Mike Maden - Drone

“Try using your hands,” Dr. Rao suggested. “Give it a good shove.”

Udi spit in both hands, lowered himself, then lunged at the upper torso, careful to not catch himself in the rapidly pumping arms. He whacked it good. The robot’s upper torso twisted violently away from Udi. Its right arm windmilled high while its left arm swung low to help it keep balance. The twisting torso also twisted the hips, and the legs followed the hips. Just as it looked like it was about to crash, the robot did a quick shuffling step, turned on the balls of its feet without losing stride, and righted itself again. Within moments, it was jogging once again in the center of the broad treadmill.

Pearce laughed. “I knew I should’ve brought your wife instead.”

“Can you imagine a platoon of these parachuting out of the sky, then racing through the enemy’s streets? The psychological impact alone would be devastating.” Dr. Rao’s eyes gleamed with awe at the future soldier she was helping to create.

“This place always makes me depressed,” Udi lamented.

“Not to worry. It will be at least five more years before you’re obsolete.” She giggled, patting Udi on his thick shoulder.

Pearce shook his head, incredulous. “Thanks for the demo. We’d better push on to the main event.”

Inside the brightly lit conference room at the lab, Dr. Rao engaged a large video monitor on the center table with a tablet device in her hand. Pearce and Udi stood next to her. The other operators Pearce had selected for the Castillo mission were already doing advance work in Mexico or prepping the computer and communications networks.

Rao opened the hinged lid of a small aluminum case that was also on the table.

She reached into the case and lifted something out with a pair of tweezers and set it on the pad. “Watch the monitor, please.”

She tapped the tablet in her hand and a live image of Udi’s clasped, hairy hands popped onto the screen. When Udi realized those were his hands, he moved them, suddenly self-conscious.

“Hey! A mini spy camera. Nice,” Udi said.

“Oh, no. Much more than that,” Rao said. “Watch.”

Rao engaged the tablet again, and the image on the monitor turned toward the ceiling tiles, then rocketed for one of them. The camera looked like it was going to crash into the ceiling, but instead, it stopped abruptly. The image on the monitor turned upside down, and now Rao, Pearce, and Udi were on the monitor far below. Within a second, however, the image righted itself and enlarged to full frame on the monitor.

“Now let’s have some fun.” Rao punched another button, and the lights shut off. The room was pitch-black, but a new infrared image appeared on the video monitor. Blue wire-mesh overlays—facial recognition software—instantly engaged, scanning all three faces. In less than a second, the blue lines flashed red.

“Apparently none of us is Aquiles Castillo,” Dr. Rao said. “If one of us had been, the appropriate facial image would have flashed green.”

“Impressive,” Pearce said.

Rao pressed another virtual button on her tablet. The lights snapped back on and the monitor displayed a swift, uneven flight back toward the black box. The onboard camera hovered just an inch above it for a moment. Five more miniature mosquito drones were parked in the box. Rao tapped one last button and the camera eye landed on the black foam padding inside the box, the last image displayed before the monitor shut off.

Udi and Pearce exchanged a glance.

“Amazing. But they look very fragile,” Udi said.

“Open your hand, please,” Rao said. She picked up one of the mosquito drones between her elegant fingers and dropped it into Udi’s broad open palm.

“I can hardly feel it,” Udi said. He raised and lowered his open hand like a measuring scale. “In fact, I really can’t feel it at all.” Udi brought his hand close to his face.

“It looks exactly like a little mosquito. Incredible.”

Rao picked up another one and handed it to Pearce. He examined it closely as well.

“They’re surprisingly durable. And they’re so light, our targets won’t notice they’re on them until it’s too late,” Rao said.

“What’s the battery life?” Udi asked.

“Two hours maximum. But they can tap into a light fixture, a lightbulb, even the static electricity on human skin, and recharge.”

“How does facial recognition work with identical twins? They share the same DNA,” Pearce asked.

“Identical twins aren’t truly identical. That’s a misnomer. Even their fingerprints aren’t the same. It’s like your own face. The left side of your face is always slightly different from the right side, even though it’s all the same DNA,” Rao said.

“How many are we deploying?” Pearce asked.

“Six mosquito drones. Three lethals for Aquiles. They have a blue mark on the belly. The other three carry nonlethal identity chips for tracking Ulises. All six are already charged and preprogrammed with the correct facial target recognition.”

“Why six bugs? Why not just two?” Udi asked as he examined his bug more closely. It really did look like a tiny aluminum mosquito with tissue-thin wings.

“Redundancy. Maybe the bad guys own a fly swatter. Who knows what you may encounter. Besides, we’re not paying for them.” Rao smiled. “Any other questions?”

“Range? Limitations?” Pearce asked.

“In a windless environment, a two-hour charge will get you a half mile maximum, flying straight. Any kind of wind resistance drops that considerably, as does maneuvering around objects. Windspeed above five miles per hour will be extremely problematic, even prohibitive. These drones are really designed for close indoor operations. They operate independently, day or night.” She held up the tablet. “Use this to activate them or make programming changes, but otherwise, you don’t need it for flight controls unless you want to. Their Achilles’ heel, obviously, is that you have to have some sort of a delivery system that can deposit them safely within the operating environment.”

“I’ve got a delivery system in mind.” Pearce pointed at Udi. “Him.”

Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

Two days later, two gorgeous women in bikinis rocketed across the deep blue water of the Gulf of California in a sparkling white ski boat. It was a perfect day in paradise beneath a brilliant, cloudless sky. The occasional gull swooped overhead.

Stella Kang drove the boat, towing Tamar Stern on a single high-performance water ski. The inboard engine whined like a jet turbine. The boat ran so fast that Tamar threw a ten-foot-tall rooster tail behind her.

Their circuit took them directly past a number of luxury yachts anchored in a three-mile-long line of privilege in the waters off of Cabo, including the Castillo boat, which was parked at the farthest end, some distance away from the others.

The first time around, the girls drew quite a bit of attention to themselves. Stella was a stunning Korean-American woman. Her thick black hair whipped behind her like a battle flag. Tamar was half Ashkenazi and half Ethiopian, with piercing green eyes and short-cropped hair. The two women were attractive enough to draw attention to themselves, but nobody in Cabo had ever seen anyone fly as fast as Tamar did on her ski.

On the second pass, all hands were on deck on the yachts. The men whooped and hollered, raised their glasses and bottles, whistled and cheered. A few boats even blew their big horns as the two laughing women rocketed past. The two skiers waved and smiled at their admirers. Even the party girls on the big yachts cheered, in awe of the show that Stella and Tamar were putting on.

A half mile away, Udi and Pearce kept discreet watch from a fishing boat they’d rented. They pretended to be sport fishing mako sharks, which were running hot this time of year, but their eyes were fixed on the surveillance gear they’d rigged to keep tabs on both the Castillos and the two women on their team. A couple of big rods and reels were rammed into their holders in the back of the boat, and thick steel shark lines trailed in the water behind them. Pearce sat strapped in the fighting chair holding another rod, the butt end jammed into the gimbal between his feet. Udi was in the cabin, the boat cruising slowly on autopilot. Pearce chummed the water behind the slow-moving boat every now and then, mostly to keep a half dozen gulls circling overhead.