Dark Winter

by Anthony J. Tata

  With the nuclear arsenals of the RINK nations locked in the vice grip of Shayne’s ManaHack software, they had little option but to bring their human biometric keys to Iran to unlock their capabilities if for no other reason than the defense assurances that mutual assured destruction provided.

  Interestingly, each country—Russia, Iran, and North Korea— had expressed interest in allying with Manaslu when he had approached them two years prior. He’d demonstrated via a link in the Dark Web his capability to cyber-attack the guidance systems of conventional and nuclear weapons. Of course, the capabilities were agnostic. He could disable RINK systems or he could disable U.S. systems and those of their allies. Bolstering the RINK alliance was more advantageous to his own political purposes, but he’d been prepared to pivot either way, as any good businessman would be.

  Shayne must have noticed Gorham’s pensive stare.

  “ManaBlades are showing us no changes,” Shayne said.

  Gorham nodded.

  Last year, Gorham and Shayne had deployed a series of microdrones—the same type he had secreted into Dr. Draganova’s office and home—from a low earth orbiting satellite. The container pod was the size of a suitcase with the protective tiles of the space shuttle. It had bored its way through the atmosphere under GPS guidance to a location not far from where Gorham’s airplane had barreled through the mountain passes before circling for landing. There, the pod had opened, releasing one hundred solar powered ManaBlades—miniature drones—that then flew soundlessly using micro jet propulsion. The micro battery packs on the drones carried enough charge for four hours of continuous operations as they flew, recorded, and streamed video back to the satellite from which they had been launched. Once the battery hit a fifteen-minute power warning, the drones found the highest altitude and least obstructed perch, pinged their location, and waited for further instructions while the sun recharged their batteries.

  Now, Gorham and Shayne studied the video feeds of the drones as they live-streamed to Shayne’s iPad. The insect-sized drones had easily penetrated throughout the maze of tunnels, caves, and buildings in Yazd. After all, Manaslu had designed much of the complex.

  “Good job on the ManaBlades,” Gorham said.

  Gorham slipped a Canali silk sport coat over his gray T-shirt. His trim fit blue jeans fell atop handmade burgundy chukkas. The casual attire was his version of “outback.”

  Shayne was dressed in L.L.Bean hiking boots, khakis, and a new safari vest over his black T-shirt. He tugged at the price tag and snapped the plastic retainer.

  “We’ve got forty-seven of the original hundred ManaBlades left. They can listen and they can jam, providing us real time intelligence.”

  “And what are we hearing? It might be nice to know whether our hosts are planning to kidnap us or feed us lamb. When I visited the construction site, they fed me lamb. Now, who knows?”

  After construction of the Partnership for Peace facility in Iran, a location selected by the government in Tehran, UN inspectors had given the building a green light and an international certification that the operation would put more Iranians to work.

  From Iran’s point of view, Gorham knew they would be able to turn the enterprise into a spy network, not unlike he had done globally by collecting hundreds of millions of e-mail addresses, videos, pictures, and thousands of other data points that each human willfully shared on a daily basis.

  Shayne pulled up his iPad and pressed a few icons until he had intelligence feeds from the remaining microdrones they had dropped months ago. On his screen, sound bars bounced up and down, indicating speech was being intercepted. Gorham had directed two drones to accompany each vehicle picking up passengers from arriving airplanes. The drones attached themselves onto the vehicles looking like pilot fish on a shark.

  Only smaller, more like a grasshopper, Gorham thought. He remembered his childhood days growing up in rural Pennsylvania. Rows of corn and soybeans. Fields of grass that would become hay to feed the milk cows. The grasshoppers and locusts. He had modeled the micro ManaBlades after the insects he had studied as a child. Their functionality fascinated him. They could fly, hop, communicate, and camouflage themselves to blend into their environment. They worked in Dr. Draganova’s office and they seemed to be working here in Iran.

