and Evans watched.
She leaned in again. “What are you looking for?”
“Commercial marine traffic is carefully tracked. Retailers and other clients need to gauge arrival times.”
Evan pushed in as well. “Ah, cool, what do you use?”
“Marinetraffic. com.”
Odin entered the name Ebba Maersk in the ship name box, then clicked SEARCH. Moments later a Google map appeared showing a line of waypoints leading away from Hong Kong and forging out into the center of the South China Sea.
Odin stared at the screen without moving for several moments.
McKinney watched him. “What’s wrong?”
“The route.” He stood up, looking straight into McKinney’s eyes.
She stared back. “You think all those containers are carrying ship-cutting drones.”
“Eighty racks per container. Six thousand two hundred containers. What is that?”
Evans answered with a nervous laugh. “That’s nearly half a million drones, Odin.”
“Okay, so, what if they don’t all contain drones? What if some contain fuel or pheromone chemicals, weapons-whatever; that could still leave a hundred thousand or more ship-cutters.”
“But what would they be cutting? The Ebba Maersk?”
Odin shook his head. “It didn’t make sense until I saw this.” He pointed at the map. “Heading through the South China Sea.” Odin opened another browser window and Googled the words U.S. aircraft carriers South China Sea.
Wun threw up his hands. “Why you search on my computer, asshole?”
Moments later the search results came up and Odin clicked on the first link from a recent article on the BBC News website. It was headlined, U.S. AND VIETNAM STAGE JOINT NAVAL EXERCISES.
Odin stood up. “USS George Washington carrier strike group out of Yokosuka. They’ve been operating here for a while. Joint naval exercises with Vietnam and the Philippines just south of the Paracel Islands. It’s a geopolitical chess game with the Chinese.”
“But why would China attack a U.S. carrier? It would start a war.”
Wun looked up at her, both shocked and offended.
Odin paused, grabbed the thick stack of printouts from the printer, and then nodded to Wun. “Thanks a lot, Wun. We’ll find our own way back to the dock. Give my best to your dad, okay?” He pulled McKinney away and started heading to the exit.
Evans was close behind. “Hey, later, Wun. Good luck with the smuggling.”
Wun looked after them suspiciously.
Odin spoke softly as they headed down a box-lined hallway. “I’m certain the Chinese wouldn’t attack a U.S. carrier group-but with drones no one would be able to tell who attacked it. Let’s face it: We don’t know either.”
“But why would someone want to precipitate a crisis?”
“You remember the Cold War? Lots of unquestioned defense spending. Don’t underestimate the tensions around global shipping lanes and energy, Professor. China is facing what they call the ‘Malacca Dilemma.’ Over three-quarters of their oil imports go through the Straits of Malacca-then up through the South China Sea. That gateway is currently dominated by U.S. naval power in the form of carrier strike groups. Which means we theoretically have a knife against their jugular-just like they do against ours. But if someone disrupts that balance…”
“You’re not suggesting there’d be war?”
“No. There’d be no definite proof who the enemy is. But it might rewrite the rule book on war. What if those thousands of containers were all weaver drone nests, Professor? Do you remember the openings on the containers we saw in Gaddani? What if that container ship is one big interconnected colony, six thousand nests strong-marked with their pheromonal scent?”
“The dock reeked of it.”
“Some were probably leaking.”
McKinney imagined the same type of drone they had seen in Gaddani-a flying ship-cutter, swarming by the thousands with the same aggressiveness they’d experienced in Colorado. “They would destroy anything that got near their colony ship-no extra programming necessary.”
Evans eased up alongside. “Then why didn’t they go ape on the workers here? Or attack the ship’s crew?”
“Maybe they’re dormant.”
Odin reacted to the suggestion. “They could activate when they crossed a GPS waypoint. Or via radio signal.” He pointed at the map printout. “How close would something have to get to the ship to get attacked?”
McKinney shrugged. “It depends on the tolerance variable set in the model. The designer could make it anything. A hundred feet or a hundred miles.”
Odin examined the printout of the container ship’s course through the South China Sea. “Once it’s out in open water…” He traced the path of the ship toward the Paracel Islands. “The picket ships and combat air patrol for a carrier group scout out to two hundred miles. But a commercial container ship like the Ebba Maersk won’t raise any alarms. That means it could get in close, and the swarm would overwhelm the George Washington ’s defenses. If it manages to sink that carrier, there’d be no way to positively attribute the attack to anyone. America couldn’t strike back, and the rest of our carriers would be just as vulnerable. Our whole naval doctrine would be obsolete. An international arms race for swarming drones would follow.”
McKinney grimaced. “Making war the province of autonomous machines.”
He looked up. “We need to stop that ship.”
Evans shrugged. “Easy. Call the navy. One antiship missile and BOOM-problem solved.”
“We’re going to need more evidence to convince someone to blow up a Danish-flagged ship, Mort. There are people on it.”
“If this drone colony wakes up, then the crew’s dead anyway-”
McKinney held a hand up to interrupt Evans but looked at Odin. “Evans is right about one thing: Warn the navy, tell them what we’ve discovered. Or get in touch with the Ebba Maersk by radio and have them turn around.”
Odin shook his head. “My crypto codes are blown. I can’t even get in contact with my own command. And I’d just sound like a lunatic to the Maersk people.”
“What about the Chinese?”
“I don’t think they’ll be too eager to sink the largest container ship in the world without provocation. If they’re not behind this, we’ll wind up getting shot as spies, and if they are, then we’ll wind up getting shot as spies.”
“Can you call someone you know-someone high up in the Pentagon?”
Odin was still shaking his head. “That’s not how things work. You saw that vocaloid, and besides almost no one knows who we are; that’s the whole point of compartmentalizing The Activity. We function because very few people in Washington know us. The colonel was my contact, and they can apparently intercept my communications with him.”
The three of them pushed through the shipping office door and out into the bustling container yard, only to be confronted by a score of grim-faced Chinese men in fairly good suits arrayed in a semicircle at a distance of thirty feet. They wore sunglasses and radio earphones. Several were holding MP5 submachine guns, raised skyward. Behind them, beyond the door they had just exited, McKinney could see several more men appearing in the reception area of the office.
They were surrounded.
Evans got deathly pale and unusually quiet.
One of the Asian men motioned for them to put their hands in the air. “If you please, Mr. Odin.”
McKinney turned to Odin. He nodded encouragingly but without much conviction. She felt her heart sink. She wasn’t used to seeing him caught off guard.
Several men rushed over to them, patting them down as a white, unmarked panel van rolled up nearby. Even more armed men in suits got out. One of the men grabbed the paper printouts of the Ebba Maersk from Odin. Another grabbed the backpack from McKinney.
