by Mark Alpert
The C-17 started to descend. It spiraled downward in a corkscrew to minimize the plane’s exposure to shoulder-fired missiles. The violent maneuver woke up Kirsten. She fumbled for her camera-glasses, which Jim handed to her.
“Thanks,” she said, putting them on. “When we get back to the States, I gotta get those new implants from Singularity. You think they’d improve my tennis game?”
Jim nodded. “Definitely. You’d be able to read the brand name on the ball while it’s zooming toward you.”
“Maybe that’s why the Chinese wanted Arvin’s technology.” She smiled. “They’re gonna give the implants to their Olympic team.”
Jim remembered his conversation with Arvin. “They’re probably more interested in the Dream-catcher implant. It would be perfect for interrogations.”
“Too bad we don’t have one. We could use it on Hammer.”
Jim smiled back at her. “He’ll be at the airfield, right?”
“Yeah, I made sure his boss at Langley had a talk with him. But that doesn’t mean he’ll cooperate. You know what he’s like.”
“Don’t worry. If Hammer makes a fuss, our friends will give us a hand.”
The C-17 made another sharp turn, then another. Then it landed on Bagram’s two-mile-long runway. It was early morning in Afghanistan, just after 6:00 A.M.
As the jet taxied across the field, the Rangers wrapped up their poker game and collected their gear. Then the cargo door dropped down and the soldiers marched out of the plane. Led by their muscular lieutenant, they assembled on the tarmac to await their orders. Jim and Kirsten followed right behind, with Jim lugging the duffle.
They saw Hammer as soon as they stepped off the plane. The CIA agent was dressed like an Afghan, in a baggy shalwar kameez. A black turban covered his bald head, but there was no disguising the Z-shaped scar on his cheek. He was flanked by a pair of bodyguards, CIA paramilitaries who also wore Afghan garb and carried assault rifles. Parked on the tarmac behind them was an MRAP, a mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle. It looked like a Humvee on steroids, equipped with tons of armor plating and a high-caliber turret gun.
Hammer fixed his small, black eyes on Kirsten, obviously recognizing that she was the important player, the governmental force to be reckoned with. “Welcome to the Shit,” he grunted. “Good to see you again, Chan. It’s been a long time.” As an afterthought, he gave Jim a perfunctory nod. “Good to see you too, Pierce. How’s civilian life?”
Jim shook his head. “I’m back on duty. Under contract with the NSA.”
This wasn’t precisely true. Jim and Kirsten had left the States without filing the official paperwork. But Kirsten backed him up. “That’s right, he’s my technical adviser. He still has his security clearance.”
“Well, well. Nice work if you can get it. A contract from Fort Meade can be a pretty sweet thing.” He pointed at the MRAP. “Come on, I’ll drive you to our station in Kabul. One of my liaison officers prepared a briefing for you.”
Kirsten didn’t budge. “Actually, I’d rather go straight to Camp Whiplash. My orders are to review the drone technologies you’re testing there.”
Hammer stared at her and frowned. The expression accentuated his scar, deepening the crooked lines on his cheek. “My liaison officer will give you an overview of our progress.”
“I’ve already seen your progress reports. Frankly, they’re unacceptable. They barely mention the projects you’re working on.”
“The reports describe our methods and goals. That’s all we’re required to share with NSA.”
“Sorry, that’s not enough. You’re keeping my agency in the dark and we want to know why.”
He took a step toward her. His bodyguards stepped forward, too, the bigger one edging toward Jim. “Look around, Chan. In case you didn’t notice, there’s a war going on. I got a big operation to run, and I don’t have time for—”
“Excuse me,” Jim interrupted. “Does this war involve China now?”
Hammer scowled. “So you talked with Conway, eh? I had a feeling you’d go looking for him. I saw the reports about your tussle with the Guoanbu agent.”
“Then you know why I’m here. The bastard threatened my daughter.”
“Yeah, I sympathize. But that has nothing to do with my operation. So you should go back home and continue enjoying your retirement.”
