The Spy I Loved (21 page)

“
We can be assured they will try again.”

“
Have you seen this?” Jenkins spun the laptop on his knees and
lifted it in Liam’s direction.

Liam
nodded sagely, having studied the contraption.

As they had sort of surmised, their little bomb-boat was not
a robot. It was not directed by line-of-sight radio control, which
had been Liam’s initial impression. It was far more sophisticated,
and yet the world being what it was, pretty much all of the
components were off the shelf or reasonably available if one knew
the right (or the wrong) people. The
secondary
setting was pure robot.
The average programmer could write the software, in weeks rather
than months or years.

The target would be acquired, the bomb-boat launched and then
for good measure the launcher could or would self-destruct. It was
all up to the remote operators. The
launcher
could also be maneuvered in
its now-discharged condition to another location, presumably for
pick-up and re-loading. The enemy had put a lot of thought into
this one. It was
crazy
enough, that it had actually worked. The machine that had
attacked Liam had acquired the target and then locked into its
attack with motors and twin screws governed by accelerometers in a
feedback loop to the speed control—as Liam recalled in the
debriefing, the thing had throttled up and down as it followed him,
especially when it hit a bump and came up out of the
water.

The
device had been carefully disarmed by Canadian Forces personnel,
called in for the occasion. Initially puzzled by the machine, they
had accepted the challenge after a quick look and some consultation
among themselves.

A keen
bunch.

Either
that or just plain crazy.

The thing
about the launcher was that it had an access hatch above the motor
and control systems. Once inside, it was almost self-explanatory.
The wires between the charge and its own dedicated little battery
were safely unplugged, then the arming circuit came
next.

The
machine could be manually operated using a camera mounted on the
deck. The camera could swivel left and right for about two hundred
and seventy degrees, as well as tilting up and down.

The boat
and camera system had a powerful transmitter considering its size.
It was more than adequate to bounce a signal via satellite uplink
to an operator almost anywhere in the zone of coverage. This was
limited by the curvature of the earth, but signals could be easily
bounced over the horizon by relay satellites.

Equipped
with a few simple servo controls and a receiver, the boat had been
packed with approximately one-point-one kilograms of plastic
explosive.

The
machine was impressive in that it was cheap but effective. The
techs said they could build one on a budget of a thousand
dollars.

The boat
itself was injection-molded from sturdy polystyrene, much like any
toy boat. So far they had not identified the maker. A small
plastics plant, one anywhere in the world and with its own tool and
die-makers, could make any number of them. They could build many
different designs. This included the launcher, the boat, and the
camouflaged surveillance cameras as well.

What else
they might have was pure speculation. The technical people had done
wonders working from fragmentary evidence.

Helicopters and other military aircraft in the area were
terribly vulnerable to surface-to-air attack. They agreed that
simply making a terror demonstration, attacking a western military
power on their own ground, was not the purpose of the opposition’s
presence.

Without much hard evidence against them, (none, really) there
was little point in making arrests or bringing charges against any
of the individuals identified or under surveillance so far. There
was little hope of a conviction with what they had now. What was
important was
building a case,
a thorough one, taking in not just the small fry
but some of the bigger players. This was only one aspect of Project
EMERALD, their working code name. It was a fishing expedition of an
entirely different kind, although the field operatives didn’t need
to know that.

What was
interesting was that the boats appeared to be part of a larger,
integrated, miniature weapons system. A robot bomb, an arming
circuit, and the video/fly-by-wire controls could go into miniature
boats, planes, four-wheel-drive trucks. The techs had done a quick
internet search and found all kinds of remote aerial, water-borne,
and toy car-type videos from amateur radio-control nuts. One fellow
even had an electric goose—a modified decoy, with an electric
motor, a camera lens, and the whole thing was pretty convincing
from a short distance away. A duck or goose decoy could carry a
kilo or half-kilo of explosive, no problem.

A
thorough search along the shoreline where Liam had first observed
the boat turned up a most devious device. The police and military
were cooperating fully, and being fed enough to keep them going by
Marinaro and his staff.

This was
where they had found the portable launcher (now empty) for the
boat. It was self-propelled in its own right. Someone had launched
it, probably elsewhere with better cover, and then maneuvered it
into position. It might have been moved subsequently. A hollow
tube, it was stabilized by a simple lead keel. There was a door on
the front end, motors, battery packs, solar cells on the top of it,
and a binocular video camera on a short mast. It was capable of
range-finding and locking onto a target according to the technical
people’s initial reports.

With the
boat loaded inside and under constant trickle-charge, the camera
had been sending scrambled signals back via uplink to a remote
control operator. Once Liam (or any target) was positively
identified, the controller hit a switch. A simple flat plate on the
front opened, and a puff of CO2 ejected the boat from the launcher,
fully charged and weapons armed. It had all the data from the
launcher’s targeting system downloaded into it prior to
launch.

The boat
had twin electric motors and ten cells, the latest in rechargeable
batteries. It could have gone a lot faster as Liam had thought, but
with the tiny boats, capsizing was always a risk.

This was
true on any kind of water.

After
launch, it was fly-by-wire essentially, with operators staring at
screens. They might be just a few miles away, otherwise time-lag
made it hard to control in a rapidly-changing tactical situation.
Liam Kimball, all human frailty and warm flesh and blood, ripe for
the spilling, was lucky. Just plain lucky.

