by Steve Alten
“Sorceress is programmed to evolve, Mr. Chau. It seems more efficient because it is becoming more efficient, a trait I wish all of us shared. Now answer my question.”
“The submarine tender Emory S. Land yielded twenty-three Mk-48 ADCAP torpedoes, six Harpoon missiles, five Tomahawk Block III TLAM missiles, and two Tomahawk Block IV deep strike missiles. The Hammerheads have transported all these weapons to the hangar bay.”
“What about the nuclear warheads?”
“The sub was only able to salvage one Trident II (D5) from the Ronald Reagan’s wreckage.”
“Only one? Mr. Stracjek indicated there would be at least ten nuclear missiles on board.”
“Most of the casings cracked when the ship sank. Even so, we could have easily extracted another three had your machine spent less time salvaging so many of the American torpedoes from the supply ship.”
Covah’s steel right cheekbone constricts his smile to a twitching, crooked half grin. “Mr. Chau, Sorceress prioritized the salvage operation based on our long-term objectives. The computer chose to arm itself, knowing we’ll most likely see more combat before we complete our objective. Has Mr. Araujo finished downloading the CVBG’s satellite information?”
“So he says, but you know I don’t trust him. He brings little to our crusade.”
“I disagree. We’ll need Mr. Araujo’s knowledge of his nation’s terrain soon enough. Now, was there something else you wished to discuss?”
“Sorceress identified Stracjek’s body among the dead. He’d been shot.”
Covah exhales painfully. “Then he died for a noble cause.” The Russian closes his eyes to think. The pale face is calm, statuesque, except for the rapid movement of his eyeballs, which twitch to and fro beneath the closed lids.
Chau watches, feeling uncomfortable in the bizarre-looking man’s presence.
The female voice causes him to jump.
ATTENTION. NEXT UTOPIA-ONE TARGET HAS BEEN ACQUIRED. COURSE PLOTTED. WHITE SEA, NORTHWEST RUSSIAN REPUBLIC.
Simon Covah remains upright and motionless in his chair, barely breathing, as his ship races north through the Atlantic, scattering everything in its path.
Naval Undersea Warfare Center Keyport, Washington
Gunnar Wolfe stares out the window of the helicopter, looking down upon Puget Sound. The sight of the Bainbridge Island Ferry brings a rush of adrenaline—and memories of a different existence.
A lifetime has passed since Gunnar was in Division Keyport, the Navy’s Undersea Warfare Center for research and development, testing and evaluation, and engineering support for its nuclear submarines, autonomous underwater systems, and undersea-warfare weapons programs. As chief design engineer of Goliath’s weapons and Hammerhead minisubs, Gunnar had overseen a team of fifty civil service and enlisted engineers, technicians, and scientists, and another dozen defense contractors. During his two-year stint his department had won the prestigious VADM Harold G. Bowen Award for Inventions of Most Value to the Navy, and was a finalist two years running in the Secretary of Defense Design Excellence Award.
Gunnar rubs his eyes. The last time he was in Keyport, the FBI had paraded him before his peers in handcuffs.
Hooah.
He glances up at Rocky, who is seated shotgun. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. He contemplates explaining his motives for wanting to eradicate Goliath’s design, but knows she wouldn’t listen. Rocky’s just like I was, a dutiful soldier, patriotic to a fault. She’s too wrapped up by the flag to see the forest for the trees …
Gunnar spots the naval base in the distance. The chopper sets down minutes later.
Two MPs approach and open the door, beckoning him out. He climbs down, following Rocky into the building, his two new friends escorting him inside.
Captain Andrew Smith is waiting at the security station by the main entrance. The base commander steps forward, tight jet-black curls protruding from beneath his cap. “Wolfe, you must have balls the size of grapefruits to set foot back at NUWC.” Smith looks at Rocky as he follows them inside. “Am I right, Commander? Are your ex-fiancé’s balls the size of grapefruits?”
“I hear yours are the size of raisins.” Rocky pushes past Smith and presses the button for the elevator.
