DEAD BEEF (Our Cyber World Book 1) (30 page)

“Yeah, man, because I’m dog tired, and rushing,” Brother Spencer said, cracking his neck. “But look at that, man. Two hundred and fifty-three done and checked out.” He gestured at the warehouse floor, where hovercrafts in 31 complete rows of eight crafts each, plus one row with five crafts stood as testimony of 9 hours of work.

“We would like to convene the young brothers tonight and show them.”

“Show them what?” Brother Spencer asked. “A floor full of hovercrafts? They’ll yawn at you, man! These are sharp, modern... young brothers. They want to see cool. They want to see interactive.”

Masoud looked around. “I know you want to use the field outside for your test in the morning.” He waved at the large warehouse. “But there might be enough space here for a small demonstration, with the full demonstration to follow.”

“I see what you’re after,” Brother Spencer said. “You want to do a little morale boosting. Get the brothers pumped for tomorrow. OK, let me finish here, another hour tops, and then we call them in.”

“This is acceptable, yes,” Masoud said, patting Brother Spencer on the back.

In the next fifty minutes, Brother Spencer cranked it big time, finishing and verifying not three but six crafts. He figured having three spares in case a unit or two busted a bone during the full test the following morning was not a bad idea. He had another five unmodified hovercrafts that he might upgrade tomorrow after the full test, demo and training of the young brothers.

Brother Spencer gave Masoud the thumbs-up when he came by to check on status. Masoud smiled and left, returning a few minutes later with Davood, the big four older brothers and the eight young brothers. The latter reacted with wide-eyed looks and inquisitive frowns when they saw the warehouse floor.

Brother Masoud took a couple of steps toward the neatly arranged hovercrafts and said, “Brother Spencer wants to do a preview presentation of his creation.” Masoud waved at the hovercrafts. “Two hundred and fifty-six hovercrafts, ready for our full testing and training tomorrow. I will now ask Brother Spencer to tell us more about it.”

“Well, instead of telling you, let me show you,” Brother Spencer said. “But let me tell you that this is the first time I fire them up all at once, so we could be in for a few exciting and maybe not so great moments.”

Brother Spencer could see the interest rising. With heads craned several of them tried to look over the others. Fortunately, Brother Masoud was now lining them up so that eventually they stood shoulder to shoulder facing the array of hovercrafts.

“OK, first up, let’s turn them on,” Brother Spencer said. “All from one laptop connected to one antenna/amplifier unit.” He pressed a key, and nearly unanimously top lights of all the hovercrafts came on.

“Not so exciting yet,” Brother Spencer said. “But no smoke, so that’s good. Now let’s go for mini-test number 2.” He pressed a key, and one by one in turn, each hovercraft spun up its propellers, then spun down to a stop. It took a while to complete the full 256 units, so Brother Spencer said, “OK, the next script I have here would now levitate and re-land each hovercraft one at a time, but I’m hungry and want to get done quick here, so...”

Brother Spencer typed a command and pressed enter. One row at a time, the crafts levitated about two feet off the ground for two seconds, then landed in their original spots.

Calls of “whoa!” and “cool!” came from the now finally stimulated young brothers.

Brother Spencer, getting excited himself since by now he expected something to fail, issued the command to levitate all crafts at once. “This is how we’ll do it during the real thing.” The crafts went up 2 feet and stayed there until he commanded them to go higher, this time 10 feet, and then 20. The warehouse filled with the whining of 256 propeller engines. That alone was impressive, Brother Spencer thought. One heck of a bee swarm.

“OK,” Brother Spencer said raising his voice to make himself heard. “We’ll leave them there so we don’t hit the ceiling. Now let’s do some laterals.” He issued commands to make them move left, then right, then front, then back. The young brothers were getting really excited now, so he ratcheted up the action by making the whole squadron rotate about its center 360 degrees. When that was done, he issued a command to split off sixty-four of the crafts, a square of eight by eight of them, and commanded them away from the others.

Brother Spencer was amazed at how everything was working. The software to control all these crafts in concert had been difficult to create, but he’d really built it as a set of 256 independent controllers which he happened to be using in concert at the moment.

Though he had planned to test it the following day, he just couldn’t wait. He issued the command for independent, randomly generated movement. Now the whining was as random as the movements of the crafts which went up and down and sideways and forwards each in their own way, and without crashing into one another, thanks to their stock built-in proximity detectors and the multi-threaded flight control system running on the laptop. Most of the brothers now were not so impressed as they were scared of getting hit. Even though the crafts maneuvered at a safe height, some of the brothers, young and old, ducked for cover.

