War Hawk: A Tucker Wayne Novel

by James Rollins

  “And that means what?”

  Frank lifted his CUCS unit. “Come see.”

  Tucker joined him. The small screen showed a smoky aerial view of the battlefield below. Frank changed the camera angle and summoned a close-up of the nest of bunkers in the neighboring desert.

  “While we hightail it out of here,” Frank said, “we might want to keep those Tangent guys busy.”

  Tucker glanced over at Frank. “What’re you thinking?”

  “I’m guessing this is a shakedown cruise of the drones, testing if they’re battle ready.” Frank grinned at him. “But as you well know, when it comes to fighting, something always goes wrong. I think I can divert one of those Warhawks to target the bunkers, make it look like a malfunction. If nothing else, it’ll give those guys something else to do rather than look our way.”

  Tucker matched his grin, picturing Karl Webster’s face. “Do it.”

  12:25 A.M.

  “The drone’s not responding,” the technician said, a panicked edge rising in his voice. “It’s ignoring all shutdown orders.”

  In the command bunker, Karl Webster watched over the technician’s shoulder. The screen flowed with code, while a smaller window displayed the video feed of a Warhawk sweeping back to its home base.

  “What the hell is it doing?” Rafael Lyon asked, flanking the tech on the other side.

  Karl leaned closer. “Maybe its self-diagnostics discovered a malfunction, and it’s headed back for repairs. If I recall, that’s a part of the design protocol for the drones.”

  The tech shook his head. “It should still respond to our transmissions—and it’s coming in with weapons hot.”

  Karl noted the red glow on the schematic in the upper right corner of the screen, highlighting the Warhawk’s cannon array and its twin nests of cluster bombs in its two holds. As he struggled to understand, he glanced over to another screen showing the fiery destruction of White City and the ongoing bombardment of the Soviet equipment parked on its outskirts.

  While he had failed to discover any evidence of Jane Sabatello and her male companion out there, if the pair had been foolish enough to hole up in one of the buildings, both were long dead. If not, he already had their Expedition targeted for surveillance.

  “Sir!” the tech gasped.

  Karl turned back to the screen. The incoming Warhawk had almost reached the bunkers—but a blue glow had appeared on the drone’s schematic, lighting up its nose cone.

  He knew what that meant.

  “It just activated its onboard EW systems,” the tech said.

  Electronic warfare.

  Karl swung around and yelled to the others in the bunker. “Shut down all systems! All communications! Now!”

  Before anyone could respond, the lights flared brightly within the concrete bunker. Computer screens flickered, the images dissolving into washes of pixels. Then the lights went out, sinking the place into darkness. A scatter of LEDs and dials glowed from the various monitoring banks, until they died away, too.

  “What the hell happened?” Lyon asked. Iron-hard fingers grasped Karl’s elbow, demanding the question be answered.

  Karl broke free of that grip. He didn’t have time to explain the Warhawk’s comprehensive suite of EW features: from electromagnetic pulses capable of frying military-grade equipment to jamming technology that could permanently blind systems.

  They had only seconds to go.

  “Everyone down!” he hollered, knowing what was coming next. “Get under cov—”

  The thunderous detonation jolted the ground under Karl’s feet, throwing him headlong away from the bunker’s entrance. His eardrums popped, and pressure pounded the air from his chest. He didn’t remember hitting the floor, only lying there with blood pouring from both nostrils.

  He finally rolled to his side and stared toward the front half of the bunker, aglow with smoldering fires. Through a cloud of oily smoke, he spotted the tip of a black wing sticking out of the rubble. He imagined the Warhawk’s final kamikaze dive upon its target, igniting its deadly cargo in one mighty blast, enough to crush half of the command bunker to ruin.

  He sat up and discovered Rafael Lyon glowering back at him, a deep gash across the French soldier’s scalp, painting half his face in blood.

  Karl didn’t look away.

  Despite the miscue in targeting the bunker—something they could diagnose later—the remaining test of the Warhawk squadron’s capabilities had been an unqualified success. Kellerman should be happy enough with the results to continue with phase three.

