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  Lake Massingir

  Mozambique

  1 May

  Pearce scratched his beard with his free hand, wild and woolly the way he wore it back in the war, except now it was flecked with gray, just like his long black hair. The crow’s-feet around his eyes had deepened.

  He reached into the bucket for another bottle of Sagres Preta, a local Portuguese dark lager, and worked the black cap off with a knife edge. He’d been drinking too much for the past few months, and his gut showed it. He never drank at work, only after hours, and never got too drunk. Just numb.

  Mostly.

  The locals told him bloody chicken livers were the next best thing to live bait if he wanted to catch one of the razor-toothed tiger fish lurking in the deep water, a hundred silvery pounds of thrashing mouth full of vicious teeth as long as sixteen-penny nails. They told him to keep the hooks small unless he wanted to catch one of the really big monsters, but then he’d have the fight of his life on his hands—literally.

  He went with the big hooks.

  The choppy water chucked against the hull of the small wooden boat. His fishing line hadn’t budged in hours in the gray water. Sunset wasn’t too far off. If something didn’t strike the bait soon, he’d start rowing back. He flexed his blistered hands. In this wind, he was in for a long haul back to shore.

  He’d rejoin Johnny tomorrow, back in the park after Johnny finished up his training consultation with Sandra.

  Troy took a sip of beer.

  He thought about his old man a lot lately, a Vietnam vet killed by the war years after it ended. Wondered if the same fate awaited him.

  Growing up, he and his dad had fought their own private little war, scratching out a living in the mountains of Wyoming. The old man would laugh at him now, for sure. Wasn’t he becoming all the things he said he hated about him?

  Probably for the same reasons, too.

  His dad didn’t talk much about the war. Didn’t have to. Wore it in his brooding face, the scars in his flesh. If he had regrets, he didn’t say. He just drank.

  Pearce had no regrets. Was proud of his CIA combat service. In SAD/SOG, he engaged the enemy wherever he found them. Righteous kills, each one. But the War on Terror had taken too many of the people he cared about, sacrificed on the altar of political ambition. So he quit. He missed them all.

  Especially Annie.

  Pearce still loved his country but hated politics. He formed Pearce Systems because he could pick and choose his operations with a certain moral clarity. And it paid well. More important, deploying remotely piloted vehicles kept his friends out of harm’s way even when the bullets were flying.

  So what was his problem?

  He was an angry man. Always had been, bar brawling all the way back in high school. Stanford took some of the edge off. Practically civilized him. Then he joined the CIA. They honed his angry edge into a fine killing blade, but under control.

  Maybe he was losing control.

  His anger deepened the last few months, for sure. So had the depression. Didn’t make sense. His company had never been more prosperous, or done better work.

  After last year, he focused Pearce Systems on the commercial uses of drone technologies. More opportunities, more money. And little chance of his people getting killed. The South African delivery was a favor for an old friend, and probably the last military system he would ever deliver.

  But bitter disappointment still ate at him. The United States had cut and run out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Now both were sliding back into chaos and radicalism. Tens of thousands of brave Americans bled and died to free those nations, but the jihadi shits they fought remained, which meant they won.

  His government had broken faith; now Pearce felt like he had lost his.

  Serving President Myers last year rekindled it briefly. She was the one politician he could believe in, because she put the national interest ahead of her own. He trusted Myers completely. But she resigned, falling on her sword to keep the nation safe.

  He and his team proudly fought the Mexican cartels and the Iranian terrorists. He was grateful Myers secured blanket immunity for them all after it was over. But he didn’t need a law degree to know that only criminals need immunity.

  Heroes got medals, not pardons.

  President Greyhill and Vice President Diele were in charge now. Exactly the kind of politicians he loathed.

  He was done with it.

  Pearce took a long pull on his beer. His line still didn’t budge. He hoped Johnny was having more luck than he was in trying to land his own pretty fish.

  Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park

  Mozambique

  Johnny Paloma pretended to stare at the solar-powered drone in Sandra Gallez’s hands, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of her face, confident and curious.

