Hank paced around, secretly signaling his crew. Dow took his place behind the camera, pretending to adjust it. Michaels positioned another scrim, trying to see if he could get more movement from the watcher.
Dow actually looked like he knew what he was doing with the film equipment. Hank liked it when operatives took their covers seriously. Back in the States, Dow had gone out and made his own videos and posted them on YouTube. He’d even subbed in as a P.A. on a low-budget film. His videos weren’t bad. From the conversation they had on the plane, Hank got the impression that Dow had half a mind to give real filmmaking a shot. More power to him. Covert ops survival skills would be very useful in Hollywood.
Suddenly a cry in the jungle brought him back to the present. It was primal. Something had just done another lap in the great circle of life, and the “something” sounded human.
Hank looked over at Dow. “You actually have that miked?”
“Yup. I got it.”
Hank stepped over as Dow handed him the headphones and rewound back to the scream-blip on the sound chart that he had been capturing as “sound bed” for the documentary with the idea that it could also sell as ambient background stock for films, themed restaurants and home “mind spas.” Dow was big into never letting things go to waste.
Hank listened to the scream. It sounded human, but there was another sound in there too. It may or may not have been human. The jungle was alive. He listened more closely.
Something about the scream sounded like speech. Ordered information. Like it was a word.
Hank passed the earphones to Michaels. “You’re the language guy. Is this a language?”
Michaels listened and nodded. “Chinese,” he said. “Probably Mandarin, but it’s hard to tell with death screams.” Michaels smiled. He was a dark guy.
It made sense to Hank that the third watchers were Chinese nationals. They were here in Africa for the three T’s: titanium, tin and tantalum, and, of course, the maximum C: coltan. These metals were vital to the manufacturing of mobile phones and key military tech, and more than 80 percent of the world’s deposits were here in Africa. In many ways these rare earth minerals were far more valuable than gold.
The dead man was most likely a member of a “disruption group.” It was a catchall term for post-WTO or World Trade Organizations that operated terror, drug and contraband smuggling groups, trading in human trafficking, animal parts or illegally mined minerals. Their mutual interests had merged them into something greater than the sum of their parts. Some masqueraded as private military companies, some advertised themselves as terrorist groups, and some wore a criminal enterprise moustache, but once you kicked over the rock and analyzed the maggots, they were all pretty much the same.
Hank crossed off any local African groups. They take their curses dead seriously here. Nobody was going to hang in the bush watching Hank Johnson make a pilot while they thought a monster was hunting them. Someone or some thing very dangerous had killed the Chinese operative.
And he was going to have to find out what it was.
Hank closed the door to his production van and flipped the lock before pulling both sets of curtains fully closed. He reached into a storage locker and grabbed the handle of a large pelican case, carefully laying it on the small dinette table that took up the front half of the compact trailer. He clicked the latches and scanned the contents: a dozen items each carefully packed in custom-cut foam.
Inside were the components for three quadcopter drones. The batteries and payloads were packed separately from the airframes. Hank was not a newcomer to this kind of hardware. He'd been using low-cost micro drones to recon sites everywhere from Afghanistan to South America. The micro-drones were cheap and could be deployed from a suitcase, unlike their larger and more well-known brethren. With a digital SLR camera onboard, the cheap drones could capture shots over archaeological sites that surpassed the dolly and crane shots of Hollywood.
Back when he had first arrived at the Niantic Project, Hank had been happy to learn that drones were a sort of hobby for science chief Dr. Lynton-Wolfe. Hank later combined Lynton-Wolfe’s innovations in “special” payloads with IQTech battery technology, financed by Montgomery’s DARPA budget. The result was a fleet of custom Niantic drones modified for XM research, site reconnaissance, offensive ops and even counter-drone defense.
For this trip, he had packed three of his favorite unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs.
The first UAV was dual-purpose: Using a fairly traditional quadcopter configuration but with a special carbon fiber airframe, milspec electric power plants, and IQTech’s ultra high-density power packs, it could carry both a gimbal-mounted Canon EOS 4D Mark III, which would do a fine job of collecting HD video footage, and a compact laser target designator. A small forward-facing HD camera and wifi downlink would allow him to see exactly what the UAV was seeing on his Nexus 10 tablet.
Hank had used this bird before. He called it “Establishing Shot”—a play on the film term referencing a wide-angle shot that sets up a scene. It was a good term to be throwing around the set in case somebody was listening in.
The second UAV used the same basic airframe but did not carry a camera for film production work. In fact, it had nothing to do with the world of Hollywood. It carried two very special payloads, one Hank hoped he wouldn't have to use. The first was a heavily modified HK MP7A1 submachine gun firing mechanism, stripped of stock, scope, grip and trigger, leaving only an integral circular-shaped 40-round magazine and a barrel. It was fitted to a target control computer that could lock on targets via either a linked HD video feed or a laser designated target.
Using the drones together, “Establishing Shot” could light up a target with the laser, while this bird — which Hank affectionately called “Long Shot”— could shoot multiple rounds of silenced body armor-penetrating munitions into a target the size of a playing card at up to 50 meters.
The third UAV was “Close Up.” It had no armament or elaborate lenses. It was effectively a flying hand grenade, useful for assassinations. The inner core of the drone was built around eight ounces of explosive. Modeled on the hunter-killer satellites designed for the SDI program, this drone could turn into the closest thing Americans make to a suicide bomber. Hard targets would get a close-up they wouldn't forget, but Hank would lose one of his favorite toys, so he hadn't been eager to try detonating it. Its low cost made it useful for close-in reconnaissance missions where the drone could be lost.
He snapped together the remaining pieces of the drones and checked the battery charge. Then he set them on the table and glanced at his watch. Time for a little site recon.
It wasn’t an optimal environment, with the dense vegetation, vines and enormous spiderwebs, but Hank wanted to know who or what was out there. He powered up “Establishing Shot” and sent it aloft.
After an hour of fly time, Hank couldn’t see anything remotely human in the bush. The drone eventually got stuck in a steel-strength giant web.
Ten minutes later, he went after the drone in the jungle and entered the food chain, which was lingo for any environment where man is not the master. Animal sounds had returned. Cawing birds. Chattering monkeys. Croaking frogs. Moisture dripped from leaf to leaf. Somewhere he heard a snake slither away.
Hank followed the flies and spotted the blood trail on the ground.