He sighed in contentment, but then snapped out of his reverie to find Elijahn watching him. The dangerous flash in the man’s eyes made him focus. He tried to remember quickly what Elijahn had asked. Yes, the computer.
“It’s not just a computer, it’s actually artificial intelligence,” he corrected and nearly fell off his chair when Elijahn turned on him. “It has to be, to do that. To do what we heard, and the way it did it. They must be light years ahead of everybody else. I’m sure—”
“So you can find it now.” Elijahn cut off his panicked ranting.
“Maybe. We would need more information from the data center for that, and you destroyed . . .” He scrambled away when Elijahn reached for his gun. “It wouldn’t matter, that kind of machine would require some major physical space, and it would be well secured. It would probably take . . .”
The gun was pointed at him.
“But we don’t need it, we don’t need the machine, we don’t need it!”
Elijahn lowered the gun. Just a little.
“The operator, get the operator.” He was talking fast, too fast, had to gain time, had to think. This was over the top, yes, but if Elijahn bought it, it would give him time. Maybe he could run. Damn the money. “Yes, it must be an advanced artificial intelligence but it can’t have existed long, these things take time, improving, learning, no matter how good it is it would still require programming and teaching and experience and human intervention . . . No, it still has to be reliant on an operator, its creator most likely, or someone integral to its creation. Yes. Has to be. I compared the audios from the drone to the transcripts we got from the data center, in one of them you can see the operator interfere.” He nodded vigorously. “Yes. Someone is talking to it, guiding it.”
“How many?”
“Several at least. To monitor, maintain. But in the middle of an attack, like what they did to our . . . your base, one person to communicate with it one on one. At the most sophisticated stage, I mean I don’t know if they have that, but it would be the artificial intelligence for the attack as a whole, the person for the system oversight and for the human angle. And we only heard the artificial intelligence, so I would bet the person is very experienced in working with it. Has to be, it’s as if they are one.” He was rambling. Staying alive was a priority now. Elijahn was not a patient man. Smart, the smartest the hacker had ever worked for, but not patient.
“Creator or operator.”
“Most likely both.”
“And if that person dies?”
“That would set them back. At least.”
Elijahn nodded. “Find him.”
Chapter Ten
Donovan gazed thoughtfully at the dark screen. The incident that Larsen and Evans had provided had all the right elements. It explained a lot—how the perpetrators had access to just enough of IDSD’s highest level encryption, how they had first learned of Oracle and deduced it most likely belonged to IDSD. Why they were going to such lengths to find it.
This last thought raised some serious concerns. NWM was certainly not the first technologically savvy group encountered since the Internationals began their efforts to tilt the scales toward peace and unity and away from the old ways, of wars and division. Much had changed in that time. Technology had advanced significantly, and too many militant groups advanced with it. There were those who still advocated using car bombs or suicide bombers, even though they were finding it harder and harder to reach their targets since the allies were increasingly implementing measures that could easily identify such crude means from afar. But other groups had transitioned to the recruitment of engineers, hackers, programmers, weapons experts—brains, dangerous ones—much like NWM’s leader, Elijahn, seemed to have done.
But as the file Donovan had just gone through showed, Elijahn had a rare drive in him. Donovan tried putting himself in the man’s shoes. He wasn’t just a militant per se. No, he had others around him for that. He saw himself as a leader. He’d been educated among those he later decided to go against, and sought to surpass them. He was extraordinarily ambitious in his desire to unite groups that wanted each to stand out, seeking its own prestige and power, because he wanted to create a global organization that would be strong enough to influence, and eventually control, the world’s rogue regimes and their militaries. He wanted to head an international militant force that would be able to stand up to the allies, and shape the world as he thought it should be.
With Elijahn’s illusions of grandeur in mind, losing the Chad base the way he did would have put a serious dent in his plans, and in any respect he might have gained until then. So what better way to regain his prestige and manufacture for himself and his domination plan a second chance among groups that did not give second chances, than to go against IDSD that had destroyed his base, and that in his mind was leading the allies in the war against the militant groups, Elijahn’s own included? Applying what he had seen from his own world of militants, he would think that hurting IDSD, crippling it, would break down the alliance and instill fear. In his mind, the mind of a warmonger, he would not understand that his acts would do just the opposite, bring the allies around IDSD and the Internationals to protect them, protect what they had achieved and what was giving whole nations so much hope.
But the problem was that while Elijahn’s actions would not destroy the alliance, they might unjustifiably make it seem weak and exposed, enough to distance from it those who were just beginning to trust its strength and deciding to stand up to a violent regime or put aside differences with long-time enemies, and try something new, a future that would benefit them. This would be a setback that had to be prevented, for the sake of many.
