3
November 11th.
Matt Burke:
Langley has become a fortress in the great Bushwar, but I have no problem getting through security. My face and iris-patterns must have been loaded in advance, because they don’t even ask for my ID before they greet me by name, tell me “Director Henderson is sending someone to escort you.”
It’s chilly today, especially with the wind coming off the river, so I’m wrapped tight in my heavy bomber and stay that way even after I’m inside, like I want to keep myself insulated from the place. I’m nowhere near ready to forgive and forget the last atrocity that the brain trust in this place sent me on. (And I’m a bit edgy because I figure the feeling is mutual, considering the outcome.)
A trim suit comes out to intercept me on cue, smiles like a store mannequin and escorts me promptly to the JIC wing, and the sixth-floor home-office of one Lawrence Henderson.
The place smells like new tech. It gives the place toxic air. I-scans do me again before letting me through to his Ops-Center, which looks like a standard-issue cubicle hell for about two dozen analyst-types, and I catch glimpses of what must be the new tech as Mr. Suit-Mannequin politely moves me through. And I recognize the graphics on the screens I can see: same swirly-blue desktop ready-graphic that trademarks Doc Becker’s experimental AI.
The doors all advertise that they’re sealed and caged to prevent eavesdropping (all flavors), and discreet sentry scanners in the frames sweep me for—I don’t know, but I’d guess pretty much everything: uplinks, guns, maybe even radiologicals and bioweapons.
Two sets of those doors and a right turn puts me in what must be Henderson’s outer office. There’s no live secretary, but there is a skinny young college-looking geek, almost-glowing copper hair chopped in jarhead-punk fashion, jeans and a rumpled gray sportcoat, clutching his minibook for dear life as he snaps-to sloppily and looks like he doesn’t know whether to offer his hand or salute me.
“You’re… ah… Captain Burke,” he gets out, and then I match the voice and face to real life before he can confirm it: “Scott Becker. From… ah…” He’s not sure what he’s allowed to say, so I help him out by offering the handshake option.
“Beer,” I tell him, and he looks confused. “I owe you. Beer.”
His freckled skin flushes sunburn-red as he looks relieved, like he expected something else, someone more dub or rum or I don’t know. But hell, he played link monitor for me—he should know better. Then he looks like he needs to tell me something but thinks he can’t here, the way he shuffles and darts his eyes. Odd. He’s supposedly been running an intel contract for years—he should be used to this level of security and paranoia. It makes me wonder what else is clicking him. But then the inner doors unseal and I hear another familiar voice:
“Gentlemen…”
Henderson—in person—is exactly the officious prick I expected: suit and tie like he lives in them, thinning strawberry hair and the faint pitting on the cheeks that comes with a bad skin history (funny it doesn’t show up in the vid-link resolution). He goes for the power-handshake like a politician (I decline this time, using the perforated hand as an excuse), offers coffee and tea and such (though then just points out the service to let us get our own), and suggests a pair of chairs in front of his big lacquered desk.
“How’s the healing coming?” he tries superficially.
“Still sore,” I tell him almost like it’s his fault. “But I figure I got out lucky.”
“Considering the carriers turned out not to be contagious,” he assumes. I don’t bother to tell him that the threat of exposure to an engineered virus didn’t bother me nearly as much as the threat of my own “backup” shooting me when I went for the Wabs’ big horn thingy. Or when I found out that Henderson had teams on the sound-weapon the whole time and didn’t budge them until after Grayman had done the job for him. So I give him my best “whatever” look and wait for him to tell me what he apparently wants to so badly.
But he doesn’t. Not quite. He pulls up the expensive high-rez holoscreen that’s built into his desk and starts to flash files in the air between us. A 3-D of what looks like a suit of heavy space battle armor out of an alien-shooter game rotates above his desktop.
“This is the new battlefield weapon for an old battlefield,” he sells like a weapons contractor. “SENTAR Corporation. Class V protection, full body coverage with extensive trauma plate. Nanotech materials. BCR hardened—doubles as MOPP gear.” He zooms and does a demo of the full-visored helmet. “Full spectrum feed and interface. Arrays pick up everything from visual spectrum to infra-red and even Terahertz—the gear can see through walls—and audio has built-in parabolics, sonar and laser—so you can hear through walls as well. It’s all linked to Datascan, which processes the feed, coordinates with existing files and active satellite imaging, and sends you back full tracking, targeting, mapping and strategic plans. You got a chance to sample some of it in Athens, Captain: a whole new level of tactical battlefield coordination.” Then he shows us the rest of the toys:
“Servo grappling hooks auto-fire from the back of the torso and the left forearm under recharging gas pressure, trailing motorized rappel lines. The AI aims them, gauges firing energy, controls whether the hooks hold or release. They can drop you smooth or fast from a roof or an aircraft, or they can grab on and lift you up. The forearms are also loaded with utility gear: retracting blades for close interdiction, gas projectors, and corrosive injectors for melting through locks and hinges, as well as electronic breaker-tools. Whole thing only weighs about fifty pounds. And then there’s this:”
The graphic raises its right arm. It’s gripping a blocky weapon with over/under barrels. Its triggered pistol-grip is forward of center so that the bulk of it is behind the shooter’s hand, bullpup-style. There’s a right-angled fore-end grip for two-handed stabilization.
