President Todd assumed that the investigation would go on for months without coming to any real conclusion.

In a sense it didn’t matter. The gun tape wasn’t particularly revealing: a building targeted, the missile launch, then on to the next target before the missile hit. The images on the ground were much more devastating, in terms of public relations.

But they did mean blame couldn’t be shifted away from the Sabre project, if anyone was so inclined.

The President was not. She had already directed a statement to be issued with the bare facts—the attack had been misdirected and was under investigation. The U.S. deeply regretted the loss of life. The victims would be compensated in accordance with past precedent.

“What do we do when people ask how it happened?” asked General Yourish, returning to a question that had been nagging at them since the incident first occurred.

“The truth,” said Blitz. “It’s still being investigated. We don’t want to prejudice the investigation. And we don’t know.”

“I think Senator Stockard’s presence on the committee has helped defer some of the questions,” said General Branson. “I just hope it doesn’t backfire.”

“I talked to the senator personally,” said Ms. Todd. “I think he’ll do an excellent job.”

“For us,” added Blitz.

“For everyone.”

The President glanced at Breanna. She had a vaguely worried look on her face.

“I don’t expect Jeff to mince any words,” the President added. “I know that he’ll be a straight shooter. But really, that’s the best we can hope for. And we will fix the problem.”

“We will,” said Breanna.

“All right, very good,” she told them, rising. “We all have a lot to do. Keep me up to date on this.”

The deputy chief of staff was waiting in the hall with her news briefing as she went out.

“How are the reports?” she asked.

“You want the good ones or the bad ones?”

“Good ones first.”

“There’s a headline from the New York Post: American killer drone wipes out village.”

“That’s a good one?”

“Wait to you see what al Jazeera has.”

“I think I’ll save that for after lunch,” said Todd, stepping into the elevator.

10

Sicily

To know why something had failed, one first had to know exactly what had happened.

This was not necessarily easy. In the case of the Sabre UAV, for example, hundreds of subsystems contributed to the aircraft’s flight behavior, and while the main focus was on the flight computers and AI sections, the systems that it interacted with had to be investigated on their own. It was a laborious and time-consuming project.

Despite a well-earned reputation for being exacting to the point of overbearing, Ray Rubeo no longer had the patience to oversee the myriad mundane details that needed to be attended to as the investigation proceeded. Instead, he turned to Robert Marcum, the vice president of his main American company, Applied Intelligence, tapping him to head the investigation. Marcum was among the most anal retentive people he employed.

Which was saying quite a lot.

Traveling from Paris, where he had been overseeing another project, Marcum arrived in Sicily shortly after Rubeo, but already had an impressive investigative team in place. They were given a small facility at the air base, and rented much larger quarters about five miles away. These quarters consisted of the top three floors of an eight-story building perched above a series of hills that cascaded down toward the seacoast some ten miles away.

The executive suite on the eastern side of the top floor had a gorgeous view, and even Rubeo had a difficult time concentrating on the video projection as Marcum briefed him on what was known so far about the accident.

“Pilot action from the Tigershark can now be one hundred percent ruled out,” said Marcum. He had worked as an engineer for many years before going into administration. “The flight records have been carefully reviewed. He gave no command that altered their flight.”

“You’ve looked at the logs yourself?” asked Rubeo. The two men were alone in the large, sparsely furnished room. Levon Jons had gone into town to arrange for more transportation and backup, in case they went to Africa.

“Of course,” said Marcum. “The pilot was Captain Mako. He’s been flying for Special Projects for a few months. I don’t know too much about him personally. I’m told he’s an excellent pilot. Young.”

“Very young, yes,” said Rubeo.

“Additionally, we are fifty-eight percent through with our checks on the Tigershark. It would appear unlikely that it was involved in any way.”

“I wonder if it’s a coincidence that the fighters were scrambled,” said Rubeo.

“In what way?”

Rubeo folded his arms. The office chairs that had come with the rooms were deep leather contraptions that would be very easy to fall asleep in. This would have to be fixed.

“I understand that the government hasn’t flown against allied coalition planes until this mission,” said Rubeo.

Marcum shook his head. “An exaggeration. This is what I mean when I say there has been much misinformation about the entire intervention. I don’t blame anyone, not even the media. It’s a very difficult situation, and NATO command has been less than forthcoming with them. We have already identified half a dozen flights by the government in the past five days. This was the largest, and the only time they engaged a plane. My bet is they won’t be doing that again anytime soon.”

“Nonetheless, it is an interesting coincidence,” said Rubeo. “If it were significant, how so?”

Marcum frowned. Engineers didn’t believe in coincidences. But then again neither did Rubeo.

“The pilot would not be paying attention to the Sabres, not fully,” said Marcum. “He admits this.”

“Yes.”

“But the government would have to know about the attack in advance. A possibility not yet ruled out, but a far-fetched one.”

Rubeo wasn’t so sure. His attention drifted as Marcum continued, reviewing the preliminary data from the Sabres.

“All of the system profiles are absolutely within spec,” said Marcum. “There are no anomalies. Sabre Four believes it struck the coordinates it was told to strike.”

“But it didn’t.”

“No. Exactly.”

“The visual ID package should have checked off,” said Rubeo, referring to a section of the system that compared the preflight target data with information gathered by the aircraft before it fired. “It should have seen that it wasn’t hitting the proper target.”

“One of our problems. Or mysteries, I should say.”

Marcum went through a few slides, showing the designated target and then the village that had been hit. The devastation was fairly awful, as would be expected.

“Were the coordinates entered incorrectly?” asked Rubeo.

“If they were incorrect, how are they right now?”

“Hmmmph.”

“We are checking, of course, for viruses and the like. But at this point we have nothing firm.”

“Understood.”

Marcum turned to administrative matters, briefing Rubeo on the different team members he wanted and the procedures he would follow as he proceeded. NATO and the Air Force were conducting their own investigations; there was also to be a UN probe. Marcum had assigned liaisons to all, but expected little in the way of real cooperation. These were more like spies to tell him what the others were thinking.

Rubeo listened as attentively as he could, but his mind was racing miles away. He was thinking of what the attack would have looked like from the ground.

There would have been no warning until the first missile was nearly at the ground. A person nearby would hear a high whistle—Rubeo had heard it himself on the test range—and then what would seem like a rush of air.