Taylor said, “She’s also one of the few people at this camp capable of writing and covertly installing a rogue piece of software.”
Howe stared at Maggie Taylor and did not reply.
Brodie leaned forward. “Colonel, someone spiked the punch. Praetorian. Whatever it is. Did it happen here? Or at Synotec? Or at DEVCOM headquarters? Or DARPA? You’ve got a faulty product with too many cooks and an almost indecipherable chain of custody. So I don’t give a rat’s ass how brilliant Ms. Dixon is. She might be a saboteur and therefore investigating herself. And when that happens, the person doing the digging stalls as long as they can, and miraculously never finds the answer. Add to the situation a very pissed-off brigadier general who might not accept the legitimacy of your command, and a Ranger platoon of speed freaks who would like nothing more than to rig the entire Vault with C4 and blow their tormentors to hell. They’ve got plenty of reasons, all they need is the order, and I doubt they’llcare who it’s coming from, or that your seizure of command was legitimized by some two-star general they’ve never seen or met a thousand miles away in Austin.”
Howe did not respond. She rapped her fingers on her polished wooden desk as she considered his words—or the best way to tell him to screw off. Then she said, “This is my call, and my judgment. Dixon is trustworthy.”
Having sex with a person can give you the false impression that you know them better than you do. Scott Brodie had been burned by that phenomenon once or twice. Maybe three times.
Taylor took the risk and said, “We would hate to think you are conferring special favor on anyone at this facility.”
Howe shot her a look, and in that look was a question:Do they know?She said, “That is not my practice, and it never has been. I assure you, Ms. Taylor, that I take my job as seriously as you do yours.”
“Of course, ma’am.”
Howe kept her eyes on Taylor a moment, then cleared her throat and looked back at Brodie. “You are right about the general, and the Rangers. They resent Morgan on one level, but they are also loyal to their senior commanding officer, and I fear what they might do on his behalf. So, per my orders, all Rangers have been confined to barracks, and to their individual rooms. I also had the phone lines disconnected at all residences. Barracks and houses. Sergeant Mendez has taken charge of the camp’s armory and all other guard duties.”
“How many MPs are on base?” asked Taylor.
“Eight,” replied Howe. Then she must have remembered the late Specialist Kemp and said, “Seven, actually.”
“There are sixty-two Rangers,” said Brodie. “Not good odds, Colonel, and not a fair position to put the MPs in.”
“They can handle it.” She retrieved two black walkies from her desk and slid them to the agents. “New comms protocol. Klasky, Pickman, and I are Channel One. Sergeant Mendez and his MPs are Two, you’reThree, and the science team is Four. Stay on Three and only switch if you need to initiate a communication.”
The agents each took a walkie and Brodie said, “Ma’am, this is giving the impression of a mutiny. That’s what the soldiers will think.”
“I don’t give a damn what they think. So long as they don’t have their guns, or the ability to fraternize, or a way to contact anyone on or off base.”
“You’re overplaying your hand.”
“It’s the hand I was dealt. Leave the management of Camp Hayden to me, and I will leave the investigation to you. Stay on your walkies.” She stood, and the two agents followed suit. “We need a tight ship now. And if there’s a rat on board, find it.”
CHAPTER 29
KLASKY LED BRODIE AND TAYLORinto the AARS room, with its miniature of the training village and an assortment of computers and display monitors, then showed them to a desk with a large monitor and two chairs. The monitor screen showed a grid of four dozen windows displaying frozen video feeds. Each window had a number in the upper left, one through forty-eight, along with a text designation—a unit number for the bots, or a name and rank for the Rangers.
The major said, “We’re cued up to the beginning of the exercise. You can press the space bar to play all the feeds at once, and type in a number followed by the enter key to make a particular camera full-screen. Press escape to get back to the grid.”
“Thank you,” said Taylor.
Brodie and Taylor sat down, with Taylor at the keyboard. Brodie moved the mouse over the upper left corner of the window and closed it.
“What are you doing?” asked Klasky.
“The date is wrong.”
“You told me March twelfth.”
“I meant the twenty-first. I’m dyslexic.” When he tried to open the file browser, a window popped up asking for a password.
Klasky gave an exasperated sigh as he leaned in and entered the password. He opened the file browser and selected the footage for March 21.
Brodie looked at the new grid of body cams. All the bots’ screens showed black-and-purple pixelated images that were impossible tomake out. Some of the Rangers’ screens were dark as well, while other Rangers’ cameras picked up their fellow teammates as ghostly orange and yellow shapes against hazy purple backgrounds.
Major Klasky explained, “This was a nighttime exercise. All participants were equipped with thermal-imaging body cams. The Rangers also had night vision goggles. The D-17s can see infrared without additional hardware.”
The Rangers were already getting their asses kicked in broad daylight, and apparently they were being made to fight these things at night too. Camp Hayden was a sadistic place.
