Net Force--Eye of the Drone Read online

  “This is definite?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time tonight?”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  “Until?”

  “Ten,” Krauss said. “Four minutes past ten, to be exact.”

  “About two hours, then.”

  “Yes.”

  “And there’s absolutely no coverage from the NORNs during that time?”

  “Correct.”

  “What about after that? When’s the next gap?”

  “Not for an entire month,” Krauss said.

  In the safe house, Carmody fell into thoughtful silence.

  In the truck, a few feet from where Krauss and Metzler sat at their console, Chaput’s eyes narrowed like those of a fox picking up a scent.

  * * *

  The four men arrived at almost the same time. Braithwaite had summoned them to the Ruppertstrasse apartment leased by Engel Financial Resources, a Volke Bank—led consortium that owned NORN Aerospace, of which the bank’s president, Gunther Koenig, was founder, principal investor, and chief operating executive.

  Braithwaite had known Kragen and Drake the longest. Former members of his RatHawks unit, they were guys who, like Braithwaite himself, took heat for throwing the fear of God and the Devil into the Talis in the Afghan highlands. Also like Braithwaite, they received conditional honorable discharges in a plea deal that barred them from ever speaking about the tough measures their unit had to employ in those nightmarish hills.

  The other two, McKenzie and Lau, were operators Braithwaite knew from his Sharp Edge days. McKenzie was former British Special Reconnaissance Regiment. Lau was a New Zealander—indigenous judging by his dark complexion, slight build, and the tribal tattoos on his neck, hands, and arms. His service background was murky, but Braithwaite suspected he’d been British under-the-counter, an MI6 hitter. Not only didn’t Lau shy away from wet work, he got a boner from close kills.

  Now Braithwaite stood in the middle of the living room, the vertical blinds of his balcony doors drawn against prying eyes. Top-notch freelancers didn’t come cheap, but Koenig had deep pockets, and he would need their assistance dispatching his problem.

  “We can’t take chances with her,” Braithwaite said. “This isn’t something that can wait.”

  “How do you know she’s onto you?” said Kragen. Big, tall, and solid as a tree trunk, he was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest.

  “She blanked her windows,” Braithwaite said. “My guess is she used electronic film. Why would she do it unless she got wise to me?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she’s wise to someone else.”

  “Who else, exactly?”

  “I don’t know that, either.” Kragen shrugged his heavy shoulders. “I just want to check your reasoning here.”

  “Trust me,” Braithwaite said. “She noticed me through her window.”

  “When was that?”

  “About three hours ago.”

  “And you’re telling us she hasn’t left the building since?”

  “She hasn’t left the building.”

  “Then where did she get the film?”

  Braithwaite looked at him. “I’m not sure I follow,” he said.

  “Don’t you see?” Kragen said. “People don’t just keep switchable window film handy like paper towels and sandwich bags.”

  “If she noticed you for the first time this morning, and hasn’t left since, she must have already had it in the apartment,” McKenzie said, picking up on Kragen’s line of thought. Pale, rangy, and blond, he sat on a chair with his thin, long-fingered hands meshed on his lap. “Which begs the question of why she had it there.”

  “It has to be that she was already worried about someone else,” Drake said. He was reclining on the sofa with his arm stretched out over its back cushions. “By the by, mate, I could use some coffee.”

  “I’ll brew some up in a minute,” Braithwaite said. He was thinking the others had a point. There was a critical gap in his thought process.

  “Let’s examine the possibilities,” Kragen said. “Maybe it wasn’t someone else. Maybe this morning wasn’t the first time she noticed you. She’s been here almost a week, right? She could have gotten suspicious days ago and ordered the film. Then picked it up earlier in Old Town. Didn’t you say she went to some mailbox place?”

  “That doesn’t work because she didn’t notice me before. I’m not clumsy enough to be noticed twice.”

  “Then explain why she already had the film. I can’t get around that one.”

  Braithwaite shook his head. He still had no answer.

  Drake looked at him. About the same size as Kragen, he had a flat, plain face, thick arms, and a broad chest. His hair was slicked straight back from his expansive forehead. The weapon under his tan blazer made the slightest bulge against his side.

  “If I may change the subject,” he said. “Aren’t there normal gaps in satellite coverage? Due to their orbits and such?”

  Braithwaite nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because it seems to me our concern isn’t really when she noticed you, but simply that she did. And that she might now take off on us,” he said. “Think about it...how do we know she’s still in the apartment? With her windows opaqued, and your blinds drawn, and satellite surveillance gaps, how do we know she’s still there?”

  Braithwaite let his eyes touch on each of the men.

  “This stays between us,” he said. “Agreed?”

  Nods around the room.

  “We have cameras,” he said.

  “Cameras where?” Drake asked.

  “Everywhere,” Braithwaite said. “To fill the gaps in the satellite coverage.”

  His visitors stared at him with silent interest.

  “By we...d’you mean Mr. Koenig?” McKenzie said.

