DEAD BEEF (Our Cyber World Book 1) (31 page)

Martin pushed on Leti as hard as he could. His rig stayed tight and strong. Arms wrapped around her would do the rest. He thought about what to do with the second piece of rope he’d cut and decided he didn’t need it.

Now would come the interesting part: getting himself and Leti upright somehow, and using her harness and release on the rope, since his was now concealed between them.

That’s when he saw them. Lights up above, on the first stretch they’d descended. Those lights, three or four, he couldn’t quite tell, were coming down, and fast.

He had to go now.

Martin struggled to come close to the edge. Using the rope Sasha had used, since he figured that one was free of obstacles for sure, he fumbled to attach it to Leti. Once attached, he struggled to stand up. The best he could do was come to his knees.

Up above two of the lights were steady, two more above. They had reached the ledge above him. “Well, boys,” he whispered, “If you use our lines, the last six feet are going to be exciting.”

Martin tried one more time to stand, and feeling the strain on his knees and thighs and back, he did it. Shuffling to the edge he got himself into position and without thinking about it, jumped.

They dropped a long way before he realized the release was open. He closed it and they came to yanking stop. He was hugging her tightly. It also looked like the ropes had held. His crotch was burning from the harness. He set that aside.

Leti stirred and mumbled something.

Up above he heard a thump, followed by another a few seconds later. Then cursing and a cry of anguish.

“Surprise, boys,” he said, having no idea who was in hot pursuit, but not having a great feeling about it.

“What’s going on?” Leti asked.

“We’re going down, Leti. Together.”

“Mr. Spencer?”

Martin pressed the release and they started descending, faster than he’d like, but under control. “Yes, it’s me. Hang on.”

She groaned in protest.

Martin looked down to see how much farther they had to go, and saw they were almost there. Then he saw Ochoa, waving. He slowed his descent, and they hit the ground at no greater force than if they’d jumped off a three foot ledge.

“We gotta run,” he told Ochoa. “First, cut me off her.”

Ochoa caught on immediately, and with his knife cut the rope in three spots.

“I carry Sasha, and you carry Leti,” Martin said.

Ochoa didn’t respond. He just did it. In one quick motion, he lifted Leti’s long body over his shoulder and started running. Martin knelt by Sasha, who was out cold, placed one arm under her legs and one under her shoulder blades and heaved her up in one go.

He ran after Ochoa, amazed at how far the ex-Navy Seal had gone already. Up above Martin heard shouting. Then came the gunfire. Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat.

Martin ran faster, never quite catching up with Ochoa, but making up a little ground. As he ran, Martin calculated. He would drive, Leticia would be in the front passenger seat, and the back seat would belong to Ochoa and Sasha. That way Ochoa could reach in the back, get the supplies he needed, and patch her up on-the-go.

Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat, the sound of gunfire kept coming.

Martin ran and listened to the hideous racket breaking an otherwise peaceful evening. Maybe Sasha was right. Maybe they would never make it back here again.

Chapter 41

“Mr. President, we have an emergent situation with Martin Spencer’s team,” the CIA deputy director said.

“Go on,” the president said. Having woken at 1 AM Eastern, the president looked haggard and quite different in his jogging suit, which, as the state of his hair suggested, he’d thrown on in a hurry.

“Shortly before 9 PM Pacific, or midnight our time, we received an encrypted message from Spencer’s team.” The message flashed on the Situation Room’s large screen: “Moving out ASAP; got Intel RE: networked UAV payload delivery; REF: Julian white paper, 2005.”

“This is probably more of Sasha Javan’s non-vetted intelligence. The message is cryptic, obviously thrown together in haste—.”

“It says what it needs to say and nothing more,” the president interjected. “They’re moving out in a hurry, sooner than planned. As I recall they were going out at midnight, but they decided to move out sooner because of intelligence they received about networked UAVs as a delivery method for the payload. See details in Julian Rogers paper, circa 2005.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“OK, do we have the paper? Can I see it? Or have we forgotten how we do things around here?”

