Page 36 of Clive Cussler's Quantum Tempest

“Must go now.”

Before he could type a response, her text window disappeared.

Murph’s eyes narrowed with confusion.

What had just happened? Was that all a fever dream? He could hardly believe it.

He’d never gotten over Linlin. She was brilliant, beautiful, funny. In his juvenile heart, he had even thought he was going to marry her.

Now she was back in his life. It seemed too good to be true.

Or maybe it was just good. He wasn’t sure.

She said she was in trouble.

He had to find her.

20

Murphy made his way into the deepest bowels of theOregon, pushed past the armory, and entered the “air lock,” aka the safety room, where pairs of shooting glasses and earmuffs hung from wall pegs. Murph heard the rapid-fire staccato of a semi-auto pistol mag-dumping on the other side of the insulated wall. He geared up and pulled open the interior door to the gun range and stepped through.

The familiar tang of burnt gunpowder teased Murphy’s olfactory bulb. He’d come to love the smell after so many hours of training on this very range. As much as he enjoyed a good virtual gunfight in outer space, no game controller haptics could ever match the kick of a real bullet smashing back a heavy steel pistol slide. He made a mental note to visit the Magic Shop and figure out how to incorporate gunpowder smell into a new, full-body virtual reality game he was designing. Kevin Nixon knew all about that stuff.

There was only one shooter on the range, and he stood in lane three. As Murph approached, he watched Juan Cabrillo raise a pistol in his left hand and rip another fifteen-round string of bullets as fast as he could pull the trigger. The red bull’s-eye in the center of the paper target twenty-five yards downrange shredded in an instant. That was fifteen rounds in a hole the size of a child’s fist.

Cabrillo hit the ambidextrous mag-release button with his thumb, and before the empty mag hit the floor he’d already shoved the pistol into the holster on his right hip—backward. It was only then that Murph noticed Juan’s right hand was wrapped in an Acebandage, and as he got closer, saw that a handball had been taped to his palm.

Murphy instantly understood Cabrillo was practicing one-handed drills with his supporting hand while simulating a wounded and immobilized strong hand. No sooner had Murphy connected the dots, Cabrillo fetched a fresh mag from a pouch with his left hand and slammed it into the butt of his pistol. By the time the pistol was pointed downrange again he had already hit the slide release. The gun was in battery when he put sights on another target in lane seven, angled away some thirty yards downrange. As soon as the sights found their target, Cabrillo cut loose.

Fifteen bullets later, another target was shredded.

Cabrillo set the empty pistol down on the bench, its barrel safely pointed downrange. He removed his noise-cancelling earbuds.

“Nice shooting, Chairman.”

“Still a little slow on the left hand, but I’ll keep pushing it. How about you?”

“Haven’t done one-handers in a couple of weeks. Good reminder.”

“We win the gunfight here, not in the field, right?” Cabrillo unwrapped his right hand as he spoke.

“Yes, sir.”

“What can I do you for?”

“I’d like to take shore leave early.”

“You’ll miss the big shindig.” Cabrillo was referring to the Corporation’s private vacation island they anchored at every year. They’d head out as soon as they recovered Linc and Raven from their mission—assuming everything went well.

The gun range and other training facilities were important, but Juan believed in playtime, too. On the island, theOregonchefs went all out on beachside barbecues, fast-moving toys from the boat garage were broken out, and Hali Kasim filled the night air with thrumming dance tunes. The music buffs on board all agreed that Kasim’s mix master skills would’ve put him at the top of the DJ 100 list if he ever made a go of it. It was all great fun and completely voluntary. It was meant to be a perk, not a punishment.

“Yeah, I know,” Murph said. “But it’s kinda important.”

“What’s up? Somebody sick?”

“Not exactly. I just got a message from an old grad school friend. They asked to see me right away.”

Juan grinned. He had a paternal affection for the young genius standing in front of him. He’d come a long way over the years, but there was still part of him that was socially awkward, even immature.