“ICW. Interface Combat Weapon. Also produced by SENTAR. Fires five-five-six-millimeter caseless—one hundred rounds per stick—as well as six various 25mm grenades set in a selective cylinder magazine. Its sighting and fire control are also fully integrated into the AI. You just point the thing, squeeze the trigger, and it shoots when it has a sure lock, or holds fire if any friendly or civilian target is in line. You could point this thing into a crowd of people, wave it around, and it would cleanly pick out the targets hiding in there without collateral damage. Or it could pick out enemies you can’t even see.”
I try not to look impressed, but side-glance at Becker, who looks like there’s porn on the screen.
“Imagine what this will mean, Captain,” he keeps selling. “This will change how we fight wars. No more large vulnerable forces on the ground, trying to secure hostile urban neighborhoods or challenging terrain. Instead, we just hit-and-fade with small, highly mobile teams, inserted and extracted using cutting-edge VTOL gunships—all extremely surgical. The new armor will significantly reduce our casualties, while the Datascan AI’s coordination will radically improve our accuracy and responses. And no more messy collateral damage: we can track and lock and drop in and take out our objectives with absolute surety. No mistakes. No civilian casualties. And no counter-propaganda, either: the optical feed from the suits will put everything we do on camera. We could upload our mission feed directly to the news-nets and comfortably let the world armchair-in on our operations.”
“Assuming it actually works that way.” But he was expecting that.
“This would be why you’re both here. Doctor Becker knows Datascan better than any other project engineer at McCain. He can watch over the interfacing as we move ahead, de-bug as we go.”
“Yeah, but I can’t get a toaster to work,” I tell him proudly. “So why me?”
“Consider your attitude a part of the equation,” he tries the sincere-thing. “And since it wasn’t me who actually picked you for this, or for the Grayman op, you’ll have to ask the ‘why’ in the right direction.”
The holo washes over to the swirling blues of the familiar ready-g
raphic.
“GOOD AFTERNOON, MAJOR BURKE,” the vox I remember from Athens drones as the text-version scrolls in the air. He can’t be serious.
“See,” I defend, “the thing’s already buggy. Thinks I’m someone else…”
“SIMON MATTHEW BURQUETTE,” the vox spits out the name I’d been promised HumInt had lost for me years ago. “AGE TWENTY-NINE. ENLISTED US ARMY FIFTH-JUNE TWO-THOUSAND-NINE. COMPLETED OCS, AIRBORNE AND RANGER TRAINING. GRADUATION RANK: SECOND LIEUTENANT. COMPLETED ADVANCED SPECIALIZED TRAINING IN SMALL ARMS, CLOSE QUARTERS COMBAT, COVERT INTERDICTION, AND SPECIAL OPERATIONS TACTICAL PLATOON COMMAND. SPEAKS FLUENT SPANISH AND LIMITED PORTUGUES, QUECHUA AND ARABIC. ASSIGNED SPECIAL FORCES MAY TWO-THOUSAND TWELVE. DEPLOYED JOINT COMBINED HUMAN INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS ZONE FOUR, TWO-THOUSAND FOURTEEN. SECURE IDENTITY: MATTHEW CHRISTOPHER BURKE. LAST ASSIGNMENT: PROJECT MONTAGNARD, TWO THOUSAND SEVENTEEN THROUGH TWO THOUSAND EIGHTEEN. LAST PROMOTION: MAJOR, THIS DATE.”
“You can’t be serious.”
Henderson—the smug bastard—lets me stew. And so does Hal.
“The Team One selection has been initiated?” Becker breaks the tension by spitting out gobbledygook. Whatever it means, he’s excited about it, and maybe a bit uncomfortable.
“Weeks ago,” Henderson tells him—apparently they speak the same language. “We have most of the candidacy online. That’s why the Major here was selected for Grayman. He fit. Still does.”
“You’re saying Grayman was a test-scenario for Tactical candidate selection?” Becker dithers like he’s just heard that Christmas is a Wab plot to pack shopping centers with targets for suicide bombers.
And I’m flashing a time-out as Henderson is nodding his smug affirmation.
“Translation for the toaster-illiterate, please?”
“The project evolution at this stage was for Datascan to demonstrate its ability to identify, profile and tracking a global target database, while simultaneously selecting and training the armored field operatives—we call them ‘Tacticals’—in the special tactics and equipment required to carry out interface operations…” This would be Becker’s version. I think Henderson lets him ramble just so I’ll like his explanation better.
“Contrary to how the Grayman operation was made to appear on the surface, Datascan is actually performing above expectations,” he keeps on trying to sell me. “It’s effectively proving it can do what it was designed for: It can positively identify anyone even remotely involved in any terrorist activity, and it can track them down. It can also very accurately predict behavior: tell us what they’re going to do before they themselves even know what that is. Then, if we decide to move on a target, it can plan the mission with every conceivable contingency, and then coordinate the troops in the field more effectively than any human commander. We will have an unbelievable tactical advantage, even in the most difficult environments. And we’re not talking one mission at a time—you’ve only seen the barest fraction of what it can do. Datascan will eventually have eyes on every potential enemy we have. The number of operations it can simultaneously manage will only be limited by the forces we can field. The War on Terror will take a turn we could never before have hoped for.”
