“Colonel Smith,” the man said, taking a seat and sliding an Android tablet across the table. “I have something to show you that I think you’ll find interesting.”

Smith looked down at the tablet. It was split into four videos with touchscreen controls at the bottom. The top left feed depicted a table set up in the woods with camouflage screening above it. Two men were leaning over it, silently discussing something that appeared to be a map. The second feed showed a massive silver cylinder being worked on by a group of young people. A woman stood about ten yards from them, leaning against a tree and watching. The image was too small to make out facial features, but he knew the body language. Randi Russell.

The other two feeds were just shots of dense foliage. One of them had a few out-of-focus feathers in the foreground.

“The activity is just on the other side of the mountain this facility is built into. I’m told that the machine you’re looking at is a new kind of nuclear-powered tunneling system. It appears that Ms. Russell is wise enough not to mount a frontal assault and is instead going to try to come up on our flank. I have to admit that I admire her tenacity. And the machine itself is really quite ingenious.”

“But her plan isn’t going to work,” Smith said.

“No. And I can’t imagine she doesn’t know that. Ms. Russell has a duty to perform and she intends to do so to the best of her ability. I would expect no less from a woman of her reputation.”

“So you have the entire mountain wired with cameras?” Smith said, really just to stall. But for what? A sudden bolt of inspiration that would allow him to stroll out of there and warn Randi that her operation had been compromised?

“No, that wouldn’t be practical,” Takahashi said, tapping the tablet with a finger. “Actually, I think you’ll be quite intrigued by this technology. Your own military has put a great deal of money into small, stealthy surveillance drones. We did the same more than a decade ago but they’re frankly not a very good solution.”

“No?” Smith said, still desperately trying to calculate a way to stop what was starting to look inevitable.

Takahashi shook his head. “They’re not particularly stealthy, they’re difficult to land and maneuver, and they have very limited range. Birds, though, have none of those failings. When one of my people came to me with the idea of mounting fiber-optic cameras to birds of prey and controlling them with mild electric shocks, I have to admit I was skeptical. Twelve years later, though, we’ve turned it into an incredibly versatile battlefield surveillance platform. And better yet, even with training the animals, our costs are under three thousand US dollars per unit.”