Kingmaker (2 page)

Alexei smoked a particular brand of pure black filterless cigarette which he had stocked up on before leaving Moscow. He’d been rationing them at an increasing rate during his time in the desert, and was now down to his last one. As soon as he lit it with a miniature plasma torch, he saw his handset come alive on the seat of his bike. He picked it up to verify the criteria, then took a long, wistful drag, flicked the unsmoked remains off into the sand, and hastily began striking his meager camp.
Assuming he hadn’t made any gross miscalculations, Alexei knew that within twelve hours, he would very likely be on his way to the US to start not just a new mission, but an entirely new life.

The attack would be outside of Kashmar, which was several hundred kilometers away from Alexei’s current position. It had been long enough since it rained last that the BMW’s microwave density sensors assured him that he could ride directly over the great crusts of salt without fear of falling through into the black saline marshes below. He stood up on his foot pegs until the ridges of minerals flattened out into dirt, and then into paths, and finally into the closest thing to a road Alexei had seen in weeks.

The handset was clipped in among the bike’s instrument cluster and he checked it as he rode. He was close enough when the attack occurred that had the target been destroyed, he would have probably heard it. Since no acrid black plumes rose above the horizon ahead, he knew that the site contained bodies and/or equipment that the United States considered vital and therefore fully intended to recover.

The reds and browns and blacks of salt and sand were behind Alexei now and it was almost ten degrees cooler as he began to pass through the shade of occasional trees. He was still several kilometers outside of Kashmar when the dirt road turned to gravel and he approached a cluster of warehouses. The windows were boarded and the old chipped brick was covered in the dripping twists and swirls and dots of Farsi graffiti which the transparent LCD inside Alexei’s visor translated into “God is great” and “Death to Israel” and “Behead all infidel pig-fuckers.” Weeds pushed up through the gravel out front where several Iranian sedans were parked at various angles. The trees around the buildings looked too straight—even for products of genetic engineering—and as Alexei got off his bike, he realized that they were artificial. The silicon foliage concealed antennas, transmitters, and clear plastic parabolic satellite dishes watching several different regions of the sky at once. He left the keys in the ignition and did not remove his helmet.

The first warehouse Alexei checked explained the Americans’ interest. There were no bodies, but dozens of drones were arranged throughout the space, each a dramatically unique model. In the natural light permitted by the transparent thermoplastic panels in the ceiling, Alexei could see everything from an old stealth Sentinel reconnaissance UAV—the Beast of Kandahar,
as it was once known—to multicopter gunships to racks of Hummingbird- and Dragonfly-class micro aerial vehicles. Nestled in below the wings and rotors of the larger aircraft were several models of continuous-track and 6x6 UGVs, or Unmanned Ground Vehicles, and even a few quadrupedal and bipedal transport, antipersonnel, and antiaircraft assets commonly referred to as “mechs.” Several of the machines were partially disassembled—clearly in the process of being reverse engineered—and the air inside the hanger was thick with the fumes of kerosene-based jet fuel and the metallic tinge of old battery acid. Although there were various components tagged and laid out on steel, multi-tiered machine tables, there was no wreckage, and none of the vehicles appeared to have sustained any damage. It looked as though everything in the warehouse had been captured fully intact.

The next structure was exactly what Alexei was expecting. Even through his one-piece, composite-weave suit he felt the frigid air wash over him as he slid the door open. The space was divided between racks of servers and rows of workstations, all connected by cables dropping down from a low ceiling of metal latticework panels. Alexei had infiltrated facilities like this before and he knew that some of the cabling was for data and some of the lines carried water—likely condensed from the vapor byproduct of hydrogen fuel cells—which was used to draw thermal energy away from the synthetic diamond heat sinks clamped down over what probably totaled tens of thousands of parallel processor cores.

Alexei was inside a modern Iranian war room.

