37: Chapter 37: Persuasion and Assault – A Double Insurance

Musk did not answer immediately.

He lowered his head to glance at the stable target color block on the detector screen, then raised his gaze to scan the detailed images of the perimeter of the Walsh construction zone once more.

A few seconds later, he finally turned his face, his tone like that of someone conducting a final safety check before a launch.

"You can rest assured about the bodyguards and tactical personnel around me."

"Among them are former SEAL Team Six demolitionists, as well as retired veterans from the Israeli 'Sayeret Matkal' special forces; they are all handpicked from retired special operations units around the world."

"The non-lethal shock suppressors and kinetic interception shields they carry are more than enough to deal with conventional armed forces."

"After Walsh digs out that piece of alien technology, he will definitely send people to escort and transfer it; by then, my men will be capable of intercepting him on any route."

Edward folded his hands in front of him, remained silent for a moment, and shook his head with a faint smile.

"The Warren Family has raised generations of armed bodyguards in Nevada for three generations, but compared to your lineup, they fall far short."

"I only brought a few Retainers this time; they grew up in the manor, having worked for my father and for me."

The term "Retainer" was clearly a bit new to Musk.

He tilted his head and repeated: "Retainers?"

"They are the kind of people who will shoulder the blame alone if something goes wrong, and when necessary, take all the evidence with them to the grave."

Edward's voice remained calm throughout, as if he were stating the risk exposure of an investment portfolio.

"They aren't as good at fighting as retired special forces, but they won't open their mouths three times in an interrogation room."

He walked back to the surveillance screen and said softly:

"When I was young, my father told me a saying."

"He said that at any time, when a situation develops to the point where you cannot control the whole picture..."

"The first thing you must do is not regret the decisions you made, but figure out one thing: how to ensure you won't be wiped out by others in this struggle."

He turned his eyes to Musk.

"The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind."

"Are we the mantis or the oriole right now? To be honest... I don't know."

"Walsh is digging that pit, and we are watching Walsh's pit."

"But is there someone else watching behind Walsh? Is there someone else watching behind us?"

"Underneath the Hoover Dam, is it empty now, or is there already someone watching the two of us?"

Musk looked at him, remained silent for a long while, and then let out a short, sharp laugh from his nose.

"You people from centennial political families really have convoluted minds."

"But you are right; whether we are the oriole or the mantis, no one knows right now."

He suddenly pointed at the screen, laugh lines still hanging at the corners of his eyes, but his voice had turned from teasing to icy solemnity,

"But there is one thing I see differently from you."

"I have pondered the reason why the Deep State makes people afraid."

"The answer is straightforward."

"They hide in the shadows, their identities are unknown, and they possess a certain transcendental quality that you cannot directly target."

"But once they surface and truly stand under the spotlight, then they are just a name, an organization, a group of people."

He stopped speaking and looked up, staring intently at Edward.

"As long as you can see what they look like, there is nothing to be afraid of."

Edward did not refute him, nor did he immediately agree.

He just glanced through the glass at the construction entrance of the parking lot opposite, and then said in a tone that was almost flat:

"You are right."

"But the premise is that we can still be alive to see what they look like at the moment they surface."

Musk twitched the corner of his mouth and did not reply further.

He turned his chair to face the monitor wall again, as if this metaphor had already been stuffed into a folder in his mind labeled "worth paying attention to."

The differences between these two men were laid out distinctly in this room.

One belonged to the new generation of capitalists, an adventurer who had fought his way up empty-handed in the world's largest private space race, believing that "as long as you are fast enough, you can pass through the risk zone."

The other belonged to the old guard of power, an old-school conservative who had been forged over a century beneath the dazzling political arena, always leaving a backup plan and always anticipating the worst-case scenario.

But it was precisely this difference that kept the "Long Live Alliance" from falling apart on this afternoon due to the recklessness or negativity of either side.

They chatted back to the topic of Walsh.

In Musk's view, this old intelligence bureaucrat who came out of Chestnut Street was now working for free for the Long Live Alliance—as long as he dug out the target, the assault plan could be launched.

But Edward did not choose this plan.

The construction lights outside the window cast a yellow hue on half of his face; he stared at the entrance of the Westfield Center underground parking lot and spoke slowly.

"I have dealt with Walsh for nearly thirty years."

"I know him."

"Musk, of the people we need to bring to our side, he is definitely not the hardest to persuade."

"And right now, there is a high degree of certainty that we can pull him into the Long Live Alliance as well."

