“Does it watch the sky too?”
Lincoln shrugs. “Visible light only. The camera won’t be able to see through clouds and it doesn’t have the resolution to pick up high-altitude UAVs, even if the sky is clear. But if there are municipal UAVs monitoring traffic, it should find them.” He takes the shotgun seat, and when Rey gets in behind the wheel, he asks, “Have you noticed any extra attention since we got in touch?”
“There is always someone,” Rey says with such energy that Lincoln suspects him for an adrenaline junkie. He might be disappointed if this visit doesn’t stir unwanted attention.
From the backseat, True asks, “Did you find a printing service we can use? We’d like to finalize our preparations before heading out to see Mr. Ocampo.”
“I have!” Rey assures her as they get underway. “I have reserved three hours at the printer’s. Is that enough?”
“It’s enough,” Lincoln agrees. But adds, as he gets his first look at traffic, “If we get there in time.”
The roads are packed. It’s crazy. All kinds of vehicles—high-end glittering sedans, mud-splattered trucks, jeepneys, scooters, motorcycles with sidecars or trailers, bicycles—all jockeying for position, with brave or foolhardy pedestrians wading into the chaos. Horns sound constantly, near and far, varying between quick warning taps and prolonged angry blasts. Rey is an aggressive participant, accelerating, braking, avoiding collisions by a whisper as a dash cam records their progress.
At least the road monitor stays quiet.
It takes them an hour to get to the printer’s but that’s all right, because Rey planned for an hour—but there’s a delay. Customers ahead of them are running late. The machines are still in use. They wait fifty minutes in the lobby before they’re issued a key card—and their schedule is blown. “Rey,” Lincoln says, “I need you to call Mr. Ocampo, let him know we’re going to be late.”
Rey shakes his head, rocks his palm back and forth in the air. “Mr. Ocampo is… nervous. He did not want this meeting. You change a thing, he might say no way, call it off.”
“We don’t need the full complement,” True says softly.
Lincoln considers this. He’s not happy about it, but she’s right. They can make do. “Come on,” he tells her. “Let’s go check out the equipment. Rey, I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll be here.”
The printers are in little cubicles with opaque glass doors. True swipes the lock on their assigned room. Lincoln follows her inside. He’s relieved to see that the printer is the promised Maemuki Quick-Task 3000, with multiple stages allowing parts to be printed simultaneously. “Looks good,” he says.
“So far.”
The facility advertises “fast, private, personal printing.” Street speak to let customers know their activities will not be closely monitored. To verify this promise, they both get out their MARC visors, using the devices to survey the room’s clean white walls, its smooth ceiling.
“I don’t see any cameras,” True says. “You?”
“No. Not detecting microphones either. Let’s do it.”
Lax oversight, combined with computer-aided design, 3-D printing, and amateur engineering guilds, has fed a continuous proliferation in the type and availability of armaments. What they are about to do has no doubt been done here many times before.
The visors go back in their cases. Then True slots an instruction card, one that Tamara prepared. This is an anarchist hack, Tamara told them. It overrides the printer’s logging function and sets a value of zero to the list of restricted manufactures. You’ll be able to print your gun parts without leaving any record of it.
Lincoln watches over her shoulder as she runs a short series of system checks that Tamara instructed her to undertake. “Looks good,” she tells him as she pulls up the project list. They intended to print four handguns. “But we’ve got time to print just two.”
“Do it. It’s just an insurance policy.”
Shaw Walker might or might not know they’re here, might or might not give a damn—but on this mission, Shaw is only one in a trio of potential hazards. Equally concerning is the possibility of Chinese interest, stirred up by Miles in his research on Nungsan, or being caught in the crossfire of the radical politics supported by both Rey and Daniel. No way to know where any of it could lead.
True initiates the print run. The process is hidden behind shields as lasers melt and fuse metal alloy powders to slowly form the necessary parts.
“How do you feel about Rey?” she asks Lincoln.
“He’s cocky. Confident. Not a bad thing.”
“This is a game for him.”
“I think that’s his personality. We hired him to keep a secret and he likes being on the inside. Don’t worry. We’re going to pull this off.”
“Sooner or later he’s going to ask what we’re printing.”
“I’m sure he knows what we’re printing. But it’s best for him if we don’t confirm or deny.”
She nods. “You better go get the ammunition.”
He sends Alex and Miles to keep her company while he goes with Rey to a courier’s office to claim the package of ammunition he sent in-country. He goes in alone, wanting to limit their exposure on the slim chance that some law enforcement agency has flagged the shipment—but he takes delivery with no questions asked, and an hour later, he’s back at the printer’s.
He tells the others, “Take Rey and get something to eat.”
True returns just as he finishes assembling the newly printed parts into two snub-nosed all-metal handguns. He gives her one. She checks the load, slips it into the deep pocket of a hip-length beige utility vest.
“Did you pull the card?” she asks.
Lincoln hands her the anarchist’s hack. “Let’s go.”
True sits in the SUV’s backseat. She’s behind Lincoln, with Alex beside her and Miles next to him. Rey has decided he is their tour guide. She obediently turns to look whenever he points out sights or names the districts and neighborhoods through which they’re passing. She pretends to be interested, pretends that she’s calm. So much of her emotional life is pretending. Putting on a face, playing a role, because the personal cannot be allowed to interfere with the professional.
She long ago learned to live by the mantra of military life: Focus on what needs to be done, and do it.
Right now she needs to play along, but the truth is that nothing Rey says makes any difference to her. They are less than two hours away from meeting Daniel Ocampo. That is all that matters.
After it was decided that they’d go to the Philippines, she called Alex to share what they’d learned of Daniel.
Alex was skeptical. “An ex-priest? You think this is real?”
“I do. But he won’t do a remote interview. We have to go down there and talk to him.”
Alex was incredulous. “Come on. This has got to be a setup.”
“No. I don’t think so. The journalist checks out. He’s credentialed. Alex, I told Lincoln you would want to go.”
“Yeah. Of course. If you think this is real.”
People at work owed him favors, so he was able to adjust his schedule, trading shifts to get the time off.
That night as they lay together in the dark, he asked her, “What are you hoping for?”
“Not a lot,” she answered. “I just… I want to know how it was for Diego in those last hours. I want to know if Shaw was with him, if he took care of him. And how did Shaw get away? I want to know that too.” She sighed at her own neediness. “Fuck. I want to know everything about that mission. I want to know what went wrong, and I want to know who’s responsible.”