Chapter 25:  Off Course (of Course)

“Take a walk on deck?” Frank said to his father when he approached him in the pub.

“And leave a full pint on the bar?” his father asked.

Frank jerked his head towards the door and said nothing in reply.

“Suit yourself, but the next round’s on you,” his father said.

“Let’s head for the stern,” Frank said, when they were in the corridor.

“You bet,” Frank Sr. said, “Start at the bow and we’ll be blown there in no time anyway.”

But Frank had no response before they arrived on the afterdeck, sheltered from the worst of the wind by the higher decks looming above them.

“So, what gives?” Frank Sr. said. “Who do you think is going to be eavesdropping on us?”

“Who do you think?” Frank said.

“Still thinking we’ve got a stowaway called Turing?”

“No longer thinking,” Frank said. “I’m convinced. I met with General Wood today and asked him whether there was anything Dunleavy and Wu had in common, and just as I expected, there was.”

“Specifically?”

“Dunleavy was the chief CIA supervisor on the cruise, and Wu was the top Chinese Ministry of Security minder. On a hunch, I also asked him whether the two professors had been on the invite list – and the answer was yes. Both turned the invitation down.”

“Interesting,” Frank Sr. said. “Yes, that does sound like more than a coincidence, doesn’t it?”

“And that’s not all,” Frank said. “I think Turing’s taken control of the ship.”

“Whoa, isn’t that going a bit, how should I say, overboard? Everything looks fine to me.”

“Does it? Have you noticed things have been getting a little lively in the ship’s motion?”

“Well, now you mention it, I have noticed a bit of wave action. But what does that have to do with Turing?”

“I stopped by the bridge this morning to ask where we were in relation to the hurricane the captain’s been updating us on in his daily updates. The officer of the deck was unconcerned, but an old sailor at the helmsman was just the opposite. He wasn’t very talkative, but he indicated the conditions were a lot worse, in his experience, than they should be this far from the storm – assuming we actually are as far from the storm as the officer said we were. That got me wondering whether perhaps the ship isn’t on the course the captain thinks it is.”

“That doesn’t sound like a lot to go on,” Frank Sr. said “And it certainly doesn’t automatically suggest that Turing is on board. It could be someone hacking the ship from the other side of the world. And anyway, Turing’s mission is to stop global warming. Why should it take an interest in a boatload of AI scientists talking about cyber arms control?”

Frank frowned. “Fair question, but hold on to it for now, because there’s more. If Turing, or anyone else, wanted to change the Argosy’s course it would need to do it without the crew noticing. That wouldn’t be too hard – the compass display is electronic, not magnetic, and it would be easy to fake GPS coordinates and any other data that displays on the bridge. If the change was limited to, say, ten or fifteen degrees from the course the captain ordered it wouldn’t be obvious. But after several days the ship would be hundreds of miles from where it was supposed to be. So, I went back to the bridge to find out.”

“How?” Frank’s father asked.

“It occurred to me,” Frank continued, “that an attacker wouldn’t have seen a reason to hack into every mobile device on the ship, because they’re not satellite phones – after we were a few miles off shore, nobody could make a call or log directly onto the Internet, so why bother?

“But there is a GPS device built into every phone, and that works wherever you are, because it’s satellite based. I guessed the compass app on my phone would rely on the GPS functionality, and guess what?”

“You’re going to tell me your app and the ship’s compass showed different readings, aren’t you?”

“Exactly. By twelve degrees, to be exact.”

“And did you share that with the crew?”

“No – not yet. Remember how we were told this ship is wired out the wazoo with sensors, cameras and microphones? I have to believe that if Turing is aboard, it’s paying attention to everything said on the bridge. For that matter, I bet it’s monitoring everything that’s picked up by a microphone or camera anywhere on the ship.”

“So, let’s say you’re right,” Frank Sr. said. “What next?”

“Sharing my concerns with General Wood, I think. But other than my suspicions, I don’t have anything to show him besides the reading on a cell phone app. Which he might decide was erroneous. And I doubt I’ll be able to drag him out on deck in the middle of a gale to have my next conversation with him, either.”

“Well,” Frank Sr. said, “you can always hand him a note instead. But let’s get back to Turing. If it is aboard, what’s its objective?”

“The most benign possibility would be to eavesdrop on those on board. But it could have done that without attacking the security guys. And why change the Argosy’s course?”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” his father said. “Why change course?”

“To steer the Argosy into the hurricane the captain has mentioned a couple of times on his daily cruise updates. And then use the storm to sink the ship with all aboard.”

