Kill Chain (20 page)

A siren wailed outside,
tires screeching. Jimmy went to the window to see a police car arriving, its
two occupants jumping out, batons drawn. The officers conducting crowd control
earlier lay dead on the street, none of the residents visible, the street
deserted.

A buzzing sound behind
him had him leap to the side, diving behind a couch as gunfire erupted from the
doorway. He rolled, ending up on a knee, his MP5 belching lead at a lone drone
hovering ten feet away. It disintegrated into dozens of pieces, dropping to the
floor with a clatter. Jumping to his feet, Jimmy surged forward, listening for
the distinctive hum of the drone’s blades, hearing nothing.

The hallway was clear
again.

He kicked the carcass of
fried tech into the hallway and closed the door, locking it before turning to
the man he was now certain was simply another victim in this situation.

And cursed.

Blood oozed from several
chest wounds, he the clear target of the drone.

Jimmy checked for a pulse
and found none.

There goes our only
witness.

He reached into his
pocket and pulled out his cellphone, quickly dialing Dawson.

“This is One-Zero. We’ve
got a situation here.”

Unknown
Location
Seoul,
Republic of Korea

Niner sat
in silence, the sound of a drone behind him enough to keep him obeying the
disembodied voice of whoever was in control, he having serious doubts the man
inside the apartment was anyone but a patsy. Their suspect had done nothing but
sob when Niner, under orders, stripped the unconscious Jimmy of his comm gear
and retrieved a set of car keys along with two plastic shopping bags from
inside the apartment. Drones then led them out of the building, the sound of
gunfire outside suggesting the worst.

And the worst had been
confirmed, the police officers performing crowd control lying in pools of their
own blood, the screams of the panicked crowds fading into the distance.

A vehicle, the same type
as had been used by the security team accompanying the automated bus, responded
to the key fob.

Must have been
purchased when he worked at the factory.

“Open the rear door.”

He complied and two
drones floated inside, hovering in the backseat.

“Close the door then
both of you get in the front.”

He opened the driver side
door and climbed in, Kim rounding the car, two drones following her. She sat
inside and closed her door, Niner pulling his own shut.

“Start the car.”

Niner slid the fob into
the dash, placing his foot on the brake. He pushed the Start button and the car
engine roared to life.

“Remove your foot from
the brake and put the bags over your heads.”

Niner frowned, handing
one of the bags to Kim as he lifted his foot. “I guess that explains what these
are for.” He slipped it over his head, Kim doing the same, and the car
immediately began to move, it disconcerting at first not to be in control. As a
passenger trying to catch a few zees, he never had a problem, a competent
driver he trusted always at the wheel. But in this case, it might as well have
been Short Round from The Temple of Doom driving with wood boxes strapped to
his feet.

He felt completely at the
mercy of either a computer programmed with a destination, or a human driving by
wire somewhere else in the world.

Kim’s breathing in the
bag was rapid, it clear she wasn’t as calm as he was, she not trained to keep
things under control mentally in situations like this. He was managing his breathing,
it an effort so ingrained after years of training and combat, it had become
second nature.

But she wasn’t trained.

He reached over blindly
and found her arm. He squeezed it gently. Her arm jerked and he began to pull
away, assuming the gesture of comfort was unwelcome, when she instead grabbed
his hand and gripped it tightly.

His chest fluttered,
butterflies in his stomach.

“One hell of a first
date, huh?”

He heard the plastic bag
rustle as she probably turned her head. “Excuse me?”

“Sorry, I make jokes.
It’s my thing.”

“Oh, umm, then yes. Great
first date.”

Niner smiled. “I guess
you haven’t been on a lot of dates then.”

“N-no, not really. Korean
men don’t like it when their women have more power than them.”

“They don’t like knowing
you can kick their ass if they get out of line?”

Kim giggled, still
holding his hand, the grip easing somewhat as her breathing slowed. “I guess
not.”

“In America, it’s the
same for some guys.”

“A-and you?”

The question had him turn
toward her slightly, the car’s mind-of-its-own driving forgotten. “Not at all.
I’d love to date a woman who could put me in my place.”

“America sounds nice.”

“It is.”

She sighed. “I hope your
friend is okay.”

His mind flashed to
Jimmy, lying unconscious on the floor of the hallway.

He must be awake by
now.

“He’ll be all right.
Might have some cracked ribs and a bump on the noggin’, but he’ll be okay.”

“Noggin’?”

“Noggin’, as in noodle, melon,
chrome dome, brain trap, bobble—”

“Oh, head. Okay, I
understand. They don’t teach American slang in school or at the academy.”

“Yeah, well your English
is excellent.”

