Devil's Due (6 page)

    The young ensign’s face reddened, but the room became pin-drop quiet under the weight of the Command Master Chief’s scowl.

    “The injury sustained to the external carotid artery,” the young ensign repeated, running a hand down the right side of her neck to demonstrate. The ensign stopped, swallowed hard. She looked nervously to the Command Master Chief. The chief prodded her on with his eyes.

    “The injury…” she began again, but apparently was unable to continue.

    As the Command Master Chief walked the ensign out of the room, Scott raised both hands to his head. Ansely had seemed okay—wounded but okay. He could hear Ansely’s voice in his head, saying “Don’t bother. Blood’s not mine.” How in the world could Cooper with a sucking chest wound be alive though still in surgery while Ansely with a gouge on his neck be dead?

    Scott couldn’t help himself when he blurted out, “Edie? Is Edie okay?”

    The Command Master Chief turned on his heel. “Who?”

    “The civilian female,” Scott said. “The civilian from the
Sea Shepherd
.”

    “The civilian female?” the ensign asked. “She was D.O.A.”

    D.O.A. Dead On Arrival. Scott’s world spun. He had to push back against the wall to keep from falling over.

Chapter 11

Bluffdale, Utah
Evening, Previous Day

A few unexpected interruptions followed by staff meetings kept Dave from his desk for hours after he applied the update to the query engine. Although the updates were live and the systems were working, he had yet to perform his final checks and his shift was nearly over.

    Using the native query language, he entered DIFF “BASE X:MEDSEA -24H” & TEST.LOG. This was a standard query to give him the difference between current live activity levels in the Med and those he’d logged earlier. The baseline results would tell him whether the query engine was working as expected.

    Distracted by thoughts of his quantum tests, he turned to his second screen and opened the summary document containing the results from his D-Wave tests. A lot of people in Big Data were envious of him and his research opportunity. Classical computers had been around for decades but quantum computers were new and exotic. Those working with the D-Wave were working to answer the exciting questions of the day. What would happen when computers operated under quantum rules? Could quantum computing really work? How would it work?

    Traditional computers worked with information in the form of bits. Each bit could only be either 1 or 0 at any given time. The same was true about any arbitrary collection of classical bits. It was the foundation of everything mankind knew about information theory and digital computing. It ensured that whenever you asked a classical computer a question, the computer proceeded in an orderly linear fashion to obtain an answer.

    But the niobium computer chips in the D-Wave relied on quantum bits or qubits. Unlike traditional bits, which were always either 1 or 0, qubits used quantum superposition, which allowed them to be 1, 0, or 1 and 0 at the same time. Because they could exist in a superimposed state, it was almost as if qubits existed in a parallel universe, for a quantum bit could simultaneously exist as two equally probable possibilities. Not only was this exceptionally strange, but it was also incredible useful for performing powerful queries and analytics.

    To be effective though, qubits needed to exhibit quantum behavior. They needed not just superstition but also entanglement, which linked the states of multiple qubits together.

    The power of entangled qubits was in their exponential capability to perform calculations. Because one qubit could exist in two states at the same time, one qubit could perform two calculations at the same time. When qubits were entangled, two qubits could perform four simultaneous calculations; three qubits could perform eight; four qubits could perform sixteen; and so on. The chip he was working with could perform more simultaneous calculations than there were atoms in 3 billion quadrillion universes.

    That kind of processing power simply wasn’t available to traditional supercomputers no matter how big they were made. Not only did the staggering possibilities have the traditional computing community in an uproar, it was also the reason the NSA’s Penetrating Hard Targets unit had invested over $200 million into quantum computing. But PHT wasn’t even close to developing anything as sophisticated at the niobium chip he was working with.

    Big Data wanted access to this technology yesterday to start applying quantum-based solutions to the exabytes of information we were burying ourselves in every single day—genomes, search queries, phone records, financial transactions, social media posts, geological surveys, climate prediction data, engineering simulations, real-time global surveillance.

