Genecaust Page 17

  He took her hand and buried it within two his. "My pleasure, Dr. Mather. I hope my visit with compatriots will not take too long. Good luck with your next endeavor."

  He took her arm, and they proceeded toward the door about twenty yards behind two agents. Special Agent Fairchild and Wilson followed them. At the front door, two more agents flanked them. Two more pulled up driving a black town car and a black SUV. The entourage took on the image of a wealthy couple and their personal security, not an unusual sight leaving the Hotel Mercure Aden.

  "You conducted yourself admirably, Meret. Well done." Steve unlocked his hotel room and stepped aside for Meret and MJ to enter. He had just returned from a preliminary discussion with Doctor Piero della Francesca and knew they would have questions.

  "Can you believe it?" Meret said. "He knew the identity of the scientist who caused the deaths on Socotra. A Doctor Sen. Do you know him?"

  "Doctor Subash Sen has been on our radar for some time. He has the ethical standards of Josef Mengele, a Nazi war surgeon I'm sure you've heard of. The Company will be all over catching up to the little rat."

  "What's going to happen our informant?"

  "You mean Piero?" Steve asked.

  "Yes." Meret felt her face grow hot and MJ jumped all over it.

  "Yeah, he's far too hot to molder away in some black hole."

  He was good looking all right. There was no denying that. "I didn't want to know before the meeting, but now, I'm concerned. And he is far too smart to molder away in some black hole." She raised a challenging eyebrow at her colleague.

  "No, no Nothing so drastic," Steve told them. Think of it as a vetting. It's what you would have done, Meret if that lunch were a real job interview. We need to know more about him and how he knows what he seems to know.

  "Piero may seem suspicious, but he's safe," Steve said.

  MJ turned on him. "The Company's considering him as a possible double agent, aren't they. Admit it?"

  He remained sitting with his face closed while his fingers tapped his thighs. Finally, he said, "So it would seem."

  Meret nodded slowly. "Good, I'm looking forward to this next step and putting the beetles out there.

  * * *

  The upscale residential neighborhood, two miles from the hotel, was the target area INTEL had placed as Granger's most likely location and Steve was impatient to begin the search. He'd rounded up twelve gamers and gave each a super beetle and smartphones with Dr. Zhen's beetle app already installed. They practiced flying out and returning to the room. As Meret had predicted, they'd been quick to master the controls.

  They were ready. The training completed, it was time for actual reconnaissance. Excited they were finally going after Granger, MJ could barely sit still during Steve's address to the team. "Since this is phase one, we've disabled your ability to use them as an explosive device. Focus on the map. Stick within your block of buildings. Go slow and go smart. Your recorded data will stream to the cloud while collected trace will be taken to the lab so when we get feedback that your beetle made a positive hit on Granger's DNA, we'll immediately mark the location and everyone's smartphone and monitor it from here. Keep your ear buds on. The field techs tested it yesterday, and the communication network is stable. Remember, expect the unexpected."

  Meret sat alone in her room cradling a smartphone in her lap as she spoke to her new super beetle, Ringo Jr. resting on the side table. "Tonight you'll get to be the first to help bring a CIA agent in from the field. Given the rapid change of events in the world, Granger makes the first of many, I'm afraid." She looked at the time. "Too little time to call Poppy." She sighed. "What a find, she's gonna help us make this happen." The go signal on her cell blinked silently. She touched the screen and worked the checklist she'd taught the gamers only hours ago. "Okay, Ringo, up and away." Holding the cell phone close, she watched Junior's point of view felt a thrill go through her at the maneuverability of the tiny bot yet the clarity of the vision. Rather than slide through turns like a rookie pilot, she banked the beetle and imagined her weight shifting through turns, dips, and wingovers as though she had become a small avatar within a warplane that happened to look like a beetle.

  The light of the moon rippled off the swells of the Arabian Sea as the sun dipped in the west. "Take the coastal road north about one kilometer and turn left at the first Mosque." Steve's voice was as tense, reflecting the feelings of the group. "Work the oceanfront properties coming south, back to the traffic circle."

  From the chair in her room, Meret maneuvered Ringo to the first building hovering two meters above the flat roof. She deftly avoided the chaos of wires stretched everywhere until she found and touched down on top of a vertical heat-venting pipe. Ringo toppled off to the rooftop. When Ringo righted himself on his own, she exhaled her held breath and mentally thanked Zhen.

  She wiped her damp hands on her armchair at slowly turned Ringo until she could determine the easiest path to the nearest side of the roof. She set Ringo to hover so she could shake her hands and relieve the tension from holding tight to the smartphone.

  With so many buildings to check, they needed patience. Meret chaffed at the bit to complete the mission but had to school herself to maintain disciple. Yes, Ringo was weeny, and in this part of the world, every household had fly swatters. They could be lethal weapons from small flying machine's point of view.

