Pretoria, South Africa
November 12, 9:00 A.M.
The Robinson R66 Turbine helicopter was comfortable and quiet, a welcome break from the noise of Pretoria—and the first after the long journey that had preceded Black Wasp’s arrival in South Africa.
With their gear in the third and fourth passenger seats behind them, Williams and Breen had just taken off when they received a text from Matt Berry:
FBI says 99% certainty voice 2 recordings is same.
Major Breen was not surprised. He had not been idle while waiting for Williams. He had been reviewing data from the National Reconnaissance Office. The signal strength recorded in the report from the East London police and the radio intercept from the USS Carl Vinson had triangulated to roughly the same location.
“So how do we approach him?” Williams asked over their dedicated headsets. The men could communicate with the pilot and he could cut in with instructions but not eavesdrop.
“By understanding his endgame, which is twofold. First, to make as much money as possible and as fast as possible. Second, to get out of South Africa as quickly as possible. Pretoria is going to want to put him on trial for mass murder. He has to get to someplace safe.”
“Such as?”
“While I was waiting, I also looked up the countries that have no extradition agreements with South Africa. He can go to China, for one. Also Pakistan, Venezuela, Ethiopia—”
“He probably has a jet fueled and waiting.”
“No doubt, which is why I suggest we approach him with as little artifice as possible,” Breen said. “We should be what we are and, moreover, expect that we might not be the only ones quickly zeroing in on this guy. The Chinese may be running a two-prong operation: dig for the bug and offer him sanctuary. That way, they corner the market. The other consideration is that Foster will certainly have an accomplice, maybe additional stores off-site to sell to additional bidders—”
“No sudden moves.”
“Exactly.”
Williams shook his head. “We’re on a fact-finding mission? That’s it?”
“It’s stronger than that,” Breen said. “We go in and make a preemptive bid, tell him the DoD wants everything. And it’s not like we don’t have leverage. We can let him know that potential bidders are descending on Prince Edward. If he doesn’t sell now, he’ll be left with extortion. That has a pretty low high-end, given South Africa’s divided feelings about its own population. We have to make sure he understands that Pretoria will pay considerably less and give our offer a short shelf life.”
“And if he agrees?”
“You tell me. Because I’m wondering how bad our military might, in fact, want this bug.”
“You think we should actually buy it?”
“That’s the goal, right? To get it away from Foster, keep him or anyone but us from killing more people?”
The tenor of that last remark was pure courtroom: by inflection, not words, Breen had just condemned the idea that even his side should possess another weapon of mass destruction.
“I can’t say I like it, but I understand,” Williams said.
“It’s like defending a murderer I know is guilty,” Breen said. “Had that with a home-grown terrorist. He told me how he was radicalized and why. It made me sick. He took the leg off a child, blinded another, driving a van into a school bus. I had to defend the monster. I have to do my best whatever my personal feelings. You’re doing the same—about winging this, I mean.”
Williams laughed. “You noticed?”
“Once a commander…”
“Yeah,” Williams said. “I wish to hell we had Grace and Rivette reporting in. Current intel about what’s going on down there so we could drop that on Foster.”
“Black Wasp wasn’t designed to work like that,” Breen said.
“Which puzzles the hell out of me.”
The criminologist said nothing further. Breen wasn’t just quiet, he had suddenly shut up.
Williams regarded him. “What are you not telling me?”
“Nothing you probably haven’t figured out,” Breen replied. “The calculation. It became obvious as soon as we started drilling. Black Wasp isn’t just a test of surgical-strike special ops. It’s a rethinking of the entire command structure, the design and execution of national military missions.”
“I think you just said ‘guinea pigs’ in bureaucratese.”
Breen snickered. “Complete with gene splicing. Grace said it herself. She and Jaz were yin and yang—opposites that, together, formed a perfect whole. They didn’t need me to execute various training scenarios. My job was to watch situations and offer evolving analysis. Your job, I suspect, was to plug us into the mainframe. In this case, the White House, I presume. The military itself doesn’t need more military. The West Wing does. They gave you the ability to feed the team without controlling it.”
“Eliminate all fat, a huge STF minus the command structure, the overhead, by using disposable loose cannons,” Williams said.
“Right. Something the military would never agree to unless ordered, since there goes the trillion-dollar budgets. And this new setup is modular. We lose Jaz and Grace, we get two others. They lose us, the same.” Breen reflected briefly. “You want the pullback, Chase? What I think we’re seeing here?”
“Very much.”
“The notion of an experimental ‘situational command’ is a feint. I believe that two very different ideas, Black Wasp and Space Force, are being groomed as the new faces of the U.S. military. The unseen—one small and mobile, like the germs we’re chasing. The other high and godlike, able to rain hell on nations, borders, hypersonic nuclear missiles, submarines, nuclear silos and bunkers—we can kill all targets of all sizes in all places all the time. Every military force in the middle becomes extraneous.”
Williams immediately grasped that big picture. “Not just the U.S. military but every other military on Earth becomes big and ineffective.”
“Exactly. And what Space Force can’t obliterate, Black Wasp can behead.”
Williams should have been pleased by Breen’s assessment. If it were true, far fewer troops would be in harm’s way or far from their families.
Except for the ones in orbit or on the moon, he thought.
He should also have been excited or at least grateful to be on the ground floor of a quick, seismic shift in a process that was typically glacial. But it was slow for a reason. Safeguards were built in—not just command structure but decision-making protocols from the top on down. With a computer determining defense readiness condition levels, wasn’t it possible that one of their own Black Wasp teams would be misread and targeted?
Once a commander …
Williams sighed and looked at the countryside rushing by. There were communities like you’d find in Middle America with lawns and pools and cars. And they were butting against pockets of jungle and rivers and brilliant colors that looked like a romantic’s idea of Africa.
It was a land both as familiar and then as abruptly alien as the life he was now leading.
It’s also not your big problem, Williams reminded himself. He had this small, key part of it. He had to focus on getting that right, giving the think tanks data to ponder before sending more Black Wasps into the world.
He was pulled from the view by a text. He was the only recipient. It was from General Krummeck. Williams read it and swore. There was a case of his worst Black Wasp fear. Of all the damn luck, an elite force had hit the right place for the wrong reason:
Wreckage of Teri found. Special Task Force at East L Target. Chaos.