Predator One (40 page)

Beyond them was the mainland.

Somewhere out there was his son. Maybe the Kings would still kill his
boy, but Davidovich didn’t think so. Not right away. No, they would place all of their resources into finding him. Into getting Davidovich back. Into silencing him.

“Try and catch me, you sick fucks,” he said, and then he waded out into the cold water and struck out as hard and fast as he could. Boy had helped him get fit and strong. To have stamina.

Yeah, and fuck you, too, you little psycho
bitch.

He tried not to think about those nights with her. All he allowed himself to think about was his son. And the phone number that his handler in the CIA had made him remember all those years ago.

Chapter Eighty-seven

UC San Diego Medical Center

200 West Arbor Drive

San Diego, California

March 31, 5:47
P.M.

Toys looked up sharply as the door to Circe’s room opened and Mr. Church stepped into the hall. Lydia and Junie instantly began moving toward him, but Church shook his head and walked into Rudy Sanchez’s room. Brick went and stood outside, arms folded, chest massive, expression
unapproachable.

The big dog, Banshee, stood in the doorway and watched him with calm, dangerous, strange eyes. Junie walked past the door and went into Circe’s room.

Doors closed.

Toys remained seated where he was.

“Whatever’s going on,” said a voice, and Toys jumped and looked up to see Sam Imura standing nearby, “it’s way the hell above our pay grade.”

Toys looked up at him, said nothing,
and nodded.

Chapter Eighty-eight

UC San Diego Medical Center

200 West Arbor Drive

San Diego, California

March 31, 5:48
P.M.

“Doctor Sanchez,” said Mr. Church, “can you hear me?”

Rudy Sanchez’s eyes fluttered for a moment, then opened slowly. His pupils were dilated and the sclera was shot with red. There was a dark purple bruise in the center of his forehead. A half-moon shape. A heel shape.

Rudy
licked his lips and tried to speak. Could not.

Mr. Church took a plastic sponge that had been provided by a nurse, dipped it in cool water, and pressed it gently to Rudy’s lips. He let the man suck moisture from it, then set the sponge aside.

“Th-thanks…” Rudy’s voice was hoarse, his voice cracked.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes.”

“Who am I?”

“Mr. Church.”

“Do you know who you are?”

“Yes.”

“What is your name?”

“Rudy Sanchez.”

“Good. Do you know where you are?” asked Church.

Rudy’s eyes turned glassy, then wet. A tear broke and rolled from the corner of his eye, along his temple, and into his hair. He looked away and then squeezed his eye shut.

“I am in hell,” said Rudy.

Chapter Eighty-nine

Over Indiana Airspace

March 31, 5:49
P.M.
Eastern Standard Time

With Top and Bunny on a separate jet to take over the crime scene in Chula Vista, I decided to maximize the flight time to try and map out what we knew about this case. I used several packs of Post-its to paper my jet’s interior walls. I called Top, and after consoling him on the loss of his friend, I told
him that I wanted to make this a joint project. We kept an open line via earbuds and laptops and worked it through together.

The process filled the rest of the flight time.

“I think we have it mapped out,” said Top. Our computers were synched to share data and we have the videoconference function thrown onto the big screens mounted inside of each aircraft. It was the closest we could get to
being in the same room. This allowed us to see the notes we’d all taped to the walls. My high-def screen was the only part of
Shirley
’s interior that wasn’t covered with little colored paper squares.

The three of us looked at what we had. The port side of
Shirley
’s cabin was covered in Post-it notes and larger papers taped to walls, windows, and seats. Both jets had onboard printers, and we’d
printed out every news report that involved drones or autonomous computer systems.

I expected to find six or seven incidents. That would have been enough. That would have been truly frightening.

There were dozens of them.

I didn’t even know what to call this.

We’d tagged more than ninety incidents that could be related to the Kings’ experimention with UAVs and the Regis control software.

“There are clear patterns here,” said Top, pointing. “You can see their whole damn rollout from day one. It started with this.” He stepped up and tapped one Post-it on which was written

Aldus Binoche

Camera Crew

B-Unit Camera UAV

Lake Superior, WI

The date was one year ago from yesterday.