    While the theories behind quantum computing were clear, the actual practice was a stark contrast. No one really knew what to do with quantum computers and those with access to the technology were trying to figure it all out. It was a solution looking for the right problems.

    Thinking about all this, Dave was beyond excited when he started reviewing the quantum test results. His tests were designed to confirm a fundamental theory: that the niobium chips he was working with were ideally suited to solving discrete combinatorial optimization problems, which involved finding the shortest, quickest, cheapest or most efficient way of performing a given task. More specifically, whether that power could be tapped into if one simply phrased a given question correctly. If his research was proven true, it would mean that quantum computing was the Holy Grail of Big Data.

    As he reached for his coffee, he glanced at the other screen, noting with some irritation that the dataset was still generating output. Even as he started typing again, his fingers stopped dead on the keys and then he stared at the screen where the results of his earlier query were displaying. Sure there was some kind of problem with the query engine updates, he chastised himself for letting himself get swept up in the usual meetings and distractions.

    He stood up from his desk, suddenly worried about hours of data analysis that could contain invalid results, not to mention the possibility of thousands and thousands of improper automated filings. His face flushed. His heart beat faster. He wondered if he should make the call and issue an Analytics Alert that would stop global data operations so that he could undo the updates. If he did that, hours of data gathering would be invalidated, as would every manual and automated query run against the data since the updates were applied.

    In a panic now, he put his face in his hands, clawing at his forehead. “Think,” he told himself tersely.

    He sat back down, decided to run the query again. He typed DIFF “BASE X:MEDSEA -24H” & TEST.LOG. Before pressing Enter, he checked and rechecked every character.

    The Med was hours ahead, so it was very early in the morning of the next day there while his original dataset had been from the deadest part of the night. At those times of day, everything should have been very quiet, but the ceaseless stream of data he was seeing showed that something was terribly wrong.

    He took a deep breath, hoped what he was seeing wasn’t a problem with the updates. That kind of problem missed for so many hours could cost him his job—a job he loved and didn’t want to lose.

Chapter 12

Mediterranean Sea
Afternoon, Tuesday, 19 June

Scott was exhausted and wasn’t thinking clearly. It didn’t matter that he had sat beside Edie in the infirmary. It only mattered that the ensign said she was dead.

    Thoughts of Edie flooded through Scott’s mind. He saw her face, her blue eyes, her red hair—sapphires and flames. He smelled her perfume as if it lingered in the air about him. He felt her hand in his.

    He thought of all the times he could have just let go. How he could have just given her the one thing she wanted—her love returned. But his love of her was a thing he kept deep inside, so deep inside that he never shared it—never truly even saw it until just now. Now, he was certain she could have been the love of his life.

    “Blood of czars and gypsies,” he told himself with a wretched half laugh, knowing he could have loved her if only he could have pushed aside his feelings and reservations about the two of them being together. It wasn’t just the age difference—her 28 to his almost 40. It was Cynthia. Cynthia who he was separated from. Cynthia and little James, his infant son.

    But nothing had been the same after they’d left Baltimore. Nothing. They’d told each other that they could make it alone. They had for a time too but there was really nowhere that a former top operative for the NSA and the daughter of the Chairman of the National Security Council could escape to. They’d known they would be found eventually.

    With each new month that passed though, they’d gained new hope. The first month on the run was true bliss with Cynthia’s belly growing every day and little James inside doing his best to capture their attention. The nurse and her Rottweiler stayed with them that first month while they sought out somewhere warm, somewhere tropical.

    It was a case of “be careful what you wish for” though because by the second month it was clear the nurse was wishing she was back in the U.S.A. The Rottweiler seemed to hate the jungle too. The jungle just wasn’t a good place for anyone or anything not used to the constant heat, humidity, and mosquitoes.

