Burn-In

by P. W. Singer

  “TAMS, what is the ETA on medevac?”

  “Thirty seconds,” the machine replied.

  Keegan knelt and brought up a map, as much to see what had changed in the situation in the compound as to focus on anything but the images of the two kids. She knew that if you thought about something like this too long you could get caught in a loop in a situation where you had to keep moving forward.

  There were no more red circles on the main square. Four remained inside the long house, so Keegan moved, one step at a time, toward it. Movement in a second-floor window of a nearby house caught her attention. Using the laser designator on her NGSW, she dazzled the window to warn away whoever was there.

  “TAMS, stay there and watch the square.”

  Overhead, the Valor made a low pass as it prepared to land in the main square, kicking up twin tornados of dust. Just as Keegan was about to enter the building, TAMS stopped her with a message to her viz.

  Significant subsurface activity beneath my position. It matches acoustic profile of tunneling. Construction plans indicate a Derler mobile safe room was installed 3 years ago in the house of Gregory Heath.

  Derlers had started out as a showy, but useful, luxury for the elite vory in Russia. With enough C-4, anyone could blast into even the most armored safe room, making them not all that safe for dodging a rival oligarch. In turn, a tunnel was just another way into your dacha that had to be guarded. The Derler was like a subterranean submarine that created a new escape route whenever you needed it.

  Keegan pushed the notice to the HRT operators and tasked TAMS with tracking the sound as best it could. The robot first walked out wide to three points and then, evidently detecting acoustic traces by its triangulation, began to follow a straight line exiting the compound.

  From out of a cloud of dust, a green-and-yellow-wheeled backhoe loader appeared, driven by Keg. He had ditched the heavy exosuit, and his chilled-out pre-mission demeanor had been replaced by a wild-eyed look of anger. Another HRT operator rode alongside him on the farm equipment, weapon at the ready.

  “Just tell me where,” Keg shouted.

  “Start digging about 50 meters in front of the bot.”

  When FBI and state law enforcement reinforcements arrived, it was a new kind of hurry up and wait. Every twelve seconds TAMS took one step forward marking the Derler’s progress through the soil, while the backhoe dug away at a perpendicular line. “This has got to be the slowest fucking getaway chase in history,” said Keg.

  Eventually, the Derler had no choice but to try and cross the trench that Keg had excavated in front of it. As it emerged into view, it looked like one of the indestructible old Soyuz space capsules that were the original basis of its design.20 The primary modifications were a drill bit on its nose and four tank treads running along its sides, pushing dirt from the front to the back, leaving no tunnel behind it. Keg bashed at the capsule with the backhoe’s arm, but the hull was too thick to penetrate. Finally, he wedged the teeth of the arm’s digging bucket into one of the capsule’s treads. The other treads whirred, trying to pull away. Keg started to drag the backhoe in opposition, almost tipping it over, until the added weight of the construction vehicle’s grip overheated the Derler’s engine, and smoke poured out of it.

  After a few seconds, the hatch on the side opened and an older man with a shaved head and muttonchops started to climb out. TAMS pushed a notice that facial recognition matched Gregory Heath. Sweat stained his black T-shirt around the neck and under the arms. His eyes were ringed by dark circles, their color a bruiselike purple that sharply contrasted with the pale white of his skin, but they matched the color of the interlaced tattoos wreathing his neck.

  Keegan shouted down to him. “Get your hands up or we’re covering this hole back up.”

  He glared and slowly held up his hands as he climbed out of the hole.

  FBI agents carefully zip-tied his hands behind his back and quietly read him his rights. He muttered to himself and ground his teeth as they led him to the Valor. Then, Heath saw TAMS. A thin layer of dust covered the machine, which made the robot look sculpted out of sandstone.

  “The devil’s tool!” Heath screamed, and then spit at it. The saliva hit TAMS in the faceplate, leaving a white trail in the dust as it dripped down.21

  Keg pushed Heath down to his knees, and then tipped the cuffed man over on his side. “Shut the fuck up.”

