Kill Decision (38 page)

McKinney limped along with a cane and stood next to a large tree, observing the festivities. It was a type of Mexican music she’d never heard before. No horns—almost like country or bluegrass. With a lively beat.

The aroma of a whole pig roasting over a fire pit came to her, along with that of vegetables and fruit being grilled. Tequila and beer flowed, along with wine. There were smiling faces and laughter all around her. She remembered this from war-torn areas of the world. No one treasured happy moments more than those going through dark times. Mouse was right about that. Community was what sustained people.

At the far end of the courtyard, among armed militiamen, Odin’s team was gathered in a circle, their arms around each other. Some of them looked seriously inebriated. McKinney could see the grief in their expressions. Smokey in particular wept as Odin rubbed his crew-cut head, comforting him. Foxy raised a beer bottle, and they all poured it onto the ground before them. It appeared to be a memorial rite for their fallen comrade.

Doctor Garza put her arm around McKinney. “How are you feeling, Professor?”

McKinney looked up. “Stiff, but I decided to take Mouse’s advice.”

“Good. You need to exercise the leg. No dancing, though.”

McKinney laughed. “Don’t worry.” She gestured to the band. “I’ve never heard a mariachi band like this.”

“That’s because it’s not mariachi. It’s a
conjunto huasteco
ensemble—probably a little different to your ears. Oh, look. . . .” She pointed to Foxy, who had suddenly appeared onstage. He grabbed a small guitar as the band urged him to join them. “Foxy has a rare gift for the
son huasteco
. He must have some Mayan blood in him somewhere.” She grinned mischievously.

McKinney noticed that the group of mourning commandos had already broken up, and Foxy was taking the stage as the audience cheered and shouted encouragement.

“Foxy, toca una canción!”

There was laughter and people clapping. McKinney couldn’t help but smile. On the edge of the gathering there were children as well, dancing and playing. Their laughter was infectious, as they shouted for Foxy to play.

Foxy started boldly strumming his borrowed Spanish guitar, and the crowd roared their approval as he fell in with the rest of the band. But soon he began to play around their music, weaving rhythms in and out as people cheered. He began to sing with a rich baritone voice. It was stirring, passionate music, whose lyrics McKinney couldn’t understand. But that wasn’t quite true. She could feel the bittersweet story in the emotion of music. It was just as Foxy had said back in Kansas City. Music transcended language.

McKinney had to admit the man had talent, all the more surprising given his headbanger proclivities. But she could see the truth in his belief that music connected people. All around them was joy, even amid sadness.

Mouse suddenly appeared out of the crowd and took Doctor Garza’s hand.
“Señorita . . .”

Garza laughed and turned to McKinney as he led her to the dance floor. “Excuse me, Professor.”

McKinney smiled. “By all means.”

But just then she also felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned to see Odin. He stood silently for a moment as others moved around them.

McKinney motioned to her cane. “Doctor says I shouldn’t—”

“Follow me.” Instead of heading to the dance floor, he motioned for her to follow him as he headed toward the edge of the crowd. “I need you to see something.”

“Now?”

“Yes. Our guests are only here for tonight.” He was already moving ahead, and she limped after him with the cane. In a few moments it was apparent that he was leading her toward a barn not far from the main house. On the way, just beyond the lights and noise of the celebration, she was surprised to see armed militiamen standing guard in the darkness. They all nodded to Odin as he passed. It reminded her about another truth of war—there were no time-outs.

When they reached the barn, Odin brought her through a gap in the open doors into what appeared to be a workshop. Two men were gathered around a well-lit workbench there, one a younger Asian man, the other a distinguished-looking Mexican man in his fifties. Both were clearly dressed for the party but were now busy examining the damaged drone Odin’s team had reassembled from their encounter in Colorado.

The men both looked up as Odin and McKinney approached.

Odin nodded to them, gesturing to McKinney. “Gustavo, Tegu, this is the professor.”

They both nodded back and extended their hands. “Professor.”

Odin turned to McKinney. “Tegu used to manage communications for smugglers, and Gustavo was a senior chemist for the drug cartel that controlled this region.”

“You’re a chemist?”

Gustavo shrugged. “It was not my goal to work for the cartels, Professor. I was a chemical engineer, but then, sometimes we’re not given a choice. I have a wife and children.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply . . .”

Odin gestured to the workbench. “I sent chemical samples and asked Tegu to bring some equipment and have a look at our little friend—see if your theory about pheromones panned out.”

McKinney moved up to the workbench and could see Tegu using some sort of voltmeter to test connections on the black drone. “And what have you found?”

Gustavo answered instead, picking up one of the aluminum cylinders, but gesturing to the dead drone. “Fascinating design. This appears to be a chemical-dispensing, chemical-reading electromechanical machine. The pepper scent you smell is a diluted mixture of oleoresin capsicum, the active ingredient in pepper spray. This cylinder here contains o-chlorobenzalmalononitrile. It’s a lacrimator found in teargas. Both very common chemicals you might find present at any riot or civil disturbance.” Then Gustavo held up the remaining capsules. “But these two cylinders are the interesting ones. They contain what are known as chemical taggants, used by law enforcement agencies like your DEA and ATF to invisibly mark narcotics, or cash—or anything, really. We have run into these before.” He held up one metal cylinder for them all to see. “Perfluorocarbons—chemical structures that do not appear in nature. Odorless, colorless, and which dissipate at a predictable, measurable rate. You can reliably determine how much time has elapsed since they were applied.”

McKinney looked to Odin. “That’s just like the pheromone matrix of ants. The message dissipates over time. And is unique.”