Time-out again: “This is just so perfect, I bet the Rads could sneeze and bork it,” I have to tell him, because he’s left reality (apparently with Doc happily in tow).
“That’s why we do not proceed until each step is fully proven,” Henderson defends, apparently fully expecting my attitude. “We start with one six-man fire-team of test candidates, run them through the new training series, give them a series of test missions, then introduce them into live operations. And then we still have to wait for the bigger-picture to catch up: Considering where our targets tend to hide, we can’t just drop on them regardless of borders and blast away. We’ll need international cooperation, which is why this is a multinational project—we already have a dozen interested nations willing to see what we can do.”
I have to digest. I have a hard time. I realize the first implication:
“So this isn’t just for sale to US Special Operations?”
“It can’t be,” he says with amazing ease. “We need to coordinate globally to hunt these bastards properly.”
And I’m immediately thinking about how much money some select corporate types could be raking in, selling expensive product to every allied nation at once, convincing them they need it. But that’s not what’s bending me:
“So what the hell was Grayman?” I hit him, realizing I’m probably dissing Doc’s life’s work in the process. “You told me you’d give me answers if I came to this party. If that was a success, it’s some definition of the word I’m not familiar with.”
But the smug he gives me makes me start sweating.
“Grayman was actually more successful than even Doctor Becker was made aware of,” he purrs. “But then, he was led to believe it was just a straightforward target-tracking op: find Grayman. We decided to accelerate things, based on what we saw coming out of Datascan as soon as it began tracking. And Datascan did indeed find, track, profile and predict—we just kept the full results restricted. It also initiated tactical supports: Yes, Major, Grayman did have Datascan’s help. It gave us a good idea how Datascan could apply its resources to covert-operative support.”
“Then Grayman is one of yours?”
I thought I had him, but he laughs at me. Well, he smirks…
“No. Grayman is what he appears to be: nobody. What he did was all his own. We just gave him a little discreet help.”
“So you could have someone expendable for your little test?” I make the accusation I’ve been stewing for weeks. “Someone you could easily disavow make your mess for you?” But he’s smirking at me again.
“Most of what Grayman did was tactically insignificant. Some of it was actually counter-productive: he made the Rads jumpy, and he neutralized some of our long-standing surveillance targets. So why did we let it play as far as we did? As I said: we accelerated our timetable: Grayman was also a recruiting operation. Datascan, you see, has very specific parameters in mind for choosing candidates for its Tacticals.”
“And in its brilliance, it chose me?”
“It considered you, based on what it’s profiled from your history.” He lets me digest that long enough to see if I squirm. Then: “It had to confirm its assumptions by observing your responses in the course of the operation. Things are going to change, Major. Not everybody is going to be able—or willing—to go with it like we need them to.
“You know, we started out by offering the gear and the AI tactical interface—you need them both to really make it work—to our established topline operational forces: SEALs, Deltas… They didn’t want it—they gave a lot of sound, professional reasons why: too bulky, too prototype... The biggest concern was that they would need to undo and remake almost everything that they are now. And they’d be getting mission plans and taking field directives from a machine. Now, these are the guys who stay ahead of the game by adapting, by keeping up with the times and the tech. My take is it scared them, shook things up too much—they need to see it work before they get on board. So Datascan had to go outside the deployed teams, had to go cherry-picking individual operators based on profile. You fit.”
“Just me?” And how did I get so lucky?
“Of the Joint CTC operators you ran the mission with, yes—it only wanted you at this phase. There were other candidates—you met them—and they may get opted in at a later date. But you came out in the first six—Tactical Team One.”
“So you all just let Grayman—some poor ‘raqed civilian, if I believe that bullshit back-story—hang his ass out as a test for your toy? And for me?” Not buying. Not at all. But he expects that. And what he says next hits me and sinks my guts before he even gets a chance to spit it out with that smug smirk of his. Because it’s the one thing that suddenly does make sense.
“No, Major. It wasn’t just a test for you. It was a test for Grayma
n.” He shifts to full sick grin and lets that sink a bit, enjoying what I assume is how much paler I suddenly get. “He passed. And he was offered. He said ‘yes’. He’s already started Immersion Indoc...”
I want to vomit. I open my mouth but I can’t manage a single fucking word.
I glance over at Becker and see he’s looking as gut-shot as I feel. Poor Doc really had no fucking idea his work had been so thoroughly co-opted.
“And now the question is yours, Major Burke,” Henderson throws the new rank at me like it’s conditional, “are you in or out?” And he sounds exactly like some DTD serial villain.
I look at the unresponsive ready-graphic that still floats blue in the air between us, and suddenly I’m absolutely sure that the fucking machine knows exactly what I’m going to say.
4
Grayman Book One: Acts of War Page 20