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Contreras said, “Of course it’s not. The program needs humans for logistics and some operational purposes. I started out running surveillance for the people at the op center, but after a few days, Cyrus contacted me and ordered me to perform a mission directly for it in Tulum. A pilot and a loadmaster showed up with pallets of gear, we did the job, or tried to anyway, and then I was sent here.”
“All by a computer.”
Contreras nodded vehemently now. “It’s running the whole thing, I know it is. I was just an interface to the meatspace.”
Zoya said, “The what?”
“Meatspace. The real world. Everything that doesn’t happen inside a computer. Except now Cyrus commands autonomous weapons, so it is able to interface directly with the meatspace, as well.” He thought a moment. “Madre de dios. Someone gave the AI millions, tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on its mission, so it will always be able to find humans to do what it needs.”
Pace, Zoya, and Court left the prisoner in the barn again, and walked back to the house in the darkness. The rain had stopped, but water dripped from the foliage all around.
Back in the dining room, Court spoke first. “Even if much of the work is being done by computers, it doesn’t change the fact that there is a human, or humans, at the controls. That’s who we have to go after.”
“Exactly,” Pace replied, standing over his laptop and looking at something on the screen. “If these bots are being shipped to Hinton, then Hinton definitely knows something. Nothing else makes any sense.” Having said that, he added, “We just checked, the tracker is still at the terminal.”
To Pace, Zoya said, “Go talk to Hightower again. Lean on him.”
Pace just looked at her. “That’s it.”
“What’s what?” Court asked, confused.
“That’s why Cyrus didn’t just report me to the cops. Because I talked to Hightower. Cyrus didn’t know what I’d learned from Zack about the workings of Hinton’s organization, so getting me arrested wasn’t enough. I had to die.”
Slowly, Court said, “You…you want us to talk to Hightower?”
Turning to Court, he said, “We have a local national watching the dormitory where all the Hinton Labs people live. They call it La Finca, the coffee plantation. If Zack leaves La Finca tonight to go out for dinner, like he’s done the last two nights, you talk to him then. If he doesn’t leave tonight, he’ll go for a run in the morning, and you can link up.”
Court and Zoya exchanged glances. “What do we tell him?” she asked.
“Either Hinton’s about to be slaughtered by a robot army, or else he’s about to build himself a robot army. Either way, Zack needs to work with us to stop anything else bad from happening.”
Court said, “You remember Zack, Jim. He’s a team player, and if he’s playing for the other team, it’s going to be hard to convince him to switch sides.”
Pace sighed. “I talked to him the other night, and I got the same feeling. It’s all we’ve got, though. I’m about to have a teleconference with Watkins and Hernandez. I’m going to try to get a raid approved for the lab and the residence. If authorization comes down, we’re going to need a lot more information on those facilities.”
Court and Zoya exchanged a look, and Zoya spoke first. “We’ll do it.”
FIFTY-SIX
On the top floor of Building Five at the Singapore Science Park, the Norwegian director of Operations Center Gama leaned back in his chair and looked at his watch. It was just past six a.m., and it was time to contact Cyrus.
The eighteen people here in the auditorium had completed their sterilization of the entire OC. Cases upon cases of computer equipment, wall monitors, office supplies, commo gear, and the like had been stacked by the door to the lobby, ready to be taken to the elevator bank when the trucks arrived.
The director would miss this job; it had been an incredible challenge, and he and his staff had performed well, for the most part, although the disappearance of the communications dispatcher from Germany weighed heavily on his mind.
Still…seventeen successful missions with only two failures, both of which the director had personally considered irrelevant to whatever the overarching mission was, seemed like an incredible success rate, especially when considering the scope of the operation.
An assassination in Amsterdam earlier this morning of target Gama 15 had marked the end, because Cyrus had informed the director that Gama 18 and 19, Zakharova and Gentry, had been removed from the target list.
While the men and women behind him sipped champagne, a special touch his American second-in-command had ordered in, he looked down to the one laptop remaining out and on a desk in the room, and he began typing in a message window.
Gama director for Cyrus.
Cyrus.
The facility is sterilized. All cases waiting in the lobby for retrieval.
Excellent. The truck is waiting a kilometer away. It will arrive within minutes. Your security presence will depart at this time, but I ask you and your entire staff to wait until all the equipment is loaded. A bus will then arrive to return you all to an airport hotel, and tickets will be given to each staff member for their journey home.
