Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling
Washington, D.C.
1028 Local Time
“Eight,” Katie said.
“Eight so far,” Kyle corrected.
They were watching a split-screen display with four separate feeds—according to Kyle, the most relevant cameras from around the boardwalk that MAADN had been able to access. In those disjointed scenes, eight individuals were being tracked as hostiles, each marked with a red diamond symbol. The friendlies were also being tracked, blue circles tagged with the mission call sign of each element. Katy easily recognized John Clark and Ding Chavez in the clearest feed—they were labeled as Blue 1.
“We need a more complete picture,” Kyle prompted.
“TIDE?” queried Moose, who was seated at an adjacent workstation.
“No better time.”
“TIDE?” Katie queried. “What’s that?”
“It’s a new program we’ve been developing. Stands for TacticalInformation Display Enhanced. We brought in some DEVGRU guys a few months ago to help us with the design. It’s based on the tactical situation displays you find on fighter aircraft. Years ago, tactical aviation hit a point where the amount of information available to pilots began exceeding their ability to comprehend it. It was classic information overload, a fire hose of data that just became noise. There was a critical need to condense everything into a single, easily decipherable presentation—a big picture of the battle space that automatically prioritized what was important.”
“And TIDE does the same thing on the ground?”
“That’s the idea. It’s designed for an urban environment, places where you have so many inputs the big picture turns to clutter. Cameras, overhead reconnaissance, mobile phone tracking, hacked feeds from other intel sources. It gets overwhelming fast.”
The four-field display of raw feeds was shunted to a secondary screen and the main monitor blinked to life with a new presentation. Katie saw a high-res satellite map of La Corniche and the bordering city—roughly one square mile of Tangier in sharp detail. The blue symbols representing Task Force 99 were spread across the waterfront. On the surrounding boulevard and streets eight red diamonds hovered like a noose.
“That’s a lot of adversaries,” Katie said.
“Those are only the ones MAADN has positively identified. Chances are, there are more.”
Katie felt a churn in her gut. Clark and his team were surrounded, yet the best view of their situation was here. She found her eyes glued to the symbol labeled Blue 1. A little over a day ago she had been talking to John Clark at Incirlik. Now here he was, a thousand miles away and back in the hunt. The man did get around. She knew he was a legend in the spec ops community,but watching him work on a live feed, from half a world away, felt surreal.
Two new red diamonds appeared on the west side—more threats verified by MAADN.
“New hostiles near the marina,” Kyle announced. “Fifty yards north of the Sprinter.”
“Is there any way we can send this picture to Clark and his team?”
“No, the TIDE software is purely experimental. No way to relay the output to the field.”
“We need to find a way,” Katie said.
Before Kyle could respond a new symbol appeared. A lone man on the eastern boardwalk was highlighted by a flashing green circle. He was walking quickly, thirty paces behind two of the identified threats on the east side.
“Is that Fulcrum?” Katie asked.
Kyle referenced another screen. “It’s only probable right now—that’s why the tag is flashing. Somatic recognition only, no facial capture.”
“Somatic?” she asked.
“The way he’s moving—his gait, build, stance. We fed in some old video footage of Klaus from a financial seminar to use for comparison.”
“You can identify somebody by the way they move?”
“You’d be surprised at how accurate it is. But the face will confirm it—he’s about to move into the field of view on camera four.”
The man appeared on the bottom-right screen. The flashing circle went solid.