  “Like this?” she asked. The Belgian beauty held the Silent Falcon’s carbon-fiber fuselage forward with one hand while the other supported the tail structure. The six-bladed prop spun almost silently, but the electric motor threw enough torque into the blades even at this low speed to blow her dark, curly hair away from her cheeks. Working undercover in L.A., Johnny encountered plenty of hot women in the clubs and on the beaches. He even worked a few side jobs as a bodyguard for some of the best-looking women in film. But Sandra’s natural, unadorned beauty enthralled him.

  “Yes, about forty-five degrees. Just like a Raven,” Johnny said. He held the Nintendo-style controller in his hands. The auto launch toggle was selected. This would automatically take the Silent Falcon to an altitude of five hundred feet and circle it until it received further commands. Onboard sensors and software avoided obstructions in its flight path or possible collisions with other aircraft.

  “Now?”

  “Now!” He laughed.

  She threw it. Despite its seven-foot wingspan, the lightweight sUAS lifted effortlessly into the bright morning sky.

  This portion of the park was mostly flat grassland, populated by a smattering of acacia trees. Perfect for small drone operations, especially landings by rookies. It was elephant country. Rhinos, too.

  Sandra jogged back over to Johnny, standing behind the brand-new green Land Rover Defender utility wagon. The famous World Wildlife Alliance white rhino logo was painted on the hood and the rear door. Pearce Systems fitted out the wagon with all of the necessary drone operations gear. The talented young conservationist was in charge of the WWA’s most advanced research project.

  “Now put the goggles on,” Johnny said.

  Sandra picked up the wireless Fat Shark Dominator HD video goggles and slipped them over her eyes. They were lightweight but huge, like a telephone handset attached to her face. Of course, she couldn’t “see” out of them—they didn’t have any lenses. The Fat Shark was a video projection system—a wearable digital theater.

  “Now take this.” Johnny handed her the flight controller.

  “Fantastique!”

  “Quite the view, eh?”

  “Like a bird. I can see everything.”

  Sandra’s entire field of view was filled with a perfect HD first-person video (FPV) image on the screen, which was also simultaneously recorded on a hard drive in the Rover. The forward-looking bird’s-eye POV through the spinning propeller was mesmerizing. She tapped another toggle and a real-time map of Limpopo Park appeared on her video screen. A blue dot indicated the GPS location of the Silent Falcon, and a red dot indicated the position of a recently GPS-tagged rhino, part of the last herd in Mozambique, about five kilometers away.

  “Now rotate the camera,” he said. “The god’s-eye view is even cooler.” The Silent Falcon was equipped with a rotating gimbal that housed the optical and infrared cameras, along with a laser pointer.

  “This is perfection, Johnny!” Sandra rotated the camera through its entire range of motion, like she’d done on simulated practice sessions b
efore, but this was her first real-time flight with the Silent Falcon.

  The WWA recently made arrangements with Mozambique’s Wildlife Department to take over rhino observation-and-research duties. The cash-strapped, ill-equipped bureaucracy had become rather lax in its conservation responsibilities in the last few years, particularly in regard to the endangered rhino population, now perilously small and reduced to just a dozen adults. The sad truth was that some of the poorly paid Mozambican park rangers were known in the past to have colluded with poachers to gather up the rhino horns so prized by wealthy Chinese for their supposed powers as aphrodisiacs and medicinals. But even the honest park police were increasingly tasked with counterterror duties, and wildlife considerations took a backseat to the new security priorities set in Maputo.

  The quiet exchange of cash to the appropriate government ministers gave Sandra’s privately funded NGO the chance to get into the GLTP and begin monitoring the rhinos. Fortunately, poachers hadn’t been seen on the Mozambique side of the Limpopo in over a year, so the human threat to those magnificent animals wasn’t her main concern.

  Tracking rhino migration patterns and feeding grounds was the primary focus of Sandra’s research. Her dream was to introduce more rhinos into the local population and restore the herds that once roamed freely here.

