Kill Decision (16 page)

Odin nodded up at the main screen—a broad view of the smoke-shrouded shantytowns of Brazzaville. He’d run ops there numerous times in the past decade. “What are we looking at?”

“You don’t recognize it?”

“After a while all these shit-holes look alike, sir.”

The general raised an eyebrow. “The location isn’t important. It’s what the systems can do that’s important. Compared with a platform like Gorgon Stare, the imagery from a Predator drone is like taking Polaroid pictures through a goddamned straw. We can zoom in on any portion of a vast battle space—each airborne asset has one hundred and sixty-five individually controlled high-resolution cameras. Multiple assets can be networked to programmatically tile together contiguous, high-resolution surveillance of broad swaths of terrain in real time. Synthetic aperture radar allows us to see through both clouds and darkness. This is an all-seeing eye, Master Sergeant, permanently recording all activity below from a height of sixty thousand feet—well above the weapon range of these populations.”

Odin nodded. No doubt the names from Greek mythology encouraged the impression of an unassailable Mount Olympus. “The technology, was it developed in the States or—”

“International partnership, but in full accordance with DOD EAR, ITAR, and OFAC export control requirements. Our international partners are just as eager to see counterterrorism operations succeed under every regional command.”

“And these are live images.”

“Live. Everything you see on the main screen is live, real world. But live imagery is the least of it.” The general moved over to a workstation manned by a uniformed JSOC first lieutenant wearing a headset—a strapping blond kid with clear skin and good posture. “Gartner, replay that truck sequence in sector H-Six we were looking at.”

The lieutenant immediately paused the imagery on his screen and tapped in some coordinates.

The general watched intently but spoke to Odin. “The critical difference of EITS over previous surveillance systems is that this high-resolution video imagery is retained over time in a data cloud, allowing analysts to ‘rewind’ the entire battle space—to see what might have taken place in a given locale over time.”

As Odin watched the nearby monitor, the image zoomed in to a tiny corner in the vast shantytown. People were walking past, but then they stopped in midstride. The video rapidly began to rewind, people and vehicles moving backward, until a faded red Toyota pickup moved into frame. The image then halted and began to play forward again, showing several armed men loading crates onto the truck bed.

Lieutenant Gartner was clearly used to doing demos with the general, because he was already doing what the general was about to ask.

“We can move in for a close-up of faces . . .”

The screen had already done so.

“. . . and we can even rotate the view.”

The image was already circling around to the other side of the men—not in a smooth pan, but in fifteen-degree leaps of POV.

Still, it was an impressive technical achievement. Odin remained emotionless. “How far back in time can you go?”

“As far back as we want to allocate storage space. We can even flag certain regions for long-term storage. Trouble spots.”

The image was already zooming out to the large city view. Live again.

“We use algorithms to parse human activity—tracking the pulse and character of a place. Automating what we call ‘pattern of life’ analysis. Compiling a fingerprint, a signature of a city’s normal routine. Airborne persistent video pattern-recognition systems will be
big
in this surveillance effort—Bayesian algorithmic models . . .”

The general was still talking as Odin watched a constellation of red glowing dots and squares superimposed on the vast city, like ants.

“This layer represents observable human activity. The dots are people, the squares vehicles. Over time the subsystem differentiates which part of the imagery is static city and which is dynamic human activity. But it goes further. Within that human activity layer, EITS begins to accumulate experience of the patterns of human living that represent a city’s background noise—its norm. What travel patterns are followed each day from location to location—with each dot being tracked representing a trip marker that’s added to the database. The totality of trips weaving a pattern of behavior. How consistent is this pattern? What portion of residents follow a routine, leaving and returning to the same places on a general schedule? Which portion of the population has no regular schedule? That lets us focus on areas of suspicious activity—a common point somewhere in the city where individuals who’d been present at earlier ‘trouble spots’ might later congregate, a place that might be the lair of an insurgent group—the sort of intel that your group would previously have had to obtain through HUMINT—can now be gleaned from observing the totality of human activity. Remembering it over time. Seeing everything. Forgetting nothing.”

Odin watched the companion imagery as Lieutenant Gartner played impressive visual accompaniment to the general’s pitch. Odin appeared deep in thought. “Our PIR usually involves locating a specific individual, and for that cell phone SIGINT suffices. Our knob turners can isolate known voice patterns, trace the—”

“You mean as long as you can run manned listening flights over the target area, and we already do that with unmanned airships that can stay aloft for weeks.” The general nudged Lieutenant Gartner aside and clicked through a few menus to bring up another information layer.

The screen suddenly flipped to an entirely new field of hundreds of thousands of clustered dots, moving through the city.

“Every cell phone’s IMEI and the base transceiver stations that serve them. This system simplifies eavesdropping. Just identify the phone you want”—he zoomed in and clicked on an ID number moving through central Brazzaville—“and you can record the subject’s communications.” The sound of foreign chatter came in over the speakers.

The general relinquished control to Gartner again and turned to face Odin. “Think about the combination of persistent telecom and video surveillance—being able to go back in time to see what happened on a street corner two months ago, before you even realized that someone was a person of interest.” The general gestured to an image of the huge city, clustered with dots. “This system displays the social map of an entire city from the communications and geolocation data of its citizens. . . .”

Lieutenant Gartner heard his cue and started making link-analysis webs visible on screen—dense strands that depicted the social network of the city’s populace.

