Prodigal Son

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “Know my favorite euphemism for this shit? ‘Loitering munitions.’ ’Cuz that’s what we do. We loiter. Days, sometimes. Even weeks. You’re not looking into their eyes, but you know them. You’re following them. Their habits, chores. See them kiss their wife good-bye. Buy bread at the market.” Rafael breathed wetly a few times. “There’s a delay after you launch. Most people don’t know that.” He closed his eyes, held out one arm like an airplane wing. “The UAV yaws from the thrust of the missile, pixelates the screen for a sec. And then it feels like an eternity, hoping no one wanders into the screen. You know, civilians, nonhostiles.” He paused. “A kid on a tricycle.”

  Rafael’s shoulders shook some more, but his eyes stayed dry. It occurred to Evan that whatever meds they had him on interfered with his ability to generate tears. He looked numb and wrecked at the same time.

  “Then you have splash, right? Moment of impact. Dust cloud. And when it settles, you can’t always tell if you got just the one or two you was aiming at, right? Could be three, could be four. ’Cuz body parts, you copy? A fucking detached torso.” A strained sound rose from deep in Rafael’s chest, part cry, part gasp. “Little kid’s sneaker. Or they’re flapping around bleeding out, the heat signature fading and fading till they’re the same color as the ground they died on. No one talks about that shit neither. And then you got more decisions, you understand? The squirters, too, at the periphery, piss themselves with fear. And maybe you gotta clean them up, too. Second missile. Third. Who makes that choice? Who steers those in? We do.” He smacked his chest hard with a fist. “We do.”

  He pounded his chest again and again and again and finally stopped, catching his breath. The heater shut off with a dying wheeze. The air felt sharp and arid at the back of Evan’s throat.

  “And everyone else, they give us all the shit. ‘Chair Force.’ ‘Stick Monkeys.’ ‘The Chairborne Rangers.’” Rafael gave a dry laugh that lifted the hairs at the back of Evan’s neck. “Doesn’t feel like combat, but it is. You carry it, carry the same burden. You make the choices, you hear me? We at least bear that. What happens when you don’t anymore? What happens then?”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Evan said carefully.

  “Course you don’t,” Rafael said. “Course you don’t. ’Cuz you’re not paying attention. No one’s paying attention.”

  “To what?”

  “What’d the Russians just put up at the Abu Dhabi defense exhibition?” Rafael stood, agitated, finger-jabbing at Evan. “A Kalashnikov drone. Size of a coffee table, six pounds of explosives on its back. Motherfucking Kalashnikov, man. You can’t take a piss in the desert without hitting one’a their rifles. And now they want to do that for drones. ‘Democratizing smart bombs,’ they say. It’s their response to our RQ-11 Raven, hand-launched motherfucker the army uses. They answered that shit with an upgrade. Mutually assured ruination. So what’s our answer to their answer?”

  “I don’t know,” Joey said.

  “We go smaller. And smarter.” Rafael slung his Padres cap on backward once more. “The third revolution.”

  “Third revolution?” she said.

  Rafael ticked off the points on his fingers. “Gunpowder. Nukes. And now this.”

  “What’s ‘this,’ Rafael?” Evan asked, careful to keep the impatience from his voice.

  “Autonomous weapons.” Rafael blinked at them. “Suicide drones that think for themselves. Kamikaze UAVs with their own moral code. ‘Ethical adaptors,’ they call them. Ones and zeros arranged to create a sense of compassion.” An ugly laugh like a sneer. “To robo-think through using lethal force. To learn from past missions. From mistakes. Like, say, someone logged the wrong guy’s SIM card in our database. Sorry, Muhammad Number Twelve. The algorithm’ll get that shit right next time. You feel me?”

  Joey said, “Jesus.”

  “Jesus can’t help no more. They even got teams of roboticists figuring out how to engineer guilt. But—go figure—it’s a bitch making robots feel guilty. So now say that some shit goes down wrong, someone bombs a … a fucking baby-naming ceremony in Paktia—” Rafael cut off with another series of silent, tearless sobs. “Whose fault is it? Is it Jake’s? Is it mine? Nope. ’Cuz we’re no longer in the mix. We’ve evolved past needing humans to make war, right? So who bears the cost? The weight of it? Does the coder? The pogue who placed the order for the drone? The fucking contractor sales rep?”

