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He took Zack by the arm. “Let me help you.” Hefting him back onto the bench, he said, “Look at the world you’re so loath to upset with my technology. Hegemonic powers with all the money and all the rules control society based on cruel self-interest. Banks control humans. Crime is rampant. The overuse of the Earth’s resources is nearing the point of no return. World debt is growing.
“Cyrus will stop it all. There’s no utopia, I’m no fool, but there is a better world, just over the horizon. And without Cyrus…if the Chinese or the Americans develop a fully networked AI agent and put it online, there will be no balance. Only despotism. A new colonization of the planet.”
Zack spit more blood. “You will need hundreds of thousands of weapons to do this.”
Hinton grinned. “Actually, no. I just need China. And I have China. And that’s only for now, and then they will fall, as well. I have to let them think they are in control until then, of course, but I am playing the long game that they do not understand.”
“But…what if Cyrus doesn’t do what you want? What if it starts picking the wrong targets, like Gentry and Zakharova in Guatemala? Like Jim Pace? How do you stop it?”
Anton shrugged a little. Again, Zack noticed some rare self-doubt on the man’s face. He said, “Simply put, I don’t. I let it figure things out. I let it optimize itself. It’s smarter than me, smarter than all of us. It will, after it matures, make all the right choices.”
“What if it doesn’t? What if it goes out of control?”
Wren stepped forward and shouted out again. “Out of control? Look around you, you idiot! This whole bloody world is out of control. Anton is going to fix it. Apply his ethics and morals to the planet via Cyrus. A new day, a new order.”
Wren continued. “Don’t be a fool, mate. We need you on our side. We need meatspace labor. Men and women who can support Cyrus in the world, reach where computers and LAWs cannot. But if you are going to be more trouble than you’re worth, then I’ll pull your pistol out of my belt and shoot you with your own fuckin’ precious gun.”
Hinton waved away Wren’s anger. “Listen to me, Zack. Cyrus is improving; no being ever begins its life perfect, ergo we all will be forced to endure the occasional and inevitable slipup as it learns its way around our complicated society.”
Zack wiped blood from his beard and mouth. “If there’s one thing I hate more than messianic mass murderers, it’s motherfuckers who say ‘ergo.’ ”
Wren backhanded him again, knocking him sideways on the bench. His nose bled now, and he wiped it with his bare forearm, smearing it on his face.
Wren looked to Hinton. “I’m sorry, Anton. I thought Zack would be easier to convince, but this isn’t working. I overestimated his intelligence.”
Zack spit blood yet again. “Right back at you, dickhead.”
•••
At forty-six years old, Larry Repult had been a team leader in the CIA’s Special Activities Center for three years but had served in Ground Branch for over eight. The man was a contradiction. Small, bald, and cerebral, but as tough as anyone in Ground Branch, the former Delta Force officer had joined the Army after earning a degree in accounting from Auburn.
Larry tapped his transmit button as he sat in thick, chest-high brush. “Mike One, all teams this net. I have the wall in sight. Twenty meters away.”
A local agent, a nineteen-year-old Cuban whose parents had secretly worked for the Americans on the island since they’d taken over from his grandparents, who themselves had been around since the Revolution in the 1950s, had scouted the area earlier in the evening for Havana station. The foliage sat between a government livestock farm that ran to the western side of the campus, and with a pair of machetes and two and a half hours’ work he cleared the thinnest of paths through the 130 meters of dense growth all the way to the eight-foot-high concrete wall that ran behind the SIGINT building.
On his way out, the Cuban had unraveled a fishing line that no one would ever see in the day but in the night the Ground Branch men had used to find their way forward much more quickly, and without the work of the kid with the blades, these guys wouldn’t have made it twenty-five meters by now.
Larry Repult rose back up, continued feeling his way with the fishing line, pushing and stomping on foliage to get it out of his way and to blaze the trail a little more for the next man, and eventually he arrived at the wall.
Cuban military patrols had been steady since the men had arrived in the area, the lights of trucks and Jeeps persistent in the distance, but this portion of the perimeter had been deemed from satellite imagery to be the best place to breach. There had been talk of just blowing the wall and making a dynamic entry on the facility, attempting to get into the SIGINT building before the Cuban military descended on them because the intel they received from inside the Hinton organization said that the military was not allowed inside the facility doors, but ultimately it was decided that climbing the outer wall with stealth might buy them some needed time to make it inside before the shooting started.
One of the men from Papa Quebec put his back to the wall, then took the foot of Quebec Two, who had taken off his nearly one hundred pounds of gear, leaving it there in the bushes. The sole piece of equipment he had with him was a nylon and polymer rope ladder slung over his shoulder.
Once Quebec Two was heaved up to the top of the wall, he slid over and dropped down in a parking lot behind a row of parked SUVs.
Tossing one end of the ladder back over, he hooked the other end around his body and lay facing up, bracing his boots against the wall as he felt the full weight of the next man, nearly 290 pounds with all his gear.
This was a slow and painful process, but when the second operator was in place, he hooked a rung of the ladder to a carabiner on his chest rig, and with his heavier weight and better support, he could more easily handle the men climbing over.
Four of the Papa Quebec operators each brought a piece of the first man’s gear back to him, and each new arrival then drew his silenced pistol and posted security while the process continued.
Finally, when everyone had made it to the parking lot, they began moving behind the SIGINT headquarters building towards the lighted area by a row of windows. The sound of a truck passing by on the opposite side only made them move faster, because they were desperate to get to cover as soon as possible.
•••
Chris Travers led all eight of his team out of the stairwell and onto level U3 of La Finca. Hash was right behind him, consulting his tablet computer, and he directed the stack through the hallways until they arrived at the armory, and then the service elevator.
The elevator doors were closed but he bypassed them, then entered the storage room beyond and found a hidden entrance leading down. They descended multiple flights of stairs, ending up in an unlit alcove off a bricked-up tunnel. The tunnel ran to the northeast, in the direction of the campus and the SIGINT building, and once Hash checked around the corner to ensure that the area was clear, he led his team out and in that direction.
