The image kept flicking from the increasingly panicked David Tresco to the winding road ahead.
“Whether you or anyone else on the board knew isn’t going to matter, David. If this comes out, no one is going to care about the details of who knew what when. Dresner Industries will collapse, I’ll be tried for crimes against humanity, and you’ll spend the rest of your life either in prison or fighting to stay out of it. The public will demand its pound of flesh. Whether you’re guilty or not won’t make any difference at all.”
Tresco froze again, but this time it wasn’t the network. He seemed paralyzed, staring sightlessly through the windshield at a world he’d taken so much from. A world that now seemed to want it all back.
Bailer returned his attention to the road. “We can fix this.”
“Fix it? How could this ever be fixed?”
It was an interesting question and Dresner listened as he turned away from the monitor and focused on the blank white of the wall behind him. The car noise and wind were being filtered out by his own Merge but the audio was still degraded — the result of Bailer continuing to use the primitive structure of his inner ear instead of the microphones that had proved so superior.
“As you know, we have no signed exclusivity agreement with the U.S. military and we’ve received no payment from them that would obligate us. It’s nothing more than a verbal agreement that Dresner made. Another example of him trying to save the world.”
“So?”
“I’ve quietly spoken to the Chinese government and they’re willing to use a number of private corporations they control to infuse enough cash for us to cover our short-term obligations. In return, we’ll provide them with the same ability to link to offensive weapons that we gave to America.”
“And do they know about the Koreans?”
“No. And there’s no reason for them to. They aren’t buying a controlling stake in the company. They’re essentially paying us to abandon our exclusive agreement with—”
Dresner shut off the sound and accessed LayerCake’s mapping program, bringing up a satellite image of the area Bailer was driving through. His position came up, as did the position of another car about two kilometers behind.
The man in that car had been following the CEO for two months and Dresner sent him a brief text. One that he’d hoped wouldn’t be necessary.
The dots representing the cars began to merge as the chase vehicle accelerated and closed the distance between them. When they appeared to be nearly touching, Dresner turned back to the monitor to once again see through Bailer’s eyes. The car was visible in the rearview mirror but Bailer didn’t seem to notice, continuing to shift his gaze between the road and Tresco, who was speaking silently on screen. There was no need to turn the sound back on. What the two men had to say was no longer of any importance.
Dresner pulled up an icon that existed only on his unit and could be activated only by commands from his mind. A list of names fanned out and he selected Bailer’s, bringing into existence a pulsing “activate” button at the edge of his vision.
He watched for a few more minutes, waiting until Bailer started into a sharp right turn. He would have preferred something more tangible like a rock wall, but the satellite image showed no such obstacles ahead. The curve, and more specifically the steep slope at its edge, would have to do.
23
“I like the new digs,” Smith said, entering a room that didn’t look much bigger or more luxurious than a storage closet. Maggie Templeton frowned but didn’t look up from the laptop she was working on. Without her massive monitors and battleship-bridge of a desk she looked kind of naked.
He’d received orders to immediately report to this forgotten corner of Fort Bragg right after wrapping up his training exercise. The smart money was that it was General Pedersen screwing with him and he was a little shocked to see Covert-One making an appearance outside its Maryland hideaway. Klein — and by extension President Castilla — were clearly taking the Merge seriously.
Maggie thumbed behind her and Smith started obediently toward a doorway with a missing door.
The room he entered was slightly larger, but even more full of junk — stacked folding tables, rusting file cabinets, and even a few old footlockers. Somehow, though, Fred Klein’s presence made it all feel like polished mahogany and portraits of George Washington. The man had a way of creating his own gravity.
“I hear you got the flag.”
“I was down to my last man, but yeah, we won,” Smith said, falling into a rolling chair with a broken wheel.
“So what is your initial impression of the Merge’s field capability?”
“Well, I just took out an entire Delta team with one ranger and four noncombat personnel — a couple of whom probably get winded taking out their garbage. I think it’s fair to say that my initial impression is positive.”
“Then you believe this is something the Defense Department should be putting resources into.”
“No question. The advantage in a simple ground-combat scenario where one side has it and the other doesn’t is incredible. I proved that today.”
“Downsides?”
“Dresner has a fair amount of control. He could decide to walk away from his agreement and start selling it on the open market. Or he could flake out and refuse to let us add apps to the system. Is there anything we can do about that?”
“Probably not,” Klein admitted. “My hope was that we’d just be able to crack the encryption and keep that in our back pocket if Dresner tries to shut us out. I gave the NSA one of the prototypes, though, and they don’t even know where to start with breaking into it.”
Smith nodded. It was basically the same thing his people were telling him. “As far as him opening up sales, it’s a risk we have to deal with anyway. Foreign militaries are going to use the commercial version and we’re going to have to develop countermeasures. While we’re at it, we’ll be thinking about how to defend against military versions, in case they ever hit the street. Worst case, we get a significant head start on countries like China. Also, you have to consider that we’re focused on unsophisticated opponents right now and it’s going to be a huge advantage against those kinds of forces.”
Klein leaned back and lit a pipe. The elaborate ventilation system that he had in Maryland was lacking, though, and a moment later Maggie Templeton’s shout came through the door. “Smoke!”
He frowned and put it out. “You spoke directly with Dresner, didn’t you? What’s your take? Assuming he doesn’t stab us in the back, how hard is he going to be to work with?”
“It’s going to be a constant give-and-take. We’re going to lean hard toward defining everything as military-specific and he’s going to come up with fifty civilian uses for whatever we propose. The ability to connect directly to weapons is pretty objective, though. That’s never going to filter down to the civilian version.”
“So your advice is to bend over and take it.”
Smith shrugged helplessly. “’Fraid so, Fred. The world keeps moving on whether we like it or not.”
“So much for military budget cuts.” Klein sighed.
“Tell Treasury to fire up the printing presses because I can personally guarantee you that we’re going to want a hundred percent penetration in combat personnel.”
“What about the technology itself? Downsides and dangers?”
“Obviously, that’s something we need to evaluate, but I don’t see many. I can tell you from personal experience that the body modifications are pretty much irrelevant — a couple of days of discomfort that a few aspirin will knock out. I’ve talked to a number of top neurologists and they see no real potential for physical or psychological damage. The audio and video signals created by the Merge aren’t any different from the ones generated by your eyes and ears. We’ll have to guard against soldiers getting overly dependent on it, but that’s true of any technology: Guns jam, Humvees break down, planes crash. Basically, it’s just a question of what the tech gurus can develop and how practical it will be in the field.”