“Mission target. Engage on my command.”
The image vanished. Hal continued to jog in place. A corridor appeared straight ahead. Hal darted into it. Wary. The walls were flat with no features — just computer-generated polygons. A simulated building of sorts — a three-dimensional blueprint.
“Right turn in twenty feet.”
The turn arrived and Hal took it. Trodding hard right.
“Left turn in ten feet.”
Hal turned left, approaching a light in the corridor. He moved away from it in a double-time jog.
“Good. Avoid the light. Enter the building.”
A door appeared. Hal entered.
“Engage enemy in fifty feet.”
Hal spotted him and raised his rifle. He fired, and the spray of bullets sounded like a phone ringing. The enemy, the building and everything else in the virtual world faded as the ringing grew louder and louder.
The ringing continued from the phone on Hal’s nightstand. He could hear it, but was too tired to open his eyes and answer. He willed his arm to the nightstand, picking up his cordless landline. Grumbling a greeting. “Yhhhh?”
“So, that’s how an alcoholic answers the phone! What if I was your mother calling?” “Whhha?” Hal said. Then looked up at his clock. “Shit.”
“That’s right, Sleeping Beauty. Are you gonna’ come down from the castle and join us here at work anytime soon?”
Hal recognized Yarbo’s voice. “I’m on the way.” He hung up and scurried out of bed. Hal grabbed a clean uniform from the closet, glancing down at his laptop. Remembering he left it recording all night. He flipped the top down and stuffed it in the carrying case.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
GUOANBU
A pair of hands fixed a military-grade surveillance camera atop a sleek and sturdy tripod in the bunkhouse loft. Weng panned the camera to the Holloman runway, adjusting the settings. He spoke in Mandarin through a Bluetooth device linked to a satellite phone. “Setting time lapse video on the Holloman runway now. You should be getting the feed.”
Weng glanced to an open laptop in front of Matt. Its screen split into quadrants-three showed feeds from the entrances and exits to Holloman Air Force Base and the fourth was from the camera Weng just set up-covering the Holloman runways. Runway twenty-five was the most visible from their vantage point.
“We have the feed of all camera images now,” Weng said through the Bluetooth earpiece, “and will record all cameras twenty-four-seven.”
The third teammate, a Chinese patriot of African descent with the alias Charlie Cooper, monitored another laptop with a radar image of the air base and its immediate surroundings.
Charlie pressed buttons on what looked like a bulky satellite phone next to his computer. Radio static sounded from the air-band scanner. He searched past garbled air and radio traffic and found what he was looking for: the back-and-forth communication of the Holloman air traffic control tower. He plugged the phone into a USB port on his laptop. Transcribed text appeared beside a wave-form view of the conversation between the tower and a pilot.
Weng closed the curtains to a mere crack so only the camera lens could peer through at the base. He signed off with his superiors on the other end of the phone, telling them they were headed to their front — the Habitat build.
Baldo was alone in Hangar 302 watching the bank of monitors. Hal was on one, working from his office. His personal laptop was up and running beside his desktop monitor. Hal angled the laptop screen away from anyone passing by and tilted it down to avoid hidden cameras. Baldo’s eyelids were heavy, watching Hal on one screen and random feeds from around the base on other screens.
Hal worked at his desk, suspicious of the motion detector in the corner of the ceiling, believing it was a disguised surveillance camera. He was careful to not look directly into it.
A small window on the laptop played the recording of his sleep from the previous night. Hal had scanned through his first hour of his sleep, noticing no changes. He watched himself toss and turn in fast motion, dragging the slider ahead in time.
Yarbo noticed Hal looking back and forth between computers. “Late night of homework?”
“Yeah, just downloading it now.”
Hal glanced at the laptop screen. Surprised to see an empty bed. He rewound it, watching carefully. He saw himself casually rise from bed and saunter to his closet. Putting on sweats, socks and running shoes.
Hal looked at the time code counter. Only two hours in, which would put the time around eleven-thirty or midnight, he thought. What the hell am I doing and why don’t I remember this? Am I sleepwalking?
The Hal on screen grabbed his house keys from the nightstand, turned off the bedroom lights and left the room. Hal scrolled the video slider to the right. Zipping through hours of footage of an empty bed. A flash of light appeared in the room and Hal stopped. Slowly scrolling back until his bedroom light turned on. He checked the time code counter. Four hours later. He played the video in real time.
The onscreen Hal returned in the same sweatsuit and running shoes. His movements were methodical and robotic. He removed his sweat pants and shirt, tossing them in a laundry basket. Sleep-jogging? Hal thought. He watched himself remove his shoes and socks, placing them neatly in the closet. He turned off the light and returned to his bed. I haven’t sleepwalked since boot camp.
Hal felt Yarbo’s eyes on him and he returned to his work, dragging the video file to the trash and emptying it. Hal closed his laptop and turned his attention back to analyzing aerial footage taken from a C-31 air strike on an Afghani village. Watching a hail of machine gun fire from a Gatling cannon rip up a Taliban unit was more entertaining than boring recon drone footage.
Hal split the screen in half, opening a new window with the FBI link to the most wanted ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorists. He studied each face, but didn’t recognize any. Hal closed the window and performed a search in a military database of Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan.
Hal scrolled through dozens of pictures, but nothing registered. He added the word known to the search field. Pulling up hundreds of matching links. Hal clicked one taken from a CNN.com article. He scrolled down, skimming it from top to bottom before closing it and returning to the next link on the search. “Afghan President Targets Known Terrorists” was the headline. He clicked on it and a photo leapt off the page, triggering a flashback of the Middle Eastern man in a designer suit. It was the same man on the screen — Mohammed Durrani-the Interim President of Afghanistan.
Hal took a shaky drink of coffee. Anxious. He set it down and tidied up his desk. More certain than ever he was being watched. He grabbed his cell phone and put it in the top drawer, then picked up a file folder and started to leave. “I’m heading down to the commissary. Catch up with you later.”
“Gimme’ a minute,” Yarbo said. “I’ll join you.”
“I gotta’ run some errands first, but I’ll find you there.”
Hal left the office. Spotting another “motion detector” in the outer hallway. The building was older, 1960s simple office architecture. The window-lined hallway faced the parking lot outside. A long yellow school bus parked at the curb in front of the entrance. The people aboard flowed into the building. Fifty high school students — boys and girls — potential Air Force recruits. They paraded down the hallway toward Hal. Some gaping out the windows to the retired fighter planes on display. Hal knifed to the middle of the crowd and pretended to drop the folder. Ducking down to pick up the papers. Enveloped by the crowd — obscured from the view of surveillance cameras.