by C. E. Murphy
"Alisha?"
Alisha drew in a sharp breath, pulling herself from the reverie of memory to look back at Greg. Hard sunlight glinted off water below, sending bright blinding streaks through the helicopter's bay door. It was enough for an excuse to brush away tears, but none had even sprung to Alisha's eyes. There was still ragged pain and betrayal in thoughts of Cristina, but it had never come to tears. She had too much anger, or not enough willingness to let go. "I'm fine," she said aloud. "The mission's clear."
"Are you all right?" Greg's voice was gentle; he knew as well as Alisha did that permission to terminate would bring to mind one person only.
"Fine," Alisha repeated, and put on a brief, edged smile. "It's all right, Greg. Sometimes that's how it ends, for people like us."
"Sometimes," he agreed, then nodded at the briefing he'd handed her. "We'll be landing soon. Get to work, Cardinal. Memorize your cover story. You're going in as soon as we can arrange it."
Chapter 3
"Thank you! It was a wonderful flight!" Bellowed over the roar of helicopter engines and whipping blades, the thick liquid sounds of the Russian language sounded alien inside Alisha's mouth, as if she shouted garbled nonsense into the wind that swept down off the Ural mountains. The pilot she spoke to, however, offered a broad smile of understanding and cut her a little bow of thanks in return. Then he gestured, not bothering to out-shout the engines. Alisha followed the line of his pantomime to a group of men standing at the edge of the chopper pad.
Several were guards, hanging back a few steps from the man who led them. Alisha took them in briefly—five, all armed, none of them looking soft or approachable in fatigues and berets—and turned her attention to the sixth man.
Brandon Parker was different yet again from the recent photos she'd seen, his blond hair cropped in a near-military cut and the shadow of beard gone from his jaw. He wore khakis and a white T-shirt beneath a drab, olive green Army coat that snapped around his hips as the helicopter blades chopped the air. He leaned into the wind, hands in his pockets, then saw Alisha looking his way and raised a hand in greeting as he came forward. "Elisa Moon?"
As if she might be anyone else. Alisha nodded, taking a few steps away from the helicopter and yelling, "Brandon Parker?" back, no more needing a verification of his identity than he'd needed for her.
"At your service! Come on," he shouted. "This is no place for a conversation!" He lifted one hand and snapped his fingers twice, an imperious order to the guards. Two nodded in response, ducking forward toward the helicopter to unload the two small bags she'd brought with her. Alisha smiled her thanks at the closer guard. There was no harm in trying to make a few friends among the ranks, although the strong-jawed young man gave her no response other than a curt nod. Alisha shrugged mentally and followed the man who'd greeted her.
"Welcome to Kazakhstan," he said the moment they were far enough from the chopper to be heard reasonably. "Sorry for all the military presence." He waved his hand at the guards, who fell in place around them as if it were natural.
"I have ID—" Alisha reached for her purse, stopped by Parker's explosive snort.
"You wouldn't be here at all if you weren't who you said you were."
"Of course not." Alisha pulled her wallet out anyway, offering it. Brandon flipped it open, gave it a cursory glance, then handed it back.
"I'm convinced." He put on a look of mock injury, offering his hand a second time. "Now will you shake my hand? Or shall I provide my own identification first?"
"That won't be necessary, Dr. Parker." Alisha took his hand, smiling back. The handshake: always a test. A test for her, not for the people she met.
"You're smart," Greg had said to her once, when she'd asked why he'd recruited her to the CIA. But smart had only been part of it, and he'd thrown that answer out almost before he said it. "You're strong."
Deceptively strong, Alisha would have said. She'd always had good upper body strength, able to out arm-wrestle her older sister since they were children. She'd discovered yoga as a teenager, and through that art had developed considerably more physical strength than women were expected to have. It gave her an advantage she loved to exploit.
So, for an instant, when Brandon Parker closed his fingers around hers, she was tempted to squeeze his hand until he understood how much strength she commanded. It was always a temptation, although she never gave into it. There was no point in giving away one of her greatest advantages at the beginning of the game.