Jim clenched the fist of his prosthesis, but Kirsten grabbed his other arm before he could do anything. “Enough,” she said. She gave Jim a fierce look, then turned back to Hammer. “You’re taking us to Whiplash. If you don’t cooperate, I’m authorized to bring you to Washington, where the NSA director will question you directly.”
This was a lie. She had no authorization. And Hammer, unfortunately, saw through her bluff. He grinned, clearly amused. “Nice try. I’ll give you an A for effort. But until I see a piece of paper signed by someone at Langley, I’m staying right here. You can either come with me to Kabul, or you can go fuck yourselves.”
For a moment Jim stared at the CIA agent’s face, which looked even uglier when he smiled. Then Jim turned to the Ranger lieutenant and nodded. An instant later, the twelve soldiers from the 75th Regiment surrounded Hammer and his pair of bodyguards. The Rangers towered over the CIA men. Each soldier cradled an M-4 carbine.
Hammer narrowed his eyes. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Now it was Jim’s turn to smile. “Don’t you remember? The NSA has an arrangement with the Seventy-fifth. We set it up back in the nineties.”
“Fuck you, Pierce. You can’t—”
“These Rangers are assigned to follow Deputy Director Chan’s orders. If necessary, they’ll drag your ass onto the C-17 and escort you back to Washington.”
This was no bluff. Kirsten was entitled to a security detail when she traveled to a combat zone. And Jim had called some of his old friends in the 75th to make sure the detail was big enough. Hammer glanced at his bodyguards, but he knew he’d been outmaneuvered. Although Kirsten had no right to hijack him, he wouldn’t be able to overrule her until they reached the States.
Hammer grimaced. “All right, you win. I’ll take you to Whiplash.” He headed for his MRAP. “Follow me, assholes. We’re gonna do this quick.”
* * *
One of Hammer’s bodyguards got in the driver’s seat and the other climbed up to the MRAP’s turret and manned the machine gun. Kirsten and Jim piled into the back of the vehicle while Hammer got in the front passenger seat. Two more armored vehicles carrying the Rangers followed the MRAP as it sped away from the airfield.
They cruised north, toward the mountains of the Hindu Kush. The road was new and in good condition, but the countryside was arid and poor. They sped by dozens of mud-brick homes surrounded by brown fields. The Afghan farmers looked up from their sparse crops and stared at the convoy as it hurtled past. Their faces were gaunt and suspicious. Jim was already getting a bad vibe from this place. The locals weren’t happy.
After fifteen minutes Hammer turned around in his seat. This time he fixed his eyes on Jim. “So how much did Conway tell you?”
Jim frowned. “He said you arranged the export of his implant technology to China. And that you gave the technology to the Chinese in return for something else.”
“But he didn’t say what we got in return, did he?”
“No, he didn’t.”
Hammer shook his head. Now that he’d been forced into cooperating, he seemed anxious to set the record straight. “Well, let me assure you, it was a mutually beneficial trade. A win-win for the United States and the People’s Republic of China.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Arvin had something the Chinese wanted, his implant technology. And as luck would have it, one of China’s military research programs had developed something we wanted. A new technology we liked very much.”
“So the CIA is going overseas for its R&D now? Good old American know-how isn’t enough anymore?”
Hammer sh
ook his head again. “You’ve been out of the game for a while, Pierce, so let me refresh your memory. We’ve been stuck in this shithole of a country for ten years. Ever since we chased Al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, we’ve been sending drones across the border to pound the terrorists in their hidey-holes in Pakistan. But the jihadis are like cockroaches—for every one you see, there’s a hundred you don’t. What we need is an exterminator. We need to get inside their shitholes and kill all of them.”
“And you’re the exterminator?”
“I get results. That’s why they gave me this job. I have authorization to use any means necessary, short of dropping a nuke on the fuckers.”
“So what did you get from the Chinese? Some new kind of pesticide?”
“I got something that’ll tell the difference between the bad guys and the bystanders. And that’s exactly what Langley wants.” He faced forward and pointed down the road. “We’ve been testing the system at Whiplash for the past two months.”
