Page 68 of Clive Cussler's Quantum Tempest
“We’re burning daylight, kids,” Juan whispered in his comms as he flipped over the guard he’d dropped with his tranq pistol.
No point in letting the man drown, Cabrillo thought. He had killed plenty of men in fair fights over the years, but never relished it—he cherished life. Letting this guard drown in a puddle of mud would be no less an act of needless killing.
“I’ve still got eyes on,” MacD said in his comms. His sniper rifle had shredded the front tire of the trailing SUV. “These boys back here will be on the road in six mikes, and they’re about two mikes behind you at full speed.”
“Copy that,” Juan said. “Keep us posted if anything changes.”
Eddie Seng broke out his trusty bolt cutters and broke the bolt seal. He and Cabrillo flung the doors open.
Dr.Littleton was first into the truck, respirator and gloves pulled on. He quickly unsealed the steel fentanyl tank and emptied the contents of his bag into it. The Gundogs brought up their respective rucksacks.
“Last lug nut affixed,” MacD reported over their comms. “You guys need to hoof it.”
After Littleton emptied the last bag of absorbant, he took a handheld electric drill with a paint-mixing paddle attachment previously wiped for DNA and fingerprints, submerged it into the tank, and pulled the trigger. The absorbant would do the job without his help, but he wanted to accelerate the process.
“You hear that, Doc?” Juan said.
“Just give me a second.” Littleton stirred the paddle as it spun around. The granules swirled and dissolved, thickening almost immediately. Within minutes the fatal liquid would be polymerized into an unyielding gel.
“Okay, second’s up. We go—now.”
Littleton detached the mixing wand and let it fall to the bottom of the tank rather than fish it out and risk splashing the poison on himself or, worse, one of the others. Leaving it behind didn’t matter. The Chinese would figure out soon enough their priceless shipment of fentanyl had been sabotaged.
Littleton scrambled out of the truck and the doors were slammed shut. Another fake set of barcodes was placed on the replacement bolt seal and the team melted back into the forest, heading for the AW. They made good time, their backs no longer burdened by the weight of the absorbant.
As the team plunged back into the tree line and headed for the tilt-rotor waiting for them, Eddie called out, “Hope that ketamine does the trick.”
“Might not matter,” Linda said. “We were in and out of there before they knew what hit them.”
Seng was referring to the tranq gun pellets, which were a brand-new combination of tranquilizers. The original formulation had a proven record of knocking people out almost instantaneously. But the addition of ketamine was a new twist. Ketamine was a drug long used by anesthesiologists during surgery, and had the beneficial side effect of completely wiping out the patient’s memory of the surgery, along with the pain.
The hope was the new tranq gun formulation would have the same effect on their targets as with the audio hypnosis. The guards would wake up as muddy, wet messes, but with absolutely no idea of what had just happened. That would hardly exonerate them, though, and they would no doubt be blamed for the ruined fentanyl, their fates dangling perilously in the hands of their ruthless superiors.
But the new pellet formulation was only part of today’s plan C. The container truck had been stopped with a temporary disabling device, a variant of theOregon’s electromagnetic pulse technology. Littleton assured the team the absorbant would do the trick within minutes, and MacD was almost as good behind a rifle scope as Linc.
The lead vehicle had been both spoofed onto the new route andthen separately re-spoofed over the edge of the washed-away mountain road. Whether or not their tumbling encounter was fatal was up to God.
MacD was already in the tilt-rotor when the rest of the team arrived.
Gomez lofted them into the air in a low, sweeping arc, out of eyesight from the rear guards now scouring the crime scene.
36
Aboard theOregon
Linlin perched uncomfortably in the steel chair, eagerly waiting for her breakfast. She was reading a book on her e-reader, which she’d fished out of her backpack slumped in the corner.
The only other reading materials in the cabin were two dog-eared and coffee-stained copies ofSeatrade Maritime Review, which she had read cover to cover, twice. She was now thoroughly up-to-date on the latest shipping news regarding regulatory compliance, logistics, and industry best practices for 1997.
She also did a lot of pushups.
Her boss, Peng De, wouldn’t call this a successful mission so far. Neither would she.
The MSS operative began to wonder if the kindly ship’s captain in the tropical shirt had pulled a fast one on her. Locked away in the small, windowless cabin, she felt more like a prisoner than a protected guest. She also noted at least one crew member was always nearby, as if guarding her.
Linlin had just showered and dressed, and her hair was still slightly damp. The day before, a diminutive woman introduced herself as the ship’s doctor and delivered several changes of clean but ill-fitting women’s clothes. Dr.Julia Huxley also inquired about her health. Both were kind gestures, but the visit was short and professional, and not a social call. She’d had no other visitors.
Linlin’s meals always arrived promptly on the designated hour. The shy hand that suddenly tapped on her door came as no surprise. She set her reading tablet down.
