Shadow Tyrants (Oregon Files 13)

Juan’s mind was reeling with the implications. “You mean, it could hack into computers all by itself?”

“Hacking is just the first step. Project C is designed to rewrite the code so seamlessly that the people monitoring it may not even know it. Think how hard it is for us to detect viruses now, ones that were written by humans. An AI could develop its own language. Even if we knew the malicious code was there, we might have no idea what it said. Every computer on earth could be taken out of our control and given over to someone else.”

“Or something else.”

Lyla nodded. “If it wasn’t designed with the right fail-safes in mind, that’s very possible. The world could be held hostage by the whim of a computer that doesn’t care at all about the human race. Or the AI could be controlled by someone who has the rest of us on strings like puppets, ready to do whatever they command. That someone would instantly become the most powerful person on earth, and there would be nothing we could do about it.”

“Where is this computer?” Juan asked.

“I wish I could tell you. Our access was extremely restricted when we were working on the computers. It was a closed network, so I couldn’t access the internet.”

“What was the network?”

“It was called Vajra.”

Mallik’s satellite system. That confirmed he was somehow involved in all this. But little of this was making sense to Juan yet.

“There were two other things that you should know,” Lyla said.

“What’s that?”

“First, twenty-three of the passengers were taken off the island shortly after we got there. The rest of us got to talking and realized that they were all hardware people, while we were all software.”

“Do you know where they were taken?”

She hesitated, then said, “No. About eight months ago, we had to redo a ton of work all of a sudden. During that time, I came across latitude and longitude coordinates when we were checking data on some computer modeling. One of the data cells next to the coordinates had the word sunken. I think it was referring to a ship that sank.”

“Do you remember the coordinates?”

She nodded and started writing on the paper Kevin had left for her. “I memorized them because they were so unusual.”

“You said there were two things.”

She nodded. “Three times during my stay on Jhootha Island, I saw a strange symbol on paperwork that was emailed to us. I’ve never seen it before. I can’t draw at all, so Kevin sketched it out from my recollection. I have no idea what it means.”

Lyla turned over the sheet of paper. On it was a circle with nine spokes.

In the center of the circle was a swastika.

THIRTY-TWO

OVER INDIA

The Corporation’s private Gulfstream had landed at Kochi’s airport at the same time the Oregon arrived at India’s southern port city to drop off the team that would be infiltrating Romir Mallik’s gala. Chuck “Tiny” Gunderson, the Corporation’s fixed-wing pilot on call whenever they needed a ride for a mission, was now taking them to Mumbai, and Eddie Seng was sitting in the copilot’s seat for the takeoff.

“How long will you be in Mumbai?” the big, blond Swede asked a minute after the wheels lifted from the runway.

“The party starts at six tomorrow night,” Eddie said.

“Good. I can get some sleep after we get there.”

“Long flight from Singapore?”

“It wasn’t bad, but I had to leave a killer poker hand at the casino when I got the call. I’m guessing we won’t be sticking around once the party is over.”

Eddie hoped they could get in and out without trouble, but he always planned for the worst. “We might need a quick extraction.”

“You usually do.” He looked over his shoulder at the rest of the team in the back. “You brought a different group with you this time. I don’t see Kevin Nixon or Hali Kasim on my plane very often.”