Gustavo palmed the cylinders. “These are cyclic perfluorocarbon tracers that can be detected in concentrations as little as one in ten-to-the-fifteenth parts. This one is perfluoromethylhexane, and the other is perfluoro-1, 3-dimethylcyclohexane. These two chemicals, combined, could create a unique chemical signature—like a code.”

McKinney nodded to herself. “A colony-specific identifier. They could use it to identify their colony mates, and to organize colony activity.”

Tegu looked up from soldering several microchips to wire leads. Though Asian, he spoke English with no accent whatsoever. “Well, quite a few of the microchips on these antennas generate an electrical signal in the presence of a specific chemical signature.” He held up the evil-looking drone. “I managed to power it back up.” On McKinney’s alarmed look he smiled. “Don’t worry, I removed the gun barrels first. But it is a vicious little fucker. . . .”

He held the drone up to McKinney’s face, and they immediately heard the firing pins on the gun rails clicking maniacally as it tried to kill her.

“Face-detection chip. Goes for a head shot if it can. I don’t know where you found this thing, but whoever designed it should seriously consider anger management counseling.”

Odin leaned in. “What about the chemical detector?”

“Oh, yes.” Tegu held up what looked like a modified voltmeter—the one he’d just been soldering. “Gustavo and I ran some tests and discovered which chips on these antennas are responsible for detecting the perfluorocarbons.” He ran his hand along the antenna that he’d grafted onto the voltmeter. “I removed the antenna and attached it onto this old voltmeter.” He pointed at the green LED numeric display. “The antenna detects the presence of these chemical taggants, and I’ve wired it so this display shows their concentration level.”

McKinney accepted the jury-rigged detector and held it up to the perfluorocarbon canisters. The LED readout immediately raced up into the hundreds. As she pulled it away from them, the readout started to count downward. “Meaning we can now follow their trail.”

Odin collected the cylinders from Gustavo. “Meaning we can hunt them. Hopefully back to their source.”

CHAPTER 23

Collateral Damage

H
enry Clarke sat
in a damask armchair next to his bed in an Egyptian cotton robe. A bottle of Dalmore fifty-year-old single malt was open on the table in front of him. A crystal glass of Scotch chilled by cold granite stones stood half-full in his hand.

He could hear the gentle breathing of a young woman in his bed nearby—sound asleep beneath the silk and down. He glanced back at her lush red hair. Her perfect alabaster skin. Clarke considered what a positive reflection she was on him, and he thought of places where he should be seen with her. He took another sip of the Dalmore.

The light of the sixty-inch plasma-screen television played over the girl’s form in shadows. The TV was on a clever mechanism that concealed itself in the wall when not in use. Clarke had gotten tired of waiting the several seconds it took for it to rise from its hiding place, and now he left it uncovered all the time. There was a moral in there somewhere, but he couldn’t fathom what it might be through the fog of Scotch. Perhaps: “Just because you
can,
doesn’t mean
 . . .”
No, that wasn’t it.

The pattern of the shadows suddenly calmed—meaning the commercials were over. He turned to face the screen again. He liked watching the news in the middle of the night with the sound turned off. A vaguely mannish British anchorwoman spoke silently for several moments, and then the screen was taken over by U.S. senators and pundits. Now there was file footage of twin Manta Ray drones flying in formation—above the Statue of Liberty, no less! A twofer: a veiled 9/11 reference (guarding sacred ground), and a positive association with liberty. Marketing psychologists deep in the bowels of M & R had no doubt thought that one up.

But the news had moved on now to shots of American FBI and Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents confiscating what looked to be remote control toy airplanes and vehicles—the larger ones that require a license to operate. We were declaring toys illegal now?

Clarke unmuted the TV with the remote. The anchor spoke with the video as a backdrop:
“. . . emergency legislation amending FCC Part Fifteen to restrict remotely piloted and autonomous vehicles in the United States—including those licensed to operate at fifty megahertz on the six-meter band. In anticipation of the change, federal agents seized stocks of remote control aircraft and rocketry equipment from special interest clubs and retailers, and also detained suspect individuals for questioning.”

The video showed agents putting a handcuffed, balding Middle Eastern man in a Windbreaker into the back of a sedan on some grassy field. People in a nearby crowd—apparently fellow enthusiasts—were shouting angrily.

So they were restricting automation now? That was an odd development. He thought it risky to instill fear of the very thing they were pushing as the security solution. The footage depicted these hobbyists as suspicious. A fringe element that needed to be monitored. He could smell Marta’s scent on this.

His cell phone vibrated, causing the young lady in his bed to stir. He reached over to the nightstand to grab it and spoke softly. “Yeah.”

“You’re not in the office.”

“I had plans. Everything’s under control—you forget I can monitor operations from anywhere.”

“There’s still value to being in the office.”

“I see you’re rolling out new product tonight. Not sure I see the rationale.”

“What’s not to understand? Certain knowledge needs to be branded subversive. These machines are no longer toys. It was the same with the Internet—at some point hacking became a national security matter. Drone use needs to be restricted to the professionals now.”

Clarke frowned at something on-screen. “Well, it makes my job harder. I mean, they’re questioning a high school kid for sending a camera to the edge of the atmosphere with a weather balloon.”

“It could just as easily have been anthrax spores, Henry.”

“Where the hell would a high school kid get anthrax spores? More importantly, why?”

“If hackers are the militia of cyber war, then hobbyists are their drone war cousins. It’s safer for everyone if we scare them now. Put them on notice. Isolate them. Like we did with the WikiLeaks people.”

“For the record, I think it’s a mistake. It’ll create a grassroots backlash that will take thousands of puppeteers weeks to dilute.”