“Thank you. And so is
your Korean.”

It was then that Niner
realized they were talking in English, perhaps not a wise choice since whoever
was speaking through the drones definitely understood it, though perhaps not
Korean. He switched. “It got rusty but when I joined the military they
encourage you to learn languages, so I started practicing. Mostly just making
my folks speak Korean when I visited or talked to them on the phone.” He
shrugged. “It came back pretty quickly.”

The car began to slow
then came to a stop.

“Do you think we’re
here?”

He turned his head to
look, uselessly. “Yeah, wherever
here
is.”

Operations
Center 1
CIA
Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

“It’s
definitely a theory, but we need proof.”

“Yeah, but what kind of
proof?” asked Leroux, the reasoning pretty sound behind Kane’s theory, yet
probably not enough for Washington.

“Proof. A proof is a
proof. When we’ve got a good proof, it’s proven.”

Leroux chuckled. “What
the hell did you just say?”

Kane groaned. “Sorry,
I’ve been speaking Chinese for most of the past hour. If the factory in China
did weaponize them, then they somehow got their hands on these weapons that
were supposed to have been destroyed.”

Leroux nodded, leaning
back in his chair. “Could they have manufactured them on their own?”

Kane grunted. “Possible,
I guess. Even so, they’d have to have access to the exact plans.”

“I don’t think that’s
what happened,” interjected Child, a photo of one of the weapons found on a downed
drone expanding on the display. He highlighted the Riker company name stamped
on the grip. “Why would they do that if they were making their own?”

“Do what?” asked Kane,
not privy to the visuals.

Leroux filled him in. “The
Riker name is molded into the grip. They wouldn’t do that if they were making a
clone. We need to find out how they got those weapons.”

“Can you contact Riker?
They should be able to tell us.”

Leroux shook his head. “They’re
bankrupt. We’ve got a call in with their lawyers but haven’t heard back yet.”

“Well, if I were a hotshot
analyst, I’d be trying to figure out if there’s any connection between the
drone manufacturer and Riker Defensive Systems. We know these weapons made it
into the Ukraine, so it’s conceivable they also made it to China. We need to
lean on their CEO and figure out what happened to those weapons.”

Leroux smiled. “Well, my hotshot
analysts
have
thought of that. What we do know is that the founder,
Grant Riker, faked the paperwork—they were never destroyed. It was kept quiet
by Washington because nobody wanted the public to know there were hundreds of
hi-tech prototype handguns suddenly on the black market.”

Kane grunted. “Well,
something tells me their secret will be out when the dust settles. Okay, you
keep looking into a link from your end, I’m going to keep plugging away here.”

“What’s your plan?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Unknown
Location
Republic
of Korea

“Remove
the bags and slowly exit the vehicle.”

Niner yanked the plastic
bag that reeked of week old takeout off his face and gasped in several lungsful
of fresh air, Kim doing the same beside him. He gave her hand a squeeze, she
giving him a shy smile. The sound of the drones rising from their resting
places on the backseat spurred him to open the door a little quicker than he’d
like, his eyes already taking in the scene.

They were in some sort of
warehouse, fairly large, and once again, no one in sight. Dozens of drones
hovered nearby, a corridor formed leading to a set of arrows on the floor that
ended at a door, a wall perhaps ten feet tall stretching most of the width of
the warehouse, though nowhere near the height.

Kim rounded the front of
the car and he took her hand, cautiously threading the gap between the drones
toward the arrows, carefully scanning the area. To the right there were dozens
of drones resting on pads of some sort, the pads plugged into an array of wall
sockets.

Charging pads?

It made sense. The drones
needed power, and if there was no one around to plug them in, then they would
need some sort of wireless transfer of energy. It essentially meant the drones
could operate indefinitely, using this as a home base.

There was only one
problem with the scenario.

Somebody had to set it
up.

Somebody inside Korea.

It could have been the
terrified man at the apartment, he the only human beyond the voice they had
heard on the drone, and the person who had called the President—two voices that
probably belonged to the same person.

What he saw could be the
work of one man. Rent a warehouse. Put down some charging pads and some arrows.
It was the wall in front of him with the lone door that gave him doubts.

It didn’t fit.

It shouldn’t be here. If
his gut was telling him the truth, the structure in front of them was
purpose-built for this situation, and there was no way one man could do this,
especially one man who was a tech-geek on cars.

This required trade
skills.

He reached the door, the
drones covering any escape routes.

“I guess we go inside.”

He put his hand on the
knob and turned it, pushing the door open slowly. He peered inside and his
eyebrows rose as he saw what appeared to be a large seating area, a number of
couches surrounding a table.