Piranha

29

Juan threaded the rental car past concrete barriers that could stop a semi from barreling onto the naval air station property. He and Eric Stone, who Juan brought along for his technical expertise, were approaching the gate to Pax River, as it was known to the base personnel, now entering during the morning rush hour.

When Juan reached the gate, the guard’s voice was drowned out by the thundering engines of a P-8 Poseidon submarine hunter coming in for a landing, but the intent was clear. He wanted to see their identification.

Juan wished they could have used the false IDs they normally traveled under, but to get into a Navy facility and access to a top secret project, at Langston Overholt’s insistence, Juan and Eric had to rely on the security clearances they’d obtained when they were in the employ of the U.S. government.

While the guard examined their IDs, a sailor armed with an assault rifle looked under their car with a mirror and inspected the empty trunk. Once they were cleared, the guard instructed them to drive to a hangar on the south side of the base.

As they passed a row of F-18 Hornets used for training Navy test pilots, Juan marveled at Overholt’s ability to get them into such a highly classified military operation. The photos of the Piranha subs no doubt contributed.

Less than thirty-six hours ago, the Oregon had left the Ciudad Bolívar once the salvage company radioed that they were on the way. Not wanting to risk an encounter with the Jamaican authorities, the Oregon made for Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. There they off-loaded Craig Reed’s repaired fishing boat and paid for his rehabilitation at the city’s best recovery center.

Tiny Gunderson, the Corporation’s fixed-wing pilot, had been waiting for Juan and Eric at Santo Domingo’s airport with their private Gulfstream jet. Four hours later, they landed at Reagan National and were directed to a hangar that stood only a hundred yards from the shore of Chesapeake Bay. The sun gleamed on closed white doors large enough to engulf an airliner.

A man dressed in a leather jacket and jeans waved for Juan to park next to a side door where an armed guard in full battle dress uniform stood watch. Juan opened his door to a brisk chill. The civilian, an athletic-looking man with tousled brown hair and a warm smile, greeted him with a handshake. This wasn’t the nerdy engineer Juan had been expecting.

“I’m Tyler Locke,” he said. “You must be Juan Cabrillo.”

“Yes, and this is Eric Stone. I understand you’re the lead investigator conducting the forensic analysis.”

“That’s me. Dirk Pitt told us to expect you and authorized us to share all of our findings. What’s your interest in the case?”

“Douglas Pearson. We want to know if it’s possible that he survived the drone accident.”

“‘Accident’?” Locke said. “I can see we have to get you up to speed on our progress.”

“So you’ve recovered the wreckage?”

“We’ve done a bit more than recover it. I’ll show you.”

Locke swiped a keycard and punched in a passcode at the door’s security panel. An electronic bolt clicked and Locke pushed his way inside.

Juan’s eyes took a moment to adjust from the blazing sunlight outside as he and Eric followed Locke in. When he was able to focus, he took in the incongruous sight of a half-dozen workers reconstructing a boat inside an airplane hangar.

Only the forward part of the vessel was intact. The rest of it had been pieced together like the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle. A steel frame supported the pieces, most of which were blackened and bent out of shape, yet they had been fitted together so precisely that the boat’s former silhouette was easily recognizable.

To the right of the boat was a smaller framework holding the remains of the UAV that had slammed into it. Fewer of these pieces were visible, but the drone’s V shape was apparent.

A muscular black man holding a tablet PC was jotting down notes about the drone. When he spotted Locke and the two newcomers, he stalked over with something between the lumbering gait of a bear and the fluid motion of a panther. The overhead lights reflected off his bald head.

“We got the last of the fragments assembled on the drone,” he said to Locke. “Another hour before we finish on the boat, but it shouldn’t change our findings. For getting the job done so quickly, I told the crew you’d buy them unlimited pale ales and crab cakes at Clarke’s Landing tonight.”

“If you’re included in that offer, I’ll have to take out a loan to pay for it,” Locke said, before introducing Juan and Eric. “This is Grant Westfield, Gordian Engineering’s top electrical engineer and the bane of all-you-can-eat buffets everywhere.”

Eric went slack-jawed as he shook Westfield’s massive paw. “Grant Westfield? You’re kidding! Murph is going to have a seizure when he finds out I met The Burn. We play you all the time in Pro Wrestling All-Stars.”

“I sincerely hope that’s a video game,” Juan said.

“It’s a real honor, Mr. Westfield,” Eric said, ignoring Juan. “I admire your decision to leave wrestling to join the Rangers after 9/11, but it would be fun to see you in the ring again.”