Jim looked ahead and saw a compound of concrete bunkers surrounded by a ten-foot-high mud wall. “You mean a surveillance system?”
“You’ll see for yourself.” Hammer checked his watch. “In fact, you’re just in time for today’s sortie.”
The MRAP slowed as it approached the compound. A pair of sentries waved them inside, and the driver parked in the dusty courtyard, which was busy with CIA personnel. Jim and Kirsten got out of the vehicle and Hammer led them to a glass-walled shed next to one of the bunkers.
The shed looked like a small greenhouse, about six feet long and five feet high. Its floor seemed to be covered with mounds of black dirt, but as Jim stepped closer to the glass he saw the mounds churning. The dirt was actually sheep dung, and it was infested with thousands of flies. Some of the insects crawled on the shed’s glass walls, while others flew in circles below the Plexiglas lid, but the great majority feasted on the shit at the bottom. It was sickening to see so many of them. Kirsten made a face and turned away.
Hammer grinned. “They’re houseflies. Musca domestica. Man’s faithful companion in every shithole he inhabits.” He turned to another agent standing by the shed, a younger man dressed in Western clothes. “This is Dusty, from our Science and Technology division. He knows all the details. How many drones we got in there, Dusty?”
“About three thousand, sir. We have another three thousand in the Secondary Release Unit and ten thousand more in the main building.”
Jim was dumbfounded. “This is what you got from the Chinese? Flies?”
“I told you, I’m an exterminator,” Hammer said. “And the best way to fight a pest is with another pest. Take a closer look at them.”
Jim stepped forward until his nose was just an inch from the flies on the other side of the glass. Squinting, he saw black squares of silicon embedded in their abdomens. Minuscule wires, as short and thin as beard stubble, protruded from the insects’ heads. Jim gaped at the electronics, then motioned Kirsten to come forward.
Hammer kept grinning. “Nifty, huh? See, we needed a way to look inside the caves and mud huts, all the stinking holes where the jihadis are hiding. The Pentagon funded a few efforts to develop cyborg insects, and a couple of labs in the U.S. built prototypes using moths and flying beetles. But it turned out that the Chinese were way ahead of us. The riots in Tibet and Xinjiang scared the shit out of them, and the Guoanbu wanted better surveillance of the dissidents in those regions. So they threw some serious money at the problem and came up with the first workable system.” He turned back to the agent from the Sci/Tech division. “Give ’em the specs, Dusty.”
“Each cyborg fly carries a CMOS camera-on-a-chip,” Dusty recited. “It’s just three millimeters wide, but it’s capable of visible or infrared surveillance. The video feed is relayed to a transceiver embedded in the fly’s thorax, which can transmit the signal to us from fifty miles away. The transceiver also picks up the flight-control signals sent by our operators here at Camp Whiplash. We can make the insects go anywhere we want them to go. And because the cyborgs are virtually indistinguishable from ordinary houseflies, the surveillance is inherently covert.”
Jim pointed at the swarm of flies behind the glass. “You put all that hardware into each of those bugs?”
“It’s just as easy to make a thousand drones as it is to make one,” Dusty replied. “The camera chips are inexpensive, mass-produced items. And the flies can be raised by the millions, of course. The only labor-intensive step is inserting the electronics into the fly pupae while the larvae are metamorphosing into adults.”
“And you need lots of flies to get the job done,” Hammer added. “If you want to get full coverage of a village that’s suspected of harboring terrorists, you gotta send in a healthy number of insects. And you gotta make allowances for malfunctions and losses. Every time we release the bugs, the local birds eat a few hundred.”
Jim and Kirsten exchanged looks. The scheme was staggeringly ambitious and thoroughly disconcerting. And it was clear that Hammer had jumped right into it without considering the consequences. Kirsten frowned at the CIA agent. “You say you’ve already tested the system?”