  Heath seemed to welcome it, screaming at the agents. “SLAVES, all of you!” His face was almost joyful in its rage, the certainty of somebody whose anger would now be known by even more. He knew that if he played his cards right, his movement could be the martyrs of this day, not the dead FBI agents.

  Keegan ignored him, knowing that if she got any closer, it wouldn’t end well. Instead, she walked over to TAMS and used the back of her sleeve to wipe most of Heath’s spit off. Then she ran her hand along the bot’s chipped and scratched add-on chest armor, checking to make sure none of the shots had penetrated. She unbuckled it, and the battered chest plate fell amidst shell casings glinting in the dawn light. Then, on unsteady legs, Keegan walked away, leaving the bot to figure out on its own what to do next.

  As she hiked the hill back to the vineyard, she first passed the body of the scout bot. Its four legs were tucked under its body, still in its sentry-mode pose, just now with a tangle of wires sticking out from its neck from where a sniper’s round had taken off its head. Almost exactly 50 meters past the bot lay Noah’s body. Someone had already placed a rumpled silver thermal blanket over the HRT operator from the waist up, a hasty attempt to conceal the identity of the dead agent. There were certain to be news camcopters around soon.

  Keegan sighed and tasted bile. She tossed her vizglasses to the ground and knelt down in the soil. For all the times they’d talked about how they wanted to go out, there were no good ways to die. Yet Noah did not deserve to die like this, killed on his country’s soil at the hands of another American. It was all bullshit. Hell, his husband would have been better off if Noah had been killed abroad; Federal Line of Duty Death Benefits were capped at $10,000 for domestic ops versus $100,000 abroad. It meant your family got a tenth as much if a homegrown versus foreign terrorist killed you.22

  Self-blame started to replace her sadness. You couldn’t tell yourself there was nothing you could have done, Keegan thought, because there always something that just might have made a difference. Always. Maybe something big like never going on the mission to begin with, like letting state police handle it. Or maybe just one more minute shooting the shit while you watched the sun rise.

  Keegan laid a hand on the foil blanket, resting her palm where it covered Noah’s forehead. She couldn’t bring herself to lift the covering and see the hole torn in her friend’s face. She felt the protective rim of his helmet’s brow, and then beneath it the jagged edges of the ballistic goggles where the round tore through.

  “Screw this,” she said, standing up and pinching her nose to fight back the tears. She turned away from the body and was surprised to find TAMS standing no more than 10 paces away. “Get out of here,” she yelled at it.

  Knowing the futility of taking it out on the machine, she quietly said to it, “Go to the Valor. I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

  “OK,” it said, and began to walk toward the tilt-rotor.

  What did a learning machine comprehend about a moment like this? It could see what she was doing, even read the evident physical tells of her sadness and anger. But could it read all that it took her not to act, not to sprint to where they held Heath and shoot him in the exact same spot between the eyes?

  And how would it remember this day? Would a lifetime of nightmares for Keegan be mere data to the machine?

  She bent down to tuck the silver blanket around Noah, so it wouldn’t blow away, folding it under his limp shoulders, careful to avoid the bloody soil under the head. It was a crime scene, after all, but what was most important in that moment was doing something for her wingman.

  �
��Agent Keegan!” somebody shouted from the compound below.

  She stood up and turned to see one of the HRT operators running toward her. “We need to get moving, now. Headquarters is calling in the Valor for a rescue op.”

  “What for?” Keegan asked, angry that anything else could be considered more important.

  “There’s been another disaster,” the agent said. “This time a chemical spill . . . a couple trains crashed in Baltimore.”

  There was too much happening at once, Keegan thought.

  She spun a tab on her Watchlet to her personal account, sending a message to Jared that he should fill up the bathtub again.

  FBI Domestic Special Detention Facility

  Reston, Virginia

  “We should have tossed him out of the Valor,” said Keg.