The CIA deputy director slid a file across the table. “It’s complicated, very technical, but we have Robert Odehl on the phone ready to answer your questions.”

“Robert, I’m reading,” the president said. “Why don’t you do a voice over as I skim, please.”

“Of course, Mr. President,” Odehl said over the phone. “Basically what we have here is a white paper from Julian Rogers pitching an idea for networking drones and using each as a node to perform in a number of applications. These include surveillance, weaponized applications, traditional communications, providing wireless networking capabilities in the battlefield, and, as Julian posited, the deployment of Cyber weapon payloads.”

“That’s more or less what the abstract says,” the president said with a hint of annoyance in his voice.

“Yes, this was never developed, so it is difficult to get too in depth—.”

“Why wasn’t it developed?” the president asked.

“Funding, or the lack thereof,” Odehl replied.

“Go on.”

“In his paper, Julian conceptually laid out an architecture that moves these nodes at random, but in a coordinated way, ensuring both that the enemy cannot easily target them, and that through automation, the mission function they provide remains intact. That’s as far as we can go. The rest is in Julian’s imagination.”

“And now, apparently, ready to deploy,” the president said. “We’ve been chasing the wrong man, haven’t we? We’ve been so fixated on Spencer, we missed the main thread.”

The CIA deputy director considered his answer and said, “Sir, according to the intelligence Mr. Spencer and his team claim to have, Mr. Rogers has been captured by Iranian operatives.”

“So let’s assume, then, that he’s in the Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado tri-state area,” the president said.

“Sir, there’s another development. Our teams have reported gunfire coming from the back side of the fire lookout, just shortly after 9 AM.”

“The same time Spencer and team left,” the president said.

“That’s what we believe.”

“Mr. President, we’re getting a distress call,” the COMM chief said on the far end of the room. “It’s from Agent Ochoa. We have his coordinates. They’re moving, but updating. Do we have your go-ahead to converge?”

“Yes, of course. Go.”

“Where did they come from?” Martin was saying as he barreled down the trail, running now mostly parallel with Highway 395, looking for the turnoff that would take him out to the main road.

“Didn’t you hear it when you were dropping?” Ochoa asked. He was in the back tending to Sasha, who was still unconscious. In the front passenger seat, Leticia was rubbing the right side of her head and sniffing smelling salt from time to time to push herself out of her grogginess.

“What? I was a little busy!”

“Helos, up top. They got dropped there. We got out just in time. If we had waited until midnight—.”

“So who are they?”

“I rather not find out, but I think we will soon. I bet after they picked up the team at the bottom, they’re up top, following us right now. I think I heard two helos.”

“Great. And where are our folks?”

“You got two of them with you in this car,” Ochoa said. “And I just put out a distress call. Our guys will be on this in minutes.”

“Thanks for coordinating with me!” Martin said.

“You were a little busy,” Ochoa said.

“How’s Sasha doing?”

“OK, she’ll live. She didn’t really bleed that much, it just spread poetically, as I like to say.”

“Great! Write a poem about this. I think I hear at least one helo now.”

Ochoa cursed like the sober sailor he was.

“Leti, are you with us yet!” Martin screamed.

“Opening up the sunroof,” she said. And in another moment she was out and looking around. She too cursed as she came down. “I can barely hear them, and they’re totally black.”

“That’s Special Ops stuff, guys!” Martin yelled over the sound of the road and the rattling of the Land Rover. “I thought our guys where on our side!”

Up ahead, Martin could see something in the headlights, something big raising a lot of dust. Leti reacted before he could say it, going up top again and opening fire. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat, the casings rained down on him, a hot one brushing his cheek. Now he cursed.

Leti came down, “Give me the AK!” Ochoa gave it to her, and she went up top again. Through the rear view mirror, Martin could see Ochoa packing handguns in his pants while he held a knife with his teeth. He too grabbed an AK-47 out of the back. Martin already had a sub-machine pistol under his left thigh.

