If Jiba and Mahao and whoever else was at the Lab were part of that group, and if they were responsible for these murders, then the isolation of this place would come back to bite them hard. There were no witnesses out here. There was no one they could call for help. Not in time. Not once Top and Bunny and I came for them.
And they could scream as loud as they wanted, but in the end they would give us the answers we wanted. My friends and I are good men, but we are not nice ones.
Not in places like this.
“TOC to Outlaw,” came the call in my ear. TOC was the tactical operations center, where Church, Doc, and Bug were gathered to oversee this op. I raised my fist and we all slowed to a stop at the foot of a large dune, our bikes purring quietly.
“Go for Outlaw,” I responded.
“We’re tracking two vehicles inbound toward the target,” said Bug.
“What do we know?”
“Two Humvees, both with civilian paint jobs. Older models, probably bought from military sell-offs. No visible armament. We don’t have thermal scans, so no intel on number of occupants. ETA to target is twenty-five minutes.”
Beside me Top cursed. That was going to be close to when we would arrive.
“What’s the call?” I asked, and Church answered.
“The play is yours, Outlaw. If you ID them as hostiles, we can have a drone there in forty minutes.”
“Copy that.” I glanced at my guys and they each nodded. “We’re going in. Soft approach, observe and assess.”
“Very well. Proceed with caution,” he said and ended the call.
Bunny looked into the distance, toward where the vehicles would be coming. “More of their team, maybe? Or bringing fuel for the bird?”
“Or coming to pick up the cocci bioweapon now that it’s been proved,” suggested Top. I nodded, because that sounded reasonable.
“Let’s go find out,” I said.
We headed out, pushing the bikes to their limit.
5.
THE LAB
TÉNÉRÉ
SOUTH-CENTRAL SAHARA
As we drove we sent a drone ahead to surveil the landscapes, and the feed was sent to the Scout goggles and to the TOC.
“Hey,” said Doc’s voice, “what are those flat areas you just passed?”
I tapped the goggles to replay that portion of the video and saw what she meant. Way off to our left there were several areas that I first took for wind-smoothed sand, but when I zoomed in, it was clear that they were huge areas of ground covered with sand-colored tarps. Huge tarps, too. Maybe a quarter acre each, and we passed ten or twelve of them. No idea if there were others out of the drone’s camera range.
“No idea,” I said. “Not sure we have the time to check them, either. Racing the clock here.”
“Whatever it is,” said Doc, “I don’t like it. Looks like camouflage for something, but whatever it is, it’s flat. No sign of structures or vehicles under the tarps. Check it on your way back.”
“I’ll add it to my to-do list,” I said, and kept driving. The Lab was ahead and we’d gained some advantage over the approaching Humvees. We kept going and then stopped two miles from the target.
Our approach vector had been picked so that the wind blew toward us, thereby carrying a good deal of the muffled engine noises away behind us. Even so, it was worth hiking the last bit to guarantee that no one heard us approach. The vehicles were still a few minutes out, but we had to move fast. The sun was rolling off the edge of the world, which gave us the shroud of twilight. The desert is dry and there isn’t much moisture in the air to refract the fading sun’s glow. It gets dark very fast.
Lights came on inside the Lab, but there were no perimeter spotlights. That was strange and it sent some minor alarm bells ringing in my head. Mass murderers and terrorists—if that’s what these people were—generally went the extra mile in overall security.
I tapped Bunny’s shoulder. “Let’s get some birds in the air.”
He unzipped Top’s pack and they quickly unwrapped and activated a pair of eagle owl drones. They weren’t exactly the right species for the Sahara, but it was night and they were close enough. Besides, we didn’t think we were creeping up on a lair of evil ornithologists. Top and Bunny each tossed a drone into the air, and the little machines deployed their wings, flapped vigorously, and rose into the darkening sky. I pulled back the flap that camouflaged the small computer strapped to my forearm, and brought up the feeds from both birds. The screen split into two and gave me high-def camera feeds, thermal scans, and scans for electronics as the drones soared over the building.
On the first pass the thermals told us that there were eight people inside. No idea who they were, but they all grouped in one room. Electronic heat signatures suggested there were machines in there, and one of them was both hot and cold. A fridge. Then the drones circled and searched for the security setup, hunting for listening devices, infrared triggers, motion sensors, and other security systems.
Bunny leaned close and studied the display. “Well,” he said sourly, “they got the whole package, don’t they?”
“Yup.”
And they did. The whole compound was wired six ways from Sunday, and all of it was networked through a very sophisticated computer system. I tapped my coms unit.
“Bug, you getting this?”
“Yeah.”
“Talk to me.”
“It’s a pretty sweet setup. Absolute cutting edge. Very expensive. Looks like the computers are protected by a one-hundred-twenty-eight-bit cyclical random numerical coder. That’s top of the line.”
“And . . . ?”
“And we’re in,” he said simply. “Top of the line isn’t ‘us’ now, is it?”
I heard Top laughing quietly.
Rogue Team International had the MindReader computer, which is arguably the world’s most sophisticated super-intrusion software system. It’s how we’ve been able to stay a couple of steps ahead of the bad guys—and some of our allies—even though we’re a relatively small group. RTI works because we can spook our way into virtually any computer system, steal data, learn secrets, clone intel, and then sneak out again with no trace. MindReader rewrites the target system’s security software, including time codes, to eliminate all traces of its presence. The next best systems—owned by the NSA, China, and Russia—could sneak in, but they left footprints, scars to mark where they’d been. Nobody ever knows that MindReader was there. It makes our system the most dangerous in the world, which is why Mr. Church doesn’t share it with anyone. That’s a very deep line in the sand. His level of trust for other governments is nonexistent.