Chapter 31

31

Juan pushed through the steel door into Murphy's darkly lit customized cabin, modeled after the hovercraft Nebuchadnezzar from The Matrix , Murph's all-time favorite movie.

Murph sat at one of the Nebuchadnezzar 's control stations, tapping away at a keyboard, totally engrossed in his work. Callie and Eric hovered over his shoulders, equally enthralled.

They were surrounded by a dozen other monitors waterfalling the iconic matrix language as screen savers, all arranged just like the movie. Empty beef jerky wrappers and crushed Red Bull cans overflowed the trash bin near Murph's station.

Juan fought back a sting of irritation, hoping he wasn't being invited to a Fortnite championship round or some other nonsense they didn't have time for. The soles of his boots clanged on the floor's steel grates as he approached the trio absorbed in Murphy's screen.

"You called for me?" Juan asked.

The three looked up, surprised by his entrance.

"You gotta see this, Chairman." Murph waved him over with a hand.

Cabrillo strode to his station, noting the odors of stale sweat, Cheez-Its, and Axe body spray. It smelled like every men's college dorm room Juan had ever been in. Murph's and Eric's clothes were wrinkled, their hair disheveled, and both men needed a shave, though with Murph that wasn't so obvious.

Callie on the other hand was fresh as a daisy, like she'd just emerged from the water at Maui's North Shore.

Cabrillo leaned over. "What am I looking at?"

"After we left the lab yesterday, Callie came by and started poking around the flight data recorder's fried hard drive," Eric began. "And what she found was this." He tapped a key on Murph's board. It displayed a piece of software code.

"And that is…?"

"It's a fragment of a line of code pointing to the dark web," Callie said.

"Why would the dark web be on the flight recorder?"

"Probably a link to a geolocation or some other kind of address for delivery," she offered.

Juan nodded, intrigued. "The dark web is the perfect place to transact illegal business."

"Buying and selling," Murphy added.

"Were you able to track down somebody with that snippet of code? An address for delivery?"

"No," Murph said. "But it was enough to give us a few ideas."

"Basically, we asked ourselves, if we were trying to find qualified customers online and not give away our identities, what would we do?" Eric said.

"In other words, these two geniuses cobbled together a search engine optimization profile, using AI to refine the parameters," Callie said.

"Meaning?" Juan asked.

"In short, what kind of ad would the Vendor run on the dark web?" Callie said. "What was the most likely approach to sell tech-related weapons to qualified buyers with big money, preserve anonymity, avoid U.S. and NATO detection—that kind of thing. Their AI-assisted coder generated some really interesting algorithms."

"We then reverse engineered all of that and built an AI bot to go out and find dark web pages that fit those algos," Murph said. "Our search came back with over fifty hits and we've spent the last several hours sorting through those—with Callie's help, of course, since she was the one that found the code in the first place."

"I only just got here an hour ago," Callie said. "They've been at this all night."

Juan sniffed the air. "Yeah, I can tell. So show me what you've found."

Murph sat up and noticed the potato chip crumbs littering his Brave Parakeets concert shirt. He brushed them off and then pulled up a new screen. It was published in five languages including English.

"This posted just a couple of days ago."

Eric read the English ad aloud.

"‘Urgently seeking twelve combat-experienced special operations warfighters for a VIP security event. Need one-plus sniper. Close-quarters combat experience a must. Non-Americans preferred. English-language fluency required. Minimum pay is fifty thousand U.S. per week, two-week minimum guaranteed in Bitcoin (BTC). Immediate twenty-five thousand U.S. transferred to your account upon acceptance. If interested, contact…'" Eric didn't bother reading the rest.

"Sounds like an old gun-for-hire ad in Soldier of Fortune ," Juan said. "Why do you think this is a Vendor ad?"

"My AI program is ninety-seven point three percent certain it is given the parameters we loaded in. I happen to agree. The non-U.S. preference is a real giveaway."

"If you're confident, that's good enough for me." Juan rubbed his chin, thinking. "Okay, let's take advantage of this."

He turned to Eric. "Stoney, we'll start by grabbing the undercover mission protocols checklist."

"Will do." Stoney stepped over to the nearest monitor and started tapping keys.

"Murph, contact the Magic Shop and our special records division."

"Who's going in?"

"Me and Linc."

Murph grinned. "Linc has the sniper cred for sure. They won't have to make anything up about his record. Do you want a new legend or pull one from the archive?"

"Let's hit the archive. I'll do ‘El Sicario.' Saves time trying to memorize new material."

"Gotcha."

"As soon as Stoney downloads that checklist, I want the two of you to quarterback everything through all departments. We can't afford to have anything fall through the cracks. This Vendor cat has his act together."

"Will do."

"You guys know the drill. We'll need DoD and Mexican military records, used passports with visa stamps, social media histories, fake girlfriends, pocket litter, vacation videos. The whole enchilada. Put a fire under everybody's tail. With the kind of money this guy is offering, he'll fill up with applications tout de suite ."

"We won't let you down," Eric said as the shared document checklist popped up on both his phone and Murphy's.

"We're on it," Murph said. He knew the special records division employed AI systems to create all of the official and personal documentation in record time with utmost precision and attention to detail. And the Magic Shop had perfected both the art and science of physical deception with its 3D-printing tools. But no AI programmer on the planet had cracked the code for intuition or instinct. Murph agreed with Cabrillo that human eyes overseeing the project were vital, and two pairs of eyes were better than one. They had to ensure that the entire package "felt" right and passed their own tests of believability. Juan's and Linc's lives depended on it.

"Aren't you missing something?" Callie asked.

"What's that?" Juan asked.

"While the computer calculated a small chance this could be a wild-goose chase, I think it's quite probable this murderous genius has set a trap for you—some kind of 4D chess master maneuver."

"She's right, boss," Eric said. "This would be the perfect play for that sort of thing."

"Or…the contract is really just a contract," Murph said. "Except that you and Linc could be on a one-way trip to an unexpected Custer's Last Stand."

Eric crossed his arms. "Or you walk into a police ambush that gets you thrown into a Third World dungeon with a life sentence, squat toilets, and no windows."

"Believe me, I can think of even worse outcomes," Juan said. "But what's the alternative? This is the only lead we have and our mission is to stop the Vendor—or die trying.

"I appreciate your concerns, but our business, gentlemen, is risk. Calculated, anticipated, and minimized to the best of our ability. But at the end of the day, none of us gets out of this carnicería alive. And on that day there is a judgment we all face. We won't be rewarded for the risks we avoided but for the hazards we braved to do good in the world as best we could, even if we failed in the attempt. Isn't that what we all signed up for?"

Murph and Eric nodded in solemn agreement.

Callie's eyes radiated with admiration. "Amen to that."