Shadow Tyrants

  When they were all out, Linda backed the Gator away and submerged until just the antenna and air snorkel were visible. The drone hovered above them, and Juan could see the aerial image projected onto his glasses.

  As they began to wade forward, the drone flew on to scout ahead.

  When they got to the edge of the jungle, the Airbus airliner came into view. The underside was still white. The giant plane loomed over them, casting deep shadows in the already dense thicket of trees.

  One of the doors on the plane was open, but its emergency slide had been torn away. If they wanted a look inside, they’d have to climb. Maybe later, Juan thought. Right now, he wanted to explore the interior of the island.

  MacD, an experienced hunter and tracker, caught everyone’s attention and waved them over. He pointed to the ground. The tire tracks that Juan had seen on the top of the caissons continued here under the cover of the foliage. Since there were no grooves on the sandy beach, they had to have been intentionally erased.

  Instead of taking the tires’ path, they divided up and crept through the jungle parallel to it twenty yards away, Juan and Eddie on one side and MacD, Linc, and Raven on the other. Gomez kept the drone fixated on the path so they could see if anyone was coming to greet them.

  Juan heard a clicking noise and stopped, holding up his hand for the others to do the same.

  He looked up and saw what was making the rhythmic noise. A blue coconut crab the size of a bulldog was doggedly attempting to clip a coconut from the palm tree above him.

  “At least we can be sure there aren’t any motion sensors,” Eddie whispered.

  Juan nodded at the huge crab, which was three times as big as any lobster he’d ever seen. “Those guys would be setting them off constantly.”

  As they walked away, the coconut finally came loose and fell to the ground. The crab scurried down the tree and hauled away its prize.

  A thousand yards later, Juan spotted a building the size of a three-car garage and as tall as a semi. It was a modern metal structure painted camouflage like the plane. There was a door big enough for a truck to pass through, and another regular door beside it, both closed.

  They regrouped and crouched down out of sight.

  “Unless the indigenous natives have a local construction company that we haven’t seen yet,” Juan said, “I’d say the Indian government is going to get a big surprise soon about their off-limits island.”

  “Unless they’re the ones who built this,” MacD said. “Maybe the indigenous angle has been one big con all these years.”

  “How about we knock on the door and ask?” Linc said.

  Raven nodded. “I have a feeling whoever they are won’t be happy to see visitors.”

  Juan said, “Gomez, give us a close-up of the front.”

  “Close-up on the way,” Gomez replied.

  The quadcopter flew down until Juan had a clear view of the door. Next to it was a keypad and flat panel big enough for a hand.

  “Could be a biometric scanner for a palm print,” Eddie said.

  “Out here?” Linc said, looking around at the desolate jungle. “Why would they need that kind of security?”

  “We might be able to find someone who knows the answer to that question,” Gomez said.

  “What do you mean?” Juan asked.

  Gomez rotated the drone’s camera so that it pointed down at two sets of footprints leading to a footpath. It went in the direction of the cigarette butts they had spotted on the beach halfway around the island from the concealed plane.

  “I think someone went for a stroll recently,” Gomez said.

  The footprints in the mud were empty, unlike the other depressions around them that had been filled with water from the short downpour twenty minutes before.

  Two people had walked out of that building since Juan’s team had landed on the island. And judging from the footprints, they hadn’t returned.

  Either Juan and his crew were about to become hunters or they were the hunted.

  EIGHTEEN

  INDIA

  Romir Mallik watched in silence as Xavier Carlton continued to make his case for Lionel Gupta’s treason. Gupta had remained tight-lipped up to this point, and Mallik certainly wasn’t going to throw him a lifeline. He’d relaxed the grip on the vial in his hand when he realized he wasn’t the one being confronted.

  Mallik initially hoped it would be the Colossus 5 damage that was pinned on Gupta. But to Mallik’s surprise, it was the destruction of his own satellite launch that Gupta was being accused of.