And Brandon's handshake gave her no reason to prove herself. It was firm and solid, expecting reasonable strength in response: not the fragile thing some men used, as if by her very femininity she might shatter from his touch. Alisha smiled again, never missing a beat. "It's a pleasure, Dr. Parker."
"The pleasure is mine, Ms. Moon. Although I must say, given your employers, you're not what we might have expected."
"You mean I'm young, an American and a woman."
Brandon's gaze flickered over her, appraising her both as a woman and a threat. Everything about her presentation played up the first and downplayed the second: she wore a professionally tailored skirt and low heels that set off the curve of her calf without being dangerous to run in. Her blouse was soft and melded against her skin as wind snapped and billowed around her. She'd deliberately foregone her suit jacket, to enhance a deceptive look of delicacy. Her hair was swept back in a chignon from which a few pincurls escaped, framing her temples. With her slender frame, she knew she looked breakable, as if the gusting wind could sweep her up and dash her against the mountainside. The only flaw in the projection was the bandage that wrapped her right ankle, providing support for the strained tendons there.
But Brandon Parker's assessment seemed to follow the lines it was supposed to, though his eyes lingered on the wrapped ankle. "A lovely woman. This way, please." He gestured toward a small convoy of older military vehicles, waiting at the far edge of the helicopter pad. "You don't look like someone who would be working for an Arabic consortium, Ms. Moon."
"That's very much the idea. If my employers wish to distance themselves from me, my very appearance and heritage provides them with plausible deniability." She climbed into the middle vehicle, an English-style jeep with the drive mechanism on the right. Brandon held the door for her and she leaned forward, watching him walk around the vehicle before she spoke again. "If I may...I didn't expect them to send their resident genius out to meet me. I spoke with a General Hashikov to make these arrangements, a Russian man—" She arched her eyebrows, genuine curiosity behind the question.
"Ah, yeah." Brandon pulled the jeep door closed behind him and thumped the driver's seat as indication they were ready to go. "Ukrainian, actually. His head spins if you say he's Russian. He runs the military side of the base. The cover for our development work, essentially."
"Ukrainian," Alisha murmured, nodding as if making note of the information. She already knew, of course, that Hashikov had been a young soldier when the Soviet Union had fallen, and had climbed the ranks through the disaffected era that followed, carrying on his duty under a flag he had, perhaps, felt very little loyalty to; when opportunity to profit outside the military's chain of command had presented itself, he'd turned his back on a life-long career with no evident regrets. Like many born under Soviet rule, Hashikov held his true nationality dear to his heart, and Alisha would never have called him Russian to his face. Still, offering Brandon Parker an opportunity to establish himself as a confidant was a good way to begin earning his trust. "I'll remember," Alisha said. "Thank you."
"No problem. I doubt you'll meet him, at least if he can avoid it. He doesn't like lay people."
"In that case, I'll be sure not to get laid."
Brandon shot her a startled look that dissolved into laughter. Alisha held up her hands, grinning. "Forgive me. That was entirely unprofessional, and I'm here representing some men with a great deal of power and money. I will," she said, schooling her features into solemnity, "behave myself. But if it
's necessary I will speak with General Hashikov regarding your work and its military applications. With no offense meant, sir, you're a developer, and the general is a military man. As an interested buyer, it's imperative for me to have as broad and comprehensive an understanding of your work as is possible."
Cool steel crept into her voice by the end of her speech, all the laughter gone from her eyes. She could see it in Brandon's expression as clearly as she could hear the tone modulations as she spoke. From sweet flirty thing to combatant inside a sentence, she congratulated herself. Way to scare 'em, Leesh.
Leesh. Only one person had ever called her by that nickname. Everyone at the Company called her Ali; everyone had always called her that, as long as she could remember. But Frank Reichart had ferreted out the nickname she had for herself: Leesh, the tough girl. Combat pilot, biker babe, the cool head in the face of danger. Ali was more fragile, the flirty woman who could convince men to lay a jacket over a puddle for her, a princess in a tower to protect. Alisha thought that was pushing compartmentalization far—more than far—enough, but it did help to be able to switch from one to another when the situation called for it. Almost everyone—even Greg, who should have known better—responded to soft flirtatious Ali, and Alisha wasn't above taking advantage of it. It made hard-core Leesh that much more effective, as proven by Brandon's brief flicker of a smile.
