Nighthawk

5

Hiram Yaeger walked through the air-conditioned computer bay on the eleventh floor of the NUMA building before heading for home. He made the same checks every night and thought of himself as a ship’s captain inspecting his vessel, but it was really just a habit born from the early days of computing when things were not as reliable.

Back when he’d first started, Yaeger had to check and reset huge reel-to-reel tapes and inspect processing connections by hand. When they first looked for bugs, it meant actual insects that had a habit of seeking out warm, dark places, getting themselves zapped on fragile micro electric circuitry and burning out what passed for microchips in the process.

Years later, it was all about mainframe processing loads and hardwired connections. Now the computers did it all themselves, speaking to each other through Wi-Fi, checking and rechecking their own performance against preset parameters. All Yaeger really had to do was to make sure no one had unplugged the system from the electrical outlet.

He checked anyway.

Satisfied that everything was in order he made his way toward the outer office. “Good night, Max,” he said, speaking to the computer.

“Night and day are the same thing to me,” the computer replied. “Unlike you, I work twenty-four hours a day.”

Hiram had designed Max and the rest of the computers in NUMA’s state-of-the-art processing center. Years before Siri had begun talking, Yaeger had given Max voice processing and interactive capabilities. Why he’d ever added a sense of humor, he didn’t know.

“No one likes a computer with a smart mouth,” Hiram said, pulling a light jacket over his shoulders and adjusting his wire-framed glasses.

“I don’t have a mouth,” Max pointed out. “But your point is well taken. FYI: You have a visitor in the outer office. My sensors indicate Priya Kashmir has just used her badge to enter the room.”

“Thanks, Max. See you tomorrow.”

Hiram continued toward the outer office, grinning that he’d stumped Max by saying good-bye in a way Max could not correct or elaborate on. A small victory for the human race.

He stepped through the door and spotted a figure in a wheelchair waiting for him.

Priya Kashmir was Yaeger’s new assistant. Born in southern India, raised in London, and schooled at MIT — where she’d graduated at the top of her class — Priya had been set to join one of NUMA’s field teams when a three-car pileup left her paralyzed from the waist down.

NUMA had honored her contract despite her injuries, paid for her medical treatment and given her a pick of assignments including working in the field if she wanted, insisting they’d find a way to make it work.

By then, she’d already decided on a different path, asking if NUMA could use her skills in the computing department.

“Hello,” she said cheerfully. “How are you this evening, Mr. Yaeger?”

Her accent was a mix of British and Indian, with the slightest hint of a Boston Yankee thrown in for good measure.

“Please stop calling me that,” Hiram said. “It makes me feel old.”

“Because your father was Mr. Yaeger?”

“My grandfather.”

She laughed, brushed a strand of mahogany hair from her face and handed him a note. “This just came in.”

Hiram took the note. It was written in flowing script that could have passed for calligraphy. “Your Post-its should be in an art museum.”

“I had a few minutes on my hands while I waited for the elevator,” she said.

Hiram read the note. The message was far simpler than the writing. It was from Kurt Austin.

“‘Need you to make Dumbo fly,’” Hiram read aloud. “‘Use those big ears and find me a splash-down site. And I need it quickly. Otherwise, you’re going to cost Rudi Gunn a bottle of Don Julio and box of hand-rolled Cuban cigars.’”

A puzzled look settled on Hiram’s face. “Curious.”

Priya had to agree. “I didn’t understand when Kurt rattled it off in the first place,” she admitted. “And I don’t honestly understand it now. But Kurt insisted you would know what he meant. I assume it’s some type of code.”

Hiram sighed, took off his jacket and draped it over the back of the chair. “Sort of. It’s Kurtspeak for: can you pull an all-nighter and find me a miracle?”

“Really? What’s the Dumbo reference? Isn’t that a flying elephant from the Disney cartoons?”

“Dynamic Underwater Monitoring Band,” Hiram said. “We added the O for fun. It’s a series of highly sensitive subsurface listening posts NUMA has set up throughout the Pacific. There are several hundred major stations and five thousand tethered buoys. They listen for seismic activity.”

