“No, it’s all right.”
“It is an extremely powerful core, with a great number of flaws,” said Rubeo. “One of which is the fact that they’re using a temporary interface.”
Rubeo waved his hand over the table and tapped down with his right thumb. This opened a panel on the wall at the far side of the room, changing the wall surface into a projection screen.
“Coding display one,” Rubeo told the computer.
A slide appeared. It was a “dump” of computer code.
“It was written in C++,” said Rubeo. “Inexplicably.”
“The point being that anyone can interpret it,” said Reid.
“Yes,” said Rubeo, drawing out the word.
Not anyone, thought Breanna—she certainly couldn’t. But the point was, anyone with a reasonable knowledge of programming could.
“I would guess that they did this for two reasons,” said Rubeo. “The first being that they didn’t want to risk the actual program. This is somewhat isolated from the core modules that make up the actual Raven program. The second is that they did it for expediency; this part of the program was developed very quickly. I would guess within a matter of weeks. Perhaps even less.”
“Why so fast?” Breanna asked.
Rubeo touched his earlobe, where he had a gold post earring. It was an old habit, usually signaling he wanted to make some difficult pronouncement.
“Politics,” suggested Reid before Rubeo could speak. “The timing suggests that Reginald Harker was interested in becoming head of the DIA. If he had successfully taken out a high priority target like Li Han, he would have had an excellent leg up.”
“Harker broke the law and risked a top secret development program so he could get a better job?” said Breanna.
Reid didn’t answer.
“Using this command module may have been seen as a safeguard,” said Rubeo. “It certainly isn’t as robust and manageable as I would imagine a mature interface is. Still, the core program must be recovered. If the Russian operative is able to make it from the camp—”
“He won’t,” said Breanna.
Chapter 3
Washington, D.C. suburbs
Zen woke even grumpier than usual, surprised and yet not surprised that Breanna had already slipped out to work.
At least the coffee was still warm. He bustled about, getting Teri breakfast, then shaving and dressing himself. He left Caroline sleeping in the guest room and headed out, Teri riding shotgun in the backseat. After dropping her off at school, he swung over and picked up his aide, Jay, then went to the hospital, where Stoner was already in physical therapy when he arrived.
“Did you sleep at all?” Zen asked, wheeling himself into the exercise room.
“I’m good.”
Stoner pushed a set of free weights over his chest. He was lifting five hundred pounds, by Zen’s reckoning, and didn’t seem to be straining.
“Are we going to the game tonight?” asked Stoner. His tone was genuinely enthusiastic—the first time Zen remembered him sounding that way since he’d been rescued.
“Yeah, if you want.”
“I do.”
Zen watched Stoner pump the weights. He reached twenty, then put the weights down easily on the stands.
“I wish I could do it that easy,” said Zen.
“Then you’d have to take the whole package. Headaches, not really knowing who you are. Not trusting your body.”
“I know a little bit about that.”
Stoner nodded.
“The doctor says some of what they did to me might help you,” said Stoner.
“Me?”
“Is that why you’re hanging around?”
“You mean my legs?”
“Exactly.”
The enthusiasm had been replaced by something else—anger.
“No,” said Zen. “I’ve been down that road. A lot. They’ve done a lot of things trying to help me to walk again. None of them worked, Mark. This is what I am. This where I am. It’s just the way it is.”
“That’s too bad,” said Stoner.
The silence was more awkward than even Stoner’s question.
“I come to see you because we’re friends,” said Zen, trying to fill it. “You saved Breanna, remember?”
“Yeah,” he said after a very long pause. Zen wondered if he really did.
“And we were friends before,” said Zen. “Remember that?”
“Vaguely,” said Stoner.
“And . . .” Zen hesitated. “I was . . . sorry I couldn’t protect you and the others in that helicopter. I always felt . . . as if I should have done something more. I should have gone against orders and figured something out. Whatever. Something . . .”
Stoner looked at him for what seemed an eternity. “It’s OK,” he said finally. “I understand.”
Then he went back to pumping more iron. Zen glanced at his watch. He had to leave.
“I’ll see you tonight,” he said.
“I’ll be ready.”
He did remember. Everything.
Mark Stoner sat on the edge of the weight bench, thinking about dying, remembering how it had all happened.
It wasn’t Zen’s fault at all. Zen wasn’t anywhere near at the time. Even if he had been, there was no guarantee he could have done anything. None.
He himself had accepted the risks. That was the nature of the job.
Zen had risked his life to get him back here alive. They were more than even, the way those things worked.
It was good to have a friend.
He rose and took two more plates from the rack, slipping them on the bar one at a time.
It would be good to go to the game. Baseball was a good thing.
Even if the hot dogs gave him heartburn.
Chapter 4
Southeastern Sudan
The Brothers were called to prayer as the sun set, joining Muslims around the world in turning toward Mecca to fulfill the requirements of their faith.
Just as the prayer was ending, a trio of small rockets arced over the advanced lookout posts and struck the guard posts at the main entrance. A split second later a half-dozen more struck the gutted bus used as the gate, obliterating it.
The rockets looked like Russian-made Grads. Which they were. Mostly.
Ordinary Grads were extremely simple weapons, mass-produced and exported around the word, including to Hezbollah, which used them against Israel. As originally designed, they sat in a tube and were fired. In the original version, the tubes were massed together and mounted on the back of a truck.
These three rockets were fired from tubes on the ground. But their rear sections included stabilizers and steering gear that made them considerably more accurate than the originals. The mechanisms were interlaced with explosives, which meant they disintegrated when they landed.
The real alteration was in the nose, where the explosive used an aluminum alloy mixed with a more common plastic explosive base to produce an explosive power some eleven times more destructive than the original warheads.
A tenth missile—this one unguided—flew a few feet farther, landing harmlessly on the roadway behind the post. The charge in it was stock, or at least appeared so. It failed to ignite properly, fuming but not exploding. This in fact was its intent: evidence for anyone who had a chance to see it that the attack had been launched by a rival group.
A dozen men died instantly. The other fighters in the camp reacted with indignation, grabbing their rifles and rushing to defend the camp and avenge the insult to their beliefs. They were met with a hail of gunfire from the Marines, who had spent the past two hours creeping up the hills into position. At roughly the same moment, another dozen rockets were fired at two sniper posts and four gun positions overlooking the camp. The sniper positions were essentially depressions in the rocks, and firing so many missiles at them was arguably overkill; the resulting explosions caused small landslides, not only obliterating the men there but turning the positions into exposed ravines that could no longer be used for defense.