Cybernarc (2 page)

"Mosquito, Peeping Tom. Bad skiing on the slopes.

Request immediate ski lift. Site Delta Green, repeat, Delta Green.”

"That’s a big roger, son,” the voice replied. "Ski lift at Delta Green. We’re on the way. ETA sixty mikes.” One hour. The team should reach the alternate LZ in forty minutes. "Copy, Mosquito. We’ll be waiting with the welcome mat! Tom out!”

Drake replaced the radio handset in Franklin’s pack. "Move out!”

The team set a rapid pace up and over the hill. The alternate landing zone lay beyond the first ridge, dangerously close to the OP site, but amid terrain so rugged that a Special Ops helo, skimming in just above the sea, should have little trouble avoiding the rather inefficient Colombian radar. Satellite photos showed a clearing large enough for the chopper to set down for an emergency dust-off. It would be hairy navigating the mountains by night, but the pilot would be wearing infrared gear that would turn night to day for him.

All of them were breathing hard when they reached the clearing three-quarters of an hour later. Esposito had made the last few hundred meters supported between Timmons and Kleinfelder. He was gasping for breath as he sank to a log at the clearing’s edge, gulping air. "How . . . long . . . ?”

Drake realized he was breathing hard, too. Damn. Ten weeks with Project RAMROD and his body had lost some of its physical edge. He lifted the Velcro strap shielding his luminous watch dial. "Fifteen minutes. Kleinfelder. Timmons. Check it out.”

The two SEALs vanished silently into the darkness. Minutes later they reappeared. "Clear,” Kleinfelder said, "Looks like an old hurricane blowdown. Still no sign of the bad guys.”

"I think we gave ’em the slip,” Franklin added. "Okay. Ski, you and Timmons set out the lights. Franklin, gimme the radio.” He thought he could make out the far-off, drumming thutter of an approaching helicopter. Pray God it was the right one. . . .

As Kaminski and Timmons began placing battery- powered torches in the clearing, Drake opened the tactical frequency again. "Mosquito, this is Peeping Tom. Come in, Mosquito. We hear you in the area. Over.” "Copy, Tom,” the Texan voice replied. "We’re cornin’ up on the LZ. Let’s see your ID, boy.”

"Show him the colors, Kleinfelder.”

The SEAL pulled a flashlight from his rucksack and shone it into the sky. The lens was covered with a red filter.

"Peeping Tom, Mosquito. I see a red light.” "Roger that, Mosquito. Red light. LZ is clear. Come on in.”

The landing-zone beacons, six of them spaced ten paces apart in a large T, cast their beams into the sky toward the north at a forty-five-degree angle, providing a landing target for the chopper. Seconds later, a shape materialized out of the dark sky, belly-lit by the LZ lights.

It was an old Huey Slick, painted in faded jungle camo colors, the cargo door open. There were no insignia or other markings, not even hull numbers. The Huey drifted downward until it was within a few feet of the ground, drowning every sound with the thunderous
whup-whup-whup
of its rotors. Palm fronds,
branches, and ferns whipped and lashed around the crouching SEALs, and bits of gravel stung Drake’s face. A spotlight snapped on from the helo’s cargo deck.

"Let’s haul ass, guys,” the Texan said over the radio. "I’m double-parked here.”

"Go!” Esposito yelled. "Move! Move! Move!” Esposito was already well into the clearing, loping toward the hovering Slick, one hand clutching his boo- nie hat to his head as he crouched low beneath the rotors.

Shit! Since when had the DEA guy been leading this op? "Esposito! Hold it!”

Too late. Timmons was running after Esposito toward the helo, followed by Kleinfelder and Franklin.

Warning shrieked in Drake’s brain. Something was
wrong.
Shadows moved on the Huey’s cargo deck, behind the blinding light. Soldiers were dropping from the hovering aircraft, fanning out across the field. . . .

"Ambush!” Drake yelled, throwing himself to the ground. He groped for his Uzi. "Down!”

But the others could not hear him over the rotor noise.

Franklin staggered in front of him, then dropped to the ground, dark wet patches staining the back of his fatigues. A few meters ahead, Kleinfelder flipped backward out of the glare of the searchlight as though struck by a sledgehammer.

He heard the stuttering bark of a machine gun. Someone was hosing the SEALs from the chopper’s cargo deck with an M-60, sweeping back and forth as the Huey rose above the field. Kaminski was down . . .
and Timmons. Damn it, his men were dying, dying before they knew what was happening!

A line of armed men was advancing now across the field, backlit by the searchlight. Drake saw one gunman stop, raise the unmistakable silhouette of an M-16, and fire a deliberate burst into the dark, twisted shape sprawled at his feet.

