by A. J Tata
“He was shot and apparently dumped in the ocean, like fish bait. The boat had a hole in the bottom. Chains with his blood on them. The sharks probably ate him.”
She spat the words out with disgust, as if she had eaten something bad. As they flew, he saw the Port of Wilmington out their left windows. Its container cranes were already beginning to take position over a full ship, ready for unloading. He couldn’t catch the name of the ship but did see a Chinese flag flying off the bow. Trade with China was booming and was good for the economy, but it always made him uneasy to see so many containers stacked to the sky, each one of which could contain a nuclear bomb. After the attacks on Savannah and Charleston, he was surprised that Wilmington was still operational, but then he considered that the administration had not yet confirmed that these were terrorist attacks. Plus, inbound ships would need to go somewhere, and the marginally active Port of Wilmington could probably use the business.
“Who found the boat?” he asked.
“Some fishermen. The boat had washed up in the shallow water.”
“So Brunswick County or New Hanover County handled the investigation?” The Cape Fear River ran from north to south, dividing Brunswick and New Hanover Counties, Mahegan knew.
“Both. But there were no arrests. There wasn’t enough evidence to say who did it, just enough to say he is dead.”
They flew for about fifteen minutes before he felt the aircraft begin to slow as the rotors tilted upward to a position for landing vertically, like a helicopter. He saw a massive compound surrounded by tall fencing topped off with razor wire. His guess was the grounds were spread over at least five hundred acres, if not more.
“We have almost eight hundred acres here, in case you’re wondering,” Ximena De La Cruz said. She was an astute woman and had studied him carefully as he sized up the compound from the air, as if he was considering the manufacturing compound as a potential target. He could feel her eyes on him as he surveyed the fifteen-foot-high fence, the multiple warehouses, and the few office buildings. Rail lines fed from inside the three highest buildings to a switching yard in the middle of the compound. The multiple rails converged to a single line that led to a gate in the fence. From there the rail led north and, he presumed, to a bridge that crossed the river and then to the Port of Wilmington. He also saw a line of trucks at another gate. Security personnel were screening each one, using mirrors to see beneath the chassis. The guards were also using metal detection wands on the drivers. At the southern end of the property were an isolated building, a short runway, and a driving track.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the metal structure.
“Our research and development facility. We test our cars on the tracks.”
What he had first determined was a runway he could see now was also possibly a drag strip of sorts, where they probably tested the zero-to-sixty speeds of the Cefiro automobiles.
The property fronted the Cape Fear River. As he looked toward the left windows, his eyes connected with Ximena De La Cruz’s hard stare. Neither of them spoke, though he held her gaze for a moment before he assessed the property as it met the river bluff. The Cape Fear River was about thirty to fifty yards below the high ground upon which the entire car plant sat. Maybe a hundred yards of marsh ran from the the river’s deep water to the base of the bluff. There was a canal that cut through the marsh and led to what looked like a tunnel into the highest part of the bluff. He caught only a glimpse, because the pilots started crabbing the aircraft to the west. Adjacent to the canal there was a pier or dock for smaller boats. This was nothing capable of handling large container ships and was more like somewhere to tie off a small fishing boat. Mahegan felt the rotors tilt vertical as the aircraft switched to helicopter mode and began its slow descent onto the concrete pad.
As the aircraft landed, two black SUVs pulled up to the concrete apron twenty yards away. A crew member opened the right door, and they exited into a cordon of armed guards, who followed them to one of the SUVs and closed the doors as they sat. The sun was already beginning to bear down on Mahegan in true Indian summer fashion.
“You know something I don’t know?” he asked Ms. De La Cruz as he studied the obvious security measures in place. Were these guards normal, or was this some heightened level of security?
“We went to full alert after Misha’s kidnapping and now the sinking of the ships,” she said. Her voice was crisp, as if this were her executive decision, and a good one at that.
“You wanted me for security? Seems like you’ve got plenty of that.”
“Tell me, Jake Mahegan, what have you seen on our flight?”
“From the time I stepped into your building in Wilmington until we got here, we’ve had constant security. Your men are big guys who seem well trained. They are all carrying weapons and looking out, not in.” All of that was true. So often security personnel would become enamored with their principal or the event and would be watching, or looking in—as opposed to securing, or looking outward. What Mahegan had noticed so far was a cohesive team of professionals who operated seamlessly.
“True. And I would hope so. They’ve each got an earbud that is digitally programmed using a watered-down version of Misha’s swarming code. What one of them is doing, the rest instantly know via their smartphones. Of course, they’re not swarming, per se, but they are receiving cues about what each member of the team is doing. The applications for this code are limitless.” Her last comment rang with an air of suspicion or uncertainty, as if the code could be used for nefarious means, or maybe that was just his filter processing as it often did.