“I’m having too much fun on this job to go back to getting slammed in the head with folding chairs. So Tyler tells me that you have a pressing need to learn the results of our analysis.”

Juan nodded. “It relates to an investigation of our own. The good doctor here implied that this was no accident.”

“No way. The Navy’s initial conclusion was that the drone locked onto the control signal emitted by the boat’s antenna and homed in, but that’s not possible.”

“Why not?”

“Because we found that the cable to the antenna was disconnected before the impact. The boat was going over twenty knots at the time and using evasive maneuvers to shake it. The drone should have lost its lock once the signal stopped transmitting, but it hit the boat perfectly amidships.”

“Do you know how it did that?” Eric asked.

Locke produced a charred piece of equipment. “By homing in on this. It’s a beacon that was hidden inside a laptop. We think someone used it to guide the drone no matter what was done to dodge it.”

Juan took the destroyed circuitry and turned it over in his hand. It was easily small enough to smuggle inside a computer case. “Do you think the saboteur was someone on the project team?”

“More than that,” Westfield said, “we think it was someone on the boat. Whoever redirected the drone had to do it from a workstation on board.”

“Pearson was on the boat at the time?”

“Four people were,” Locke said. “The boat’s captain and the three project leaders: Douglas Pearson, Frederick Weddell, and Lawrence Kensit. We found the bodies of only two of them, the captain and Weddell. Weddell was on deck at the time of the explosion and the captain was on the bridge. The control center was hit dead-on by the drone.”

“Because of the intense heat, we were lucky to find any remains inside the boat after it sank,” Westfield said. “Just a few bones, but it was enough for DNA testing of the marrow.”

“I’m guessing you only found DNA evidence for Kensit,” Juan said, “and Pearson’s bones were nowhere to be found.”

“That did seem to be the case,” Locke said. “But we found a big inconsistency when we simulated the impact.”

“‘Simulated’? You mean you can reconstruct what actually happened at the moment of the explosion?”

Locke nodded. “My company, Gordian, developed the software. We create three-dimensional models of the craft involved. Then we input the deformities caused by the impact and explosion, the speed at which both craft were traveling, and the approximate locations where the pieces were recovered from the seabed floor, and the program crunches the numbers to produce a crude simulation of the event.”

Westfield handed him the tablet and Locke tapped on it until the screen was showing a surprisingly detailed representation of the boat frozen atop the water’s surface, trailing a wake behind it. The drone was suspended above it, poised in a dive.

“The video is slowed by a factor of one hundred.” Locke pressed the PLAY button and the drone inched toward the boat until its nose crumpled against the deck. It continued to deform until it erupted in a fireball. Fragments of the boat flew away before it, too, exploded. The video ended when all of the airborne pieces had fallen in the water. Juan was amazed they could have recovered anything at all, let alone the substantial portion they’d fitted back together.

“Now that you know what the impact looked like from the outside,” Locke said, “let’s take a look at it from inside.”

He pulled up another video, this one showing a re-creation of the control center that was nearly photo-realistic. Only one figure was in the room, a generic representation sitting in a chair.

“Where are the rest of them?” Eric asked.

“The captain is on the bridge, and Weddell had gone up to disconnect the antenna cable manually,” Westfield said. “Our simulation shows that only one person remained in the control center.”

“Pearson must have jumped overboard before the drone hit,” Juan said.

“The DNA evidence did show that it was Kensit in the center,” Locke said, “but watch this.”

He started the video, and at the moment of the drone’s impact, the person and chair were flung backward, smashing into the opposite wall, before disintegrating in the fireball.

Juan didn’t see anything unexpected. “I must be missing something.”

“Douglas Pearson weighed two hundred and fifty pounds,” Locke said. “Kensit was one-sixty. If Kensit were the one in the chair, the impact profile would have been significantly different, at least six inches higher than where we found pieces of chair and DNA embedded in the equipment we recovered from that side of the boat. Kensit didn’t die in that room, Pearson did.”

“Are you sure?”

“I estimate the probability at eighty percent,” Westfield said. “We had a photo of the interior to work with, but we can’t be sure of the exact configuration that day.”

“But the Navy said the DNA evidence was a match for Kensit,” Juan said.

“If Kensit was the one responsible for reprogramming the drone,” Eric said, “someone with that level of expertise could certainly fake his own death by breaking into the computer records and switching the DNA profiles. I know Murph and I could do it, given enough time.”

