The helicopter approached the ship that towed the Mississippi. It looked larger than a tugboat. More like an icebreaker, retrofitted for another purpose – although what, no one could guess simply by looking at her. The vessel was sky blue with a grey deck. On the side of its hull were the words, Maria Helena. And below them were the words, Deep Sea Projects. It had a large, raised bridge located towards mid ship, and an entirely flat stern. A single helicopter stood proudly strapped into the helipad. She had no idea what type of helicopter and nor did she care. Behind it, a marking with the letter H showed that it was capable of supporting two helicopters.
All in all, she summed up that the vessel was too proud to be an oversized tugboat and too modest to be a billionaire’s plaything. Of course, she already knew who owned the vessel. Its purpose had been quite intentionally left undisclosed by the Secretary of Defense herself. Whatever projects Sam Reilly was involved in, as well as the crew he employed, was wrapped in a dark shroud of secrecy, and a sort of unspoken immunity from government observation. She could have guessed that beneath its tugboat appearance, the Maria Helena boasted some of the most state of the art underwater equipment in the world.
The helicopter came into land. As its rotor blades came to settle and she noticed a young man waiting at the entrance to the main bridge. He wore a white V-neck shirt, cargo pants and no shoes. One glance told her that this man was athletic and had spent his life outdoors. He wore a happy-go-lucky grin that she recognized instantly.
He was the hero who was going to give her the Presidency.
Chapter Sixty Eight
Sam watched her step out of the helicopter. She was tall, but not overtly so. Maybe five-ten or six foot. Slim without being underweight. She wore a plain blue polo shirt and denim jeans over leather boots. A small button of the American flag over her right breast. It gave her the down to earth appearance of someone out to get a job done, rather than competing for the position of Presidency.
She approached him directly. There was a confidence in her stride. Her posture upright and energetic. Sam figured she could have been in the military or at least spent time performing some outside tasks which required her to maintain her physique. Definitely not a bureaucrat or a pen pusher, he decided. Sam couldn’t remember much about her background. He’d intentionally ignored much of the news and hype regarding the primaries. As far as he was concerned, until the parties had picked their nominees, the candidates were wasting his and their time, when everyone had their own jobs to do.
“Mr. Reilly?” she asked, offering her hand. “I’m Senator Vanessa Croft.”
He took it. She had a firm handshake, but not aggressively strong. “Yes, Ma’am. Welcome aboard.”
“Thank you. I’m pleased to meet you. I believe I, along with the American people, owe you a great debt of gratitude. You risked your life for the environment. Is there anything I can offer you in return?”
Sam smiled. “You’re welcome, but there’s nothing you can offer me that I don’t already have. I’m just thankful we got lucky and that we didn’t have another terrible oil disaster that wrecked our coastline.”
“You should be recognized and rewarded for your efforts.”
“Forget it. The owners accepted Lloyds Open Form, which means that I’m entitled to a percentage of the value of the vessel and all that she was carrying. It just so happens she was carrying nearly two million barrels of crude oil. Given she was on fire, and about to lose her entire hold, I’ll be applying for at least 50% of her value. I’ll be well compensated.”
“I know who you are Sam Reilly, that sort of money means nothing to you. You did it because you wanted to save the environment and I’m here to commend you for that.”
Sam smiled again. So she’s met my father. He probably paid into her campaign coffers. “Come with me to the Mission Room and I’ll brief you on these rogue waves. I’m sure that’s a lot more important to you than making a show about a hero.”
In the Mission Room, Sam pulled a chair out for her, but she refused it. Instead she chose to stand while she examined a photo of a racing yacht under sail. The yacht was heeled hard to one side and on the other were several men and two young boys.
“This must have been your father. He looks to have been a similar age to you now. You and he look very much alike at a similar age. And that means one of these boys is a young Sam Reilly. The other must be your brother.” She stopped talking as she watched his face. “I’m so sorry. I forgot your family tragedy.”
Sam’s brother, Danny, had lost his life trying to protect him during a Sydney to Hobart race when they were still boys. Sam had spent a long time trying to run away from the ocean, and when he finally worked out that it was impossible, he spent the next years trying to recreate the events of that night – somehow in search of an answer, why Danny had lost his life and he didn’t.
“It’s all right. It was an accident. We were both young, and overconfident. My brother died trying to keep me safe. He was a better man than I ever was, and I’ve spent every day since then trying to live up to the man he should have had the opportunity to grow into.”
“I think he would be proud of who you are.” She stopped smiling for the first time since she’d arrived. She looked at the next photo, her expression pensive. “I’ve lost someone close to me. My child. It changes a person. Gives them the opportunity to be better than they ever could have, had they been given the life they wanted. Had they been normal. Do you understand what I mean?”
“I do, Ma’am.” And Sam did. He had taken risks to achieve things that he never would have if his brother was still alive. Danny’s death had changed him in ways that couldn’t be measured. He saw himself as having a higher purpose than his own immediate gratification.
