7
Net Force HQ
Quantico, Virginia
General Abe Kent had something he wanted to show to Thorn.
They met at the quartermaster’s warehouse, a nice brisk ten-minute walk from Thorn’s office. The pair of armed guards didn’t salute, but they weren’t supposed to—they needed to be able to open up with the subguns they held at a moment’s notice if somebody who didn’t belong here somehow showed up.
He saw Kent coming across the concrete, not quite a march, but more than a stroll.
“Abe,” Thorn said.
“Sir. Right this way.” General Kent nodded at the two guards.
“What am I going to look at?”
“A SWORD fighter,” Kent said.
Thorn blinked. He thought he knew about such things, but certainly there weren’t actually guys in the military these days who still used swords. . . .
“Excuse me?” he said, frowning. “Did you say ‘sword fighter’?”
“S-W-O-R-D,” Kent said. “Stands for ‘Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection Systems.’ ”
Thorn smiled. “I see. The military sure does love those acronyms, don’t they?”
“Yes, sir, they surely do.”
“You don’t need to ‘sir’ me, Abe.”
“That’s not what I hear, General Thorn.”
Thorn shook his head. “Hasn’t happened yet. What is it, the SWORD?”
Kent led him to a cleared-out spot in the warehouse. Except for what was parked in the middle of the space.
“What on earth—?”
Kent said, “Basically, sir, it’s a robot. About a meter high, rides on tracks, like tank treads—even looks kind of like a stripped-down tank, doesn’t it? This model weighs about fifty kilos, runs on lithium-ion batteries. It has a working range of a thousand meters, can go about thirty-five klicks on a charge, or sit parked and watching for four or five hours before the battery runs down, and you can swap that out in a couple minutes. What you have is four cameras—a wide-angle and zoom facing front, one facing to the rear, and one lined up as a gunsight. Mounts an M240 light machine gun, the ammo belt rides in a can, holds about three hundred rounds.”
Thorn stared at the device. It looked deadly just parked there.
“You need more punch, you can get one that comes with an M202-A1 6mm rocket launcher.”
Thorn glanced at Kent, then back at the SWORD device.
“SWORD is radio-controlled,” Kent continued. “Take some kid who grew up playing with a Gameboy or Xbox, put him in a VR helmet. He holds a controller, and it’s just like playing a video game. He can roll it down a street, look this way and that, and engage enemy targets from inside a protected location up to a kilometer away.”
Thorn shook his head, unsure whether he was impressed or simply depressed. “And what does this toy cost?”
“Starts out just over a quarter million, runs to three hundred fifty, four hundred thousand, depending on the bells and whistles. There’s one with an ordnance sniffer good to a few parts per million—it’ll nose out an ammo dump a walking soldier might miss. Or you can get one with a chemical/radiation detector. There’s another one with a flamethrower—you park it, a little tube comes up and spins around spewing fire in a complete circle—covers three-sixty for fifty meters. Pretty good for stopping a major shooting riot in its tracks. For less-lethal encounters, there’s a model that will spew gas the same way—tear, pepper, puke, whatever, and it comes with an extra battery that charges a capacitor which gives anybody foolish enough to lay bare hands on it about ninety thousand volts of low-amperage charge that will knock them onto their ass in a hurry.”
“Nice.”
“Yep. They started rolling them out in Second Iraq, Stryker Brigade. They were an outgrowth of the bomb-defusing Talon robots built by Foster-Miller, up in Massachusetts. Somebody said, ‘Well, if we can defuse a bomb, why can’t we put a gun on it?’ So they did.”
Thorn shook his head again. He was pretty sure he wasn’t impressed after all. “Sounds like some kind of science-fiction movie.”
“It does, doesn’t it? There were some worries about it at first. What if the bad guys got the radio codes and turned them on our people? They use coded, random-shifting opchans, so that hasn’t happened, and isn’t likely to anytime soon.”
“They durable?”
“Better than a GI in body armor. New ones use ceramic plate and cloned spider-silk weave. A lucky shot might take out a camera, but it’ll resist small-arms fire fairly well otherwise.”
“I bet the first enemy combatant to see one of these coming must have needed to change his pants.”
“I expect so. Probably didn’t get a chance to do that. Some of the kids running the gear can drive tacks with the guns. If they can see it, they can hit it. There are several hundred of the things on active duty, and another hundred on order.”
“So how did we get one?”
“Courtesy of retired Captain Julio Fernandez.”
Thorn smiled.
“Best scrounger I ever saw,” Kent said.
“He’s still working with John Howard, isn’t he?”
“Yes, sir. Man can get blood out of a stone. I don’t know how he managed it, but it wound up costing us some equipment we aren’t using and about twenty thousand dollars.”
