Jackson scratches at his auburn Afro. “Look, son, I understand your concerns, but keep in mind, son, we’re not the bad guys. The nuclear genie’s been out of his bottle since my father fought in the big one. The name of the game today isn’t destruction, it’s maintaining the stalemate. The French’ve been working on pure fusion for more than a decade. For all we know the Russians—”
“Ugghhh!” Gunnar backhands the lamp, smashing it against the wall. “Wake up, Bear, we’re out of our freaking minds! Soldiers and civilians are no longer human beings, they’re kill ratios. This is the goddamn doomsday bomb, plain and simple, and you’re justifying the need for potential genocide.”
Bear averts eye contact. He’s done. The commando mentality’s gone. His brain’s fried.
“And what about Covah?” Jackson asks. “Did the men and women of the Ronald Reagan deserve to die?”
Gunnar stops pacing. “No. Simon went too far.”
“And the whole prison thing? Is that how you want your career to end? You can stop him, Gunnar. You can prevent him from killing any more innocent people.”
“I don’t know … maybe.” Gunnar leans back against his old desk. “Covah’s just part of the equation; the bigger problem is Sorceress.”
“It’s a computer. You’ll find a way to shut it down.”
“You don’t get it, do you? This is AI, the real deal. Sorceress is a self-replicating system—a prototype—originally intended to be deployed by NASA for deep-space nonhuman applications. Land Sorceress on Mars or Europa on board a probe, and the machine runs everything, growing as it acquires information. But on a nuclear sub?”
“What’s your point?”
“Christ, Bear, wake up! Sorceress is the ultimate thinking machine, and it’s programmed to learn. Elizabeth Goode made a breakthrough and the DoD jumped on it, dropping billions into the program before any of us could gain an understanding of what we were dealing with.”
“You’re overreacting. We don’t even know if it’s on board.”
Gunnar looks up with bloodshot eyes at his former CO. “It’s on board. And as it self-replicates and grows, we’ll understand less and less about it, making it even more difficult to take off-line.” He pauses, a distant memory tugging at him. “I remember an experiment we conducted for NASA back in 2001, it used a Starbridge Systems computer a thousand times more powerful than a traditional PC. It was one of the many stepping-stone systems Dr. Goode used to configure Sorceress. The computer was asked to recognize basic audio tones. The computer completed the task … only too well. Five of its logic circuits evolved independently. Dr. Goode told me her researchers had no idea how or why it happened, but whenever they tried to bypass the evolved cells, the entire system would shut itself down … as if it refused to sacrifice its independence.”
“And all this means?”
“Multiply that simple experiment by a million. Sorceress is a thinking machine designed to evolve, and it’s been functioning for several weeks now. Who knows what it’s learned even in that small amount of time? Who knows if Simon can even maintain control?”
The general stands. “You know Covah better than any of us. What’s he intending to do?”
Gunnar shakes his head, the jet lag wearing on his brain. “I don’t know. Simon lost his entire family in the Serbian uprising. My guess is he wants revenge. If I were him, I’d move Goliath into the Mediterranean and launch an attack on Belgrade.”
“We can’t allow that to happen, can we?” Bear stares at his protégé. “Gunnar?”
No response.
“I’ve spoken with the president. He’s agreed to offer you a full presidential pardon and reinstatement with back pay if you’re willing to help us stop Covah.”
Gunnar smirks. “The United States government sentences me to ten years, and now they want to pay me to play soldier again. That’s rich.”
“No one said anything about playing soldier. There’s a lunatic out there commanding the most powerful weapon in history. You designed its weapon systems. All we want is your help in finding a way to stop it.”
“No you don’t. What you really want is for me to return to active duty, to lead an assault.” Gunnar turns, his blood boiling. “With all due respect, sir, you can tell Edwards he can shove his reinstatement up his ass.”
He pushes past Bear and out the door.
“Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union.”
—Joseph Stalin
“Our countries will continue working together to our advantage.”
—General Leonid Ivashov, Chief Foreign Affairs official, regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s resumption of conventional arms sales to Iran
“We will bury you.”
—Nikita Khrushchev, USSR Communist Party First Secretary on relations with the United States
CHAPTER 6
Northwestern Russia
The Barents Sea is located in Russia’s northwest region, an odd-shaped body of water that surrounds the Kola Peninsula before looping inland for several hundred miles to join the White Sea. There are four port cities located on that body of water, seven naval bases, and six naval yards, all of which service the nuclear-powered ships of Russia’s Northern Fleet.
Once the pride of the Soviet Navy, the facilities of the Northern Fleet have become radioactive graveyards for decommissioned vessels. More than twenty-five strategic nuclear-powered submarines are laid up, rotting in floating docks, waiting to be dismantled. Solid and liquid radioactive wastes from spent fuel assemblies are haphazardly stored, exposing unskilled, often inebriated laborers to high doses of radiation. Toxic refuse leaks into the environment. Thousands of barrels of nuclear waste and tons of damaged reactor components have been illegally dumped into the neighboring Arctic Ocean. A lack of funds and storage space, as well as gross criminal negligence, have made the waterway an environmental and economic disaster zone.
The largest and most important submarine base in the region is Zapadnaya Litsa, home to Russia’s newest Borey-class missile subs, as well as the monstrous, decommissioned Typhoons. Seven of these nuclear-powered ballistic missile giants were commissioned between 1981 and 1989 at Shipyard 402, the last of which was begun but never finished, owning to funding shortages, political changes, and technical problems.
Until Goliath, the SSBN Typhoon was the largest submarine ever constructed. Squat and bulbous, the vessel is 575 feet long, with a 75-foot beam and 38-foot draft. Five titanium inner sections are situated within a superstructure composed of two concentric main hulls. Each of these two hulls is equipped with a nuclear water reactor and turbogear assembly that drives the Typhoon’s two fifty-thousand-horsepower steam turbines, as well as its four 3,200-kW turbo generators. The sub has two seven-blade, fixed-pitch, shrouded propellers, which enable the submarine to reach submerged speeds of twenty-five knots at maximum diving depths of 1,300 feet.
The titanic size of the Typhoon provides unprecedented comfort for its fifty officers and 120-man crew. Sailors bunk in rooms rather than hot racks, and have access to a gymnasium, swimming pool, sauna, art gallery, solarium, and even a pets’ compartment featuring birds and fish.