Daniel Suarez - Kill Decision

“That who was targeting me?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.” Odin turned the tablet screen back toward him and started tapping at it again. “Until tonight we haven’t been able to predict the target of these drone attacks in advance. But you solved that for us.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Let’s take it one step at a time.”

“Why would someone send a drone after me? I study ants.”

“Here…” He turned the Rover back toward her.

McKinney could now see a close-up infrared view of her own bungalow and its corrugated tin roof. There, hovering around her window, was a dimly visible object. A pizza-pan-sized four-rotor flying… thing. She could barely make it out as it moved from window to window with the thoroughness of a bee at a flowering bush.

She stared at the screen in disbelief. “None of this makes any sense.”

“Looks like a modified Chinese F50 airframe, but that doesn’t really tell us anything about its firmware or who sent it. I could buy a hundred of these off the back of some truck in Dubai or Moscow.”

She was still watching the evil-looking insect float outside her living quarters, her own glowing heat signature visible in bed through the window.

“As near as we can tell, the parent drone sniffs out its victims by their IMEI.”

McKinney still watched the screen. “I don’t know what that is.”

“International mobile equipment identity. Every mobile phone has a unique number burned in at the factory. That ID can be used to pinpoint the location of a specific phone anywhere in the world within fifty meters.”

McKinney had a vivid image of her iPhone charging next to her bed.

“But that’s not accurate enough to deliver ordnance. So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches to confirm the presence of the target. The spotter descends, and we think it searches the vicinity, looking for the victim’s face-probably uses a cheap pocket camera face-detection chip to make a list of human faces that it compares with target photos it already has in memory. We’ll know more if we can catch it.”

“Where would it get my photo?”

“Facebook, LinkedIn, university profile. That’s a trivial problem.”

She watched in horror as the spotter drone suddenly projected a grid of hundreds of infrared dots across the interior of her cabin-across her very body-in a light spectrum she hadn’t seen as she lay in the darkness.

“Registration grid. Once the target is confirmed, it uses an IR laser to send a coded signal back to the parent, clearing it to attack. That’s how we knew when to make our move.”

McKinney saw her own form shining an LED flashlight beam out her screen that didn’t show up in infrared, but the video focused on the quadracopter spotter drone, which floated away. A bright light blinked rapidly on its back in a complex sequence.

“The spotter then moves to a safe distance to film the strike, confirm detonation of ordnance, fatalities, so on. ELINT suggests that it then connects to the nearest Wi-Fi hotspot it can hijack to upload the video to a predetermined Web domain before the spotter also self-destructs.” He looked to the back of the plane. “Did we stop that video upload, Hoov?”

The Eurasian guy at the electronics console answered. “We did. There was a connection to our open Wi-Fi access point just before the attack. It performed a test upload-which I let past-and afterwards a large encrypted file was transferred… which I trapped.”

“Bingo. That means they don’t have shit. No damage assessment.” Odin handed the ruggedized tablet over to her, but his gaze stayed on Hoov. “What else do you have for me?”

Hoov was studying several screens of his own. “Judging from the impact radius, I’d say it’s another fifteen-kilo laser-guided fuel-air bomb.”

“Foxy, we’ll need to insert a mop-up crew into the TPDF to get the bomb fragments.”

Foxy answered. “Already in the works.”

“And the parent drone-please tell me we got clear video for once.”

Everyone turned to face Hoov expectantly.

Hoov milked the pregnant silence, then smiled. “Channel Two.”

Odin clapped once and grabbed the Rover. He tapped the screen for a few moments as the others crowded around him, looking over his shoulder from the seat backs. It was obvious that they’d been trying to get a look at their quarry for some time. Their eyes went wide and they nodded in satisfaction.

Odin looked up. “Goddammit, good job, Hoov. There’s our enemy, people. At long last we meet.”

The woman in the hijab poked her ringed index finger. “South African Bateleur?”

Foxy shook his head. “Not with that wing configuration. Looks more like a Rustom-H to me. Or maybe an Indian Aura.”

Odin was shaking his head. “No, it’s another knock-off. Maybe built with stolen tech.”

He turned the Rover to face McKinney. “Here’s what would have killed you tonight, Professor…”

She studied the black-and-white image. It was like seeing footage of Bigfoot; a vaguely familiar drone shape-straight wings, with canards, and a rear-facing propeller. It was filmed off to the side and from below, where a bomblike object was visible on a hard-point on its belly. The perspective of the image was changing slowly, as though taken from another aircraft that was moving in a different direction.

The rest of the group seemed pretty satisfied, but McKinney grimaced. “Why didn’t you shoot it down before it attacked me?”

“Not the plan. It’s important that they don’t know we’re tracking them. Not yet, at any rate. And by intercepting their spotter’s video upload, they won’t know whether you’re alive or dead.”

“Can’t you trace it”-she rolled her hand in thought-“by radio signals or something? Find out who’s controlling it?”

Odin looked grim. “That’s the problem: No one is controlling it. These drones are autonomous-programmed to find and kill their victim, and then to self-destruct. So far it’s been impossible to get a good look at one, much less capture it intact. But we’re working on that last part, and thanks to you we made some progress tonight.” He turned back to Hoov. “When did we lose it?”

“Disappeared from the radar screen nine clicks south of Target One at an altitude of twenty-two thousand feet.”

Foxy murmured, “Figures.”

Odin didn’t seem surprised either. “Any luck catching the spotter?”

“Negative. It flew off after the bomb strike. Tin Man and Smokey are beating the bush trying to find it, but all hell’s broken loose at the research station. Armed guards are running around with flashlights.”

“Pull ’em out. See what our operatives can find tomorrow. In the meantime upload everything to the gateway, and tell Expert Four I want a written assessment by the time I return.”

“Will do.”

McKinney was still trying to process the insanity of her situation. “Let me get this straight: Someone tried to kill me with a self-piloting suicide drone?”

“I know this must all seem very strange.”

She looked at him like he was certifiably insane.

“Okay. Maybe it is very strange. But now there’s a tool to cheaply eliminate people without facing consequences. That means this is about to spread.”

McKinney was still trying to grapple with it. “But… I’ve seen documentaries on plane crashes-can’t you go through the wreckage and find out-”

“What? That the parts were made in China? Everything’s made in China. Whoever’s doing this is using off-the-shelf components-the same chips and circuit boards used in computers and game consoles. What we need to do is get ahold of the firmware that runs them-their brain. But immediately after they attack, these drones climb to about twenty or twenty-five thousand feet-then self-destruct. And when I say ‘self-destruct,’ I mean they shred themselves. Explosive residue on the few pieces we’ve found shows it’s pentaerythritol tetranitrate-Primacord-basically explosive rope. Used for cutting steel.”