Mike Maden - Drone Command

“You’re not going to leave this place, ever. You do understand that, don’t you?”

“If you’re going to shoot me, do it now.” Pearce flexed his shoulders. “I’ve got an itch I can’t scratch that’s killing me.”

Feng laughed. “Kill you? No. You are too valuable alive. I’m going to extract every last secret you’re hiding in that thick skull of yours. We both know you can’t stop it. And unlike you, I’m not constrained by the Geneva Convention or the ACLU. I have no qualms about crippling you for life or blinding you. Even if I decide to let you go, you’d still be maimed and your government wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it, nor would I suffer the least consequence. Do you understand how perilous your situation truly is?”

“I think I’ve caught the gist of it. But I’m not much of a talker. So stop wasting your breath.”

“I have a technician who will not only make you talk but also, perhaps, even sing, as the saying goes. I should like that.”

“Don’t get your panties in a wad. I don’t do Broadway show tunes if that’s what you’re hoping for.”

Feng barked a command to his security guard. The big Mongolian slapped the black bag back over Pearce’s head.

Pearce wanted to scream. His mind clawed at the claustrophobic fear rising in his throat; only a sheer act of will kept him silent. For now.

“I’ll be back in a few hours and we’ll begin our first session. Until then, I want you to imagine the worst of all possible pain and know that it will pale in comparison to what I have in store for you.”

“Room service is that bad, eh?”

Feng’s cell phone chirped. He checked the screen and motioned violently toward the stairs. A few moments later Feng and the Mongolian disappeared, slamming the steel door behind them.

Pearce sat in the rickety chair, shoulders aching, shrouded in the lightless bag. The room was silent now except for his heavy breathing. He didn’t want to hyperventilate. Fought to control it. The bag was stuffy, close. But that wasn’t the worst. He felt like a miner trapped a thousand feet below the earth when the lights go out and the roof caves in. He prayed Ian would find him before the sightless black dragged him down into madness. He focused his mind on the one possible thing that could save him: the Pearce Systems tracker embedded in his gut.

It was his only hope.

Still no luck.”

Ian’s charming brogue had softened recently, Myers noticed. Too long in the States. “Can’t you do anything?”

The Scotsman shook his head solemnly. “If Troy is behind a thick wall or underground, we’ll never find his tracker signal, and unless they move him quickly out in the open, he’ll be lost for a while. We’re losing the satellite feed in ten more minutes.”

Myers paced the room, hardly noticing the plush carpet beneath her bare feet. She’d lost her husband and her son, and nearly lost Pearce almost two years ago in the Sahara. She’d cradled his unconscious body in her lap as Judy Hopper corkscrewed the plane through the air, making their escape. She couldn’t bear the thought of seeing him like that again.

Her laptop dinged. She raced over to it.

“Found her!” Myers shouted. An automated search of a classified photo database finally identified the woman in the video. Ian made a screen grab and tossed it into the NSA search engine. Maybe Lane couldn’t do anything to rescue Pearce at the moment, but at least the president could open up classified government resources for them with a phone call.

Ian rolled his chair over to the coffee table serving as Myers’s desk. “Dr. Weng Litong. Yes, I’ve heard of her. She runs the PLA’s robotic-weapons development program.”

“Makes sense she’d be in the same building with the Wu-14,” Myers said. “What’s her beef with Troy?”

“There’s no telling.” Ian tapped a few keys. Ran a loop of Myers’s video showing Weng whispering into Feng’s ear and Feng’s reaction. “Whatever she said to Feng sent him up. The question remains, what did she say?”

Myers shook her head. “Too bad my video camera couldn’t capture audio.”

“Bollocks! My head is up my proverbial arse. We don’t need audio.” Ian stood on his robotic legs and rushed over to his laptop on the dining-room table. The original video clip was on his hard drive. As he pulled it up, Myers came up behind him.

“What are you looking for?”

Ian paused the video clip just as Weng’s face came into view. He enlarged the image so that the faces of Weng and Feng filled the screen. He played the video again. Watched her lean over, whisper in his ear. Her face slid behind Feng’s head then slid back into view. Feng frowned violently, whispered back. Weng nodded. Spoke again, turned aside, hiding her face.

“She didn’t want anyone else but Feng to hear what she was saying,” Myers said. “Too bad we can’t hear it, too.”

Ian grinned. “Oh, but we can.” Ian clicked his mouse and pulled up another program. A translucent square popped up in the middle of the screen. He dragged it over to Weng’s mouth and tapped a couple of keys. “That will lock the target to Weng’s mouth.”

“What for?”

“A lip-reading software program.”

“Are you serious?”

“MI5 has been using one for years in coordination with the nationwide CCTV network. I suspect the FBI uses one, too.”

Myers knew that the Brits had installed millions of closed-circuit television cameras in public areas like subway stations, airports, and street intersections over the years, and millions more were in private use. She read one estimate that there was one CCTV camera for every eleven British citizens. Like her own miniature video camera, however, those systems often didn’t have audio. Lip-reading software was the next best thing, and maybe better, since it allowed the observer to pick and choose the conversations they wanted to hear.

Ian clicked on a few icons and the Feng-Weng loop ran again with the lip-reading software window automatically tracking Weng’s mouth.

“Not sure how this is going to help unless you speak Mandarin,” Myers said.

“Not a problem. I have a—”

“Translation program, of course.” She patted him on the shoulder.

A few minutes later, Ian pulled up the transcript. “Sorry, ma’am, it reads like gibberish. But there are some useful fragments.”

Ian was right. The lip-reading program obviously didn’t function when Weng’s mouth was turned away or was hidden behind Feng’s head, but it managed to grab a few words: Zhao, Mali, Pearce, Guo, Congo.

“Those make any sense to you?” Ian asked.

“Troy was in Mali, certainly. I don’t know about Congo. I assume Zhao and Guo are names of people? Or places?”

“Good question. Let me try a couple of searches.” Ian ran a search program that sought links between the names Feng, Zhao, and Guo. Myers popped a K-Cup into a Keurig brewing machine while she waited. “What would you like to drink, Ian?”

“Oil,” Ian finally said. “And blood.”

“Excuse me?”

Ian strode over to her with a sheet of paper in his hands. “It appears as if Feng and Zhao were both close relatives in the oil industry. Feng was his uncle. Tea, if there is any, thank you.”

Myers pulled another K-Cup for tea and popped it into the brewer. “Was?”

“Zhao Yi is dead. Killed in an elevator accident in Mali in 2015.”

“What’s that got to do with Troy?”

“Zhao was heading up the Sino-Sahara Oil Corporation in Bamako, Mali, when he was killed.”