“That’s exactly what our report is going to suggest,” Westfield said. “The Navy should check the actual stored DNA sample, if they still have it. It’s highly unlikely Kensit could have tampered with the original. They’re kept in a secure deep freeze in Rockville, Maryland.”

“When do you think the sample will be retested?” Juan asked.

“You know DoD bureaucracy. It could take weeks.”

“We don’t have that kind of time. Can it be expedited?”

Locke shrugged. “That’s up to the Navy, although you must have some pull just to get in here. We’ll deliver our preliminary conclusions before we leave tomorrow morning. We need to go to Cairo on an urgent project, so we won’t be able to follow up for a week or two.”

Westfield rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why we can’t go back to Seattle first. The Great Pyramid is five thousand years old and it can’t wait another few days?”

“In the meantime, Mr. Cabrillo,” Locke continued, “I would operate under the assumption that Lawrence Kensit is still alive. What he’s doing now or where he went, I couldn’t tell you. But if you’re after him, I recommend you proceed with extreme caution.”

“Why do you say that?”

The grim expression on Locke’s face was chilling. “Kensit is a meticulous planner who was willing to kill people he’d known for years to make himself disappear. Two years prior to the incident, he practically forced himself on the project, which was interacting with every new type of drone the Navy had in development, both in the air and on the water. He learned everything there was to know about drone operations, from the security precautions to how they were controlled. He must have had a very specific reason for faking his death.”

“Right,” Eric said, “to sell the Piranha sub technology to the highest bidder without anyone realizing he was the one who’d stolen the plans.”

Juan caught Locke and Westfield exchanging worried glances. “I’d be surprised if that was why he did it,” Locke said. “We interviewed everyone on the drone project in the course of our investigation. Every single one of them said two things. First, Kensit, who earned Ph.D.s in both physics and computer science, was the most brilliant person they’d ever met, and this coming from some of the brightest minds in weapons development. Kensit and his intelligence weren’t challenged on a project like this, they said. He disdained others for their inability to keep up with his mental acuity, but he stayed on the project anyway.”

“And the second thing?” Juan prodded.

“Kensit didn’t hide his contempt for how America was wasting its opportunity to fix the planet and squandering its technological superiority, specifically its advantage in weaponry. He thought world leaders were too corrupt or weak or beholden to uneducated constituencies to solve the problems that he felt had simple solutions. Crime, war, famine, pollution, disease, energy and water shortages — all of those issues could be solved if one person with the right technology, intelligence, and ruthless vision unencumbered by sentimentality could focus on the big picture and force leaders to do what he thought was best for the planet. One guess who that person should be.”

Juan nodded slowly as the ramifications jelled in his mind. He now understood why the discovery that Kensit was the survivor alarmed Locke and Westfield. And while they knew he had killed three men to cover up his death, they didn’t know he was now employing Haitian death squads that had nearly wiped out Oregon’s entire crew by using an untraceable means of spying on them. Based on the assassin’s pronouncement that the world would change in less than four days, the physicist was either completely off his rocker or he was bringing to fruition a goal that was equally insane.

“Did Kensit have any friends at all? Anyone close that might have suspected his plans?”

“He had no family, and he didn’t hang out with anyone outside of work. One of his coworkers mentioned overhearing Kensit speaking to Pearson about a diary he’d received as an inheritance. Pearson spoke German and Kensit wanted him to do some translation. The coworker thought it unusual because it was the only time Kensit talked about a personal matter. And he remembered there were just a few snippets of the conversation before Kensit abruptly shut Pearson down and never spoke about it again: something about a German scientist, a ship called the Roraima, and a reference to Oz.”

“Oz as in The Wizard of Oz?” Eric asked.

“I asked the same thing,” Westfield said. “He said that’s what it sounded like.”

“Kensit could have been referring to Australia,” Juan said, meaning the nickname Aussies gave their own country.

Westfield shrugged. “It’s hard to know without more to go on. We looked up the Roraima. There are three that we know of. One is a small cargo ship currently sailing under a Brazilian flag. The second was a nineteenth-century steamship that ran aground, but the vessel was saved and the captain subsequently built a Victorian mansion named after the ship. It’s a bed-and-breakfast now.”

“And the third?” Juan asked.

“That’s the most interesting one,” Locke said. “It sunk in Saint-Pierre Harbor in 1902 when Mount Pelée erupted. I understand it’s a tourist attraction now. The question is why Kensit would be interested in any of those ships. We couldn’t come up with a reason.”

“I know someone who might be able to.” And it was just their luck, Juan thought, that St. Julien Perlmutter was only a short drive away in Washington, D.C.