Page 62 of Clive Cussler's Quantum Tempest

“What is it?” Eddie asked through his mask.

“Clear liquid. No telling.” Cabrillo dipped the test strip into the fluid, careful not to get any on his gloved fingers. He was even more careful to drop the saturated strip into the tube and seal it up quickly. He handed the sealed tube gingerly to Eddie.

Seng studied the strip as Cabrillo resealed the tank.

Eddie pulled off his respirator, wanting to make sure the mask’s view screen hadn’t affected his perception of the color of the strip. His frown said it all.

“That bad?” Cabrillo asked.

“Yeah.” Seng nodded at the tank. “You’re staring at twenty-five hundred liters of pure fentanyl.”

?

Juan darkened. That much liquid fentanyl wasn’t just a problem.

It was pure evil.

Fentanyl was fifty times more potent than heroin. Just two milligrams of the liquid opioid could kill an average adult. If evenly distributed around the planet, the contents of that tank would theoretically kill one and a quarter billion people.

Equally bad, that same drug—ironically used as a highly effective anesthetic and painkiller—was designed to make other illegal opioids more powerful and therefore more addictive. Fentanyl had already killed hundreds of thousands of Americans in recent years, and turned many of America’s inner cities into violent and filthy zones of zombielike addicts.

“We’ve got our evidence now. But we can’t just leave that crap behind,” Juan said.

“And we can’t blow it up or burn it or drain it out—it would trash the environment, and who knows how many innocent civilians would die.”

“We need to get back to theOregonand come up with a plan,” Juan said as he fished around in his pack. “Hand me that busted bolt seal.”

“Aye.” Eddie pulled the two broken pieces from his pocket and handed them to Juan, who now held a tablet in his hand. He scanned the barcodes on the bolt halves. Seconds later, a miniature thermal printer spit out an identical pair of barcode labels.

Eddie handed him a brand-new, bright blue bolt seal, identical in size, style, and color to the one they had destroyed. Every shipping line used its own preferred color and style of bolt seals and it was easy enough to pull one from theOregon’s stores. They used bolt seals in their own containerized operations, but they also kept a stock of nearly every kind of seal currently in use worldwide for just this kind of work.

Juan fixed one transparent label to the long, bullet-shaped male side of the seal and then the other to the short female receptor as Eddie bagged up the gear for both their packs. Unless inspected under a microscope, no human eye would be able to detect the deception.

Six minutes later, the two men had shut the container door, snapped the new bolt seal in place, and planted a tracker. They then scrambled back up to the warehouse roof and climbed into the Joby S4 hovering just above the deck for the short flight back to theOregon.

33

Aboard theOregon

Juan and Eddie made a beeline straight from theOregon’s landing pad to the biophysical lab belowdecks. Dr.Eric Littleton, the lab’s director, was primed and ready like an eager prizefighter waiting for the first bell. Juan had called ahead with his suspected fentanyl discovery and Littleton was ready to receive it for testing confirmation. He began his investigation immediately.

Like Juan, Dr.Littleton was a Caltech grad. He earned his doctorate in biochemistry with secondary specialities and certifications in nuclear physics, biophysics, and weapons design. The former weapons inspector had performed site inspections and forensic analyses of weapons of mass destruction sites as an officer in the U.S. Army before transferring to the civilian side of the house. He’d overseen numerous overseas missions involving chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive weapons. His education and experience were impeccable.

Cabrillo knew in the current environment of asymmetrical warfare there was no telling what they would come up against. Today’s fentanyl discovery proved his wisdom in bringing the dapper southern gentleman on board and creating his department.

“How long, Doc?” Cabrillo asked.

“If you want a definitive confirmation of fentanyl, a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis is the gold standard.”

“So…how long?”

“If it’s a pure, unmixed sample, should be fairly quick. Thirty minutes max.”

“Make it fifteen, if you can.”

“Go grab a cup of joe in the canteen. Should be done by the time you bring me back one.”

“You got it.”