All of the technicians were dead. They lay in pools of bodily fluids, their white microfiber thermal-insulated suits absorbing the blood from their gums and eyes and ears, and the greenish-brown bile heaved up from their stomachs with their very last breaths. The attack had obviously been radiological, conducted by one or more quadrotor drones focusing beams of ionizing radiation—probably gamma rays—at levels of at least one hundred thousand roentgens. Unconsciousness would have been almost instantaneous and death from internal hemorrhaging not far behind.

The building would probably not be safe until it was fully decontaminated, so Alexei backed out and closed the door. He felt the ring beneath his glove vibrate and he took his handset out of his thigh pocket and checked the map. The Americans were less than a kilometer away and
approaching rapidly. He picked a spot between the nearest building and his bike, took a few casual steps, relaxed his arms and legs, and collapsed.

He couldn’t tell exactly how many vehicles there were, but from the number of doors he heard open and slam, he guessed at least three. There were the sounds of ammo magazines being slapped into place, rounds being chambered, and safeties being released, but he could tell the men were not advancing in any kind of formation. Their boots kicked lackadaisically at the gravel as they gathered.

“Check him out. Dude almost got away.”

“What the hell’s a bike like that doing way the fuck out here?”

“I don’t know, but the poor thing’s all alone without anyone in the world to take care of it.”

“To the victor go the spoils.”

“How the hell are you going to get that thing back?”

“It’s a motorcycle, you fucking retard. How do you think?”

“Man, if I were you, I wouldn’t go near that thing.”

“Why not?”

“It’s either bobby trapped and you’re going to get your balls blown off right away, or you’re going to hit an IED on the way back and get your balls blown off. Either way, no motorcycle’s worth getting your balls blown off.”

“Why not? Ain’t like he’s using them.”

“All right, everyone. Listen up. We got four buildings to cover. Scarberry, Hash, I want you to take the western structure. Carbone and O’Leary, you take the one behind it. Me and Collins will start with this guy, then do the main building. Whoever finishes last gets the fourth building while everyone else gets to drink what’s in that cooler we brought. Got it?”

There was a chorus of acknowledgments, followed by the crunch of boots dispersing. Alexei heard the top of a Zippo flick open, a plasma torch ignite, and then a metallic snap. The stiff weave of his suit lifted the armor above his torso, leaving a shallow cavity into which his chest slowly rose and fell as he took measured, invisible breaths.

“You scan this guy yet?”

Alexei could hear a handheld electric potential sensor being triggered. “He’s cooked. Man, that’s a nice fucking helmet he’s got on.”

Alexei heard a boot next to his head, then felt his visor get shoved up.

“Holy shit, this ain’t no Hajji!”

“It most certainly is not.”

“Fucking mercenaries.”

“What do you mean
fucking mercenaries
? What do you think you are?”

“I’m a
military contractor
. There’s a difference.”

“And what difference is that?”

“The difference is he’s dead and I ain’t, which means I get to make the rules.”

“You can make all the rules you want, just do it while you’re helping me move this guy.”

“Hold on. He ain’t even bleeding. Let me get his helmet first.”

Alexei felt fingers working at the strap under his chin.

“Leave the helmet where it is, Collins.”

“Come on, man. That’s a nice fucking helmet. Ain’t like he needs it anymore.”

“I said leave it. Take the bike if you want it, but we’re here to collect these bodies, not rob them.”

“How can you rob someone who’s dead? That’s just plain ignorant.”

“By taking shit that doesn’t belong to you, that’s how. Now I’m done fucking around, Collins. I said no.”

A moment passed and then Alexei’s visor got slapped back down.

“Fine. Fuck it. Helmets are for pussies, anyways.”

“Relax. It’s not like you got much to protect. Come on. Let’s get this done.”

Alexei felt himself being lifted from the ankles and armpits, carried a short distance, and then lowered.

“Gently now.”

“Man, how come you’re always sticking up for these ragheads?”

“He isn’t a raghead. You saw him. He’s about as white as O’Leary’s ass.”