“The question is, General, what are we going to do with it?”
Kent shrugged. “I don’t know for certain, sir, but it’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. Worse comes to worst, we can sell it to the Army and make a profit.”
“I suppose,” Thorn said.
“That concludes our inspection tour, sir.”
Thorn nodded. “What are you up to these day, Abe? Other than collecting props from old Schwarzenegger movies?” For a while, Kent had been showing Thorn how to use a katana, a Japanese blade. Kent’s grandfather had taught him iaido, and Thorn was interested in all kinds of blade work.
“Learning how to play the guitar,” Kent said.
“Really?”
“I . . . inherited one, as you probably recall.”
Thorn remembered. The Georgian hit man, what was his name? Natadze?
“How is it going?”
“Slowly. Very slowly. But I have a good teacher. She’s very patient.”
Thorn thought he caught something in Kent’s voice when he mentioned the guitar teacher, but he didn’t follow it up.
“How about you?”
“Marissa is planning the wedding. I’m supposed to go meet her grandparents soon.”
“Congratulations, sir.”
“You’ll get an invitation, if they ever get a date set.”
“I look forward to it.”
“Me, too.”
Both men grinned.
“You ever married, Abe?”
“Long ago. She passed away a few years back.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.” A beat, then: “Any luck on the Army base break-ins?”
Thorn shook his head. “Nope. I just left Jay Gridley. He was running off to check on something. General Hadden is really unhappy.”
“In his shoes, I’d be, too,” Kent said. “He lobbied hard to get the newer, smaller, high-tech bases built and running. Trying to bootstrap the military into the twenty-first century faster. That somebody was able to bust into a couple makes him look bad. Not a good idea to make the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs look bad.”
“I hear that.”
Blue Parrot Cafe
Miami, Florida
“You’re a woman,” the man said. His incredulous tone of voice was probably the same he’d have used to say, “You’re a dog.”
“Yes,” Lewis said.
“Your master sent a woman.”
Lewis had figured that he’d be one of those—a lot of the fundamentalists were. He was offended, of course, even though she wore a scarf covering her hair, along with dark glasses and a long-sleeved and modest dress, so he wouldn’t be further offended by any display of skin.
They sat at a small round table at the Blue Parrot, a tiny, mostly outdoor cafe in Miami—no way she would meet somebody like him in Washington, or even as close as Baltimore. The day was warm, the air damp, and her clothing wasn’t particularly comfortable. At least the table’s umbrella kept the direct sun off her. It was winter in the rest of the country, but down here, you could lie on the beach and cook. Had she been here for pleasure, she’d be wearing shorts and a halter top, and plenty of sunblock. She could see why so many people retired to this state. Snow three feet deep in Chicago, and people running around in thongs in Miami—old bones might prefer the heat.
The man—maybe forty, tall, dark, with a thick moustache—used the name Mishari Aziz. He wore a dark red Hawaiian shirt, white linen trousers, and sandals, and was certainly better dressed for the climate than she was.
“Mr. Aziz, it is said that a man looking for wolves will walk past a fox.”
Aziz blinked at her, as if astounded she could speak. If that line wasn’t in the Koran, something like it probably was.
He was a fanatic, but not stupid. He took her point. “Ah, yes, perhaps that is wise.” He didn’t trust women, but he was the buyer and not the seller. If he wanted to deal, he had to deal with her. Let him think she was a pawn pushed by a man, if that would put him at ease.
He sat on the aluminum chair across the table from her.
“Tell me,” he said. It was a command.
“My employer can deliver any of a number of Army bases—codes, guard routines, all the security measures in place. Included among these are some with nuclear weapons on hand.”
She saw a fanatical light flare in his eyes.
“A careful seeker will have seen examples of our ability to invade the Army’s bases at will.”
“Oklahoma and Hawaii,” he said.
They were paying attention. Hawaii was hardly past. “Just so.”
He leaned back in his chair and affected a posture of skepticism. “Blowing up garbage cans and knocking down doors? Not impressive.”
“Mr. Aziz, do you know the saying about the dancing bear? It’s not that he dances well, but that he dances at all. Our operatives were able to penetrate the Army’s defenses—they could just as easily leveled a barracks full of soldiers or stolen whatever they wished. That is what we are offering.”
“You could have struck a blow—”
“You can strike a blow,” she said, cutting him off. “We are businesspeople; we do not concern ourselves with politics.”
His jaw muscles flexed. He didn’t like being interrupted, especially by a woman, nor did he like people who didn’t take sides—especially his side. But she had something he wanted. He would swallow his anger.
“The amount of money you are asking for is great,” he said.