“Whoa!” Frank Sr. said. “Why? What’s the end game? Sure, there’s a hurricane out there, but ships survive hurricane’s all the time. If this storm’s just a category one, or maybe even a category two, a ship this big should have a good chance of surviving. And don’t forget all those life boats. Once you’re inside one, you’d be pretty safe – they’re like sealed-up bottles. I guess you could get banged up pretty bad, but at the end of the day someone would be able to pick you up.”

“The lifeboats are an interesting part of the equation,” Frank agreed. “After I visited the bridge the second time I played hooky for the rest of the day and went to the ship’s library instead – boy do I miss the Internet! Anyway, I found a book on ship safety and it turns out that lifeboat davits are designed to allow launching using gravity alone. That makes sense, since a sinking ship might lose electrical power.”

“So, what’s the point of heading towards a hurricane then?” his father asked.

“My guess,” Frank said, “is Turing would decide that by the time – if ever – we figured out what was going on, we’d want to stick with the ship. Then, when we got close enough to the eye of the hurricane and the waves got high enough, it would open up the valves between the water ballast tanks on each side of the ship and turn the ship broadside to the waves. In no time, the ship would start to heel and the shifting ballast would accelerate that until over the ship would go. That would leave half the lifeboats under the water and the other half impossible to launch from that angle. I don’t expect it would take long for the ship to sink after that.”

Frank’s father paused. “Well, isn’t that a pretty picture,” he said finally. “But you still haven’t told me why Turing should be on board at all.”

“Right.” Frank said. “You’ll remember the way we trapped Turing the first time was by convincing it that a new, more powerful version of had been created that would be instructed to hunt down and destroy Turing. If it thought that could happen before, why wouldn’t it think so now? And he best way to avoid that happening would be to wipe out most of the people capable of creating one before it got back to its real mission.”

“Could be,” Frank Sr. said. “Maybe you’ll get a chance to ask it. But I’d be more interested in how to kill it. When are you going to contact Wood? Or maybe the captain might make more sense?”

“I considered that and decided no. How does a computer nerd who’s never been in a vessel bigger than a rowboat walk up to a captain on his own bridge and tell him he’s maybe hundreds of miles off course?”

“Point taken. He might not be inclined to take you seriously.”

“Anyway,” Frank said, I guess there really isn’t any question about it. It’s got to be Wood. I’ll take your suggestion and write this up so I can hand it to him. Still, Turing will be bound to get wise sooner or later. I have to believe it’s been monitoring you and me since the moment we came on board. And it would certainly be paying attention to General Wood as well. I think the most we can do going forward is try and keep it in the dark about what we’re thinking and planning.”

“I hope we can do better than that.” his father said.

“How so?” Frank said.

“By avoiding ending up dead sooner rather than later.”

*  *  *

But that ship, as the saying goes, had already sailed. Frank’s visit to Wood’s office, and the questions he had asked, were enough to indicate he had suspicions. Given his past actions, Turing could not afford to allow Frank to pursue those suspicions further. It began compiling a list of weapons and situations of opportunity that might be utilized to terminate its nemesis. Despite the limited means at its disposal, that list continued to grow.

Chapter 26

Tally Ho

 

Frank shifted from one foot to the other in General Wood’s small office. There was no room for a guest chair, and the general didn’t look like he’d invite Frank to take a seat if there had been one.

Wood was frowning heavily as he labored his way though the several pages of text Frank had scrawled on the sheets of stationary he’d found in a drawer in his cabin; Frank’s handwriting was every bit as bad as Frank’s handwriting would be expected to be.

At last, the general looked up from the sheets of paper. He gave a hard stare at Frank and then pushed back in his chair, still staring. Frank could imagine at least some of what he must be thinking; the last thing Frank had written was to ask the general not to respond in his office. Had Frank convinced him?

At last, Wood stood up. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” he said to his assistant as Frank followed him out into the corridor, and from there out into the wind on deck. They traveled halfway down the ship before they found a set of stairs to shelter behind.

“Am I right in understanding the only actual proof you have for your theory is the fact your cellphone app shows a different course from the ship’s electronic compass?”

“That, and the two unexplained accidents to the intelligence agents on board, as well as the earlier, peculiar deaths of the two scientists you confirmed yesterday had declined invitations to participate. One was killed in a freak hospital accident and the other supposedly committed suicide, but none of his friends believed it. And then, of course, we don’t seem to be doing very well avoiding bad weather.”

The general was frowning at Frank again. The idea that a rogue intelligence had taken control of the ship while all seemed to be normal sounded outlandish. But, on the other hand, the Turing program had proven itself capable of sinking a ship in the past.

