Arms Race (18 page)

What? Alex said.

Vest, girl. They gonna be blazing.

They waited in fear for the bombardment to start. The seconds slowed into minutes,
and the valley's hush grew deep. Then the dusk air burst with the roar of cannons.
Alex heard the shriek of falling shells, saw a crackling, strobing light several
valleys over. She couldn't hold the camera still enough to get a decent shot.

For the next two days they shadowed the road to
the Protected Area. Every four or
five hours a Chinese or American convoy churned its way upstream towards the battle
zone. The fighting always began at dusk. Heading towards the fiery horizon felt like
madness. As they neared where the villages had been, Marlow grew quiet. Alex had
a constant low grinding in her belly, part hunger and part nerves, but she pushed
them both on. This was her chance. This was what journalists did.

The forest began to thin. At this lower altitude the snow was mostly gone. On the
far side of the ridge was the Protected Area. They tightened their pack straps and
slogged up the slope.

From the news footage she'd seen, Alex knew what to expect: a nightmare of razed
villages and twisted fuselage. And that was the official version. She knew Hurtz
and the army must be hiding bodies, and she would find them. Mongolian men and women
lying in the mud, children too, dead and cold. Without make-up or artifice she would
turn to the camera and call Hurtz out. She would end the false accounting of Zero
Zero Zero.

Alex reached the crest of the ridge, steeled herself, and drew in a breath at what
she saw.

A sudden sweeping view of paradise.

Late-afternoon sun lit a valley of open grassland, surrounded on all sides by timbered
hills. The road followed the silver windings of a river, then turned into a complex
of buildings that might have been a military
base or factory. Distant workers moved
around a series of small pools. A recovery drone, lights winking in the dusk, came
in to land. The breeze carried the steady thump of heavy machinery.

Where's the war? Alex said.

Marlow shrugged, his face caught between confusion and relief.

An American convoy rolled in through the complex gates. Figures moved towards the
trucks to unload. Alex raised her camera and filmed a few precious seconds, and as
she did, excitement rose through the fog of her exhaustion. Here, surely, was the
heart of her film.

Right on dark they approached the nearest gate. There were no guards. They moved
cautiously up the raked-pebble drive. There was a sharp series of detonations and
an almighty flash. Alex and Marlow threw themselves down.

A salvo of rockets blasted into the sky, arcing up and out in whistling parabolic
curves. They drifted high, almost out of sight, and were gone to tiny falling cinders,
then exploded in starbursts of red and white and blue.

Fireworks? Marlow said, dazed. We been freaking out 'bout goddamn
fireworks
?

They pulled themselves off the ground. Alex was too confused to reply. Up close she
could see the complex was neither army base nor factory. The buildings were
elegant
slabs of glass, fronted with marble columns after the neoclassical malls of Dubai.

The workers weren't workers, either: they stood round in aggressively cut swimwear,
watching the conflagration above. Beyond, American and Chinese army officers played
each other at a bizarre mix of volleyball and boxing. Alex and Marlow trudged past
in snow fatigues and battered helmets, bent beneath the weight of their packs, capturing
it all on film. No one paid them any attention.

From behind, horns blared. Marlow and Alex turned, blinded, and were run off the
road by a wedge of golf buggies. Alex glimpsed jowled and whooping Chinese and American
generals at the controls. They slammed to a halt beside a newly arrived supply convoy,
and joined the mob of officers and arms dealers wrestling cases of champagne from
the trucks. Someone dropped a case and the bottles went up like grenades. The air
crackled with fireworks and laughter, shouting in a dozen tongues, and a sudden pungent
rain from the rockets above. The revellers raised their hands and opened their mouths.
Caviar Monday, baby! a voice yelled.

Somewhere nearby a door opened. There was a spill of boozy cheering, of whistles
and horns. The chug of machinery crisped into the bass, kick, snare of nineties house.
People streamed past towards the music.

Come on, you two! someone shouted. She's starting!
The American woman on the door
looked at them hard. She tilted her head to one side, then turned and consulted with
a thickset Chinese man. He nodded.

Door prize! the woman yelled.