  Keg stood next to Keegan as they watched Heath rave and shout in a squirming tantrum inside the interrogation room. To bring him in, the HRT force had split up. Keegan, Keg, and one other agent flew directly to Quantico and then raced in a two-vehicle convoy up to the Dizz-Diff. The impossibly large sweep of the crisis playing out in Baltimore was evident even on the drive up, 75 miles away from the disaster. The southbound side of I-95 was jammed even more than normal, while the traffic toward the city was lighter than it should have been. Overhead, a steady stream of helicopters and drones flew north, ranging from emergency response systems moving toward the disaster zone to delivery bots filling a rush of gas mask orders in the DC suburbs. The winds had fortunately taken the gas cloud out to sea, but everyone was still on edge. The uncertainty was taking hold, no one knowing what was going to break down next, so prepping for anything. It was evident when they rolled through a National Guard roadblock of four armored fighting vehicles, including a pair of desert-tan Strykers mounting IM-SHORAD ground-to-air missiles.

  “Just send him to do cleanup in Baltimore,” said another HRT member about Heath. “No MOPP suit, though; just breathe in the air.”23

  “We need him alive,” Keegan said louder than she meant to, both to chill the discussion they shouldn’t be having and because she had to hear herself say it to believe it. On the flight back, Keegan too had thought through how easy it would be for Heath to end up with a broken neck or a bullet in his heart from a failed escape attempt. With so much chaos going on, they might even get away with it.

  She switched the screen from a view of Heath to updates on Baltimore. It confirmed the reports that two automated trains had collided at Baltimore’s Morrell Park terminal. Laden with chemicals, their loads had combined to lace the air with chlorine and phosgene gas, the cocktail used in the very first chemical warfare attacks in World War I, and brought back in more recent wars.24 Aerial newsfeeds kept hopping between perspective shots of different drones, alternating views whenever their camcopters got chased off or the yellow-green smoke got too thick.

  Then a hand, hesitant on her shoulder. Keegan smelled coffee and turned around.

  “I’m sorry about Agent Reddy. I know you guys go way back,” said Noritz. He then held out a mug of coffee and a chocolate donut. “I know you don’t feel like eating, but you have to take care of yourself.”

  It was a small gesture, one she appreciated. “Sir,” Keegan said. “I . . .” She trailed off. The wall screen switched to hundreds of people being triaged and treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The footage was shaky, shot by human not machine. The injured rubbed at chemical burns and scratched at red eyes, coughing up blood and phlegm. The news report added that this was just the start. The phosgene’s effects were more potent, but slower-acting on victims’ insides, causing death for many a full day from now.

  “Like images from a war zone,” Noritz said. “Hell, maybe it is and we don’t even know it. Those neo-Nazi shits have worked for Russia in the past.”25 Noritz paused as a new image appeared on the screen. He squinted in disbelief at a swooping drone feed flying over a crowd numbering in tens of thousands walking along a highway. The mass of bodies filled the median and emergency turnoff lanes, as automated vehicles ignored them, zooming by at normal speeds in the car lanes.

  “Shit, that’s the BW Parkway.26 All those people from Baltimore are headed here,” Keegan said.

  Then the screen cut to a politician in the halls of the McCain Senate Office Building. It was Senator Jacobs. Though the sound was off, the text crawl revealed the politician’s demand to do something about what he called these “unnatural disasters.” He planned to rally Americans to “take the future into their own hands.”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” said Noritz. “Take the future into their own hands.”

  “Pretty simple, isn’t it? Get people pissed off, smash some bots or whatever.” Keegan flashed back to Control Room, disconnected bot limbs on dirty sheets.

  “You doing OK?” he asked, noticing her vacant look.

  “No,” said Keegan. “But we’re past that.”

  “We sure are,” he said. “We’re pushing everybody out to protect critical infrastructure so you’re taking the lead on Heath.”

  “So it’s mine now?”

  “I’d send you home if it were up to me. You’ve been through enough for now,” said Noritz. Noritz looked at Keegan with an arched eyebrow, pulled out his ChapStick, and popped the cap on and off. “You need to be aware that this is getting political.”

  “Always was, right?” said Keegan.

  “Just get in the room with Heath. Of course, whether a failed attack on one train station before all this shit even matters is debatable.”