    The nurse stayed until James was born, which was fortunate as the birth was as difficult as the pregnancy. After James was born, things worsened, however. Cynthia didn’t want Scott to touch her or James. She just wanted to be left alone, to sit in her rocking chair, to stare out the window.

    Sometime after the birth, maybe a few days or weeks, Cynthia made a plan to return to the states. Her plan was one that didn’t include Scott. A trial separation she called it. Scott begged her not to go, not to take little James and leave. Cynthia had anyway. The nurse and her Rottweiler went with Cynthia. Little James went with Cynthia too.

    “I’ve so much to work out,” Cynthia told Scott. “I need time that’s all. A trial separation, that’s all.”

    But Scott wasn’t just separated from Cynthia. Separation was a lie she told him and he told himself. Divorce was the truth, for he ultimately signed the papers her attorneys sent even though doing so tore his heart into a million tiny pieces. The actual separation had been six months. Six months followed by divorce papers, followed by 8 months of a fresh hell every single day.

    
Sea Shepherd
wasn’t his first duty as a mercenary for hire. His first duty had been in Afghanistan. As Afghanistan wasn’t getting the job of killing him done fast enough, he’d signed up for what seemed a more dangerous mission aboard the
Sea Shepherd
. With tensions as high as they were in the Mediterranean, his end seemed a sure thing—only the wrong person had been killed. Edie shouldn’t have paid his price. He should have.

    If he wasn’t a coward, he’d have put a 50-cent bullet in his own brain. But he was coward in that way. If he was going to die, he was going to go out fighting, not whimpering in some dark corner readying to eat his own bullet.

    All these thoughts and more ran through Scott’s mind in the time it took to put his hands to his head, pull at his own brow and then take his hands away.

    When he found focus once again, Scott found every eye in the room was on him and Captain Howard was shouting, “How did this civilian get into my situation room?”

    Scott didn’t give a damn about the red-faced captain shouting at him. He took a deep breath, collected his thoughts. He told himself Edie wasn’t D.O.A, told himself that he’d sat beside her in the infirmary.

    “Security, security,” the captain shouted, pointing to Scott as the sentries who had been posted outside the door rushed in.

    Scott pleaded with the ensign, said, “Edie, the civilian from the
Sea Shepherd
, red hair, blue eyes, late 20’s. She was in the infirmary, is she okay?”

    One of the Navy SEALs, still in covert field dress, stood and moved to Captain Howard’s side, whispering something Scott couldn’t hear.

    Scott also didn’t quite know what followed. One moment he was standing at the back of the room and the next he was on the floor with his arms being yanked backward. The pain he felt was searing. In fact, after all he’d been through, it seemed every bump, cut, scrape and bruise he’d received earlier in the day was suddenly on fire.

    “Scott Madison Evers,” he shouted out as his head, twisted sideways, was being pushed forcefully against the floor. “Security Chief aboard
Sea Shepherd
.”

    He screamed out in pain as he was pulled roughly by the arms from the floor. From the hallway, he heard a voice say, “My responsibility, sir. Evers here must have turned wrong.”

    Scott recognized Midshipman Tinsdale at once. Her short-cropped blond hair and blue eyes were unforgettable. Her expression when she eyed Scott said she wasn’t happy—and yet she seemed to be trying to cover for him or perhaps simply accepting the blame for his actions.

    “Turned wrong?” Captain Howard shot back.

    The Navy SEAL in covert field dress moved back to Captain Howard’s side. More whispering followed. A moment later, the captain said firmly, “Security, stand down. Return to your posting while we sort this out.”

    Scott pulled at the neck and sleeves of the long black t-shirt he wore to fit the shirt back into place. While he did so, he looked directly at Captain Howard. He twisted his neck back into place too and a loud crack seemed to settle everything into place.

    “Well then,” Scott said boldly, firmly. “Brig? Infirmary? Or would you like to hear what I have to say about how we can get these sons of bitches and make them pay?”