UAV - Chapter 4

1

"Stay focused."

Victor tapped on the car window, startling Helen. She had been staring at a worn photograph again, that slight frown on her face that meant she was thinking about her sister.

He knew that look. He'd worn it himself, once, before he'd learned to bury it so deep even he couldn't find it anymore. Before the wedding. Before the drone strike. Before he'd traded grief for purpose.

She rolled down the window. "Sorry."

Victor leaned back against the hood, scanning the parking lot of Markwell. It was the middle of the day, but on a weekend so there were very few cars in the parking lot. His was in a back corner, tucked out of sight.

After spending time in the Middle East, coming back stateside was always an adjustment. The Pacific Northwest in late fall was a different kind of oppressive—gray skies that seemed to press down on everything, a persistent drizzle that never quite stopped, air so damp it seeped through clothing and carried the earthy smell of wet Douglas fir and decaying leaves. Victor pulled his jacket tighter. The cool wasn't extreme, maybe fifty degrees, but after months of desert heat it felt like stepping into a refrigerator.

"You miss her," he added, trying to get a read on Helen's emotions.

"I do," Helen said. "You don't remember anything?"

"She went in," Victor said. "We got pinned down and they bombed the building. Some debris knocked me out, and I was gone for two days. When I woke up, I heard she was gone."

Helen looked at the photo. "Yeah."

Victor couldn't tell if she believed him.

"She was a good woman," he offered.

"She was," Helen agreed, tucking the photo in a pocket.

"It's going to be a whirlwind few days. You up for this?"

"Of course," Helen said.

Victor wasn't so sure. She was damn good at her job, one of the best hackers he'd ever seen, but he didn't trust her. He knew she was here with ulterior motives.

He knew no one on his team would talk to her, though, which means she would eventually have to drop the hunt. Her sister was dead, killed by enemies in an explosion, and that was the end of the story. She might not trust him, but she was smart and knew better than to make accusations she couldn't back up. He hoped she was smart enough to just drop it.

He didn't want to have to kill her, too.

The thought arrived without weight, the way such thoughts always did now. Once—before Lahore, before the wedding, before Nadia—the idea of killing a woman whose only crime was grief would have sickened him. Now it was logistics. A timeline adjustment. He noticed the absence of feeling the way you notice a missing tooth: the space was familiar, but the nerve was dead.

Nadia would have been horrified. His sister, who wept over stray cats, who made Victor promise—hand on his heart, in her sun-drenched courtyard while Tariq tugged at his sleeve—to never become the kind of man who reduced people to problems that needed solving.

He wondered, sometimes, if she could see what he'd become. He hoped she couldn't.

"Where is William?" he asked.

"He said he was picking up some food," Helen said. "Hamburgers, I think. Mentioned he was craving hamburgers."

Victor sighed. "Figures. Has Francis checked in yet?"

"Not yet," Helen said. "Do you think he needs backup?"

Victor shook his head. If Francis needed backup inside the building, he would radio out to them. Victor wasn't about to second-guess his second in command.

"Did you find anything out about the networks?"

"Not yet," Helen said. "I've been probing the Air Force firewalls, but I don't want to set off any red flags."

"I need you to get us inside," Victor said. "The entire job hinges on that."

"What is the job?"

"I'll tell you when the time is right," Victor said. "For now, just get us access to the networks so we can hook in. You can do that, can't you?"

"No civilians, right?"

"None," he said. "These are military targets."

"Okay."

"You can get us in, right?"

"I can," Helen said. "But their firewalls are tricky and it's going to be hard to punch a hole through without knowing more of what's inside. They don't have any easy backdoor, and I can't just try different things out without letting them know they're getting hacked. When I try to punch through, I need to do it all at once."

"How long will it take?"

"Weeks," Helen said. "I have to be gentle until I know the right places to press."

"What will speed things up?"

"I need someone who already knows the system," Helen said. "Someone on the inside."

Victor allowed himself a thin smile. "What if I told you we already have someone?"

Helen looked at him sharply. "What do you mean?"

"The engineer we picked up in Lahore. Imran Hyderi. He designed the backdoor in Markwell's autonomous navigation software. Every authentication pathway, every encryption layer—he built them."

"You said he was a consultant."

"He is consulting," Victor said. "I'm going to introduce you to him tonight. He'll walk you through the architecture, and you'll have your access within days instead of weeks."