She turned to face him. “Now, this is the fifth rogue wave we’ve had in the past five weeks. I believe you were about to tell me why this supposedly exceedingly rare event keeps on sinking our ships.”
Chapter Sixty Nine
In the mission room of the Maria Helena, Sam went through the tedious process of explaining all the events leading up to his current assessment of the suddenly frequent rogue waves. Starting from his father’s complaint that he’d lost three cargo ships in a month, to the loss of his old high school friend, Luke Eldridge. He told her about the Antiqui Nautae and the evidence that they once used the Bimini Road to create large and unnatural waves which they then used to target western vessels during the seventeenth century.
She paused for a few seconds. Maybe ten. She had worked in politics for the past eight years, but before that she was a scientist. Vanessa knew how to take in complex information and separate the relevant parts from the meaningless. Then she looked up. “You think the phosphorescent plankton has been genetically modified to create moving water, which then strikes the Bimini Road causing it to increase in height and form a perfectly vertical rogue wave?”
“No.” Sam’s response was immediate. “Plankton are drifters by definition, meaning they require the movement of seawater to bring nutrients to them or them to nutrients. But I am certain they are involved in the process. Maybe they attract larger creatures that then travel across the Bimini Road creating the movement required to create the wave, under already chaotic swells.”
“That’s seems pretty farfetched to me.”
Sam tapped on the desk. “Me too. Like I said, all I know, is that the story of an amazingly bright phosphorescence prior and during the rogue wave has been described by the captain of each vessel struck by a rogue wave in the past six weeks.”
“Bioluminescent plankton don’t always glow. It takes energy to make the chemicals that allow them to glow. It would be a waste of that energy to glow during the daytime, just like you would be wasting batteries if you used a flashlight on a sunny day. It’s normally used as a response to a predator. In theory, the light goes on, illuminating the larger predator, which then become the prey.”
“So, the question is. If the bioluminescent plankton is fr
ightened – where is its predator?”
“Exactly.” She smiled, her most conceited politician’s smile. “Of course, I don’t even care who its predator was. What I want is stop these rogue waves, and from what you’re telling me, it seems pretty simple – we just destroy the Bimini Road.”
Sam grinned. He liked action instead of rhetoric and was surprised to find it from a politician. “Yes.”
“Some will see it as a terrible loss to the history of the region, but I’m far more concerned about the living right now.”
“I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I arranged for a barge to leave Florida yesterday. On it were three massive concrete blocks. Large enough to act as a break wall at the point of the Bimini Road. It will never produce a rogue wave again.”
She smiled politely at him. “Well Mr. Reilly, I can see that you’ve got this situation under control. I’ll leave you to it. I’m going off to make a press statement and get the most out of this story for my campaign, while you go and save the day in secret.”
“Thank you Ma’am.” Sam was glad to get rid of her. There were some things he had to do to solve this current problem that would require delicate handling or years’ worth of red tape. And they didn’t have years. The destruction of Bimini Road wasn’t technically his to approve. It was inside the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas government. And that would take years to get approved. He knew the less his own government was aware, the better. The best type of plausible deniability, is the kind that governments really don’t know about.
She turned, about to leave.
Sam stood up to see her out. “By the way, you got here very fast.” It was almost an accusation.
She smiled. Like all politicians, she had the answer prepared before anyone had developed the question. “Yes, I was on my way to speak in Miami – ironically, I was supposed to be giving a speech about problems with the oil industry.”
“I guess you’ll be making that same speech, now with the backdrop of some dead marine animals, smothered by leaked oil.”
“Is it wrong to use the vivid imagery of a near disaster to highlight a message to the American people?”
“It depends. What’s the message?”
“That we need to invest in future technologies and energy sources if we’re to survive on this planet.”
“Is that what the American government’s doing?” It was the second time he’d confronted her position in a matter of minutes.
She smiled. Aware of his complaints about the government’s stance on global warming, and alternative energy sources. “It is if I become the next President of the United States of America.”
Sam was about to give his opinion, which he rarely did on politics.
Instead, Elise walked into the Mission Room. “Sam, Veyron just put the sample of the glowing seawater under a microscope. You’re both going to need to see this.”
Chapter Seventy
Sam followed Elise down three flights of stairs into the aft hold of the Maria Helena, where their science lab was positioned. Neither he nor Senator Croft spoke. They both simply followed. The room was large. Approximately twenty feet wide by thirty long. At the center stood a series of rectangular tables at a height comfortable for work while standing. There were no chairs in the room. On the tables were seven microscopes with a number of slides lined up and three Petri dishes. One laptop was opened and in the process of calculating something – the timer showed another eleven minutes remaining. Sam recognized it as Elise’s laptop.
Veyron ignored them as they approached. His right eye firmly fixed to the end of a microscope. His left hand tapping at the table. The rest of him rigid as though paralyzed. Sam knew that look. He’d seen it only once before – when he’d agreed to sacrifice his most prized submarine to save the lives of over a thousand Mexican workers.