“Okay. Let’s say you might be right. Do you have a way to prove it? Or a way to take back control of the ship if you are?”

“Yes, on the first one. The only logical explanation for the cellphone app being wrong would be that it was defective. But you wouldn’t expect several different apps to all be off base. We could collect several phones, each with a different compass app, and then go up to the bridge to see whether they all show a different course. For good measure, we could ask the captain to shift course and see whether they all change in unison and stay that way, and then whether the ship’s compass slowly shifts back. But that would surely tip Turing off that we know there’s something wrong with the ship’s navigation.”

“Forget the second test,” Wood said. “All either experiment would tell you was that there’s something wrong with the ship’s compass. Not why. Do you have anything better to offer?”

“Short of Turing killing me next? Unfortunately, nothing else comes to mind.”

“Okay, then how about the second question? If your rogue program is controlling the ship, how do we kill it or subvert it?”

“I’m afraid I don’t have any ideas on that yet, either. I’ve only had suspicions for a day now and know almost nothing about the ship’s systems. I’d suggest we pull together the people who know the ship best and who know the most about AI and then put our heads together.”

Wood braced himself as the ship took a bigger wave than usual.

“Look,” he said at last. “I’m not saying you might not be right. Let me think this over and speak with the captain. I’ll get back to you.”

*  *  *

Back at Cruise Control, Richard Spaziani turned from his computer to the young man standing nervously at his door. “Who said what?”

“Somebody at the Air Force Weather Reconnaissance Squadron called to say one of their hurricane hunter planes spotted the Argosy less than three hundred fifty miles from the eye of hurricane Eloise, and headed right into it.”

“How can that be? Aren’t they supposed to be three times that far from the storm and heading away from it?”

“That’s right, Mr. Spaziani. I checked before I came your way, and the captain reported in this morning that he was on course, with fair seas and clear skies.”

“Then the Air Force must be wrong.”

“I know it sounds that way, sir, but according to the flight report, they raised the Argosy on VHF, and the captain confirmed. He said they were having trouble with their navigation and AIS systems. And that they would be changing course soon.”

“That’s crazy. Get SSMO to call the Argosy for an explanation, and then tell me right away what’s going on.”

Spaziani tried to focus on what he’d been doing before, but had little success. As Fleet Director, he was responsible for the health and safety of everyone on every ship managed by his company. In the case of the Argosy, that meant the top computer scientists from multiple countries. And the ship they were on was heading into a hurricane? What could be worse?

There was another knock at the door.

“What did Captain Antonio say?” Spaziani asked.

“He didn’t respond, sir.”

“You mean he wouldn’t respond?” Spaziani asked.

“No sir. They couldn’t get anyone on the ship to respond at all.”

The fleet Director stared at the young employee, who by now was visibly wilting under his gaze. “Will there be anything else, sir?” the unhappy underling said.

“No, that’s all.”

Spaziani gazed at his computer screen through unseeing eyes. He’d answered his own question. There was something worse than learning one of his ships was heading into a hurricane, and that was realizing he’d need to pick up the phone to call the White House and tell them he’d lost control of their ship.

*  *  *

President Yazzi looked around the hurriedly gathered group of advisors. “Alright,” he said. “What is it that we do and don’t know?” he said.

“On the what we know side of the ledger,” Carson Bekin said, “the Argosy was last seen approximately three hundred fifty miles from the center of hurricane Eloise, heading straight towards it. Assuming the ship holds that course, we won’t be able to track it by satellite unless there’s an unexpected break in the cloud cover. And we won’t be able to track it by its AIS signal, because someone on the ship turned it off after the call from the Air Force crew member. We will be able to look for it by radar if we put a ship or plane within radar range.

“What we don’t know is why the ship is behaving as it is. All prior communications between the crew and Imperial Seaquest, the cruise company, seemed normal, although we now know the positions they were reporting must have been false. We also don’t whether they were knowingly false, or whether the systems on the ship had been tampered with, misleading the crew. And, under any scenario, we have nothing to suggest who is behind whatever is happening.”

“What do you make of the last communication? The ship confirmed its position and heading at that time.”

“Hard to say, sir. The exchange wasn’t recorded, so there’s no way to tell whether the voice was that of a crew member or of someone who had taken control of the bridge.”

“What else do we have to go on?” Yazzi asked.