  “And that’s what Jake got onto?” Evan asked.

  “They pulled him up to Creech North.” Despite the Faraday bags sealing their phones, despite the fact that they were alone, when Rafael said the base name, he still spoke in hushed tones from fear or reverence or both. “They needed pilots for testing. Don’t need sensor operators ’cuz that’s what the drones do, right? Make us redundant. Hell, man, it’s just life-and-death decisions, right? The hell you need me for?”

  “What do they look like?” Evan asked, though he already knew. “The drones?”

  “Insects. We’re talking swarms. One collective brain distributed across a thousand of them. They’re securely data-linked. Anything one knows, they all know. You got—wha’d they call it?—diffusion of responsibility even for motherfucking microdrones. Take one out, the other ninety-nine finish the job. And the shit these things can do. Coordinate their movements, chose optimal formations, navigate to targets. And we ain’t even talked about cluster bombs yet. Shoot a thousand of these fuckers out of an F-16 flare canister, they disperse to dodge radar, head to a congested urban environment, then join up to maximize their payload. Navigate to multiple precision strikes … Hell, you could wipe out an entire presidential cabinet at the same time in their beds.”

  Rafael breathed for a time, and Evan and Joey breathed with him.

  “They can do all that shit without a single human in the decision loop,” he finally said softly. All the anger had drained from his voice. “They just need the start order. ‘Circle that black pickup truck.’ ‘Land on the roof of that hospital.’ ‘Eliminate these two dudes inside that house.’”

  Evan pictured Declan Gentner holding his palm aloft. The spurt of blood from Jake Hargreave’s neck.

  Evan looked over at Joey. “Kill everyone at the impound lot.”

  Rafael stared at him, wide-eyed. “That’s what they used to get Jake?”

  “A KAM,” Evan said. “Yeah.”

  Rafael nodded. “Dragonfly?”

  “That’s right.”

  Evan started toward Rafael, who flinched, hands hovering tense above his thighs, ready to lift into a high guard. A reflex of the traumatized. After a moment he relaxed his arms again and looked away, tongue running inside his bottom lip, his eyes averted, embarrassed. Evan nodded reassuringly and moved past him to the fogged-up windowpane.

  He drew the letter M on the glass, his fingertip cutting through the fog. Then he added wings to the sides. “This logo was stamped on the dragonfly,” he said. “Recognize it?”

  “Mimeticom.” Rafael’s nod looked like a twitch. “That’s them all right.”

  Using his sleeve, Evan wiped the logo from the pane. “Who’s them?”

  “The company providing the tech for this shit at Creech North. Serious top-secret, need-to-know shit buried in Area 6.” He blinked rapidly four times, his nose scrunching. “It’s the Area 6 of Area 6. When Jake was up there, they found out there were glitches in the ethical-adaptor software.”

  “Glitches,” Joey said.

  “They programmed five unarmed dragonflies to surveil an office with ‘maximum efficiency.’ A reality-based tactical scenario. Had a E-1 in there at his desk, you know, playing his role. Just a kid, three steps out of basic. So they set him up in the room and pulled back to the observation bay.” A spasm caught Rafael’s eye, twitching it once. He wet his lips again, staring off into the middle distance. “When the drill went live, the first drone flew itself through his eye into his brain.”

  Joey let a breath out through her teeth.

  “The other fo
ur took perches in the corners of the room,” Rafael said. “‘Maximum efficiency.’ Easier to provide comprehensive surveillance if no one’s moving, right? Problem solved. And hey, no worries. Like I said, the algorithm’ll get it right next time.”

  Evan forced a swallow down his dry throat. “And Jake was going to blow the whistle on this?”

  “Man, Jake came back from Creech North shaken. Was looking into options within Command, but you think the inspector general’s gonna give a shit? They’re not inclined to open up the kimono ’bout anything related to the drone program. They discharged him, threatened him legally, all that. Sent a signal loud and clear. You talk, we own your ass and you die in Leavenworth. But Mimeticom’s not content to leave it there. They’re staring at a five-hundred-million-dollar contract with the DoD, and I’m thinking those motherfuckers weren’t willing to risk it on one guy keeping his mouth shut. I’ll tell you something that’s not programmable. Jake Hargreave’s soul. You try rendering that outta ones and zeros.”