  “We all know that Romir’s satellite system is critical to the functionality of Colossus,” Carlton said. “That’s why Lionel had to keep the Vajra constellation from being completed.”

  Finally, Gupta spoke up. “I did no such thing.”

  “To prove it, I even know the name of the man you had on the inside. Eshan Chandra.” Carlton looked at Mallik. “Is that correct?”

  Mallik couldn’t contain his shock at hearing the name and nodded. “We discovered that Chandra altered the fuel feed software, which caused the engines to fail. When we questioned him, he told us he didn’t know the name of his employer. He took the job after a million dollars was wired to his account.”

  “Where is Chandra now?”

  “He committed suicide.” In fact, he was killed during questioning by an overzealous interrogator, but Mallik wasn’t going to mention that.

  “I’m telling you I had nothing to do with this!” Gupta yelled.

  “Please, Lionel,” Carlton said with utter disdain. “I have records of your correspondence with Chandra instructing him to destroy the rocket.”

  “Whatever ‘proof’ you have is faked.”

  Suddenly, Jason Wakefield spoke up. “No it’s not.”

  All eyes turned to the communications mogul.

  “You happened to be using one of my phone networks when you made the plans. You should have realized I built back doors into all of my systems to let me monitor calls and texts.”

  Gupta’s jaw dropped. “I . . . I . . .”

  Carlton smirked in satisfaction at catching Gupta. But his victory was short-lived.

  “And I approve of your actions,” Wakefield added.

  Carlton looked as if he’d been slapped. Mallik was just as stunned.

  “What are you talking about, Jason?” Carlton demanded.

  “I’ve been waiting to see if someone else was as disturbed by the Colossus Project as I am,” Wakefield said. “We’ve gone too far. I know we’ve collectively spent a billion dollars on this effort, but it’s gotten out of control.”

  Mallik watched as the other members of the Nine whispered to one another at this news.

  “You can’t be serious,” Carlton said.

  “Dead serious,” Wakefield said. “I’ve been slowing down communications among the ships for months. You just haven’t noticed. Now, I’m glad to see Lionel has taken even stronger steps to stop this project. It’s time those of us who oppose Colossus to come out of the shadows instead of just passively resisting.”

  “Staying in the shadows is exactly what we all agreed to,” said Carlton, who now sounded alarmed.

  “I didn’t agree to anything,” Pedro Neves said. “My father did.”

  “Then he should have told you that Colossus is the most advanced artificial intelligence project ever devised. Once it is fully operational, we will be able to pierce any network on earth without the knowledge of a single person outside the project. The control virus created by Colossus will be undetectable and unreadable by any corporation, government, or military. We will have finally fulfilled Ashoka’s dream: to harness ultimate knowledge for the benefit of mankind.”

  “His dream was to protect the world from the power of knowledge, not control it,” Wakefield said.

  “We can’t protect
it without controlling it,” Carlton replied. “Ashoka couldn’t have foreseen the radical changes in technology that we’ve undergone. The development and perfection of artificial intelligence is inevitable. Who better than us to shepherd the world through this radical change?”

  “I don’t know,” Melissa Valentine said, her tone full of worry. “I’m having second thoughts as well.” She looked at Neves as she spoke. “With Colossus’s control virus and pattern matching algorithms, we’ll be able to rig elections, manipulate markets, bankrupt corporations, and disable entire armies. And because it can be done in secret through subtle changes in software, those governments, corporations, and militaries will never even know it’s being done under our direction. We’ll have more power at our fingertips than any group in history. It’s an awesome responsibility and ripe for abuse.”

  “Exactly,” Wakefield said. “We will be tyrants operating from the shadows.”

  “Isn’t that what we all wanted?” Carlton asked. “We’ve created ultimate knowledge, just as our ancestors wanted, just as Ashoka wanted. And we’re the people most qualified to carry out that vision. Ruling from behind the scenes is the only way it works.”

