You think I chickened out?”
“Chickened out? Who said that?”
“It’s implied. Like I was too scared to fire at enemy soldiers because of everything else that had happened.”
“I don’t think that would be a fair assessment, do you?”
“It’d be bull.”
Zen studied him. “What did Colonel Ernesto say?” he asked.
Turk frowned. “She . . .” He shrugged.
“She what?”
Turk shook his head.
“What’s the personal thing going on here, Turk?” asked Zen sharply.
“What do you mean?”
“What is it with you and Ginella? One day she’s singing your praises, now she’s tossing you under the bus. What did you do to her?”
Zen couldn’t have surprised him more if he’d risen from the wheelchair and begun to walk on his own.
“What do you mean?” asked Turk.
“It’s written all over your face. There’s something personal here. What exactly is going on?”
“It’s nothing bad.”
“Whole story.” Zen had the tone of a father interrogating a child sent home from school by the principal. “Now.”
Reluctantly, Turk told Zen everything that had happened between him and Ginella, including her reaction to Li.
“There was never a quid pro quo, or anything like that,” he added. “But it was, uh, awkward.”
“Is that what’s really bothering you?”
“I did not see a missile on that hill. She can say anything she wants, but I didn’t see it. And I wasn’t affected by the Sabres. I mean, it was bad and everything—it’s terrible, but that wasn’t my fault either.”
If Turk had been a woman, the affair would clearly be a problem for Ginella. A commanding officer couldn’t have an affair with a subordinate, even one temporarily assigned.
But the role reversal blurred everything. Maybe it shouldn’t—from a purely theoretical sense, a colonel was a colonel, and a captain was a captain. But in real life, old prejudices died hard. A man simply wasn’t viewed as a victim of sexual harassment, no matter what the circumstances.
And in truth, that wasn’t necessarily the case—not legally, at least. Ginella hadn’t explicitly threatened Turk’s career.
The real problem wasn’t Ginella, it was Turk. Maybe he hadn’t blamed himself for the Sabre accident, but Zen remembered him being troubled when he landed. Maybe he’d just missed the missile on the hill—at that speed and height, it wouldn’t be surprising at all. But whatever had happened, he was definitely second guessing himself now.
Fighter pilots couldn’t have that. In the darkest moment, you needed to know you could trust yourself. You needed to be able to just do, not think.
“Are you afraid Colonel Ernesto’s going to screw up your career?” Zen asked.
“I don’t know,” admitted Turk. “I guess what I’m really—what really bugs me is somebody saying I’m a coward.”
“If you missed a missile, that wouldn’t make you a coward. That idea shouldn’t even enter your mind.”
“Well.”
“Seriously. It’s bull. And I don’t think you missed it.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t worry about Ginella,” Zen told the pilot.
“You’re not going to say anything to her, are you?”
“Nothing that doesn’t need to be said.”
11
Tripoli
The machine called Arachne stood barely half a foot tall with its six legs fully extended, and could easily hide behind a crumpled piece of newspaper. The work module on top was smaller than a watch face, but its interchangeable sensors were more powerful than even the most advanced timepiece. One provided a 360-degree IR image, another an optical image in 10-4 lux.
In the rarefied world of advanced robots, Arachne was a superstar—or would have been, had anyone been allowed to boast of her prowess. The “bot,” as Rubeo and his people referred to her, was a hand-built terrestrial spy, able to do things that human spies could only dream of. Developed privately, she was still undergoing testing before being offered for sale to the CIA.
Where better to give her a realistic test than in Libya?
Rubeo finished the bench calibration on the third and final sensor, more critical in this application than the others—a magnetometer that mapped currents. The device had to be carefully calibrated, then gingerly handled until it was locked on the unit. The procedure was relatively straightforward for the techies who worked with it routinely, but unusual enough that the man who invented the device had to proceed extremely slowly.
Rubeo finished his checks, locked out the options panel, and then killed the power to the unit. He unscrewed it gingerly and brought it over to the bot, which was sitting on the bench in the hangar across from the larger transport bot, Diomedes.
Also invented by Rubeo’s company, a version of Diomedes was already in operation with Whiplash and the U.S. military. The Greek name was used only by Rubeo; the versions delivered to the military had extremely mundane designations like “gun bot 34MRU” and “WGR46TransportAssist,” which alluded to their ultimate use.
Diomedes was about half the size of a gas-powered lawn mower, with a squat, rounded hull that featured a flat payload area about twelve by eighteen inches in the back, and a broad mast area that looked a bit like the bridge superstructure from a modern destroyer. The skin was made of a thick, webbed resin composite, sturdy yet light. The motor, powered by hydrogen fuel cells, was extremely quiet. Diomedes could operate at full speed for sixteen hours without being refueled; in combat under normal operation, it might last a good week before needing a new fuel cell.
Unlike the smaller bot, Diomedes had two tanklike treads on either side of its rectangular body. Fore and aft of the tread systems were wheels that extended from large shafts. Ordinarily, the wheels remained retracted next to the transport bot’s hull, but when meeting an obstruction or if needed for balance or quick maneuvering, the bot extended them. This helped get the machine over small obstacles or balance on very difficult terrain. There were two armlike extensions at the front, and a miniature arm with a crane hook in the flat rear compartment.
Rubeo slid the sensor atop to the plastic holder, making sure the metal shielding was properly in place. The system was designed to ignore the fields generated by the bot, but he considered the shielding an important safeguard nonetheless.
Lawson was hovering nearby, watching. He was excited about the bots, which he called “little creatures.” He wasn’t actually in the way, but his lurking presence would have been annoying if he hadn’t been so enthusiastic.
Actually, it was annoying, but Rubeo let him stay anyway. The others were seeing to last minute details or guarding the area outside. Uncharacteristically, Rubeo felt the need for human company tonight.
He glanced at his watch as he snapped the last prong in place on Arachne. Clearly, they wouldn’t be able to get south before dawn—it was almost 5:00 P.M. now. The process had taken far longer than he thought it would.
His fault, really. He should have had more of his people here to help. He needn’t have done all the prep work himself.
Should he go to the hotel rooms they’d rented and get some sleep? Or sleep in the desert?
He’d ask Jons what he thought.
“So the spider creature walks right in to where we want it to go?” asked Lawson.
“When told to.” Rubeo went to the bench and took the control unit—a modified laptop—and brought it over to finish orienting Arachne. The unit had to be told what sensors it was carrying; once that was done, the process was fully automated and quick.
“How does it get in?”
“It will depend. If necessary, Diomedes will cut a hole through the wall,” said Rubeo. “Or do whatever is necessary.”
“Oh. I thought maybe it would, like, crawl up the drain spout or something.”
“It could, if there was a drain spout,” said Rubeo. “We haven’t seen an easy access. Diomedes will check the external perimeter, and if there is an easy access, we’ll use it. Cutting into the building is the last resort.”
“Because of the noise?”
“The saw is relatively quiet,” said Rubeo. “But because of that it works very slowly.”
“Are you a better weaver than Minerva?” Lawson asked the bot.
“I’m impressed,” said Rubeo. In Roman myth, Arachne was a weaver who was turned into a spider after her work outshone Minerva’s in a contest. Jealous, Minerva took revenge by changing her into a spider. “I didn’t know you knew the story.”