  Evan felt Rafael’s outrage keenly. With the advent of drones, the Orphan Program had been downsized drastically. Why bother with the expense and uncertainty of deploying an expendable living, breathing weapon when you could merely push a button to disintegrate a target in another hemisphere? But Evan’s training, like Rafael’s, was about more than ease. It was about a willingness to shoulder the human consequences. To use pain and fear and grief and guilt as guardrails. To feel that which you were willing to inflict. Or at least risk that you might. And to carry the cost the rest of your waking days.

  “What was Jake’s plan?” Evan asked.

  “He was figuring shit out. Maybe a journalist. Or an ombudsman over at Defense. Thought about protest ads in the Air Force Times. Had to talk it through, ’cuz if you don’t talk about stuff like this, it eats you from the inside.” Rafael raised his arms, a gesture encompassing the base, the four walls of his room, himself.

  Evan pictured that plastic parking permit hung over the rearview mirror of Jake’s Bronco, lost among the air fresheners. “He came to see you here,” he said.

  Rafael gave a nod. “Once. His head wasn’t right. Talking ’bout he’s gonna break into Creech North and get evidence. No one breaks in there, man. And if they did, they’d never break back out.”

  Evan thought about that shot-up Bronco. They’d tried to kill Jake on the 110 Freeway. He’d fled his vehicle and returned to the impound lot later to peel the security-hologrammed Creech North parking sticker off his windshield. The sticker now burning a hole through Evan’s cargo pocket. Hargreave had been planning to use it to gain access to Creech North again.

  “Did he ever mention someone called ‘the doctor’?” Evan asked.

  Rafael wrinkled his nose, shook his head. “I warned him you can’t go up against this kind of power and keep breathing.” He hesitated.

  Joey sidled a half step closer. “What?”

  “Since his visit I feel like I’ve been watched. I don’t know how to explain it. Just … eyes on me.” He scratched at his arm. “But of course who am I gonna tell that to?” His posture slumped, and his shoulders rolled forward, defeated. “Looking back, I wish he hadn’t told me any of it.”

  “Do they know that you know anything?” Evan asked.

  “Well, them getting my ass landed in here means they wanted to make sure no one would listen to my delusional schizophrenic ass. But Jake didn’t let up, and they killed him. So they’re moving, cleaning up. Who knows what kinda risk those motherfuckers consider me now?”

  Evan crossed to the tiny desk, where a pad of paper rested squared to its right side. He jotted down a phone number, handed it to Rafael. “If you need me.”

  Rafael looked down at the paper: “1-855-2-NOWHERE.”

  “Wait,” he said. “No. I heard about you. You’re really out there? You’re really you?”

  “Not anymore,” Evan said. “Just seeing through this one last thing.”

  Rafael said, “For Jake?”

  The question, obvious as it was, caught Evan off guard. Why was he doing this? Since that first phone call from Veronica, he hadn’t really stopped to consider.

  I heard you help people.

  Was that it? Was that why he was here? To do a favor for the woman who hadn’t wanted him? Why? To be close to her? There was something more, something in all this he needed to know.

  He recalled her words once more: You barely cried. The doctor thought something was wrong with you. But I knew there wasn’t. I could see how sensitive you were, how much you were taking in, that you were overcome by it. And to survive you had to shut off parts of yourself, what you felt, what you reacted to.

  He felt suddenly hyperaware of the bones of his feet and how imperfectly they balanced him. His breath moving through the channel of his throat. His heartbeat up from its resting rate, body temperature also on the rise.

  Emotion.

  And then it struck him.

  Veronica was the only one who’d ever seen him purely, who’d held him in his first vulnerable minutes and looked into the wide-open slate of his face before trauma and loss had been written over it. Before he’d closed up and armored himself, scar tissue growing around a vulnerable core until nothing could pierce it.

  He recalled the chill air of the Recoleta Cemetery, Veronica laying her hands on his shoulders, hazel eyes appraising him from beneath the brim of that hat like she was seeing more of him than he knew existed.

