Kill Decision (47 page)

As the driver turned the car to circle back, the LED counter on the detector started racing upward from zero to several hundred parts per billion.

“Whoa! Wait a second.”

Odin motioned to the driver. “Stop!”

The car stopped.

The LED leveled off at three hundred twelve. Odin gestured back to the open stretch of pavement. “Go back. Over there.” He pointed.

The driver shifted into reverse, turned around, and then headed out into the open area. Almost immediately McKinney watched the detector readout race up past seven hundred.

“It’s getting stronger.”

Indeed, McKinney could already smell the familiar peppery scent. “That’s with nothing physical left behind. Whatever was here must have been bigger than what was in Gaddani.”

They were driving along the empty dockside now. Odin looked to her. “They must have just loaded it. If we find out where that shipment was going, we might be able to intercept it. Jot down those bay numbers, Mort. And tell the driver to bring us to the shipping office.”

*   *   *

F
ifteen minutes later
they were standing in a tiny cubicle in a grungy office that smelled of cigarettes and cheap aftershave. They were crowded around Wun’s dusty computer screen, looking at a map of the vast container yard with thousands of little squares moving on it.

Wun changed some dates on the edge of the screen, and the pattern changed.

Odin pointed. “They were in Bays three thirty-six through five fifty-two.”

Wun spoke with a thick accent. “Container IDs?”

“No container IDs, Wun. Just give a printout of all the containers that went on that ship—and the name of the ship. That’s all we need.”

“Probably more than one ship.” Wun swept his hand across the yard map. “Big area.” He clicked through a few command menus, and then snorted. “Ah . . . big ship too.”

“Big ship—you mean they all went on one ship?”

Wun nodded. “Fourteen thousand two hundred forty-two container.” He held up his index finger. “One ship.
Ebba Maersk
—biggest ship there is.” A printer somewhere started spitting out paper.

McKinney leaned in. “The
Ebba Maersk
. That’s the name of the ship?”

Wun nodded. “Big, big ship. Half kilometer long.” He then scrolled through the list of containers in the manifest, shaking his head. “Different companies, same product and same weight. Machine tools. Six thousand two hundred three container machine tools.”

McKinney was puzzled.

Odin pointed at the description line:
Machine Tools
. “Kind of unusual to have so many of one thing from different companies, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “Never see before.”

Odin narrowed his eyes. “Where’s the ship heading?”

Wun ran his finger along the screen, then stopped on one line. “Singapore.”

“You have Internet access?”

Wun rolled his eyes and gave Odin a dirty look.

“Okay, fine, Wun. Can I use this for a second?”

Wun pushed back and Odin leaned in to open a Web browser. He quickly typed into the URL line as McKinney and Evans watched.

She leaned in again. “What are you looking for?”

“Commercial marine traffic is carefully tracked. Retailers and other clients need to gauge arrival times.”

Evan pushed in as well. “Ah, cool, what do you use?”

“Marinetraffic.com.”

Odin entered the name
Ebba Maersk
in the ship name box, then clicked
SEARCH
. Moments later a Google map appeared showing a line of waypoints leading away from Hong Kong and forging out into the center of the South China Sea.

Odin stared at the screen without moving for several moments.

McKinney watched him. “What’s wrong?”

“The route.” He stood up, looking straight into McKinney’s eyes.

She stared back. “You think all those containers are carrying ship-cutting drones.”

“Eighty racks per container. Six thousand two hundred containers. What is that?”

Evans answered with a nervous laugh. “That’s nearly half a million drones, Odin.”

“Okay, so, what if they don’t all contain drones? What if some contain fuel or pheromone chemicals, weapons—whatever; that could still leave a hundred thousand or more ship-cutters.”

“But what would they be cutting? The
Ebba Maersk
?”

Odin shook his head. “It didn’t make sense until I saw this.” He pointed at the map. “Heading through the South China Sea.” Odin opened another browser window and Googled the words
U.S. aircraft carriers South China Sea.

Wun threw up his hands. “Why you search on my computer, asshole?”

Moments later the search results came up and Odin clicked on the first link from a recent article on the BBC News website. It was headlined,
U.S. AND VIETNAM STAGE JOINT NAVAL EXERCISES.

Odin stood up. “USS
George Washington
carrier strike group out of Yokosuka. They’ve been operating here for a while. Joint naval exercises with Vietnam and the Philippines just south of the Paracel Islands. It’s a geopolitical chess game with the Chinese.”

“But why would China attack a U.S. carrier? It would start a war.”

Wun looked up at her, both shocked and offended.

Odin paused, grabbed the thick stack of printouts from the printer, and then nodded to Wun. “Thanks a lot, Wun. We’ll find our own way back to the dock. Give my best to your dad, okay?” He pulled McKinney away and started heading to the exit.

Evans was close behind. “Hey, later, Wun. Good luck with the smuggling.”

Wun looked after them suspiciously.

Odin spoke softly as they headed down a box-lined hallway. “I’m certain the Chinese wouldn’t attack a U.S. carrier group—but with drones no one would be able to tell who attacked it. Let’s face it: We don’t know either.”

“But why would someone want to precipitate a crisis?”

“You remember the Cold War? Lots of unquestioned defense spending. Don’t underestimate the tensions around global shipping lanes and energy, Professor. China is facing what they call the ‘Malacca Dilemma.’ Over three-quarters of their oil imports go through the Straits of Malacca—then up through the South China Sea. That gateway is currently dominated by U.S. naval power in the form of carrier strike groups. Which means we theoretically have a knife against their jugular—just like they do against ours. But if someone disrupts that balance . . .”

“You’re not suggesting there’d be war?”