An attempt by Elijahn to cripple IDSD would take something special. Something clever. Not destroying its headquarters in Brussels, that wouldn’t be possible. That plan of his had been foiled once before and, in any case, the allies had taken that option from him when they destroyed his base, killing his people. No, it would have to be something that would require the kind of resources he could assemble quietly, under the radar, and while he was still in hiding. And his ideal target would be something that ran like a thread through IDSD’s missions, the missions of the allies and their military forces and defense agencies, the missions that had been hitting those same groups whose support Elijahn needed to regain. Something that would enable him to let these groups know he was alive without fearing their rejection because of his previous defeat. Something the destruction of which would bring anti-militant missions, and perhaps a whole lot more than that, to a standstill.
Donovan was sure that was Oracle, the unique artificial intelligence.
And then there was the matter of revenge. For Elijahn himself, for his dreams, for his aspirations. For his life’s work that had been destroyed. And revenge was an all too powerful motive. The man was driven, strategically smart, and patient, and Donovan doubted anything would deter him from his goal. In fact, there was only one thing Donovan thought Elijahn wouldn’t readily give, and that was his own life. He would want to live to reap the fruits of his long-awaited success.
Which made it worse. Elijahn was not about to let his plans fail. He was coming after Oracle, no matter what, and he was doing so to win.
The question was what that meant. With what he now knew about Elijahn, the likely perpetrator in all this, Donovan went back to the possibility of a physical attack on the AI. Could Elijahn do that, come after the artificial intelligence itself? Would he think he could, or even risk it, considering that the allies had foiled a major physical attack by him once before? Would he think that the element of surprise was on his side, that it would be easier for him to act because they didn’t know that he was alive and had not forsaken his plans? Would he even have the kind of force needed to take on the IDSD complex here in the United States? The answer to that last question, Donovan was ready to wager, was no. That would require means that were not being assembled anywhere around here. Otherwise, intelligence would have picked up o
n it. And security at IDSD was especially high these days, so something like that couldn’t be pulled off anyway, not even by a specialist team. Not even in disguise—identification systems had long ago taken care of that, and again, current security was too tight to allow it.
So if not the physical system—or the cyber connection, which would be not be possible with the AI he had in mind, certainly not now—what then? People again. The people behind Oracle.
The person in the human-AI link or collaboration or whatever it was that IDSD had. Now that, according to Reilly, killing whoever that was, would do the job. Donovan frowned. He wouldn’t wait to receive from Larsen the information he’d asked for. He would go get it itself, first thing the next day. It was time he had a face-to-face chat with these people, get the facts straight. All the facts. Before someone else died.
He touched his desk screen, brought up the file Evans had sent him, and went through it again.
Elijahn watched his people. Not many, but enough. The best he had. Or had left. None of them had been at the Chad base, and so they had survived the wrath of his enemies. He could not recruit more people since, could not risk exposing the fact that he was still alive, or where he was hiding. And so they were all he had, them and the locals he had hired. They were all training now. Preparing here, in the soundproof part of the converted warehouse. Final preparations. It was almost time. Soon he would have his revenge, and he would have what he was entitled to.
The hacker working just outside this training area was the same guy who had figured out how to get the data out of the drone. Audio only, true, and partial at that, but it was enough. Enough for Elijahn to hear it, that thing they called Oracle. Enough for him to realize it was responsible for what happened to the magnificent base he had so carefully built, to the people he had so carefully trained, to the contacts he had so carefully created and nurtured. To his dreams, his ambitions, his destiny.
He was not at the base when the attack came. He was at his headquarters. That was where the technologies and experts were, the brain of his group, while the Chad base had been his power. And then it was gone. Nothing, nothing at all was left, not a building standing, not a weapon intact, not a person alive. And he could do nothing.
He had no idea his enemies had found him already, no idea they had been following his people’s communications. His group was substantial by then, with many affiliations, with people, weapons and money moving across the globe. That meant, unavoidably, communicating, and as much as he had worked to hide it, his enemies were ever looking, and discovery at a too early a stage had been a known risk.
And that was precisely why he had the base built as it was. With the best modern security means there were. Multiple traps had been laid around it, from motion detectors and temperature sensors to automated gunfire to mines that could wreak havoc, and the best of all—a controlled electromagnetic disruption that would go off outside the protected perimeter, taking down electronics from the ground up at a sufficient radius to disrupt anything those who would come to harm him might use. Everything was computer-controlled from deep inside the base. And anyone managing to get through, which was, in his mind, impossible, would encounter not only additional security means, but also his warriors, hundreds of them, trained for combat and full of hate. His enemies could send hundreds, thousands, swoop down with jet fighters, drop bombs, and still he would be ready.
But they had only sent dozens. Just that, dozens. Stealthy, they had crept through, not activating any of the security defenses. Not triggering a single system. Not one. As if they had eyes everywhere. As if they knew, at each step, what awaited them and had circumvented it. They had breached the base perimeter, and when finally his people inside realized they were there it was too late. They had spread through the base, moving as if they knew where every person, every weapon, every technology was. Used his own defenses against his people, moving at the last minute so that automated fire found his people and not them, IEDs ripped through his people, not them. Dozens, against his hundreds. It was over so fast nothing could be done.
