“No, sir.”
“On all three nights, the only bot he activated and released from its holding bay was Number 20. Bucky. The same unit that later killed him.”
If PFC Greer was surprised by that information, he didn’t show it. In fact, he said, “I was afraid there was some connection between whatever he was up to down there and what happened to him.”
“Why didn’t you report any of this to your superiors once you learned of Major Ames’s death?”
Greer looked away again. “I don’t know, sir. I should have.”
Brodie leaned forward in his chair. “I need you to think, Tom. Of something he said, or his demeanor, anything at all that you might remember that can help us get justice for the major and his family.”
Greer took a deep breath. “Like I said, I was jacked up the first two nights, so I really can’t totally remember, but the third night, the major came back up and he looked… afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid ofthem, sir. The tin men.”
“What did he say to you?”
Greer met Brodie’s gaze. “He said to me, ‘There’s a ghost in the machine.’ And then he walked away. And that’s the last time I ever saw him.”
CHAPTER 18
BRODIE AND TAYLOR WALKED OUTof the barracks into the cool desert night. Brodie said, “Ames feared the D-17s are smarter than they seem.”
Taylor nodded. “Or they arebecomingsmarter, somehow.”
Brodie considered that a moment. “Maybe Ames wasn’t tinkering. Maybe he was digging, and he found something. And that’s why he’s dead.”
“If that’s the case, who would be responsible?”
“Maybe no one. The bot itself. Maybe these things have the capacity to get smarter, but that wasn’t the intention of the programmers.”
Taylor looked skeptical. “I’m not sure that’s possible. If the D-17s have a higher intellectual capacity than is evident, it’s because someone designed them that way. Someone in DEVCOM. Or DARPA. Or Synotec.”
Brodie nodded. They both watched a white Military Police vehicle rumble across the dusty road ahead of them. Then he said, “It looks like Caroline’s Intel was accurate. So can we trust her, or is she still a bitch?”
“Why not both?”
Brodie smiled.
She added, “Could be a limited hangout.”
That was Intel jargon for revealing part of the truth to establish credibility, or to mask the larger truth. Ms. Taylor wasn’t in a trusting mood, and neither was he.
Taylor asked, “How does PFC Greer fit into this?”
“Maybe he doesn’t, beyond what he’s already told us. He was onnight duty more often than most because he asked to be, so he was the one who was most likely to encounter Roger Ames during the major’s late-night visits. And Ames only approached Greer when the private was alone, so that he would have a reason to not have a Ranger accompany him down into the Vault when he activated and released Bucky and… did whatever he did.”
Taylor thought on that. “Ames’s first visit was on April third. Something must have occurred before that date that got Ames interested in Bucky.”
Right. But there was no reported incident with Bucky until its subsequent malfunction on the training grounds the day it murdered Ames. If there had been, someone would have mentioned it.
They walked in silence toward the western end of Camp Hayden, their way illuminated by the occasional LED streetlamp. The camp was eerily silent, other than the distant hum of electrical generators and the crunching tires of the slow-moving MP vehicle that continued its night rounds along the sand-strewn roads.
Taylor whispered, “Stop.”
Brodie stopped walking. They were standing in a patch of darkness next to a storage shed, about twenty yards from the edge of the cul-de-sac of houses. A figure was walking down the front steps of the house next to theirs. It was Caroline Dixon. She’d changed into a long skirt, ankle boots, and a low-cut top that showed off a couple of major assets.
