Page 57 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

“Lucky we had a couple of spare mil-spec D38999 connectors lying around,” Murphy said. “Perfect fit.”

“So glad you retrieved this bad boy,” Eric said in a whisper as he tightened the power fitting. He flipped a switch on the box. “We’re powered up.”

“Excellent.” Murph connected the flight recorder to his laptop with a USB adapter cable and began tapping keys. “Now we’re going to findout every airstrip that plane ever landed on, every flight path it ever took, and every—”

Murphy frowned.

“Problem?” Juan asked.

“This thing’s encrypted. Doesn’t make any sense.”

“Sure it does, if you’re trying to hide something,” Juan said.

“Well, we’ll just see about that.”

“You need any help?” Eric asked.

“Nah, this looks pretty easy. I’ll fire up my magic decoder ring and—”

Snap. Murphy’s screen flared like a supernova.

Eric dashed over. “What happened?”

“What do you think happened? Someone put a dead man’s switch on that thing—along with the software equivalent of an IED. It not only wiped its own hard drive clean, it zapped my machine.”

“What about the Cray?” Juan asked, referring to theOregon’s supercomputer.

“Good thing I wasn’t connected to the mainframe. No telling what might have happened.”

Murph tugged at his wispy chin beard. “We’re dealing with some seriously sinister genius here—the automated plane, the missile-torpedoes, and this level of cybersecurity? Somehow my machine got reverse-hacked—and that’s something even the NSA hasn’t been able to do.”

“You mean this Vendor character?” Max asked. “It can’t just be one guy.”

Murph shook his head. “If it is just him, it means this dude is a one-man DARPA.”

“It has to be a national government,” Eric said. “Who else would have those kinds of resources?”

Juan frowned. “The usual suspects?”

Eric and Murph exchanged a look. “Yeah, we’ve been talking about that. None of them have deployed these kinds of capabilities before.”

“So maybe it’s not one of the usual suspects,” Max said.

Juan folded his arms. “Or maybe it’s all of them.”

Max raised one of his graying eyebrows. “A consortium?”

“Like the Legion of Doom,” Eric said.

“No way. Not DC. Think Marvel. Sinister Six, all day long. Dr. Octopus? Hello?”

“Yeah, you’re right. I wasn’t thinking.”

Juan and Max exchanged a confused look just as Callie stepped to the table.

“Comic book references. Cool,” she said. “Wasn’t quite expecting that in a flight data recorder debrief.”

Eric and Murph couldn’t hide their delight at her appearance. Both were obviously smitten.