Instead of having a sequential passing of information to her security team, the security team all had the same information near simultaneously, it seemed. The man who had escorted him to the elevator earlier most likely had known precisely where their SUV was and when they would arrive at their location. The benefits of seamless information and communication were huge, of course. In the Army Mahegan called this phenomenon situational awareness. How much did he know about his men, their locations, and capabilities, and how much did he know about the enemy? Efforts to reduce friendly fire casualties had resulted in programs such as Blue Force Tracking, which provided specific locations of friendly vehicles and personnel who might have the tracking devices. But that capability was mainly for the generals in the rear who were watching the fight unfold. Those on the ground usually had less sophisticated capabilities. It was revolutionary to have something so fully integrated that it could provide instant awareness of what every team member was doing at every moment.
If Mahegan had heard De La Cruz correctly, he could understand her concerns. In the wrong hands, this kind of technology could be devastating. Already he had suspected that the flocks of birds seen near the three sunken ships were actually weaponized ANTS systems. The question was whether those systems were developed here at Cefiro.
De La Cruz led him into the largest of the buildings, where they took an elevator up to the top floor. Again, they were handed off from one team of security specialists to another. They could have been carbon copies of each other. They were barrel-chested and had blue blazers, dark pants, dark shirts, shaved heads, and olive complexions. Most appeared to be Hispanic. None of them smiled, and few of them spoke. Mahegan was not a big user of advanced technology in civilian life, though he had taken advantage of everything possible in combat. Any edge he could get helped. Whatever De La Cruz was using seemed to ensure a tight cordon of security.
From what De La Cruz called “the bird’s eye,” he could see the assembly line full of robots, starting with a chassis at one end and finishing with a fully assembled automobile at the other end of the warehouse. He stood in an anteroom to her richly appointed office, looking through Plexiglas at the marvels of modern machinery. That Cuba had been able to finance and build this facility in North Carolina seemed next to impossible. He began to wonder who was financing this operation . . . and for what purposes. North Carolina had been the only s
tate in the Southeast not to have a major car manufacturer. Perhaps the incentives and tax breaks had been incentive enough to construct something that Google or Tesla would envy.
“Impressive,” he said. It was an understatement. He watched the cars begin on one side as a piece of metal; evolve quickly into a chassis; pass to the next robot and receive an engine, then a body, wheels, electrical wiring happening with each step; then finally get spray painted red or white. Henry Ford would be amazed.
“Yes. We have orders for over thirty thousand cars. We are on schedule to meet that demand and exceed it by twenty thousand, meeting our annual production goal of fifty thousand a year. It’s low by most standards, but high for the new autonomous car market. Even Tesla is not doing what we are from a production standpoint, much less a technology one. Think about it, Mahegan. We are on the cutting edge, the ground floor, of the most transformational revolution in transportation since the airplane.”
“So why drag me out here? Give me a stock tip?”
“Funny,” she said, pursing her lips. “We’re a private company, but if you accept my offer, I will give you equity, plus two hundred thousand dollars.”
“And the mission is?”
“Find Misha. Protect my company’s intellectual property.”
“I’m no Internet genius,” he said.
He could hear the hiss and pump of hydraulic robots twisting and fitting parts into precise spots. Everything from fenders to microchips were secured with exactness.
“Finding Misha is most important to me at the moment,” she said. “My information assurance team detected hacking within our network since Roger Constance has . . . left us. They are good, but Roger was highly skilled. The team is patching the system after our latest attacks, and we are assessing the damage as to what proprietary information might have been stolen, if any. I think we will be okay in that regard, but without Misha, well, we may have a problem. Misha, you see, helped her father.”
“What kind of problem?” Though he thought he already knew. If Misha, instead of her father, had developed the code for Cefiro vehicles to communicate, then they could also swarm. Misha might have made a mistake, or she might have built in trapdoors if the code was used for something other than its intended purpose. If the software was incomplete or flawed, which was certainly possible, they would want the original code writer to patch the problem. With fifty thousand vehicles about to hit the market, the last thing De La Cruz wanted was a major recall.
“I believe she wrote much of our software. Some things are . . . incomplete. She’s a crafty kid, and maybe she did so on purpose.”
That was as close to an affirmation as he was going to receive, but he made no response. A gear caught in his mind at this point also. He understood that De La Cruz might want the vehicles to be able to communicate simultaneously a maintenance issue to a service center. He failed to see the utility in having the vehicles communicate with one another, unless, of course, it was a military application.
She turned toward him and placed a slender hand on his chest.
“You’re a smart man with a good reputation for solving tough problems. I will make it three hundred thousand dollars if you find Misha.”
“I’m not negotiating. Just processing. Would it be possible to check out the property first? See what I’m getting into?”
“Sure. You can have free access, with one qualification. Rhames here will accompany you everywhere on Cefiro property.”
Standing in the corner of the room was a six-and-a-half-foot-tall dark-skinned man with the build and calculating gaze of a football linebacker. He took his cue from De La Cruz and walked toward them, dressed in the same attire as all the other security guards, except he had a DEATH FROM ABOVE tattoo around his neck in dark ink.
