Target Utopia (16 page)

The Cube

A
T SOME POINT
Ray Rubeo stopped studying the data flowing across the screen and just stared at the simulation of the UAV in flight. It was impressive, all the more so because it had been developed without the help of a massive government program.

True, vast amounts of it had been stolen or inspired by his own work. Still, to have constructed something so smart and capable—the scientist in Rubeo couldn't help but admire the ingenuity.

But he wasn't here to admire someone else's work—especially when that other person seemed bent on destroying everything he had worked for.

Rubeo tapped his screen, changing the window to see an analysis of real-time performance data. He was surprised to find that the screen was no longer updating.

“What happened?” he asked his team back in New Mexico.

“The UAV appears to have crashed or stopped operating,” said Kristen Morgan, one of the operators handling communications with him. “It's off their radars and nothing they do will bring it back. They're close enough to pick it up, or they were.”

“Command signals?”

“If there were, the Global Hawk was too far away to pick them up. When you diverted it to protect the base—”

“Yes, I understand. A necessary decision.” Rubeo scowled. It was a chess match, and one had to protect his pieces until an advantage could be had. “Compile the data as soon as you can. We need models, everything we discussed.”

“Will do.”

“And how are we coming with the file on Braxton and his associates?”

“It's thicker than it was. We have a whole range of his shell companies and some contractors.”

“Keep working on it,” said Rubeo. “Update my files here every hour.”

“Not a problem.”

“Something he's done will give him away,” Rubeo told her. “As brilliant as he clearly is.”

Malaysia

B
Y THE TIME
Danny got back to the command bunker, most of the debris had been cleared and the systems restored. Lieutenant JG Cathy Talaria had taken over and replaced the wounded with fresh staff.

Walsh was back, chest bandaged and arm in a sling.

“Are you OK?” Danny asked.

“Broken arm. The rest is nothing.”

“Don't—”

“They lost the UAV,” said the techie, changing the subject. He was here for his brain but he shared the tough-as-nails will of the rest of the Whiplash team. “I have the Global Hawk running a search pattern in the area. It has to land soon, at least according to our calcs. It slowed way down before we lost final contact, so it may have crashed.”

“Where?”

“Not sure, Colonel. Turk thinks over the water. But it's just a guess.”

“Hmmm.” Danny leaned down to look at the console. Walsh had a map up on one of the screens showing the approximate search location. There were several small islets in the area, but none were big enough to support a full base. All had been scouted even before Danny first arrived to look for a base; as far as they could tell there were none.

“If it crashes, we need to recover it,” said Danny. “Hopefully before it sinks.”

“Not going to be easy, Colonel. They're roughly a hundred miles from shore. And that's at a minimum.”

“Better to try than give up.” Danny went over to Talaria and told her what he wanted to do.

“If Captain Thomas says we can spare the men, I'll lead a squad myself, sir,” said the young woman.

“That's your captain's call,” said Danny. “Where are the Ospreys?”

“They're both on the ground getting refueled and checked over,” said Talaria.

“I'm going to talk to the pilots. Tell Thomas
what I want to do, and ask him to detail a squad to help me, if possible.”

T
URK FLEW OVER
the area where he'd lost the radar contact. There was nothing but dark, empty ocean. He settled into a widening orbit as he searched.

“Basher One, do you have a contact?” he asked his wingman.

“Negative, Two. What are you seeing?”

“Nothing.”

“You think he crashed?”

“Possibly,” answered Turk. Even in daylight it would have been hard to detect the fragments of the small aircraft on the surface of the ocean. Now, without a fire, there wouldn't be enough for the passive IR sensor to pick up either.

Turk stared out of the cockpit, frustrated. They'd come so far, only to lose the damn thing.

“Basher Two, check your fuel gauges,” said Cowboy. “How good are you at treading water, Air Force?”

Turk glanced at his fuel gauge and did some quick math. He had about forty-one minutes of fuel left . . . and it would take about eighteen to get home. They had planned to land with about twenty minutes of reserve, a generally prudent mark.

“I'm a lousy swimmer,” Turk told Cowboy. “I'm about three minutes to bingo. I have enough fuel for two more minutes. The Global Hawk is flying this way.”

“Basher Two, do you have contact with your bandit?” asked Walsh, back at the Marine base.

“Negative. Lost it. We're trying to get a visual or something, anything, on a wreckage.”

“Be advised the Global Hawk just had a fleeting contact about fifteen nautical miles east of where you are. I'm heading the aircraft in that direction. Stand by for a vector.”

“Roger that,” said Turk, altering his course as Walsh read out the heading. It was almost exactly due east of the point where he'd lost the aircraft.

“Hey, Air Force, you don't have the fuel for this,” said Cowboy.

“I got twenty minutes of reserve.”

“Turk—”

“Don't worry, I'm not going to break your plane,” answered Turk.

“That ain't it, dude,” responded Cowboy. “If we have to punch out, I can't swim.”