  Volanski, Schultz, Saidon, and Neves all sat stone-faced. Wakefield and Valentine were shaking their heads.

  Gupta turned to Mallik. “I’m sorry, Romir. I did have your satellite launch sabotaged. But I’m with Wakefield. The Colossus Project is a mistake. We need to shut it down.”

  Then he turned to the rest of the Nine. “Who’s with me?”

  Wakefield’s hand went up right away, followed by Valentine’s. Then to Mallik’s shock, Pedro Neves raised his hand.

  Mallik felt a swell of victory. Thinking he was the only one with major reservations about the project, he’d been going it alone for months trying to undercut Colossus. Now he had allies he didn’t even know he had.

  He raised his hand, tilting the majority in favor of those against continuing.

  Carlton gaped at him. “Romir? You, too?”

  “You think you can control Colossus,” Mallik said, “but you’re delusional. We’d be unleashing a runaway artificial intelligence that would soon outgrow all of us. The software that you believe will help you control others will actually grow out of our control. Once Colossus becomes self-aware, it will realize it no longer needs us. Then it will do everything it can to protect itself.”

  Carlton scoffed. “That old trope? Colossus will launch all the nukes and cause Armageddon? You helped us build in a fail-safe to prevent that.”

  Mallik shook his head. “You said yourself that we’re creating the most advanced AI ever built. If that’s true, why do you think we could outsmart it? How do we know it won’t decide that it, in fact, should be making the decisions? We can’t possibly know what’s going to happen with Colossus when it reaches its full potential. We see it every day in unintended consequences from advanced software, software with millions of lines of code that no single person could ever read and comprehend. I saw it myself with my wife’s death.”

  He swallowed as he remembered his own personal tragedy, then glanced at Torkan, who simply returned his gaze with a tinge of sadness.

  Mallik looked at every member of the Nine. Several heads were nodding. He could feel the momentum swinging to his side’s favor. It was time for his final pitch.

  “So I ask you, what happens when Colossus has billions of lines of code that it writes itself? What happens when Colossus reaches the singularity and can improve itself without any intervention from us, at a rate far beyond our imagination? Don’t we become irrelevant at that point? Don’t we become the servants instead of the masters?”

  Carlton said, “But your shipboard fail-safe . . .”

  Mallik dismissed that line of thinking with a wave of his hands. “Is a stopgap, nothing more. That’s why I built additional capabilities into the Vajra satellite constellation. That’s why I had the Colossus 5 damaged: to give me more time—to give us more time—to stop this madness once and for all.”

  Mallik knew he’d said something wrong as soon as he saw Wakefield’s expression change to anger. On his other side, Gupta shook his head in pity. The rest of the Nine had reactions of surprise and disgust.

  Except Carlton. He was beaming with a wide smile. Gupta got up and walked over to Carlton’s side of the table and shook his hand.

  “You were right,” Gupta said. “I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

  “Who else would have sabotaged the Colossus 5?” Carlton said. He focused on Torkan for a moment before staring at Mallik with obvious delight. “They didn’t believe me, Romir. Not fully. Thank you for admitting it.”

  None of the other Nine would face Mallik after the revelation he’d so carelessly confessed. His stomach churned when Carlton looked at the six Library guards inside the meeting chamber and said, “Take him and Torkan into custody until we determine the proper method of execution.”

  NINETEEN

  Carlton was quite pleased at how his plan had played out. He knew that all he’d had to do was pander to Mallik’s need to be on the winning side.

  The Library guards took out their weapons and moved toward Mallik and Torkan. Torkan tensed, ready for a fight that he couldn’t win. Mallik didn’t stand. Instead, he held up one hand with some kind of object in it.

  “Stop right there,” he said. The guards hesitated and looked to Carlton, who rolled his eyes.

  “Please, Romir. Don’t make this more pathetic than it already is.”

