Rogue Operator (21 page)

“That
mother—” Maggie stopped and took a deep breath. “Why are
we
here?”

“Leverage.”

“What’s
that mean?” asked Darius as fear returned to his mother’s eyes.

“It
means they’re going to kill us if Daddy doesn’t do what they say!” cried Ayla,
bursting into tears and burying her head in her mother’s chest.

“No,
that’s not true. They’re not going to hurt you because I’m going to cooperate
with them. You’ve got nothing to worry about,” said Jason, trying to be as
reassuring as possible, even though he personally felt the words coming from
his mouth were a load of lies. “There’s a school here for you kids to go to and
make some new friends. Hon, you’re allowed to go out and about. Apparently
there are stores. There’s just a curfew between eleven at night and six in the
morning, and you can’t leave the compound.”

He
stared at Maggie’s red and swollen eyes, pleading with his own eyes for her to
be strong for the kids’ sake. She nodded, and made several attempts before
successfully forcing a smile on her face.

“Well,
that doesn’t sound so bad then, does it?” She tilted Ayla’s head up, their
twelve year old, brimming with confidence only a few days ago, now turned into
a puddle of terrified pre-teen. “There’s a school, I’ll be able to walk you
there and pick you up. We can go shopping, and before you know it, we’ll be
heading back home and you’ll have a really cool story to tell all your
friends.”

This
piqued Darius’ attention and he looked up at his father.

“Can we
tell people when we get home?”

His
voice sounded so hopeful, so excited, that Jason decided a little white lie
might be worth it if it meant getting through the next few days, months or
year, with an eight year old ready to cooperate so he could tell his friends.

“Absolutely,”
smiled Jason. “I’ll bet none of them have been to North Korea!”

Darius
jumped from his father’s lap and faced Maggie.

“I’m
hungry.”

And with
that declaration, the conversation ended, and the Peterson family agreed to
become cooperative citizens of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, where
the only semblance of democracy that night may have been the tiny kitchen table
they sat at.

CIA Headquarters, Langley Virginia

Today, Six Days after the Kidnappings

Chris felt Sherrie’s hand grip his, and he immediately began to
worry about whether or not his hand was sweaty. Which probably made things
worse. But she grasped it in such a way that it didn’t matter, interlacing
their fingers and keeping their palms apart. Either her file on him was
incredibly detailed, or she was just very considerate.

Or she
had dated a guy with sweaty palms before, and assumed he’d have them.

He
wasn’t sure how long he’d last playing this charade. It was times like these
that he wished he were Kane. Kane was always cool, calm and collected. He
wouldn’t be worrying about his palms sweating. He’d probably have his arm
around her, holding her close, whispering sweet-nothings in her ear.

Whatever
the hell those were.

As they entered
the main lobby, Sherrie released his hand, and they became all business.
Apparently their affair was to be known to those who paid attention, but not
blatantly obvious so as to force someone to report their relationship as
against regulation. There were lots of flings in the office, and it was quietly
tolerated. His unaired theory on it was that they’d rather have you fulfilling
your sexual needs with a fellow CIA staffer, than with some stranger who might
actually be an enemy agent.

They
passed through security and rode the elevator up in silence. She gave him a
wink as she stepped into her cubicle. He returned it with flushed cheeks, and
sat down at his computer.

This was
where he was comfortable.

This was
where he could do some good, and not have to worry about trying to figure out
some female brain.

Logged
in, he connected to the Echelon interface and began loading in every keyword he
could think of into the dictionary that might cover the events in Ogden, and
the kidnapping of the scientists and their families, now that he had been fully
read in. It didn’t take long for his initial batch to be loaded, and he leaned
back, tapping his chin, occasionally leaning forward and adding another word or
phrase.

His
secure inbox soon began to fill with hit results from previously logged
conversations, and he smiled in anticipation.

Let’s
catch us some traitors.

Jason Peterson “Residence”, Somewhere in North Korea

Three Days after the Kidnappings

Jason climbed into bed, the bed linens smelling different than he
was used to. He realized their captors were going to a lot of effort to try and
make them feel at home. The pasta was Barilla, the sauce Ragu, the parmesan Kraft.
But the laundry detergent wasn’t their regular brand, and it was those little
things that would never let this be home.

Maggie
was already in bed, her bedside lamp out. He reached over, turned his off with
a twist, then leaned over and kissed her gently on the cheek. He was exhausted,
and knew as soon as his head hit the pillow he would be out like a light.

“Don’t
you think it’s time you told me?”

He
opened his eyes and stared at the dark mass beside him.

“Told
you what?”

“Everything.
What you’ve been working on. What happened three months ago that changed you.”

“It’s
top secret, hon, you know I can’t—”

“Bullshit,
Jason. We’re in North fuckin’ Korea. Apparently it’s only a secret to your
family!”

Her
voice was a hiss, but it still cut, causing his chest to tighten and
butterflies to form in his stomach. But the worst part was that she was right.
What the hell was the point of keeping the secret from his own wife, when she
was here, right along with him, kidnapped, and probably going to die when it
was all over.

He
sighed. “You’re right.” But he was concerned. The house was almost definitely
bugged. Would they care if he told his wife? Probably not. They probably
assumed he already had. But what if the weapons potential hadn’t occurred to
them? He leaned over and flipped the radio on, a piped in all-music channel
with no DJ’s and no news, as they had discovered last night, bleated out of its
tiny speaker. He turned the volume up as loud as he thought he could get away
with, without disturbing the kids.

He then
pulled the sheets and blanket over their heads, and huddled close to his wife,
putting his mouth near her ear.

“Have
you ever heard of nanotechnology?”

“Sure,
tiny robots, right?”