“Remember that?” asked Top. “The guy who had that Cajun-cooking reality show? Something happened and
the whole crew died? Local law said a generator blew up, overheated the ice on the lake where Binoche was fishing, and the whole team went into the icy water. Died right there. Only thing is, there was a camera drone doing—whaddya call it when they have someone else take scenery shots and shit?”

“B-roll?” I suggested. “Second unit?”

“Right. They had a UAV camera doing that. A production assistant
reported it going missing, then said it was back and heading their way. That was the last transmission.”

“So, what are you saying?” asked Bunny. “Someone hijacked it and put a bomb on it?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Why?”

“Test drive,” he said. “Can’t prove it, but think about it. Remote spot and a way to completely hide the evidence? That sound like those Kings ass-fucks to you?”

“Okay,” agreed Bunny, “but who the hell’s Aldus Binoche. I mean, sure, he had that TV show, but he has no connection to the Kings.”

“Figure it out, Farm Boy.”

Bunny sighed. “Right, right, they picked someone with no connections to test-drive their thing. But … what thing were they test-driving. This isn’t Regis.”

“Actually, it is,” I said. “The UAVs leased by the network all have SafeZone. The
manufacturer of the software even had to do a big payout to prevent a lawsuit.”

Bunny leafed through some pages on the floor of their jet. “So how come it didn’t show up in the field-test stats? No, wait, I’m being slow again. It doesn’t show up because this is the civilian version, and it’s already sold, so why would the vendor report it? There’s—what?—one of those legal things where they pay
money but the other side has to sign something that says no one is actually accepting responsibility or admitting fault?”

“Brain finally switched on?” asked Top.

“I need more coffee. Can’t remember the last time I slept.”

We scanned our notes.

“Looks to me, from what we have here,” said Top, “that the Kings can hack the GPS and controls of commercial UAV and maybe autonomous drive systems.
That seem like a fair assessment?”

We thought about it, nodded. There were several incidents of wayward drones whose misbehavior had no known cause. Unless you consider the hacking and hijacking angle.

“You know, Boss,” said Bunny, “this makes me think a little harder about your theory that they have either Davidovich or his research.”

We looked at the other notes.

“Then there’s this from
ten months ago,” said Top, taking a matchstick out of his mouth and pointing to another. “Four serious accidents involving self-parking cars. One fatality in Saint Louis. Girl gets killed when her car suddenly pulls out into traffic. Statement from her friend inside the salon and witnesses on the street confirm that the girl was fighting to get out of the car but was killed. That’s number two.”

“SafeZone?” asked Bunny.

Top nodded and pointed to more than thirty other accidents, including some fatal crashes, involving autonomous driving systems. The accidents were random, scattered across the country, across economic and social demographics, across age groups. There was a pattern, but it wasn’t easy to see.

We saw it now, though.

“Again, they’re hacking SafeZone software and causing
it to malfunction,” said Top. “All of which led up to Cadillac One going ass-wild a little while back.”

The Beast, the president’s armored car, had indeed malfunctioned, causing some minor injuries. Linden Brierly, a close friend of Mr. Church, had had his face dented.

“Wait,” said Bunny, “so they had this same software in the president’s car? Is it still there? I mean, if so, we need to make
a call.”

I shook my head. “No. As soon as it malfunctioned, it was stripped out and replaced by a different system. Solomon, I think. Different manufacturer altogether and it isn’t tied to Regis. Bug ran a check on that for Church after it happened. No one who was anywhere near Regis was involved with Solomon. It has no DARPA or DoD connection, and it has no military application of any kind.”

“Sure, okay,” said Bunny, “but does that mean we trust it?”

“Right now,” I said, “I don’t trust the timer on my Mr. Coffee.”

“Hooah,” agreed Top.

“We’ll forward all of this to Nikki and Church. And to Linden Brierly.” I looked at the wall. “What’s next?”

Top looked at his laptop. “El train in Chicago. Autodrive system on two trains went ape-shit four months back. Engineers couldn’t control
the trains, and they crashed.”

