Page 33 of Clive Cussler's Quantum Tempest
She didn’t balk for a second when she was given Peretz’s name as her next target. Acquiring the nerve agent sarin was the primary obstacle in her plan, but the Guardian network readily provided it upon her request in its stable, liquid form. She had easy access to a level 3 chemical safety lab, so aerosolizing it hadn’t been a problem and loading it into the emergency inhalers was a simple task. Fortunately, she oversaw the Stanford pharmacy, where Peretz’s doctor had put in his albuterol prescription for the climb.
Sarin was the perfect agent. Death was nearly instantaneous, and its effects mimicked an asthma attack. Sarin metabolized rapidly in the body, making postmortem detection highly unlikely even if conducted quickly. In all likelihood, his body wouldn’t be discovered forseveral days and an autopsy conducted many hours after that. She doubted an autopsy would be requested at all. Peretz was a diagnosed asthmatic who obviously died in an asthma-inducing environment hiking a difficult trail with an expended asthma inhaler lying just inches from his cold, dead fingers. Why would any medical examiner call for an autopsy?
She glanced around the valley once again. There was still nobody else in sight in this remote region of the park. Only serious hikers ever came this way, and there were precious few of those this time of year. According to Peretz’s intercepted emails, this remoteness was one of the primary reasons he picked this climb. Like many people of his ideological persuasion, he loved the concept of humanity in theory, but actual persons with real names and messy emotions repulsed him or were, at best, tools at his disposal.
She glanced down once more at Peretz’s figure. She considered rolling his body down the side of the mountain, making him harder to find and certainly more difficult to recover. An early discovery of his body was now her biggest concern. The park service flew routine air patrols over the area, even if hikers hadn’t been reported lost or late by family and friends. Fortunately, the required itineraries all hikers had to file with their permits weren’t monitored by the rangers. No park officials checked hikers in or out of the park.
Peretz would eventually be missed after another forty-eight hours, and rangers notified. But what if a routine patrol plane flew over now? They’d see her hovering over his dead body. Police would be called, and she would be identified as a person of interest, especially if she didn’t report the incident. And if she did report it? Either way, questions would be asked. Why was she there? Did she know the man? Isn’t that quite a coincidence?
Better to leave things alone—and just leave.
Now.
Killing Peretz was the critical mission, but remaining undiscovered was as important both for herself and the Guardians. Her organization possessed considerable weapons to kill and destroy, but anonymity was their best defense.
She shouldered her pack and headed in a different direction, cutting across to a different trail and to an alternate trailhead without security cameras, where a prearranged car had been parked for her use. With any luck, she’d be home by tomorrow afternoon, her bases covered, her alibis intact, and no one the wiser before the body was even discovered.
She wasn’t convinced she could save humanity from the impending AGI holocaust, but today she had done her part, fatally tossing one of that speeding train’s most dangerous conductors onto the tracks.
19
Aboard theOregon
Off the Pacific coast of Mexico
“Eat my plasma bolt!” Murphy screamed as the automaton exploded. The robot’s heavy shields had been damaged enough by the grenades tossed by Murphy’s squad mates. He was able to take out the mechanical monster with a short burst from his plasma sniper rifle.
Shouts of triumph and “Great job, Scorpio7!” rang out over Dr.Mark Murphy’s headset.
“Thanks, guys—couldn’t have done it without you.”
Murphy was stretched out in a gaming lounge chair, his face covered with a virtual reality mask, his hands gripped on a virtual rifle. His gaming chair was attached to one of several consoles in his private cabin, which was designed to match the hovercraftNebuchadnezzarfrom his favorite movie,The Matrix, steel deck plates included.
He and his best friend, Eric Stone, spent countless off-duty hours destroying all manner of malicious aliens and were world-class masters of the most popular online games. Murph was another of the rareOregoncrew members with no former military experience. But his previous career as a cutting-edge weapons designer, his unmatched brilliance and unique skill sets had proven invaluable to Cabrillo.
Murphy had taken every security precaution to protect theOregonfrom any kind of hacker shenanigans, using multiple aliases, VPNs, and other measures when he played his online games. He shut them alldown whenever they went into any kind of threat area to avoid electromagnetic detection. He wasn’t due on shift at the weapons station for another twelve hours.
“Let’s move out,” the squad commander said. She was a twenty-two-year-old Romanian from Bucharest. She wisely used a voice alteration device to mask her youth and gender in the highly competitive, verbally abusive, and testosterone-fueled world of online gaming. He let her lead the squad and pretended to be a newbie on this mission. If the other players had known his most famous gamertag they might not have wanted to play with him for fear of being humiliated by his prowess.
“Roger that,” Murphy said as he advanced his mechanical soldier out of the asteroid’s long shadows and ran to catch up with the rest of his unit.
Suddenly, an anonymous private text message scrolled across the top of his screen:
U2FsdGVkX19yZGcAuzVxwZ2C+xodE6TPAGWlSx3YV58=
What would have appeared to be gibberish to most people was instantly recognizable to the brilliant MIT graduate.
“Guys, I’ll catch up.”
“Okay back there?” his squad commander asked.
“All good. Gotta take care of some business.”
“Mommy said it’s time to go night night?” one of the other fighters asked.
Murphy resisted the temptation to put a plasma bolt in the back of the punk’s virtual helmet. The kid needed to learn some manners, but right now Murph had a puzzle to solve.
“You guys stay frosty,” Murphy said.
