Predator One (25 page)

“Jesus.”

“It’s supposed to limit the actions of hijackers without endangering innocent passengers. They wanted to install some kind of knockout gas, but that didn’t fly. There would be lawsuits.”

“There’s going to be lawsuits anyway,” I growled. “This is a bullshit idea.”

Church nodded. “It has some obvious advantages, but there are too many holes in the operational philosophy. Typical of something designed
by engineers at the behest of Congress but without the input of people experienced in the variables of field application.”

“What he said,” agreed Bug.

“I’m no technophobe,” I said. “I love my gadgets—kind of—but giving over that much control to a bunch of ones and zeros does not seem like a particularly bright idea.”

“Not even to me, and this stuff’s kind of my religion,” said Bug.

Church
shook his head. “It’s typical of a certain mind-set in both Congress and the military, where an improperly considered response is used because it’s either quicker, faster, or cost-effective. Though, in this case, many of the contractors are tied to corporations and persons who have powerful lobbies. They are owned by companies that make sizable and regular campaign donations.”

“Leaving working
schlubs like us to clean up the mess when it goes wrong,” I said.

Church smiled. “That is as workable a description as I’ve heard for the DMS charter.”

I chewed on what Bug had told me. “This is what Davidovich was working on when he went missing? This weapons system?”

“It’s not a weapons system in itself,” said Bug. “It’s only a piece of software that makes everything work more smoothly and
efficiently. Something that gets all of the other bits of software that have been designed by, like, a thousand other people over the last forty years to talk to each other. Or, maybe, to put it better, it lets all the software talk in the same language. Once the complete installation is done, it’s going to upgrade U.S. military efficiency by something like twenty-six percent.”

Church said, “You
see now why they moved forward with this?”

“Right,” I said reluctantly, “it puts us back in front of the arms race.”

“Way out in front,” said Bug.

“Tell me, though, how thoroughly have they tested this stuff? I mean, what’s the margin for error in field tests and—”

Church sighed.

Bug said, “It’s been running at a field-efficiency rating of 99.001299 percent.”

I stared at him. “That’s…”

“Impossible? Pretty much. But we, um, borrowed a copy of Regis and ran it through MindReader. And I mean really ran it. It came up one hundred percent every single time. Joe, this is really amazing software. This is why everyone said that Davidovich was the Da Vinci, the Einstein, the Hawking of computers. No one—and I mean no one anywhere—has ever come up with anything half as good as this.”

“Not even you?”

“Hey, I’m good, Joe. Maybe the top twenty in the world—”

“Top three,” said Church quietly.

“But Davidovich was way, way out in front of all the rest of us. Guy was a social ground sloth and kind of an asshole to talk to, but he was the best of the best of the best. And Regis is work he started but didn’t complete. Imagine what he would have come up with if he hadn’t been killed.”

“Yeah, I am imagining it, and I don’t like it,” I said. “I distrust perfection except in baseball pitching, craft beer, and short skirts. Otherwise … there’s always something bad waiting to happen.”

“You ever talk to Rudy about that paranoia?”

“Sadly,” said Church, “Captain Ledger is frequently correct in his distrust of perfect models. How many times have we encountered a team who has bypassed
unbreakable security? Or hacked untouchable defense computers?”

“Yeah, I guess,” said Bug dubiously.

“Could someone have stolen Regis? Or made a copy and then used it to control the drones at the ballpark?”

“That’s almost impossible,” said Bug. “All copies of Regis are stamped with individual ID codes, and all copies are accounted for. And each individual software install has a built-in self-delete
subroutine in case one of the planes or tanks falls into enemy hands. If anyone tries to copy or download it without the right permission codes, the CPU erases everything. Davidovich wouldn’t have had either the erase or command codes, and even if he had, they’d have been changed the day he went missing, just as all of his DARPA remote-access and Web passwords were changed.”

“Come on, Bug,” I
said, “Davidovich invented this thing, right? You telling me he couldn’t have built in a trapdoor?”