D
ANNY STRAPPED HIMSELF
into the copilot's seat of the Osprey and hung on as the aircraft began its short taxi down the runway. With no way to quickly tie the Osprey pilot directly into the Whiplash communications system, they'd settled for a low-tech solution—he would relay information to the pilot as he spoke through his own gear. It was easier to do that from the second officer's seat.

An unconventional solution, but the Marines liked to brag that they could adapt to any situation, and they seemed determined to prove it tonight.

“What's our ETA to the area?” Danny asked the pilot after they'd swooped into the sky.

“Fifty minutes, give or take, depending on the final location,” he told him. “Faster if I could go over Brunei.”

“No,” said Danny. “Hold off on that. If we get an actual sighting, and if there's a need, then we'll do it. On my responsibility. But I don't want to cause a ruckus without a very good reason.”

“You're the boss.”

T
HE
UAV
HAD
slowed to eighty knots by the time Turk got it on his radar. It had climbed as well; it was now at 8,000 feet.

Why had it climbed?

Eighty knots was slow, possibly close to the slowest speed the aircraft could go and remain flying. It was continuing to decelerate, all the while staying at the same altitude—surely it would have to stall in a matter of moments.

“Basher Two, I'm one mile behind you,” said Cowboy. “I have the contact on the radar. It's five miles away.”

“Roger. Copy.”

“How is it flying?” asked Cowboy. “Airspeed is dropping through seventy knots?”

“Copy.”

“What—Damn! Did he just blow up?”

“He just deployed a parachute,” said Turk, interpreting the new radar returns. “Come on—we want visuals.”

“Remember your fuel.”

“Roger.” Turk glanced at the gauge. He had ten minutes of his reserve time left . . . and that was with a good tailwind.

But there it was, descending less than two miles from him. He clicked on the radio to tell Walsh.

“Roger that. Global Hawk is three minutes away. Is there a ship there?”

“Negative. Nothing.”

“Colonel Freah and a team of Marines are heading there to see if they can recover it. Can you stand by until they arrive? They're about forty minutes off.”

“Can't do it,” said Cowboy, breaking in. “We don't have the fuel.”

“Understood,” answered Walsh.

“S
ORRY FOR INTERRUPTING
,” Cowboy told Turk. “But I don't want you doing anything rash.”

“I wasn't gonna.”

“Not a problem, then.”

“Roger that.”

Cowboy leaned his head to the side until his helmet touched the canopy. The night vision in the helmet made it possible to see, though the range was somewhat limited.

“I see the chute,” he told Turk. “It's going down slow. Nothing there, though.”

“Yeah.”

Earlier, Cowboy had entertained a fantasy of using the F-35B's vertical landing ability to touch down near the UAV's landing spot, grab the
thing, and take off. But that wouldn't work here, even as a fantasy.

“Why parachute into the water?” he asked Turk. “Why the hell not just crash and be done with it.”

“Probably just following its programming.”

“Computers.”

The UAV had fallen to 2,000 feet. Cowboy slowed Basher One to just over a hundred knots, watching it go down. The entire experience felt surreal, and for good reason: he was taking a leisurely spin around an aircraft that had tried to shoot him down less than an hour before.

“I wonder if I could snag the chute with my wheel,” he told Turk.

“Hey, that's a great idea,” answered Turk.

“No, no, I'm kidding.”

“I'm going to take a shot at it,” said Turk.

“What are you going to do if you catch it?”

“I'll bring it back to the base. Stand by.”

T
URK LINED UP
the chute in the dead center of his windscreen. Snagging it was probably a one in a million shot, he thought, but even a slight chance was better than nothing.

The trick was to get close enough to the parachute so he could get it, but not have the engine ingest the cloth. What he needed was a big hook underneath—arresting gear would have been perfect. The tip of a missile might work—except that he didn't have any more.

That left his landing gear, as Cowboy had suggested.

A ridiculous long shot, and a dangerous one, but getting the UAV was high priority, and what the hell—as long as he didn't ingest the chute, there was no downside.

Besides, he'd faced longer odds in Iran, among other places.

The Lightning II shuddered as he deployed the landing gear, and Turk swore it was a reaction to the fact that he was lowering his gear with no land in sight.

The parachute was at 1,200 feet. He had time for one pass, maybe two.

Bitchin' Betty gave him a stall warning as he eased closer to the target. He nudged the throttle slightly, saw the canopy coming on his left side . . .

Too far!

Turk pushed his rudder pedal, sliding in the air.

Come on, baby!

His left wing knifed toward the floating nylon blanket. Turk held steady, not even daring to breathe.

“Missed,” said Cowboy. “Damn close. It ducked to the side at the last second.”

Turk hadn't counted on the vortex of wind under the aircraft; it had pushed the chute out at the last second, whipping it below and past the wheel.

“Let me try,” said Cowboy.

“You're not low enough,” said Turk, banking
for a second try. “Get into position to follow me. If I miss, you get it. Be careful not to get it in your engine intakes.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

As Turk came out of the turn, he realized that the parachute had fallen faster than he'd thought it would; his wing had given it an extra push. He started to line up, then saw what looked like a whale with a unicorn's horn appear on the surface of the water.