Helen studied Victor's face. He could see the gears turning behind her eyes, the suspicion she was too smart to fully suppress.

"He's really willing to help?" she asked.

"He understands the situation." Victor's tone didn't change.

"You kidnapped him, didn't you." It wasn't a question.

"He's cooperating," Victor said. "That's all you need to know."

Helen looked like she wanted to argue but thought better of it. Good. She was learning.

"You said we don't have a backdoor, but we do?" Helen asked. "The Air Force network has one built in?"

"Not the Air Force network. Markwell's software that the Air Force uses. Different thing. Imran built a hidden access layer into the autonomous systems. Once you're inside the Markwell layer, you can bridge to the military network through their own software updates."

Helen was quiet for a moment, processing. "That's actually brilliant."

"Imran is a brilliant man," Victor agreed. "Which is why we went all the way to Lahore to get him."

"What will speed things up even more is someone who knows the military side," Helen said, her mind already working the problem. "A tech reached out to me earlier this morning. Someone I used to work with who's been keeping tabs on military hackers. It looks like two drone operators went off base in Nevada with day passes."

Victor's eyes sharpened. "Wallis and Beck."

Helen stared at him. "How did you—"

"I've had files on every drone operator at that Nevada base for three months," Victor said. "Beck has been probing Markwell's diagnostic ports since he was stationed there. Unauthorized system modifications, pattern analysis—he already understands the architecture we need him for. Wallis is leverage." His voice was flat, clinical. "Go on. They went AWOL?"

"Not exactly scheduled leave," Helen said, recalibrating. "My tech says they hacked the leave system and created false authorization. No one in the Air Force is alerted to it, and my friend found it by a stroke of luck. The general who signed them out isn't listed in the database."

"Beck's work," Victor said. "We've been monitoring base network traffic for weeks, logging every time he touched a diagnostic port. He's been rehearsing for this without knowing it."

"So you were already planning to grab them."

"I was waiting for the right moment. They just handed it to us."

"With Imran giving us the Markwell side and a drone pilot giving us the military side, I could have full access in days. Maybe hours."

Victor didn't hesitate. "When did they go off base?"

"They've been out for about an hour, but I don't think they'll stay overnight. They have twelve-hour passes. If I had to guess I'd say maybe seven, eight more hours before they head back inside."

"All right. I'll have a jet prepped. Figure out which casinos they are hitting and find us a place to grab them."

Helen nodded. "You got it."

"You're sure it's worth it?"

"It could save us weeks of probing," Helen replied.

"Then make it happen," he said.

The door to the office building opened up. Francis stepped outside, carrying a laptop under his arm. As soon as Victor saw his face he knew something was wrong.

"What is it?" he asked once Francis was close.

"We've got a problem."

"What? Did you get the package?"

"I did," Francis said, "but our contact inside flagged an alert. A couple of developers were snooping in the code. They found Imran's backdoor."

"Who?"

"A couple of developers. Nobodies."

"Did they report it to Markwell?"

"No," Francis said. "The contact only found out this morning when he saw a trigger in the logs. He wants to know what we want him to do."

Victor turned to Helen. "What about the government? Anything recent on the web about this?"

She was typing frantically on her computer, searching for any trace of a leak. After a second she looked up at them. "No word. Yet. No one is talking about software vulnerabilities with Markwell."

"So it looks like they kept their mouths shut," Victor said.

"Looks like," Francis agreed.

"Still loose ends," Victor mused. "Who are they?"

"Peter Karnegie and Lyle Goldman. Mid-level developers."

"Both local?"

"Yes," Francis said. "But that's the other problem. Lyle is out of town on vacation."

"When did he leave?"

"This morning. He went to Utah, and his plane just touched down a few hours ago."

"Perfect," Victor said, scratching his chin.

"You think it'll work?"

"Like a charm," Victor replied. "Have the contact plant something inside to make it look legit, and you can put something on his friend. Make it look like a sale went wrong."

Helen's gaze bounced between them, her brow furrowing. "What?"

Francis gave her an irritated look and turned back to Victor. "Africa?"

"Iran," Victor said. "It'll hit the news faster."

"I'll make sure the contact gets the story straight."

"What are you guys talking about?" Helen interrupted.

Victor sighed.

"Here's what happened," he explained. "Lyle killed his friend and stole the software his company develops. He was planning to sell it to Iran."

