Daniel Suarez - Kill Decision

So by Nature’s measure both Kinshasa and Brazzaville were a resounding success. Happiness and contentment weren’t in great supply, but there were lots of young people, eager to lay the groundwork for another generation. The rage here was of a type Odin had seen in all the shantytowns and slums of the world: Young men without prospects were not happy about their situation. In the vast game of Darwinian musical chairs, whenever the music stopped there were large numbers of people without a seat-and some smartass had sold them guns.

This was the root of most conflict in the world-people asserting their will to survive, to flourish, and to procreate. Evil had nothing to do with it. And although he’d worked these hidden conflicts for years, Odin knew that most fighting was just a symptom of another problem: too many people competing for limited resources. And yet fighting wouldn’t resolve this either. Rwanda, for example, was still the most densely populated country in sub-Saharan Africa even after the genocide. No, the best way he knew of to defuse these conflicts was to provide opportunities and education to women. Independence. Once that took, population growth would ebb, and actual plans could be made for the future.

This was not a methodology favored by weapons manufacturers.

Odin stood at the visitors’ railing and studied a glowing constellation of high-definition screens arrayed around the control room. Sprawling shantytowns simmered below the surveillance platforms. A populace unaware that they were the test subjects for a grand experiment.

“Have you ever seen EITS in action, Master Sergeant?”

“I have not, General.”

A uniformed African-American JSOC brigadier general stood in the center of the control room as green-badge contractors in shirtsleeves manned most of the workstations in cubicles around him. The general took a sip from a white al-Qaeda-branded coffee mug. “Welcome to Stuttgart. What you’re looking at is nothing less than the future of low-intensity conflict management.”

“I appreciate you taking time for me, sir.”

“Always happy to assist The Activity.” He looked up at the screens lining the walls. “You might occupy a different command silo, but our systems could be a tremendous help in your group’s line of work.” The general reached out and straightened the visitor’s badge on Odin’s lanyard. It said merely Visitor.

“I’m eager to see what they can do, sir.”

The general took another sip from his al-Qaeda mug.

Odin had seen these mugs many times before in command centers. They were much sought after by the REMF crowd. Al-Qaeda was, after all, mostly a media organization-one with a Web presence that would put Ashton Kutcher to shame. They rolled out their own branded characters and products to jihadists worldwide on a regular basis. They even had professional-looking magazines and journals, along with podcast reality shows, making jihadi documentaries with Western video-editing software. Both sides could claim it as ironic with entirely different emphasis. If even terrorists ran franchise operations, maybe there was some common ground, after all.

Odin glanced up again at the array of high-definition screens and across the rows of control board operators. Dozens of people manning supporting systems. “I was told this is a test bed-a prototype-but it looks operational.”

“In a limited geographical zone, it is. This is a joint public-private SAP. Major private sector partners helped build this operations center to showcase what a truly unified twenty-first-century command looks like. We think this technology has a tremendous future.”

“We, sir?”

“It’s difficult not to take a proprietary interest. My staff and I have contributed time and effort to make sure this system meets real-world operational requirements.”

Odin actually knew quite a bit about the systems integrated into EITS, such as the Gorgon Stare, along with all the other systems that defense contractors were developing: automated 3-D mapping of Third World cities, building by building; as well as ARGUS-IR, the Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance-Infrared system. They were networked, unmanned suborbital camera-and-narrow-aperture-radar platforms-airborne optics tiling together live, highly detailed imagery of a broad swath of terrain in real time. A persistent unblinking eye creating a digital, three-dimensional model of reality as it happened.

Odin nodded up at the main screen-a broad view of the smoke-shrouded shantytowns of Brazzaville. He’d run ops there numerous times in the past decade. “What are we looking at?”

“You don’t recognize it?”

“After a while all these shit-holes look alike, sir.”

The general raised an eyebrow. “The location isn’t important. It’s what the systems can do that’s important. Compared with a platform like Gorgon Stare, the imagery from a Predator drone is like taking Polaroid pictures through a goddamned straw. We can zoom in on any portion of a vast battle space-each airborne asset has one hundred and sixty-five individually controlled high-resolution cameras. Multiple assets can be networked to programmatically tile together contiguous, high-resolution surveillance of broad swaths of terrain in real time. Synthetic aperture radar allows us to see through both clouds and darkness. This is an all-seeing eye, Master Sergeant, permanently recording all activity below from a height of sixty thousand feet-well above the weapon range of these populations.”

Odin nodded. No doubt the names from Greek mythology encouraged the impression of an unassailable Mount Olympus. “The technology, was it developed in the States or-”

“International partnership, but in full accordance with DOD EAR, ITAR, and OFAC export control requirements. Our international partners are just as eager to see counterterrorism operations succeed under every regional command.”

“And these are live images.”

“Live. Everything you see on the main screen is live, real world. But live imagery is the least of it.” The general moved over to a workstation manned by a uniformed JSOC first lieutenant wearing a headset-a strapping blond kid with clear skin and good posture. “Gartner, replay that truck sequence in sector H-Six we were looking at.”

The lieutenant immediately paused the imagery on his screen and tapped in some coordinates.

The general watched intently but spoke to Odin. “The critical difference of EITS over previous surveillance systems is that this high-resolution video imagery is retained over time in a data cloud, allowing analysts to ‘rewind’ the entire battle space-to see what might have taken place in a given locale over time.”

As Odin watched the nearby monitor, the image zoomed in to a tiny corner in the vast shantytown. People were walking past, but then they stopped in midstride. The video rapidly began to rewind, people and vehicles moving backward, until a faded red Toyota pickup moved into frame. The image then halted and began to play forward again, showing several armed men loading crates onto the truck bed.

Lieutenant Gartner was clearly used to doing demos with the general, because he was already doing what the general was about to ask.

“We can move in for a close-up of faces…”

The screen had already done so.

“… and we can even rotate the view.”

The image was already circling around to the other side of the men-not in a smooth pan, but in fifteen-degree leaps of POV.

Still, it was an impressive technical achievement. Odin remained emotionless. “How far back in time can you go?”

“As far back as we want to allocate storage space. We can even flag certain regions for long-term storage. Trouble spots.”

The image was already zooming out to the large city view. Live again.