He ran his hand through his long, unruly hair. “Christ, you’re a piece of work. The file said you’d be difficult.” He exhaled in irritation. “Fine. We’re an elite intelligence unit of the U.S. Army.”
“Special Forces.”
“No. Special Forces is publicly acknowledged to exist. We don’t officially exist.”
“Delta Force…”
“Look, no. Not Delta Force. That’s a counterterrorism unit. We go in before them. Alone and quietly. We uncover the reality on the ground. That’s all I’m trying to do, Professor.”
McKinney eyed him suspiciously. “What’s your rank?”
“What does it matter?”
“I want to know who I’m dealing with.”
“I’m a master sergeant.”
“They sent a sergeant? I would have thought that tracking down the drones attacking America would have rated at least a lieutenant.”
“What is this, a class thing?”
“No, but it occurs to me that officers go to officer training school, where they presumably learn how to manage groups of people and complex operations-where they learn ethics. I mean, I study bugs, and I went to school for half my life.”
“For your information, I gave up all possibility of promotion to serve in this unit. Everyone in my unit is a sergeant-and we’ll stay sergeants our entire career.”
She was confused.
“Commissioned officers receive their commission from the Congress. That means the civilian government is answerable for their conduct. Noncommissioned officers answer only to the military high command. Our rank has to do with government exposure.”
“Meaning you skip around the globe breaking laws, and they’ll disown you if you’re caught.”
“Meaning I’m the guy who has to solve problems whether there’s an international legal framework for them or not. And for drones, there is not.”
McKinney felt convinced he was telling the truth, if only because the answer made her mad. “No uniforms, apparently.”
“Blending in is what we do.”
“Did it ever occur to you that the presence of American units like yours in foreign countries is precisely what’s causing these drone attacks against us?”
“And you really think the world would be a peaceful place if we left it alone?”
“I wasn’t arguing that the world is filled with unicorns and rainbows. I’ve spent a decade in the Third World. I’m no stranger to corruption and lawlessness in places like Africa. In fact, I’m godmother to a boy whose father was murdered by ivory poachers. So, I get that civil society needs to be defended by people with guns-but those people cannot be above the law. And you just described to me why you’re a sergeant-in order to better skirt international laws.”
“Okay. You don’t trust your government. But if you think drones in American hands are frightening, imagine them controlled by North Korea, or Burma, or narco-traffickers, or Dominionists, or AT amp;T. If you want to lobby for some international legal framework for these machines, more power to you-but until you civilians sort this shit out, I and my team have to deal with it. It’s not a fucking theory with me, okay? I’m concerned about whether humans will be combatants on future battlefields, or just targets. It matters a whole goddamned lot to me, maybe even more than it does to you, so I’d appreciate you setting aside your objections and pitching the fuck in.”
McKinney was taken aback. She had apparently managed to get under his skin. Finally. She nodded. “All right. Okay. Just laying my cards on the table.”
“Thank you.”
Foxy, the wild-haired Albanian man with the heavy metal T-shirt, ducked his head into the office. “Knock, knock. Sorry to interrupt the high velocity data exchange, but you need to see this, Odin.”
“What is it?”
“Cable news. They found something in Pakistan.”
“What?”
“Drones.”
“Goddammit.”
Odin cast a look to McKinney, and then nodded. “No time like the present, Professor.”
They headed toward the door.
Odin gestured to the Albanian soldier. “Professor, this is Foxy, my two-IC. If you need anything, and I’m not available, you talk to him.”
Foxy extended a calloused hand. “Pleased to meet you, Professor. Wish it was under better circumstances.”
“You and me both.”
Odin led them down a tiled institutional hallway. They soon arrived at an austere recreation room at the end of the deserted office wing. There, on sturdy sofas, sat Mooch, Hoov, and the woman she’d seen earlier wearing a maroon hijab and a chocolate brown abaya. There was also a Caucasian man, short and stocky, with a thick reddish-brown beard-possibly Scotch-Irish. The group was staring at a television bolted at an angle to the drop ceiling. The woman was leaning back with her sandaled feet up on a coffee table. She nodded to McKinney.
McKinney nodded back.
When Odin entered everyone stood, but all eyes were still glued to the television, where an American cable news channel was showing video of a workshop filled with aircraft components-wings and fuselages. Odin studied the screen.
Foxy spoke over the anchor’s voice. “Found a workshop in good ol’ Karachi. Reverse-engineering operation for American drone wreckage. The story is that whoever ran it was behind the attack in Karbala.”
“Who found it?” Odin was watching the screen impassively.
“Pakistani military. Maybe ISI. They tipped off CIA.” Foxy pointed at the rough, leaked video footage. “There’s a Predator tail. A few pieces of Reapers in the back.”
Odin turned to him. “I call bullshit.”
Foxy nodded. “No doubt.”
McKinney looked at him with surprise. “Why do you think it’s fake?”
“Too perfect. One of our drones commits an atrocity, and a week later we find a barnful of evidence that we’ve been framed by insurgents?” Odin shook his head, accentuating the length of his beard. “I’d say it’s an influence operation. Even if it’s true, most people abroad won’t believe it. Foxy, work your connections at CIA. Try to find out who’s hypnotizing the chickens. In the meantime, we proceed under the supposition it’s an IO focused at a domestic audience.”
Foxy frowned. “What if it’s the real deal? Shouldn’t we send someone to examine the site?”
“Too risky. They’ll be closely watching whoever goes there. If the same extremely careful people carrying out the drone attacks Stateside are behind the Karbala attack, then they probably intended us to find this orgy of evidence-which means it’s worse than useless; it’s a deception. And if they weren’t behind Karbala, then this has no bearing on our mission.”
Above them a Ford pickup truck commercial had come on, depicting trucks towing improbable loads up improbable inclines in improbable ways.
Odin made a slashing gesture across his throat, and someone muted the television. He placed his hand on McKinney’s shoulder. “Everyone. Cornell University professor Linda McKinney is now a member of this team. You are to defend her with your lives. From this point onward, you will refer to her as Expert Six or simply as ‘Professor.’ Is that understood?”
The team members nodded.
“Professor, this is my team. You’ve already met Foxy.” He pointed to the woman in the maroon hijab. “Ripper. Human intel. Pay no attention to her outfit. She’s about as Muslim as a Vegas casino.” He pointed at the Eurasian kid who worked the electronics board on the plane. “This is Hoov. Signals intelligence-our knob turner.”
Hoov displayed mild impatience. “He means commo-I trained with the 704th-”
