Jerome Preisler - Net Force--Attack Protocol

“So somebody fucked with their satellite readings?”

“Looks like it, sir. They were in the dark about the swarm’s heading and flight path until I raised them.”

A moment passed.

“We’ve been set up,” Howard said. “Like tin ducks in a shooting gallery.”

Neither Fernandez nor Wasserman spoke. The colonel sucked in air. It whistled slightly through the gap between his front teeth.

“Okay,” he said after a second. “Wass, I need a linkup to Duchess. Quick.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Julio?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get ready. You’ve got till I’m off the com. Then it’s showtime.”

Laura and Mario drove toward the decimated barracks, making their approach from the left across Janus Heights, staying within a hundred yards or so of the field’s southern border. Ahead of them at the extreme eastern end of the parade grounds, the high, hungry flames leaping from the buildings gave the postmidnight darkness an eerie, orange tinge.

“Laura...stop here,” he said from the rear of the Jolt.

She applied the brakes, shifted into Park, and twisted around in her seat. “Que te pasa?”

“I want to check something out,” he said. “There are binoculars in the glove box.”

She opened the box, fished them from inside, then twisted around in her seat and passed them back to him.

Mario raised the binocs to his eyes. The buzzing in the sky could no longer be mistaken for anything but drones...and a lot of them. It seemed much lower and closer than just a few minutes ago, and reminded him of the cyclic, pulsating hum of a large power transformer. But louder. Exponentially louder.

He gazed out to his left, eastward and southward. The clouds had thinned and shredded after the snow petered off, and the combined luminosity of the moonlight, starlight, and flames gave him a clear view of the parade grounds.

There were two stationary hedgehogs in sight, one on the south side of the building, another on the north side. Spree and Nash, he guessed, following some corrupted version of their patrol directives, continuing to protect their specified sectors in their robotic minds. If he was right, their positions revealed something about how their programming had been manipulated and altered. Probably, Earl was out of sight behind the burning building.

Mario was still looking through the lenses when he noticed something at the very edge of their periphery. To the east. He swung them farther in that direction...and snatched in a breath.

“Mario...what is it?”

He realized he still hadn’t answered Laura’s first question.

“I was looking at the hedgehogs outside the barracks. But then I saw them .” He pointed and held out the binocs. “Here. Take these. They’re headed toward the barracks. See?”

She held them to her eyes.

“I see,” she said. “Are they tanks?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “They’re Pumas. Armored battlewagons. Kind of a cross between tanks, trucks, and personnel carriers. The three up front are four-wheelers. They’re moving in a wedge.”

“Like an arrow.”

“Right. It’s an attack formation.”

She kept looking through the glasses. “I see a fourth one. A little behind them. It’s bigger.”

“Yeah,” he said. “A six-by-six. That’s the command-and-control vehicle.”

“Who do you think is inside them?”

He was quiet a second. Some of his earliest work at Janus had involved assisting Julio Fernandez with improvements to the master/minion configurations of his autonomous and semiautonomous vehicle systems. Logically...

“I think those first three are RCVs. Robotic combat vehicles,” he said. “That last one, the C&C, it’s probably manned. There could be a whole crew in it. Maybe Commander Howard if he made it out of headquarters. Maybe Sergeant Fernandez, too. He set up the system architecture. All of it. Knows it better than anybody.”

She lowered the glasses.

“Mario,” she said, “ hay algo no entiendo. Why are the robots just standing outside the barracks?”

He thought about that a minute. It was a good question.

“The building has a reinforced basement. An emergency shelter,” he said. “The ’hogs could be waiting. Guarding it. In case there are survivors inside.”

“Then those Pumas...they must be going there to get people out.”

“Yeah,” Mario said. “Must be.”

Laura looked at him. “We have to help,” she said.

“No,” he said. “I’m pretty sure there are drones in the air...and I don’t think they’re ours. And you’re a civilian. Not a soldier. You have to get away from here.”

“Mario, Mario...ese no es el punto,” she said in Spanish . “Este es nuestro deber como humanos. Pararse y ser valiente.”

He looked at her in silence.

That’s not the point, she had said.

It is our duty as human beings to stand up and be brave, she had said.

Mario kept looking at her. His throat felt thick. At that moment, he knew she was everything he could ever want out of life. Laura Cruz and a thousand endless nights of holding her close. Two kids, three, maybe more. A family. Boys that looked like a combination of their mom and dad, and little girls that were miniature versions of Laura, with deep, dark beautiful brown eyes exactly like hers.

He sighed, nodded.

“Let’s go,” he said.

George Bush Center for Intelligence

Langley, Virginia

Morse was on her second trip back to her desk from the Keurig machine when the phone rang, her office landline this time. It was Howard again. She hurried to answer, lunging for the phone without setting down the coffee. Big mistake. Physical coordination wasn’t her greatest strength. It became an outright weak spot under stress. The coffee barely missed her blazer while sloshing over the rim of her cup onto the desk.

She set it outside the spill and jabbed at the speaker button.

“I’m here,” she said.

Howard gave a twenty-five second update. He told her about the drone swarms. One launching from Mihail Kogălniceanu Airfield. A second group from Camp Turzii in Satu Mare District. Then he outlined his plan to clear his personnel from the bunker.

Morse felt her pulse quicken as he spoke. She noticed coffee trickling over the side of the desk, yanked some tissues from a box on the other side, and wadded them into the spill.

“First things first,” she said. “I don’t see how you can launch a rescue operation without support.”

“It’s already done,” Howard said. “We’re moving in.”

“Then abort and move out. It’s suicidal.”

“And leave my people?”

“The bunker’s built to hold up under massive bombing.”

“I’m not worried about the bunker. I have wounded men and women down there.”

“They can have air and ground assistance within the hour. POTUS and Director Michaels have assembled a task force from BS-AST. There’s a brigade of Marines at MKAF. And a joint mechanized task force is ready to deploy from Novo Selo in Bulgaria. They have a THOR antidrone unit. Don’t be foolish, Colonel. Move out.”

“Not till we evac the bunker, Duchess.”

A second of silence.

“Goddamn it,” she said. “I could turn my request into a direct order.”

Both knew she wasn’t bluffing. Net Force’s rapid kick start had led to myriad interim command-relationship agreements between its various components, the intelligence community, and the military. Under those CRAs, Morse was Quickdraw’s ultimate TACOM, or tactical command officer.

“Since when do you cuss?” Howard said.

“Since you turned into Mike Carmody.”

“I’m gonna ignore that one.”