Door prize? Marlow echoed.

Those giant backpacks! And that starved look, and the zeal in your eyes—that's gold.
Congratulations. She handed Marlow an envelope full of drinks tickets. Enjoy.

The corridor opened onto a vast, smoke-filled nightclub styled like a Mongolian
village, right down to the dirt floor and roaming goats. One of the goats was being
strung up over a fire, its throat cut, and Alex realised the place
was
a Mongolian
village; they'd built the club over the top.

Bass pounded from the sound system. Defence contractors shimmied past in aviators
and Hawaiian shirts, cameras round their necks. An arms dealer Alex recognised from
her documentary chugged his beer to a chant of
Scoop! Scoop! Scoop!
There were half
a dozen John Pilger lookalikes, identical in flak jackets and grey wigs.

What's the theme tonight? Alex asked a passing waiter.

The man looked at her, confused. Journalists, he said. You look fine. Maybe a bit
over the top, but fine.

Up on the main stage the DJ finished his set, and a karaoke machine was wheeled out.
A short brunette clutching a glass of champagne came on to tremendous cheers. She
launched into a bizarre rendition of ‘Total
Eclipse of the Heart'
.
Each time her
babyish voice crooned the chorus, a wag down the back hollered: Of darkness!

Marlow was watching the singer closely. I'll be damned, he said.

What's wrong? Alex asked.

Look.

Swaying on absurd platform shoes, her familiar face addled with booze, droning into
the microphone in a saccharine whisper, was General Hurtz.

Alex felt her fatigue vanish. She dropped her pack and thrust the camera into Marlow's
hands. This is it, she said. Don't worry about me. Just get the footage out.

What are you going to do? Marlow asked.

Alex smiled grimly. Interview the shit out of her.

Then she was off, cutting through the crowd like an icebreaker, climbing the stairs
to the stage, growing fierce with each stride. The general looked up in confusion.
Alex towered over her. She grabbed the microphone and the music abruptly cut.

General Hurtz, she boomed into the silence. What have you done with the war?

The crowd howled with laughter. There were cries of
Scoop! Scoop! Scoop!

Oh, I get it, Hurtz said. You're being a journalist. Very good. Now take a hike.

I'm serious, Alex said.

Hurtz fumbled in her pocket. She was wearing a
deconstructed general's uniform, dyed
gold and reworked to resemble a straitjacket. She found her glasses and put them
on, and found Alex staring down at her, eyes steady and fierce beneath the helmet.

You look like you're dressed for a war, Hurtz said.

I heard there was one round here, Alex said. Seen it?

Hurtz took another microphone from its stand. Friends! she cried. I have a report
of a missing war. Anyone seen a war round here?

The crowd roared.

We kidnapped it and tortured it! someone shouted.

No, really, Alex said. What the fuck's happened to it?

What does it look like? Hurtz
said, raising her champagne flute. We've stolen it.

This time the crowd went wild, screaming and drumming their feet.

But tell me, Hurtz said once the noise died down, didn't you used to be famous?

Alex scowled. Notorious, she said.

That's right! Hurtz said. You're that newsreader who blew up on air. Friends, we
have a real-deal journalist in the house—please make her welcome!

Excited cheers filled the club. The crowd pushed in close to get a better look. They
seemed to think it was part of the night's entertainment.
Looks just like her
, Alex
heard someone say. A group of military police were pushing their way through the
tightly packed crowd. Marlow was
slouched against a speaker stack to one side, helmet
over his eyes, camera held at waist height. The red recording light shone steadily.

So tell me, General Hurtz, Alex said. What is this place?

Hurtz's eyes darted to
the back of the club. What do you say, she asked the crowd, playing for time. Shall
we tell the journalist our secret?

Yes! they shouted, with such force that Alex saw the general blink.

Well, then, Hurtz said. What is this place? You've heard of hollow government? This
is what's inside the hollow.

Right, Alex said, confused. What about the trillion-dollar war? Where's that? Inside
the hollow too?

Hurtz smiled. It's amazing what we can do with computers these days.

With
computers
?

One enormous system. See there, above the bar?