“Don’t worry, my brothers!” Brother Spencer said. “They are designed not to crash, and they won’t hit you either!”

But the panic among the brothers did not subside, and in an enclosed space, the crafts moved seemingly in a more erratic matter, since they were also avoiding walls, beams and light fixtures. Brother Spencer decided to bring things to a close first with a command that caused all the crafts to almost unanimously fall into their initial formation, and then he issued the command for them to land. They came down slowly, landed, and cut out their engines. One last command turned them all off.

Brother Spencer turned and saw Brother Masoud coming to him, mouth agape and arms extended. When he got to Brother Spencer, he hugged him and kissed him on one cheek, then the other, and he did that two more times. Brother Davood came next, and while he did his hug and kiss thing, the other brothers hollered and clapped. Some of them even danced a silly dance of celebration.

When the hollering and hooting subsided just enough, Brother Davood, still half embracing Brother Spencer, said, “Do you know what you have done? Allah will bless you greatly! This invention of yours is stupendous, and I think has far greater application than even what we’re planning to do in the next few days!”

Brother Spencer smiled and nodded. Later, as they were walking out of the warehouse, with the lights turning off behind them, Brother Spencer thought to himself that he really had no idea what he was doing or what he had done.

At the cabin, it was a little after 8:30 PM Pacific when Sasha, now sitting at the computer table, said, “Hey, guys. We have an update from the WNC front.”

They all gathered around Sasha’s laptop and saw the message on the screen: “Operation up in air, on track.”

“Sounds like a translation error,” Martin noted. “Up in the air usually means, we don’t know or in question, right? But then they say on track.”

“Translation reconfirmed,” Sasha said. “And it doesn’t say ‘the,’ just ‘up in air.’”

“Whatever they’re planning has an aerial component to it,” Beloski said. “Oh, Jeez.”

“What?” Martin asked.

“Are you thinking they might use a plane or a helicopter?” Ochoa asked.

“It would make sense in an area that large,” Martin said. “It would help cover a lot of ground, but I would think they’d go with a lot of attack points, and an aircraft or even two or three wouldn’t do it.”

“Not two or three,” Beloski said. “A couple of hundred. Do you remember that Unmanned Airborne Vehicles whitepaper Julian submitted about 3 months before his dismissal?”

“The one about independently controlled networked UAVs?” Martin asked, vaguely recalling. “That never went anywhere.”

“What if it’s going somewhere now?” Beloski said. “What if it’s ‘up in air’ in the WNC area?”

Martin did not hesitate, “OK folks, change in plans. We’re leaving ASAP. And once we get on the road, we’re going to haul you know what. We got 15 hours to Cheyenne, and we need to make them count.”

“Do we need to notify superiors?” Ochoa asked.

“I don’t know that it will help,” Martin said. “But it won’t hurt. Sasha, type and encrypt this message.”

“Working it.”

Martin dictated, “Moving out ASAP; got Intel RE: networked UAV payload delivery; REF: Julian white paper, 2005.”

Sasha typed the message, encrypted it, then sent it out on each of the three satellite links to make sure.

“Now when they see a cloud of UAVs flying over missile silos, they’ll know we told truth,” Sasha said. Looking around the cabin she said. “God, I’m going to miss this place.”

Martin came behind her and whispered in her ear. “We’re coming back here, just you and I. You have my word.”

She craned her neck to face him and placed her hand on his cheek. “Oh, Martin. I so wish that were true, but all our wishing won’t make it so.”

“We’re going to get you down safely,” he said.

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she said with moist eyes. “When this is over, they’re going to grab me.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

She kissed him lightly. “But you don’t,” she said.

Chapter 40

Martin was glad Ochoa insisted on walking them to assist Sasha’s hike and to help send them off. Ochoa had explained his drive would be the quickest, and that he could run down the hill in thirty-five minutes top, so this wouldn’t lose him a lot of time.

Leticia went ahead of them to the rock wall and got the first set of rappelling rigs ready for the first leg of the descent. One rig she set up on the platform, saying she’d take that one, and the other she set up at the end of the path that went along the wall. She and Sasha would go down side-by-side, with Leticia assisting Sasha as needed, though Sasha more than once insisted she wouldn’t need help, especially since she was the only one that had made the descent, twice, if anyone cared to count, thank you.

Martin would follow on Sasha’s line once he got the OK from below with three blinks of a flashlight. One blink meant wait. Two meant trouble below. Martin didn’t want to see two blinks.

