Raven Strike

by Dale Brown; Jim DeFelice

  “I don’t think this is worth a million euros,” said Kimko. “A million euros would not be appropriate.”

  Kimko started to hand the phone back. Li Han wouldn’t take it.

  If it were a UAV, and if Moscow didn’t know anything about it, then certainly it would be worth a million euros.

  Maybe, maybe not. The best thing to do would be to let someone else make the call. In that case, if it were a fraud, then there would be no blame on him.

  “I think one million euros is too much,” said Kimko. He sighed, as if making a deep concession. “But if perhaps I could have one of my people inspect it, then we could negotiate seriously. People who know about these things,” added Kimko. “I don’t. I’m not an expert.”

  “No one sees it until I’m paid.”

  “Well that’s impossible, then. This could all be a fraud.” Kimko started to reach for the door handle, then remembered this was his truck—he shouldn’t be the one to leave. They sat for a few moments in silence.

  “Maybe an inspection could be arranged,” said Li Han finally. “If you made a down payment.”

  Kimko snorted. “Impossible.”

  “I will give you something else. You’ll pay for that.”

  Kimko made a face. Now he knew the man was a con artist. Whether it was his truck or not, he was getting out. He reached for the door.

  “Here is a CIA bug,” said Li Han, reaching into his pocket.

  Once more Kimko’s lungs seized. Li Han was worse than a con man—he was a plant, an agent.

  “It’s inactive,” said Li Han, opening his palm. A small insect was inside. “Take it and I’ll show you.”

  Unsure what else to do, Kimko reached for the insect. He picked it up gingerly. It felt real.

  Men would be shooting at them any moment, he was sure. This was all a setup.

  Li Han reached into his pocket again. He took out a small radiolike device and flipped it on.

  “See?” said Li Han. “No radio signal. You see my needle. The bug doesn’t work, but you can examine it and see how they do it.”

  “I’m sure we have millions of these,” said Kimko.

  “One thousand euros. Now.”

  “We have many of these,” said Kimko. He didn’t trust Li Han’s detector, and in fact wasn’t even sure the bug was a listening device. It looked more like a plastic model, a gag toy. He started to give it back.

  “A thousand euros as a down payment.” Li Han pushed his hand away gently. “The device as a token of my sincerity.”

  “I will give you five hundred euros right now,” said Kimko, deciding now it was the only way to get rid of him.

  Li Han folded his arms and looked down at the floor of the truck. Kimko wondered if he should go higher. No, he decided—he shouldn’t have made an offer at all.

  “Five hundred will do for now,” said Li Han. “There is a three-story building near the railroad tracks that once belonged to the stationmaster. You will meet me there at dusk tomorrow if you intend to purchase the aircraft. It won’t be there,” added Li Han, “so you needn’t try any tricks. Come alone. I will take you to it, and you will transfer the money to an account. Once the transaction is complete, we can all be on our way. Come alone. Alone.”

  “Understood,” said Kimko.

  “They’re leaving,” said Nuri, watching the video feed on the MY-PID slate. It was coming directly from the Global Hawk; the Tigershark was still a few minutes away, and MY-PID itself still wasn’t online. “The car with Li Han seems to be going back to the house,” said Nuri. “If it does, then we should follow the second truck, see where it goes.”

  “I want Mao Man,” said Melissa, leaning forward in the backseat.

  “We’ll get him,” said Nuri. “Relax.”

  Nuri zoomed the screen out as the vehicles continued to drive. He couldn’t watch both for very much longer.

  “Li Han has to take priority,” insisted Melissa.

  “He’s your problem,” said Nuri. “We’re here for the UAV. Danny, we have to choose. I say we go with the truck. We can relocate Li Han easily.”

  “You could say the same about the truck,” answered Melissa.

  “Nuri’s calling the shots on the surveillance,” said Danny. He put the Mercedes into gear. “Which way am I heading?”