Drake knew he couldn’t stay here, and if he opened fire he’d be cut down like the rest. He hadn’t been seen yet, but he was willing to bet that the ambushers knew exactly how many men were in the SEAL team. They’d come looking for him.

The Prick 41 lay close by, where Franklin had dropped it. Timing his movement to the sweep of the searchlight, he rolled across the ground, snagged one of the radio’s carrying straps, then rose and bolted for the jungle.

He’d been seen! Wood splintered from a tree trunk beside his head as he dodged into the forest. Behind him, the helicopter lifted higher above the clearing, the M-60 door
gunner reaching out after him with bursts of hot lead. Infrared, he thought as he ran. The pilot can see in the dark. . . .

Drake kept running, alone now as he’d never been alone before in his life.

©
Chapter Two

"So
THEN
I E&E’D,”
Drake said. He shifted in his chair. It seemed strange, sitting in an office again. This was the second time in twenty-four hours that he’d told his story, but it had lost none of its immediacy for him. He still felt the horror of the ambush, the wet and mud and heat of the jungle. "Took two days to reach Palomino, about twenty klicks east of the Salazar place.” "Was there any sign of pursuit?” James Weston wanted to know. The distinguished-looking, grayhaired director of Project RAMROD was making notes on a pad in front of him. "Any mobilization at ail by the people at the hacienda?”

"None that I was aware of, sir.”

The third man in the room was also taking notes. "And you’re certain, Lieutenant, that the helicopter was not Colombian military.” Brigadier General Maxwell Sinclair was the number-three man in the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, and as such, Drake’s commanding officer.

"Yes, sir,” Drake replied. "I saw a mix of weapons, uniforms, stuff like that. Mercenaries would be my guess. Paramilitary, certainly. The pilot . . . well, I never got a look at him, but on the radio he sure as hell
sounded
American. Texan, I think.” He looked at Weston. "You looked into who was supposed to fly the dust-off, of course.”

"First thing we checked,” Weston said. "The scheduled pilot was Michael Howard Braden. CIA contract man. He’s flown helos for the Company before.” Weston paused and gave an ironic smile. "And he
is
from Texas. But the records show that Braden took sick just before the mission. Dysentery. Checked into Gorgas Army Hospital, Panama.”

"His replacement?” General Sinclair asked.

"We don’t know. He was replaced . . . but there are no records on whoever took the run.” Weston shrugged. "Sometimes these CIA contract operations leave something to be desired in their . . . accountability.” He fixed his stare on Drake once more. "So what happened then? You said you reached Palomino.” "Yes, sir. I found a sloop, a native fishing boat, pulled up on the sand. Nobody was around, so I appropriated her, hoisted sail, and headed north. Once I was out of sight of land, I used the Prick 41 to raise a Coast Guard E-2C over the southern Caribbean. An hour later, I was picked up by a Sea King and taken to the
Decisive.
That’s a Coast Guard cutter pulling drug- interdiction duty just outside Colombia’s twelve-mile limit. Twenty-four hours later I was at Fort Gulik.” He spread his hands. "And today I’m here.”

"Very resourceful,” Sinclair said thoughtfully. "An excellent job all around.”

"It would have been better if I hadn’t lost my team,” Drake said bitterly.

"I see nothing that you could have done differently, son.”

"It’s not the sort of thing you can just walk away from, General.” The disaster in Colombia had been weighing on Drake ever since he’d eluded the ambush. He didn’t know what else he
could
have done . . . but the responsibility had been his.

"You’ve got to, Lieutenant. What happened, well . . .” Sinclair’s mouth twisted unpleasantly. "It’s obvious now that we have a leak. A bad one. You couldn’t help that.”

Weston consulted his notes. "Where do you think the leak is, General? The DEA?”

"Possible,” Sinclair replied. The two men began a low, rapid-fire exchange, comparing the notes they’d taken during Drake’s debriefing.

Drake looked away, gazing out the large window in one wall of Weston’s office. There was little to see: the flat, scrub-brush brown of Peninsula marshland, and in the distance the metallic-gray brightness of the York River beneath the dull overcast of an early-fall day.

Camp Peary, the CIA’s training center and operations facility a few miles north of Williamsburg, Virginia, was a far cry from the mountains and jungles of Colombia. Called "the Farm” by initiates, it was disguised as a Pentagon research-and-testing center, with 480 wooded acres concealing obstacle courses, weapons ranges, a complete Eastern European border town, and training grounds. It
also
housed genuine research-and- testing facilities, the better to maintain the camp’s cover.

