BR-6-7-4 clung close to the ceiling, flattening its shape, and crept between the door and the doorway it was set in, into a large open room. Two human-shaped objects, alive in IR, sat on the floor at one end of the room. The one facing it was a Person of Interest. It logged that fact. The other faced away from BR-67-4. It began the long trek across the room.
It took nine minutes for BR-6-7-4 to cross the room in full stealth mode. The two warm human-shaped objects remained roughly stationary in that time. The Person of Interest's eyes were closed. Its chest rose and fell, consistent with respiration. BR-6-7-4 consulted its decision tree and provisionally labeled the Person of Interest as "Alive", consistent with body temperature and respiration, and "Asleep", consistent with a long duration of eye closure and silence. It left a flag indicating possible re-evaluation due to seated position.
Finally BR-6-7-4 reached a position where it could see the facial area of the second human-shaped object. This human-shaped object also respirated, also with eyes closed. More interesting was the face. Facial recognition routines identified a possible match with one of its Primary Targets, but a number of the details were different in unexpected ways.
Spider BR-6-7-4 hunkered down, double-checked that it was functionally invisible, and broadcast a burst of data to its masters.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Kade had lost track of the hours he'd spent here. Ananda was tireless, the rhythm of his mind as flawless and eternal as ocean surf against a beach. Kade on the other hand… he was tired. More at peace, but so so tired. His concentration was fraying, random thoughts sneaking back in around the absorbing tranquility of his breath.
And then he felt it.
All around him, behind him, throughout this room. Scores of minds unmasked themselves, sitting calm and silent in rows and columns. How long had they been here?
And then, as one, the monks began to breathe, in time to Kade and Ananda.
The effect was electrifying. Kade felt himself buoyed by it. He was not just one. He was many. He was all. The minds in the room were a web, a tapestry, an orchestra of thought without thought. The room breathed in. The room breathed out. A thought occurred in the mind of a novice. It rippled across the mind of the room. All observed it. All brought attention back to the breath.
It lifted Kade up. It filled him with a peace and clarity he'd never felt. He felt utterly clear, sober, grounded, balanced. All fatigue left him. Shadows vanished from the corners of his mind. As one they brought their collective attention to their symphony of breath, let go of the anchor of attachment to the past, to what had been, to what might have been.
There was only here.
There was only now.
There was only breath.
There was only mind.
44
FINDINGS
Aboard the Boca Raton, an icon on a screen turned yellow, began to flash for attention. Jane Kim tapped the icon, expanded the alert. One of the spiders at target 67. A possible match. There. That face. Kaden Lane, in monk's robes, shaven head, a bandage across his face. And across from him, Professor Somdet Phra Ananda, personal friend of the King of Thailand.
Kim paged Nichols in his stateroom. He would want to see this.
While she waited, she turned her attention to the other spiders at target 67. If Lane was there, Cataranes might be there too. She updated the target profile for Cataranes to include the possibility of a shaven head, bandages, and monk's robes, and redirected all of them towards finding Primary Target Beta. Find Blackbird.
Two and a half hours later, they did. She was still alive.
Becker answered the phone at 4.13am Sunday morning, DC time. Sunday afternoon in Thailand. The Boca Raton. They'd found Lane and Cataranes. Monastery. Undefended. Within range of retrieval. The data was spooling to his slate now.
"Get the ball rolling," he told Nichols.
"Do we have clearance to launch?"
"You will in four hours."
White House, National Security Advisor's Office
"This operation was a complete clusterfuck, was it not?" Senator Barbara Engels asked. "And now you want to follow it up with an armed invasion? This is crazy."
Becker wanted to rub his temples. The senator's voice made his head hurt. The meeting had stretched on for more than an hour already, going round and round on the same topics.
"Thank you, Barbara," National Security Advisor Carolyn Pryce said. "We appreciate the input of the oversight committee."
The senator shook her head. "You're looking at a lot more than input here. If this blows up in our faces, you're going to see hearings in my committee. Hearings during an election year. Does that register with you? You people are off the deep end."
Secretary of State Abrams nodded his head in support. "I agree with Senator Engels. We can't further provoke the Thai."
"They're harboring a criminal," said Becker's superior, ERD Director Joe Duran. "A possibly posthuman being who's coerced and abducted our agents, used them to kill our men. We have to go in."
Duran's boss, Homeland Security Secretary Langston Hughes, nodded his approval.
Pryce turned to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Stanley McWilliams had been largely silent throughout the meeting, studying the details of the plan that Becker had sent him on his slate. "Admiral McWilliams? What's your view on this?"
The silver-haired admiral looked up from his slate, met Pryce's eyes, held them steadily. "This mission is a crock of shit."
Becker felt himself bristle. People around the table straightened themselves in surprise. Becker opened his mouth to reply.
Pryce held her raised palm out towards him, her eyes still on McWilliams. The reply died on Becker's lips.
"Go on, Admiral."
"First, we shouldn't have launched those recon drones last night. We have a chain of command for a reason." His eyes flickered over Becker and then Maximilian Barnes.
I've made an enemy, Becker realized. Going around him and his people pissed him off.
"Second, this mission looks good on a slate, but no plan survives contact with the enemy. Everything has to go perfectly for us to get in and out without being detected. That's possible, but unlikely. If anything goes sideways at all, we'll be caught invading an undefended, civilian, holy site in a nominally allied country. And for what?" He slid his slate across the table, a picture of Kaden Lane on it. "For bullshit. It's not worth it."
Everyone started talking at once.
Pryce held her hand up. "Quiet."
The noise stopped as quickly as it had begun.