Exit 9

5

I.D. MINUS 14 DAYS

Brown team leader Gagnon looked out the window from his seat behind the controls of the seaplane at the circle of light on the choppy ocean below. Wright, his partner, sat in the seat behind him, operating the wireless remote that controlled the spotlight attached to the bottom of the plane.

Since the previous afternoon, they’d been searching for any sign of yellow team. They would have started sooner, but a severe storm had passed through the area, grounding them for over forty-eight hours.

The real miracle, if one wanted to call it that, was that the sea hadn’t completely iced over yet. That was global warming for you, Gagnon thought. Even this close to winter, there were still ice-free parts of the Arctic Ocean that had never been that way at this time of year in the past.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Just water.”

It was all that Gagnon had seen, too. “Let’s move on to the next sector.”

He straightened out the plane, and headed for the next grid coordinates.

They were both acutely aware that it could have been the middle of summer with twenty-four-hour daylight, and they might still not spot any wreckage if something had happened to the yellow team’s boat. A rogue wave could have swamped the vessel and taken the whole thing down, or the rough seas could have broken everything into tiny bits and spread it far and wide so that there’d be nothing to draw attention. The fact that it was less than two weeks shy of winter, and the only light they had to cover the hundreds of square miles below them was a small spotlight, made the task seem impossible.

Two more hours, Gagnon decided. If nothing turned up, they’d call it a night and radio the Ranch to see if they should continue the search tomorrow or pack it in.

The island was small, found on only the most detailed of maps. At its widest, it was only a quarter-mile across. It was, in the most generous terms, a rocky, ice-covered piece of nothing.

Five hours earlier, two men, a camouflage shelter, and the equipment they would need for their assignment had been flown in. At the time of their drop-off, they’d been unsure how long they were going to have to stay, but at most, it would be no more than two nights, and it was quite possible they’d be sleeping in their own beds back at Bluebird that very evening.

Ten miles away, a Project boat, looking very much like a fishing vessel slowly making its way back to port somewhere to the south, was scanning the skies with a compact yet powerful radar system. The information it collected was transmitted real-time via satellite to a handheld device that was part of the equipment the two men had brought with them.

For nearly an hour, they had been watching a blip weave back and forth across the screen, slowly growing closer to the island. It was getting late, though, so at some point the plane would undoubtedly break off and head back to the small village several hundred miles away that its occupants had been using as a base. If that happened, the men would definitely be spending the night.

“We could try it now,” the junior of the two suggested.

Without looking away from the screen, the other man shook his head. “Not yet.” It was important that this worked so he didn’t want to risk any mistakes.

Over the next thirty minutes, the plane continued to move closer. Finally, when it was within two miles, the man in charge looked up.

“Now,” he said.

The younger man picked up a second device, a tablet computer synced in to a localized network they’d set up when they first arrived. The man brought up the appropriate screen, and pressed the appropriate button.

Ten seconds later, on the other side of the island, a radio beacon went live.

Bowop-bowop .

The signal came in bursts of two, each set separated by a second of silence. It was so faint at first that it didn’t even register with Gagnon or Wright. When it finally did, the pilot looked over at the radio, surprised.

The receiver had been tuned to the frequency that would be utilized by the yellow team’s emergency beacons, but since the searchers had started the day before, they’d picked up only silence. They assumed any beacons were either at the bottom of the sea or no longer working.

Gagnon turned up the volume.

Bowop-bowop.

Bowop-bowop.

“Is that them?” Wright asked.

Gagnon looked at the radio. “It’s the right frequency.”

“Which way is it coming from?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

Gagnon banked the plane to the south to see if the signal strength would grow, but instead it diminished to almost nothing. When he turned back in the other direction, its intensity increased for a minute or two, then started to fade again. He brought the plane around once more, heading back to the point where the signal had been strongest. From there, it would have to be coming from somewhere off to one side or the other, but which one?

“You see anything out there?”

Wright was moving the light around. “No.”