  Mallik opened his palm and revealed a glass vial with red writing on it below an orange and black biohazard symbol.

  “Volanski knows what this is,” Mallik said, looking at the Russian arms trader. “If you try to keep me from leaving the Library, I will drop it. Then all of us will die.”

  Boris Volanski suddenly jumped to his feet in alarm.

  “Novichok!” he yelled. Carlton could feel Natalie Taylor’s hand on his shoulder. His assistant knew as well as he did what Novichok could do.

  “That’s right,” Mallik said. “This is a pressurized vial. If it breaks, the nerve agent will be propelled throughout the room. It will kill us in seconds.”

  Carlton slowly got to his feet.

  “Nobody leaves until Torkan and I do,” Mallik warned.

  Carlton nearly sneered, “You haven’t got the guts.” But then he realized Mallik did have the guts and that he had nothing to lose. His wife was gone, he had no children, and he seemed to be fanatical about stopping the Colossus Project.

  “How did you know it was me?” Mallik said.

  Carlton said nothing. Mallik looked around the room until Jason Wakefield spoke.

  “Carlton has a video of your man Torkan at the Moretti Navi shipyard,” he said, nodding at Mallik’s bodyguard. “He sent it to all of us before the meeting and suggested the ruse to get you to admit your involvement. Some of us didn’t initially believe it, particularly me because of the ‘kidnapping’ attempt that you now obviously set up. But I went along with it because I thought you would prove him wrong. Instead, Carlton was right. I don’t like being played for a fool.”

  “How could you, Romir?” Melissa Valentine said, shaking her head. “We thought you were one of us.”

  “I tried to warn you before we started,” Mallik said, “but you wouldn’t listen. I thought the project was a boondoggle until we established the Jhootha Island facility. Then I knew Colossus was no pipe dream. I was the only person who could stop you. That’s why I ramped up the Vajra project so quickly. It cost me even more than Colossus has cost us together, but now I see that it was worth it.”

  He stood, the vial held between his fingers. “Now, I’m going to leave here with Torkan. I expect that you’ll try to prevent me from completing my satellite constellation. Go ahead. I’m ready for you. Whatever you can come up with won’t work. In the end, you’ll see that I’m
right. I hope someday in the future you’ll thank me for what I’m doing.”

  “Thank you?” Carlton spat. “For destroying our vision for a better world?”

  “For saving the world.”

  Mallik backed toward the doorway behind him. Torkan was behind him, his eyes on the motionless guards.

  When Mallik was through the doorway, he stopped and said, “You’ll never stop coming after me, will you? The Nine has to end here.”

  Then he tossed the vial into the room and sprinted out of sight.

  Carlton saw the vial arc in the air toward the center of the room and turned to run, but Taylor was already hauling him backward. He stumbled after her, pushing Gupta through the arch with him. They’d rounded the corner when he heard the vial smash against the stone floor and the screaming begin.

  They kept running. Carlton turned to see Wakefield stumble through the arch behind them with one of the guards. Wakefield’s terrified eyes pleaded for help, but there was none coming. He and the guard seized up as their muscles froze, and they both keeled over like statues, their heads smashing into the hard floor.

  Gupta paused at the horrifying sight. His own man had been left behind to die.

  “Come on!” Taylor shouted. “You can’t do anything for them! This way!”

  “Who is this woman?” Gupta said to Carlton. “How does your assistant know we can’t do anything?”

  “Because she was in British Army Intelligence,” Carlton said. “She’s not just my assistant, she’s my bodyguard. Much better than yours, I might add.”

  Taylor shoved Gupta into motion, and they kept going until they found one of the remaining Library guards at Carlton’s exit.

  “Find the rest of your men,” Carlton said to him. “Romir Mallik just killed the other members of the Nine. Stop him before he can leave the Library.”

  The guard looked at him in shock, then nodded and ran off.

  They descended into the tunnel as Gupta said in stunned disbelief, “Why would Mallik do that?”