"I see now why you're the woman for the job, Ms. Moon. I imagine you're underestimated a lot."
"Hazard of the profession, Dr. Parker." Ali, Alisha thought. Leesh. It didn't matter which name she thought of herself as. Put them together and she got herself: Alisha MacAleer. And she was the one who woke up with nightmares when things went wrong.
#
The drive up the mountainside to the base was horrifyingly dramatic. The road was a rough, one-lane gravel strip cut against the mountain. Alisha couldn't see the shoulder beneath the Jeep's body, only the thousand-foot drop down to the glacier-formed valley below. The mountain was close enough to touch on the left-hand side of the convoy as well, rough stone brambled with stubborn bushes determined to eke life out of a barren surface.
One good shove and there'd be nothing between her and the valley floor.
The memory of Cristina's eyes in the last moment of her life flashed through Alisha's mind. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, wishing it was cold enough to claim that as her excuse.
Perhaps it was. Brandon made a motion toward shrugging his suit jacket off, as if to give it to her. Alisha shook her head. "It's not the cold." She took a deep breath, glanced out the window, and lied, "I'm afraid of heights."
Brandon clucked his tongue. "I'd have put you on the left if I'd known that."
Alisha looked back at him to offer her thanks, and smiled suddenly, a real smile. Brandon's cheeks had paled, the pulse in his throat suddenly higher. He honestly didn't like heights, and the noble offer alarmed him. "Thank you for the thought," Alisha murmured. "I'll be all right. In the meantime, are we free to speak about your project here?" She cut a glance toward the driver, then back to Brandon, her eyebrows lifted in question.
"We are. Please, feel free. I've got a demonstration set up once we arrive, but any questions you have now, of course." He spread his hands in invitation. Long fingers, Alisha noted; well-shaped nails, and strength in the quick way he used his hands. His CIA training would have taught him to make those hands a weapon. Alisha looked down at her own hands, all tapered fingernails and evident softness. Like Brandon, she was built to deceive. The question was, who would see beneath the surface fastest and best.
"In order for your so-called artificial intelligences to be most useful, they'll need to be both rapidly programmed and yet resistant to hacking." She chose her words carefully, focus tuned to the scientist beside her instead of a study of hands. Brandon let out a low laugh that said he knew she was challenging him by casting doubt on the AI aspect of his work.
"The process I've developed depends on a coding written in ordinary English, a series of if-then statements which allow a drone to assess terrain, likelihood of risk and the best way to proceed with that information." He shot Alisha a sideways look to see if she was following him, as much a test as the one she'd laid out.
"Programmers have been trying to successfully create plain English code for years. Decades."
"I succeeded." For the first time, his demeanor slid toward the egotistical, blunt tone blurring the line between utter confidence and arrogance. "More important, the program learns from its mistakes, and propagates what it's learned."
Alisha's shoulder blades pinched together, changing her whole posture as her eyebrows rose in surprise. "You're saying that one of these drones could conceivably teach another?"
"Exactly!" Arrogance evaporated into of smug delight. Brandon twisted in his seat to face her, hands spread in explanation. "As for the hacking aspect, the AI's wifi frequency changes randomly every few seconds on a logarithmic pattern established by a subset of the program. Every drone updates its frequency change at the same time, so there's no lag, but the cycle is too fast for anything shy of another AI to break into."
Alisha pursed her lips, more impressed than she wanted to be. "If your prototype lives up to your pitch, Dr. Parker…"
If it lived up to his pitch, American military intelligence and development was desperately behind Brandon's curve. Moreover, he was obviously the clear and present danger that his father had feared he might be.
"It will. It's the culmination of years of work," Parker said rather grandiosely. Alisha tilted her chin up, curiosity wrinkling her forehead.