  “Yes and no,” Braithwaite said. “Munich is a smart city. It has cameras and sensors on practically every street and they’re all internet connected. Supposedly so people can find out where there’s a fucking traffic jam or pothole in the road.” He paused. “NORN Aerospace isn’t just satellites. It’s diversified and it’s multinational. Four, five years back, it started making camera and sensor suites for the Chinese Sharp Eyes system. In Beijing, using dirt-cheap labor. The company made a killing there. And now it’s importing those same suites to German cities.”

  “And this is one of them,” Drake said.

  “Leader of the pack. Under a government contract Koenig secured using Volke Bank’s clout. NORN designed and installed the system from the ground up. Cameras, software, everything.”

  “Brilliant racket,” Kragen said. “He makes out every way from Sunday.”

  “Right.”

  McKenzie said, “You got to respect those Chinese. They’re up front about the cameras being for keeping the rubes in line. Here they talk quality-of-life horseshit.”

  Braithwaite shrugged. “I don’t care about politics,” he said. “What’s important is there are cameras on at both ends of this street. And I’ve got them and all the other cameras in town cued to the woman’s facial recognition data.”

  “And we can access them?” Lau said from the table. He spoke so quietly it was almost less with a natural voice than a low expulsion of air.

  Braithwaite pulled his phone out of his pocket and held it up for him to see.

  “There’s a smart city app. You’ll all download it to your phones. The public can access parts of it. But I have passwords for the parts they can’t.” He paused. “Never mind when she spotted me. Or when she got hold of the film. Drake’s right about one thing. I don’t think she’ll stick around.”

  “Because she knows you’ll have noticed the window film,” said McKenzie. “And that you’re onto her knowing about you.”

  “Right. Sh
e’s going to try to give us the slip, and I’m betting it will be tonight. My guess is she blanked the windows because she’s getting ready to leave right now.”

  “Meaning we have to be ready to take her.”

  “And find out what she knows about Mr. Koenig.”

  “And once the information is extracted,” Lau said, “what do we do with her?”

  Braithwaite’s eyes met his.

  “We all know what,” he said. “Just make it clean.”

  Silence among the group. After a minute, Drake stretched his arms and yawned.

  “We still on for that coffee?” he asked.

  Braithwaite looked at him and nodded.

  “I’ll get it started,” he said.

  III

  The CIA safe house—or more properly, safe apartment—was a third-story condo unit in a quiet, gated residential complex in Ramersdorf-Perlach, a neighborhood five miles southeast of the city center. Modern and immaculate, the building was located amid expansive grounds with well-clipped grass running paths bordered by flowering shrubs, tennis courts, a swimming pool, and several outdoor parking areas.

  At five o’clock in the afternoon Carmody jogged easily on one of the paths, wearing a radio-over-internet communications earpiece and a loose hooded sweatshirt that adequately concealed his Sig 9mm. It was now four hours since the commandeered hexacopter ditched in the lake north of Moosach. He had needed time to organize his thoughts and felt a quick jog would be beneficial.

  As he neared the entrance to the building, he glanced at his Chronograph watch and decided to quickly check in with his men at Ruppertstrasse.

  “Streetcar, it’s Alpha, do you read me?” he said over the RoIP.

  “Copy, Alpha.”

  “Status?”

  “All quiet,” Long said. “No sign of our target. Or the Aussie.”

  Carmody slowed to a walk. He had ordered Wheeler and Long onto close surveillance immediately after the drone was taken out—presumably by Outlier. Though he knew she would expect it, her downing of the Raptor III left him with no real choice. He’d lost his eye in the sky but wasn’t about to let her slip.

  “Okay,” he said. “Stay on your toes.”

  “Got it, boss. Out.”

  He entered the building and took the elevator upstairs. Dixon and Schultz were eating pastrami sandwiches at the kitchen table. Carmody nodded to them and got a bottle of water out of the fridge.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said, wasting no time. “Why would Outlier send the drone to buzz us? What did she have to gain?”

  “Guess you aren’t interested in something to eat,” Schultz said.

  Carmody looked at him.

  “Sorry.” Schultz swallowed what was in his mouth. “Maybe she just wanted to let us know what she can do.”

  Carmody shook his head. “She isn’t about creating spectacles.”

  “I hear you,” Dixon said. “It doesn’t fit her MO.”

  Carmody went over to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. “If she crashed the drone without pulling her stunt, we might have thought there was an accidental malfunction. Or at least thought it was possible. But the air show outside Nussbaumpark’s a dead giveaway she hacked it.”

  “Not to mention what happened at the lake,” Schultz said.

  They were all silent. Then comprehension spread across Dixon’s face. “You’re telling us she deliberately wanted to draw us out.”

  “With a big splash.” Carmody bent forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees, both hands around the water bottle. He was giving his mind a chance to process what he instinctively understood.

  “Boss,” Dixon said after a minute. “If you’re right about her game, and she wants us on her...”

  “Then me sending Wheeler and Long to stake her out played right into it,” Carmody said, finishing the sentence.

  Schultz looked at him. “So what do we do?”

  Carmody raised his eyes to his face.

  “We keep playing,” he said.

  * * *

  It was 7:15 p.m. and twilight was falling over Munich.

