Kill Decision(73)

Odin looked across the cargo back. “Negative. How many times has Huginn been wrong, Foxy?”

Foxy said nothing.

McKinney stood and braced herself on an equipment rack as the plane bumped in turbulence. She looked over Odin’s shoulder. “You’re sounding the alarm on the report of a bird?”

“Huginn and Muninn don’t act this way unless something is seriously wrong.” He looked at the signals officers studying their radar console. “Those sensors don’t reveal everything.” Odin’s tablet was now booted, and he turned the screen so she could see black-and-white thermal imagery from one of the raven’s cameras. The birds were following something at low altitude. The rocks and scrub soared past in the imagery.

McKinney studied the screen. “A raven’s-eye view.”

Huginn was trailing the black silhouette of a bird of prey gliding over the desert terrain at an altitude of perhaps a hundred and fifty feet. The second raven, Muninn, sometimes entered the frame, meaning they were flying together.

McKinney studied the image. “Looks like a hawk.”

Odin spoke into his radio. “You getting this, Foxy, Hoov?”

“Yeah, Odin, Prof’s right. Looks like the twins sent up the alarm over another bird.”

Odin studied the screen. “That hawk has one problem: It’s got no heat signature.” He pointed his gloved hand at the thermal image, and McKinney could clearly see the difference between the heat intensity of the second raven and the interloper.

Odin keyed another radio. “All units red alert. Bogey one thousand meters out and closing on White Sands Base from the east. Designate bogey Target One. Looks like a microdrone in the shape of a bird. Have the Predator swing around to track this thing. I want stable, detailed imagery on it, and port the video to the team at the JOC.”

Another voice came through, possibly Hoov’s. “On it, Odin.”

Odin strapped on a MICH helmet with a monocle over his left eye, then handed the tablet to McKinney. He appeared to be watching from the helmet eyepiece. “Pretty goddamned clever. Even if it showed up on radar, its speed and profile would match that of a bird.”

“A spotter drone.”

“That would be my guess. It’s too small to deliver any ordnance.”

Foxy’s voice again. “Agreed, boss.”

Odin was adjusting channels on a satellite radio on his harness. “Okay, we’re getting the Predator feed. Give them Huginn’s coordinates, and they should be able to pick up the bogey from there.”

“Got it.”

He adjusted the radio. “The attack drone is probably still over the horizon and won’t reveal itself unless this one finds who it’s looking for.”

“Me.”

“Yes. Let’s hope it takes our bait.” He worked unseen commands on his monocle screen with a handheld controller, and suddenly her table computer showed a surveillance camera image of . . . herself, sitting in a well-lit converted hangar somewhere, motionless, except for her fingers clattering away at a keyboard in front of a large window.

McKinney sat down again, the tablet computer in her lap. She kept her eye on the image there. It felt eerie.

Odin appeared to be clicking through screens of his own. “We’ve got a Predator doing a mile-radius orbit of White Sands Base at ten thousand feet. I wanted to get clear video from a separate platform. We’re much farther out and twice as high, but we’ve got lightning pods for our own thermal imaging.”

“Lightning pods.”

“High-resolution thermal optics in a pod on the wing. Here . . .”

Odin had brought up another thermal image on the tablet. This one was far more clear and stable than that from the ravens. The image showed what was now clearly an artificial bird with a small propeller mounted on the tail. Odin’s ravens ducked in and out of the frame, dogging the interloper, shadowing it.

“Probably electric. Silent.” Odin spoke into his headset. “Huginn, Muninn. Return. Return. Confirm.”

One by one a seeming confirmation caw came in over the radio, and the ravens broke off from trailing the artificial bird on the tablet screen.

McKinney looked at him. “You’re shitting me.”

“I told you they were smart. I don’t want them in the middle of this when the fireworks start.”

The radio crackled. “Odin, signals team says this thing just went into an orbit over White Sands Base. Looks like it detected either the professor’s cell phone or the Bluetooth ID of her laptop.”

Hoov’s voice chimed in, “It’s probably getting a PID on her physical likeness now.”

Odin added, “Stay alert, everyone. When it summons the attack drone, we won’t have much time to intercept it.”