Turk hardly touched his food, spending most of his time watching Li instead. She had long slim fingers. They were expressive, even just holding a fork.
He wanted to ask her why and how she had become a pilot, but Grizzly started another story about how he’d spent “a year one week” flying Hog missions with a SEAL team.
His stories were too involved to be interrupted. The ops weren’t the interesting part; the shenanigans, missteps, complications, and above all the nightly parties with members of the SEAL team, were the real point. According to Grizzly, they had gotten into a total of ten fights in six days, including one all-out brawl with members of a mixed martial-arts troupe.
True or not, it was a good yarn. Li, anxious to get ready for her flight, excused herself before it ended. Unable to find an excuse to accompany her that wouldn’t sound overly corny, Turk watched her leave.
Even her walk was sexy.
He was glad that he didn’t have to fly with Paulson, but the long wait before the sortie weighed heavily. He finally found a couch in a corner of the room next to the ready room and bedded down.
He started to drift off. He saw Li in his mind, starting to slip into unconsciousness. The image was pleasant, but almost immediately it morphed into Ginella. They started having sex.
Turk opened his eyes. Grizzly was shaking him.
God!
Turk practically jumped to the ceiling.
“Rise and shine, bro,” laughed Grizzly, who fortunately had no idea of the dream he’d just woken him from. “We got some flyin’ to do.”
18
Following Halit’s advice, Rubeo decided to avoid the gate south of Tripoli, riding about twenty miles across open desert to reach a road that connected to the main highway south.
The road was barely discernible from the dirt, grit, and sand that washed over it. They drove up through a succession of hills. From a distance the terrain looked like the rumpled back of a giant sleeping facedown on the earth. Up close they were brown and almost featureless, bland nonentities that only slowed them down.
So much of life was like that, thought Rubeo. From a distance things looked remarkable. And then you got there and they were bland and boring.
Even his own life. For all his work in artificial intelligence systems, in related technologies, in the interface between man and machine — what accomplishments filled him with excitement?
The work that he was doing now on autonomous machines? On computers that really, truly, thought for themselves — not in the areas where they had been programmed to think, but in areas that they knew nothing about.
The Sabres were a small by-product of that work — a distant offshoot, really, because of course war had to be programmed into a machine.
And programmed out. The machine needed to be taught limits so it would not turn on its master, as everyone who had ever picked up a scifi novel surely knew.
Had he not given the Sabres proper limits? Or was it a mechanical flaw?
Some combination, surely.
They had not yet ruled out direct action from the enemy. But that seemed to make little sense. Why do something to cause more casualties? The aim would be to have the plane destroy itself.
“What do you think of this?” asked Jons, handing him one of the team iPads. The device was equipped with a satellite modem in place of the usual cell and wireless connections; the com system used a series of anonymous servers to hide the identity and origins of the Web requests.
The screen showed a news story on the UAV incident. Labeled “Analysis,” it recounted some of the popular theories on what had happened. Most were far off base or so vague that they could be describing a car accident.
But the paragraphs Jons had highlighted speculated that the attack had been made because of software problems. And it cited anonymous e-mails from “developers” indicating that the aircraft were making targeting decisions on their own.
In contrast to the rest of the piece, there was plenty of well-reasoned thought on the subject, enough to convince Rubeo that the source knew a great deal about the problems involved. He scrolled back to the top and reread the story carefully. Much of it was generic, so much so that he couldn’t figure out whether the writer, as opposed to the source, actually knew what he was talking about.
“It’s not very specific,” said Rubeo, handing the iPad back. “This middle part is interesting, but I don’t know that he has any real sources inside our organization. He might know someone at another company that’s working on the problem.”
“That’s what I thought.” Jons opened the browser to a new page. “But I did a couple of searches on some of the phrases just to be sure. Look at this list.”
There were twenty-eight matches from bulletin boards and comment areas. All used similar language to describe the accident and the theory that the aircraft had been under their own autonomous control when the attack was made.
“These drones are being operated without human supervision,” read one. “They decide who to kill and who to spare. The man who invented them, Ray Rubeo, thinks machines are better than people.”
The latter was a rather common criticism, not just of Rubeo, but of practically any scientist who worked in the area. But the fact that it was being directed at one person, rather than a team, bothered Rubeo immensely. Coupled with the alleged e-mail, it looked as if someone either in his company or at least tangentially related was leaking information.
“What do you think?” asked Jons.
“Someone doesn’t like AI,” said Rubeo, handing the computer back.
“Or you. You’re mentioned by name in these. My guess is that a bunch of organizations got the e-mail cited in that article,” added Jons. “It looks like a campaign.”
Rubeo said nothing. He had many competitors. Each one was an enemy, at least figuratively. And any number of people would benefit if the government stopped dealing with his firm; there would be a vast void to fill.
“No one seems to be taking them very seriously,” he told Jons. “Or otherwise I’d have heard.”
“Maybe. In any event, it’s a potential security leak. It could definitely be a disgruntled employee. Anyone willing to put out this kind of information, add your name — they won’t stop here.”
“I don’t think it’s an employee. Or an ex-employee. They’re paid too well.”
“It’s not always about money. Or science.”
In Rubeo’s experience, if it wasn’t about science, then it was always about money. Or sex.
“Rerun our security checks,” he told Jons.
“Oh, we’re well into that.”
“Good.”
“It may be a contractor,” suggested Jons. “We’re checking that as well. I wonder if there’s any disgruntled military. Maybe on the Whiplash side.”
“We can certainly check. There aren’t many of them.”
“Not directly. Indirectly, you’d be surprised.”
“Right.” Rubeo settled back into the seat, as frustrated as ever.
Halit proved his worth at the gate, speaking quickly to the guards. Jons, standing next to him, handed over a folded envelope, and they were through.
“One hundred euros,” Jons told Rubeo, climbing back into the truck. “That is all it took to get us past the front line. The government doesn’t have long.”
Rubeo nodded but said nothing. Darkness had enveloped the desert.
They drove quickly, nearly missing the turn that would take them to the military site where the government’s most powerful radar units were located. There were two sets here, general warning radars and radars that were connected with an SA–10 antiaircraft battery.