“No. How’s our security?”
“We’ve got boom cameras topside and an RF-transmitter sensor perimeter established at the ridgeline, but there hasn’t been any movement. No overflying aircraft.”
“Have you swept the place?”
She nodded. “Nothing.”
“Good.” Odin deftly tossed his Forest Service campaign hat over a deer head’s antlers. He then put the birdcage down and opened its door. “Huginn, Muninn. Explore.” They hopped out of the cage.
McKinney couldn’t help but notice that everyone was armed with pistols in nylon thigh holsters and scoped assault rifles hanging barrel-down on straps over their shoulders and combat harnesses with spare clips. “We expecting trouble?”
Odin spoke without looking up. “We’re always expecting trouble.”
McKinney heard a loud caw and looked up to see the ravens perched on the antler chandelier. “At least someone likes the decor.”
Hoov entered again. “Colonel’s up, Odin.”
“Thanks.” He headed after Hoov. “I want this recorded.”
“Already rolling.”
McKinney followed them both into what looked to be a rec or family room. This had another large fieldstone fireplace, and the walls were sprinkled with authentic-looking mountain bric-a-brac-snowshoes, muskets, kerosene lanterns, and framed portraits and photos of men posing with large dead animals. There was also a sizable bar along with a couple of sofas and a writing desk-on which Hoov had set up his electronics workstation. As with the rest of the place, the heavy drapes were drawn and the overhead lights and lamps on. Hoov’s workstation consisted of several flat-panel monitors, a couple of ruggedized laptops, radio gear, and wires running out beneath the drapes-through a sliding glass door, perhaps. There was also a small video camera clipped to the top of one of the monitors, on which a red LED light glowed.
Staring out at them from the central monitor was a stern-looking, thick-necked man in his sixties, in a sport coat and button-down shirt, viewed from the waist up. The lines on his face were as intricate as the Utah desert seen from space.
Odin saluted. “Colonel.”
The man nodded. “Glad to see your troop is all accounted for, Master Sergeant. Did Professor McKinney survive?”
“She did, sir. She’s with us.”
“Good. Task Force Ancile is to stand down immediately. You’re all to return to Fort Bragg with whatever intel you have.”
“Why’d they shoot down my plane, sir?”
“Let’s call it a misunderstanding, Master Sergeant.”
“I’d like to know what-”
“Return to base. It doesn’t matter what happened before; now that the drones are public, there’s been a reset. Joint Chiefs are letting Air Force take the lead. We’re to stand down. It came from the very top.”
Odin just stared for a moment. “Colonel, I think you need to-”
“It’s not your job to think, Master Sergeant. It’s your job to follow orders. Now, get to it.”
The screen blinked out.
Odin kept staring at the dark screen.
Foxy sat down in his flowing ghillie suit on the arm of the sofa. “So that’s it, then? Air Force shoots at us, and then we’re under their op-con?”
Odin shook his head slowly. “Hoov.”
Hoov looked up from his laptop screen and pulled his radio headphones off. “Yeah?”
Odin pointed at the screen. “Run it through Visuallistics.”
Hoov frowned and tossed his headphones onto the desk. “You serious?”
Foxy could see the shock on Hoov’s face. “Odin, what’s up? Why would you suspect the colonel? I mean, this is the colonel. Mouse and he-”
“I don’t suspect the colonel.”
“Then I’m not following you.”
“Just do it.”
Foxy still looked confused.
Hoov was turning to another laptop. “That was a JWICS transmission-off our own damn satellite.”
“Do I have to do it?”
McKinney looked from person to person. “What’s going on?”
Foxy shrugged. “Odin thinks someone’s running an IO on us.”
“Which means…”
Hoov was opening the image of the colonel on another computer screen. “Influence operation. He thinks the video was doctored-which is fucking unlikely.”
“But how would you know?”
“Digital forensics-software we use to check the validity of photos and video that informants send us. People sometimes add the faces of high-value targets to footage, looking for a reward.” Hoov was clicking away as he spoke. “This works like weapon ballistics: Every brand of commercial camera has an electronic signature-subtle variations of resolution and compression pattern. This software tells me almost instantly the make and model of video camera that was used to make an image.”
“How does knowing the camera help?”
“Once I know that, I can tell if any part of the image has been altered. I don’t know how anyone could do that in real time, though…” Hoov clicked away, and then stopped. He straightened. “Huh.”
Odin, Foxy, and McKinney watched him closely.
Odin spoke first. “What is it?”
Hoov turned. “It hasn’t been altered.”
Odin looked relieved. “Good.”
“I wasn’t finished.” He gestured to the screen. “It wasn’t altered because it wasn’t created by a camera. It was created by Image Metrics. He’s a vocaloid.”
“A what?”
Odin answered. “A computer-generated character.”
The group gathered around the monitor. The colonel’s image looked photographically real.
Foxy was shaking his head. “Fuck me…”
Hoov ran his fingers through his close-cropped blond hair. “They must be using motion-capture. An actor on a green-screen or something. Sampled the colonel’s voice patterns. They use this type of tech to do virtual pop stars in Japan, but I’ve never seen it this real. It’s…” His voice trailed off.
“This is some seriously sophisticated shit, boss. And they’re inside our satellite network?”
Odin stared at the screen. “We need to assume whoever’s behind this is deeper in the system than we are. It also means they know where we are. The satellite uplink would have confirmed that.”
Hoov was checking radar images on one of his screens. “The feed from NORAD doesn’t show anything around us for fifty miles.”
Foxy shook his head. “But why would you trust it?”
Hoov swiveled in his chair. “For the moment they think we believed the colonel’s message, Odin. They’ll be expecting us to return to Bragg.”
“We’d never reach the base.”
Foxy sat back down on the sofa arm. “Now I’ve seen everything.”
Ripper and Tin Man entered the room and Foxy nodded to them. “Keep an eye on those perimeter alarms.”
Ripper scowled in irritation. “What’d the colonel say?”
“The colonel’s a goddamned cartoon. Keep an eye on the sensors.”
As they exited with confused expressions, one of the ravens flew atop a tall bookshelf and plucked up a large, squirming beetle from a dark corner. The bird then flew down and perched on the lampshade next to McKinney. It held the beetle in its beak, legs still wriggling.
Foxy regarded the bird. “Good one, Huginn.”
McKinney did a double-take on the insect.
Huginn cocked its head at her but did not start eating the huge black beetle in its mouth.
“What have you got there?”
Foxy looked up from the laptop screen again. “Dinner, look’s like.”
McKinney tried to approach the bird, but it walked to the other edge of the lampshade. She caught her breath. “Hang on a second.”
Odin turned to face her. “What is it?”
“It’s a South American flower beetle-its territory ends four thousand miles south of here.” She plucked it from the raven’s beak. Huginn didn’t put up too much fuss. She examined the beetle as its wings beat furiously to escape. But McKinney was an old hand at handling live insects. The others gathered around her, and she pointed at what appeared to be a large third eye in the center of its head. “How did it get here?”