  Shayne’s screen showed that the forty-seven ManaBlades were deployed on fourteen vehicles and in seven rooms throughout the compound, all in preparation for his and Gorham’s arrival.

  “The Russian delegation is here,” Shayne said. “Their conversations are mostly bitching about having to come to Iran instead of the other way around. They’re also confused as to why there’s no vodka. Sounds like Khilkov has his dog with him. So that’s a good sign it’s him and not an imposter.”

  “The wolfhound?”

  “A Borzoi, as they call it. The dog of the Czars. Looks more like a greyhound with fur.” Shayne had a picture of Khilkov’s Russian wolfhound. She was a tall, slender breed that indeed had an angular face, as if sculpted for racing. White and tan hair covered the animal’s body.

  “Why would he bring a dog? Aren’t they eaten here?” Gorham asked.

  “You’re thinking of Korea.”

  “Speaking of which?”

  “North Korea? They landed two hours ago. Their replacement president is here, evidently.”

  “Most likely a doppelganger,” Gorham said.

  “They’re being very deferential to him, if so.” Shayne pinched the screen and tapped an icon. “Facial recognition shows 92 percent chance it is either Son Yung with some facial disfiguration to make it not look like him or someone else made to look like him.”

  Son Yung was the new leader of North Korea. A former army general, Yung was a devout follower of the previous president and reportedly bellicose in his intentions toward America and the West.

  “Remind me to fire the CEO of that facial recognition software company we bought. That’s bullshit. We should know one way or the other. There is no margin for error here, Shayne. We’re about to step foot into enemy territory, which makes us traitors to the United States. Imperfection is unacceptable.”

  “Noted,” Shayne said, used to Gorham’s rants.

  “The only thing making any of this worthwhile is our globalist agenda, the prize at the end. Our path is the only way to get there. Farmers must burn the previous crop to grow a new one. And we shall burn the world to reshape it in the only sustainable way forward.”

  The young, muscled flight attendant who was also a security guard opened the door, his pistol holster flashing from beneath his sport coat. Gorham had recruited his security guards from around the world. He paid each of the twenty men a half million dollars a year. The training he put them through rivaled any special operations, SEAL, or Ranger training course. His main stipulation was that none of the applicants could have any prior service in the United States military. He didn’t trust the system and wanted no infiltrators. He had purchased a thousand acres of land near his Idaho compound, developed his own curriculum and training courses, and personally trained his first batch of five recruits.

  The central theme to his training was that force could only be used in a few instances. First and foremost, to protect him, the CEO and President of the company. After all, without him, there was no Manaslu. And without Manaslu, there would be no social media empire and no newspaper network to overtly, subtly, or otherwise influence and shape opinion.

  His company had spanned the boundaries of nation-states, bringing people together in a way that nation-states were unable, coalescing opinions and visions that a shared economy could become a shared universe, providing for the greater good of all mankind. Just as the British drawn Durand Line separating Afghanistan and Pakistan was irrelevant—harmful even—the boundaries of nation-states today were meaningless. Other than the collection of taxes and provision of services, government’s primary purpose was to disaggregate the nation-state to protect itself. Chiefly, James Madison’s “Violence of Factions,” muted
and channeled separatist fervor. Everything was so polarized now that, though, that violence was erupting and spilling over, pushing against the institutional breakwaters that kept rebellion at bay. Gorham’s goal was to harness that energy, propel it forward, trample the institutions of nation states, and blend the chaos into a new vision—his vision—of a global unified people. In Gorham’s view, the factions could become one entity. Laws could be derived from the evolving norms hashed out on social media. Just like the reaction to the dentist who killed the lion in Africa created a new social norm—don’t kill lions—Gorham believed that his legions of Internet analysts could rapidly discern public opinion, create a new norm—a law—and regurgitate it instantly on the vast social media and print newspaper enterprise. The result, according to Gorham’s extensive collection of personal information, was a diverse world more driven to an understanding of the need for peace.