  She began her methodical circle of the first building on her list by starting at its stop floor. The first window was a wall of glass that covered the width of the apartment within. She remembered that the apartments having such a wall of glass faced the East. They were a stacked cascade of patios with an unobstructed view of the Aegean. At night the ocean would appear as a dark void. She faced Ringo inward at the wall of glass where there was a chance of observing resident activity. There would be trace on each patio and others treasures to discover.

  She turned on Ringo's night-light and became the hunter.

  At the last apartment of her first circle the top floor, Meret encountered three big, rough-looking, scruffy men sitting around a table. Drawn closer by the glowing hot tips of their cigars, she settled Ringo on a high windowsill of a small opening next to the large glass sill to watch. The small window opened to the apartment's bathroom and she had to resist entry until she studied the patio and the three men.

  She was an anxious as MJ to get this job done, but it would be foolish to condemn her drone to the flyswatter, or worse yet, discovery because she couldn't curb her patience. She took her time and noticed a fourth glass on the table. While it defined a place for a fourth person, instead of a chair, the place at the table remained vacant, leaving space large enough for a wheelchair.

  Meret realized a wheelchair would be the ideal cage for a prisoner held for special treatment. She imagined seeing Granger in that spot, handcuffed to the wheelchair, drugged into silence, or worse.

  Not wanting to waste time sitting surveillance on one point of interest, she tagged the space and called for the positioning of a watcher drone.

  Waiting for the watcher to arrive, she continued a static visual of the patio looking for other clues. When her cell displayed its arrival, and she vacated the special observation on the sill and entered the apartment through the small open bathroom window.

  Meret methodically flew Ringo through all the rooms in the apartment. One room contained three sleeping women on three beds. The adjacent room had a closed door. It mattered little if it were locked, Ringo lacked hands large enough to turn a knob. Perhaps she could find enter from the outside. Meret decided to search for trace in the kitchen and began a search for its location. Before she could initiate and live intervention, she had to wait to see if she had found a DNA match for Granger. Now, she only had to find that trace that led for a match indicating he had been there, or better still, that he was possibly still there.

  The body count consisted of three women and three men plus one unseen person. Seven possible DNA residue in the sink. Ringo had room for
twelve more samples before she could return to base and present Ringo's collection for examination.

  Meret found the sink and exhaled a ton of relief. No one had cleanup after dinner. And there were seven bowls with residue of something for Ringo to sample.

  With no more room in his micro chamber, she hit Ringo's Home button and placed her cell on the table crossing her arms and fingers to stare at her screen. Watching and willing Ringo's green dot to go faster in the overlay schematic of the apartment complex was frustrating. What she knew in her heart told her Granger was there. Only the trace of his DNA could prove it.

  Watching Ringo making a calculated best bee-line return gave her nothing to do but wait. This waiting time was not the time to read. While Ringo completed his delivery and the tech team could initiate a scan of the DNA, she hit another button and listened to the chatter others also in the chase and requested another beetle bot to fly.

  Meret's next rooftop looked like a church organ with its many pipes, and while she dithered in a decision on where to land, her view suddenly spun wildly before settling to a view from a two-meter hover above the roof. Freaking wire. Grateful once more for Zhen programming, she breathed her heartbeat back to normal and settled Junior, the name she gave to his replacement, on the closest pipe.

  After finding no entry in a dozen pipes and other outflow devices, her strategy returned to doing flybys of each floor looking for open windows.

  Junior blinked for a recharge and Meret checked the time on her screen. She'd been at this for more than two hours Hours. They must have scanned the trace she and Ringo had delivered by now. Shit, no call-back meant no positive results.

  Rather than hit the Home button, she piloted the bot out over the ocean and once there, climbed for some altitude above the complex and then hit the home button to see how fast the bot could return with no obstructions to weave around.

  Fast.

  Within minutes her first tour of gleaning duty ended, and Junior sailed through her open window. Rapid recharging only required a new battery. She slid a thumb over the bot belly and made a quick exchange in the opened slot. It was a maneuver she could do with her eyes closed. She smiled and hit the lift-off button, skillfully guiding Junior to the techies that would extract his DNA samples back to the search.

  Meret had to know the results of her work with Ringo. She was certain he was behind the door next to the sleeping women.

  Why had the techs not returned her call?

  32

  It's All in the Cloud

  Late May, Aden, Yemen - Zhen delivers Better Communication

  Finding human DNA wasn't a problem. It was everywhere. To Ringo, humans were a cloud of dust that touched everything. To be fair, all living things, including palm trees, behaved as clouds of DNA in the micro universe and her beetles could collect it all. However, the bot's programming was not capable of on-site analysis and required delivery to a qualified lab. Each beetle could cache a terabyte of audio-video data before it had to upload. However, with a good link to their satellite, the beetles continually streamed what they collected.

  Meret and Zhen's contributions reducing the collection, sequencing, and DNA analysis turn around time had already enhanced the power of what they brought to the CIA's investigatory's table. But when it came to making a rapid analysis of the transferred data from the field, she identified and shared the nature of growing frustration she gleaned from listening to agents complaining they couldn't see the benefits of their contribution or know how well or poorly they were doing. She raised the issue to Zhen their about the need for real-time, two-way transfer and feedback. He conceded, "Collection is easy. I can do that. We have the technology to tackle building a real-time transfer of knowledge."

