Page 62 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

“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. “Oursearch 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-languagefluencyrequired. 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 inSoldier 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 haveto 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 applicationstout 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.”