“
So it wasn’t
just
a robot then. Well. That’s nice to know.” Liam
pursed his lips in appreciation. “You’ve got to wonder what’s
next.”

“
For one thing, you’re starting to talk like us.” Jenkins was
sympathetic, but Liam was alive after all. “In a more open, more
conventional warfare scenario, those things would be set on fully
automatic.”

It was an
interesting shoreline defense, in Jenkins’ opinion, being
relatively light, portable and cheap to build.

Certain
friendly governments would be informed of this
development.

However.
Now they had something to go on. Such systems didn’t just grow on
trees.

Ian
sighed.

“
And sooner or later, they will send a robot after
us.”

Jenkins
sat up, looking for the bottle.

The world
wasn’t quite ready for that yet.

And yet
it was so close—you could almost build your own for fifty or a
hundred thousand dollars, Jenkins thought.

“
What’s worse, is that now we’ll be keeping an eye over our
shoulder, spooked by every kid with a radio-control dune buggy.
Maybe not looking where we should be when the time
comes.”

Ian
lifted an eyebrow.

“
Or—radio control helicopters, gliders, airplanes. It could be
a cute little robot doggie, all lost and alone, going
arf, arf, arf.
Shit.”

There was
no telling what the enemy would try next, but with a little help
from some friends, they might just intercept a signal. The trick
was not to alert the enemy, or they would just switch it off—or
blow it up. They could almost assume that it would be turned off
until it was needed again. Their boat teams hadn’t been searching
at night at all.

The
investigation would take a whole new turn, not that that was
uncommon.

You never
really knew what you might dig up. It was a process.

Chapter Fifteen

Jenkins
cast her eye on their signal-blocker, set between them and their
observers across the road.

A little
black box of the most anonymous kind, it identified low-powered
bug-type signals and jammed them. The green light still glowed on
the front and that was about it. It was also true that data could
be captured by heat radiating from the screen and the machine had
countermeasures in place, random bursts in selected non-visible EM
frequencies.

“
Liam.”

“
Sir.”

Jenkins
and Ian stared at Liam from across his kitchen table. Little F was
onscreen, and Liam had the laptop off to one side. They could all
see F and F could see them. For want of inspiration, they were
having dinner, barbecuing steak and drinking one or two welcome
beers. Liam’s chest stung from mini-shrapnel, but he had the best
painkillers in the world and knew how to use them without blurring
his senses beyond reason.

“
Our two little frogs.”

“
Ah.” Liam tipped back his bottle and had a swig.

Now that
all bets were off and things were a little more open, he had the
boss on speakerphone.

“
What about them?”

A fresh
notice appeared in his bucket and there were attachments as
usual.

Liam
opened it up, and then shoved the computer over their way. Ian and
Jenkins leaned in, reading it without moving their lips so to
speak. Names, dates, addresses, passports and birth certificates.
Hmn.

Subject
Number One. Caleb Hanson, born in a small town in Arkansas.
Military training. Thirty-four years old. He’d been employed by a
slightly-notorious American private security firm, with a few years
of employment in Iraq, Afghanistan and in several strife-torn
African states. His last known employment was eighteen months
previously.

Subject
Number Two. Simon Barnet, born on Martinique. No major information.
Twenty-nine years old.

“
These guys have the look of mercenaries.” Entered the country
claiming to be on vacation.

No real
questions asked at Canada Border Services Agency when they arrived,
driving a truck, bearing fishing gear, credit cards, and having a
reservation at The Pines. No prior arrests.

They fit
the profile well enough and didn’t trigger any
thresholds.

There
wasn’t much to go on with such preliminary information.

Ian sat
back and Jenkins pushed the machine back to Liam.

“
We’ll talk to you later, Uncle Frank.”

“
Keep in touch. Bye-bye.”

Marinaro had a quick
tete-a-tete
with Frank that they
didn’t need to hear, but kept his image onscreen. His next
appointment was a few minutes away and someone might think of
another question.

It made
for some interesting reading.

Frogman
number one, as Marinaro was calling him, was a white male. He had
been in excellent health and about six feet tall. He weighed in at
over eighty kilos. No identifying marks. Brown eyes and brown hair,
clean-shaven. The picture of the face was not a flattering
likeness, not in life or death, and the harsh light gave it a waxy
look. Liam didn’t recognize him.

Frogman number two was an African male. Liam shook his head.
Looking, back, there might have been something, the dark skin
around the white-edged eyes in the scuba mask.
Race
was the last thing on Liam’s
mind at the time. He was six-foot, three inches tall. Ninety kilos,
brown eyes, a few small tattoos, purely decorative in the opinion
of the experts. There was no deep meaning or affiliation, not as
far as they could determine from databases of such artworks,
databases compiled over many years and from many different
sources.

According
to the report, the police were being cooperative. They needed all
the help and manpower they could get. Police were keeping an eye
out for unaccounted-for vehicles, people not returning to their
site or accommodation. There were always recreational divers in the
area in summer. As many as possible were being interviewed casually
by docksides and wharves by junior operatives. The cops were
pitching in when they could on the lower-level
activities.

They were
looking at all rental properties, looking for those that were
occupied but seemed too quiet.