Suddenly a voice yelled in my ear. “Jumper to Cowboy, Jumper to Cowboy, do you copy?”
I touched my earbud. “Go for Cowboy.”
It was Nikki, and she sounded hysterical. “Be advised, we have lost control of the drone.”
“Say again?”
“We have lost operational control of the drone. We’re getting signals that the bird has gone weapons hot. Jesus Christ, Cowboy, it’s coming right at you. Get out of there!”
Outside, I heard Top and Bunny and Brian yelling.
I heard gunfire.
Hands reached through the smashed hole where the windshield had been. I fought them, fought to hold on to Davidovich as he tried to cling to me.
There was a hissing sound outside, above me.
Then the world seemed to come apart. There was so much heat, and yet my brain seemed to go dark. I felt my body moving through the air, pushed by a burning fist of superheated gas. Then leaves and branches were whipping at me. I was falling, crashing, tumbling as I plummeted through the brush. I still had hold of Davidovich’s hand. Somehow, impossibly, I still clutched his hand in mine.
It was only after I landed that I realized that his hand was all I held.
Chapter One Hundred and Fifteen
Tanglewood Island
Pierce County, Washington
April 1, 12:33 P.M.
On the big screen, they watched the lawn-service truck erupt into a fireball. The plume of fire rose, carrying pieces of the truck and its occupants with it. Smoke billowed up and was torn by the forest winds.
Doctor Pharos was surprised that he felt some sadness at the death of Aaron Davidovich. Not much, but some.
The burned man’s reaction was different.
“Good,” he said, nearly spitting the word at the TV monitor. The screen was dark now, though a moment ago it displayed the video feed of the hijacked DMS drone. “There’s an end to it.”
“He was more useful to us alive than smeared over half of Washington State.”
“How so? We have Regis. We have the other programs. We milked that cow for all there was.”
Pharos shook his head. “He can control all of the programs.”
“We control them.”
“We use them. It’s not the same thing.”
The Gentleman chuckled. “Of course it is. A soldier doesn’t need to know how a bullet is made. He needs to be good at killing his enemies with it. Davidovich loaded our guns very, very well.”
Pharos got out of his chair and walked around to the foot of the hospital bed so that he could be face-to-face with the burned man. He leaned on the steel foot rail.
“Most of his programs are running now. The rest will kick in automatically according to the timetable, but—”
“Which is exactly what we wanted.”
“Please, let me finish. Your bullet-and-gun analogy is flawed. What Davidovich did for us is much closer to building a nuclear reactor than casting a bullet. We are going to use the power of that reactor to accomplish every item on our checklist, and that’s fine. But once all of that has been accomplished, we have to be able to shut the reactor down; otherwise it becomes a danger to us every bit as much as to our enemies.”
“It will shut down by itself, Michael. That’s part of the timetable, too.”
“Theoretically, yes. Optimistically, yes. But tell me, my friend,” said Pharos, “what if it doesn’t? What if runs on and on until it goes critical and melts down? Which, as Davidovich so often warned us, is a real possibility unless carefully managed. What then?”
The Gentleman turned aside and did not answer.
What disturbed Pharos most was that the burned man kept smiling.
Chapter One Hundred and Sixteen
Tiger Mountain State Forest
Washington
April 1, 12:41 P.M.
Short version, Top shot the drone down with a rocket-propelled grenade.
Saved everyone else’s lives, because the thing was turning for another pass.
Long version? Well, time would tell. Doctor Aaron Davidovich was dead. Blown to bits, burned to ash. Taking all of his secrets with him.
The reset code.
The notebooks.
The identities of Doctor Pharos and the Gentleman.
The name of the goddamn island where the Kings had held him.
Gone.
All of it, just … gone.
Me?
I was flash-burned and bruised. My hearing might never be right. And I had about a hundred small cuts to add to the damaged suit of skin I was already wearing. None of which I cared about.
Davidovich was dead, and so was our only lead.
I sat on a log and drank water while Brian applied some kind of burn salve to my skin. Odin and Java Teams showed up and milled around and made the kind of too-little, too-late grumbling comments you’d expect them to make.
I called Church and told him.
He didn’t say much. Didn’t tell me he was happy I was alive. I guess he had about as much enthusiasm and optimism as I had.
Chapter One Hundred and Seventeen
Naval Base Kitsap
Kitsap Peninsula
Puget Sound, Washington
April 1, 12:46 P.M.
The boat was named for a former president of the United States, but the class of submarines was named after a fast and aggressive Atlantic fish. The USS Jimmy Carter was a Seawolf-class nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine. Lethal, powerful, and reliable. And rare. Twenty-nine of the boats had been planned, but only three built once the Cold War ended and took a big chunk of the defense budget with it. Instead of building more Seawolf hulls, the navy switched to the less expensive Virginia-class subs.
The Jimmy Carter kept sailing, though. Above and below the waves. Doing her job, making a difference in both direct enforcement and covert operations. Built to go toe-to-toe with the Russian Typhoon missile boats and still be agile enough to duke it out with the Akula-class attack subs, these subs were a perfect balance of muscle and speed: they were armed with eight torpedo tubes and laden with fifty UGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles.