  As soon as Li Han was out of sight, Kimko told the driver to get on the road and go south. He pulled his ruck from the floor of the truck and reached inside, taking out a small fabric pencil case. He unfolded a metallic instrument from inside a small cocoon of bubble wrap, pushed its two halves together and turned. An LED at the end blinked red twice, then turned green. This was a bug detector, simpler in operation than Li Han’s, though more sophisticated, or so Kimko thought. It detected all manner of radiation; if the mosquito was a listening device, it would find out.

  The light stayed green, even when he put the other end of the stick against it. He began to speak.

  “I wonder if this is really a listening device,” he said in Russian. “I doubt it. He has taken my euros and I will never see him again.”

  The light remained green.

  Probably it was phony. But then, so was the money he had handed over.

  Kimko replaced the detector carefully back in its little nest. He took his satellite phone from the ruck and tapped the numbers; it was time to talk to Moscow.

  Turk eased off the throttle as the Tigershark reached the ellipse marked out on his helmet display’s sitrep map. The map gave the pilot a God’s eye view of the world, with his target area in the center screen; he switched to the more traditional American view, showing the plane in the center, then keyed his mike to talk to Danny.

  “Tigershark to Whiplash Ground—Colonel, I’m on station. You should have an affirmative hookup.”

  “Roger that, Tigershark. Ground acknowledges. Starting the handshake.”

  Turk smirked at the terminology. Handshake. All the damn radios did was squawk at each other.

  Having five hundred euros in his hand made Li Han feel almost insanely giddy. It was foolish and stupid—he had far larger sums than that in any number of his accounts, and several thousand in American dollars stuffed into his boots. Yet he couldn’t help the intoxication. He’d been raised in a dirt-poor village in northwestern China; when he was growing up, the family pig ate better than he did. All the years since had done nothing to erase the memories of abject poverty and worthlessness, and only magnified the importance of money. Of cash. Of bills that passed smoothly between your fingers.

  He folded them carefully, then put them in his pocket. Back to the problem at hand.

  “Why did the program execute once it was in the laptop?” Li Han said aloud. He spoke in his native Chinese, trying to work out his problem with an invisible colleague. “And what does it think it’s doing? Is it trying to go after me? I wonder what sort of intelligence it has. Because clearly it has intelligence.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Amara in English.

  “Something you wouldn’t understand,” snapped Li Han in Chinese.

  The young man didn’t understand what he said, but the harsh tone came through, and his face turned to a frown. Li Han felt a twinge of guilt—Amara wasn’t a bad kid. He should be kinder to him, especially since he thought he would be useful.

  “I am exploring a problem,” Li Han said in English, trying to make his voice kinder. “The aircraft’s brain is a computer. When it interfaced with my computer, it acted as if it were alive. It started to operate. Do you know what that means?”

  “The program began to work on its own.”

  “Exactly. Which is not something it should do.”

  He isn’t completely ignorant, Li Han thought. He might be taught; he could be useful.

  “I don’t entirely understand it yet,” continued Li Han. “I think it is some sort of control unit that is plugged into the brain and then programmed. But the programming is very involved. My face and a file of information about me was there.”
>
  “Why?”

  “Good question. I’m not sure. It is clear I was its target. These weren’t surveillance images. So was the aircraft programmed to watch me? I think so. How did they do it? How is this connected to the rest of the software, the part I haven’t seen? I’m not sure. That is what I am pondering.”

  “Why is all this useful?”

  Li Han couldn’t help but smirk. Amara was not stupid, but there were clear limits.

  “Let’s say we want to watch someone,” he explained. “Let’s say we want to target the President of the United States for surveillance. If we gave the computer all of the information, could it do it? That is my question—because the information about me is in the command deck, the portion of the program that is supplying controls. Why would it be there otherwise? I don’t know,” added Li Han. “We must do more work.”

  “You are going to sell it to the Russian.”

  “Not that part,” said Li Han. “Not the brain. The brain is self-contained.”

  Li Han explained how he had pulled it from the aircraft.

  “I believe it could work in another aircraft,” he added. “I’m not entirely sure. I need to experiment more.”

