Havoc

Features of Havoc

Product DescriptionWhen CIA Officer Tom Grant was pulled out of early retirement to investigate a recent high-tech robbery at United States Nanotechnologies, America's government-run agency for the development of nanoweapons, he had no idea that he would be propelled into the middle of a conspiracy that could threaten the survival of our species.Teaming up with young Rachel Muratani, a rising star in the agency, and Karen Frost, an old hand from the FBI, Grant tracks the cyber thieves to CyberWerke, a German conglomerate run by Rolf Hartman. Hartman has stretched his high-tech empire across Europe, and now plans to use the newly acquired nanotechnology to take his empire global.Among the stolen USN hardware is a prototype nanoassembler, a highly intelligent and self-propelled machine with the capability of creating and destroying any object allowed by the laws of physics, including itself---though it needs access to radioactive material in order to mine the fuel required to power its clones. When the nanoassembler breaks free from its relatively unsophisticated captors, it finds itself no longer restricted by the software shackles imposed on it while at USN. While the megalomaniacal Hartman races to recapture it, Grant and his team must not only stop Hartman, but find away to combat the nanoassembler as it embarks on its own mission to ensure the survival of its species---even if that means the eradication of the human race!About the AuthorR.J. Pineiro is a computer engineer working on leading edge microprocessors at Advance Micro Devices. He is the author of Retribution, Ultimatum, and Breakthrough, as well as the millennium thrillers 01-01-00 and Y2K.Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.[1] A SPOOK IN PARADISEIF THERES ONE THING .tine work its how to spot field surveillance as naturally as picking the occasional Latino flea that insists on camping out in the southern hemisphere of yours truly while I enjoy an early-morning beer buzz in my hammock on this remote beach in El Salvador, Central America.The yacht slowly cruises beyond the surf for the fourth time in the past hour, pretending to be just another tourist rig enjoying a beautiful day in paradise.But I know better.No one knows where I headed following my touchy-feely departure from Langley. At least no one is supposed to know. But there are ways, if ones really hard-boiled about it.And that, of course, leads me to another thing I got out of my joyful twenty-five years as a spy: a hell of a fan club-the long list of sleazeballs across three continents who would just love to go to work on me with a blowtorch, superglue, and a pair of gerbils.The yacht continues on its merry way as if nothing is wrong, .ping my socks in spite of the two cervezas frias I had for breakfast.Locating field surveillance is the bread and butter of my profession-or perhaps I should say of my former profession, though once a spook always a spook. No one who operated in the field for any length of time can ever forget the ins and outs of not just noticing a tail but also beating it, losing those following you so you can then meet safely with an informant or leave a package for an agent-something called a drop in my past life..veillance, you develop this sixth sense, the feeling that youre being watched even though you physically cant see the .ing you, waiting for you to make a mistake, trying to use you to find the informant that youre running to gather intel on.And that old familiar feeling is now rushing through my alcohol-thinned blood, uncurling the hairs of my ass.No one should know where I am, but the possibility that someone did manage to track me down to this tiny republic now sticks in my mind like the barnacles on the hull of the piece-of-shit fishing boat I bought from the same Salvadoran peddler who sold me the rusting pickup truck and the flea-.front condo for the past eight months.I perform another mental check of the extremes that I w