Up top, Leti fired a single shot. For a moment, Martin thought it connected because in the rearview mirror he saw a spark. But then Leti was coming down, cursing again, and Ochoa was yelling, “Incoming! Hit the brake!”

A red streak hissed past them and caught a bush on fire.

Ochoa swore and said, “Just a flare! Gun it!”

Martin went to press the accelerator, but it was too late. A helicopter landed roughly in front of them. Already figures were streaming out of it, and behind them, another helicopter hovered inches off the ground. They were trapped.

Dust came from everywhere followed by bright white lights, and suddenly they were engulfed in a cloud of haze and sound.

Leticia rolled out her door and gunfire erupted on that side. Ochoa was gone too, and Martin heard the slicing of a knife, guttural sounds, handguns firing, an AK-47 rattling, screams, glass shattering, more screams, blood streaking the windows of the Land Rover. Then came silence broken only by the helicopter blades, which eventually died both in front and in back, and the white lights went off.

As the dust settled, Martin saw two figures, searching through the bodies in front of the Land Rover. Meeting in front of the Land Rover, they faced each other and the male figure extended a hand which the female figured clasped. They pulled each other in and joined at the shoulder for a moment, two soldiers thanking each other for standing together in battle.

Martin Spencer rolled more than stepped out of the driver seat, and that’s when he noticed he was shaking. He checked himself. Not a scratch. He looked in the back seat, and didn’t see Sasha at first. When he opened the backdoor, he saw that Ochoa had stashed her on the floor board. She was moaning, but otherwise untouched.

“You OK?” Ochoa asked behind him.

“What the hell was that?” Martin asked.

“A bloody mess,” Ochoa said. “We checked them all. No IDs, no decals on the helos, fully black.”

Leti was looking through bodies still, tossing body parts aside when she found nothing. “Who are these bozos?”

A phone rang somewhere with a joyful little jingle that struck fully off-key in the midst of the carnage. Somehow his brain connected the spilled blood and mangled bodies with one 32-bit hexadecimal phrase: DEAD BEEF.

“Here,” Ochoa said, digging out the ringing phone from a body, then wiping off the gore from it on his shirt. “I bet this is for you?”

Martin brought it to his ear, smelling the scent of iron on it. “Hello?”

“Who is this?” an accented female voice said on the other end.

Martin put the phone on speaker and said, “Martin Spencer. Who are you?”

“Oh, hello, Mr. Spencer. I didn’t realize my associate handed the phone straight to you.”

Martin frowned at Ochoa. Ochoa made a spinning motion and nodded. “Just keep it going,” he mouthed.

“How may I help you ma’am, and if you don’t mind, whom I am I speaking with?”

“Let’s just say I’m an old friend of your
mon chéri
, Sasha. Is she a bit under the weather still, or might she be available for a brief chat?”

The rear door of the Land Cruiser opened, and Sasha stumbled out. She hung onto the roof rack to steady herself. Leticia ran to her and held her up. Sasha was glaring in Martin's direction, as if all her strength were now focused through her eyes to beam with pure hatred.

“I’m afraid she’s still not in chat mode, ma’am. Now, are you going to give me your name, or am I going to have to guess at it by working my way through the Old Testament, say, with the story of the prophet Samuel and his mother who couldn’t conceive?”

“I believe you mean the Torah, Mr. Spencer.”

“I believe you do, Chana,” he said.

There was a long pause, and then a clearing of the throat. “For someone in your present situation, you seem awful sure of yourself,” she said finally.

“You mistake me for someone speaking to you while staring at the barrel of a gun. Or someone concerned that the black-clad figures around him are about to reach into the back of the car and rip his
mon chéri
from him. But that’s not the man talking to you now. This man is looking at two unmarked shot-up black helicopters, pilots included, and a count of bodies too burdensome to enumerate piled around the car where his
mon chéri
rests comfortably. Do you have the right picture now, or do you need me to take a couple of snaps with this bloody phone? And by bloody, I mean literally, as in I’m utterly surprised it still works.”

“If what you say is true, Mr. Spencer, prove it by pressing the video button, please.”