Gunnar grins at his former base commander. “Six years and you still haven’t gotten laid, huh, Smitty? Bet that shit’s backed up pretty good by now—”
“Fuck you, traitor.” Smith turns to his MPs. “If he even looks like he’s doing something suspicious, shoot him in the knees.”
Gunnar, Rocky, and the two guards step inside the elevator and take it up to the third floor, where they are greeted by more security personnel. The MPs allow them to pass, but Gunnar can feel their venom.
Rocky leads him to the familiar double steel security doors. “Your team’s inside. Try not to steal anything before our next meeting.”
Gunnar grits his teeth, watching her walk away. So beautiful. So full of rage. She wants Covah the way Ahab wanted Moby-Dick. He takes a deep breath and enters the lab.
A dozen members of Goliath’s design team look up from their computer terminals, the expression on most faces a mix of curiosity and disgust.
Justin Fisch steps forward, wearing his usual tie-dyed tee shirt beneath his lab coat. He offers a closed fist. “Hey, G-Man.”
“Hey, Fisch.” The knuckles of Gunnar’s fist meet those of the computer expert, their old greeting.
“Heard about Simon. Bet you want to tear him apart, huh?”
“Covah always had an agenda,” whispers Karen Jensen, the naval engineer who had designed the minisub’s sensor array. The thirty-five-year-old brunette with the pierced tongue and eyebrow gives Gunnar a quick hug. “Personally, I never trusted him.”
She takes him by the wrist, leading him to his old office. “Take a look, boss. Fisch and I fixed it up, just the way you left it.”
Gunnar opens the door, catching a whiff of carpet shampoo. The big metal desk in the corner has been cleaned off, the file cabinets, ransacked long ago by the FBI, now back in place. The solid brass table lamp with the gold Penn State emblem against the navy shade has been reassembled, situated in its proper place on the left side of the desk. The computer has been replaced with a newer model, its screen saver flashing “welcome back.”
He steps inside, his heart pounding. Opposite his work space is the old beige, vinyl sofa. Rehung on the wall above the sofa are rows of framed photographs. Gunnar, age twenty-five, bare-chested on a beach, posing with his Ranger buddies. His Special Ops graduation photo, in which he is accepting congratulations from Colonel Jackson. Assorted shots from his days at Penn State, Fort Benning, NUWC …
He notices that the pictures have been carefully rearranged to compensate for the ones no longer there, the ones of him and Rocky. The black-and-white of him and Simon, standing on either side of President George W. Bush in the Oval Office, is also gone.
Gunnar exhales. He raises the venetian blinds, staring out at Puget Sound. This is no longer his office. This is no longer his life …
“All right people,” Bear growls, entering the lab. “Staff meeting’s in two hours. Until then, get back to work.” Jackson steps inside Gunnar’s office. “Fisch, Jensen, that means you, too. And Jensen, take that damn thing out of your eyebrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
The general shuts the door. “Let’s talk.”
Gunnar continues to stare out the window.
“There’s a lot of history between us, son. I think it’s high time we cleared the air.” Jackson loosens his tie. “Now, I know things have been rough—”
Rough? Jesus …
“Why did you refuse my letters?”
“Guess I was too busy to read them.”
“You mean angry. You’re angry at your country. Angry at the Army. Angry at me and Rocky. It’s understandable, being sent to prison for a crime you didn’t commit. The question now is—what are you going to do about it?”
Gunnar bites his
tongue.
“Hell, Gunnar, how do you think I feel? You were like a son to me. When the judge sentenced you—it ripped my heart out. Practically destroyed Rocky.”
Gunnar says nothing.
“Covah was your best friend, and he set you up. He committed treason against our country, and now he’s murdered thousands of innocent men and women. You were the finest Ranger, the finest soldier I ever trained. I need you back in the game. I need you to take this guy out.”
Gunnar can feel the veins throbbing in his neck. He turns slowly to face the Bear, a man he respects more than any person, living or dead. “With all due respect … screw you, sir.”
Jackson’s eyes widen. “Excuse me?”
“I said, ‘screw you,’ General, or didn’t you hear me?”