  Less conflict, more agreement. Squeeze out the extremes and move everyone in one direction toward a unified vision—Gorham’s vision—of a world without borders. A global enterprise serving all people. Already his company was in the top ten gross domestic products of all countries in the world. Manaslu was on path to becoming the third largest revenue generator of all countries and companies in the world. His vision was within reach.

  This war would burn the world to the ground so he could reshape it and cause the leading economies to spend untold and unprecedented treasure on defense. Having moved most of his company’s stock and assets to cash and precious metals, hedging against the markets that were already crashing, he was fully prepared for the next phase.

  The hangar air was stale, musty. Gorham stepped carefully down the movable walkway until he was on concrete. A Persian man with a trimmed black beard stood next to the open back door of a hardened black Mercedes Benz. Gorham looked left and right, saw the ManaBlades looking like indistinguishable black grasshoppers on the front and rear fenders.

  Shayne was still looking at his iPad, reading the intel feeds. “All good, boss.”

  Gorham walked around the back of the car, opened the other back door, and sat in the rear left seat.

  “No, sir. Your seat is here,” the Persian said from the right rear door as he held it open. His voice was heavily accented. He wore a blank olive uniform. The black pistol on his hip was stuffed in a worn tan leather holster.

  “I’m good,” Gorham said, sitting in the back left.

  The driver protested again by walking around the rear of the car. He opened the left rear door and showed his palm to Gorham, which he swept away, as if to say, this way.

  “Let’s go,” Gorham snapped. “We have a meeting.”

  The man looked across the room briefly and then locked eyes with Gorham.

  “Do we have a problem?” Gorham asked.

  “No. No problem.” The driver shut the right rear door, then closed Gorham’s door politely and then stepped into the driver’s seat. He put the vehicle in gear and drove through a small opening in the hangar wall.

  Shayne was sitting in the front right passenger seat. As they had approached the car, one of the ManaBlades had determined an anomaly beneath the right rear seat of the vehicle. It appeared to be a syringe situated just beneath the padding, needle pointed upward. The imaging capability on the ManaBlades showed no other anomalies in the other seats.

  Shayne typed on secure ManaChat. Not sure what that says about my expendability.

  Gorham responded. Knock me out. Torture you for the crypto. They think you’re the engineer. They get their nukes back.

  Shayne was an excellent engineer, but Gorham had created his empire mostly by writing his own code, developing his own algorithms, and having the prescience to be ahead of the next wave before it came crashing down.

  The vehicle moved into the sunlight, which was dimmed by the shaded windows. From the valley floor, the mountains appeared taller, overbearing. Shayne continued to stare at the iPad, which was monitoring potential threats in dozens of locations. The ManaBlades sent miniaturized digital packets either to the ManaSat or directly to Shayne’s iPad, depending upon which was sending the more dominant signal. A large part of Gorham’s plan depended upon continuous situational awareness. Just as in business, he couldn’t wait days or even hours to make decisions; he needed intel immediately and made split-second decisions that had helped him surpass Facebook, Amazon, and Google as the largest capitalized technology company in the world. He knew, though, that it was a tenuous position, potentially lost at any moment of the day, week, or month. Tough sledding twenty-four/seven.

  The car picked up speed as it rocked across the bumpy concrete. Gorham texted Shayne. Going to tunnel #7

  Roger

  For ease of communication, they had numbered all the caves and buildings in preparation for this mission. Just as Gorham had wanted to be on location when the commando team raided the bar, he needed to present himself as the world leader he intended to be. While he preferred remote video teleconferencing, his reading of Sun Tzu and Clausewitz had convinced him that there was no replacement for boots on the ground, as he liked to say.

  Two Hind helicopters joined them above. These were Soviet era gunships, not unlike the American Apache AH-64, but far less lethal. The rotor noise drowned them in the relentless whup-whup of the blades. The wink of sniper scopes flared from hide sites in the ridges above them as they sped from the hangar.

  Are we protected or prey? Gorham wondered.