"I thought your previous projects involved quantum computing. Or—" she interrupted his indrawn breath before he had the chance to explain "—or does the prototype work on one of your quantum chips?"
A hint of a smile curved the near corner of Brandon's mouth. "What, after all, is the speed of thought? Is it faster than light? We make so many decisions so rapidly, every day, some physical, some psychological. How to keep from falling: an instinctive balance reaction, but a decision nonetheless. In order to create a truly viable combat intelligence, it needed to be able to think as quickly, for equally minute, yet vital tasks. I had to begin with the chip. All the brilliant programming in the world wouldn't matter if the chip couldn't handle the processing power necessary to make an artificial intelligence possible. I've been working on the theories since childhood."
Not according to his CIA records. Alisha bit her tongue on the comment, though curiosity flared in her. She'd taken Brandon's records at face value, but it was wholly possible he'd been working on projects so secret that his files were a cover story. She would have to look into it more closely.
Later, though. Brandon was still talking: "…uses infrared to determine whether a target is armed and should be dealt with using deadly methods, or if subdual is sufficient."
"Subdual?"
"It's rather amazing how badly incapacitated a human being can be by appropriate usage of sound waves. Okay." He straightened in his seat, gesturing ahead as the jeep went around a sharp curve that revealed a bleak fortress cut into the mountains. "Here we are, Ms. Moon. The heart of Project ACUTE."
Chapter 4
Alisha's eyebrows rose as a smile curved her lips. "'ACUTE'?"
"Artificial Combat Utility Experiment, capital U-T in utility. I can't decide if it implies the drones are soft and fuzzy and adorable, or all sharp angles."
"Which are they?" Alisha listened to his description with half an ear as the Jeep drew into the complex. Concrete walls with barbed wire fences atop them cut the road in half, bleak gates pulling open to allow passage. They swung shut behind the vehicles, ponderous creaking over the wail of mountainside winds. Alisha glanced over her shoulder to watch youthful men in uniform slam bars down across the inner wall of the gates. They came to attention again as soon as they'd finished, and Alisha turned her attention forward.
A valley spread out before them, empty fields that housed the b
uildings of the military base. "It doesn't look like a military base." As soon as the words were out, she shook her head. "It doesn't look like a place you'd expect to find one," she amended.
"No," Brandon agreed. "It's pretty, isn't it?"
Alisha tilted in her seat to squint at the mountaintops, sweeping above the complex to tips that looked sharp enough to slice a fingertip on. Gray and green scrubby spruce trees crept two-thirds of the way up the mountain-sides, petering out to bare rock, brown and gray under the blustery sky. Closer to the base itself, there were more deciduous trees, leaves so stirred by the wind Alisha imagined she could hear the hiss and bustle even over the Jeep's engine. The land itself spoke of strength and determination, mountains looming as if to remind the small creatures that peopled their feet that they were merely mortal, and looked on the face of eternity. "It's magnificent," Alisha murmured. "And what's that?" She nodded ahead, where a glint of silver against a partially constructed stone wall caught her eye.
"That," Brandon said, sounding anticipatory, "is our demonstration, Ms. Moon." He thumped the side of the driver's seat and the Jeep veered off its course to the main buildings, bouncing through fields that were deceptively smooth to the eye. Alisha heard Brandon's apology gritting through his teeth as she clung to the armrest in order to keep her seat.
"Pity this job doesn't cover dental," she muttered, not entirely intending to be overheard.
Brandon shot her a look of wry humor as the driver slowed the vehicle to a halt some fifty feet away from a solitary man standing in the field. "I'll make the rash assumption that the compensations are otherwise worthwhile, or you wouldn't be doing it."
Alisha laughed, enjoying Brandon Parker's company far too much. That made him dangerous, and made staying professional that much more vital.
But it would be better to bring him in rather than be forced to terminate him. Not just because he was Greg Parker's son, but because a man of his talent and intelligence could once again be an incredibly valuable asset to the CIA. If the attraction was mutual—and, she thought, with a tinge of old bitterness, cash dollars weren't quite as important to him as they'd been to Frank Reichart—there might be a way through this mission that would leave everyone satisfied.