Brodie had a lot of questions about this case and about Camp Hayden, but none of them would be answered in this room. Big picture, it sounded like the Army was playing with some very dangerous new toys, and maybe they’d given their toys too much freedom, or too much intelligence, or maybe too much freedom andnot enoughintelligence, and one of the bots had turned on its master.
This line of thinking made Scott Brodie think of his sidearm and that they were flying commercial. “We will need to make arrangements to bring our service weapons, sir.”
Taylor looked at him. “Are you going to shoot the robots, Scott?”
He turned to her. “I’d prefer high explosives, Maggie, but I’ll settle for a sidearm. We are entering an isolated high-pressure environment full of paranoid military officials, a platoon of strung-out Army Rangers, and, potentially, a murderer who decided to switch one of their high-tech weapons from ‘stun’ to ‘kill.’?”
Dombroski said, “Beware your assumptions, Mr. Brodie. A lot of very intelligent people have spent a lot more time than you or I considering the advantages and dangers of autonomous warfare. Whatever went wrong there, I doubt it will be simple or straightforward. I assure you that the men and women of Camp Hayden have seen all the same science fiction movies you have and know the obvious risks of working with autonomous weapons.” He added, “All that said, I have already instructed the travel office to notify the TSA and the airline of your presence and that you will be traveling armed.”
Brodie looked at the general. “Thank you, sir.”
Dombroski stared back at him. “Your paranoia has saved your ass a few times, Scott, and many others’ as well. But a reactionary mind isa closed mind and will not serve you. And let me be straight with you here. This whole business scares the hell out of me. I don’t like it, and it makes me worry about the future of our military and the future of our world. But I’m a dinosaur. You don’t have enough gray hairs yet to think that way.”
“Understood, sir.”
Dombroski stood from his desk and the two agents followed suit. The general looked between them and said, “In a certain way, you hold the future of the next generation of warfare in your hands. How this case develops and concludes can have vast implications. So make sure the truth doesn’t get outrun by self-serving lies. Camp Hayden is a black hole. Your job is to peer through the darkness.”
They both replied, “Yes, sir.”
CHAPTER 3
BRODIE AND TAYLOR HEADED BACKto their office. For a moment, neither spoke, absorbing all that Dombroski had said and trying to think ahead to what they had just been assigned to deal with.
Brodie broke the silence. “If we hijack the Black Hawk we can keep flying until we hit Vegas. Maybe the Bellagio has a helipad.”
“I think you’ve done enough gambling.” She reminded him, “You owe me fifty dollars. Plus two lunches.”
“Care to make it double or nothing?”
“No. Unlike you, I quit while I’m ahead.”
They returned to their office, which was on the third floor. It was about half the size of General Dombroski’s and offered a good view of the parking lot. Brodie’s and Taylor’s desks faced each other in the middle of the room, and the perimeter was lined with an overstuffed bookshelf, three towers of gray filing cabinets, and a black gun safe in the corner to store their Army-issued SIG Sauer M18 pistols, plus boxes of extra ammo for days when the job got interesting. The gun safe also served as a table for Brodie’s fourteen-cup Mr. Coffee machine, and an electric kettle for Taylor’s yerba maté addiction.
On the wall above the gun safe was a large corkboard covered in takeout menus, a few police reports andWANTEDposters, and a map of the DC area speckled with multicolored pushpins. Whether tracking cases or ordering lunch, Scott Brodie liked to keep things analogue.
Brodie sat down at his desk and eyed the board. They had a heavy caseload, which was now someone else’s problem. In the last fewyears, CID had suffered a retention issue and was understaffed, and therefore capable agents such as Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor were overworked. Neither of them really minded, especially as their assignments had all been substantial and important cases ever since they got back from Berlin. They’d proven their worth—and then some—on that case, and the least the CID could do in return was throw them a steady stream of murderers, rapists, weapons smugglers, and drug traffickers to investigate. The U.S. Army had over a million uniformed personnel worldwide, which left plenty of opportunities for mischief. It spoke to the importance of what had happened at Camp Hayden that Brodie and Taylor’s caseload was being cleared out to focus on this single case.
Brodie noticed Taylor staring at him across the desk. She wore her trademark manic look. He asked, “What’s up?”
“What do you know about artificial intelligence?”
“As little as possible.” He added, “It’s an oxymoron.”
“It’s advancing quickly.”
“Hopefully not that quickly. I plan to be dead before things get too weird.”
“Scott. This is an important moment in a big case for us, before a million things get thrown at us. We need to think this through with clear heads.”
“We don’t know the case, Maggie. Our heads are empty, which is different than clear.”
“Wrong.”
Brodie looked at his partner, who was gazing intensely at him with her big brown eyes. He’d had his share of rotten partners in his career, and a couple of okay ones as well, but no one like Magnolia Annabelle Taylor. Born and raised in the Appalachian hills of eastern Tennessee in a profoundly screwed-up family, she’d clawed her way out of that world and into Georgetown University, where she excelled, and then on to a successful career as a Civil Affairs specialist in Afghanistan, where shewas wounded in combat and earned a Purple Heart and a Silver Star for her bravery. She was the definition of a self-made woman, born with brains and beauty but absolutely nothing else. She wasn’t always the easiest person to get along with, and her obsessive nature got on Brodie’s nerves on a regular basis. But he had to remind himself that she cared about her job in a way few others did, and she ultimately made him a better agent. And when she was in this state, he needed to play along.
“All right,” said Brodie. “Here’s how I see it. Either someone screwed up and it got a guy killed, or someone knew exactly what they were doing and it got a guy killed. Either negligence, or homicide by way of sabotage of this autonomous weapon. The latter would make a more interesting case, but the former is more likely. Stupidity and carelessness are in greater supply than malice in this world, which is the most optimistic thing you will ever hear me say.”
She shook her head. “There are other possibilities. Like you said, when something is lethal, the stakes are a lot higher for it to be smart. So the Army made these things smart.”