  The syringe in the seat was a pretty good indicator that the twenty-four hours in Iran would not be without incident. Gorham believed in his own safety for two reasons. First, he had the ability to manipulate the RINK alliance weapon systems, as he had demonstrated less than twenty-four hours ago. Hacking into the North Korean nuclear system, he’d been able to launch and refine the accuracy of one of its few nuclear weapons. He could have just as easily put that nuke on Pyongyang, Tehran, or Moscow, and he had made that clear to the RINK leadership. Secondly, he held the key to victory over the West, and in particular, the Americans. Everyone understood that destruction of the American threat was the path to victory. Gorham was not naïve enough to believe that once victory was achieved each of the RINK nations would be properly satiated and simply hand him the keys to the globe. No, he would deal with them when that time came. He had a plan.

  As Gorham predicted it might, the Mercedes drove over a mile across the airfield and along a taxiway and then on to a well-worn two track dirt road that led to entrance number seven. As they approached the mouth of the cave, a concrete blast door slid open and the driver pulled into the cavern. The car maneuvered through a narrow passageway and pulled into a large opening, the size of a warehouse. Fluorescent lights shone from the fabricated ceiling.

  The car stopped next to a cylindrical tube big enough to hold at least two people. It was connected to a fifty-yard-long Plexiglas, perhaps bullet proof, walkway that led to the center of the room. The ManaBlades had scoped out this meeting area in Yazd, Iran. Designed as a telecommunications facility for Manaslu employees, the cavernous arena looked more like a sports arena. From above, the drones had shown a large X of walkways—the biometric chambers—with a cylinder at the start of each leg. In the middle was a protected space where the principal and one assistant could sit and discuss important matters with the other leaders.

  Carrying his iPad, Shayne stepped out of the vehicle first. The driver opened the door for Gorham, who nodded at the Persian. The man did not seem pleased, as if their first party trick was a failure.

  Gorham and Shayne stepped into the glass enclosed foyer to the biometric walkway. A metal door to their front prevented their entry for the moment. The walkway would measure their gaits as part of a series of identity confirmation steps, including retina, voice, handprint, facial recognition, and DNA. The hydraulic door behind them hissed shut.

  After a few seconds, the door to the walkway slid open. Small cameras winked at them with red operating lights as they strode forward. Gorham’s chukka
s echoed like gunshots, and behind him Shayne’s new boots squeaked on the buffed runway. Gorham led the way to the biometric scanning station at the base of the walkway in the middle of the arena.

  There were three other walkways, all at 90 degree angles to one another. Russia would come in from the left, North Korea from the center, and Iran from the right. Like four different fighters approaching the boxing ring in a coliseum. This facility—built in part by Manaslu—was nearly as big as a coliseum. The negotiating platform was about the size of a boxing ring.

  Gorham glanced over his shoulder at Shayne’s iPad, which showed that two ManaBlades had flown to the central meeting place, taking up inconspicuous residence on the back of the Russian and Iranian negotiating platforms.

  Stopping in front of the biometric scanning station, Gorham let the retina scanner buzz across his eyes. A mechanical arm reached out and swabbed his cheek with a Q-Tip. He placed his hand on the reader and a red light swept back and forth. He stared into the black glass, behind which were his patented algorithms for facial recognition, the best in the world. Then he said, “Ian Gorham.”

  Green check marks appeared. Voice. Handprint. Eyes. Gait. DNA. Facial.

  A mechanical female voice said, “Ian Gorham. Approved. Enter.”

  He stepped through the portal into the seating area as Shayne went through the exact same process.

  “Shayne. Approved. Enter.”

  As they approached their seating area, both Gorham and Shayne remained silent. They had rehearsed this visit. They knew there was a possibility that all the RINK members could conspire to turn on them, but there was no incentive to do so. Not without the completion of the transfer of the biometric keys to unlock the nuclear arsenal control. Yet, Gorham didn’t discount the fact that each leader was unpredictable.