Pi Day Doomsday

SEARCH AREA

The taskforce meeting had lasted much of the day, yet the end was not in sight. Lieutenant Poole had endured peaks and valleys of emotion throughout the day, but the best was still to come.

With Adam’s suspected identity revealed, a W-88 thermonuclear warhead no larger than an elongated 55-gallon oil drum, the three military officers from the nearby Navy and Coast Guard stations balked. There was too little information to start a search. They needed more: defined search parameters, geographic boundaries, restrained public visibility of their forces, hours of search operation, potential release areas, probable depth of release, and so on. Also, many of their subs were on sensitive peacekeeping missions around the world; pulling them back could seriously endanger world peace.

They reminded Poole that if they were to call them in, there would be submarine conning towers popping up all over the waters off the L.A. coast, that she should have cover stories for them if they were sighted.

The subject of narrowing the search area eventually arose. Citing the continuing search for the crashed Malaysian Airlines Flight MH-370, still missing after two years, as an example, the Naval spokesman, Commander Norton, said that a similar search would be just as futile without more details.

The conversation continued, irritating her. She knew she could provide information to narrow the search, but she had trouble putting it into words. She decided to try anyway, attempting to move off dead center. Carefully measuring her words, she started, “Well, we know that Fogner lives in Dana Point. He probably stores his boat there, too. Let’s assume that. Our SWAT team should confirm that information shortly.”

She stood, moved to a whiteboard on the side wall, and, with a black marker, drew a coarse outline of the coastline near Dana Point, placing an X over it. She then took another marker and scribed a large blue arc around the X, from shoreline to shoreline, out into the imagined ocean west of the city. “Now let’s say this is a map of the area surrounding Fogner’s location. I’ve drawn a search radius from there of, say, ten miles; a distance he would probably stay within for maximum impact, unless he went further up the coast. I doubt he would do that with a Sea Ray; it’s a rough trip even with a much larger vessel.”

Out to the side of her primitive map, she wrote the equation:

“That equation approximates our search area. Its area, A, is one-half the search radius squared times pi. Ten times ten times 3.14 yields 314 square miles. Half of that is 157 square miles. That’s your search area, gentlemen.”

Under her breath, Gibbs muttered, “There’s that damn pi again.” Nobody laughed.

Understanding the math, and finally grasping her assumed variables, Norton sighed, relenting to her persistence. He penciled a few numbers on a pad and replied, “According to my figures, if we search a five-square-mile area each day, which is really humping it for something that small, we’ll have the entire area mapped in 31.4 days. It will be akin to searching for a toothpick in a national forest.”

“Not acceptable, Commander. In nineteen days, we’ll all be dust.”

“Okay, then,” Norton said, pulling his phone from his pocket. “We have a crack civilian-contractor, ocean-survey team that we use on occasion when our forces are occupied elsewhere. It’s up the coast a ways, just north of Monterey. They have an Alvin-class mini-sub and a pilot that can find anything. He’s honestly as good as they get.” Chuckling, he admitted, “He received his training with us but we let him get away, four years later. He was the best the Navy had. Now we pay his company ten times more to use his services. His name’s Matt Cross.”

He paged through his cell phone contacts and found him. “There he is. Works at the Mid-Bay Ocean Research Corporation, just outside of Moss Landing. I’ll get our people to notify him and bring him down. Of course, we’ll have to bring his sub, the Canyon Glider, down too. For some reason he’ll only use that submersible, like it’s an extension of his body. Maybe it is. They’re quite a team.”

He cocked his head and said, “There’s only one small problem; his wife’s a newshound reporter for a local TV station up there. If she gets word of our operation it’ll be all over the news.”

Gibbs asked, “Can he be trusted to keep it quiet?” She knew that before she left D.C., the DHS had admonished her that, under no circumstances should she allow the gravity of the threat to leak to the press. They feared a country-wide panic, possibly worse than the threat itself.

Norton nodded. “Yes I believe he can. We’ve put him in similar situations before, where outing an exercise or operative could have very deadly consequences, and he sailed through them with flying colors. Remember he’s ex-Navy.”