  The joy in her face at that moment was palpable, and Johnny had just handed her the high-tech key to her dream. He had no idea it was possible to be this happy for someone else.

  Pearce Systems’ research director, Dr. Kirin Rao, selected the solar-powered sUAS because it had a fourteen-hour flight time and a nearly silent propulsion system, both features that made it a perfect platform for wildlife observation. Rao paired up the hand-launched surveillance drone to a control station and a video camera system with an editing suite installed in the cargo area of the oversize Land Rover, but the Silent Falcon could also be easily flown with the handheld controller that Pearce Systems provided. With detachable wings, the Silent Falcon could be quickly disassembled for transport, and just as easily reassembled in the field. Along with spare parts, extra batteries, a charging station, and all the other equipment needed to operate it, the solar-powered drone system was completely contained in the self-sufficient Land Rover. Dr. Rao hoped that this new unit would be the test bed for a whole range of new wildlife applications.

  “Oh! Johnny! I see them!”

  Johnny glanced into the back of the Land Rover. In the corner he’d stashed a small picnic basket with avocado and tomato sandwiches and a bottle of vintage Portuguese wine, and even a blanket, all courtesy of the hotel concierge. The river wasn’t far from here. It was going to be a damn good day. Maybe one of the best days of his life.

  4

  China National Petroleum Headquarters

  Beijing, China

  1 May

  Zhou Yi watched the automatic window blinds blot out the smog-choked sky. He sat in a crowded conference room on the top floor of one of the three glass-and-steel monoliths of CNPC headquarters, buildings that were as gray and uninspiring as Beijing’s nearly unbreathable atmosphere. His morning runs in the park the last few days had burned his lungs and stung his eyes. Unfortunately, he was in for more of the same in here. The older executives seated around the long mahogany table lit up cigarettes after tea and coffee had been served by the waitstaff, and now the air in the conference room was clogged with acrid smoke.

  As the recently appointed vice president of business affairs of the newly formed Sino-Sahara Oil Corporation, Zhou was expected to spend more time in Beijing, which technically was his birthplace but hardly his home. The grandson of an original Politburo Member and the son of a princeling on the ruling Standing Committee, Zhou was as close to royalty as a communist regime would allow. This gave him unprecedented freedoms, powers, and privileges, but equally binding responsibilities both to his family and his nation. Responsibilities that the handsome and athletic forty-year-old took quite seriously despite his famously hedonistic lifestyle.

  Zhao believed he could best fulfill those responsibilities by remaining out in the field and Skyping meetings like this one rather than sitting in a sealed conference room. But when Zhao’s uncle, the chairman of CNPC, summoned him back to company headquarters, Zhao was compelled to obey both as a dutiful nephew and as an up-and-coming executive in the state-owned enterprise that had made his entire family extremely rich over the last four decades—nearly three billion dollars in total.

  But Zhou’s meteoric rise was due primarily to his outstanding performance in the field, not his family connections. He’d just outmaneuvered a European energy consortium and brokered a lucrative new oil contract with the Azerbaijani government, still reeling from the Russian invasion nearly two years before. Zhou’s latest promotion was just another rung up on the lofty ladder of his ambition. He had already climbed high, and swiftly, but he had much farther to go. He also knew that one false step from this great height would be fatal to his career, if not his life.

  Zhou sat bolt upright in his leather chair and wore the standard gray business suit so common among his peers. However, his suit was an elegant English, hand-tailored affair, perfectly cut to his broad shoulders and accented with a stunning light blue Italian silk tie and pocket square. The effect was bold, even brash, but not rebellious. Zhao was completely committed to serving the cause of China, but equally committed to serving it with style.

  The analyst presenting today’s briefing was a member of the Ministry of State Security. Zhou knew him well. They had risen through the ranks of the MSS together, though Zhou’s membership in his nation’s foreign intelligence service was itself a closely guarded state secret.