"Peter is dead?"

Victor smiled slightly. "Not yet."

Helen's throat worked. She pressed her lips together, fingers white-knuckled on the edge of the laptop, and looked away—but not before Victor caught the tremor at the corner of her mouth. Something stirred in Victor—not conscience, which he'd cauterized years ago, but recognition. He'd seen that exact expression before. Nadia's face, the night she'd learned what he did for a living. The same dawning understanding that the person standing in front of you was capable of things you couldn't reconcile with their humanity.

Nadia had cried for three hours. Helen wouldn't cry. She was too much like Kate for that.

He turned away from the thought. He was getting better at turning away.

He would need to keep an eye on her. Make sure she didn't do anything stupid.

"So you're going to frame Lyle and make it look like he stole the software?" Helen asked, her voice brittle.

Victor nodded. "And when no one knows where Lyle disappeared to they'll focus all efforts on finding him. We won't even be on their radar."

"He won't be that hard to find," Helen said. "We found him in like two minutes."

"When you drop a body into a pigpen they eat everything," Victor said. "Even the bones and teeth."

He looked to Francis. "Take care of Peter and the contact."

"You got it," Francis replied, handing Helen the laptop from Markwell and disappearing down the street. He tucked his hands in his pocket, bracing against the damp chill.

Victor turned to Helen. "We're going to Nevada to pick up your pilots. I'll call and have a local team take care of Lyle. Go find William. We're leaving."

"What about Imran?" Helen asked.

"He's secure," Victor said. "I'll bring him along. You two can start working together on the flight."

2

Peter stepped into the foyer of his home and shut the door, rubbing his arms. It was cold, and he'd forgotten his big jacket when he ran to the store. The house smelled of coffee and the faint mustiness of old carpet, familiar and comforting. Rain tapped against the front windows in an uneven rhythm.

It had taken three different stops before he finally found pastrami but now that he had a half pound of it, he could already taste his sandwich. Some slices of Gouda cheese to top it off, along with an immodest helping of mayonnaise. He headed into the kitchen, opening the bag and taking out his sliced deliciousness.

Maybe he should toast the bread first and then put a slab of butter on it before layering the pastrami—

He froze, halfway into the kitchen in midstride. The hairs went up on the back of his neck: something was wrong. The kitchen light was off, and in the silence he could hear the house settling around him—the tick of the radiator, the hum of the refrigerator, and beneath it, the sound of someone breathing.

"You should have reported it," a voice said from his living room.

The house lights were still off, but he could dimly see a shadowy figure standing in the doorway. It was a small man, lithe with dark hair. He had a thick British accent.

"Who…why…?"

"If you had told someone, then this would have been a lot harder for me. We would have needed a new plan and killing you could have been a liability. It might have been enough of an inconvenience to just scrap our entire job and let you live."

The man stepped forward, flicking on the kitchen light.

"Now, however, it's just unfortunate that you sat on the information."

"You…you shouldn't be here," Peter said, feeling his knees wobble. He could barely breathe, and the words were little more than a whisper.

The man smiled at him. "I shouldn't be a lot of things. What is the password to your computer?"

"Wha…what?"

"Your computer," the man repeated. "I have to put a few documents on it, and it's best if I don't break my way in. I want them to look as legitimate as possible instead of a log of failed password attempts."

Peter gulped. "Are you going to kill me?"

"Yes."

Peter dropped his bag on the floor. The pastrami hit the tile with a wet slap.

"The question is: am I going to have to torture you first?"

Peter turned and ran for the door. He made it two steps before the man was on him. He felt a stinging pain in his back, followed by agony ripping through his body as the knife jerked up. Before he could scream a hand covered his mouth. He tried to pull it away, but the grip was like iron.

"The password," the man whispered in his ear. "And this is over. Try to scream and it will last all night."

Peter whimpered.

"You understand?" the man asked. Peter nodded feeling tears in his eyes from the pain and fear. The man's hand disappeared. "What is the password?"

Peter gave it to him.

"See? That wasn't very hard," the man said. "I'm a man of my word."

He felt the blade draw back ever so slightly and then it suddenly twisted. Peter's knees buckled and he screamed, but the hand was back, clamped on his mouth. He screamed into the hand, feeling agony and dizziness wash over him. The world turned red and became pain.

"Mostly."