Extracting his eye for a moment to fit a new slide under the microscope, Veyron noticed Sam and Senator Croft had walked in. His jaw was slightly clenched, but otherwise it could have been any other day at work. Sam had learned long ago that Veyron was often hard to read and more accustomed to relationships with his machines than the other members of the Maria Helena. Sam hoped that he’d misread Veyron’s stance today.
His initial impression was confirmed a moment later. Veyron ignored any pleasantries or acknowledgement of their arrival and simply started with their problem.
Veyron placed a new slide under the microscope. “Have a look what some idiot’s created! I’d say it’s a beautiful work of engineering, if it wasn’t so completely lethal.”
Sam bent over so that he could look into the eye of the microscope. With his right hand he adjusted the lens into focus.
“So it is phytoplankton,” Sam said with an uneasy enthusiasm. “There are two main types of phytoplankton, or algae that use photosynthesis to grow – dinoflagellates and diatoms.” Sam continued to explain, drawing on his experience in marine biology, so that they were all on the same page. “Dinoflagellates use a whip-like tail, or flagella, to move through the water and their bodies are covered with complex shells. Diatoms also have shells, but they are made of a different substance and their structure is rigid and made of interlocking parts. Diatoms do not rely on flagella to move through the water and instead rely on ocean currents to travel through the water.”
Vanessa lost her façade of patient control. “Scientists believe the Noctiluca flashes to startle or scare away its predators. The bioluminescence might also attract bigger predators to eat Noctiluca’s predators. We’ve already been through this, what’s the new discovery.”
Sam sighed. “I’m still looking. They look normal.”
“Do they? How many flagella do you see?” Veyron asked.
Sam increased the magnification and tried to focus on a single dinoflagellate. He then counted. “Holy shit, there’s eight!”
Veyron placed his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Yes.”
“So we’re looking at dinoflagellates – with eight flagella for propulsion?”
“That’s correct,” Veyron confirmed.
Vanessa pointed out what everyone in the room was thinking. “They’ve been genetically modified for faster movement and propulsion.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Veyron replied. “But nowhere near fast enough to create a rogue wave. Instead, I have a theory that Elise confirmed through computer modelling.”
“Well, don’t leave me in suspense,” Vanessa said.
“These dinoflagellates use their eight flagella to bind and join with others. They’re climbing.”
“Climbing?” she asked.
“Picture this – a hundred or two hundred foot wall of water and plankton, bound in a solid state.” Veyron waited long enough for her to close her eyes and imagine it.”
Vanessa closed her eyes. “Okay, got it.”
“Now, imagine if the plankton let go of each other simultaneously at one side of the wall, while the back of the wall maintained its structural integrity.”
“They could specifically target the direction of the movement of seawater.”
“Exactly. But even this alone would only cause one hell of a splash. Whoever designed these things would still need the Bimini Road to form the shape of the Rogue Wave.”
“Okay, so Sam here tells me that he’s arranged to block the Bimini Road permanently, which should stop this from being anyone’s problem. Would you agree, Veyron?”
Veyron ignored her question. “I’m not finished with the show yet.” He took a prefilled syringe and injected a single microliter, or one thousandth of a milliliter, onto the slide. “Now watch them grow, Sam.”
“Phytoplankton is renowned for its ability to procreate given the right conditions, those being warmth, sunlight, and nutrients. As a single celled organism, it multiplies through cellular division. Breaking into two cells every twenty-four to forty-eight hours, it can rapidly cover miles of seawater within weeks.”
“Just watch,” Veyron said.
Sam t
ook a deep breath. “Oh, shit. We have a problem, don’t we?”
Chapter Seventy One
The otherwise dormant dinoflagellate cells became alive. Cellular division started immediately. Only they weren’t dividing every twenty-four to forty-eight hours. They were dividing fast, very fast. He couldn’t even begin to calculate how fast.
“That’s very quick, isn’t it?” he said.
Elise’s computer stopped trying to compute the calculation. “My computer tells me these are multiplying at a rate of one every 4 minutes.”
“That couldn’t possibly be right,” Sam said.
“Not naturally anyway,” Veyron agreed. “No, someone has intentionally gone into the DNA and changed the code.”
“Why would someone want to speed up evolution?”
“It’s a faster way of seeing an organism’s response to an external stimuli.” Senator Croft answered. “Before politics I was an environmental scientist. We would often use mice, whose life-expectancy is substantially shorter than ours, to understand their physiological response over the course of many generations. That way, we could get results in five years that would take us more like five hundred if we were looking at humans.”
“Okay, so whoever did this wanted to increase the speed of the plankton’s evolutionary cycle, but to study what?” Sam said.
Senator Croft stood next to him. “May I?”
“Sure, have a look. See what you can make of it.”
“Perhaps they simply wanted to mass produce the genetically modified creatures so that they could build a rogue wave?” Vanessa suggested.
“That’s what we thought at first,” Veyron replied. “Unfortunately, the reason is much more dangerous. You were right about one thing. They were trying to speed up evolution, but not for the reason you both assume.”
Rogue Wave Page 17
