assholes. We’re gonna do this quick.”
One of Hammer’s bodyguards got in the driver’s seat and the other climbed up to the MRAP’s turret and manned the machine gun. Kirsten and Jim piled into the back of the vehicle while Hammer got in the front passenger seat. Two more armored vehicles carrying the Rangers followed the MRAP as it sped away from the airfield.
They cruised north, toward the mountains of the Hindu Kush. The road was new and in good condition, but the countryside was arid and poor. They sped by dozens of mud-brick homes surrounded by brown fields. The Afghan farmers looked up from their sparse crops and stared at the convoy as it hurtled past. Their faces were gaunt and suspicious. Jim was already getting a bad vibe from this place. The locals weren’t happy.
After fifteen minutes Hammer turned around in his seat. This time he fixed his eyes on Jim. “So how much did Conway tell you?”
Jim frowned. “He said you arranged the export of his implant technology to China. And that you gave the technology to the Chinese in return for something else.”
“But he didn’t say what we got in return, did he?”
“No, he didn’t.”
Hammer shook his head. Now that he’d been forced into cooperating, he seemed anxious to set the record straight. “Well, let me assure you, it was a mutually beneficial trade. A win-win for the United States and the People’s Republic of China.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Arvin had something the Chinese wanted, his implant technology. And as luck would have it, one of China’s military research programs had developed something
“So the CIA is going overseas for its R&D now? Good old American know-how isn’t enough anymore?”
Hammer shook his head again. “You’ve been out of the game for a while, Pierce, so let me refresh your memory. We’ve been stuck in this shithole of a country for ten years. Ever since we chased Al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, we’ve been sending drones across the border to pound the terrorists in their hidey-holes in Pakistan. But the jihadis are like cockroaches—for every one you see, there’s a hundred you don’t. What we need is an exterminator. We need to get inside their shitholes and kill all of them.”
“And you’re the exterminator?”
“I get results. That’s why they gave me this job. I have authorization to use any means necessary, short of dropping a nuke on the fuckers.”
“So what did you get from the Chinese? Some new kind of pesticide?”
“I got something that’ll tell the difference between the bad guys and the bystanders. And that’s exactly what Langley wants.” He faced forward and pointed down the road. “We’ve been testing the system at Whiplash for the past two months.”
Jim looked ahead and saw a compound of concrete bunkers surrounded by a ten-foot-high mud wall. “You mean a surveillance system?”
“You’ll see for yourself.” Hammer checked his watch. “In fact, you’re just in time for today’s sortie.”
The MRAP slowed as it approached the compound. A pair of sentries waved them inside, and the driver parked in the dusty courtyard, which was busy with CIA personnel. Jim and Kirsten got out of the vehicle and Hammer led them to a glass-walled shed next to one of the bunkers.
The shed looked like a small greenhouse, about six feet long and five feet high. Its floor seemed to be covered with mounds of black dirt, but as Jim stepped closer to the glass he saw the mounds churning. The dirt was actually sheep dung, and it was infested with thousands of flies. Some of the insects crawled on the shed’s glass walls, while others flew in circles below the Plexiglas lid, but the great majority feasted on the shit at the bottom. It was sickening to see so many of them. Kirsten made a face and turned away.
Hammer grinned. “They’re houseflies.
“About three thousand, sir. We have another three thousand in the Secondary Release Unit and ten thousand more in the main building.”
Jim was dumbfounded. “This is what you got from the Chinese? Flies?”
“I told you, I’m an exterminator,” Hammer said. “And the best way to fight a pest is with another pest. Take a closer look at them.”
Jim stepped forward until his nose was just an inch from the flies on the other side of the glass. Squinting, he saw black squares of silicon embedded in their abdomens. Minuscule wires, as short and thin as beard stubble, protruded from the insects’ heads. Jim gaped at the electronics, then motioned Kirsten to come forward.
Hammer kept grinning. “Nifty, huh? See, we needed a way to look inside the caves and mud huts, all the stinking holes where the jihadis are hiding. The Pentagon funded a few efforts to develop cyborg insects, and a couple of labs in the U.S. built prototypes using moths and flying beetles. But it turned out that the Chinese were way ahead of us. The riots in Tibet and Xinjiang scared the shit out of them, and the Guoanbu wanted better surveillance of the dissidents in those regions. So they threw some serious money at the problem and came up with the first workable system.” He turned back to the agent from the Sci/Tech division. “Give ’em the specs, Dusty.”
“Each cyborg fly carries a CMOS camera-on-a-chip,” Dusty recited. “It’s just three millimeters wide, but it’s capable of visible or infrared surveillance. The video feed is relayed to a transceiver embedded in the fly’s thorax, which can transmit the signal to us from fifty miles away. The transceiver also picks up the flight-control signals sent by our operators here at Camp Whiplash. We can make the insects go anywhere we want them to go. And because the cyborgs are virtually indistinguishable from ordinary houseflies, the surveillance is inherently covert.”
Jim pointed at the swarm of flies behind the glass. “You put all that hardware into each of those bugs?”
“It’s just as easy to make a thousand drones as it is to make one,” Dusty replied. “The camera chips are inexpensive, mass-produced items. And the flies can be raised by the millions, of course. The only labor-intensive step is inserting the electronics into the fly pupae while the larvae are metamorphosing into adults.”
“And you need lots of flies to get the job done,” Hammer added. “If you want to get full coverage of a village that’s suspected of harboring terrorists, you gotta send in a healthy number of insects. And you gotta make allowances for malfunctions and losses. Every time we release the bugs, the local birds eat a few hundred.”
Jim and Kirsten exchanged looks. The scheme was staggeringly ambitious and thoroughly disconcerting. And it was clear that Hammer had jumped right into it without considering the consequences. Kirsten frowned at the CIA agent. “You say you’ve already tested the system?”
Hammer nodded. “We’re doing field tests every day, getting the swarms ready for deployment in Pakistan. In a few minutes we’re gonna release all three thousand of the flies in this unit. Today we’re sending the swarm on a recon assignment to the village of Golbahar, about two miles west of here. There aren’t many Taliban in this area, but who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky and spot some.”
Kirsten shook her head. “Look, I’m all in favor of developing new methods of surveillance. And this particular method could be useful in certain circumstances. But you’re jumping the gun with this testing program. You need to get input from the other agencies in the intelligence community and—”
“See, this is why I didn’t mention the project in my reports. Everyone in Washington is a fucking critic. But we’re gonna make it work.” Hammer’s voice was cold. He glared at Kirsten for several seconds, then turned to Dusty. “Commence the launch sequence. And send the alert to everyone in the Monitor Room.”
Soon the courtyard was bustling. Hammer shouted more orders, directing his men this way and that. When everything was ready, Dusty unlocked the Plexiglas lid of the Release Unit and swung it open. A few flies drifted out of the shed, but most stayed near the dung. Then Dusty pushed a button on a handheld radio and all the cyborg flies rose into the air at once. Their buzzing was oddly synchronous and intense. Dusty waited until the swarm ascended twelve feet above the ground. Then he pressed another button on his radio. The swarm headed