  Zhou’s government properly understood that economic development was itself a weapon in the war against the West, and resource acquisition was key to furthering China’s blistering economic growth. The Western nations still waved the flag of “free enterprise,” but its most successful corporations long ago abandoned pure capitalism in exchange for securing favors with their respective ruling classes by guaranteeing the politicians’ perpetual reelection in exchange for favorable tax and regulatory policies that guaranteed the “too big to fail” corporations hegemonic dominance in their markets.

  Zhou constantly marveled at America’s repudiation of its own past greatness. During his university days, Zhou met more committed communists on the campuses of UCLA and Harvard than he ever had in Beijing. The running joke among the ruling class in China these days was that if you wanted your child to study socialism, send them to an American Ivy League school, but if you wanted them to learn about capitalism, send them to Shanghai. Not only was China a more capitalist nation than the United States these days, it vigorously applied the lessons of American economic development that the Americans themselves had long forgotten. In a short period of time, aggressive, mercantilist trade policies catapulted a newly independent nineteenth-century America into the ranks of the wealthiest nations of Old Europe. Now America ran half-trillion-dollar annual trade deficits, exporting both wealth and jobs as quickly as it was accumulating debt from the same nations with which it ran trade deficits, particularly mercantilist China.

  America was in rapid decline, even as its few ruling elites and their “too big to jail” client corporations accumulated ever-more-egregious amounts of wealth and political power. China understood, in fact, that it was because American elites enriched themselves without responsibility to their society that the United States was in an economic and political death spiral. China believed that capitalism should serve the interests of the state. American political elites apparently believed in crony capitalism where the state served the interests of the capitalist masters. The twenty-first century would soon decide which of the two systems was most viable.

  The lights dimmed and a 4K HD digital projector lit up a massive screen on the far wall. Images of various African nations, Chinese corporations, and specific industrial enterpr
ises—particularly oil and other natural resources—flashed on the screen as the analyst spoke. No recording devices, tablets, or even paper and pencils were allowed in the room today. Today’s meeting was top secret, and the security services feared the Western intelligence agencies and their vast cybersurveillance efforts. CNPC was a known target, particularly of the CIA. The purpose of the briefing was for policy orientation only.

  “Today, there are over eight hundred Chinese corporations operating in nearly every nation on the African continent,” the analyst began. “Many of them are engaged in resource extraction to meet the growing demand of our rapidly expanding industrial and manufacturing sectors.” Icons matching African resources and Chinese industries flashed in sequence. “Every day, new resource potentials are being discovered and developed across the continent, but none so important as the recent location of new uranium and, amazingly, massive rare-earth-element deposits here in the Saharan desert, in the far reaches of Mali. In fact, Mali may have the world’s single greatest known deposit of lanthanum.”

  The screen zoomed in on an image of northeastern Mali to emphasize its importance. The executives gathered around the table whispered excitedly. Lanthanum was critical for the manufacture of batteries. Hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius required more than ten kilograms of the mineral per vehicle, and more hybrids were being brought to the market every day. China itself was now the world’s largest car market, and hybrids were key to the expansion of that market. The startling new REE discovery in Mali was obviously the reason why this top secret emergency meeting had been called.

  “As you are all well aware, China is the world’s largest producer of rare earth elements, giving us nearly monopolistic control over their use. This allows us to minimize their costs for ourselves but also deny their use to our biggest competitors.” From an earlier briefing, Zhou knew that the seventeen chemical elements on the periodic table known as REEs weren’t, technically, “rare” so much as widely dispersed throughout the earth’s crust—but seldom in harvestable amounts. Those elements were critical in other key new technological products like wind turbines, lasers, and cell phones. China was the country with the greatest concentration of REE deposits and was currently mining between 80 and 90 percent of all REEs today. That near monopoly provided China with a significant competitive advantage it had no intention of relinquishing. That competitive advantage was one of the reasons why Los Angeles Metro had purchased its first all-electric buses from the Chinese corporation BYD.