Since he was the only one that had never rappelled before, Leticia and Ochoa took turns giving him instructions. After Leticia shot Ochoa a sharp look, Ochoa raised his hands in mock surrender.

Leticia finished giving instructions, saying, “It’s less confusing when you hear it from one person.”

Ochoa had stuffed Sasha’s midsection around her wound with extra padding with whatever he could find so that the harness wouldn’t press too hard or make her bleed. Martin guessed that was a best effort, but probably they’d have a little triage to do when they got to the bottom. The look on Ochoa’s face confirmed Martin’s suspicions.

They all wore headlights, and that helped a little to break the darkness. Martin imagined how they would have had to descend totally dark if they had done this in clandestine fashion, as he learned Sasha had originally envisioned, and he was glad that was not the case now.

Leticia went up to the platform, and a few seconds later she shouted she was ready for Sasha to start down. With Ochoa’s help, Sasha backed up to the edge, blew Martin a kiss, and with a tiny hop, dropped into the dark.

“Nervous?” Ochoa asked.

“Yeah,” Martin said.

“You should be.” Ochoa was looking down. “That was fast. Three flashes.”

Martin thought to himself, 1,000 feet, that fast?

As Sasha did before him, with Ochoa, helping him, Martin backed up to the edge. “On the next one you’ll have to do this by yourself. Don’t think about it. Just lean back and hop, and down you go, OK?” Ochoa said.

“Alright.”

“You know, a few hours ago, everybody was thinking I was here to kill you. And here I am, holding you at the edge of a cliff.”

“Not a happy thought.”

“Listen, Martin, real quick,” Ochoa said. “I haven’t been in Collections the whole time I’ve been with the ITAA. Before that I served as a payload deployer, back when they didn’t let geniuses like you do the work in theater. You remember. A couple of screwed up missions where the geniuses had to go out, green and untrained to salvage the operation, and the deployers were set aside.”

“I remember that,” Martin said.

“I just share that because I may come across as dense, but I get what you’re doing.”

“OK.”

“Trust, right?” Ochoa said.

“Trust.”

“Vaya con Dios.”

And with that, Martin was off. The first drop surprised him, his headlight dancing in the darkness. He spun once, then twice. As he was starting the third turn, he righted himself with a light foot touch off the rock. He managed to stay facing the wall the rest of the way down.

“Sorry I’m slow,” he said when touched down at the next ledge. “I’m being safe.”

“That’s OK, Martin,” Sasha said with a grimace. “We want you to be safe.”

“You OK?” he asked Sasha.

She paused before saying, “I’ll just say, two more drops.”

“Just drop slower,” Martin said.

“Hell, no, that just hurts more,” Sasha said. Leticia was nodding in agreement.

“How about we rest, we have time,” Martin suggested.

“Hell, no again. Let’s just rip the Band-Aid, remember?”

Leticia finished setting up the ropes for the next drop, tested them, and then helped Sasha to the edge. Once Sasha was on her way, Leticia attached herself and dropped into darkness.

It took longer this time before Martin saw the three blinks, which suggested that maybe this drop was longer than the last. Perhaps the longest of the three, he hoped. Now, as Ochoa suggested, he had to hook himself in and back up all on his own. He remembered how Leticia had just done it: two, three steps back, and jump without hesitation.

Martin was about to do that when from below he saw two flashes, darkness, then three flashes. He could come down, but there was trouble. Someone had completed the drop, someone hadn’t, or she hadn’t completed it well. He was about to go down on Sasha’s rope when he realized that Sasha could be stuck on her rope. He went to the other rope and heard shouting from below, a female voice. Sasha’s voice.

To make sure, he pulled Leticia’s rope. It was taught. He went over to Sasha’s rope and felt it was limp. Leti was in trouble, stuck somewhere in between. Whatever had happened, Sasha couldn’t help. He was Leti's only hope. He cursed, latched himself in again, took three steps and jumped.

He descended slowly so as to not go by Leticia, and when he saw her below him and to his right, he stopped. On his side he saw that if he went down to her level, he’d be hanging free, without a way to use his feet to walk-step to her. But up here he could do it, he thought, then hold to her line as he released his to get to her.

He walk-stepped along the rock to swing himself to her rope, and then tucked it under his right armpit and restarted his decent, slowly. When he was just above her, still holding her line, he maneuvered to his left and dropped right next to her.

She was out, hanging there, limp. Up close he could see the problem. She had set the line too far to the right, and had come in contact with a jutting rock on her way down.

