Page 3 of Sins of Arrogance

“Just the one smart enough to lay hands on the re­search and failed pro­to­types be­fore any­one else could,” Brice adds.

I meet my fa­ther-in-law’s gaze. “The first weapons man­u­fac­tur­ers to the ta­ble will con­trol the mar­ket. That ad­van­tage doesn’t come cheap.”

Bro­gan’s eyes nar­row, but he nods. “I’m lis­ten­ing.”

“Ini­tial fa­cil­ity ex­pan­sion, clean lab con­ver­sion, full elec­tro­mag­netic shield­ing, air­flow par­ti­tion­ing.” I point to a num­ber on the screen. “We’re look­ing at a base­line of $20 mil­lion, just to make des­ig­nated space in the Bunker safe for de­vel­op­ment. Se­cu­rity retrofits will push that to $35–$40 mil­lion.”

Rory whis­tles. “For a bunker that al­ready ex­ists?”

Dol­ing out in­for­ma­tion on a need-to-know ba­sis, I haven’t walked my guys through the num­bers. I trust them, but only a fool­ish man doesn’t take pre­cau­tions to pro­tect an en­deavor of this mag­ni­tude.

I might be a so­ciopath, but I’m no mup­pet.

“Not like this,” I say. “I’m talk­ing in­de­pen­dent air sys­tems, laser-coded hall locks, neu­ral-gated ac­cess points. The same shite they use to pro­tect ex­per­i­men­tal de­fense labs in Nevada. Only bet­ter. Be­cause no one, and I feckin’ mean no one can know it’s here.”

Bro­gan rubs his chin thought­fully. “I as­sume the orig­i­nal en­gi­neer is in a hold­ing cell.”

“Dead,” Rory says with sat­is­fac­tion.

He re­ally hated what he found on the Rus­sian’s hard drive.

“And the other po­ten­tial back­ers?” Bro­gan asks.

I shrug. “Neu­tral­iz­ing all of them would have drawn at­ten­tion to our in­ter­est in the whis­per gun tech­nol­ogy.”

My risk as­sess­ment said that was more prob­lem­atic than the fact other peo­ple knew about the failed demon­stra­tion. Mag­netic propul­sion gun tech­nol­ogy is not en­tirely new, only un­de­vel­oped for close range, per­sonal weapons.

Bro­gan grunts ap­proval and I switch to the sec­ond slide. “Then there’s the tal­ent.”

A photo pops up of a Lat­inX woman in her late 30s in glasses, her dark hair in a tight bun and wear­ing a lab coat. Her ex­pres­sion is guarded, but there is banked rage in her gaze.

The pic­ture is from the mo­ment when her male col­league was be­ing awarded a medal of ex­cel­lence from DARPA for the work he stole from her and pub­lished as his own.

“Dr. Xi­mena Morales. She should be the head of ex­per­i­men­tal bal­lis­tics for a NATO de­fense ini­tia­tive but her less tal­ented male col­league was given the job over her.”

“Let me guess. She’s not com­ing over for the pen­sion plan,” Bro­gan says in a dry tone.

“No.” Not even close. “She’s com­ing for $1.5 mil­lion up­front and the op­por­tu­nity to kit out a lab to her spec­i­fi­ca­tion, no red-tape in­volved.”

But more im­por­tantly to Hex, she’s com­ing be­cause I of­fered re­spect and recog­ni­tion of her in­tel­li­gence and work. I made it clear to Dr. Morales that she wasn’t in the run­ning, but the only physi­cist/weapons sys­tems en­gi­neer I wanted on this project.

Bro­gan raises his eye­brows. “I pre­sume the sign­ing bonus is only part of her hir­ing pack­age.”

“We’ll pay her half a mil a year to stay. Add an­other $2 mil­lion an­nu­ally for her hand­picked team of four weapons en­gi­neers, two ma­te­ri­als chemists, and a ro­bot­ics tech.”

Bro­gan grunts. “Two-point-five mil­lion a year, just for staff?”

“They’re not staff,” I say coldly. “They’re the rea­son no one will be able to match what we’re build­ing. We hire the best and not only do we get the pro­to­type faster, we know they aren’t out there some­where work­ing for some­body else.”

“Let’s say we fund it,” Bro­gan says. “How long be­fore we see a re­turn?”

I flip to the fi­nal screen. The whis­per gun mockup ap­pears. A sleek, unas­sum­ing matte-black shape sur­rounded by a glow­ing field of num­bers.

“Base cost per unit: $5,000–$7,000, de­pend­ing on ma­te­rial fluc­tu­a­tions. That’s graphene-lined bar­rels, neodymium-mag­net rail propul­sion, and phase-shift­ing gel lined grips.”

Conor whis­tles this time, not tone­lessly though. He whis­tles The Foggy Dew.

Brice rolls his eyes at his fel­low lieu­tenant. “And sale price?”