Daniel Suarez - Kill Decision

They all turned.

“Eat. Shit. And get back to the plane. We’re on standby until further notice.”

Aye, ayes rippled through the group.

McKinney got out as well, straightening the eye holes on her ski mask.

“Professor.”

She turned to see Odin motion for her to follow as he headed into a corrugated metal hangar across the sandy roadway.

She caught up to him. “Hey, I could use something to eat.”

“In a second. I want you to see something.” He led her out the far side, through a large rolling door to a series of olive drab military tents. Odin led her through the open flaps, where several rather fashionably dressed people were placing computer monitors and chairs, and hanging maps. Natural gas heaters were keeping the tent warm.

An attractive woman with blond hair did a double take at the ski-masked McKinney, but Odin barked, “Ignore her. Keep working.”

The woman immediately resumed what could only be described as set dressing.

Odin stopped and McKinney came up alongside him.

Two young men were adding finishing touches to what was a frighteningly real reproduction of herself-complete with hair and eye color. It was a simulacrum of her sitting at a desk, hands on her own laptop keyboard. Her twin wore a green polo shirt and jeans. One of the special effects artists was using an airbrush to touch up her neck, while the other one concealed wires beneath a mat on the ground.

“This is creepy as hell.”

The men looked up at her. One of them smiled. “Thanks.”

“What are the wires for?”

Odin answered. “Body heat. We know the spotter drones use IR, so your decoy needs to match the thermal signature of a human being. Between that”-he pointed at the iPhone sitting on the desk-“your cloned phone, your malware-infected laptop, and your physical likeness, we should be able to lure this thing in.”

One of the artists pointed. “Odin, check this out.” He plugged a wire in, and McKinney’s twin’s fingers clattered on her keyboard.

“Ha!” Odin chuckled. “Nice touch, Ian.”

McKinney’s mouth was dry just looking at her sacrificial twin. “When does this all start?”

“A few hours from now, I’ll have your laptop ‘accidentally’ log on to a mobile broadband tower overlooking Interstate Seventy, at the top of that hill.” Odin looked out at a distant antenna tower surrounded by fencing atop a nearby ridgeline. “That should let them know you’re in the United States. And where.”

“And what do you do if something comes?”

Odin studied the sky. “Let’s get some breakfast…”

Falling asleep in the cargo bay of a C-130 was like trying to catch some shut-eye on the undercarriage of a passenger train. Even after three hours she hadn’t managed a wink. McKinney stared out of one of the few round porthole windows, crystals frosting its edges. She could see a wide, barren canyonland below of eroded basins and distant brown mountains in the moonlight. The plane looked to be about twenty thousand feet up. It was a crisp, clear winter night.

Odin glanced over at her and spoke into his headset microphone. “We’ll give it another twelve hours, and then change crews at Hill Air Force Base.” His expression suddenly changed. He stopped and touched a hand to his headphones, listening to something she couldn’t hear in her radio.

She searched his expression. “What is it?”

“Something is here.” Odin turned to the others and circled his hand. “All units. All units. Bogey approaching White Sands Base at three o’clock.”

The radio crackled. It was Foxy’s voice-coming from farther forward in the C-130’s payload bay. “No unidentified radar contacts, Odin. The sky and ground are clear.”

Odin looked to Foxy across the pallets and the length of the cargo hold, talking on radios even though they could see each other. “Negative. I just got a transmission from Huginn. He’s got a positive contact.”

McKinney looked around and noticed she hadn’t seen Odin’s ravens on board. She gave him an incredulous face. “Huginn and Muninn are talking to you.”

“Yes.” Odin grabbed his rucksack from an overhead stowage rack and rummaged through it to produce a ruggedized tablet computer. “They’ve been on the ground at White Sands Base for over a day. I’m in contact via satellite radio.”

“You’re talking to your ravens over a radio?”

He nodded as he booted his equipment. “Training. They communicate direction, distance, and type of contact. Whatever this is, it’s airborne, and coming in from the east. Navy SEAL teams command attack dogs via headset commands-the only difference here is that ravens are more intelligent.” He logged on. “And can see and hear for miles and cover vast areas over any type of ground without being detected.”

Foxy’s voice came over the radio channel again. He was examining a tablet computer of his own over by the flight deck doorway. “The only radar contacts the techs have in the east are dozens of miles out. American Airlines Flight 733 from Denver to Salt Lake City forty miles out at thirty-eight thousand feet, and two private aircraft, one eighteen miles out, heading north at four thousand, and another at twenty-two miles out heading southwest at five thousand feet. You sure it wasn’t our MQ-1 they saw?”

Odin looked across the cargo back. “Negative. How many times has Huginn been wrong, Foxy?”

Foxy said nothing.

McKinney stood and braced herself on an equipment rack as the plane bumped in turbulence. She looked over Odin’s shoulder. “You’re sounding the alarm on the report of a bird?”

“Huginn and Muninn don’t act this way unless something is seriously wrong.” He looked at the signals officers studying their radar console. “Those sensors don’t reveal everything.” Odin’s tablet was now booted, and he turned the screen so she could see black-and-white thermal imagery from one of the raven’s cameras. The birds were following something at low altitude. The rocks and scrub soared past in the imagery.

McKinney studied the screen. “A raven’s-eye view.”

Huginn was trailing the black silhouette of a bird of prey gliding over the desert terrain at an altitude of perhaps a hundred and fifty feet. The second raven, Muninn, sometimes entered the frame, meaning they were flying together.

McKinney studied the image. “Looks like a hawk.”

Odin spoke into his radio. “You getting this, Foxy, Hoov?”

“Yeah, Odin, Prof’s right. Looks like the twins sent up the alarm over another bird.”

Odin studied the screen. “That hawk has one problem: It’s got no heat signature.” He pointed his gloved hand at the thermal image, and McKinney could clearly see the difference between the heat intensity of the second raven and the interloper.

Odin keyed another radio. “All units red alert. Bogey one thousand meters out and closing on White Sands Base from the east. Designate bogey Target One. Looks like a microdrone in the shape of a bird. Have the Predator swing around to track this thing. I want stable, detailed imagery on it, and port the video to the team at the JOC.”

Another voice came through, possibly Hoov’s. “On it, Odin.”

Odin strapped on a MICH helmet with a monocle over his left eye, then handed the tablet to McKinney. He appeared to be watching from the helmet eyepiece. “Pretty goddamned clever. Even if it showed up on radar, its speed and profile would match that of a bird.”

“A spotter drone.”

“That would be my guess. It’s too small to deliver any ordnance.”

Foxy’s voice again. “Agreed, boss.”

Odin was adjusting channels on a satellite radio on his harness. “Okay, we’re getting the Predator feed. Give them Huginn’s coordinates, and they should be able to pick up the bogey from there.”