by Dale Brown
They radioed their “victory” back to their carrier and were promptly ordered to return. Additional planes were on the way to escort the minesweeper and chase the Americans off the reef.
As tempted as Turk was to pursue them and burst their bubble, he had other priorities.
Unfortunately.
“Whiplash Shark, how do you read?” asked Danny over the Whiplash circuit.
“Read you good, Colonel.”
“We’re returning to base.”
“Roger that. Chinese aircraft heading back. There’s another flight on its way to the reef. The Chinese think they shot me down,” Turk added.
“Let them think that. What about the UAV that tangled with the Marines?”
“I’m just about to go check,” said Turk. “I was planning on sending both Sabres to escort you back while I do that.”
“Acknowledged. Good. Listen, Turk, that UAV that attacked the Marines—it’s not a priority right now. We pulled some gear out of the container that the geeks want to look at, and I’m sure they’ll get a lot more information from that. I don’t want you risking yourself, or the planes for that matter.”
“Roger that, Colonel.”
“All right. Let me know if the situation changes.”
Turk gave the instructions to Sabre One, did a quick check on Two, which was already with the Osprey, then pulled up the map to show where the other two Sabres were.
West of him, about to lose their connection to his plane.
What?
“No way,” Turk told the computer.
“Unknown command.”
“Range, Sabre Three and Sabre Four, from Tigershark.”
“Two hundred miles.”
“How are they connected to my command?”
“Connection via Whiplash satellite system, satellite 34G. Connection about to terminate.”
“Maintain connection,” Turk told the computer.
“Connection is automaintained,” replied the computer, meaning that it had no control over it. In theory, at least, it should be very strong; the planes themselves were doing something to cut it.
“Plot course for intercept,” Turk told his flight computer as he put the Tigershark in the general direction of the wayward Sabres. He jammed the throttle, increasing his speed. He couldn’t keep the afterburner on very long, though, as he was already close to bingo.
He put his radar on long scan but found nothing. Turk did a quick calculation; at their present course and speed, he’d catch up in ten minutes.
It was going to be a long ten minutes. The sky in front of him seemed completely empty; not even the enemy UAV was around.
“Connection to Sabres lost,” declared the computer.
“Reset.”
“Command unavailable.”
“Locate Sabre Three and Sabre Four.”
“Aircraft are not responding.”
“Detect them.”
“Aircraft cannot be found.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Unknown command.”
“Someone ought to program you to understand curse words,” said Turk.
ACES
1
Over the South China Sea
SEARCHING THE AREA where he should have met the Sabres left Turk with a strange sense of déjà vu, as if he’d woken up back in Iran. Nothing made sense.
He had the enemy UAV they were following on his infrared scan. It had been flying low, barely inches from the ocean where it was lost in the reflective clutter of the waves, but now he could see it clearly, running two miles ahead at a speed of just under a hundred knots. Turk closed the distance, sure the Sabres would appear in the infrared screen. But they didn’t.
He was about to call Breanna for instructions on what to do with the UAV—he assumed he was to shoot it down—but before he could it abruptly dove into the water.
Marking the spot on his GPS, he resumed his search for the Sabres, using every sensor he had, including his own eyes. But the sky was empty for a hundred miles in every direction.
“Colonel Freah—Whiplash Shark to Leader,” said Turk, clicking the radio. “Colonel Freah, I have a problem that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Go ahead, Shark.”
“I can’t find the Sabres. They’re gone.”
“Say again?”
“The enemy UAV just crashed into the water. I have the location. But the Sabres aren’t here.”
“Did they crash?”
“Negative, as far as I know.” It was certainly a possibility, of course—maybe even a probability. But something was very wrong. Why had they broken the connection? It had happened while they were still flying. Had they been damaged? It didn’t really make sense.
“They just went off the radar screen,” Turk told him. “I thought maybe there was an ECM or something. But then when I got close—there’s just nothing here.”
“Have you talked to the Cube about it?”
“Not yet.”
“Do it.” Before Turk could switch back, Danny added, “What’s your fuel situation?”
“It’s tight,” acknowledged Turk. “Do we have a tanker available?”
“Negative. Negative. Be careful of your reserves.”
“Yeah, roger that.”
The Tigershark’s sensor data as well as its location and vital signs were being pumped back to Whiplash, and Breanna had seen the UAVs disappear from the screen.
She, too, was baffled, as was everyone in the situation room.
“We’re guessing they must have sustained damage somewhere,” she told him. “But we don’t have a theory yet.”
“I can search the route they took,” volunteered Turk; he’d already turned back in that direction. “There were a few atolls, and maybe—”
“Negative, Turk. Your fuel is low. Return to base.”
“I have a few more minutes to play with.”
“You are into your reserves already,” insisted Breanna. “Turn that aircraft around and get back to land. I don’t want to lose you, too.”
That’s a change, thought Turk as he complied. Probably she’s just worried about losing the plane.