“One must consider what one is buying. For a working atomic weapon, ten million is not such a great amount.”
“You are not selling such a thing.”
“We are selling the key to the store wherein it resides, and a map of the pitfalls between it and the man who wants it. The rest is up to you.”
Aziz nodded to himself. “My backers will require another demonstration.”
“What will it take to convince them?”
“Something substantial. Entry, and acquisition of a thing of material value.”
“We aren’t going to deliver a nuke.”
“That will not be necessary. But they would see you recover something more heavily guarded than a trash can.”
“We can do that.”
“When?”
“A few days, a week, it depends.” She stood. He came to his feet, too. “You will see evidence of it when it happens, and we will contact you as before.”
She didn’t offer to shake hands. Neither did he.
As she left the Blue Parrot, Lewis knew she would be followed by Aziz’s operatives. She didn’t bother to look for them. She hailed a taxi, and told the driver to take her to the Dolphin Mall.
It was a bit of a drive, and she smiled to herself as they headed that way. Of course Aziz would have her followed. Knowledge was power, and if he could track her, perhaps it would give him leverage.
The mall, a few miles west of the Miami International Airport, was a huge place, hundreds of stores, a million and a half square feet. If she couldn’t lose a tail there, she didn’t deserve to be playing this game.
She enjoyed the air-conditioning in the cab. This dress, plus what she had on under it, was passing warm.
Finally, they arrived. She paid the driver and entered the mall. It was crowded, even on a weekday—shoppers, elderly walkers, mall rats. She walked purposefully to Lace and Secrets. She had been here to check it out before the meeting with Aziz. He would not have brought a female op to their meeting because he would not have considered the idea that he was going to meet a woman. A man alone in a woman’s lingerie shop wasn’t exactly rare, but he’d stand out. The help would be all over him—if the op was stupid enough to come into the place.
She browsed lingerie until she spotted her tail. A short, young, swarthy man with a moustache stood by one of the benches outside the store, pretending to look at a newspaper. He wore a white shirt and gray trousers. A few meters away, a second man, cut from the same cloth, pretended to be talking on a pay phone.
Both kept stealing quick looks at the shop.
They were amateurs. Might as well be wearing neon signs proclaiming them as undercover operatives. Here—look here!
Lewis would have grinned, but she was in persona now. So predictable. If Aziz was as smart as he ought to be, he’d have hired a blond surfer-type in shorts and a tank top for a sub-rosa op, or a barely dressed woman with a tan, who couldn’t have possibly spent her whole life under a burka. But these guys liked to keep things in the family. Lewis would bet that both of the young men out there were related to Aziz—brothers, cousins, nephews, like that.
She went to find a clerk. A young woman with a nose ring and a pierced eyebrow, about nineteen or so, was behind the counter.
“Yes, ma’am?”
Lewis tried to look frightened. “I wonder if you might help me? My ex-husband is out there, he’s following me, and I’m afraid he’s going to kill me.”
The clerk blinked. “You want me to call Security?”
“No, I don’t want any trouble. He’s—he’s a violent man. He beat me when we together. He carries a gun. I have a restraining order against him, to keep him away, but that won’t help. If I can get away from him without him following me, that would be the best thing. Is there a back way out of here?”
She already knew that there was, but using it would set off an alarm—unless the alarm was deactivated.
“There is.”
“If I could go out that way, I could get to my car. I’m leaving town, going to stay with my sister in Houston. Can you help me, please?”
“No problem,” the clerk said.
Once she was in the hall behind the shop and the clerk had closed the door behind her, Lewis stripped off the dress. Under it, she wore shorts and a T-shirt. She pulled a pair of sandals from her bag, then left the dress, sensible shoes, and bag in the nearest garbage can. She headed for the parking lot and her rental car. With any luck, she’d be on a plane back to D.C. before Abdul and Sayed back there realized they had lost her.
There were, of course, other potential buyers. And she would contact them if Aziz didn’t work out. The next time they met, she would have Carruth and a couple of his troops backing her. You couldn’t trust a fanatic, and once Aziz realized that she could deliver, he would certainly try to avoid paying for it if he could. That was expected.
Lewis had reasons to hate the Army, but she didn’t hate her country. There was no way she would put an atomic weapon into the hands of a zealot who would kill hundreds of thousands without blinking, in the name of some warped sense of reality. He had to believe that she would, he had to know that she could give him what he wanted, so she had to demonstrate it, but it wasn’t going to happen. Not to mention that the target such a man would select might well be the town in which Lewis herself happened to be. Sure, she’d sell him the key—but there would be a nasty surprise waiting for Mr. Aziz when he tried to open that door. And the Army would give her a medal for it. How ironic was that?