  They took a left turn off the main highway moving west, away from the city.

  “Where are you going?” Li Han asked.

  “You told me you wanted a new place.”

  “True,” said Li Han.

  Suddenly, a host of suspicions fell on him. Paranoia surged back. Where was Amara taking him?

  Li Han put his hand down casually, letting it rest on his holster.

  They drove about two miles, climbing up a low hill. Li Han’s suspicions grew, then eased. If Amara had wanted to kill him, any place would do. They had already passed plenty of abandoned fields.

  “It’s just ahead,” said Amara. “Twill will be there. If he waves, then we must go on by. You should duck then,” he added. “It will be a signal that he is being watched.”

  “Why so far away?” asked Li Han.

  “We expect fighting in the city. We don’t need to be caught.”

  Li Han stared out the window. It was reasonable, but he wasn’t sure—it still might be a trick.

  Too elaborate for Amara. But he was being more assertive than before—far more assertive.

  There was a small building near the road on the left. Twill, the thin man with the close-cropped hair, stepped out from the shadow.

  He didn’t wave.

  “There he is,” said Li Han.

  Amara slowed, then pulled off the side of the road, stopping just in front of Twill. Li Han got out. There were two pickups parked near the building. Even in the dark it looked like a good burst of wind would knock it down.

  “This isn’t much of a building,” he said, starting toward it.

  “Too bad if you don’t like it,” said Amara, suddenly next to him.

  Li Han, surprised by the sharp tone, started to turn.

  Amara’s first bullet caught him in the side of the head. By the time the second struck his forehead, he was already dead.

  Targets Unknown

  Chapter 1

  Duka

  Danny Freah turned onto the hard-packed road, gingerly pressing his foot against the Mercedes accelerator. Their subject was only two hundred yards ahead.

  “I have a full connection,” said Nuri. “Everything’s being routed back through MY-PID. All right. He’s heading east . . . Whoa, slow down. He turned off onto a dirt road. I think there may be a lookout about fifty yards away. MY-PID, analyze and identify this position.”

  Danny concentrated on the road as Nuri pointed at the screen and talked to the computer.

  “One of the bugs I set isn’t in the proper location,” Nuri told him. “It’s in the truck we’re following.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. I’m listening to a conversation in Russian.”

  “Russian?”

  “Shhh.”

  MY-PID provided the translation on the fly, almost instantaneously. It heard not only the caller in the car, but was able to amplify the conversation on the other side.

  Voice 1 (in car): . . . I don’t know exactly what it is. I have photos on a camera. I will upload them when I am at a safe location.

  Voice 2 (phone): How did he obtain it?

  Voice 1: It crashed somehow. I don’t know. I can find out, if it’s important.

  Voice 2: The price is ridiculous.

  Voice 1: I told him.

  Voice 2: These Africans think any scrap of metal is valuable.

  Voice 1: I need to meet him at dusk at the old stationmaster house. If you’re not interested—

  Voice 2: We’ll send someone. Who is he?

  Voice 1: He’s Chinese. He’s connected with the Brotherhood.

  Voice 2: Ah—I think I know who it is. Call at the usual time.

  Voice 1 hung up. The man in the truck said nothing else.

  “MY-PID, can you ID either of the voices?” asked Nuri.

  “Call was made to a phone registered to the Stalingrad Export Company,” reported the Voice. “Caller voice patterns are being compared to Russian SVG and GRU known agents.”

  “Good.”

  “Caller 1 is identified as Milos Kimko, known operative with Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki,” said the Voice a few seconds later. “He was posted to Africa 03-02-13. Dossier available.”

  “Hold it for me,” said Nuri. “Where’s the old stationmaster house?”

  “Insufficient data.”

  “Is there a stationmaster house in Duka?”

  “Two possible buildings identified,” responded the computer. “Both are near the railroad tracks.”

  “Place them under constant surveillance.”

  “Are you talking to a person, or a machine?” asked Melissa.

  “Nuri can fill in the details later,” said Danny. “Right now we have to decide which way we’re going. The turnoff the truck took is ahead.”