2
The Cube
RAY RUBEO LEFT the situation room and walked down the hall to his office.
Even if he didn’t suspect Reid was trying to pin some of the blame of Kallipolis and Braxton on loose security at Dreamland when he was there—Rubeo had been the head scientist—losing the Sabres without any explanation was a major disaster. While the techies all thought they’d simply been damaged and dipped into the water, Rubeo had far greater fears.
While he trusted the Whiplash computer system and its security protocols—his firm, after all, had designed them—he suddenly couldn’t trust all of the people who might eventually be given access to them. And so as he sat down he took a small iPodlike device from his pocket along with a cord; unplugging the keyboard, he inserted the device in its place, then reconnected the keyboard. The device added another layer of encryption and would destroy all traces of his keystrokes in the system once the session was over; there would be no record of what he typed when he was done.
Rubeo typed a series of commands to connect him to his own computer network. Once he was authenticated—ID’ing the physical device he was using was just a start—he began typing commands.
Retrieve the file on Braxton, he typed into the computer. Retrieve all files related to radar. Highlight Project Ghost and any related projects. List any associates on projects . . .
Rubeo typed for a solid five minutes, commanding the computer to search not just his files, but any file anywhere on the Internet. That meant government files as well, not all of which he was authorized to see.
This was too important a problem to worry about formalities.
Five minutes later he was looking at the paper Braxton had written on neutralizing telemetry data via sympathetic waves.
Obviously, Braxton had done more work since then.
Rubeo si
fted through the other retrievals until he found the files on encryptions.
“Ray?”
Rubeo looked up to find Breanna at the door.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “Are you all right?”
“Braxton was able to override the command broadcast protocol. The only possible motive was to steal the Sabres. And the only reason for that was to get their distributed intelligence architecture. That’s what he wants.”
“You don’t think the aircraft crashed?”
“Not at all. They’ve been captured,” said Rubeo. “We’ll have to study the data, but my guess is, the same techniques he’s using to hide the radar signatures were used to disguise the telemetry he sent to the Sabres. The only possible reason he would want them, though, is the distributed autonomous computing. That’s the real difference between them and the Gen 4 Flighthawks. If he was simply tweaking our nose, he could have done it earlier, rather than taking them on such a long flight west.”
“You’re saying that his plan was to steal these aircraft all along?” asked Breanna.
“I don’t know. I would say he and his people anticipated the opportunity. The way the aircraft think and communicate is unique. And obviously they are very valuable, even with the computing units.”
That was quite an understatement. The AI system was envisioned as the centerpiece of a small army of units working together and on their own with minimal human guidance. It was the stuff of science fiction, but it was well within their grasp.
“If they have our control system, we’ve got to change it,” Breanna said.
“Not until we get the Sabres back,” said Rubeo. “If we change it now, they’ll realize we know what they’re doing and how.”
“You have a plan for that?”
“I will. As soon as I figure out a way to get past the encryption in real time.”
Breanna nodded.
Clearly, Rubeo thought, she didn’t realize how difficult that task actually was.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE artificial intelligence modules that piloted the combat UAVs was a long and tortuous process. Thousands of people had eventually worked on the project, and over a hundred were still working on it, making improvements every day. But despite the many variations and evolutionary changes, the core of the AI systems came from a common seed, a set of chips and programming protocols that Jennifer Gleason had originally developed at Dreamland. In the wake of the accident that robbed Zen of the use of his legs, the scientist had revamped the original designs and added what she called “piping” into the chip structure that functioned as a kind of emergency override. When a numerical pass code “flowed” down the pipeline, it could control the brain.
The pass code was a little more complicated than a standard password, as it changed on the fly. It got its basis from DNA sequencing. At the time, this was thought to be an almost foolproof identifier—the researchers could literally lick a finger, put it in a reader, and thus establish their identity with both ease and physical security. Since that time, various work-arounds had been discovered, and easier methods used, but the pipeline was an integral part of the chip construction. It was similar to a reptilian brain deeply implanted beneath the human cortex.
Rubeo wasn’t sure exactly how the pass code was being exploited. Overcoming it was theoretically possible, but difficult. A much quicker solution was to use the pass code themselves—which he had done by deciphering the part of Jennifer’s DNA used in the communications.
The problem was that a different and much longer strand was being used for the command sections, most likely on a rolling basis where the keys changed according to a formula he would have to crack. He needed the rest of Jennifer’s genotype, and even then would face a difficult task of sheer force computing to break the encryption into a “simple” code.
Braxton had obviously gotten his hands on Jennifer’s full genotype somehow, not just the small section of the X chromosome, as Rubeo had originally thought. But there was no record of the rest.
A lock of hair? That was probably how Braxton had done it.
The only thing the scientist could think of was exhuming her body.
“God, this is grisly.” Breanna shivered as he told her.
