“We’ll talk about that,” said Chaz. “What about the other two sites?”
Again, the national security advisor had the numbers ready. “The NRO rates Point Green at seventy-three percent confidence, and Point Orange at seventy-one.”
“That’s better than a one-in-four chance of being wrong,” said Chaz. “Not good enough, Frank. I’m not prepared to authorize a strike on foreign soil with odds that shaky.”
“I understand, sir,” said Cerney. “Our Marine scouts are transiting to the next site now. With luck, we’ll have confirmation on Point Green by about this time tomorrow, and Point Orange the day after.”
“Why so long?”
“The scouts are travelling by sailboat,” Cerney said. “Posing as vacationers. We ordered the Marines to keep the infiltration covert. This is how they chose to carry out the mission.”
“If they get caught,” Jackie said, “we could end up with a major diplomatic crisis.”
“I’m not too concerned about the Cubans themselves,” said the national security advisor. “We’ve got a gun pointed at our head, and — short of armed invasion — they’ll understand if we take precautions to protect ourselves against nuclear attack. Especially since we’ve been careful not to lump them in with the bad guys on this one.”
He picked up the red striped folder from the president’s desk. “What worries me is that word could get back to Kim Yong-nam. If that happens, we’ll be too busy dodging radioactive fallout to worry about diplomatic problems.”
CHAPTER 57
Melly was writing on the whiteboard again, jotting rapidly with the nearly calligraphic penmanship that amazed Nathan and made him ever so slightly envious. Her lettering looked like one of the so-called ‘hand printed’ fonts: the kind that were supposed to resemble idealized human handwriting.
When Nathan made a deliberate effort to be legible, his own writing was somewhere between chicken scratch and minimalist hieroglyphics. If he was in any sort of hurry, things only went downhill from there.
The quality of Melly’s penmanship did not seem to alter with speed. Her furious scribbles were every bit as neat as her more methodical notes. Nathan didn’t see how that could be possible, but clearly it was. Yet another item on his growing list of reasons to be fascinated by this woman.
Her full name was Melanie Imogene Kimball; Nathan had been quite careful to listen during that part of the introductions. As far as he could tell she was exactly his height, and her voice had a tendency to squeak when she was excited.
Although she was possibly a bit plain by ordinary standards of physical attractiveness, Nathan found her long straight nose, wide hazel eyes, and pointed chin to be absolutely charming. But the most fascinating things about her were not physical at all.
Melly was a civilian software engineer from the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, and — even after Nathan had showered, slept, and rebooted his gray matter — she was proving to be at least his equal in terms of skill and intelligence, and probably his better. For some men, that would have been a turnoff. For Nathan Nguyen, it was the best of all possible worlds.
Not that he would have the courage to do anything about it. In his imagination it would all play out perfectly. Rum cocktails in some open air bar with a thatched roof… A long walk on the beach… A beautiful Key West sunset… Their hands drifting toward each other until fingers entwined of their own accord…
She cleared her throat. “You’re not listening, are you?”
“No,” he said. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t.”
“Where was your mind just now?”
“Uh… Situational response algorithms,” he said. “We’re going to need to add another one.”
Melly turned back to the whiteboard. “I don’t think it’s necessary. That’s what I’ve been trying to say.”
She pointed to a section of her notations. “Your existing code already cues on acoustic frequencies commonly emitted by the marine mammals that NOAA is interested in.”
Her finger moved to indicate another section of notations. “You’ve even got a subroutine to maneuver the Sea Bat toward the axis of greatest signal strength, so that it swims in the general direction of the acoustic source, remaining within detection range of the dolphins, or whales, or whatever.”
She capped her dry erase marker. “All we need to do is give the algorithm a different set of target frequencies to home in on.”
Nathan shook his head. “It’s a good idea, but you’re forgetting two things. First, the maneuvering algorithm is slaved to signal strength. If the acoustic signal gets too strong, the Sea Bat turns aside and swims away for a hundred yards. The software was specifically designed to keep the units from getting in too close, and interfering with the normal movements and habits of the mammals under observation. And it’s pretty difficult to attack something when you can’t get within a hundred yards of the target.”
Melly nodded. “And your second thing?”
“Second,” Nathan said, “we don’t have hardware or software for arming and detonating the explosive package.”
“The second problem belongs to them,” Melly said. She gestured toward the far table where Chief Goss and Eddie Sinclair were busy shoehorning something into the narrow interior cavity of the partially disassembled Sea Bat. “And I’ve got some ideas for solving the first problem.”
“The situational response algorithms are written in ARIX-B,” Nathan said. “It’s a—”
Melly picked up the thread. “It’s a proprietary language owned and controlled by Norton. I know all that.”
Nathan smiled. “I was going to say it’s a nightmare to work in. Once you get the wrinkles ironed out, ARIX-B does a nice job. But getting your code to that point isn’t easy. A single wrong keystroke can have you chasing your tail for weeks. It’s not anywhere near as forgiving as the first generation of ARIX.”
“I know that too,” Melly said. “Which is why we’re not going to crack open the algorithms. We don’t have the time to do it right, and we can’t spend weeks — or even days — chasing our tails as you so eloquently put it.”
“Then what are we going to do?” asked Nathan.
Melly put down her black dry erase marker, and picked up a red one. “Something like this…” She began to jot text and symbols in her neat calligraphic style.
After a moment, Nathan saw what she was getting at. “You want to modify the emergency recovery subprogram!”
Melly nodded. “Yep. It takes priority over all normal program functions. It can override the turn-away imperative in your situational response algorithms. And best of all—”
“It’s written in URScript,” Nathan finished.
“Exactly,” said Melly. “Much much easier to work in than ARIX-B.”
Nathan stood up and walked around the table to the whiteboard. “You’re not rewriting my control code, you’re hacking it.”
“That’s all we have time for,” Melly said. “Don’t take it personally. This is not a comment on your coding skills.”
“Take it personally?” he said. “Are you kidding? You’re a genius!”
They both blushed at this unexpected outburst.
Nathan picked up his own dry erase marker and began making frantic hen scratches. Melly went to work beside him, writing with equal speed.
And sometimes, when neither one of them were paying attention, their hands nearly touched.