Bastian had blamed internal politics and a vendetta against him by some in the military hierarchy and new presidential administration. There was certainly some truth to that. The general had been pilloried by Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff following the operation that resulted in his wife’s capture and beheading. But Jennifer also hadn’t met the criteria for waivers, and the new President could hardly be expected to make an exception.
Breanna heard Rubeo’s voice from a distance, as if he were summoning her out of a dream. “Will you?”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Will you ask him?”
“I haven’t spoken to my father in several years, nor seen him in ages,” she said. “I’m ashamed to say I don’t even know how to get in touch with him.”
“I do,” said Rubeo. “But I can’t promise that he will take your call, let alone agree to our request.”
“What’s the number?” Breanna asked.
3
Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian shouldered the rifle, then watched through the scope as the buck made its way through the trees on the hill opposite him. It was eight hundred yards away, surveying the edge of the open field below the slope.
Eight hundred yards was a very long shot, even with the customized Remington 700 rig in his hands. Dog had shot elk at that range and come away with a trophy, but that was a different gun and many years ago now. His hands remained rock steady, but his eyes were no longer what they once were. Even as he peered through the scope, his right eye began to water and the left to quiver.
Still, he had the big animal in his crosshairs as it started down the slope.
Ten years ago he would have taken the shot.
Ten years ago he wouldn’t have been here.
Bastian followed the deer through the scope. It was moving west, toward an old abandoned farm. He could swing around, cross the stream that divided the two hills, and come out in a small copse where it was likely to be browsing.
“Going to make me work a little, are you?” he said to the buck as if he were a few feet away.
The air was crisp, without a discernible wind. This piece of Pennsylvania — his piece of Pennsylvania — was deserted and empty, the one place on earth where he felt entirely alone and secure.
Dog reached a trail that had been cut some eighty years before by the previous owners — a Boy Scout council — and turned to follow it. The old blazes were faded and in many cases gone with the trees they’d been painted on. The trail itself was so overgrown in spots that only someone who had been over it many times could pick it out.
Dog could do it with his eyes closed. He’d been over it a hundred times in the past three months alone. Two blue, he called it, after the original markers. He legged down to the stream, where a rope and tree plank bridge was still the best way over the water for a considerable distance.
The wind began to pick up as he started down the trail. It shook the bare tops of the trees, gently at first, but by the time he reached the bridge, dead twigs were raining from some of the taller, crowded limbs. Worse, the wind was at his back, which would send his scent toward the deer.
He’d have to give up the hunt. Temporarily.
“You win today,” said Dog, turning around for home. He could use some tea.
There was a time when just thinking of the word “tea” sent him into the blackness, even as he insisted on keeping up the ritual. He was beyond that now, and while he couldn’t say that about many things that reminded him of Jennifer, that one thing, the one habit she had left him with, was something he was grateful for.
She would have liked the crispness in the air. Not the hunting, though. She loved to run and hike and climb rocks and mountains, but she didn’t like to hunt. She always said it was because she didn’t have the patience for it. And she didn’t have great eyesight — she wore glasses or contacts from the time she was a child. But she could handle a rifle with aplomb.
He thought it was more an aversion to killing for sport. So much of her work involved killing, indirectly, that doing it outside the job was something to avoid.
Dog unslung his rifle as he reached his cabin. There was nothing in the house worth stealing, and he could tell just by looking that he had no human visitor, but twice now he’d surprised bears near the back. A woman two towns over had come home one night to find a small black bear sitting in her living room. That hadn’t ended well for the bear or the house, though the woman at least escaped without injury.
He eyed the side yard carefully, glanced around his parked Impala, then went up the stairs to the porch. He stooped down to look through the front window.
All clear.
Dog opened the front door, which he habitually left unlocked. He put his rifle away, then went to the kitchen to start the kettle. He was just pouring the water when the phone began to ring.
Dog rarely used the phone and wasn’t about to answer it now. He concentrated on filling his kettle.
The answering machine picked up on the fifth ring.
“Daddy?”
Breanna’s voice, halting, timid, crossed the tiny space of the old-fashioned kitchen like a ghost peeking out from the closet.
“Daddy, I — we need your help.” Breanna was stuttering, stumbling over her words, the same way she had when she was little and had to tell him about poor grades in school or some other disappointment that seemed monumental to her. “It has to do with the Sabre combat UAVs, and their AI. I know you may not want to talk to me, but if you could talk to Ray, or even Jonathon Reid, we would appreciate it. You have Ray’s number, I know. Here’s Jonathon’s…”
Dog listened as she gave Reid’s CIA phone number and then repeated Rubeo’s number.
He took a step toward the phone, wanting in his heart to answer. But the distance was too great, the pain too much. He shouldn’t and didn’t blame her, and yet it was too hard to get the phone, and too hard to talk to her.
Dog stood in the empty kitchen, the walls closing around him. Water spit fitfully from the faucet as his pot overflowed.
Finally he shut the water off and found the lid for the kettle. The igniter on the burner had long since stopped working. Taking a match from the box he kept nearby, the sturdy hands he had counted on earlier when hunting shook so badly he nearly missed the striker patch on the side of the box.
4
The moment of victory was also a moment of high vulnerability, for it was a moment not only of imbalance but also hubris. Vanity was a great weakness, seductive and difficult to overcome.
And yet, Braxton couldn’t help but feel a swell of satisfaction as he steadied the two Sabre UAVs for a landing in the lagoon of the atoll two miles from the tug. It was a moment of triumph years in the making, and not simply because he had found a way to defeat Rubeo and the scientist’s military masters. He had defeated the brightest brain trust of the most powerful nation in the world. His triumph was one of historical proportions. He stood on the precipice of a new age, a time when nations no longer mattered. From this day forward, individuals were their own sovereigns; democracy had evolved to a higher level.
At the moment it applied only to a select few, but eventually the shackles of world government would be thrown off by all. Braxton had no illusions. Governments, from the biggest to the smallest, would fight the new age. History was not on their side, but there would be many casualties. He aimed not to be one.
The computer flying the two aircraft indicated they were nearly at stall speed. Braxton watched as the computer settled them into a gentle landing on the calm water of the lagoon. Unlike his craft, these weren’t optimized to survive a water landing, but he’d programmed the flight computer to compensate as much as possible. The Sabres skipped along the surface like stones, slowing gradually as they came toward the beach. He’d planned on them landing on the sand together, but an unanticipated change in the wind caused the first Sabre to slip into the water about twenty yards before the sand. The second aircraft continued on its own, hitting the sand and continuing about thirty yards up the gentle slope before spinning right and flipping over. The cameras he had posted on the island showed that it remained intact despite the crash.