Instead of the news, a row of screens showed closeups of teenagers' faces, staring
into the camera with furious concentration. Explosions, instrument controls and Mongolian
terrain reflected in their eyes.

Hyper-real three-D, Hurtz said. Everyone plugs in, from the pilots to the media.
Apart from the people in this room, everyone thinks they're getting live camera feeds.

Bullshit, Alex said. You can't fake a war.

It's not fake, Hurtz said. It's being fought virtually.

Alex raised her eyebrows.

We are absolutely at war, Hurtz said. Pilots fly missions, patriots crowd the streets.
The fighting all happens overseas anyway, so who cares if it's virtual or real?

There were murmurs of assent from the crowd.

If I attacked you, Alex said, you'd care if it was virtual or real.

Precisely, Hurtz replied, warming to her subject. I'd prefer it to be virtual. We
all would, when the loss of one life makes so little difference to the cause. War
is fundamentally economic. You lose when you run out of resources. The blood and
fire is just a distracting spectacle. We've agreed with our Chinese friends to step
up the spectacle, and eliminate the real blood and fire. The economic base remains
unchanged. Whoever runs out of money first will lose.

But if there's no war, what the hell are you spending the money on?

Billions on the computer systems. Billions on enough real drones to make it plausible.

And the rest?

Profit.

There were whistles and claps from the floor.

Are you fucking serious? Alex said. You must have stolen a trillion dollars.

Hurtz took off her glasses in a decisive gesture Alex recognised from TV. Don't be
naïve, Hurtz said. War's a business, same as any other. We deliver it for cheap,
the
profits are ours to spend. Besides, what's a few air-freighted lobsters when
we've saved millions of lives?

Alex felt a surge of rage. You haven't saved lives, she said. It's not real. There
are no armies and no fighting. It's fraud, on the most outrageous scale.

Hurtz gave a delighted hoot. No armies and no fighting? she said, turning to the
crowd. What do we call that?

Peace! they howled.

Peace? Alex cried. You—

We're not the only ones, Hurtz said. You should watch this year's Nobel Prize announcements.

Peace, Alex started again, is not—

Listen to me, Hurtz said, her voice swelling to fill the room. After the Cold War,
Fukuyama said history had ended. He was wrong. The conflicts that drive history forward
still happen, and they happen for us, and because of us, but not
to
us. History hasn't
ended. It's been outsourced.

But—

Think of all the proxy wars. All the tech we've built to safely fight war at arm's
length—air strikes, stealth bombers, cruise missiles. And now we have drones. Hallelujah!
We can fight full-scale wars without a single soldier getting out of bed. All we're
doing here is taking the next logical step. We've outsourced warfare, in its entirety,
to computers.

The assembled staffers, arms dealers and high-ranking officers were quiet now, standing
with their faces lifted to
Hurtz. Even the cohort of military police had stopped
at the foot of the stage to listen.

Let me ask you a question, Hurtz said. What difference did your famous meltdown
make? How many pilots now work from home because of you? How many lives have you
saved?

When my film's done—

Your film? What good is a film, against
this
? Hurtz said, sweeping a hand around
the enormous militarised nightclub. Against the fact that war's in our blood? The
reason people like you fail is because you waste your time asking: how do we eliminate
war? The real question is: what kind of war is closest to peace?

Alex turned from the general and crossed to the far side of the stage, trying to
clear her head.

There are many types of war, Hurtz continued. And we have the power to choose. How
about if this war was physically real? Drone versus drone: would you prefer that?
Thousands of lethally armed robots engaged in the annihilation of this country,
its environment and people? Costs far beyond the trillion spent so far. Mongolians
dead on the ground, right where we stand. Would that make you happy? Would it bring
us closer to peace?

Or maybe you'd like us to go back to the old, asymmetrical warfare. Drone versus
human: massive lethal force deployed on mere suspicion. Signature strikes on weddings
and funerals? Wrong time, wrong place, wrong
colour? No? Then let's go further back.
We could just have a traditional war. Human versus human: millions sent to the slaughter,
millions caught in the crossfire. Cities razed. Unmarked mass graves. How about that?