  McKenzie swung the blue Volkswagen Golf GTI into the garage beneath the woman’s apartment building. Coming off the ramp, he peered ahead and saw her Ducati motorcycle parked at the far end of the aisle.

  He braked to a halt and nodded to his two companions. They exited the car without a word, Drake sliding quietly out of the front passenger seat, Kragen from the rear. As they threaded their way between parked cars, McKenzie chose a spot near the entrance and backed in. He was diagonally opposite the elevator and able to see anyone who left it.

  Around the block on the eastbound side of Lindwurmstrasse, Braithwaite pulled to the curb in a sleek black two-door BMW M135i hatchback, doused his headlights, then sat quietly facing the thoroughfare’s intersection with Ruppertstrasse. Lau was beside him in the passenger seat.

  Braithwaite glanced at his dash console. Synced to his GoMunich app, it provided a mild overhead view of the street through a camera pod mounted on the corner stoplight.

  Beside him, Lau stared out into the purple dusk.

  “What do you think the bitch wants?” he said. “Between us, mate.”

  “I think she’s here because of the Bergmanns,” Braithwaite said. “Because of something that ties her to them.”

  A moment passed. Lau kept staring out the windshield. “You didn’t answer my question,” he said.

  Braithwaite looked over at him. “It could be she knows what happened,” he said. “I have no proof. But it’s enough that I suspect she does, ain’t it?”

  Lau was still for a long moment. “I wonder when she’ll leave the building,” he said.

  “Soon, I hope. I want this done.”

  Lau turned to him. “Same,” he said.

  * * *

  “Here you go,” Wheeler said. He approached the blonde woman on the bench and held out a paper Dixie cup of gelato. “Caramel apple with flakes of strudel crust.”

  “Thank you.” Krauss put aside her tablet and took it from him. “What did you get for yourself?”

  “Blueberry chocolate chip with cookie crumbles,” he said. “This is incredible.”

  “I told you so. Americans are always skeptics.”

  “And Germans always think they know best.”

  Krauss smiled a little. “We know what we are,” she said. “That’s all.”

  He sat down beside her and spooned some gelato into his mouth. Krauss swallowed some of hers. They were in the small front court of the building where Aurelion Braithwaite occupied a terrace apartment, their bench facing the building where Outlier was renting a fifth-floor Airbnb under an assumed name.

  For all the world, they could have been a couple out enjoying a glorious Saturday night, which was why Wheeler had asked Krauss to join him on the surveillance. There was no cover like a man and woman on a date.

  “Any movement?” he said.

  “One car left the garage, innocent enough,” she replied. “A Skoda Rapid with a female driver and children in the back seat. About five minutes ago, a Volkswagen Golf pulled in. Three male passengers. I ran a license plate check.”

  “And?”

  “It’s a lease from a company called Voorstand Corporate Automobiles,” she said. “One of the accounts its website boasts about is Volke Bank.”

  Wheeler nodded. The links were very clear. According to a municipal records search he’d run, Volke held governing shares of Engel Financial Resources, the outfit that owned Braithwaite’s apartment.

  “You sure you’re a tech?” he asked.

  “I hold dual master’s degrees in unmanned aircraft systems...and criminology.”

  “And you aren’t wearing a wedding band.”

  “Correct.”

  He grunted.

  “I n
eed to tell my people about that VW,” he said.

  “Yes again,” she said, eating another spoonful of gelato.

  * * *

  His Opel Crossland X parked on the westbound side of Lindwurmstrasse, Long watched with interest as the BMW M135i pulled over to the curb about thirty yards up ahead and across Ruppertstrasse.

  “Don’t see anyone getting out,” he said over the RoIP.

  “Wait and see what happens,” Wheeler said from the bench around the corner.

  “Are you eating something?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “You’re slurping in my ear.”

  “Oh, sorry.” Wheeler slurped again. “We’re having gelatos.”

  “How cute,” Long said, and waited.

  Nobody exited the BMW. His curiosity grew.

  After a minute, he tapped the multifunction dashboard panel for an external camera interface. Gave it a few more taps to angle the high-resolution laser IR camera enclosed within his side-view mirror assembly. Then he steadily held his finger down on the 12.5X zoom button. The LZIR could see through pitch darkness, and even the tinted film covering the windshield glass, with an imaging range of three miles.

  It yielded a crisp, close-up picture of the BMW...and the two men inside.

  “That’s the Aussie in the driver’s seat,” he said. “What the hell’s his name again?”

  “Braithwaite.”

  “Right.”

  He reached out and tapped the screen to frame the passenger, connecting to the Echelon face database. The match was almost immediate. “His buddy’s Dario Lau,” he declared.

  “Another RatHawk/Sharp End freelancer,” Wheeler said.

  Long filled his cheeks with air, pursed his lips, and expelled it with a low whistle.

  “We better tell Carmody right away,” he said.

  The time stamp on his dash display read 7:21 p.m.

  * * *

  Carmody called his operations manager, Carol Morse, the instant he and Long got off the net.

  “Afternoon, Duchess,” he said into his satphone.

  “Evening, Alpha,” she replied from Langley, Virginia, where it was six hours behind. “What do you have for me?”