The Jimmy Carter was easing out of its home port at Naval Base Kitsap and edging toward the deep blue Pacific water. The stay in port had been at the end of thirteen months of continuous duty. The boat had been part of a new series of exercises in the troubled waters between Japan and China and had twice been sent to openly lurk in plain view of the North Korean navy. No shots were ever fired, however its presence was a statement made with cold eloquence. Since returning to Washington State, the Carter had received a thirteen-million-dollar computer upgrade. Hardware, software, and firmware. A team of DARPA engineers had crawled like ticks all over the boat, removing old systems, installing new ones, uploading software that was supposed to give the boat a new level of operational efficiency that would ensure a lightning-fast reaction-time counterpunch.
The crew and officers were used to this sort of upgrade. The Department of Defense loved its toys, and refits were a fact of naval life.
Now the refit was done, the systems double and triple checked, and the boat was on its way to a run to Pearl Harbor and back to test the systems.
Doctor Sarah Ghose tried not to be a total obstructive pain in the ass, but she knew that everyone thought she was. She wasn’t a sailor, and despite her degrees and a lifetime of advanced schooling, she couldn’t reliably tell starboard from port or fore from aft. Every time she thought she had that down, she discovered she was wrong. She also found herself transgressing against the countless rules and policies aboard a naval fighting vessel, and a submarine in particular. She often called the chief of the boat “Chief,” which was apparently wrong; and she called him “sir,” which was clearly a sin against God.
The only reason she hadn’t been loaded into a torpedo tube and fired into the depths of the ocean was that she understood the BattleZone and Enact software packages and could debug any glitches as they happened.
Which is w
hy the captain allowed her to remain on the bridge.
Or, as she’d been told at least fifty times, the control room. The bridge was that tall conical thing that sometimes stuck out of the water.
Ghose was sure he loathed her as much as everyone else.
She watched as the crew went through the process of preparing to dive the boat.
“Stop engines,” ordered the diving officer. “Switch to battery power.”
Ghose watched as this was done. Everyone seemed to move without concern and with a fluid and practiced ease.
“Close main induction.”
Ghose remembered some of what they’d told her the first four times the boat had gone through this process, and if she couldn’t remember policy, she could grasp the mechanics. The main induction was a large air-intake pipe, located at the rear of the conning tower. It has to be closed before diving or the engine rooms would fill with water. The executive officer told her that this happened once way back in 1939 to a submarine called the USS Squalus. The boat sank and half the crew died. She licked her lips nervously, hoping this crew was doing everything right.
The diving officer went through the rest of it with the crew. Making sure the main induction opening was sealed and checking this against a row of green indicator lights. Testing it by releasing air pressure into the hull.
“Open main vents,” said the officer, contriving to sound bored. Ghose wasn’t fooled. No one in their right minds could be anything but terrified by willingly sinking a big iron casket into the depths of the ocean.
“Rig out bow planes,” said the officer. “Close vents.”
As this was done, Ghose felt her heart hammering in her chest.
“Blow negative.”
There were sounds and creaks, and the big metal coffin dropped down into the water. Ghose could not see this, but she was sure she could feel it.
“Level off. Slow to one third.”
After a moment, the diving officer turned to the captain and informed him that everything had been done right and that the boat was at the proper depth and speed—and, Ghose hoped, that they were not about to implode like a crushed Dr Pepper can.
The captain, who had spent this entire procedure leaning over a light map table, straightened and said, “Very well.”
He turned to Doctor Ghose, a big, bland smile on his face. Everyone in the control room looked at her.
Today, after all, was the big day.
It was her day.
“Doctor … are we ready to play our game?” asked the captain. He gestured toward the computer console that had been installed at Kitsap. It looked simple enough. A deck-mounted swivel chair and a computer workstation that had a thirty-inch screen and an extended keyboard. There were two key ports on the upper right side, similar in design to the key slots used on the missile control system. Most of the new systems could be activated and managed by a trained specialist even for one feature, ADAD—the autonomous drive and defense package. ADAD was for submarines what the ComSpinner was for planes. In the event of catastrophic injury to the crew—such as a fire, loss of breathable air, or flooding—the self-contained system would continue managing all systems on the boat, from lights to defensive countermeasures, following a very specific set of the rules of war. In an extreme emergency, such as a nuclear attack on the United States, the president could transmit a control code that would authorize a deeper level of software that would direct ADAD to launch its Tomahawks in retaliatory strikes.
Today’s exercise would not take things that far. What Doctor Ghose and the captain would do was similar to what happened during a missile-testing exercise. They would agree to proceed, break and read authorization codes, insert their keys, turn the keys, and step back to let ADAD do the rest. Except that ADAD was loaded in safe mode only.
If the emergency was real, the captain and any surviving officer who had a key could activate the system.
If everyone was dead or incapacitated, ADAD would self-load after a certain span of time. At any time, a human operator could input a reset code and stop the launch of weapons.