“Back door,” corrected Bug. “Sure, that’s possible, but DARPA’s had years to look for it, and they haven’t found anything.”

“Maybe,” I said, taking a fresh swing at it, “if he’s still alive, couldn’t someone have forced him to re-create it for them?”

“Hey, Joe,” said Bug quickly, “if you’re asking
if he could sit down and rewrite the entire Regis software package for someone else … then, no, that’s crazy talk. Davidovich had fifty-some engineers working on different parts of it. We’re not talking something you can upload with a CD-ROM. This is a massive program. The installation process alone takes specialized training. I don’t think Davidovich could possibly rebuild all of that by himself.
Second, even if he did, it wouldn’t be exactly the same, and DARPA spent three years on it after Davidovich was gone. It’s not the same program.”

“Okay, one last thing, and then I’ll let this go,” I said. “About a year before Davidovich was taken, there were two computer experts killed down in Texas.”

“What about them?” he asked.

“What if someone had all their research and a living, breathing
Aaron Davidovich—what would that do to our Vegas odds?”

Church was silent, considering it.

Bug said, “Oh. Wow. Yeah, I see where you’re going with that. But those guys were killed, not abducted.”

“Their research could have been stolen,” suggested Church. “There was some indication of it, I believe.”

Bug hit some keys to look something up. “Yeah, okay, maybe. Their laptops were found in the
ashes, but by that point they were melted slag. Someone could have swapped out their computers for dummies before the place was torched. It’s what I would do.”

“Give us a worst-case of how their research could be applied by a well-funded terrorist organization,” I asked. “Like, say, the Seven Kings.”

“Geez, talk about a can of worms. Milo Harrison was the deputy department chair of applied robotics,
and the applications he was developing were the next couple of generations of mechanical autonomy. He had two DoD contracts tied, including the Regis project. He was a hardware guy, though. Integrative adaptive systems. That’s intended to allow multiple autonomous systems to work at maximum efficiency while conserving stored power. A lot of microminiaturization stuff for switches and relays.
That was four years ago, and a lot of what he was developing is already in use on just about everything from the latest Apache helicopters to automated systems on submarines. Everyone uses Harrison’s stuff because it smooths out the physical application of software commands. Almost zero lag time between order and execution.”

“What about the other guy?”

“Professor Harry Seymour was chairman of
the school’s experimental aeronautics department. Not as much of his stuff is in application, though there are bits of it in BattleZone and in nonmilitary variations like SafeZone. A lot of his research was folded into all three of the Regis software packages. Like I said, pretty much every automated manned combat, flight, or UAV system we have uses one or all of them. And SafeZone’s showing up
in CCTV cameras, new versions of OnStar, autonomous parking programs for passenger cars. Self-drive trains. Man, it’s everywhere. This is the age of autonomy.”

“That’s hardly comforting, Bug.”

“You asked.”

“Okay. Now mix Davidovich into that soup. Could any combination of their knowledge be used to take control of one of any of our drones, or anything with Regis in it and turn it against us?”

“Yes,” Bug said with hesitation.

Church said, “I can see where you’re going with this, Captain, and it certainly gives one pause, but we have no indication at all that this is what we’re seeing. It doesn’t tie into the ballpark.”

“Maybe not directly,” I said, and sighed. “But why would we be talking about this if we weren’t all thinking that Regis in the wrong hands could be very damn scary?”

Neither of them commented.

“What happened at the park? That could be the Seven Kings testing out some new toys.”

Church sighed. “Fair enough. Bug, tell him the rest.”

“What ‘rest’?” I asked.

Bug gave me a truly disturbing little smile. “The really scary part.”

Chapter Fifty

Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia

March 30, 4:48
P.M.

The two forensics collections technicians who followed Jerry Spencer around the ballpark were both professionals, both top of their game. The woman, Gina Robles, had spent the last sixteen years working with the NYPD and was heading up her own division when she was offered a better job with the DMS. Her partner, Laurence
Hong, had been with the FBI for eleven years before getting the call. Neither of them held expectations of being lackeys for someone else.

Both had become just that.