  Or at least, that’s the way I’ll spin it.

  12:32 A.M.

  From a high hill a mile away, Tucker studied the smoldering ruins of the town through a set of binoculars. Beyond the outskirts, piles of slag metal glowed against the dark sand, marking all that remained of the Soviet tank and equipment.

  He was suddenly struck by the surrealism of it all: how decades of old military hardware could be obliterated by twenty-first-century drones equipped with an AI system created by a British mathematician from World War II.

  He lowered his binoculars with a shake of his head, struggling to understand.

  He rolled over to where Frank and Jane were huddled over the CUCS unit, monitoring events through Rex’s eyes. Not only had Frank managed to keep them digitally cloaked from those hawks in the sky, but he had sent one of those raptors down upon the bunker complex.

  A small curl of smoke still marked where the drone had crashed itself and its payload on the enemy’s compound.

  Tucker rolled to his feet, knowing they had to get moving, to get clear of the area before Tangent collected itself after the unexpected assault.

  Kane heaved to his legs with a rare huff of complaint.

  Tucker patted the dog’s side gently. “You said it, buddy.”

  He joined the others and got them all moving again.

  Jane strode alongside him. “Frank had Rex pull as much data as he could from the drone he commandeered, but he’ll need Nora’s help to decipher even half of it.”

  He nodded, too tired to consider all the ramifications.

  During the hike back to the Expedition, he found Jane’s hand in his own. He didn’t know who took whose hand or when, but he didn’t care. They continued in silence across the desert, happy to be alive.

  At least, for now.

  23

  October 23, 2:08 P.M. CDT

  Lubbock, Texas

  The next day, Tucker found himself drowsing on a motel bed. An air conditioner hummed nearby, doing its best to hold back the Texas heat. Kane was sprawled beside him, with Jane curled on the dog’s far side.

  Lucky dog . . .

  Then again, they were all lucky.

  As he lay there, he listened to the tapping of Frank’s laptop keyboard and the low murmur of Nora’s voice. After leaving White Sands, the group had returned to the trailer belonging to Sirocco Power and collected their Honda Pilot. Afterward, Tucker had driven the stolen Expedition and dumped it in the middle of the desert after thoroughly wiping it down. From there, the group had hurried back to the resort outside of Las Cruces and collected Nora in the middle of the night. She had still been awake, her eyes puffy and red from working on the code that Sandy Conlon had left on her thumb drive. Tucker skipped any celebratory reunion and got everyone, including Rex, packed up and moving again.

  He drove the rest of the night to reach Lubbock, Texas, just before dawn.

  On the drive here, Frank and Nora had sat in the backseat with their heads bent together. Frank pored through and shared all the data that Rex had collected, while Nora explained what she had learned about Sandy’s code. He doubted the two had slept at all, even after arriving at the motel. While refueling the SUV, Nora had grabbed a six-pack of Rockstar energy drinks from the gas station’s convenience store, while Frank stuck to coffee.

  “What a beautiful piece of work,” Frank said. “I think I’m in love.”

  Tucker forced open his eyes and
rolled his head sideways. Frank sat cross-legged on the neighboring bed with his laptop perched atop his calves. Nora lay on her belly next to him, with her own computer near her nose.

  Tucker grumbled, “You cruising porn sites again, Frank?”

  The man looked flabbergasted, glancing from Nora back to Tucker. “I didn’t . . . what are you—?”

  Nora spared him any further embarrassment. “He’s talking about Sandy’s code for perfecting the AI operating system. It is beautiful.”

  Frank collected himself, nodding a bit too much. “That’s right. The work she did is simply amazing. I barely understand half of it, but with Nora’s help, I can appreciate the sheer magnitude of what she accomplished on her own.”

  Nora rolled around and sat up. “That’s Sandy. When she sets her mind on a task, there’s no stopping her.”

  Except to put a bullet through her skull, he thought sourly, but he kept that to himself.

  “What’s so amazing about it?” Tucker asked.