  His mother’s gaze held the totality of him. It was the only place he’d ever seen it reflected. She was the mirror by which he might be able to know himself.

  It sounded so pathetic and small, a childish hope as futile as Andre’s parental quest. That this final mission, set in motion by his long-lost mother, might prove to be the path to himself.

  His mother.

  He’d used the word now, if only in his mind, the realization sending him further afield.

  “X?” Joey said. “You okay?”

  Evan came back to the present, mildly surprised to find himself here in Room 15 of the Magnolia South Residential Building. He swayed once more on his feet. Joey’s eyebrows were furled; she was watching him with concern. He shook off his thoughts, seated himself in the present.

  “I need an address for Mimeticom,” he said.

  “The lab don’t got no address,” Rafael said. “But I can steer you to the founder. Brendan Molleken.”

  “A tech guy,” Evan said. “He have a Ph.D.?”

  “Handful of them, I’d guess.”

  Evan’s eyes snapped to Joey’s as quickly as hers found his. “The doctor?” she said.

  Rafael said, “He lives in Atherton.”

  Evan firmed his legs, locked in his composure, looked over at Joey.

  She shrugged. “I packed for an overnight.”

  42

  The Stranger

  Declan firmed the camera once more to his face. The zoom lens, a Canon EF 70-200, was a workhorse. Depth control, image stabilization, even a Super Spectra Coating to reduce lens flare. Best of all it was great at distance with its telephoto lens, ideal for wildlife portraiture.

  Or spying on a high-security Veterans Reintegration Center from a half mile away. They were in a rented sedan, Queenie behind the wheel. The red Corvette was too conspicuous even for the outer parking lot. She’d gone with a Corolla from Avis, a muted maroon to match today’s nail polish.

  He adjusted the lens, zeroing in once more on the window of Room 15 of Magnolia South. A smear of transparency cleared the fogged pane where the stranger had mopped off the logo he’d drawn.

  A familiar logo.

  “You sure?” Queenie asked. She tugged at her Big Red gum, let it snap back against her front teeth. She smelled of cinnamon and hair spray. You can take the girl out of Philly.

  “I’m sure,” Declan said.

  “Well, I’d say that’s a red flag. Should we call the doc?”

  Declan lowered the camera, kept his gaze locked on the chain-link fence
and the building’s back side beyond. “We should.”

  Two rings to a pickup. That infuriatingly calm voice. “Yes?”

  “We’re in position to move on the second target,” Declan said. “Someone intriguing swam into our net.”

  “Duran?” Even the doctor couldn’t hide his eagerness.

  He’d backed off a bit after Declan had texted him pictures of the co-worker’s fragmented body. Barely a trace of blood, since most of the damage was skeletal. Declan had posed the man flat on his own carpet next to his La-Z-Boy, a chalk outline gone cubist. The doctor wasn’t bloodthirsty, not per se, but he was willing to be in the name of ambition. He had concerns, and they had to be sated.

  If Declan and Queenie didn’t deliver Duran soon, they would pay a price. Declan clicked the phone to speaker, set it in the cup holder.

  “Not Duran,” Declan said carefully. “A stranger. Who is familiar with Mimeticom.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “Who is this stranger?”

  “I don’t know. Couldn’t get a clear view.”

  “Is he alone?”

  “From our vantage he appears to be.”

  “Did you see his face?”

  Declan watched the vehicles exiting the base. A Humvee filled with airmen. Fat guy on a motorcycle. Family in a Suburban. “Not clearly. Watched him through a fogged-up window.”

  “And your assumption is that he is the one helping Duran?”

  “That is indeed my assumption.”

  Queenie laced her fingers, reversed them, and stretched like a cat, her arms stiff over the steering wheel.

  “Well,” the doctor said, “it’s a good thing I delayed you in getting to the second target. Now we have more data.”

  “Yes we do,” Declan said. “We are so very appreciative of you.”

  Queenie side-eyed him. Careful, little brother.

  “Can you follow the stranger?” the doctor asked.

  More vehicles flashed through the gate, drifting up the blacktop and past the parking lot. Officer in a spit-shined Lexus. Two dykes in a pickup. A food-services truck driven by a wetback.