For a dangerous moment, the Bear’s eyes seem to ignite. He turns away slowly. Removes his hat. Takes a long breath. Runs a hand through his auburn Afro, his blood pressure still simmering. Quietly he asks, “What the hell happened to you?”
Gunnar says nothing.
“This isn’t about serving time in prison, this has been brewing for quite a while, hasn’t it?”
Gunnar stares out the window.
“I said hasn’t it, Captain?” Bear growls.
Gunnar exhales, searching for the words to a speech he’s rehearsed a thousand times.
“I got sick of it. The hypocrisy. The politics. Sick of humanity. There’s so much blood on my hands, I just … I had enough.”
“What do you mean, you were sick of the hypocrisy?”
“The hypocrisy of modern warfare. The hypocrisy of being a soldier, and all the political bullshit that conceals the truth. I spent most of my adult life risking my neck on missions that never changed a goddamn thing. I killed pawns when I should have been going after the real murderers.”
Gunnar’s words become impassioned as he paces. “Want to know what really gets me? It’s the White House policy of financing the most cruel and fanatical fighters, as long as they’re fighting the enemy of the moment. How many times has that little hypocrisy bitten us in the ass? It was the United States who supported the Shah of Iran. Then, when Iran became our enemy, we supported Saddam Hussein, hell we even provided that nutcase with biological weapons. We looked the other way while he gassed his own people and repressed his population, as long as he invaded Iran. Poor Israel does the right thing and blows up Saddam’s nuclear reactor, and we actually condemn the action, even though it probably saved millions of American lives!”
“Gunnar—”
“The Soviets invade Afghanistan, so we rush to provide weapons to Osama bin Laden. Hell, even Manuel Noriega was on the CIA payroll. The only reason George H. Bush went after him had nothing to do with drugs, it had to do with Noriega’s refusal to cooperate with our terrorist contra war against Nicaragua.”
“I’m not here for a history lesson. You were an American soldier. You were trained to do our nation’s dirty work.”
“Then my nation should have let me do it!” Gunnar shakes his head in frustration. “Explain to me why it’s acceptable to slaughter platoons of men with families while Arab assassins remain off-limits? Explain to me why President Bush backed off when we had Saddam dead to rights. And Milosevic … we should have taken that murdering bastard out the moment he ordered the first Kosovo village burned. Bunch of damn sadists—”
“You burned out. I should have seen it coming. It was my fault—”
“Burned out, burned up, blown up, fucked up—call it whatever the hell you want. Know why I originally joined this man’s army? It was to complete my education. My father decided to cut me off financially when I decided I wanted something more than working twelve hours a day on a dairy farm.” Gunnar turns his back on the general. Stares out the window, tears of frustration blurring Puget Sound. “Guess what I learned? I learned to kill. Thanks for the education, Uncle Sam.”
Jackson stares at his former commando. “You’re venting years of frustration, but I know you, Gunnar. I know there’s something else you’re not telling me.”
Gunnar wipes his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Jackson wonders whether to push it. “Okay, tell me about the Goliath. What made you want to destroy the sub’s schematics?”
“Not want—did. I destroyed the schematics, but I didn’t touch the computer components or sell the plans, I wouldn’t do that. And I swear on my mother’s soul that I didn’t know Simon was going to steal them either.”
“All right. But that still doesn’t tell me why.”
Gunnar paces again. “I was blindsided. There was a meeting … I was called to the Pentagon. It was just after Rocky and I got engaged. The DoD ordered me to redesign the Hammerhead as a remotely operated vehicle.”
“And?”
“It was their reasons behind the design changes that pissed me off.” Gunnar turns to face his former mentor. “Seems some four-star general decided my stealth subs would make the perfect delivery system for pure-fusion bombs.”
Bear rubs his forehead, grimacing.
“Oh, you should have heard ’em, Bear, sitting around the table, reviewing the improved dimensions of the killing field … sounded as if they were discussing a profit and loss statement. Pure fusion … the way of the future. You familiar with the weapon?”
“Somewhat. The bomb requires no plutonium in the mix.”