It wasn’t the official designation, of course. Both of them had impressive titles, breathtaking salaries, nice offices, killer benefits packages. The works. Each of them even had their own teams, ranging from secretaries to dedicated
lab technicians to field techs. Each of them believed—truly believed—that they could run the DMS forensics shop.

Just not as well as Spencer.

It’s never a fun thing when an expert meets a genius. Robles and Hong talked about it over cocktails quite often.

“This must be what it feels like to be Inspector Lestrade,” said Robles one night as she toyed with the olives in her martini. “You know,
the cop who’s in all those Sherlock Holmes stories.”

“I know who Lestrade is, Gina,” complained Hong. “He’s a fucking idiot.”

“No, he’s not. That’s the point. He’s a good cop. A solid investigator. But…”

She left the rest hang that night, but it was a conversation they returned to in one form or another a hundred times.

Now, they trailed the genius and kept looking for something useful. Something
that would break them out of the lackey role and remind Spencer that they were every bit as valuable as he was.

It was Robles who spotted it.

Down on the field near the pitcher’s mound. Explosions had thrown debris all the way out here from the stands. Broken and partially melted chairs, shattered concrete, torn and bloody clothing, a baseball bat, trash. Ambulance crews were removing tagged
bits of red meat so ragged that they would require lab analysis to identify which parts of what kind of body they came from. Male, female, young, old. As Spencer, Hong, and Robles passed by, heading toward a spot where a piece of what could be a control circuit had been spotted, Gina Robles saw something.

It was broken and covered with brick dust, but it was there.

“Wait,” she said, touching
Hong’s arm. “What’s that?”

They both stopped, looked down. Their hearts jumped a gear at the same moment. Robles knelt and leaned forward, studying the shape that was almost completely hidden by dust and bits of rubble. Almost.

But not entirely.

“Jesus Christ,” said Hong, who stood behind her. “Holy Jesus fuck.”

Robles immediately turned, cupped her hands around her mouth, and yelled at the
top of her voice.

“Jerry!”

Chapter Fifty-one

Thomas Jefferson University Hospital

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

March 30, 4:51
P.M.

“It gets scarier?” I asked. “Are you going to tell me that the drones at the park were using a proprietary military program?”

“Not exactly,” said Bug. “If that was the case, we could probably backtrack those drones to where the software was stolen from. No, it’s trickier than that. After
Regis was developed and sold to the military, DARPA licensed a stripped-down version of it for sale to commercial markets.”

“What? Why?”

“Money. Piles of it. I mean, are you kidding me? Drones are so hot right now. Everyone wants them, and hundreds of companies are building them. It’s a growth market worth billions, and it’s only going to get bigger.”

“And the FAA and FTC have been fighting
this every step of the way,” I said.

“Fighting and losing,” said Church. “Though they thought they’d won a major battle when Congress decided that all drones need to have a reset subroutine that can be activated in case of illegal misuse.”

“Right,” said Bug, nodding emphatically.

“I’m not following,” I admitted. “You’re saying DARPA gave them Regis?”

“They gave them a version of it,” said
Bug. “A fragment. Actually, it’s a commercial version of BattleZone that’s been retooled for nonmilitary use. It would allow civil authorities to take operational command of a commercial drone under certain specific events. Homeland worked out the details.”

“That’s not necessarily a good sign,” I said.

“Hardly,” said Church. “Bug and his number two, Yoda, were able to crack the security in under
ten minutes. They could take over any drone licensed for business or private use.”

“Shit,” I said.

“Which means,” said Bug, “that if we can do it—”

“Yeah, yeah. The Kings and everyone else can do it.”

“Well,” Bug said diffidently, “the talented people could do it.”

“This is nuts. If those drones have Regis, can we track it to point of sale?”

Bug laughed. “Right now, just about everything
has Regis. Every jet, every submarine, every tank has the full military package. All commercial drones have the stripped-down SafeZone. And just about every single drone on the shelves at BestBuy, Target, Walmart, Sears, and Brookstone. Hell, Costco has them. Regis is everywhere.”