In theory.
“Doctor—?” prompted the captain.
Ghose licked her lips. “Yes, of course.”
She unfastened the top button of her blouse and fished for the metal chain, hooked it with a finger, pulled it out, and held the red key up for the captain’s inspection.
He smiled at her. A tolerant smile.
“Say the words, doctor.”
“Oh,” she said flustered, “right.” She cleared her throat. “Captain, I have the red key.”
“And…?”
“And I am ready to continue.”
“Very well,” he replied. “I acknowledge the red key.”
He dug under his collar and found his own chain and brought a second key out. He showed it to her.
“I have the blue key. I am ready to continue. Do you agree?”
“I agree.”
He nodded approval and crossed to the computer station, gesturing for her to join him. She did, but remained standing as he punched in his personal code on the keypad of a small safe built into the wall. The door popped open to reveal a pair of plastic envelopes slightly longer than playing cards. They were identical and marked ADAD / TESTGROUP C / AUTH.
He took them out and handed one to her.
“Chief of the Boat,” said the captain, and a stocky man with a Cherokee face stepped up, “will you witness and verify that I have removed the code sleeves from my safe?”
“Yes, sir. I verify that you have removed two code sleeves from your safe.” He then described the code sleeves in a very loud voice.
“Chief of the Boat,” continued the captain, “will you witness and verify that I am handing one code sleeve to Doctor Sarah Ghose? And verify that Doctor Ghose has received a code sleeve.”
The chief of the boat did, and Ghose had to fight to keep from rolling her eyes. She understood the need for procedure, but some of it seemed awfully silly to her. Still, she waited it all out.
When she held the plastic envelope, the captain addressed her. “Doctor Ghose, I am breaking the seal of my code sleeve.”
He did so by bending it in half. It broke with a sharp sound. The captain pulled it apart and removed a white plastic card on which a short string of numbers and letters was printed in bold typeface. She broke hers, and they compared the codes, agreed that they were identical, showed them to the chief of the boat, who verified all of this, and then turned to the control console. Doctor Ghose slid into the seat and tapped a few keys to bring up a pair of empty fields. She deliberately typed in her code, had it witnessed and verified, and then watched as the captain did the same.
Immediately, the previously quiet computer came to life. Lights flared and a series of small overlapping windows appeared. One gave detailed information about the state of the boat and its readiness for action. Another screen fed telemetric intel from the RFID chips each of the crew had in the fatty tissue under their arms. A third screen showed the status of the weapons systems, and a fourth was a direct link to a roomful of sailors, scientists, and engineers who were clustered around ranks of computers to oversee this test. Because of the attack in Philadelphia and the pervasive belief that a greater threat was poised to strike the United States, everyone wanted this shakedown cruise to succeed. If it worked on this boat, then the Regis systems already being installed on the navy’s ten active carriers and more than two hundred and eighty fighting vessels would be brought to the highest possible level of combat readiness.
The air force was doing the same with its jets, as were the army and marines with everything from helicopters to tanks. A lot was riding on the success of ADAD.
“System is green and fluid,” said Ghose. “All meters are at midpoint, and the redundancies are showing online.”
“Very well,” said the captain. He removed his keychain and waited for her to do the same. He inserted his key and nodded to her to do the same. They made eye contact, and she
saw it then, hidden behind his blasé expression, that spark of excitement. He was enjoying this. He wanted it to work, too. There was a twinkle there.
She smiled at him. He managed to keep a poker face.
“On zero,” he said. “Two, one, zero, turn.”
They turned the keys.
The ADAD system came online smoothly and without pause. All throughout the control room, the lights changed as the autonomous systems activated and took operational control of the submarine. The chief of the boat ordered everyone to stand down, and they obeyed, standing or sitting at their posts, watching as software did what it had been trained to do. The ADAD ran through a series of diagnostics that included making subtle changes to airflow, trim, position, speed, course, and every other system. The telemetry was sent back to Kitsap, where it was analyzed.
Ghose could not see the smiles on all those faces, but she knew they had to be there. She wore one of her own. And now, so did the captain.
“Running a weapons check,” said Ghose, and the captain turned to see the lights on the torpedo and missile systems flick on and off. The mine-deployment systems flashed. The countermeasure-deployment systems did likewise.
Everything was running perfectly.
“Well, Doctor Ghose,” said the captain, “I must admit that this is mighty damn impressive. You and your team have done something remarkable here. On behalf of my officers and crew, I want to congratulate you.”
He held out his hand.
Ghose took it.
And then the lights went out.
Everything except the screen on the ADAD console. In the one second she had left to live, Doctor Sarah Ghose saw something that was impossible. According to every safeguard, every design feature, every failsafe bit of computer code, it was absolutely impossible.
All fifty of the Tomahawk cruise missiles went live.
Every single warhead on the harpoon torpedoes went from inactive into the green.
All of the firing systems instantly went from disabled/inactive to active launch.
In a microsecond. Faster than any human involvement could manage.
Far too fast for any human intervention to stop.