“What the hell is that?” he asked Cowboy.

“Stand by.”

Turk's warning system began to blare—a radar had appeared out of nowhere and was tracking him.

“What's going on?” he cursed, hitting his throttle for thrust and cleaning the gear. He came back on the stick, climbing to get higher and give himself room to maneuver.

“It's some sort of submersible,” said Cowboy. “It's snagging the UAV.”

Turk spun his head but was too far past the sub to see.

“It's in the water—watch out!”

There was a small burst about halfway up the line to the chute—an explosive device cut the connection between the UAV and its parachute. Meanwhile, the submarine dove below the water, the aircraft in tow.

“Damn,” said Cowboy. “That's right out of
Star Wars
.”

“Or Dreamland,” said Turk, banking to try to get a look.

Suburban Virginia

G
ERRY
“B
IRD
” R
ODRIGUEZ
was nothing like Zen remembered him from Dreamland. There, he had been a quiet if hardworking junior scientist; now he was not only self-assured and expansive, but clearly well off: he had arrived at the restaurant in a Mercedes S, and the watch on his sleeve looked to be a Patek.

He'd also put on quite a bit of weight since the days they played pickup basketball together back at Dreamland, before Zen's accident. At six-eight, Rodriguez was tall enough to be a domineering presence under the basket in any pickup game, but had been so thin that you could miss him if he turned sideways. Now there was no missing him at all. Well-proportioned for his size and ruggedly handsome, he dominated the restaurant like he dominated the paint.

“I'm glad we were finally able to make our schedules mesh,” said Rodriguez. “You're so damn busy.”

“Not as busy as you,” said Zen. They'd been trying to meet for two months.

The waiter came over and cleared their plates. Rodriguez ordered a scotch for dessert. Zen, who'd been drinking water with dinner, asked for a bourbon.

“We have several,” said the waiter, who began reeling off a list of boutique brands, none of which Zen had heard of.

“Woodford?” Zen finally asked.

“Coming up,” said the man approvingly before sweeping away.

“So what do you think, Zen?” asked Rodriguez. “Do you think you want to try?”

“It's very—It's an interesting idea.”

“I know you've been through this a lot,” said Rodriguez. “A lot of people have promised that you'll walk again. I can't make a promise. But this process has worked with two other people.”

“But there's no guarantees.”

“No. Exactly. It's an experiment. That's why we want you, after all.”

“The fact that I'm a senator has nothing to do with it.”

“No. It raises the bar for us—if we fail, obviously, that's real bad.”

“If it succeeds, you have a lot of media attention.”

Rodriguez shrugged, and Zen thought of an after-game beer session where Rodriguez had made a similar gesture about his thirty points, giving the credit to his guard—Zen. But even if he was being a bit disingenuous, he was right that they were taking risks themselves, and he'd already agreed to keep everything quiet as it proceeded.

And in any event, so what? If it was a chance to walk again, what was the difference?

“Explain a little more,” said Zen. “How much of me are you going to cut up?”

“Just the good parts.” Rodriguez took him through the cell grafting techniques—he'd tried something like that in his last year at Dreamland—but
lost Zen when he began talking about the nanolevel microchips that would be placed in his spine and legs.

The drinks came; Zen savored the sweet burn of the bourbon in his mouth.

“It's a long process,” continued Rodriguez. “Over the course of a year, like I said. We have to put you into a coma—three times.”

“Just three?” joked Zen.

“Yeah. If it works. That bit's only for a few days, but it adds up.” Rodriguez laughed nervously. “To you, it'll feel like you're sleeping.”

“But I eventually wake up.”

“Yeah, that part I can guarantee. Almost guarantee,” Rodriguez corrected himself. “That part is basically like a normal medical procedure. It's done every day at hospitals for patients in trauma.”

“So this is trauma?”

“Sure. Think about it—it's the reverse of what you went through at Dreamland. You're coming back in the other direction.”

That made more sense to Zen than the nanochips.

“The rest of it is the risky stuff,” said Rodriguez. “But we've done it on two other people. Whom we didn't have nearly as good medical histories of. So I'm pretty confident, or I wouldn't be here. That, and I still think of myself as your friend, and want to help.”

Rodriguez had explained that his well-documented medical history and the length of time he'd been crippled were major assets to the program. When they were done, they would
know a tremendous amount about the process and the human body's reaction to it.

“It's a three year commitment,” added Rodriguez. “But only the first two are really heavy. After that, it's pretty much just real life.”

Zen nodded. They finished their drinks in silence.

“Well, let me think about it,” Zen told him.

“There's a lot to think about,” said the scientist. “I would . . . I do need an answer relatively soon. A month, tops. There's one other candidate.”

“And I have a limited window physically,” said Zen, referring to something Rodriguez had said earlier.

“That's right. Your age. We're already pushing the envelope.”

“Can't do anything about that,” said Zen.

“Not yet.” Rodriguez smiled. “Soon.”