“Correct. What you’re left with is a bigger blast but no radioactive fallout. Perfect if you want to eliminate your enemy but rebuild at a later date. A pure-fusion device small enough to squeeze into one of Goliath’s minisubs could potentially wipe out a country the size of Kuwait.”
Jackson scratches at his auburn Afro. “Look, son, I understand your concerns, but keep in mind, son, we’re not the bad guys. The nuclear genie’s been out of his bottle since my father fought in the big one. The name of the game today isn’t destruction, it’s maintaining the stalemate. The French’ve been working on pure fusion for more than a decade. For all we know the Russians—”
“Ugghhh!” Gunnar backhands the lamp, smashing it against the wall. “Wake up, Bear, we’re out of our freaking minds! Soldiers and civilians are no longer human beings, they’re kill ratios. This is the goddamn doomsday bomb, plain and simple, and you’re justifying the need for potential genocide.”
Bear averts eye contact. He’s done. The commando mentality’s gone. His brain’s fried.
“And what about Covah?” Jackson asks. “Did the men and women of the Ronald Reagan deserve to die?”
Gunnar stops pacing. “No. Simon went too far.”
“And the whole prison thing? Is that how you want your career to end? You can stop him, Gunnar. You can prevent him from killing any more innocent people.”
“I don’t know … maybe.” Gunnar leans back against his old desk. “Covah’s just part of the equation; the bigger problem is Sorceress.”
“It’s a computer. You’ll find a way to shut it down.”
“You don’t get it, do you? This is AI, the real deal. Sorceress is a self-replicating system—a prototype—originally intended to be deployed by NASA for deep-space nonhuman applications. Land Sorceress on Mars or Europa on board a probe, and the machine runs everything, growing as it acquires information. But on a nuclear sub?”
“What’s your point?”
“Christ, Bear, wake up! Sorceress is the ultimate thinking machine, and it’s programmed to learn. Elizabeth Goode made a breakthrough and the DoD jumped on it, dropping billions into the program before any of us could gain an understanding of what we were dealing with.”
“You’re overreacting. We don’t even know if it’s on board.”
Gunnar looks up with bloodshot eyes at his former CO. “It’s on board. And as it self-replicates and grows, we’ll understand less and less about it, making it even more difficult to take off-line.” He pauses, a distant memory tugging at him. “I remember an experiment we conducted for NASA back in 2001, it used a Starbridge Syst
ems computer a thousand times more powerful than a traditional PC. It was one of the many stepping-stone systems Dr. Goode used to configure Sorceress. The computer was asked to recognize basic audio tones. The computer completed the task … only too well. Five of its logic circuits evolved independently. Dr. Goode told me her researchers had no idea how or why it happened, but whenever they tried to bypass the evolved cells, the entire system would shut itself down … as if it refused to sacrifice its independence.”
“And all this means?”
“Multiply that simple experiment by a million. Sorceress is a thinking machine designed to evolve, and it’s been functioning for several weeks now. Who knows what it’s learned even in that small amount of time? Who knows if Simon can even maintain control?”
The general stands. “You know Covah better than any of us. What’s he intending to do?”
Gunnar shakes his head, the jet lag wearing on his brain. “I don’t know. Simon lost his entire family in the Serbian uprising. My guess is he wants revenge. If I were him, I’d move Goliath into the Mediterranean and launch an attack on Belgrade.”
“We can’t allow that to happen, can we?” Bear stares at his protégé. “Gunnar?”
No response.
“I’ve spoken with the president. He’s agreed to offer you a full presidential pardon and reinstatement with back pay if you’re willing to help us stop Covah.”
Gunnar smirks. “The United States government sentences me to ten years, and now they want to pay me to play soldier again. That’s rich.”
“No one said anything about playing soldier. There’s a lunatic out there commanding the most powerful weapon in history. You designed its weapon systems. All we want is your help in finding a way to stop it.”
“No you don’t. What you really want is for me to return to active duty, to lead an assault.” Gunnar turns, his blood boiling. “With all due respect, sir, you can tell Edwards he can shove his reinstatement up his ass.”
He pushes past Bear and out the door.
“Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union.”
