Daniel Suarez - Kill Decision

The driver of the Polaris had stopped, engine idling, and pulled back his own ghillie suit hood to reveal Smokey. He nodded in greeting to McKinney.

Foxy shouldered his rifle. “Colonel sent word over JWICS. Says you’re to report when you get in.”

Odin exhaled as he contemplated this, sending a plume of vapor out over his beard.

Foxy looked dour. “They’re shooting us down in more ways than one.”

“We’re still on mission…” Odin headed back to the SUV.

“What? What do you mean?”

Odin marched toward the truck. “Let’s get to the house.”

Smokey and Foxy led the way on the Polaris, a mile or so down the dirt road where the ravine opened out to a small valley surrounded by wooded hills. The road forked, with the right branch descending toward the valley floor, but they followed the Polaris to the left, uphill to a big chalet built into the hillside and surrounded by sparse pine forest. The first-floor walls were of fieldstone, but stout logs formed the next two floors, with a pine-needle-covered slate roof and dormers rising above that. There was another Forest Service SUV parked near a closed garage door.

McKinney looked up through the windshield as she pulled to a stop.

Odin gestured as he got out. “Old FBI safe house. They used to debrief Russian and Cuban defectors here in the sixties and seventies.” Odin opened the cargo bay and grabbed the raven cage.

Smokey and Foxy had already pushed through the tall oak doors into the foyer of the old chalet. “Hoov!”

McKinney and Odin followed them into a musty three-story entry hall lined with mounted elk and deer heads, balcony railings, and a large staircase. There was a huge fireplace on the far wall, and although it was cold in the house, there was no fire lit. Stacked along the wall were a dozen or so green Pelican equipment cases.

McKinney then stared up at a large antler chandelier hanging on chains overhead. “This place is a vegan’s nightmare.”

“Who’s vegan?” Hoov entered the room from an interior door and nodded greetings.

Odin dispensed with pleasantries. “Get me an uplink to the colonel ASAP.”

“On it.” Hoov departed just as Ripper entered from a different doorway with Mooch. “Hey, Sarge.” She was now wearing a flannel shirt, jeans, and hiking boots. “Is it true we’re standing down?”

“No. How’s our security?”

“We’ve got boom cameras topside and an RF-transmitter sensor perimeter established at the ridgeline, but there hasn’t been any movement. No overflying aircraft.”

“Have you swept the place?”

She nodded. “Nothing.”

“Good.” Odin deftly tossed his Forest Service campaign hat over a deer head’s antlers. He then put the birdcage down and opened its door. “Huginn, Muninn. Explore.” They hopped out of the cage.

McKinney couldn’t help but notice that everyone was armed with pistols in nylon thigh holsters and scoped assault rifles hanging barrel-down on straps over their shoulders and combat harnesses with spare clips. “We expecting trouble?”

Odin spoke without looking up. “We’re always expecting trouble.”

McKinney heard a loud caw and looked up to see the ravens perched on the antler chandelier. “At least someone likes the decor.”

Hoov entered again. “Colonel’s up, Odin.”

“Thanks.” He headed after Hoov. “I want this recorded.”

“Already rolling.”

McKinney followed them both into what looked to be a rec or family room. This had another large fieldstone fireplace, and the walls were sprinkled with authentic-looking mountain bric-a-brac-snowshoes, muskets, kerosene lanterns, and framed portraits and photos of men posing with large dead animals. There was also a sizable bar along with a couple of sofas and a writing desk-on which Hoov had set up his electronics workstation. As with the rest of the place, the heavy drapes were drawn and the overhead lights and lamps on. Hoov’s workstation consisted of several flat-panel monitors, a couple of ruggedized laptops, radio gear, and wires running out beneath the drapes-through a sliding glass door, perhaps. There was also a small video camera clipped to the top of one of the monitors, on which a red LED light glowed.

Staring out at them from the central monitor was a stern-looking, thick-necked man in his sixties, in a sport coat and button-down shirt, viewed from the waist up. The lines on his face were as intricate as the Utah desert seen from space.

Odin saluted. “Colonel.”

The man nodded. “Glad to see your troop is all accounted for, Master Sergeant. Did Professor McKinney survive?”

“She did, sir. She’s with us.”

“Good. Task Force Ancile is to stand down immediately. You’re all to return to Fort Bragg with whatever intel you have.”

“Why’d they shoot down my plane, sir?”

“Let’s call it a misunderstanding, Master Sergeant.”

“I’d like to know what-”

“Return to base. It doesn’t matter what happened before; now that the drones are public, there’s been a reset. Joint Chiefs are letting Air Force take the lead. We’re to stand down. It came from the very top.”

Odin just stared for a moment. “Colonel, I think you need to-”

“It’s not your job to think, Master Sergeant. It’s your job to follow orders. Now, get to it.”

The screen blinked out.

Odin kept staring at the dark screen.

Foxy sat down in his flowing ghillie suit on the arm of the sofa. “So that’s it, then? Air Force shoots at us, and then we’re under their op-con?”

Odin shook his head slowly. “Hoov.”

Hoov looked up from his laptop screen and pulled his radio headphones off. “Yeah?”

Odin pointed at the screen. “Run it through Visuallistics.”

Hoov frowned and tossed his headphones onto the desk. “You serious?”

Foxy could see the shock on Hoov’s face. “Odin, what’s up? Why would you suspect the colonel? I mean, this is the colonel. Mouse and he-”

“I don’t suspect the colonel.”

“Then I’m not following you.”

“Just do it.”

Foxy still looked confused.

Hoov was turning to another laptop. “That was a JWICS transmission-off our own damn satellite.”

“Do I have to do it?”

McKinney looked from person to person. “What’s going on?”

Foxy shrugged. “Odin thinks someone’s running an IO on us.”

“Which means…”

Hoov was opening the image of the colonel on another computer screen. “Influence operation. He thinks the video was doctored-which is fucking unlikely.”

“But how would you know?”

“Digital forensics-software we use to check the validity of photos and video that informants send us. People sometimes add the faces of high-value targets to footage, looking for a reward.” Hoov was clicking away as he spoke. “This works like weapon ballistics: Every brand of commercial camera has an electronic signature-subtle variations of resolution and compression pattern. This software tells me almost instantly the make and model of video camera that was used to make an image.”

“How does knowing the camera help?”

“Once I know that, I can tell if any part of the image has been altered. I don’t know how anyone could do that in real time, though…” Hoov clicked away, and then stopped. He straightened. “Huh.”

Odin, Foxy, and McKinney watched him closely.

Odin spoke first. “What is it?”

Hoov turned. “It hasn’t been altered.”

Odin looked relieved. “Good.”

“I wasn’t finished.” He gestured to the screen. “It wasn’t altered because it wasn’t created by a camera. It was created by Image Metrics. He’s a vocaloid.”

“A what?”

Odin answered. “A computer-generated character.”