Daniel Suarez - Kill Decision

It was past one in the morning, and as he clicked across the quiet building lobby from the parking elevators, the RFID tag in his badge identified him to the armed security people at the front desk before he arrived. He didn’t recognize this crew, but then, security people were always rotating. And the security system told the guards everything they needed to know about him.

“Evening, Mr. Clarke.”

Clarke nodded as he passed the buff Latino and his female colleague in navy blazers.

“Should I turn on the lights for twenty-two?”

“Don’t bother. I like the darkness.”

Clarke nodded to them as the elevator arrived, and he tapped the button for the top floor. In a few moments he was moving through the lobby of his company’s full-floor office. The full floor wasn’t necessary, but then, they had lots of subtenants who didn’t want nameplates and addresses of their own. It was hard to say what any of them did, but none were here at the moment. The place was deserted.

Although it was originally Marta’s idea, Clarke had started to enjoy coming in to the office in the wee hours. It was relaxing not having his phone constantly ringing. Instead he was issuing most of the messages without having to deal with real-time responses.

He drew a key card out of his pocket and unlocked his office door with a muted bleep-bleep. Tossing his leather satchel onto the sofa, he moved across the large corner office in the dim emergency lighting. There along the far wall was his favorite piece of art-a slab of cut blue-green glass six feet wide, four feet tall, and one inch thick on a three-foot-tall granite pedestal. Projected into the heart of the glass by an ingenious arrangement of blue, white, and red lasers and spinning mirrors was a map of the world, onto which was projected the current “mood” of every continent as derived from word forms flowing through the public Internet-data from Web search queries, blogs, social media entries, Wikipedia edits, news articles, and on and on. Tag clouds of the ten most common words and phrases flowing through the veins of the Net filled the boundaries of each continent. Positive words such as hope and great were depicted in blue, neutral words in white, and negative words in red. Even as he watched, large red letters for attack seemed to encompass half of North America. He could spend hours watching the mood of the world shift and spread like a lava lamp of news. When the Japanese earthquake and tsunami occurred, he had seen the red data race across the globe faster than the actual shock waves.

The artful device had cost him two hundred and ninety thousand dollars, but he would have paid double. With it, the moment anything happened in the world, he knew. It was his personal crystal ball. Nothing could surprise him as long as he gazed into its depths.

“A fascinating piece,” a voice spoke from behind him.

Clarke spun in alarm toward a darkened corner where his reading chair stood.

“I saw something like it in Germany. Except it wasn’t so beautiful.”

“What the hell? Who are you? How did you get in here?” Clarke started edging toward his desk and his phone.

“Looking for this?” The man tossed Clarke’s desk phone into the center of the room, where it clattered to a stop. A tail of severed cord trailed from it. “Don’t reach for your cell phone either. You wouldn’t live to dial.”

“What are you doing in here? Do you have any idea how serious…” Clarke was still backing up as an intimidating man with cold blue-gray eyes emerged into a shaft of light. The intruder was dressed in a white plastic smock with rubber gloves and plastic booties. A six-inch killing knife held firmly in one gloved hand. “Oh, God.”

“Surely you knew there would be consequences for what you’re doing?”

Clarke looked around and considered shouting for help.

“Go ahead. No one can hear. I imagine that’s the whole point of this place.”

Clarke bumped into the edge of his desk. “I don’t know who you’re working for, but I can pay you more.”

“I’m not here for money. What I want is information.”

“I’ll tell you everything I know. No problem.”

“Your firm is part of a private intelligence-gathering operation. One designed to detect and neutralize opposition to your clients’ enterprises. Correct?”

Clarke struggled to find words. It was a familiar-sounding process but with an entirely different emphasis. “Wait, wait. We gather information from legal sources. We market ideas. We predict likely scenarios-what we do is simple business intelligence.”

The man stared. “You’re a propagandist, Mr. Clarke, and personally, I don’t give a shit how you rationalize it in the wee hours of the night. What I want to know is who hired you to push autonomous drones.”

Clarke was at a loss. “Is that what this is about?”

“Who hired you?”

“Surely you-”

“We could breach your network, examine your banking transactions, trace payments to and from offshore shell companies-but frankly, fuck that. I don’t have the patience. It’s three times now that some asshole has tried to kill me with a drone strike, and I’m ready to start sending back severed heads. And unless you tell me something I don’t already know, I’m gonna start with yours.”

“Oh, God.” Clarke started to hyperventilate. “You think I have something to do with the drone attacks? Hold it, hold it. I’ve got nothing-nothing-to do with those attacks. We were hired by M and R to help mold public opinion in support of the drone appropriation. That’s all I know. That’s it-”

“Who at M and R?”

“I could give you names, but they’re just lawyers. They’re all just lawyers. I’m telling you, they’re all half out of their minds with fear that they’re going to be the next one hit by a missile-they’re sending their kids to suburban schools like this is the London Blitz or something. We were paid to sell drones to the public, but frankly it makes sense-we’re under attack. Why wouldn’t we want to launch drones in our own defense as quickly as possible?”

The man moved closer, rolling the knife in his palm with frightening skill. “Time’s up.”

“Wait! Wait!” Clarke held up his hands defensively. “Rita Morehouse. Jack Allenby, Aaron Nichols, uh, Uma Verazzi.”

“Those are your handlers at M and R?”

Clarke nodded, suddenly sweating and trembling. “Yes. Please don’t kill me. I promise I won’t warn them. I swear it.”

“Well, you’re not someone I’d want watching my back. I didn’t even have to cut you.” The man deftly grabbed Clarke’s silk tie and, with a single frictionless motion, cut it clean away, leaving an orphaned double-Windsor.

Clarke recoiled, trembling and clenching his eyes shut as he held up his hands defensively. “Please! I promise you. I swear it.”

After a few moments he opened his eyes warily, but the man appeared to be gone. Clarke lowered his arms to see his office door open and himself alone. He let out a deep sigh, just now realizing he’d forgotten to breathe. He leaned back against his desk and tried to collect his thoughts.

The first thing he did was edge toward his office door. He then leapt forward and closed, then locked it. He peered through the glass at an angle to see if anyone was outside. The man seemed to be gone.

Clarke reached into his jacket and produced his iPhone. A moment later he was listening. Even though it was one in the morning, it only took one ring to pick up. It never occurred to him to wonder why. “Marta! Some SAD-SOG asshole just threatened me at knifepoint in my own goddamned office.”

“He said he was SOG?”

Clarke took a deep, calming breath. “No, but he sure as hell knew who we are. He said he’d been attacked three times by drones, and he was coming for somebody’s head. He was definitely black ops and wanted the names of my contacts at M and R.”