RAMROD was one of them.

RAMROD’s headquarters resided in a nondescript government building supposedly devoted to agricultural studies. The reality, as might be expected in such an environment, was quite different.

Drake was suddenly aware that someone had asked him a question. "I beg your pardon, sir?”

"I asked if you felt up to a PARET run this afternoon,” Weston said. "We have some Group Seven VIPs coming in this afternoon, and they’ve been promised a show.”

"No problem, Mr. Weston,” Drake replied. "I feel fine.”

"You’re sure? We can always grab another guinea pig somewhere.”

"Hey, after three days in the jungle, I don’t think CORA can hit me with anything I can’t handle.” "Good enough.” Weston stood behind his desk. "Gentlemen, let’s go downstairs.”

They left the director’s third-floor office, passing through a secretarial suite and into the elevator foyer outside.

Stepping into a waiting elevator, Weston produced an ID card from his wallet and slipped the magnetic strip embedded in one end into a nondescript slot in the control panel next to the floor-selection buttons. Dragging the card sharply through the slot, he then pressed the red "emergency stop” button. The door closed and the elevator started to descend.

The panel showed stops for three floors and a basement, but the elevator car dropped past the parking level, still descending. When the doors opened a moment later, they stepped into a reception area brilliantly lit by fluorescent lights. On the tile floor was a large mosaic—Leonardo’s famous engraving illustrating the geometric perfection in the proportions of the human body. Beneath the feet, spelled out in capitals, was a single word: RAMROD.

They were not challenged, but Drake felt the eyes of several OS men on them as they crossed the logo to the security desk. OS—the CIA’s Office of Security—provided RAMROD’s guards, tight-lipped men in black uniforms and helmets and armed with M-16s.
"security”
was written across the white strips on their helmets and on their MP-style armbands.

Weston signed in, then registered his palm print on a reader at the desk. Sinclair did the same, followed by Drake. Special authorization was required for Sinclair. While the general had the appropriate security clearance, he was not a member of RAMROD and his credentials were given special scrutiny. Each of them was given an ID pass to be pinned to his lapel and warned—as always—that he must wear the pass at all times while in RAMROD’s secure areas.

Security was taken very seriously in Project RAMROD’s lower levels.

Walking quickly now down echoing tile corridors, the three men followed a red line on the floor, though they’d all come this way many times before. The hallways were bustling with men and women, all tagged with security IDs, coming and going about their business. Project RAMROD’s workers included military personnel like Drake, CIA people like Weston and the OS guards, men and women from Rand Corporation, DARPA, IBM, employees from a dozen other government-sponsored think tanks and corporations across the country.

They reached a set of sealed doors beneath a sign reading
LAB ONE: CLEAN ACCESS.
They showed their passes to a pair of OS men with M-16s, then Weston ran his magnetic card through a reader on the wall. The doors slid open and they walked into the gowning room.

The far end of the room was a double glass wall, looking into a high-tech electronics lab. From lockers at the side Drake and the others removed knee-length white smocks, disposable paper shower caps, and booties. The RAMROD logo was repeated on their smocks, which they donned over their regular clothing. Lab One maintained a clean room environment, and the several dozen men and women moving among the gleaming consoles and computer terminals on the other side of the glass wail were all similarly attired. When they were ready, Weston used his magnetic access card a final time, and the three of them stepped into the shining spotlessness of RAMROD’s main lab.

As always, Drake was struck by the lab’s similarities to a hospital operating room—the lights, the cleanliness, the air of purposeful activity among the white- gowned attendants. The center of attention was the figure of a nude human male spread-eagled on a stainless- steel table. Despite the OR atmosphere, the subject looked more like a torture victim than a surgical patient.

The subject was called Rod, and he—
it,
rather—was not human.

RAMROD. It was a typically contrived government acronym that did more to mask the project’s purpose than explain it. The name was short for
R
and
Artificially intelligent
Military
R
Obotic
Device,
an unwieldy title further shortened by the men and women who worked on him to Rod. RAMROD’s centerpiece, the reason for the project’s existence, was a humanoid robot originally designed as an all-purpose military weapon with the strength, speed, and endurance of a machine, but with the flexibility, the
adaptability
of a man.

RAMROD had been conceived in the early seventies as a joint R&D project by Rand and DARPA, with the goal of creating a combat robot. That had been during the final years of Vi
etnam, when some of the higher-
ranking ponderers at the Pentagon had begun looking at alternatives to the use of half-trained, teenage draftees in combat.