He had watched it all from his headquarters, through cameras carefully set. Right up until the base disintegrated, his cameras with it.
Not one of theirs was killed. All of his were eliminated. Men he had borrowed, bought, convinced. Trained. Controlled.
He had been shocked, confused, could not begin to understand how this could be. He had spent long years studying them, his enemies—their weapons, their capabilities, their methods and ways. He had based his people’s training on that knowledge, planned his base’s location, its structure, its defenses on it. And yet when it came down to it, somehow they went through all that he had painstakingly built as though they knew all about it, as though they had been right there in his head when he planned, when he implemented.
He had remained hidden. And for a long time he had only watched and listened. He knew those he had partnered with had turned their backs on him, saying he could not deliver on his promises. Saying he had been weak. Saying the alliance had gotten the better of him. They had thought he had been there, in his base, and had said that he had died in shame. That it was as it should be, in their world failure such as his warranted death. And he knew his enemies, those who had destroyed him, had searched, until finally they too thought that he had died in their attack. But he was alive and hiding where none of them could ever find him, and when it was safe he had gone back himself, one last time, to see it, his ruined base, his lost hope, in anger, in despair.
And that was when he had found the drone. Half-buried in the sand, a distance from what used to be his base. He had taken it back to his headquarters, where he still had his best brains and a few select warriors. No one, not even his former partners, knew where his headquarters was, or that it even existed. And there, his engineers had opened the drone, carefully so, and even then they had almost lost the data. Almost. Enough remained, thanks to the hacker, precious audio segments. It had taken them, the experts he had painstakingly collected, long months to work with these, and he had waited patiently. They could not decipher the audio files fully, but they deciphered enough.
And he heard it. The mechanical voice, giving orders. Guiding the enemy soldiers quietly, quickly, never hesitating, moving from team to team, angle to angle, seeing it all, anticipating it all, as if it was right there inside his base, as if it knew about everything, everyone that had been placed in their way. As Elijahn had listened to the impossible, he had understood. He now had a name for his anger, for his hate, for his revenge.
Oracle.
IDSD, that was who the drone belonged to. The very organization he dreamed of replacing someday had done this to him. He began to plan his revenge and had searched for the nemesis it had set upon him. But he had not been able to find it. Having to stay down, stay dead, made it difficult.
Finally, the same hacker who had helped recover the data from the drone, who had been searching like him, like all his people, had come to him, told him what he thought his nemesis was. The hacker was also the one who had come up with the idea to go to the one place all his enemies’ data was in, the one place he could, perhaps, find something, anything, about this Oracle. And he had found it there, in the data center. He found Oracle. Or at least enough to confirm what it was, that it was used by his enemies in other attacks too, attacks that had set back those who had been his partners. And if that was true, if that Oracle had been involved in those two attacks he now knew about, how many other of their plans had it foiled? How many plans of others, others who would join him if he eliminated Oracle?
Luck, it seemed, was finally on his side. If he could destroy Oracle, then expose its existence to his world, he would have all the respect, the power, he deserved. No, not only to his world. To the entire world. Oracle would be made public, IDSD and its wretched allies would lose their advantage and suffer the consequences of their shameful defeat by him, and his victory—and his revenge—would finally be complete.
Yes, mistak
es had been made. He should not have left those guards at the data center to be found with bullets in them, even if these could not be traced. He should have stuck with his original plan, to make the fire look like an accident in order to mask the theft. Not given them a reason to look for anyone in connection with the destruction. But success, finally being so close to his revenge, had made him careless, and now IDSD, like everyone else, his hacker and the scout he had sent out had told him, was protecting itself against both physical and cyber access and was looking for whoever had destroyed the data center. Still, that did not matter. They would not know what he had done, what he had been after, or that it was he who had caused the destruction. And this time there would be no intelligence to lead them to him.
He would win. He was alone, but not for long. He would have his revenge, and his place in his world like never before. And they would all fear him.
Movement caught his eyes. On the other side of the glass, the hacker was waving excitedly. Elijahn left the training area and walked over to him.
“I got it,” the hacker said.
In his office at IDSD Missions, Vice Admiral Frank Scholes faced the two heads of intelligence. His, in person, and US Global Intelligence’s, on the screen.
“Is that so?” he asked.
“Yes,” Larsen said. “Agent Pierce gave us what we needed to identify who broke into the data center, and he managed that even though we stalled him on Oracle. And you know Elijahn, you know what Oracle did to him. He won’t stop until he gets what he wants. We believe that if we bring Agent Pierce into the loop, he would understand. He would also be able to anticipate Elijahn’s actions better, and we might have a better chance of bringing this to an end faster. And protecting Oracle.”
“I have to agree,” Evans said.
Scholes nodded. He’d already reached this conclusion himself, having followed the investigation—and Lara—closely. And having run a more in-depth check on the USFID agent, once he learned the man was Lara’s neighbor. For his own peace of mind.
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