country.”
I wanted to ask,
“What we have on our hands here,” he continued, “is a major national security crisis. Drug cartels murdering the head of the DEA in his home. We have reason to believe that the weapons they are using were supplied to them by your laboratory’s clients. The so-called Convoy Emerging Wealth Fund.”
He paused to let that sink in.
“Based on what evidence?” I asked, and returned Sophie’s let-me-do-the-talking look with a warning glare of my own. I was glad to see her, but after what I had just been through I wasn’t about to stay quiet for anybody, or let a claim that Jesse was involved in a criminal conspiracy go unchallenged.
Clark said, “Aside from the remarkable similarities between the drones you built for Convoy and those used by the cartels, there’s their location.”
I blinked. “Their location?”
Sophie said, “I’ve been helping the DEA look for drones. Went through their satellite photo archives with our Axons.” Her neural networks weren’t just good for keeping UAVs aloft and tracking radio signals or sunken treasure; they were powerful general-purpose pattern-recognition machines. Spotting instances of a particular image in a vast haystack of data was exactly the kind of problem at which they excelled. “We’ve found silhouettes of whole squadrons of drones flying across the Caribbean towards the USA. Thirty a day, every day, going back for more than a year.”
I whistled with surprise.
Then I said, “Wait a second.” That didn’t make any sense. “Across the Caribbean? From Colombia? No way. Those drones can’t fly that far unless they’ve invented a whole new generation of fuel cell while they’re at it.” I was confident about that much; this was my area of expertise.
“Exactly. I’m guessing they can go maybe four hundred miles when loaded. Which just happens to be the distance from Colombia to Haiti, and from Haiti to Florida.”
I opened my mouth and closed it again. Jesse and Anya had been operating out of Haiti for the last six months.
“We have a few shots of drones flying north from Colombia, too,” Sophie said. “Figure they go from there to Haiti, recharge during the day, then on to Florida the next night, navigating via GPS, low and under the radar. If carbon-fibre frames that small show up on radar at all. They’re not much bigger than frigate birds. Land them in the Everglades, unload them, send them back to Colombia for more. Two-day trip each way, thirty drones reaching the USA every day. That means a hundred and twenty drones, carrying a cumulative payload of forty tons of drugs over the last year.” I whistled again. “We haven’t found any shots of the return trip yet. It probably won’t help, I’m sure all the launch and landing sites change frequently.” She shook her head with something like admiration. “Drones solve the smuggling problem, simple as that. Unstoppable and untraceable. Even if the occasional one gets intercepted, it can’t testify.”
“The bottom line,” Clark said grimly, “is that these jokers have a hundred and twenty drones they can bring into America and pack with Semtex instead of cocaine any time they like. Are you beginning to get the picture here?”
“Yes,” I said, half-chastened, “but that’s still only circumstantial evidence against Convoy. Nothing tangible.”
“No. You’re quite right. We don’t have any real evidence, and even if we did, they’re a British corporation, directed by a Canadian and a Russian, operating out of Haiti, with a Liberian-registered ship anchored in international waters. Going after them would be a legal nightmare.”
“You can’t just say they’re ‘enemy combatants’ and disappear them like in the good old days?” I asked.
Nobody seemed to find my joke at all funny.
“Mr. Kowalski. You need to understand the situation here.” Clark’s demeanour changed from charmer to street fighter. “Bad enough when the cartels were assassinating DEA agents and Colombian and Mexican officials on their soil. Now they have murdered a presidential appointee in his home. This is already a Category Three shitstorm. His wife and four-year-old daughter are in critical condition with shrapnel wounds. The press are already all over it, and they still think it was a bomb someone planted. When they find out it had wings they’ll go berserk. These cartels can go after anyone they want with these things, anyone, and there’s not a damn thing we can do except turn off our phones and pray. We need to nip this thing in the bud before it turns into the Katrina of all shitstorms. Our military supremacy is built on technical supremacy, and we have just been blindsided and leapfrogged. I’ve spent two days hearing people tell me that our UAVs are years behind these drones. Our forces don’t believe in autonomous weapons. They’re worried they could go rogue and kill innocents. A reasonable concern, but not one that terrorists share. We can’t let that give them the edge. We need to go after them with everything we’ve got. Off the record, we don’t want to go extra-legal here, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t conceivable.”
I went cold as I realized what he meant. My joke had flopped because it was no joke at all: the US government was seriously considering having Jesse and Anya snatched up without arrest or trial.
“Extra-legal?” Sophie sounded incredulous too. “As in kidnapping and torture?”
Clark’s eyes went steely. “Miss Warren -“
“Dr. Warren, if you please.”
“Dr. Warren. This administration does not torture.”
“But it might be willing to kidnap foreign citizens without even charging them with anything. Or maybe just get the Haitians to pick them up for you. I’m sure they’d be very careful to ask questions very nicely. That way you wouldn’t even have to worry about any pesky judges. Good thing, too, because last I checked, kidnapping people on the high seas was called piracy. So state-sponsored piracy is OK, but torture is not. Kind of a fine line, don’t you think?” The volume of Sophie’s voice remained unchanged, but its tone was growing ever colder and more furious. “And what exactly do you mean when you say anything is ‘off the record’? Did I miss the memo where you suspended the First Amendment? If we tell people what you just said, do we get disappeared too? I’m just curious. I’d just like to know what the new ground rules are now that the Constitution apparently no longer applies.”
This didn’t really seem like the time and place to erupt into an irate lecture on civil liberties, but I was proud of her for being so entirely unintimidated. There was something to be said for holding the entire rest of the planet in intellectual contempt.
“Dr. Warren,” Clark said, “really, there’s no need for any histrionics.” Sophie gave him a flat look which I knew meant
Sophie and I said, in stereo, “What?”
“We need to find out who is behind these attacks and where they are, fast.”
“Don Mario,” Lisa said. “Almost certainly.”
I blinked, turned to her. “Don Mario?” It sounded like a name out of pulp fiction.
“Colombia’s biggest drug lord. Real name Daniel Barrera. Has a personal army of an estimated six thousand
“We’re not ready to make assumptions about who,” Clark corrected her. Lisa looked chastened, like a priest rebuked by the Pope. “The truth is we don’t know anything yet. Convoy is one of our few leads, and you’re our only existing connection to them. We’d like you to think of a reason to visit them, immediately.”
“And do what?” I asked.
“Nothing cloak and dagger. Just keep your eyes open and report back on anything you discover. Don’t get me wrong. The fate of the nation does not rest on your success. We have dozens of other investigatory fronts open already. But anything you unearth could save who knows how many lives, and prevent a national panic. In the past we’ve called the cartels narco-terrorists mostly because that made it easier to get funding from Congress. But now we mean it. If they start murdering law enforcement officials around the country with apparent impunity, just imagine the chaos.”
“Sounds bad,” Sophie said coldly. “Why, it’s enough to give me the itch to throw out the Constitution and start