“Whatever. Anyone who comes out here and takes up arms against the United States is a raghead in my book, and you’re the only one I know who gives a fuck about what happens to every one of these camel-humping sons-a-bitches. That what they teach you in officer school? You too brainwashed to break the rules every now and then?”

“It’s not because I’m an officer, and it’s not because I’m afraid to break the rules.”

“Then what is it? What’s wrong with grabbing a helmet, or a gold tooth, or a little jewelry every now and then? Ain’t like they’re going to miss any of it.”

“It’s called
respect
, Collins. Not that you’d know anything about that.”

“Respect? Wait a second. You do know that we’re sending these bodies out for DECOP, right? You do know what Deceased Enemy Combatant Processing is, don’t you? I’m pretty sure that’s about the farthest thing from respect there is.”

“Maybe, but that’s not my call. What is my call is how they get treated before they get sent out. It may not be much, but it’s something.”

“Yeah, it’s something, all right.”

“Let me ask you something, Collins. You think you’re always going to be on the winning side of this fight?”

“I damn sure intend to be.”

“You might intend to be, but what we want and what we get are two very different things, aren’t they? When your number’s up, you want someone pulling your teeth out of your skull with some rusty old pair of pliers, or cutting off your ear and wearing it on a necklace as a souvenir, or dragging your bare-ass body through the streets while everyone spits and pisses on your corpse?”

“They’ll do all that shit anyway. It don’t matter what we do.”

“Maybe, but that’s not the point. It isn’t about who
they
are—it’s about who
we
are. They might be our enemy, but that doesn’t mean we have to hate them. We all got our fights to fight in this world.”

“That’s why we should be out here getting what we can, when we can. If you ask me, we’re passing up a damn good opportunity here.”

“That’s the thing,” the man said. “I’m not asking.”

Alexei felt the space around him condense and then he heard the click of several latches. When he opened his eyes again, it was black.

The time glowing in the corner of his visor told Alexei that it was a little less than three hours before he was loaded onto a freight drone, and then another ten hours before he landed. Environmental scrubbers in his helmet kept carbon dioxide levels in the casket down to 394 parts per million by absorbing the
poisonous molecules into the padding, and he sipped cool, compressed oxygen from the vent over his nose and mouth. The freighter was refrigerated, and when the sensors around Alexei’s torso detected that he was nearly hypothermic, current from the batteries in his boots was forced through the resistant steel fibers woven into his suit’s composite material until his core was back up to ninety-eight degrees. He spent a few hours drifting in and out of sleep and he dreamed that he had the opportunity to kill a man who he hated intensely for reasons he could not recall, but the trigger of his pistol was soft and the bullets just slid down the barrel with a metallic rasp and dropped to the floor at his feet where they bounced and rolled and accumulated into a maddening pile of impotence.

He felt himself being unloaded and then the casket vibrated as it moved along a track. There were industrial sounds ahead of him: the banging of heavy objects being moved and stacked; the hiss and groan of pneumatics; the robotic whine of servos and actuators; the accumulative cacophony of products either being assembled or destroyed. When the noise entirely surrounded him, Alexei placed his palms against the top of the casket and pushed. The material warped, then reformed to its original shape as soon as he lowered his hands. He made a fist and punched feebly in the small space, but the carbon fiber shell deflected his blows. The casket jerked to a stop and then the top was gone and Alexei was suddenly looking up at the underside of a massive metallic insect. Jointed appendages clattered above him wielding high-speed diamond-tipped saw blades and drill bits, scalpels, retractors, needles, suction tubes, and fiber optic scopes. There wasn’t enough room to vault up and out, so he threw his weight against the side of the casket, but it was locked securely into its track. An array of steel grippers began to descend—mechanisms designed to pin him at multiple points and keep him immobile during the initial cutting—but they paused just above the casket. The noise immediately around him wound down as the machinery’s residual power faded. The casket was yanked further along the track and the surgical cluster was replaced by a chubby face with saggy eyes and a black beard shaped along an ample jawline. The man smiled.