“Essentially,
yes. There have been several challenges. Essentially miniaturization of the
components to the microscopic level, then coming up with a manufacturing
process that would make them economical when produced in scale. We beat the
first challenge years ago, and now are pretty good at building them, and
programming them to do basic things in the labs. It’s really quite exciting
what we’ve been able to do.”

“What
are they used for?”

He could
tell from her tone that she was excited to finally learn what he had been
working on for essentially their entire marriage. Husbands and wives shouldn’t
have secrets, but this was the job, and he had signed a non-disclosure
agreement that had specifically mentioned his family, including his wife.

No
bedtime stories.

No
pillow talk.

Nobody
said anything about being held hostage by a foreign power.

“Well,
that’s the exciting part. With enough of these, programmed properly, we can do
almost anything. Imagine, you’ve got cholesterol. No problem. You get an
injection of nanobots—”

“Is that
what they’re called? Nanobots?”

Jason
shrugged, then realized she couldn’t see him.

“That’s
what they’re called this month. We haven’t hit on anything yet that grabs us
all. Nanobots, nanites, Microbots, T-one-thousandths—”

“Huh?”

“Sorry,
Terminator reference. Anyway,
whatever
they’re called, imagine getting
an injection. They swim through your veins, and whenever they encounter plaque
buildup, they go to work, removing it. After a few days their job is done, your
arteries are as clean as the day you were born, and your body then just
eliminates them as waste.

“And
that’s just the beginning. We can program them to recognize cancer cells,
tumors, blood clots—anything. Organ damage. Fat cells! Imagine, the ultimate
diet pill! Your heart is failing, they go in and fix it. Gallstones, they go in
and eliminate them. All with just an injection of these things, programmed for
a specific task.”

“But if
they’re so tiny, wouldn’t you need a lot of them?”

“And
that’s the second problem, which we thought we had solved about three months
ago. We created a program where the nanobot would make a copy of itself, then
transfer its programming to its duplicate. It was supposed to happen just once,
but somehow the line of code limiting it to just one replication was removed,
and it replicated a second and a third copy of itself, and in the meantime, the
new ones, created their own copies. It was exponential. Within minutes they had
broken out of their test environment, and run out of the test material we had
used for them to replicate, so they began consuming the lab. We had to use the
EMP to stop them, otherwise—”

His
voice cracked as he recalled the horror. A hand gently snaked its way around
him as Maggie comforted him.

“It’s
okay, it’s over.”

“It was
almost over for everyone. We were stupid. We were cocky. Nanotech researchers
have been trying to come up with some sort of rules to govern its development
so we can prevent the grey-goo scenario.”

“What’s
that?”

“It’s an
end of the world type thing. Basically you create a nanobot that can replicate
itself using the materials surrounding it. It then keeps doing that, while its
offspring do the same, and theirs as well. Eventually, the entire planet is
consumed, and all that is left are nanobots. No humans, no buildings, no land,
nothing. It’s just tiny robots.”

“And
that’s what almost happened in your lab?”

Jason
nodded. “Yes, it was horrible. Within just minutes they had swarmed out of the
test chamber and were eating through the equipment, the tables, the floor. When
I finally hit the EMP, they stopped just inches from my feet.”

“What’s
an EMP? I’ve heard that somewhere before.”

“It’s an
Electro Magnetic Pulse generator. It’s a machine that builds up a massive
electrical charge, then releases it all at once. It fries anything electronic,
including nanobots and all of the computers within about a half mile radius. It
fried the entire company. We nearly bankrupted them.”

“But
saved the world.”

“Yeah,
from our own stupidity.”

“If it’s
so dangerous, why keep going?”

“Because
of the potential. Imagine the health applications. We’re almost talking
immortality here. An end to diabetes, strokes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s,
organ failure, obesity. It’s the holy grail of medicine. And that’s not all.
Imagine being able to dump these into our rivers and oceans. They could clean
up the crap we’ve dumped in there over the centuries, leaving anything natural
alone. Or they could be programmed to build things. Imagine a microscopic
building crew that you just dumped into a pit and they began to build whatever
they were programmed to build. It would revolutionize mankind, take us into the
twenty-second century with perfect health, and cheap manufacturing of anything
we needed.”

He could
hear his voice rising in his excitement, and he took a deep breath, lowering
his voice.

“We just
needed to figure out a way to manufacture them in bulk. It was proving too
expensive, so self-replication seemed the only way to go. We built in the
safeguard, but it was somehow disabled.”

“How did
that happen? Did you ever figure it out?”

“We went
through our records, and it looks like Phil checked in a set of code that had
the one line that prevented more than one copy from being made commented out.”

“What’s
that?”

“It’s
just programmer talk for disabling a line of code without deleting it, so you
can easily reenable it later. It’s very easy to do, and it can be done by
accidentally clicking on a button and not noticing you did it. It was an
accident, and he felt terrible about it.”

“Obviously
not terrible enough if he’s willing to let this get into the hands of the North
Koreans. But how could they use it to create a weapon that wouldn’t end up
destroying themselves?”

“Well,
we figured that out too.”

“You
did—”

He could
hear her anger and disappointment.

“Not for
weaponization, but to allow us to replicate in a controlled way. Essentially we
would set an upper limit for the first generation, and when the code was copied
to their offspring, a counter would be decreased when passed on, so the new
generation couldn’t replicate more than that counter. When they created their
copies, the counter passed on would be decreased again. Essentially you would
only get as many generations as you set the counter to. So if you set it to one,
then you would have your original nanobot, and it would create one copy,
passing on the code with the counter decremented by one, so in other words,
zero. The new copy wouldn’t make a copy of itself. If you set it to two, then
the original would make two copies, the first copy getting a value of one, the
second a value of zero. The first copy would make one copy of itself, passing
on zero, and the second copy wouldn’t make anything, since it was already at
zero. So a value of two would create four copies.