“Geez,” said Bunny, “I remember that. Something like eleven people dead.”

“Twelve,” said Top. “Put down to computer error.”

I stepped closer to the wall. “That’s a bigger system to take control of. With each step, the Kings have been flexing their wings. Testing SafeZone, proving to themselves that they can take it over.” I turned to the others. “What questions
does this raise? Hit me.”

“Right out of the gate,” said Bunny, “what about BattleZone? We have the Eglin thing, but there’s nothing else here that says they can hack into the software packages the Department of Defense has been installing. No ships have launched missiles, no fighters have gone crazy. What’s that tell us? Do they not have access to the military version of Regis? Is it only SafeZone
that they can control?”

“Eglin,” said Top.

“Sure, Eglin,” Bunny agreed, “but what about it? That Regis stuff’s in everything. Why aren’t there missiles in the air? If they had control over BattleZone and all of Regis, they could launch all their shit and that would be game over. The fact that they haven’t makes me think that what happened to Dilbert Howell was actual computer error. Sad, tragic,
sure, but I’m not sure we can make a case to connect that to the Kings.”

“You’re saying you don’t believe it?” I asked.

“What I’m saying,” insisted Bunny, “is that we can’t prove it. Eglin could be bad timing and a tragic accident.”

Top gave him a long and withering look.

“We can’t take Eglin off the board,” I said slowly. “I mean, if it was the Kings, it’s a big win for them. It might have
told them everything they need to know if they’re planning something really big.”

“Like a major launch?” asked Bunny.

“Like a major launch.”

“Shit.”

“Which puts us exactly where, Cap’n?” asked Top. “Do we recommend to the entire United States military that they flush a few billion dollars and pull the software out of every plane, tank, and warship? They would burn us at the damn stake.”

“In a heartbeat,” said Bunny.

“Got to file a recommendation of caution,” I said. “And we have to hope that Eglin wasn’t part of this.”

From the looks on their faces, I knew they didn’t buy that any more than I did.

“Other questions?” I asked.

“Drones in general,” said Bunny. “Aside from being able to hack other people’s drones, the Kings have access to their own. The one at the Resort. Two
different kinds of drones in Philly. And the one that killed Bug’s mom. Where are they getting them?”

It was a good question with, unfortunately, a disappointing answer. UAVs are everywhere now. More than 320 companies based in the United States manufacture drones or drone parts. Thousands of stores sell kits to build them. Plus, there are imports. Canada and Mexico have factories, and everyone
in Southeast Asia who could retool a plant are turning them out.

I called Doctor Hu to see if he had anything, but he transferred me to Yoda without actually responding to my question. He does that sort of thing. Hu’s a dick.

When Yoda came on the line, I explained what I wanted.

“Hmmmm. Well, the, ummmm, drone from the ballpark isn’t standard. It’s, ummm, a variation on a design used by the
Russians. Though, ummmm, we’ve seen an almost identical model in North Korea. Built to look like a regular pigeon. I think, mmmm, Nikki told you that it had some kind of radical QC CPU. Mmmmm-hmmmm, that’s kind of delicious, and we’re picking it apart to see, ummm, how it works. Or why it works, because it’s so small. Nothing like it anywhere. I, ummmm, dream about tech like this.”

“Okay,” I
said, and damn near followed it with an “mmmm.” “Does it tell us anything? Does it lead us anywhere?”

“Ummmm, no. Not really. Just, mmmm, tells us that they’re smarter than us.”

“Not really what I want to hear, Yoda.”

“Not really what I, ummmm, ever want to admit.”

I ended the call. Then I thought about it and called Nikki. She didn’t hum, and she worked in a different part of Bug’s group.
She was a superstar in research and hacking.

“Nikki,” I said, putting the call on speaker, “I want to describe something to you, and I want your reaction. Okay? Let me outline it without commentary.”

“Sure, Joe. Go for it.”

I told her what Top, Bunny, and I had come up with. The yearlong pattern of what appeared to be field tests of the ability to hack and subvert autonomous driving systems
and commercial drones. When I was finished, I could almost hear her frown.