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Jim appreciated Anne’s work—they wouldn’t have found the Estelle without her—but he didn’t think there was anything a forensic accountant could tell him right now that would be more important than him focusing all his attention on the ship in the harbor. “I’m going to need to call you back.” He reached to hang up, but Anne spoke up before he could.
“You’re not looking for one container. You’re looking for six.”
His thumb moved away from the power button. “What?”
“I kept digging. Wan Chai Machine Technology Limited has sent only three shipments abroad. Miami, Singapore, and there in Cuba. That we already knew. But Wan Chai appears to be part of a consortium of over ten HK-based technology companies, could be many more than that, and six of these companies have containers on the Estelle ETC right now.”
“Oh my God,” Pace just muttered. “You…you don’t know what was shipped, do you?”
“They all just say ‘machine parts—electronic.’ Same as the Wan Chai bill of lading. And the recipient is the same, Empressa Informatica of Havana.”
“Still nothing on them?”
“Nothing at all. Probably because they don’t exist. It’s Cuba, so getting information on state-controlled business is extremely difficult, but the recipient address on the bills of lading is of a retail mall on the outskirts of Havana. I checked with NGA; they say that space has been unoccupied for four years.”
Pace’s brain spun trying to put this puzzle together. “So…the Cuban government is taking possession of high-tech autonomous weapons?”
“It’s looking that way. I’ll send you the other container numbers, and then I’ll keep digging.”
Pace knew he wasn’t about to tell Travers to check five more containers on that ship. But the fact that the shipment from HK was six times the size he’d thought it was told him his idea that these were lethal autonomous weapons in country to kill Hinton and his staff no longer made sense.
He also knew that a half-dozen containers could hold over 175 tons of equipment. From what Gentry had said about the attack in Mexico, two robots weighing just a couple hundred pounds each had killed several armed men.
The containers on the Estelle could be carrying more than fifteen hundred similarly sized devices.
He was about to hit his radio transmit button to relay this news to Travers when he heard the click indicating that someone on Juliet Victor was broadcasting.
•••
Chris Travers held down his push-to-talk button as he whispered. “Overwatch? Yeah, I have a quadrupedal unmanned ground vehicle of some kind. Definitely armed, there’s a rifle on a turret, maybe thirty cal, can’t tell. I see what look to be legs, some sort of grasping arm. Computer equipment. Batteries. But…here’s the thing. This machine is completely disassembled.”
“What do you mean, disassembled?”
“None of this stuff is attached to each other. They’re just components in foam trays. Bolts and cables stored in plastic cases.”
“Meaning?”
“If these were going to be deployed, then they would need to go to some sort of manufacturing facility, something like that. I don’t really know how this shit works, maybe you could do it at an auto repair shop, but it’s not like someone’s going to take this container, pop open the doors, and press a button to animate these robots.”
“Got it. What about a controlling system? Is there a device, something with joysticks, a screen, maybe even a VR headset?”
“I don’t see anything like that.”
Pace gave a long, low sigh. “Then they’re autonomous. Holy fuck. Do you see any ammo for the weapons?”
“I do not, but there are cases on the pallets we’re not going to be able to get to. Could be ammunition in them.”
“Actually, there are entire containers you’re not going to get to. Langley says five other shipments on board the Estelle are suspect.”
Travers stopped looking over the hardware in the case below him. “That kinda seems like overkill for a facility wipe at a science lab.”
“It does, indeed.”
Takahashi spoke up now. “You think somebody’s planning a robot Bay of Pigs?”
It was a joke, but no one laughed. Pace said, “Shit. The anchor’s all the way up, One. Photograph everything you see, put it all back the way you found it, and put a single radio tracker somewhere on the goods. Hide it in packaging where no one can find it. Then get out of there before that ship gets under way.”
“Roger that,” Travers said, but just as soon as he spoke, he felt the ship’s engines come to life with a low rumble. To Takahashi, he said, “We’re goin’ on a little boat ride, Hash.”
