“Doctor, are you saying that the illicit computer code is a program for artificial intelligence?”
“Not as such. I mean, whoever wrote it didn’t intend for the machine to ‘come alive’ or start arguing with us, or anything so science fiction. But there’s a forerunner of what will someday be artificial intelligence, and it’s called ‘fuzzy logic.’ That’s the ability of a computer program to analyze data and make an unpredictable decision based on what, for a better phrase, would be its qualitative assessment of that data.”
“Okay, Doc, you’ve utterly lost me.”
“It’s a type of program I can’t imagine us using in a precise military system where our task is quite clear and finite: Give a remote pilot the ability to bring an Air Force aircraft home in an otherwise unrecoverable emergency.”
“But you mentioned civilian airline data. What’s that about?”
“I don’t know, and it’s really scaring me. I’ll tell you flatly as the chief software engineer on this program, there is zero reason for having or needing such information in this project. Whoever put it there had something else in mind, and—”
“You’re thinking terrorism, aren’t you?”
“How can I not? A strange fuzzy logic code, airline tables and information, none of which should be there. And, I’m fairly convinced it was that damned fuzzy logic code that nearly killed us the other night by diving the airplane.”
“You say you’ve got a final test flight tonight that’s terrifying you?” Jerrod asked quietly.
“Yes. I mean, I can verify beforehand that this… this renegade code is gone, and I think we’ll be safe from having the same thing occur for the same reasons, but whoever did this to begin with is still on the loose, and if the point is to destroy this program and maybe the company, they can’t let that test succeed.”
“So, they’ll find some other way…”
“To kill us, literally or figuratively. Yes.”
Jerrod drummed his fingers on his desk. He was a man of medium build, penetrating eyes, and a steady gaze, who still favored Marine-style haircuts and a no-nonsense air, but his words were surprisingly reassuring.
“With you watching the software, and me watching everything else, Doctor, whoever it is will not succeed tonight.”
Ben felt an illogical flash of relief. Jerrod might be amazingly effective, he thought, but he couldn’t be everywhere stemming every risk.
“So, what should I do?” Ben asked.
“Maintain normal routine and appearance, but prepare to make sure that the… what did you call it?”
“Renegade code?”
“Yes. Make sure it doesn’t climb aboard the aircraft with you tonight.”
“Okay. I’ll get out there early.”
“And let me caution you as you already have sensed, that this is the highest level of security concern. We could have, for want of a better description, a hostile mole inside our own organization. It’s not impossible.”
“What?” Ben asked, his alarm evident.
Jerrod had his hand up to calm him. “What I mean is, discuss this with absolutely no one else, regardless of clearance, regardless of normal need to know. No one at Uniwave. No one in the Air Force. No one at home. Not even your dog.”
“I have a cat, or rather, I’m owned by a cat.”
“Understood. Not even your cat.”
“Okay.”
“Actually, the funny thing is, I’m dead serious. There have been instances in which pets have been bugged because intelligence operatives knew their targets talked to their pets.”
“You’re not joking, are you?”
“Nope. There can also be bugs in a home, if not surgically implanted in the cat or the cat’s collar. Look, we’ll talk in a few days. But only you and me.” Dan Jerrod rose from his chair and shook Ben’s hand. “You did the right thing, Doctor.”
Ben left Jerrod’s office and headed down the corridor feeling a chill of latent guilt. There was a momentary urge to turn back and ask Dan Jerrod if the name Nelson Oolokvit rang a bell, but he squelched it.
Behind him, Dan Jerrod stood for a few moments in the door of his outer office watching Ben Cole until he disappeared around a far corner on the way back to his lab and office. Jerrod checked his watch, mildly surprised to find it was already 4:15 P.M. He had too much to do before 8 P.M. to be standing around, and the unspoken self-admonition propelled him back inside as he closed the door and decided to sweep his office for clandestine listening devices before making the calls he now had to make.
Cole was a lot more astute than he’d first concluded.
TWENTY THREE
THURSDAY, DAY 4 SIXTY-THREE NAUTICAL MILES SOUTH OF VALDEZ, ALASKA LATE AFTERNOON
“Those waves look enormous!” Jim said from the second row of seats as Scott McDermott worked the control column of the little Grumman, holding the speed just above a stall and looking for the right crest to settle into.
He glanced at April and grinned. “This is challenging enough for an amphibian like this bird — where the hull itself is the boat — but can you imagine an open-ocean landing in something like a little Cessna on pontoons?”
“No,” she said simply, not wanting to discuss it. She felt a serious, visceral need to keep her eyes on the rolling sea ahead, and her hands locked in a death grip on the framework of the copilot’s seat she was occupying. Engaging him in a broader discussion than basic survival would require more concentration than she could give just now.
April knew that Scott McDermott was trying to shake her up. It was an adolescent effort, but he was obviously still wallowing in the pubescent “Hi girls, I fly jets!” mode — a warped and juvenile state of mind to which young military aviators were often heir, and one primarily distinguishable by a pathological presumption of dazzled female response.
“Okay, this wave looks like a winner,” Scott said, working the rudder to sideslip the Widgeon a few degrees to the left. “Nope,” he said, as he quickly goosed the overhead throttles and pulled up to evade the wave just beginning to break suddenly, the white foam passing so close beneath them that April caught herself worrying that her seat cushion might get wet.
Once more he lined up on a moving wave crest, this one not as large as the last.
“These are three-foot seas?” Jim fairly bellowed at him. “They look like ten!”
“Naw, they’re within limits,” Scott replied. “Here we go!”
This time he found the exact position he wanted and pulsed the yoke forward just enough, setting the bottom of the Widgeon’s hull into the crest at a little over seventy knots and kicking the rudder left at the same moment, riding with it as he throttled the engines back and held on, waiting for the flying boat to make the uncomfortable transition from aircraft to watercraft as the hull let itself be sucked into the sea and the pontoons on each wingtip made contact.
“Whee-e-e-e!” he said, the exultation prompting April to roll her eyes. Slowly she began to regain confidence in her immediate survival. All her seaplane landings as a pilot had been on smooth water in high-wing single engines on floats, which meant that three-foot waves looked mountainous.
In the air, the Grumman Widgeon had merely bounced through any turbulence it encountered, but now it was a seasick machine, wallowing in all three axes at once as Scott idled the engines and checked his GPS, pointing north.
“We’re two miles northwest of the coordinates you gave me,” he said to her, holding the map. “Exactly where I wanted to be.”
She was nodding, having agreed that the Albatross would have had to come down within sixty seconds of the last satellite burst from her little GPS-based tracking unit, and at 140 knots, that translated into a bit more than two miles.