The general was pacing, gesturing to the screen as he engaged in a rehearsed soliloquy. “A detailed social encyclopedia. Autodetection of suspicious activity . . .”

Gartner made certain the big screen did exactly that—showing a knot of young Congolese men pouring gasoline onto tires stuffed around another man’s torso, then setting it alight to horrific effect.

“Now we know not only the cell phones of this group but also their faces”—the image zoomed in to a leader in sunglasses and a beret—“their leaders. Their vehicles, their confederates—in short, everything.”

While the general talked, Odin wondered how much money they’d spent on this. In Vietnam it had taken an average of fifty thousand bullets to eliminate one Vietcong soldier. Had we upped the ante here? And what was the false positive rate? How many noninsurgents—people who simply matched a misguided pattern—were flagged by the system and handed over to security services or contractor hit squads for imagined or predicted crimes? Certainly, it was not in the interests of the folks running the system to admit it made mistakes.

Of course, Odin knew a system like EITS was not intended to resolve conflicts. It was intended merely to manage them. To keep violence disorganized, channeled, and isolated long enough to permit uninterrupted resource extraction. Once that was finished, the locals would be left to their own devices again. Rinse and repeat, and you pretty much understood the conflict map of the globe. This system let them know more about the locals than the locals knew about themselves. And it was just the beginning. There was no reason this couldn’t be done everywhere—including America, as Odin well knew. The only question was whether it had already been implemented there, in full or in part.

Odin interrupted the general, midpitch. “I was told there’s an autonomous strike capability to this system, General. Is that not the case?”

The general halted, took another sip of coffee, and nodded. “We both know lethal autonomy is inevitable, Sergeant. However, at the moment, we’re not using armed systems over this AO. This is a surveillance platform only.”

“Autonomous drones are part of the design specification, correct?”

“For surveillance, yes. Unmanned systems are how we coordinate complete coverage of the target area.”

“But weapons could be integrated.”

The general put his coffee mug down and studied Odin. “Kill-decision drones are a thorny issue, Master Sergeant. For the foreseeable future we’re keeping a human in the loop.”

“Is this the only implementation of the EITS system currently in use, General?”

“What are you looking for, Sergeant?”

Odin drummed his fingers on the railing while staring up at the screens. Then he focused his gaze on the general. “We both know the days of manned combat aircraft are numbered. Autonomous drones will be cheaper, more maneuverable, and expendable. And remotely piloted drones will be useless against a sophisticated adversary like China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea—they’ll just jam our link signal. That means we need to integrate autonomous drones into our military units. For patrolling and reacting to incursions.”

The general nodded and grabbed his coffee mug again. “We’re in agreement, then. It’s just a question of how long it will take Washington to realize it.”

They studied each other for a few moments in silence as the clattering of computer keyboards and soft radio chatter sounded around the control room.

The general gestured to the screens. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

Odin pondered the imagery. “I just have one concern, General.”

“And what’s that?”

“America pays for the difficult R and D to design these systems, and once they’re designed, they might get away from us. And then there’s the second- and third-order effects of technology like this. Surveillance drift nets create opposition—opposition from a public that doesn’t want technological domination. They’ll innovate ways to evade it, and it’s quite possible we could wind up causing more conflict than if we’d never built it.”

The general just stared at him.

“Just a thought. . . .”

CHAPTER 12

Underground Drive

L
inda McKinney disembarked
from a white, unmarked private jet, descending the steps into a cold winter night. Though idling, the plane’s engines were still deafening, its navigation and strobe lights flashing.

A freezing wind gusted across the desolate tarmac of a municipal airport. A private terminal building stood off to the left, beyond which she could see a drab concrete elevated highway. Closer was a parking lot beyond a length of chain-link fence and a sealed white metal hangar. Other than that all she could see was a series of yellow-tinged parking lot lights extending into the distance.

McKinney zipped up a red Gore-Tex coat and matching knit cap emblazoned with a white company logo in bold letters: Ancile Services. She had no idea what it was or why everyone else was now wearing similar coats—though theirs were in black.

Other team members shuffled past her carrying duffels and backpacks. The woman, Ripper, nodded as she passed by. Her long black hair flowed freely now, with multiple ear piercings visible. Very much American. That had been a swift transformation.

Hoov and Mooch ducked by, opening the jet’s cargo hatch. Tin Man and Ripper seemed to be heading toward the nearby hangar.

Foxy patted McKinney on the shoulder and shouted over the jet roar as he passed by. “Coming?”

“Where to?”

He motioned with two gloved fingers toward the hangar, and McKinney fell in line behind him. It was shocking how completely American he looked now in a company coat and hipster eyeglasses. He had the African kora slung over his back, but it looked more like a goofy souvenir in this context. As they got farther from the plane’s engine noise, she asked, “Where are we?”

He cast a glance back at her. “Kansas City.”

“My passport. All my identification was destroyed in—”

“That’s not a problem, Professor.”

“What is this, a military base?”

“Private jetport.”

Ahead, Tin Man was turning a key in a lock near the main hangar door. The large doors opened a few feet, and the team moved quickly inside. Fluorescent lights were already flickering on, revealing two white panel vans in a cavernous empty space.

Foxy ushered McKinney inside the hangar and gave several quick hand signals to Hoov and Mooch. They were rolling equipment cases in from the jet, which was already taxiing away down the tarmac.