He was in no position to climb onto that particular piece of moral high ground, but she decided that now probably wasn’t the time to point this out. “So?”
“I have no weapon. It’s why I ran. So I could live to find them. To find them and kill them. Now God has delivered you to me.”
“I don’t think God had anything to do with this meeting.”
“I disagree. He has created an opportunity for both of us to get what we want.”
Randi frowned in the darkness. More likely, God was playing one of the cruel jokes he seemed so fond of. The risks of engaging the men below were high even by her standards, but Zahid didn’t care. In fact, he likely wanted nothing more than to join his friends in paradise soaked with the blood of men who had killed them. She, on the other hand, just wanted to satisfy her curiosity and retreat to base for a cocktail or ten.
“Fine,” she said, holstering her sidearm and handing the Afghan her assault rifle. “But we do it my way.”
“I’ve heard the stories about you, but I believe none of them.”
She dropped her pack and unfastened the sniper rifle. “Just another woman, right?”
“These men will not let themselves be distracted by the promise of sex from a whore.”
She found a stable surface to set up her rifle and scanned the canyon floor through the starlight scope. “I’m not looking to damage our new friendship with threats, but next time you open your mouth, it better be to tell me about Sarabat.”
There was a lengthy silence but finally he spoke. “Our village was attacked from the air and the ground. We killed a few, but they came on us too quickly and with too many weapons. They murdered everyone. I don’t know who they were. Not American uniforms. Many different accents and many different weapons.”
“You’re mistaking me for someone who cares, Zahid. Tell me about Sarabat.”
When he didn’t answer, she looked up and found him staring up at the stars.
“Do we still have a deal?”
“I said I would tell you if you helped me. You have done nothing.”
She returned to the scope and swept the weapon right, stopping when she got to the man bringing up the rear. He was partially obscured from her position and she kept going, finally settling on the point man. He was moving almost directly away from her and she held her breath, centering crosshairs between his shoulder blades and silently counting off the beat of her heart.
A gentle squeeze of the trigger was followed by a less gentle recoil and the earsplitting crack of the round leaving the barrel.
It struck a little low and left but the high-caliber bullet didn’t need to be perfectly aimed to tear away a substantial piece of his torso. She didn’t bother to watch him go down, instead pulling back as automatic fire erupted from below and began ricocheting off the rocks around them.
“One down,” she said, pressing her back against the stone wall. “Now start talking or you’re going to be next.”
14
When the elevator doors opened, Craig Bailer ushered them out into an underground facility that was large enough to be almost disorienting. The modest building they’d entered through housed little more than a security desk and a couple of abstract sculptures, but now Smith found himself in a room that was probably two hundred meters long and half as wide, with a ceiling hidden somewhere beyond the steel support grid fifteen meters above.
At the far end was a live jungle guarded by a full-sized tank and various sandbagged machine-gun placements. The extensive computer equipment and personnel that Smith would have expected at a demonstration of a bleeding-edge technology were conspicuously absent as he followed Bailer to a simple table containing two Merges and a couple of laptops.
General Pedersen picked up one of the units and turned it over in his hands. It was slightly larger than the commercial version, with a matte-black exterior displaying a visible carbon-fiber weave. Smith examined the other one, noting that the indicator light was missing, as was the on/off switch and power cable connector. In fact, there was nothing at all that would suggest it was anything but a solid piece of plastic.
“All right,” Bailer said, waking up the laptops. “Is it safe to assume that neither of you has used a Merge before?”
They both shook their heads.
“In our stores, we do demos on how to set them up, but for the most part I’m just going to let you have at it yourself so you can see how simple it is. What I will point out, though, is that the military version of the unit has no connectors at all. That’s for two reasons: First, we found connector ports to be responsible for over ninety percent of failures. And second, it’s simpler.”
“If it’s so much better why do the commercial units have a power switch and USB port?” Smith asked. “Cost?”
Bailer gave a bemused shake of his head. “Excellent guess, Doctor, but the reality is much stranger. Our market research suggested that people are comfortable with wired connections and that not having them made the perceived value of the unit less — even though they’re completely outdated and serve no real function.”
“How do you charge it?” Pedersen asked.
“Dr. Smith? Care to guess?”
He winced perceptibly at the question and considered purposely answering wrong, but his ego wouldn’t allow it. “Induction.”
“Well done,” Bailer said. “There’s a small mat that plugs into the wall and you just lay the unit on it. Takes about an hour for a full charge, which in turn will last about twenty-five hours of normal usage. The increased battery size is almost entirely responsible for the additional weight you may have noticed.”
“And how does it connect to the computer?” Pedersen asked.
“Standard Bluetooth. But it’s only necessary for the initial setup. After that, it stands alone.”
He crouched and dug out two military helmets from boxes beneath the table. Both looked more or less government-issue with the exception of elaborate fore-and-aft cameras bolted to the top. “If I could have you put these on and take a place in front of a laptop, we’ll get you up and running.”
“So the system is built into helmets?” Pedersen said.
“Yes. But only for the purposes of this demonstration. In a combat situation, you’d have to use the head studs.”
As he tightened his chin strap and sat, Smith couldn’t help feeling a little excitement. Dresner’s demonstration, while impressive, had been nothing but a big screen and some interesting parlor tricks. To actually feel a machine-brain link, though, was something he never thought he’d experience in his lifetime.
“Uh, how do you turn it on?” Pedersen said.
“Dr. Smith? You’re doing so well. Care to take another shot?”
“I have no idea,” he said honestly. That seemed to cheer the general up a bit.
“It couldn’t be simpler. Just give it a good shake.”
Smith did and the computer screen in front of him immediately recognized the unit, bringing up its serial number and asking if he wanted to enter the setup routine.
“Do I just choose yes?”
Bailer retreated a bit. “No more help from me. I want you to get a feel for what it’s going to take to get your people up and running.”
Smith clicked through and five images of a tree came up on the screen. The caption asked him to select the sharpest image. He did and what felt a bit like an eye exam continued through a few more screens, asking him to judge color, rotation, and the relative speed of objects. Finally, the word “silver” appeared and he was asked to repeat the word over and over in his mind. A few seconds later, a notification came up that he was done and icons sprang to life in his peripheral vision.