Musk glanced at him.

"If your men can stabilize him without exchanging fire, and ensure he doesn't lean to the other side, then I have no objections."

"But if any uncontrollable situation really arises at that time..."

He pointed to a drill signal point on the screen that was still slowly extending, "My elite special forces will still be on site. This is a backup plan."

Edward nodded and said nothing more.

Outside the window, the orange warning lights of the construction site were rotating and flashing in the night fog.

The drilling pipe, labeled "Well No. 3," was continuing to extend toward the target one thousand meters underground at a stable speed of nearly twelve meters per hour.

...

Westfield Center, second basement level, 2:17 AM.

The drill bit of Well No. 3 stopped when it was less than three meters away from the target.

The engineer in charge was a tall, thin man named Colvin Satter,

ostensibly a drilling technician for the Western Geological Engineering Company, but actually having worked in the CIA's Technical Operations Division for twelve years.

Through the micro-sonar feedback on the directional drill bit, he could already "see" that thing.

It was not a rock formation, not an underground aquifer, and not any natural geological structure.

The sonar echo showed a regular, clearly defined oval object, about the size of an adult's fist.

It hung quietly in the uniform background of sedimentary rock like a foreign object that had been deliberately embedded, less than three meters from the tip of the drill bit.

"Stop."

Colvin said the word into his encrypted headset.

His voice was very soft, but to everyone on the drilling platform wearing a headset, this word sounded louder than the roar of the drilling rig.

The entire construction team completed the noise reduction switch within thirty seconds.

The large rotary drilling rig was shut down and replaced by two sets of silent hydraulic lifting equipment,

originally a modified model used for precision artifact extraction under the foundations of historical buildings, with noise levels no higher than a household dishwasher.

The mud circulation system inside the drill pipe was adjusted to the lowest flow rate to ensure that no abnormal vibrations would be transmitted to the surface during the final extraction process.

All key equipment and operators were sent underground in batches through the building's freight elevator in the middle of the night under the guise of "routine heat pump system maintenance," using sealed equipment boxes.

Soundproof felt was laid in the corridor from the freight elevator to the construction enclosure on the second basement level,

and at every corner, a "worker" wearing an orange safety vest stood guard;

these people were not wearing ordinary work clothes under their orange safety vests, but Kevlar bulletproof liners.

Colvin personally operated the lifting equipment.

His fingers made subtle adjustments to the angle of the drill bit on the control panel, and the hydraulic lifting arm slowly retracted upward at a speed of less than one centimeter per second.

The waveform of the sonar feedback pulsed on the screen...

Closer, even closer.

When the gripper of the lifting arm finally touched the foreign object, Colvin's pupils shrank sharply.

The tactile feedback showed that the surface of the thing was not rock, not a metal vein, and not any natural material he had ever encountered in underground drilling operations.

It was a smooth, cool, slightly elastic synthetic material, like some kind of high-density polymer.

The lifting arm retracted steadily.

The sealed extraction chamber at the very front of the drill pipe exited the drill path amidst the low hum of the hydraulic system, and the hatch was opened while still sealed.

Colvin put on two pairs of gloves, the inner layer being chemical-resistant nitrile and the outer layer being cut-resistant Kevlar, and then reached his hand into the extraction chamber.

The thing he took out was a translucent box.

Its length, width, and height were all between two and three inches, and the shell was a material he had never seen before,

like glass but lighter than glass, with no scratches on the surface, still smooth enough to reflect light after being buried underground for eighty years.

The inside of the box was filled with some kind of clear liquid preservation medium, and in the very center of the liquid—

an eyeball was floating quietly.

Colvin's first reaction was not fear, but a sense of almost absurd confusion.

The eyeball was too big.

It was not the size of a human eyeball; a human eyeball has a diameter of about 2.5 centimeters, while this eyeball was at least three to four times that.

The base color of the entire eyeball was deep black, but the black base was covered with a layer of iridescent dark blue; that iridescence flowed slowly in the liquid medium, like some kind of living luster.

The pupil was not round, but oval-shaped, elongated vertically, and the edges presented a dark purple that did not belong to any Earth creature.

"What the hell is this..."

A technician responsible for recording data behind Colvin whispered involuntarily, "What kind of person's eyeball could be this big?"

No one answered him.

Colvin did not turn back, but his spine stiffened slightly.

He had seen countless dead people—in underground bunkers in Mosul, on the edge of the deserts of Kandahar, beside mass graves in the Balkans—but not a single pair of eyes had ever looked like this.