Expert Five interjected, “Then we would expect swarming drones to be cheap and disposable.”
McKinney nodded. “And individually, not very smart. The demise of one or dozens or hundreds might not mean the demise of the group-and the survivors would be informed by the experience of swarm mates around them.”
Singleton scribbled on his notepad. “You sound intrigued by the possibilities.”
“I find weaver ants fascinating. But I wouldn’t want to meet them scaled up in size and given weapons. It would be an insanely foolish thing to build.”
Odin stood up again. “Thank you, Professor.”
Singleton cleared his throat. “All of this would be incredibly useful information if we were facing hundreds of thousands of swarming robots-which we are not. Can we get down to business now?”
Odin just stared at Singleton for a moment. “Now that we know what risks we might face from swarming intelligence, let’s review recent operations.” Odin turned to the African-American scientist at the far end of the table. “Four, tell me what you learned from the Tanzanian video.”
The man put on glasses and started examining his laptop screen. “Pretty amazing to finally see one of these things flying, Odin. Your hunch about the target was dead on.” He glanced up at McKinney. “No offense intended, Six.”
“None taken.”
He tapped a combination of keys, and what was on his screen moved to a larger flat-screen monitor hanging on the wall where everyone could see it. It was the black-and-white FLIR footage of the drone that had attacked McKinney in Africa.
“From what we can tell, Odin, this isn’t an extant design.” He pointed at various features with a laser pointer. “Forward canards. Midsection dome. Slightly swept wing. What we’re looking at here is a Frankenstein machine-something put together from all sorts of different drone designs.”
“What’s the prognosis for recovering wreckage?”
“In the Amani jungle reserve? Approaching zero. Whole armies have disappeared in there.”
“What about its radar track? Where did it come from?”
“Came on radar off the east coast of Africa, near Zanzibar.”
“HUMINT?”
“CIA’s got some local stringers asking around, but that’s gonna take time. Could be weeks till we hear anything.”
“What about ships in the area?”
“There were dozens of ships and small craft. It’s near a major African port, but there were no satellite assets overhead at the time.”
The Korean scientist nodded. “The enemy’s probably monitoring orbit schedules.”
“Okay, so even though we were in the right time and place, we still have no idea where these things are originating.”
The African-American scientist nodded sadly. “It’ll be worse here in the States. The drones mix in with domestic air traffic-small private planes. There are thousands of unregistered private airstrips-runways on ranches and commercial and private lands that aren’t attended by flight controllers or anyone else. Radar echoes alone aren’t going to identify these things, and since they are remotely controlled we can’t listen for unique radio signatures.”
The Korean scientist nodded. “None of them have been picked up by DEA drones or coastal radar, so they might be being built and launched domestically. But with just two dozen attacks over three months, we don’t have much data to work with. There’s too much terrain to cover.”
The blond scientist added with a slight Germanic accent, “Without an intact specimen-”
The Korean scientist next to him shook his head vigorously. “The moment we try to grab it, it’ll explode in our faces-making it next to impossible to determine who built it, how it operates, and how to defend against it.”
Odin glanced down at the notes on his pad of paper and crossed an item off a list. “That’s being handled, Two. Next comes target prediction. Where are we?”
The Japanese researcher shook his head. “Nowhere, Odin. We’ve run the previous bombing victims through tens of thousands of link analysis filters, searching for any recognizable pattern or connection, but there’s nothing. A human rights activist, a financier, oil company executives…” He threw up his hands. “None of them knew each other or had interactions of any type. They didn’t work for the same companies or even in the same industry. They had no common financial interests, enemies, religious or political affiliations, social interests. Exchanged no communications. Not all of them were American, and on paper some of them would have been political adversaries-for example, the human rights activist in Chicago and the private prison lobbyist in Houston. Or the financial journalists killed in the New York cafe bombing or the retired East German Communist party boss living in Queens.”
Odin pondered it. “What were the journalists working on when they died?”
“Corruption at major investment houses. The activist was doing a documentary on sweatshops in Syria.” He shrugged. “If you’re going by a list of people they criticized-well, it’s a long list. It’s in the hundreds. We certainly can’t use it to predict an attack. We sliced and diced the data just about any way we can think of, and the only clear pattern is that these drones don’t attack in high winds, rain, or snow.”
A murmur swept though the group as several wrote that down.
“None of you guys noticed that?”
Odin looked up from his notepad. “Praying for rain isn’t a solution. What else have you got?”
“Other than that… I guess we’re still dead in the water.”
“Not entirely.” Odin tapped the intercom on a phone sitting on the table nearby.
A voice came over the speaker. “You ready?”
“Yeah, get in here.”
“There in a sec.”
McKinney couldn’t help but notice that Odin was looking at her. She raised her eyebrows.
The others looked to her as well.
Odin paused a moment before speaking to her. “Your value, Professor, lies not only in what you know, but also in what you represent.”
She looked at him askew. “I’m not following you.”
The team room door opened, and Hoov, the Eurasian communications specialist from the plane in Africa, entered carrying a laptop case. He pulled up a chair and deposited the case on the table between Odin and McKinney.
Odin gestured to him. “You remember Hoov. He’s been examining an image we took of your laptop several days ago-before the attack.”
“You broke into my quarters.”
Hoov shook his head dismissively. “Not necessary, Professor. I was able to remotely access your system.”
“Oh, well… that’s okay, then.”
“Tell her what you found, Hoov.”
Hoov nodded and addressed McKinney. “Three different classes of malware-one a fairly common ZeuS/Zbot Trojan variant, but two of them were a bit more exotic. Not known in the wild, and sophisticated. They both utilized a previously unknown OS vulnerability-what’s known as a zero-day-which means we’re dealing with serious people.”
“Get to the point, Hoov.”
“Okay. Professor, your computer is infected with the same rare, stealthy malware that compromised the Stanford servers.”
McKinney wasn’t surprised. “Okay, so they stole my work the same way they stole the Stanford researchers’ work.”
“Correct.”
“How long do you think they’ve been inside my machine?”
“Hard to say. But…” Hoov looked to Odin.
Odin leaned in. “I’ve got a cyber team ready to trace the espionage pipeline this malware serves whenever I give the word. But I don’t want to do that just yet.”
“Why not?”
“It would risk detection, and I don’t want them to abandon this pipeline like they did the Stanford one. Right now they’re still searching for you. That’s valuable to us.”
McKinney narrowed her eyes at him.
“They’re not positive you’re dead. They’ll be looking to see if you pop up again. We can use that.”