  Frank rubbed his eyes. “It’s how she extrapolated Alan Turing’s algorithms and theories and found a practical way of implementing them.”

  Nora smiled, which seemed to erase the exhaustion from her face—or maybe it was her memory of Sandy. “Turing postulated that the crux to building his Oracle—a thinking computer capable of deciphering anything and learning from it—was to build chaos into its systems. He believed chaos or randomness was the key to creative intelligence.”

  Tucker remembered Jane mentioning how Turing had wanted to put radioactive radium into a computer, hoping its unpredictable radioactive decay would instill randomness into his machines.

  Jane stirred, drawn by the conversation. She propped herself up and shoved a couple of pillows behind her back. “What did Sandy figure out?”

  “You should really see the code to fully appreciate it,” Nora said. “But at its simplest, Sandy found a way to incorporate irrational numbers into the design of the neural nets used to operate the drones.”

  “If that’s the simplest,” Tucker said, “I’d hate to see what you call complicated.”

  Nora frowned, plainly trying to figure out a way to dumb it down for him.

  Frank helped her. “You know computer code is all zeros and ones. Basically current on and current off. Sandy found a way to incorporate a whole range of numbers between fully on and fully off.”

  “Just like there’s an infinite set of fractional numbers between zero and one,” Nora added. “She figured out if you wire up a neural net in such a way that tiny changes in input trigger bigger changes in outputs, then a feedback loop will—”

  Tucker lifted a hand, suppressing a groan. “Okay, I believe you, but how does that help us?”

  Nora glanced at Frank.

  The man gave a small shake of his head. “You tell him.”

  “What?” Tucker pressed.

  Nora cringed. “To test Sandy’s code, I inputted it into Rex.”

  Tucker glanced to the drone on the floor. Cables ran from its central core to Nora’s computer. He tried to imagine what equipping Sandy’s new AI with a set of wings might do.

  Tucker’s voice came out sharper than he intended. “What the hell, Nora? Why did you—?”

  “Because I asked her to,” Frank said, clearly protective of Nora. “Rex collected too much raw data last night. He got loads of information directly from the drones, but he also sucked up massive amounts of intelligence from those Tangent bunkers before that Warhawk took them out. Way too much for me to analyze. It would take me months to even scratch the surface.”

  Jane put a hand on Tucker’s arm, seeming to be a step ahead of him. “They want to use Rex—an improved Rex—to sift through all that raw data and make some educated guess about Tangent’s next move.”

  Frank nodded.

  “It’s actually pretty brilliant,” Jane said, which drew a bashful smile out of Frank. She slid off the bed and joined the other two. “Let me see that code.”

  Knowing he was outclassed by this discussion, Tucker grabbed Kane’s leash. His partner was immediately up on his paws, showing no hesitation or sign of being nearly suffocated to death hours ago.

  “Looks like it’s just us,” Tucker said.

  He headed out into the midday heat. This part of Texas was suffering through a scorching Indian summer. He had grabbed a ball cap before leaving and tugged the bill farther over his eyes. As usual, his gaze swept the parking lot of the Motel 6. With no one about, he didn’t bother hooking Kane’s leash and headed off with the dog to a neighboring park.

  He spent an hour tossing a red rubber Kong ball for Kane, both entertaining the shepherd and reestablishing a bond that went deeper than handler and dog. He also assessed the shepherd’s physical health after last night. It took someone who knew Kane intimately to note how the shepherd began to favor his left hind leg—not with a limp, but by being a step slower if Tucker tossed the ball in that direction. Kane pivoted off that leg with less strength, more caution.

  Tucker bent down on a knee, opening his arms as Kane returned a final time. He let off a small whistle between his teeth. Kane’s ears perked straight up upon hearing this and ran at Tucker. The shepherd dropped the ball, abandoning his favorite toy, and ran full tilt into Tucker, knocking him onto his back. They rolled in the cool grass under the shaded branches of an elm tree, whose leaves had begun to turn a golden yellow.

