Fezzan had used the name Ahmed when they first met. Kharon knew it was not his real name, but it was convenient to continue the fiction. In fact, it felt almost delicious to do so, a kind of proof to himself that he was far superior to the people he was dealing with.

Hubris is a killer, he reminded himself.

“You wish transport south again?” asked Fezzan.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“As soon as it can be arranged.”

“Tomorrow then. At four.”

“In the morning?”

“Afternoon.”

Kharon shook his head. “Too late. I want to be there before noon.”

“Noon.” Fezzan made a dismissive sound and picked up one of the beer bottles. He emptied it into his glass. “Who would even be awake then?”

“If you can’t do it, I can find someone else.”

Fezzan scowled at him. “I have other business.”

“That’s not my problem.” Kharon started to get up. He noticed a young woman in a silk dress eyeing him at the end of the bar. She might be useful.

“All right.” Fezzan thumped the empty bottle on the table. “You know, you are not always a welcome person behind the lines.”

“No?” Kharon glanced over at the woman, studying her. It was difficult to tell her age in the bar. She could be anywhere from fourteen to thirty.

Most likely on the younger end of the scale, he decided.

Fezzan followed his gaze.

“You should be careful,” warned the Libyan. “Some fruit has terrible surprises inside.”

“Best pick it before it rots, then.”

The girl was gone by the time Kharon finished with Fezzan, but that was just as well; he had much work to do. He went upstairs and caught a taxi to the Tula, a tourist-class hotel on the ocean about a half mile away. The hotel had a spectacular view of the ocean, and a restaurant on the roof some thirty-five stories high. But for Kharon, the attraction was the computer in the alcove just off the lobby.

There were two there, generally used by patrons to confirm airline reservations and print out boarding passes. But the Internet connection was not limited to this, and within a few moments Kharon had disabled the timer as well.

He went to Yahoo News and did a quick recap of the stories on the bombing attacks on the government city.

Two hundred thirty-eight stories had been published in the past twelve hours. But none included the video he had uploaded the night before.

All of that work—not to mention expense—for nothing?

That was not true. The same man who procured the video had also introduced the worm; it was a package deal. But still, it was disappointing that the video had not been used.

Most of the stories were vague about what had happened. Kharon decided he would have to help things along. Choosing one at random, he went to the comments section. He created an account and then began typing:

THE VICIOUS ATTAK ON THE TOWN IN LIBYA WAS CONDUCTD BY A AMERICAN DRONE . . .

He liked the typos. They would stay.

Kharon wrote a few more lines, then posted it. After repeating the process on a dozen other news sites, he turned to his real work.

Opening the text editor, he began pounding the keys:

THE ATTACK THAT WENT WRONG IN THE LIBYAN CITY YESTERDAY WAS LAUNCHED BY AN AMERICAN UAV USING AUTONOMOUS SOFTWARE TO MAKE WAR DECISIONS. IT WAS DESIGNED BY RAY RUBEO, A PROMINENT AMERICAN SCIENTIST WHO CREATED DREAMLAND . . .

Kharon added the slight inaccuracies in Rubeo’s biography—he did not create Dreamland, nor did he profit there, as Kharon wrote further down in his missive—out of design rather than spite; they would provoke questions about the scientist. The fact that Rubeo was no longer associated with Dreamland—the project was now under another arm of the Department of Defense—was immaterial. The press knew what Dreamland was. Saying the name gave them a bit of red meat to chew on.

Kharon signed the e-mail with the letter F, then sent it to the address of the New York Times national security reporter. He retrieved the text, made a few small changes, and sent it to the Washington Post.

He sent it three other newspapers, and to reporters at several blogs. Then he backed out, erased all of the local memory, and rebooted the computer.

Work done for the day, Kharon looked at his watch. It was well past midnight—too late to bother trying to sleep. He thought of the girl he had spotted earlier in the bar. Perhaps she would have returned by now.

He made sure the computer screen was back to the hotel’s front page, then went out to find a taxi.

16

Sicily

Turk’s fourth beer of the night finally got him off to sleep. He dozed fitfully, curled up at the side of the king-size mattress, huddled around one of his pillows. His dreams were gnarled images that made no sense—an A–10, an F/A–18, Ginella, Zen, buildings, and endless sky.

His phone woke him up, buzzing incessantly.

He had no idea where it was, or where he was. He pushed around in the bed, disoriented. His head hurt and his legs were stiff.

The phone continued to ring. Its face blinked red.

“Turk,” he said, finally grabbing it.

“Captain Mako, I’m sorry I woke you.”

It was Ginella. Her voice was officious, almost quiet.

“Not a problem,” Turk managed.

“I’m down two pilots, Grizzly and Turner. I’m told you’re available, if you choose to volunteer.”

“Yeah, uh, well uh—”

“I just spoke both with your Colonel Freah and Operations. It’s entirely voluntary.”

“When do you, uh—when do you need me there?”

“We’ll be briefing the mission at 0600,” she told him.

“Um, sure. I guess.”

“That’s a half hour from now, Captain. Can you make it?”

“Yeah, um, I’m at the hotel,” he said.

Her voice softened a little. “I realize that, Captain. Would you like me to send a driver?”

“Man, if you could do that, it would be super.”

“Be in the lobby in ten minutes,” she told him. “He’ll have coffee.”

“Ten minutes?”

“He’s already on the way. I knew you’d say yes.”

17

Sicily

It was absurd and ridiculous to think that he was responsible in any way for the dozen deaths and the other casualties at al-Hayat. And yet Ray Rubeo couldn’t help it.

The images he had seen of the strike tortured him. The fact that his people had no luck finding what went wrong bothered him even more. Surely it wasn’t just a mistake—the enemy must have done this for propaganda purposes. And yet his people found no evidence of that.

Something had gone wrong. But what?

Working over his secure laptop in his hotel room, Rubeo worked as he had never worked before. He pulled up schematics and data dumps, looked at past accidents and systems failures, reviewed the different aspects of the mission until he practically had it memorized. And still the cause remained as much a mystery to him as it did to his people.

There was nothing wrong with the system that he could tell. The systems in the Sabre that had made the attack were exactly the same as those in the others.

So the attack hadn’t happened. It was all a bad dream.

Rubeo had presided over disasters before. He had stood in the Dreamland control center as the entire world fell apart. He’d never felt a twinge of guilt. Fear, yes—he worried that his people would be hurt, or perhaps that his ideas and inventions would fall short. But he never felt guilty about what he did.