  “Well, it matters to me,” she said. “Heath’s lucky he’s survived this long.”

  “Well, do this right and maybe one day we change that too.”

  Keegan didn’t reply, uncertain if Noritz meant the death penalty or the same end that had found Reppley. The Bureau too had favors it could collect on inside prisons.

  A few minutes later, Keegan and TAMS entered the room, the robot walking in first. TAMS moved directly across from the bare metal table that Heath was cuffed to, affecting a seating position without having to rely on a chair. Keegan pulled over a chair from the wall for herself and sat down between the prisoner and the machine.

  The robot nodded at Keegan, and she uncuffed Heath.

  “Mr. Heath, it is a pleasure to see you again,” the robot said.

  Keegan noted it spoke in a faint twang with drawn-out vowels now. The algorithm had either decided to build empathy with Heath or picked up how everyone who often served in a position of command in law enforcement or the military affected a southern accent, even if they weren’t from the South.

  Heath nodded but looked at Keegan, a squinting, puzzled expression on his face. The strange situation had already created a crack in the zealot’s angry certainty.

  “Don’t look at me. This is out of my hands,” said Keegan. “You’re too important for a human to run this.”

  Heath flushed, then stared back resolutely at TAMS. “Where’s my lawyer?” he said. “I’m not saying shit more.”

  “Mr. Heath, the revision last year to the Homeland Security Act provides for federal law enforcement to proceed with interrogation without counsel present during a national emergency,” said TAMS. “When your counsel arrives, they will be allowed to see you.”

  “If they can get through,” said Keegan. “You probably haven’t been keeping up on the news out in your racist theme park, but DC’s gone haywire. Tell him if I am lying, TAMS.”

  “Agent Keegan is correct,” said TAMS. “There is decreased likelihood of counsel arriving. However, I am able to provide that legal counsel protocols would advise cooperation, noting that it is more likely to yield a reduced sentence by a statistically significant margin. However, it is your right to receive that analysis from a human counsel directly.”

  “This bot is saying another bot would tell your lawyer the same thing it’s telling you,” Keegan said.

  Heath looked over at Keegan with a glare and turned back to TAMS. “Whatever.” He coughed dee
ply from his throat, swished back and forth in his mouth, and spat at the robot, this time hitting it just below the chin.

  “Mr. Heath, this is now the second time that you have provided me a saliva-derived DNA sample,” said TAMS as the spittle dripped off its chin onto the metal table. “It is your intent to signal disdain; however, its unrequested sharing also provides DNA information that Terrence v. State of Nevada ruled usable by law enforcement.”

  “Fuck you,” said Heath, first to the robot and then he turned to Keegan. “And fuck you too.”

  Keegan smiled and nodded her head slightly in acknowledgment. But she also mimicked wiping her own chin, just with her hand balled into a fist. Spit on the human, the gesture said, and it ends differently.

  TAMS continued. “Your DNA information provides much useful data, but most notable to your profile is its integration with commercial system genealogy testing. Based on the WhoNet database, it appears that your ethnic heritage is 54 percent Caucasian, 32 percent African American, and 14 percent Sephardic Jewish.”27

  Heath’s eyes widened and he licked his lips. Keegan wondered if he actually knew this all along.

  “Pretty interesting background for your brand as a ‘real’ American,” Keegan said.

  “This information is notable,” TAMS said in that slight southern tone that now came across as menacing, “not just for use in medical analysis. Predication analytics indicate that its inclusion in your open-source biographic profile would cause a notable shift in web traffic.”

  Keegan produced a tablet, which now showed a social media metrics model of what would happen if this information were pushed out. Not only did the data visualization reveal a plunge in Heath’s followers and influence, but it also projected a viral outbreak of threats of violent physical action.

  “Those are the numbers of a dead Nazi, not just online, but anywhere he goes,” Keegan whispered.

  “Analysis indicates that it is useful to allow humans time to process information of significance,” TAMS said, following the script that Keegan had given it before the interrogation. “I will return in five minutes. Agent Keegan will stay to monitor you.” TAMS stood and walked out of the interrogation room.