“Assuming that they were — I’m not sure that’s one hundred percent yet — there’s no reason to think the tragedy would have been avoided with a manned plane,” said Zen.
“Really, Senator?”
“Obviously, we have to see the circumstances of the accident,” he said. “But manned planes make mistakes, too. Unfortunately.”
“UAVs seem more dangerous.”
“Not really. UAVs have helped reduce casualties,” Zen answered. “Now some people — pilots especially — long for what are thought of as the good ol’ days, when every aircraft was manned. But remember, back in the very old days, collateral damage was a serious problem. World War Two saw horrendous civilian deaths. We’ve come a long way.”
A voice from the back shouted a question. “Why are robots making the decisions now?”
Zen tried to ignore the question, turning to the right, but the reporter he glanced at asked the same thing.
“I don’t know that they are,” said Zen.
“There have been anonymous reports to that effect,” said the first reporter. “Several news organizations have gotten leaks.”
“I don’t have information on that, so I guess I can’t address it,” said Zen.
“Are the UAVs acting on their own?” asked Storey.
“It’s not a robot rebellion, if that’s what you’re asking,” said Zen. “Men are in the loop.”
“I’ve heard from sources that they are not,” said the reporter in the back.
“I’ve given you pretty much the details I know and can give,” said Zen. He noticed Zongchen standing nearby. “We’re looking into everything. Probably the person you really want to talk to about the committee would be General Zongchen.”
Zongchen gave him a look that said, Thanks a lot.
The reporters began peppering him with questions. Before Zongchen could answer, a rock sailed overhead. Zen looked up and saw several more flying from the direction of the ruins.
Suddenly, there were many rocks in the air.
The riot took Kharon by surprise. He moved to his left, looking for a way out of the crowd.
People surged from the edge of the ruins, pushing toward the thin line of UN soldiers. Clearly, the action had been planned by the government. A foolish, stupid move.
But then, what did they do that wasn’t foolish?
The cameras shifted their aim from the dignitaries to the crowd. The people yelled about killers and murderers, and threw more rocks — they couldn’t quite see the irony.
The journalists moved toward the rock throwers, most thinking they were immune to the violence. Kharon realized they were just as much the target as the dignitaries were — and they didn’t have anyone to protect them.
It was time to leave.
He pocketed his ID and moved quickly back through the ruins, walking at first, then running back to his truck.
Zen made it to the Osprey just as the UN soldiers fired warning shots into the air. He wheeled himself toward the platform but was intercepted by two of the plainclothes security people who had traveled with them but stayed in the background.
“Sorry, Senator. We’re getting you out of here,” said one of the men gruffly. He grabbed him under the arm.
Zen started to protest but realized it was too late — he was half carried, half thrown into the Osprey. The props were already spinning.
“My chair!” he yelled.
No one heard him in the confusion. The door closed and the aircraft veered upward.
Zen crawled to the nearest seat and pulled himself up. Someone helped him turn around.
It was Zongchen.
“This did not go as well as I hoped,” said the Chinese general. He was sweating profusely. His pants were torn and his knee was bleeding.
“No, I would say it didn’t go well at all,” said Zen, wondering how long it would take to find a wheelchair as good as the one he had left behind.
5
The fact that the government thought staging a riot at al-Hayat would have any beneficial effect toward their cause showed just how far removed from reality the leaders were.
Kharon brooded about this on the drive back to the city, worried that the government would collapse before he was able to exact his revenge. If so, years of effort would have been wasted; he would have to begin fresh.
He was so distracted that when they arrived in Tripoli he agreed to pay Fezzan an extra hundred euros to help him carry the box of drives and CPUs up the stairs of the small house he had rented in the western quarter. Taped shut in a cardboard box that had held bags of cashews, the components were neither large nor particularly heavy. Fezzan left as happy as Kharon had ever seen him.
A few minutes after he left, Kharon took the devices from the box and put them in a large, padded suitcase. He went downstairs — he used the building only for his sporadic contacts with Fezzan and other locals — and found his small motorcycle in the alley at the back. He tied the suitcase to the rear fender with a pair of bungee cords, put on a helmet to obscure his face, then set out on a zigzag trail through the city.
His paranoia poked at him a few blocks later, when he came to an intersection blocked by police vehicles. Officially neutral like the city, the Tripoli police were generally considered pro-rebel, though you could never tell whose side they were on. And given Kharon’s situation, either could instantly decide he was their enemy.
But the police were investigating a routine traffic accident, and waved him past as he approached.
Kharon drove to the dense residential districts north of Third Ring Road. After making sure he wasn’t being followed, he pulled down an alley and raced toward a building at the far end. Reaching into his pocket, he took out a garage door opener and pressed the button in the middle. Then he hit the brakes, skidding under the thick branches of several trees as he turned into a bay whose door was just opening. He took the turn so hard that he had to steady himself with his foot on the cement floor, half crashing to a halt.
He jerked his head back and forth, making sure he was alone. Then he hopped away from the bike and went to the empty workbench a few feet away. Reaching under it, he found a key taped to the underside. He used it to open the circuit breaker box above the bench just as the door opener’s automatic lights turned off. With his fingers, he hunted until he found the switch at the very bottom of the panel. He threw it to off, and then, still in the dark, walked to the side of the room and found the light switch.
When the lights came on, he glanced to the right, looking for the red light connected to his security system. The light stayed off. No one had been inside since his last visit.
Kharon went to the door to the garage and opened it. He glanced around the small room, making sure it was empty. Then he went back outside to the garage and the power panel, turned the breaker back on, and went inside.
The garage was the side end of a small workshop used as a sewing factory some years before. All of the machinery had been removed, a perfect place for Kharon to set up shop had he wanted. But he had decided it could be too easily surrounded; he used it only as a temporary staging area.
Inside the large room, he retrieved a touchscreen computer hidden in a small compartment beneath the tile floor. He activated it, then used it to interface with the security system, running a second check to make sure it had not been compromised. Satisfied, he pulled a large duffel bag from the compartment, replaced the tile, and went back to the garage, where he put the CPU drives in the bag. Then he locked down the building and went out through a side door.
An hour later Kharon carried the duffel bag down the steps of a lab building at Tripoli University to the subbasement where the utilities were kept. He waited at the bottom of the stairs, listening to hear if anyone was following. Then he slipped a thin plastic shim into the doorjamb to get around the lock. He stepped into a corridor lined with large pipes. Closing the door, he found himself completely in the dark.