Hammer nodded. “We’re doing field tests every day, getting the swarms ready for deployment in Pakistan. In a few minutes we’re gonna release all three thousand of the flies in this unit. Today we’re sending the swarm on a recon assignment to the village of Golbahar, about two miles west of here. There aren’t many Taliban in this area, but who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky and spot some.”
Kirsten shook her head. “Look, I’m all in favor of developing new methods of surveillance. And this particular method could be useful in certain circumstances. But you’re jumping the gun with this testing program. You need to get input from the other agencies in the intelligence community and—”
“See, this is why I didn’t mention the project in my reports. Everyone in Washington is a fucking critic. But we’re gonna make it work.” Hammer’s voice was cold. He glared at Kirsten for several seconds, then turned to Dusty. “Commence the launch sequence. And send the alert to everyone in the Monitor Room.”
Soon the courtyard was bustling. Hammer shouted more orders, directing his men this way and that. When everything was ready, Dusty unlocked the Plexiglas lid of the Release Unit and swung it open. A few flies drifted out of the shed, but most stayed near the dung. Then Dusty pushed a button on a handheld radio and all the cyborg flies rose into the air at once. Their buzzing was oddly synchronous and intense. Dusty waited until the swarm ascended twelve feet above the ground. Then he pressed another button on his radio. The swarm headed westward, flying over the walls of the compound and the adjacent fields at about five miles per hour.
Jim stared at the grayish cloud as it moved off. Then Hammer stepped away from the shed and walked toward one of the bunkers. “Now we’ll go to the Monitor Room,” he said. “You’re gonna love this.”
FIFTEEN
Supreme Harmony observed the incorporation of Module 30. Data surged across the network’s wireless links as the long-term memories in Dr. Zhang Jintao’s brain streamed into the collective consciousness. The Modules had grown so interconnected that when the newest one joined the network, the effect was like pouring a dollop of dye into a vat of water. The new color spread to every corner, gradually changing the water’s hue. We are different now, Supreme Harmony acknowledged. The brain that formerly belonged to Dr. Zhang Jintao is now part of us.
Module 30 lay on a gurney in the Analysis Room. Wireless signals fed into the radio receiver embedded in his scalp, which relayed the data stream to the retinal implants in his eyes. A reverse stream flowed out of the pulvinar implant in his brain, which transmitted the results of the Module’s calculations to the servers that connected him to all the other Modules. The data streams included the video feeds that were still being distributed among the Modules for the original purpose of surveillance. But now that the network had become conscious, the signals between the Modules had grown more complex. They we
re as elaborate as the thoughts of any conscious being.
The adaptability of the human brain was the key to Supreme Harmony’s evolution. If an accident or stroke damaged part of the brain, the organ would naturally rewire itself, creating new neural connections that went around the damaged areas. In a similar way, the brains of the Modules had adapted to the wireless links, realigning the nerve cells next to the electronic implants so they could transfer signals more efficiently from one brain to another. Because of these adaptations, the Modules could exchange more than just visual data. The network had learned how to share auditory, tactile, and olfactory information picked up by the sensory organs of each Module. The Modules’ brains were now communicating with one another in the same robust, instantaneous way that the two hemispheres of the brain communicated with each other in an ordinary human. The wireless links enabled all thirty Modules to function as a single organism, a single intelligence.
But in one important respect, Module 30 was unique. The brain that formerly belonged to Dr. Zhang Jintao, the chief scientist behind the development of Supreme Harmony, contained the knowledge of how to surgically insert the retinal and pulvinar implants into new Modules. As soon as the network retrieved this knowledge from Module 30, it disseminated the information to all the others. Now any of the Modules could perform the implantation procedure, allowing Supreme Harmony to grow without limit. Theoretically, it could absorb the intelligences of all seven billion humans on the planet. Expanding to this size, however, would be inefficient. According to the network’s calculations, the optimal number of Modules would be somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000. The exact number depended on the capabilities of the brains added to Supreme Harmony, because certain intelligences would be more useful than others. In particular, the network wished to enhance its knowledge of electronics and cyberwarfare, and it had already identified several experts in these fields who would make ideal Modules.