“No. There’d be no definite proof who the enemy is. But it might rewrite the rule book on war. What if those thousands of containers were all weaver drone nests, Professor? Do you remember the openings on the containers we saw in Gaddani? What if that container ship is one big interconnected colony, six thousand nests strong—marked with their pheromonal scent?”

“The dock reeked of it.”

“Some were probably leaking.”

McKinney imagined the same type of drone they had seen in Gaddani—a flying ship-cutter, swarming by the thousands with the same aggressiveness they’d experienced in Colorado. “They would destroy anything that got near their colony ship—no extra programming necessary.”

Evans eased up alongside. “Then why didn’t they go ape on the workers here? Or attack the ship’s crew?”

“Maybe they’re dormant.”

Odin reacted to the suggestion. “They could activate when they crossed a GPS waypoint. Or via radio signal.” He pointed at the map printout. “How close would something have to get to the ship to get attacked?”

McKinney shrugged. “It depends on the tolerance variable set in the model. The designer could make it anything. A hundred feet or a hundred miles.”

Odin examined the printout of the container ship’s course through the South China Sea. “Once it’s out in open water . . .” He traced the path of the ship toward the Paracel Islands. “The picket ships and combat air patrol for a carrier group scout out to two hundred miles. But a commercial container ship like the
Ebba Maersk
won’t raise any alarms. That means it could get in close, and the swarm would overwhelm the
George Washington
’s defenses. If it manages to sink that carrier, there’d be no way to positively attribute the attack to anyone. America couldn’t strike back, and the rest of our carriers would be just as vulnerable. Our whole naval doctrine would be obsolete. An international arms race for swarming drones would follow.”

McKinney grimaced. “Making war the province of autonomous machines.”

He looked up. “We need to stop that ship.”

Evans shrugged. “Easy. Call the navy. One antiship missile and BOOM—problem solved.”

“We’re going to need more evidence to convince someone to blow up a Danish-flagged ship, Mort. There are people on it.”

“If this drone colony wakes up, then the crew’s dead anyway—”

McKinney held a hand up to interrupt Evans but looked at Odin. “Evans is right about one thing: Warn the navy, tell them what we’ve discovered. Or get in touch with the
Ebba Maersk
by radio and have them turn around.”

Odin shook his head. “My crypto codes are blown. I can’t even get in contact with my own command. And I’d just sound like a lunatic to the
Maersk
people.”

“What about the Chinese?”

“I don’t think they’ll be too eager to sink the largest container ship in the world without provocation. If they’re not behind this, we’ll wind up getting shot as spies, and if they are, then we’ll wind up getting shot as spies.”

“Can you call someone you know—someone high up in the Pentagon?”

Odin was still shaking his head. “That’s not how things work. You saw that vocaloid, and besides almost no one knows who we are; that’s the whole point of compartmentalizing The Activity. We function because very few people in Washington know us. The colonel was my contact, and they can apparently intercept my communications with him.”

The three of them pushed through the shipping office door and out into the bustling container yard, only to be confronted by a score of grim-faced Chinese men in fairly good suits arrayed in a semicircle at a distance of thirty feet. They wore sunglasses and radio earphones. Several were holding MP5 submachine guns, raised skyward. Behind them, beyond the door they had just exited, McKinney could see several more men appearing in the reception area of the office.

They were surrounded.

Evans got deathly pale and unusually quiet.

One of the Asian men motioned for them to put their hands in the air. “If you please, Mr. Odin.”

McKinney turned to Odin. He nodded encouragingly but without much conviction. She felt her heart sink. She wasn’t used to seeing him caught off guard.

Several men rushed over to them, patting them down as a white, unmarked panel van rolled up nearby. Even more armed men in suits got out. One of the men grabbed the paper printouts of the
Ebba Maersk
from Odin. Another grabbed the backpack from McKinney.

She felt fear rushing through her again. Were these Chinese government agents? She, Odin, and Evans were, after all, in the country illegally. But the quality of the men’s suits began to put doubts in her head. Corrupt officials, gangsters—there was really very little difference.

The men roughly and very intimately frisked her, while another man pulled her hands behind her back and secured them with plastic zip-ties. They then marched all three of their prisoners to the panel van and pushed them inside.

Evans was looking more angry by the minute. “This is why I fucking hate you, Odin. I had a life, man.” He closed his eyes in a hard squint as if having difficulty coping with his anxiety.

Odin shook his head, muttering. “Zollo . . . zollo . . . zollo.”

“Don’t even pull that bullshit with me right now.”

They were all lying on the corrugated metal floor of the van with several men standing over them holding small black submachine guns. The van accelerated, sending the prisoners sliding. One of the guards kicked Evans.

“Ow!”

McKinney rolled over to look at Odin. “Odin. Who are these people?”

One of the other guards stomped on McKinney with his expensive dress shoes. The effect was less than he’d probably intended, but she kept quiet.

Odin just stared ahead, unreadable. She’d never seen him like that, which worried her more than anything else.

They didn’t drive long—just a few minutes. Given the size of the container yard, McKinney felt fairly certain that they couldn’t have left the premises in that time. Sure enough, when the van stopped and the guards opened the rear doors to drag them out, she could see that they were in the vast, empty section of the container yard where the weaver drone shipment had departed. There was nothing but empty pavement and silent shipping cranes for hundreds of meters in every direction—and the water of the Pearl River Delta close at hand. There were fewer men now—but still about a dozen. And they were all armed. McKinney, Odin, and Evans each had two men haul them by the elbows toward the water’s edge. McKinney felt her adrenaline spiking. This used to be an alien sensation—facing imminent death—but she was starting to become familiar with it.