"What the hell is that?" Hayes muttered, taking a subconscious half step back. "Sarge, is that a bomb?" "Don't be an idiot," Hayes, Kesler snapped. Though his own voice betrayed a tremor of doubt.
It's a GPS tracker or a crypto wallet hard drive. These cartels are getting high-tech. They wire the cash ledgers directly into the car's power so they can wipe it remotely if they get pulled over. Riker reached out, his thick fingers grasping the edges of the box. He yanked hard, trying to tear it free, but it was welded securely to a secondary bracket.
It ain't budging, Sarge. Do we cut the wires? Before Kesler could answer, a voice drifted over from the concrete barrier. "If you cut those wires, you will trigger a localized electromagnetic fail safe that will brick the vehicle's entire ECU," Nia said. She stood up slowly, brushing the dust from her coat.
She didn't look like a terrified civilian anymore. "She didn't look like a cornered mule. She walked right up to the edge of the police tape they had haphazardly strung up between the cruisers, stopping a few feet from the mutilated nose of her car. Her posture was absolute steel. "You wanted to know what I do for a living, Officer Riker?"
Nia asked, her voice carrying a chilling authority that made all three men freeze. "I build tamper-proof closed loop surveillance and telemetry systems for high-risk assets. My company just sold the patent to a defense contractor." Kesler sneered, trying to regain control. "I don't care if you build spaceships," Caldwell.
You have an illegal undeclared hidden compartment in a motor vehicle. That's a felony in this state. You're going in cuffs. That's not a hidden compartment for drugs, Sergeant. Nia said, tilting her head slightly.
That box is a proprietary black-box surveillance node. It is hardwired into the vehicle's architecture. And that small glass circle you're staring at, that's a wide-angle Leica lens. Riker looked down at the box, then slowly back at Nia. The blood drained from his face as the implication began to sink in.
A camera, he stammered. Not just a camera, Nia corrected, her voice remaining remarkably calm. She shifted her gaze from Riker to Kesler, locking eyes with the sergeant. It's the central hub for a network of 12 micro cameras embedded throughout the cabin, the rearview mirror, the exterior trim, and the dashboard. Kesler's expression tightened.