  Meret added, "Good, but let's consider what's required for better communication. How would your design cope with the requirement of sudden, on demand, daily sessions from two to a dozen people for quick interface and communication?"

  He leaned toward her to speak, and she raised a finger to stop him. "And –"

  He laughed and completed her thought. "And, instant access to all the data collected by each to be shared among those needing it."

  This time she shook her finger. "You've been thinking about this. What do you have?"

  "I'll write a quick routine and put together graphical information on a map overlay. Give me an hour, and I'll send you something for today's meeting with your teammates."

  True to Dr. Zhen's promise, an hour later her smart phone's audio alert told her she had a waiting download from him. After downloading and installing the enhanced app, she quickly saw it what he could accomplish in one hour of coding. She ran back into the meeting room exploding with renewed energy. "Break's over, everyone. I have some good news. Grab your food and drink and give the big screen your attention." She hot-wired her phone to the projector. "Okay, this is also my first look at this add-on to our current set of apps." She hit the Conference button.

  Zhen's initial image probably what was a Google map of the upscale neighborhood appeared. "Notice the time of this recon is displayed on the clock in the corner." She touched the Play Forward icon. "The results of each Beetle feed to the local hub are cumulative, much like spray painting. The longer you spray, the more hits are recorded and the deeper the color becomes. In this case, we only need to watch one color, because this mission only involves one person in the search. So green is for Granger. If we had a team missing, each member of that team would have their color. Watch what happens when I increase the speed of the timeline of the last five-hour mission to five minutes."

  Two, three and then five semi-transparent dots of different, colors appeared. The dots appeared scattered throughout the map's neighborhood. With time, the transparency of each deepened according to the numbers of hits made in their scans. On one side of the screen numerically displayed the real hits per labeled dot.

  SA Steve Fairchild stood motioning for a quiet response considering they were still in a clandestine operation. He patted the air with his open palms and mouthed, "Fucking outstanding." Grins and high fives cascaded through the small hotel room. Meret hugged MJ Wilson and whispered in her ear. "We're going to get him."

  Fairchild addressed a smaller group of specially selected agents from the initial cadre of men and women who had canvased the one-square mile of homes and condos. "We found trace in five locations. I think Granger is being moved on a regular basis from one place to another."

  "Oh my god. I might have seen Granger." Meret's hand went to her head. "Three guys . . . I saw them in one of the houses I scanned, bad-looking men, rough and dirty-looking."

  Another agent added I've seen those three guys. They were taking what looked like an old guy down the street in a wheelchair. They even looked furtive. You know, guilty of something, but I didn't pay much attention at the time. Damn. I was an idiot."

  MJ shook Steve's arm. "That fits with what both of you just said. That could be how they move him. That would explain why we found his trace in so many places but didn't find him."

  Another agent said, "Exactly, and if that is the case, we will have him home in twenty-four hours."

  Fairchild added, "We cannot wait for more agents to arrive and with this new technology we'll meet up in this room at 05:00 and 20:00 from now on. Don't get too comfortable. Manage your profile. Keep it low. We're okay letting them move him around as they always have. If we give them any reason to move Granger to another area, we may lose him for good.

  "Everyone needs to assume we kicked up a bunch of noise last night. Even though the hum of each beetle is low, it still represents alien background noise that may raise suspicion. Find a good spot to hide your beetle where you can have a clear shot of each balcony. Then blend in. Look for a good hidey-hole that lets the beetles monitor a big room while we sleep."

  After the meeting, Meret approached Steve. "I have an idea. This low profile you have the agents following should help the hostage takers to believe their plan is foolproof. MJ and
I should sweep the rooms where Granger hasn't been held yet. The hostage takers won't be able to ignore the opportunity to hide him in a new place."

  He exhaled and glanced at MJ chatting excitedly to some agents off to one side. "I think you got that right."

  * * *

  Meret felt as though she stood at the start of a 3K run she planned to win. As she checked Ringo for the flight to the first house on her list, she played the recording made on one of the team's initial fly-by over Zhen's new app that showed the history of Granger's movements in the entire apartment complex. She prayed there would be no record of his presence since they had begun the surveillance. Since the team's last survey confirmed Granger had yet to be relocated there, she planned to settle in the corner of that rooftop, so she had a view of the doors and the street in two directions. Once she landed Ringo, her screen confirmed her theory and her entire awareness went into overdrive as though someone had just fired the starting gun in her race to find Granger.

  Almost immediately, a white merchant van drove up and parked at the northern end of the block of buildings. Curious, she flew Ringo lower over the buildings on the other side of the street and dropped him on a protruding brick almost at street level.

  Every agent flying a bot would see all of this the second Meret hit the Conference button. Until then, their cell phones remained ignorant of the events displayed on her screen. Lights in a fourth-floor apartment across the way blinked off. She waited.