Designed to function in any environment, to use any weapon, to exhibit literally inhuman patience, strength, endurance, stealth, and speed, a few robotic soldiers might replace whole regiments of eighteen-year-olds. Why send in platoon after platoon of teenagers to take some fortified, blood-drenched hill in the jungle, it was reasoned, when a single squad of RAMRODs, airdropped in full Combat Mod, could infiltrate and destroy the target before the enemy even realized he was under attack?

Though RAMROD had produced limited test prototypes by the early eighties, the DOD budget for the program had been canceled in 1984. At a unit cost of upward of two billion dollars, not even the Pentagon could afford a very large army of robot soldiers.

But the fall of the budgetary ax had not ended the project. Supporters of the program, arguing that RAMROD represented incredible strides in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics, had pointed out that with billions already spent in R&D, a few million more to create a fully operational prototype that could be field-evaluated would not break the bank. There were other uses to which true artificial intelligence would be put one day—exploring space or the bottom of the sea, working in deadly environments in factories or nuclear power plants, serving in law enforcement or firefighter roles . . . the possibilities were endless.

So RAMROD had continued, funded now through the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology. The Central Intelligence Agency had been in on RAMROD since the beginning, the project facilities had been constructed on the Company’s Camp Peary reserve for security purposes, and it was only natural that a CIA executive head up the whole program.

That was James Weston’s role. It was interesting, Drake thought, how the room grew silent as soon as Weston walked through the sliding glass doors and onto the lab floor.

"Carry on, people,” Weston announced. "Don’t mind us.”

A slim, attractive woman, her long blond hair hidden by her cap, looked up from the surgical table. "We never do, Mr. Weston,” Dr. Heather McDaniels said. She grinned at Drake. "Hello, Chris. Welcome back! How was your . . . vacation?”

When he’d been pulled out of RAMROD and given TAD—temporary attached duty—orders to join the
snowdrop
op into Colombia, the story passed around the RAMROD lab was that he was vacationing in Florida. No one believed it for a moment, of course.

"Didn’t even have time to get a suntan,” Drake replied. "Say! Your friend here’s looking almost human.”

It was a running joke among RAMROD team personnel. Rod had been looking "almost human” for two months now, ever since they’d begun molding the soft synthetic that served as the robot’s skin to simulate wrinkles, blemishes, moles, and the minor imperfections of detail that had transformed him from a department-store mannequin into something that, dressed and walking, would be indistinguishable from a human.

Biomimicry,
they called it. An android, a robot designed to look like a man. Rod had begun his—was
life
the right word?—his existence, anyway, as a Tinkertoy construct of titanium-steel alloy and camera eyes.

Now, lying stretched out on the table, Rod appeared to be perfectly human, a man in his mid-thirties, lean and hard-muscled, with wavy, light brown hair that was almost blond and features that Drake had once heard described as "ruggedly handsome.” Upright, the robot stood three inches taller than Drake’s compact five-foot- nine-inch frame, but he had a lighter build. That lightness was illusory, of course. A guess-your-weight barker at a carnival might have set Rod’s Weight at 170 pounds. In fact, in its current configuration, the RAMROD robot would have tipped the scales at 290.

The skin looked and felt lifelike, radiating a body temperature of thirty-seven degrees Celsius. Special programming imitated respiration and, at need, could mimic heartbeat and pulse. Extraordinary effort had been expended on such added niceties as wrinkles around the eyes, moles, eyelashes, body hair, and entirely gratuitous nipples, genitals, and navel. The idea, as the updated RAMROD project directives had succinctly phrased it, was "to simulate in detail external aspects of human appearance, such that reasonably severe inspection, including strip searches or exposure in public locker rooms or lavatories, will not reveal the artificial nature of the subject.”

Most of the Rand and DARPA technicians assumed that the CIA wanted the realism so it could employ Rod as a robot spy. Never mind the fact that Rod would never have made it past an airport metal detector. Drake leaned closer. "Hello, Rod.”

"Can’t hear you,” a technician said. "He’s off-line.” "Sack time, huh?” Drake saw that the robot’s right shoulder had been opened up for some mechanical adjustment, the skin peeled back and held by clamps, a steel access panel underneath removed. The SEAL was used to the sight by now, though he still felt a small shock each time he looked into the robot’s interior, expecting, perhaps, to see blood and bone.

Instead, uncountable slender, colored wires arranged in compact bundles shared the cavity with multiple layers of intricate, needle-slim parts that seemed to slide across one another with frictionless ease as a technician manipulated them with a probe.

Dr. Edward Costrini was watching the manipulations through a binocular viewer positioned over the opening. On a TV monitor behind his head, the complexity of the robot’s servohydraulic system flexed and rippled like living muscle tissue.