  “Don’t turn,” said Nuri. “Keep going. We’ll have to head back to follow Li Han. This guy doesn’t have the UAV. Not yet, anyway.”

  Chapter 2

  Duka

  They dumped Li Han’s body inside the building, raked over the dirt where he had fallen, then climbed into the trucks.

  Amara started away. He drove quickly, exactly as he had rehearsed, moving toward the main road south. It was dark but he didn’t use his headlights. The fewer people who noticed him, the better.

  He’d driven nearly halfway to the road when his hands began to sweat. Until now he’d been completely calm, unmoved by what he had done. Li Han was nothing to him, an infidel and worse. Ali Aba Muhammad had told him to kill Li Han and take the item back; obeying was as easy as breathing.

  But his body began to rebel. The sweat was the first sign. It wouldn’t stop. He wiped his right hand on his pants, put it back on the wheel, then wiped his left. The sweat kept coming.

  “There is no God but the true God,” he said to himself, beginning to pray.

  The prayer calmed him, but only slightly.

  By rights, he should hate Li Han and feel no remorse. His killing of Swal—a man whom Amara had, admittedly, despised—showed that he was a sinner and infidel of the worst sort. But for some reason Amara remained disturbed.

  Li Han was not the first man he had killed. But the others had been during battles, and in truth Amara was not even sure that any of them had died—they had been far away, and he’d been either under cover or running. Nor had he known them. Here, Li Han had been right next to him. They had spent several weeks together. Even though Amara suspected from the beginning that he would kill him, even though he had quickly grown to despise the foreigner with his haughty manner, still, Amara had been close enough to him to actually see his face, his eyes, as he died bare inches away.

  He had to die. It was God’s will, as the Mentor had explained, and he was preparing to betray the Brotherhood to the Russians. But with all that, with all these good reasons, still
Amara felt a tinge of regret and even fear. Twice as he drove he thought Li Han was in the truck beside him; once he even swore for a moment that he was there just before he glanced over.

  The seat of course was empty, and he knew for a fact that Li Han was back in the building. But the feeling lingered.

  When he reached the highway, Amara flipped the lights on and stepped on the gas, determined to put as many miles between himself and Duka as quickly possible.

  He rolled down the windows. The wind rushed into the cab. It filled his lungs with energy and braced his cheeks. He would be in the south very soon. Li Han’s ghost would be left far behind.

  Chapter 3

  Duka

  “Vehicle located,” MY-PID declared.

  “Display on a grid map,” commanded Nuri.

  The system popped the image onto the control unit screen. Li Han’s pickup was parked outside of a ramshackle house on the western outskirts of town.

  “Can you locate the subject?” Nuri asked.

  “Subject appears to be in building,” answered the computer, interpreting the infrared heat signature inside. “Certainty is eighty-four percent.”

  “How many people are with him?”

  “Subject appears alone. No activity.”

  “Looks like Li Han found a new place to stay,” Nuri told Danny. “He’s sleeping in a little shack outside the city.”

  “Why’d he change location?” Danny asked.

  “Don’t know.” Nuri magnified the image, but it was impossible to see inside the building; the thick roof filtered and dulled the IR signal. “When’s the rest of our gear getting here?”

  “The MC-17 should check in any minute,” said Danny. “I’ll arrange a drop near here.”

  “Good.”

  Nuri told MY-PID to examine the house where Li Han had been earlier. Someone was there as well. The computer declared that there was too little data to positively rule out that Li Han wasn’t in that building; only so much could be determined from studying heat signatures. They would have to watch both buildings.

  Meanwhile, the bug tracked the Russian as he headed to a ramshackle compound southeast of the city, wedged into a trio of craggy hills. This was the Almighty First Liberation’s “fortress.” MY-PID counted twenty-eight man-sized heat signatures within the various buildings, accounting for the bulk of the rebel force. They were in defensive positions spread out in the rocks, guarding the approaches; clearly they expected retaliation for their leader’s attack.