“Rhames,” he said. They were eye to eye. He was thick in the chest; perhaps he was wearing body armor. His arm muscles strained the material of his suit. His hands were the size of baseball mitts. They didn’t shake hands. Rhames didn’t offer his hand, and neither did Mahegan.
“Mahegan,” he said.
They sized one another up for a moment. He wasn’t sure how long Rhames had been with De La Cruz, but Mahegan got the impression that he was treading on Rhames’s turf somehow, that his presence was a challenge to the guard’s competence. Rhames’s brown eyes bored into him. His crow’s-feet crinkled when he smirked, as if to ask, “What can you do that I can’t?”
Mahegan turned to De La Cruz and said, “I’m going to take a walk around the place. Outside. That shouldn’t require any escort.”
She paused, looked at Rhames, and said, “You good with that?”
Rhames smiled a gold-toothed grin and said, “I can see everything on the monitors. I’m good.”
Mahegan walked with De La Cruz to the elevator. She waved her card across the reader and pressed the button.
“Do I get a card?”
She snapped hers off her lanyard and handed it to him. “I’ll get another one.”
He stuffed the card into his pocket as the elevator doors opened. Once on the ground floor, he walked through the glass-door security turnstiles, which popped open with a wave of the card. After walking outside, he stood on the brick steps and looked to the east, toward the river. The sun was at high noon. A warm west breeze brushed his face.
From the helicopter he had seen two rectangular fenced areas. One area was the large manufacturing plant where De La Cruz and he had watched the automated assembly line produce sophisticated cars. The second square was the one in which he was most interested. Inside its fence, at the far southwest corner, was another building, which De La Cruz had called the research and development facility. Why the separation? he wondered. And why the additional security?
He walked along a paved road that gave way to a gravel road that eventually looped around to the south. He kept walking beyond the road, up to the fence. He was impressed with its quality. It was a mixture of steel bars, which were driven into the ground about five feet deep, curved outward at the top, and were honed to a fine point, with steel crossbars on the inside. Heavy-gauge wire mesh protected the exterior. He understood corporate security was paramount, but this was impressive. There was a groomed dirt path that followed the fence, like a baseball stadium warning track.
He walked south on the path along the eastern boundary of the fence until he reached a right turn. The fence continued to the south and also branched off and turned west, away from the river. To his right were knee-high sea grass and rolling hills. The track was finely dragged, like a baseball infield. Occasionally, he saw animal tracks, fox, deer, and a variety of birds. He considered that guards might also inspect the track for footprints to determine if there had been a breach. He walked until he reached pavement that led into the second, more secure fenced-off area for the research and development facility. He saw a card reader for the gate, pulled out De La Cruz’s card, waved it, and nothing happened.
He stood at the gate, wondering why the CEO would not have universal access to the entire facility. He looked to his left, toward the river, and saw the tip of the pier jutting across the marsh. To his two o’clock was the research and development building, about a quarter mile away. He studied the razor wire along the fence and the lack of it on the gate. He imagined that the wire impeded the sliding of the gate back and forth as vehicles gained access or departed. Sharp pickets were aimed toward him, meaning that whoever ran the research and development facility wanted to keep routine Cefiro employees out.
He stepped back, grasped two of the pickets by reaching up to the top of the eight-foot gate. Using the heavy-gauge metal bars as leverage, he pulled himself up and then flipped his hands so that he was basically doing a parallel bars dip. Pushing up now, he was able to swing his legs over the gate and land on the asphalt road, executing a parachute landing fall. His knees flexed as he rolled onto his side.
He stood and turned east, following the same fence he had just walked, but from the other side, hit the riv
er again, turned south, and walked all the way to the southernmost fence and stared into what was nothing other than an ammunition depot. He recalled that the largest ammunition depot in the United States was on the Cape Fear River. It was called Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point, or MOTSU in military acronym parlance. He saw rows of grass-covered mounds twenty feet high and forty feet wide, like burial grounds for giants. But he knew these mounds were ammunition bunkers, where the military housed every kind of bomb and bullet in the inventory.
He turned around and saw the research and development building about four hundred yards to the northwest. The main Cefiro building was nearly a full mile away now, a distant and less potent-looking image than the tall and wide corrugated metal research and development building.
He continued walking parallel to the MOTSU ammunition depot and saw inside the research and development grounds a series of mounds that did not look natural but were camouflaged well enough to blend in. They were mini versions of the large ammunition bunkers. Perhaps they were storage areas, or maybe they were remnants of whatever the property had been before it became a mega-site for an auto manufacturer. They looked like graves that had grown over with reeds and tall grass. Maybe that was what they were, but Mahegan didn’t see any cemetery markers. Maybe Cefiro had bought some land from the military, and they were old, hopefully empty ammunition bunkers.