“We’d need a court order,” said Rubeo. “Or approval from next of kin. Your father.”
Breanna’s body turned ice cold, as if she’d plummeted into an icy lake.
Jennifer’s DNA? How had Braxton even gotten hold of that?
What would her father say?
“Time is certainly critical,” Rubeo told her. “We have to locate the UAVs before Braxton has a chance to study them carefully. And before the Chinese get there.”
Breanna’s mind drifted back to the last time she’d seen her father, Tecumseh Bastian. It was at Jennifer Gleason’s funeral. He’d asked for a special waiver to allow her to be buried at Arlington Cemetery. It was only right, he’d argued; she’d served the country for years as a scientist, and then died on a Dreamland operation. But the request was denied.
Bastian had blamed internal politics and a vendetta against him by some in the military hierarchy and new presidential administration. There was certainly some truth to that. The general had been pilloried by Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff following the operation that resulted in his wife’s capture and beheading. But Jennifer also hadn’t met the criteria for waivers, and the new President could hardly be expected to make an exception.
Breanna heard Rubeo’s voice from a distance, as if he were summoning her out of a dream. “Will you?”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Will you ask him?”
“I haven’t spoken to my father in several years, nor seen him in ages,” she said. “I’m ashamed to say I don’t even know how to get in touch with him.”
“I do,” said Rubeo. “But I can’t promise that he will take your call, let alone agree to our request.”
“What’s the number?” Breanna asked.
3
Rural Pennsylvania
TECUMSEH “DOG” BASTIAN shouldered the rifle, then watched through the scope as the buck made its way through the trees on the hill opposite him. It was eight hundred yards away, surveying the edge of the open field below the slope.
Eight hundred yards was a very long shot, even with the customized Remington 700 rig in his hands. Dog had shot elk at that range and come away with a trophy, but that was a different gun and many years ago now. His hands remained rock steady, but his eyes were no longer what they once were. Even as he peered through the scope, his right eye began to water and the left to quiver.
Still, he had the big animal in his crosshairs as it started down the slope.
Ten years ago he would have taken the shot.
Ten years ago he wouldn’t have been here.
Bastian followed the deer through the scope. It was moving west, toward an old abandoned farm. He could swing around, cross the stream that divided the two hills, and come out in a small copse where it was likely to be browsing.
“Going to make me work a little, are you?” he said to the buck as if he were a few feet away.
The air was crisp, without a discernible wind. This piece of Pennsylvania—his piece of Pennsylvania—was deserted and empty, the one place on earth where he felt entirely alone and secure.
Dog reached a trail that had been cut some eighty years before by the previous owners—a Boy Scout council—and turned to follow it. The old blazes were faded and in many cases gone with the trees they’d been painted on. The trail itself was so overgrown in spots that only someone who had been over it many times could pick it out.
Dog could do it with his eyes closed. He’d been over it a hundred times in the past three months alone. Two blue, he called it, after the original markers. He legged down to the stream, where a rope and tree plank bridge was still the best way over the water for a considerable distance.
The wind began to pick up as he started down the trail. It shook the bare tops of the t
rees, gently at first, but by the time he reached the bridge, dead twigs were raining from some of the taller, crowded limbs. Worse, the wind was at his back, which would send his scent toward the deer.
He’d have to give up the hunt. Temporarily.
“You win today,” said Dog, turning around for home. He could use some tea.
There was a time when just thinking of the word “tea” sent him into the blackness, even as he insisted on keeping up the ritual. He was beyond that now, and while he couldn’t say that about many things that reminded him of Jennifer, that one thing, the one habit she had left him with, was something he was grateful for.
She would have liked the crispness in the air. Not the hunting, though. She loved to run and hike and climb rocks and mountains, but she didn’t like to hunt. She always said it was because she didn’t have the patience for it. And she didn’t have great eyesight—she wore glasses or contacts from the time she was a child. But she could handle a rifle with aplomb.
He thought it was more an aversion to killing for sport. So much of her work involved killing, indirectly, that doing it outside the job was something to avoid.
Dog unslung his rifle as he reached his cabin. There was nothing in the house worth stealing, and he could tell just by looking that he had no human visitor, but twice now he’d surprised bears near the back. A woman two towns over had come home one night to find a small black bear sitting in her living room. That hadn’t ended well for the bear or the house, though the woman at least escaped without injury.
He eyed the side yard carefully, glanced around his parked Impala, then went up the stairs to the porch. He stooped down to look through the front window.
All clear.
Dog opened the front door, which he habitually left unlocked. He put his rifle away, then went to the kitchen to start the kettle. He was just pouring the water when the phone began to ring.
Dog rarely used the phone and wasn’t about to answer it now. He concentrated on filling his kettle.
The answering machine picked up on the fifth ring.
“Daddy?”
Breanna’s voice, halting, timid, crossed the tiny space of the old-fashioned kitchen like a ghost peeking out from the closet.
