Steve Martini - The Rule of Nine

“So?” says Herman.

“So he’s flying whatever it is using the eye that’s on board that little devil,” she says. “Which means he can see everything on the ground as he flies over it.”

It’s hard to know where it is because we can’t follow Thorn’s line of sight to track the small model in the air. Then suddenly Thorn turns and looks across the field.

“I got it.” In the sunlight with the glasses I pick up the glint off one of the wings. The only reason I can see it is because it’s almost stationary in the sky, doing a tight circle, hovering over an area on the other side of the field.

“Where?” says Herman.

“There.” I point. “See the little metal shed over there? Looks like a pump house?”

“Yeah.”

“Look directly above it.”

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Looks like a little dot.”

Suddenly the little plane darts away. It moves off just a bit and then drops down quickly and starts to fly in a slow, lazy circle at rooftop height around the corrugated-steel pump house. The building is more of a box, perhaps four feet square and eight feet high, with a slanted shed roof that pitches this way. The metal is all rusted, as if it’s been there for a hundred years.

The model turns, heading toward the building. I expect it to fly over the shed roof but it doesn’t. Instead, the model noses up just as it gets there and stalls. Suddenly it falls like a rock, hits the roof, and slides off and hits the ground.

“So much for that,” I say.

Thorn grabs the box, gets in the pickup, and races across the field. He parks close to the pump house, then retrieves the little plane. He checks it out.

“Maybe he broke it,” says Herman.

“I don’t know. It looks like he’s adjusting something under the wings,” I tell them. “That’s got to be the smallest model plane I’ve ever seen. It’s not much bigger than his hand. It looks like four bent wires coming out underneath. They look like the legs on an insect.”

“Let me see,” says Joselyn.

I hand her the glasses. She focuses and looks. “Climbing, perching, and jumping,” she says. “It’s what they’re working on.”

“What?” I say.

“There’re like feet or something attached to the ends of the wires.”

Within seconds he flings it into the air again, opens the computer, and starts all over.

“What’s he doing, playing?” I ask.

“I don’t think so,” says Joselyn.

Thorn flies the model around the shed twice and then approaches from the same direction, straight in toward the roof. At the last second he noses up and the little plane falls from the air once more. Only this time it doesn’t slide off the roof. It stays there, upright, as if there is something holding it in place.

“Son of a gun. He did it,” she says.

“Did what?” says Herman.

“He perched it on the roof,” she says. “From everything I’ve read, they haven’t been able to do that yet.”

“What?” I ask.

“The military has been putting out RFPs, requests for proposals, to contractors for several years. They’re looking for somebody who can design a micro air vehicle that can perch on the side of a building.”

“Why would they want to do that?” says Herman.

“Because if you can attach enough things to the side of a building and equip them with listening devices, you can pick up everything going on inside. The power to recharge the batteries you get from a photoelectric cell. A fly on the wall could stay there for years,” she says.

“You work with some very insidious people,” I tell her.

“I don’t work with them. I just know about them.”

“You think that’s what he’s doing, trying to pick up surveillance?” says Herman.

“I don’t know,” says Joselyn. “I know they have stuff that can fly and climb. And they’re working on weapons systems, some of them no bigger than the tip of your finger. They say within a few years they’ll have robotic insects the size of a grasshopper armed with lethal toxins and heat sensors to home in on the human body. They could release them by the millions using missiles tipped with cluster bombs. If they can do that, they can do anything.”

“Where do you guys get this stuff?” I ask.

“It’s not science fiction,” says Joselyn. The second she says it I hear a high-speed whirring sound. It comes from behind us, sounds like the wings of a hummingbird, and races over our heads. It’s gone before we can even see it.

“Son of a bitch,” says Herman.

When I look out at the field, Thorn is standing there holding the computer, looking down at the screen. The little model is no longer perched on the roof.

“Let’s get out of here,” says Joselyn.

“It’s too late. He’s seen us,” says Herman, who is already halfway to the car.

I lift the binoculars up to my eyes with one hand. “What the hell is that?” I am looking back at the jet under the camouflage netting. The rear ramp is now down. The man who was doing the welding is testing the motor that lifts the ramp up and down. As I look at it I realize why. The ramp was never designed to carry the kind of weight represented by the bomb. Resting on a steel cradle just above the stairs is the massive casing of a torpedo-shaped device.

“I gotta call Thorpe,” I tell her.

“Later,” she says.

I pull out my cell phone.

“Not now,” she says.

“Just a second.” I fumble with the applications until I find the camera. I look at the screen on the phone and wait for the ramp to come down again. It won’t be a great picture but it’s better than nothing.

“We don’t have enough time,” she says.

Thorn is down on one knee out in the field with the open cardboard box next to him.

The ramp starts to come down.

Thorn is charging up the little bird for another look. He finishes and then slowly stands, turns around, and looks up. Like a flashbulb going off in his head, he suddenly realizes what’s on display under the belly of the big plane. He spins around and looks up toward where Joselyn and I are standing. I don’t think he can see us, but he knows we’re here.

I wait until the end of the ramp reaches the ground, like a yawning mouth, and then I snap the picture.

It’s a footrace for the car, with Joselyn out in front. Herman is already behind the wheel, with the engine running.

We jump in the back and Joselyn yells, “Move!”

“Do you think he saw us?” I ask.

“I don’t, but I think we better find another way out of here,” she says.

There’s a map in the glove compartment,” says Herman.

He is ripping along the dirt road doing at least fifty miles an hour, fishtailing in the sandy soil. Joselyn and I are bouncing around in the backseat. My head hits the ceiling of the car.

“Get the map,” he says.

“I’m trying. Slow down or you’re going to kill us. We won’t have to worry about Thorn,” I tell him.

“Where does this road lead?” says Joselyn.

Herman is driving farther into the brushy hillside, away from the pavement we came in on.

“It’ll take us back to the highway,” says Herman. “There’s a turn, but I’m not sure where.”

“How do you know?” I ask.

“’Cause I checked the map to make sure I had a way out before I parked,” he says. “But I don’t want to make a wrong turn.”

He slows for a few seconds and I reach over from the backseat, into the glove compartment, and pull out a folded single-page Avis map.

Herman glances over. “No, not that one. The one underneath.”

I fish around inside and find another, thicker map. As soon as I slump into the backseat I unfold it and it opens up like an accordion, enough paper to seal off the backseat. It’s a geodetic survey map showing the island in sections. “Did this come with the car?”