Northeastern Japan
The door slid open and Jon Smith watched it carefully. The procedure was the same as it had been every time before: a single guard standing with his back against the far wall of the corridor, one hand buried suggestively in his jacket. It was always the same man—stocky, rock hard, with a weathered face and dead eyes. Smith owed his life many times over to his gift for sizing up the competition, and this guy was one nasty piece of work. Almost certainly Special Forces, probably significant combat experience, and clearly serious about his job.
Smith expected—or more accurately hoped—that this was the beginning of another visit from the very conflicted Dr. Ito, but instead Masao Takahashi strode in. The door closed behind him and Smith bowed respectfully. Pretty much everything that could be used as a weapon had been removed from the room, and fashioning one out of the materials at hand was impossible with two cameras watching him.
“Colonel Smith,” the man said, taking a seat and sliding an Android tablet across the table. “I have something to show you that I think you’ll find interesting.”
Smith looked down at the tablet. It was split into four videos with touchscreen controls at the bottom. The top left feed depicted a table set up in the woods with camouflage screening above it. Two men were leaning over it, silently discussing something that appeared to be a map. The second feed showed a massive silver cylinder being worked on by a group of young people. A woman stood about ten yards from them, leaning against a tree and watching. The image was too small to make out facial features, but he knew the body language. Randi Russell.
The other two feeds were just shots of dense foliage. One of them had a few out-of-focus feathers in the foreground.
“The activity is just on the other side of the mountain this facility is built into. I’m told that the machine you’re looking at is a new kind of nuclear-powered tunneling system. It appears that Ms. Russell is wise enough not to mount a frontal assault and is instead going to try to come up on our flank. I have to admit that I admire her tenacity. And the machine itself is really quite ingenious.”
“But her plan isn’t going to work,” Smith said.
“No. And I can’t imagine she doesn’t know that. Ms. Russell has a duty to perform and she intends to do so to the best of her ability. I would expect no less from a woman of her reputation.”
“So you have the entire mountain wired with cameras?” Smith said, really just to stall. But for what? A sudden bolt of inspiration that would allow him to stroll out of there and warn Randi that her operation had been compromised?
“No, that wouldn’t be practical,” Takahashi said, tapping the tablet with a finger. “Actually, I think you’ll be quite intrigued by this technology. Your own military has put a great deal of money into small, stealthy surveillance drones. We did the same more than a decade ago but they’re frankly not a very good solution.”
“No?” Smith said, still desperately trying to calculate a way to stop what was starting to look inevitable.
Takahashi shook his head. “They’re not particularly stealthy, they’re difficult to land and maneuver, and they have very limited range. Birds, though, have none of those failings. When one of my people came to me with the idea of mounting fiber-optic cameras to birds of prey and controlling them with mild electric shocks, I have to admit I was skeptical. Twelve years later, though, we’ve turned it into an incredibly versatile battlefield surveillance platform. And better yet, even with training the animals, our costs are under three thousand US dollars per unit.”
“Impressive,” Smith said absently, unable to take his eyes off Randi. The woman was a witch when it came to recognizing that she was in danger. Yet there she was, completely oblivious. He tried to will her to look up but what good would it do? All she’d see was a goddamn bird perched in a tree.
“I have to admit that I’m not quite sure how to react to Ms. Russell’s efforts and thought I’d ask your advice. My assumption is that by now Keith Morrison has told your president that siding with the Chinese would be suicidal. But is he listening? Is what you’re looking at on that tablet a last, futile attempt to stop me? Or is it the first salvo in a full-scale attack by your country? Is Castilla willing to sacrifice the lives of millions of Americans in order to protect a country that every day becomes more of a threat to you and your standing in the world? From my perspective, that seems…insane.”
Smith stared down at the video feeds, trying to decide what to say. He’d had a great deal of time to think, and much of it had been spent on how the US would fare in a confrontation with Takahashi’s new military. The conclusion that he’d come to was that America would be decimated and the world would descend into chaos in the aftermath.
“President Castilla isn’t a stupid man and neither are the people advising him, General. Here’s what I can tell you. If Randi is involved, this is a very quiet, small-scale operation. Virtually no one knows about it and if it doesn’t work, no one ever will.”
“Then, in your opinion, your country will back down.”
“In my opinion, yes,” Smith said honestly. “There’s a big difference between sacrificing a handful of operatives and sacrificing three hundred and fifty million civilians.”
Takahashi leaned back in his chair and nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps he just can’t face the idea that you are no longer the world’s preeminent power.”
“He’s a realist, General. We’ve known for decades that the era of wars between major powers was over. The destructive force of modern weapons is just too great. There would only be losers.”
Takahashi smiled thinly. “Until now.”
It was clear that he was referring to his nanoscale weapon and its ability to throw off the balance of power enough for him to get the upper hand.
“No, sir,” Smith said. “I believe the potential for blowback from your weapon goes well beyond anything we saw during the Cold War. And I suspect that if you ask Dr. Ito, he’ll tell you the same thing.”
“Scientists are never certain of anything, Colonel. They hedge, they equivocate, they overcomplicate. As a soldier, I expected more of you.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint, General, but I’m not just a scientist, I’m one of the world’s leading experts on the consequences of biowarfare. That’s basically what you’re doing here. You’re creating artificial life and weaponizing it. You won’t be able to control it, sir. I guarantee that. If you feel you have to attack China, do it. Nuke them. I imagine you’ve built quite an arsenal and have a way to deploy it that they’ll never see coming. But destroy Ito’s weapon and everything relating to it.”
Takahashi didn’t react other than to tap one of the feeds on the tablet. It depicted an empty meadow probably only twenty yards in diameter. Smith focused on it but wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be looking for. A moment later a projectile flashed into view at the top of the frame. Dirt and rock were thrown into the air when it impacted the ground and the dust clouded the image.
For a moment, he wasn’t sure what had happened, but then he noticed the broken metal parts strewn across the clearing: fins, a nose cone, broken chunks of a fuselage. It had been some kind of bomb, probably dropped from a high-altitude drone. But it hadn’t exploded. A dud? Had his side finally gotten a lucky break? Randi sure as hell couldn’t have missed that. She’d know that her operation was blown and get her people the hell out of there.
It didn’t take long to realize that he had fallen victim to wishful thinking. Tiny jets of flame became visible throughout the clearing and he stared down in silence as they began to take to the air.