  They play-wrestled for a few minutes, with Kane pretending to bite at his wrists or licking ferociously at his face. Finally, Tucker lay on his back, with Kane sprawled at his side, pinning down Tucker’s right arm. Tucker stared through the branches, while Kane panted happily. He could feel all the aches and bruises of the past several days—but also a deep well of contentment . . . especially with his best friend at his side.

  He closed his eyes and came close to falling asleep when a shadow passed over him. His body tensed, instantly going alert. But Kane still lay on his arm, his tail wagging.

  It wasn’t a threat.

  He craned back and saw Jane standing there, smiling down at them both.

  “Got room for a third?” she asked.

  He flopped his left arm across the grass, and Jane dropped down beside him. She snuggled close with her head resting on his shoulder. He could smell the perfume of her honeysuckle-scented shampoo.

  “How are Frank and Nora—?”

  Jane sighed, sounding disappointed, but not apparently because the others weren’t getting anywhere. “I tried to keep up with them, but they moved beyond even my comprehension like twenty minutes ago. I only stayed longer to save face, then found an excuse to leave before they figured me out.”

  Tucker smiled. “I know what you mean. I felt like a dinosaur in there, a dusty relic from another era. All this talk of a new battlefield—an information war fought with digital code and smart drones—I might as well be a knight facing an armored tank.”

  She turned her head and smiled at him. “You’ll always be my knight.”

  “Okay, that might be the corniest thing you’ve ever said.”

  She laughed. “Maybe . . . but it’s true.”

  Despite his discounting of her words, he recognized she was being genuine. Likewise, he couldn’t discount the warmth swelling through him. It was those damned eyes, aglow in the shade, so easy to get lost in. Memories of happier times played through him, rising easily out of the past, perhaps made even easier because he could never fully escape his haunted past. The two were entwined, part of the same fog of war.

  Still, their lives had eventually pulled them apart. She’d had a family, a son, a whole existence beyond their shared history. He tried to picture her pregnant, raising a child alone, dealing with the grief of losing her husband. Even now, a familiar fear shone from her eyes, for Nathan.

  “Listen, Jane, as your knight in shining armor, I think maybe we need to revisit your involvement here. After that close call at White Sands—”

  “No,” she said firmly. She propped up to an el
bow and looked down at him. “You’re not the only one who knows how to read people. You think sending me running back to Nathan will help protect him.”

  “If you get killed—”

  “Then I get killed, and he lives.” She dropped onto her back, still nestled against him. “Once I’m out of the way, Tangent will have no need to pursue Nathan. He’ll be safe. And besides, it’s no life to be always running, always looking over your shoulder. If there’s a way to end this, then for Nathan’s sake, I’ll do anything and everything to give him that chance.”

  He heard the fierceness behind her words. At heart, she was still a soldier. She refused to sit on the sidelines when it came to protecting her son. Still, he sensed the hesitancy, the doubt, even the guilt. He read it in the seismic tremble in her body. She wanted to be back at Nathan’s side.

  “Tell me about him,” Tucker whispered.

  She stared sidelong at him. “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “Like why did you pick the name Nathan?”

  She frowned, as if trying to guess if he was teasing her.

  “What’s his favorite cereal?” he pressed her gently. “Is there a bedtime story he likes?”

  She started slowly. “Nathan . . . he’s named after my husband’s grandfather, who died of cancer a year before Nate was born. As to breakfast, that boy is a Lucky Charms addict, but he only wants it with warm milk, which I find disgusting. Still, I love stirring his milk on the stove each morning, reminds me of warming his bottle when he was a baby.”

  Tucker heard the wistful smile in her words as she continued to share Nathan with him, building their lives together in bits and pieces.

  “But he can sometimes be a handful, especially lately . . . he’s getting to be that age, trying to find his independence, which both makes me proud and breaks my heart a little.”

  After a time, her words faded into a thoughtful silence. They continued to lie there. Finally, she whispered, “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For reminding me why I’m here.”

  Her arm drifted across his chest and hugged him, drawing him tighter to her. He rolled up and stared down at her. Her eyes shone with a renewed determination, but also an ember of something warmer, of what might have been . . . and maybe what could still be.