Dreading what he’d find, Martin rotated Leti slowly so he could see her right side. His head lamp didn’t find any blood except for a small cut above and her right eye. He felt her hair and found no blood there. That at least was promising. Next Martin brought his face next to her, and felt her breath. That too was good. She was just unconscious, and from the looks of it, she hadn’t been going too fast when she hit.

“Martin!” he heard Sasha shouting. “Is she OK?”

“I think so!” he shouted back, hoping it would wake Leti. It didn’t.

He pinched her, shook her, slapped her face. Leti would not budge. He’d just have to wait for her to awaken. But how long would that take? Did she have internal damage, like a concussion, that if left unattended would get worse with time? How long should he wait? If after waiting she didn’t come to, then what?

Martin decided to wait five minutes, after which he’d have to figure something out.

Sasha shouted again asking if Leti was OK.

“I think so! Just giving her time to come to!” he shouted, and hoped he was right.

“Put both releases together and push them together!” Sasha shouted.

Martin looked down at the releases to see if that was possible, and gripping his left hand around both decided that it was. With his right he reached below and joined both their lines there.

“OK!” he shouted, “Here we go!”

He kept the descent as slow and smooth as he could. Whenever he felt unsure or when he feared he was about to lose control, he stopped and regrouped. Making steady progress, Martin and Leti arrived at the ledge together a couple of minutes later. He grabbed her limp body awkwardly and lay her down.

“No bleeding,” Sasha confirmed. “That’s a good sign.”

Martin was looking at Leti, examining her more thoroughly now. He found a scrape on her elbow, not a terribly bad one, but it needed cleaning. Ochoa would have some supplies down below. He looked up at Sasha and stopped when his light beamed onto her abdomen.

“I know,” Sasha said. “Maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea.”

A wide swath of blood was expanding along her midsection. In an instant he knew what needed to be done.

“You go down first,” he said. “And you wait for Ochoa.”

“Two things,” she said. “First you need to lay down the ropes. Second, how are you going to get her down?”

Martin started working on what he knew he could do. He took the remaining rope sections from Leti, found the eyehooks bolted into the rock and went to work. In another minute he was tossing the ropes down. “Off you go,” he said.

“He’s not down there right now,” Sasha said. “Let’s think about this for a minute.”

“You’re getting faint. We don’t have another minute.”

“But—.”

“But nothing, on your feet,” Martin said, and extended his hands to help her.

“OK, OK,” Sasha said getting up on her feet. “But if you’re going to get her down, you need to figure out a way to strap yourselves together, preferably with her in front.”

“Have you done that?”

“Never, though it sounds like fun, especially if you do it naked.”

Martin had to smile. He latched her into the line and said, “How about you and I do that when we come back?”

“Now that’s a promise I’d like us to keep.”

“Great. Off you go.”

Sasha stepped back and with a small hop was gone. He waited for what seemed like forever, and then saw three blinks.

It was then he knelt and considered his options. He looked at his and Leti’s harnesses. They were different, and though there was probably a way, he did not see how to tie them together, no matter how much he puzzled it.

Martin checked in on Leti. Still breathing, still out.

He looked at the valley below and blinked his flashlight once at Sasha. She responded with three blinks. For the next hour they kept that up, and then, she didn’t respond. He blinked again. No response. Again. Nothing.

Now he had two unconscious women on his hands, and Martin thought it ironic that he, the non-expert was still wide awake.

To his cautious relief, he saw headlights coming down the trail ten minutes later. Ochoa, if that was his car, had made good time after all. As previously agreed, he aimed his flashlight at the car and turned it on, counting to ten seconds, then turned off the flashlight. In return he got three headlight blinks, confirming Ochoa's arrival.

Now he blinked two times at Ochoa, waited, and blinked two times again. Trouble. A second later, the car’s interior light came on, and then went off. Martin imagined Ochoa jumping out of the Land Rover, slamming the door behind him to run into the dark and find whoever was in trouble. Below now he could see a small light bouncing and moving fast.

OK, Sasha would be taken care of, he thought. He could focus all his attention on Leti.

He looked up at the rock wall they’d descended with every intension of cursing it, and that’s when it hit him.

Grabbing Leti’s knife, he went over to the first rope dropping from above, pulled it tight, and cut it above his head. He then did the same with the second one. He now had two sections of rope measuring somewhere between six and seven feet. With these he could join his harness to Leti’s.

First turning Leti over on her left side, he worked the rope through her harness and his, looping it several times. Then lying on his side and as close to her as he could, he tightened and cinched the rope, finally double and triple-knotting it once he couldn’t pull any tighter.