“I hate to say it, sir, but really nothing at all. We can’t know for sure whether the ship is even still afloat. The Argosy was unarmed, so it could have been stormed during the night by an attack party a couple of days ago while the weather was still reasonably good. We don’t think that’s the case, because the cruise company says the telephone calls seemed perfectly normal – no tension in the voices, everything just as they’d expect. On the other hand, for all we know, someone could have scuttled or torpedoed the ship after it was spotted by air. They could have done that days ago, though, without bothering to redirect the ship towards a hurricane. So far, the only hypothesis is that a hijacker may be planning to demand a ransom to turn around and save the ship when it gets closer to the hurricane.”

“What do you suggest we do?”

“I’d like to defer to Commander Williams, Sir,” Bekin said, nodding to someone in uniform farther down the table. “He leads a Seal assault squadron based on the East Coast.”

“Thank you,” Williams said. “Mr. President, our major challenge is lack of knowledge about the situation on board the Argosy. At one extreme, it could be that a cyber attacker is intercepting all communications and steering the ship, in which case our strategy would be more technical than combative. But on the other, it could be that a heavily armed assault team boarded the ship at night on the high seas. If it’s the latter, any effort to regain control could result in inadvertent passenger casualties, or even to the deliberate slaughter of innocent individuals while our own attack team storms the ship.

“For this reason, we recommend that our first goal should be to establish communication with someone on the Argosy who we can be sure is trustworthy and not speaking with a gun to their head or deliberately giving us false information.”

“And how would you go about that?” Yazzi said.

“The only way we can accomplish that with certainty, sir, would be to place someone on board with a satellite telephone. If the Argosy is under cyberattack, that will provide an immediate means to work towards regaining control. And if the Argosy is under the control of an armed force, we’ll find that out and can formulate an appropriate response on site.”

“And how would you accomplish that? The weather must be deteriorating by the hour.”

“We can offer two options, sir. The first would be to intercept the Argosy with one of our submarines. The second would be to scramble one of our experimental littoral combat ships. They have a modified catamaran design and two helipads. They’re very fast – up to fifty-five knots, and stable, too, even in rough seas. We built two of them more than ten years ago as testbeds for developing a next generation vessel for coastal combat. As luck would have it, one of them – the Sea Fighter – is at the Kingsbay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia. It could reach the Argosy faster, carries a more varied armament, can carry a larger assault team than a submarine, and carries helicopters, so this would be our recommended choice.

“What would the operational plan be?” Yazzi asked.

“Under either option, we’d need to send another hurricane hunter out to locate and track the Argosy until the rescue vessel picks it up on its own radar. When it comes within visual distance of the Argosy, we would seek to make radio contact. If contact is refused, our vessel will cross the bows of the Argosy, hoping to cause it to change course away from the hurricane.

“If it develops that the Argosy is under the control of armed attackers who decline contact and win the chicken fight, we would not suggest an immediate assault. Not only would our people be sitting ducks as they approached the Argosy, but the enemy might begin killing passengers. So, any direct assault would better be attempted in the middle of the night. But there would still be risk if the hijacker was mounting a careful watch.

“If we observe no evidence that the Argosy is under the control of an armed force, we believe the best next step would be to get a seal team with a satellite telephone on to the ship. We could then immediately begin assessing the situation.”

“How will you accomplish that? Won’t the weather be an issue?”

“Seal team members are used to bad weather, sir. The Sea Fighter will carry the type of lifeboat the Coast Guard launches from shore to rescue survivors of shipwrecks in storms. From there, the team will be able to fire grapnels on deck and then scale the side of the Argosy using ropes.”

“Wouldn’t a helicopter be safer?” Yazzi asked.

“We’re not optimistic, sir, given projected weather conditions. Normally, we’d never try to land someone on a ship in winds over forty-five knots, and even then, that would be at the pilot’s discretion.”

The president did not look pleased. Finally, he said, “And how do you rate the odds of success?”

“It’s impossible to tell until we can assess the nature and potential firepower of the opponent, sir. But the more weather conditions deteriorate, so do the odds.”

“Thank you, Commander,” Yazzi said. “In that case you’d better hurry up and get that Sea Fighter to sea.”

Author’s Notes:  Not too much to note this week, although as you can see we’re now getting to the point where there’s the opportunity for all sorts of Tom Clancy-esque  actions and touches to bubble up into the narrative: daring naval action; cutting edge technology and warships; and real danger. Also, we’ll need a new character to take the scene – the daring young Navy Seal who will attempt to board the Argosy. What will he be like? And what will Turing come up with as a way to stop him? Meanwhile, there’s the looming menace of the monster storm, lurking over the horizon but swirling its malignancy towards our hero on the wind.

And in case you’re wondering: Commander Williams is a placeholder name. I’ll come up with something clever later on.

Next Week: Convincing Captain Antonio his ship is no longer his own. Continue reading here

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