“P-waves and S-waves,” Priya said.

Hiram nodded. “With DUMBO, we can detect a large earthquake and pinpoint its location far earlier than the existing tsunami monitoring network, but we’re also able to monitor the smallest tectonic movements. Deep earthquakes that wouldn’t wake a light sleeper if he was dozing next to the china cabinet. We learn a lot more about deep-earth geology that way. We can even predict when a big one is coming by the prevalence or absence of tiny tremors.”

Priya nodded, but she still looked confused. “What does that have to do with his mission and why does he want DUMBO to fly?”

“The flying part is just Kurt being Kurt,” Hiram explained. “He thinks he’s funny. I warn you: Do not laugh at his jokes. It’ll only encourage him and you’ll never hear the end of them. But the idea is top-notch as usual.”

From there, Hiram went on to explain about the missing Nighthawk and the rapid naval buildup to search for it. He tied the DUMBO project in as he finished. “Kurt wants us to listen to the tapes in case the seismic sensors picked up any sign of the crash. If they did, we can triangulate a location and save everyone a lot of time searching the South Pacific.”

Priya’s eyes seemed to catch the light as she smiled. “That’s brilliant,” she said. “If it works. Can seismic detectors really be that sensitive?”

Hiram hedged. “The network is far more sensitive than we thought it would be. We learned shortly after setting it up that other sounds from the ocean were being recorded. Subsurface mining off Taiwan, torpedo and artillery explosions at military test sites around the Pacific and even the last desperate groans of sinking ships. As those go down, they tend to break up, often accompanied by subtle explosions as the hull ruptures and trapped air is released. We were able to pinpoint the exact location of nine missing ships in the first six months of operations. But the Nighthawk is much smaller than your average seagoing vessel.”

“Better than nothing,” Priya said, grinning.

“Exactly,” he said. “It’s just unlikely to be easy, especially given this time frame.”

She eased her chair forward. “How can I help?”

“The first thing we have to do is download all the recorded data,” Hiram said. “Then we have to cross-reference it and begin the slow, painful process of weeding out the background noise, the magma and seismic activity that the sensors are designed to pick up and anything that doesn’t emanate from the search area. After that, we have to identify and remove shipping static, biological sources of interference like whale songs and schools of tuna, and at least a hundred other extraneous forms of underwater vibration.”

The lights in the office brightened and the coffeepot in the corner switched on automatically and started brewing.

“More precisely, he means I have to do all that,” Max announced over a speaker. “Looks like we’re all working through the night together.”

Priya laughed. “I swear, sometimes she misses you,” she said.

Hiram noticed a sense of glee in the computer voice that he’d have sworn he never programmed into it. “Eavesdropping again, Max. That’s another bad habit.”

“All in the name of efficiency,” Max replied. “Seismic data accessed, commencing download. Also, please advise Kurt that machine-rolled cigars are every bit the equal of — if not superior to — human, hand-rolled products.”

Priya laughed. “Have you been smoking again, Max? You know that’s a bad habit.”

“No,” Max said. “Just stating a verifiable factual principle.”

Hiram chuckled. “You’re an expert at most things, Max, but I’m going to leave cigars and liquor to Kurt.”

“Very well,” Max said. “Beginning audio analysis.”

Hiram walked over to the coffeepot and poured two cups. When Max finished the grunt work, he and Priya would have to make the final choices regarding what frequencies would be allowed to remain in the recording. Not much to do until then.

“Cream and sugar?” he said to Priya.

“Two cubes, please. And, thank you.”

Hiram dropped a sugar cube into the dark liquid. It made a tiny splash and almost no sound at all. The way he reckoned it, the Nighthawk parachuting into the ocean would do something similar, although it would be the equivalent of tossing a sugar cube into an Olympic swimming pool. He put their chances of hearing it, even with the network of sensors, at ten-to-one.

He dropped the second cube in, stirred the coffee and watched the small block of sugar dissolve and disappear. At least the Nighthawk couldn’t do that.