As they neared the height of the signal, Gagnon mentally flipped a coin, then turned the plane east. Instead of fading this time, the signal got even stronger.

After a few seconds, Wright said, “Is that an island up ahead?”

Gagnon studied the ocean ahead of them. Sure enough, about a mile away, there was the tiny silhouette of a rocky hill sticking out of the water.

“Maybe they’re just stranded there,” Wright suggested, unable to keep the hope out of his voice.

Gagnon wasn’t quite ready to jump for joy yet. “Let’s find the signal first.”

As they flew closer, it was clear the signal was indeed coming from the island, specifically the northwest side. As soon as they were within range, Wright fired up the spotlight and aimed it at the tiny piece of land. At first all they saw were just rocks and a few patches of snow and ice. No sign that anyone had ever been there. But then, as the northwest edge came into view, they found what they were looking for.

Both of them stared silently at the debris caught in the circle of light. It was piled haphazardly on the beach. Not even close to a full boat’s worth, but enough for them to know that whatever vessel it had belonged to was unlikely to still be afloat. Wright panned the light over everything, then held it steady on one point as they flew by.

“There it is,” he said.

He didn’t have to elaborate. Gagnon had seen it, too. An empty life vest, stuck in the middle of the debris. The light near the top was blinking weakly in the night, at almost the same rhythm as the message of distress coming from the radio beacon buried somewhere inside the vest.

“Do you see them anywhere?”

“No. Go by again.”

In the end, they made four passes of the wreckage, and two complete circles around the island, but there was no sign of anyone, alive or dead.

“I don’t like it,” Gagnon said.

“What do you mean?”

Gagnon frowned. “Just enough wreckage to prove that something happened to the boat, with a life vest that still has an active emergency beacon conveniently washing ashore where it could easily be found? Does that seem likely to you?”

Wright was silent for a moment. “It could happen. The current could have washed it up.”

Gagnon stared back at his partner. “Did you look at the water? There weren’t a lot of waves on that beach. If there were, that stuff would be even more broken up than it is. I’ll bet you the current runs right past that end of the island.”

Wright looked out the window again. “You’re right. It does feel wrong.”

Gagnon took one last glimpse of the wreckage, and turned the plane back toward the small village where they were staying. Once the course was set, he picked up the satellite radio and called the Ranch.

“Bravo Four,” a voice at the Ranch answered.

“This is Brown,” Gagnon said.

“Go ahead, Brown.”

“Blair House,” he said, using the active code.

“Wanda June.”

Satisfied he was indeed speaking with the Ranch, Gagnon said, “Wreckage found. No apparent survivors.”

Momentary silence on the other end. “Please confirm. No apparent survivors.”

“Roger, Bravo Four. No survivors.”

“Any idea what happened?”

“Rough seas, maybe. A storm. It’s pretty rough out there. I’d say this is an unfortunate accident.”

Another pause. “Confirming.”

“Roger, Bravo Four. That’s what it is.”

“Roger, Brown. Get some rest. Will touch base in the morning with new assignment.”

“Will do, Bravo Four. Out.”

“They’re leaving,” the senior man said into the encrypted radio.

“You think they will be back?” Major Ross asked. He’d been patched in from Bluebird.

“No, sir. They’re returning to the outpost, then will be getting a new assignment in the morning. I think it worked.”

“Good. Return to base.”

Pax knocked on the door of Matt’s office.

“Come in,” Matt called out.

Upon entering, Pax found Rachel and Matt in the more casual sitting area in the front end of the room. “Sorry, but you wanted to see this.”

“Brown team found something?” Rachel asked.

Pax nodded grimly. “Yeah, but there’s more.”

He handed over a transcript of the conversation that had just come in. Rachel and Matt read it at the same time. Their first reaction was to the news that by all appearances, yellow team was dead. Their second was to the hidden message contained within brown team’s words.

“‘An unfortunate accident,’” Rachel read. She looked up. “That means…”

“…yellow team found Bluebird,” her brother finished.