He had the team’s attention now; they were taking notes. “He won’t have to survey the entire area; he has ways, known only to him, of sniffing things out like an underwater bloodhound. God only knows how he does it, but he can perform miracles… and we need that here.” He paused and continued, “We’ll still need to shrink the search area, though. Asking him to search an area that size is almost planning for failure. Hell, my Navy can’t do it in nineteen-days time; it would take almost that long to redirect and reposition our forces,”

“I’ve got an idea,” said Dover, interrupting the seemingly hopeless interchange. “Can we revisit the salvaged Sea Ray? Is it still in your marina? I saw a waterlogged GPS on the helm’s dash. It could hold waypoints of Fogner’s trip.” It was a long shot, knowing that electronics and salt water don’t mix, but it was better than anything they had so far.

She evaluated his proposition at some length, then summarized her doubts. “How can we do that? That boat’s so hot we can only spend minutes aboard before we reach saturation. Remember: radiation is additive. The dosage doesn’t restart each day, but accumulates over hours, days, and weeks. We’ll have to have a rotating crew for the inspection.”

Dover retorted, “We’ll do a grab-and-go. I’ll can get a few radiation suits from the San Onofre plant. Since its decommissioning, there are several NBC, or Bunny, suits standing idle. My friend there, the one that supplied us with the San Onofre special, has offered them for our use in nuclear emergencies. They cost over two-thousand dollars apiece; makes it difficult to justify for our inventory. It’s just a loan. They won’t mind.”

With little else to go on, she examined her options and found none. Her map on the wall showed it all. He did have a valid point about the GPS post-mortem; what could it hurt if they had the proper protection for an extended de-installation. It could yield invaluable information about the bomb’s whereabouts.

“Okay, Ensign, do it. I’ll find a volunteer deputy or two and have them ready by tomorrow. When can you get these ‘Bunny’ suits?”

“I’m released to your command until this nightmare is over. I’ll get two suits on my way home tonight and be at the salvage harbor, wearing one, at eight a.m. tomorrow. My specialty is marine electronics so I’ll head the operation… if you don’t mind.”

Pleased that anyone would throw a lifesaver her way, feeling she was sinking below the water line, she accepted his offer. “Sure, Ensign, that would be great.”

“I’m in, too,” Strong said, raising his hand. “I’m an electrical engineer, familiar with the design and firmware in most GPS units. Recovering positional data also happens to be one of my specialties, especially if it’s encrypted. I’m pretty sure I can help. Okay, Ensign?”

She smiled, referred to Dover for his consent, and waited.

“Sure, Agent Strong. Why not? I’d be glad to have you on board. See you at eight?”

“You bet. Do you have a map how to get there?”

“I’ll draw you one. Hold a minute.”

Dover scribbled on a small pad, tore off the page, and handed it to him. “Well, I gotta go, folks. Got a hot date tonight.” He rose to leave the room then looked back at Poole. “Meeting tomorrow?”

“I think not, Ensign. You’ll be out with Agent Strong most of the day, and we’re locked up until you report back in. We’ll take tomorrow off and meet here on Wednesday, same time. Don’t be surprised, though, if I show up at the marina. Yours and Keller’s SWAT report are pivotal elements in this case right now. Anybody else have a comment or question before we close up for the day?”

Silence.

“No? Then have a great day off tomorrow, you deserve it, and if you need anything, call Sheriff Victor; I keep him abreast of everything by email, encrypted of course.” Quietly the taskforce filed from the room leaving her alone in silence.

Drawing a deep breath, she exhaled, shuffled the papers together on the table, and closed her laptop. The time was approaching six o’clock and she was drained. At least things were moving again, she thought. Unproductive days were not in her vocabulary. She knew that if she failed in her task, there would be no reprimand, no bad grade, no demotion, just ten million souls frying in microseconds, without warning. All on her hands. Failure was truly not an option.

As she closed the door to her lab, she decided to stop on the way home and grab a few burgers, one for her, and one for her longtime companion, Pupski. He loved hamburgers. She knew he’d be waiting with a wagging tail.