The Island of Dragons (Rockpools Book 4)

by Gregg Dunnett

  I nod. I can see where this is going. But also that James is a bit left behind.

  “Hey! What? What am I missing here?”

  So I turn to him and explain. “Normally you wouldn’t be able to just access someone’s DNS via a simple query. You’d need to run port scans against a DNS range, and find it that way. But if it’s open then the whole thing is open. You can’t send private emails, they may as well be left on a public message board.”

  “Or put on Twitter,” Oscar continues. And he’s right.

  “What?” James says again.

  “I didn’t know you knew this stuff, Billy?” Oscar says. And I shrug. “I don’t really, I’m not an expert.”

  Oscar gives me a sly grin.

  “Do you wanna just maybe carry on with the explanation?” James tells him, and he does.

  “OK. Bottom line is. Once I was in I ran a series of keyword searches, on all the company emails, around the times when you got the reports of the dead fish on the beach. I wanted to see if anyone was reporting any problems at the site, anything that might have caused it. You’d be amazed, just how stupid some people are, they still think email is private.”

  “And?” I lean forward. I didn’t think of doing this. I mean I wouldn’t do it anyway, it’s completely illegal, but maybe if it had occurred to me. I just didn’t imagine the DNS would be listed.

  “What did you find?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nearly nothing. Except this.” He stops and takes out a printout from the pocket of his jacket. It’s an email from a woman named Claire Watson. I scan read it, and it seems to be a report of yields from the Lornea Island site. There’s one bit where someone has used a highlighter to turn some words yellow:

  Our issue we’ve discussed on Sqrbt. I’ll update there.

  “What’s Sqrbt?”

  “I don’t know,” Oscar says, “But Squarebot is a private end-to-end encrypted company communications system. So I’d guess it’s a reference to that.”

  I hand it back. It figures, any sensible company these days isn’t going to discuss sensitive matters on email. That’s why platforms like Squarebot exist.

  “I don’t see the point.”

  “The point is,” James interrupts us. “They’re not using email. They have an issue, but it’s too sensitive to talk about. And it’s ongoing.” He looks at Oscar. “We reckon it’s a leak.”

  “Why?”

  “Your dead fish. It’s either a leak or they’re dumping. And as much as I don’t trust a single chemical company, I don’t think Fonchem would dump. Not with Lily’s dad’s knowledge anyway.”

  “Well,” I start, but then I stop talking. I’d already assumed it must be a leak. Or it could be a leak – if it’s not just the result of an onshore gale that whipped up enough waves to wash some animals ashore, that can happen.

  “Billy, are you done eating?” James asks now. And when I say I am, he goes on.

  “Can you clear the table. I’ve got a map I want to show you.”

  So I help by grabbing the big pot and taking it through to the kitchen. I go to rinse it in the sink, but James tells me not to worry, he’ll do it later, so I just dump it on the side instead. Then I go back through to the other room, where now there’s a giant blueprint unrolled on the table.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s the building plans for the Fonchem site. The current one – you can see where they want to extend down here.” I lean in and look. It’s interesting to me, because on Google Earth it’s all blurred out – companies can request to do this and sometimes Google says yes, if they accept that there’s a security risk for publishing accurate maps. I’ve no idea really what I’m looking at though. It’s just a series of buildings, and pipelines, and storage areas. I turn to James and look.

  “The Fonchem Lornea Island site makes resins, mostly, and you need a lot of heat to do that. So we reckon, if there’s a leak somewhere, you’d be able to see it, if you could see heat.”

  Now they both look up from the map and stare at me, in this really weird, expectant way. It makes me feel uncomfortable, the way they’re both looking at me. But then I understand what they’re getting at.

  “Infrared?”

  James nods, smiling.

  “Fitted onto a drone?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Fly it over there and…”

  “That’s right. We figure if we can get images – actual pictures showing there’s a leak from the current facility – they’ll be forced to fix it. But more importantly, there’s no chance they’ll get the go ahead for the site extension.”

  “Even better, Lily doesn’t have to find out we had anything to do with it.” Oscar finishes.

  Maybe I should explain, because it’s both really simple, what they’re suggesting, but also – well – audacious, I suppose. Possibly illegal, I’m not sure – I’d have to check if there are any restrictions of drone flying in that area. You see, all objects emit infrared energy, known as a heat signature. An infrared camera (they’re also called thermal-imaging cameras) detects and measures the infrared energy of objects. The camera converts that infrared data into an electronic image that shows the apparent surface temperature of the object being measured. So something that’s cold, like a pipeline, would show as dark, you’d hardly see it. But a leak – a leak of something hot – would show up bright white. You wouldn’t be able to miss it.

  “Have you got an infrared camera?”

  “No,” James says. “We don’t even have a drone, or know how to fly one, but you mentioned…”

  “In Australia,” I remember, I told them when we first met. “I used them to monitor white sharks – and I knew how to fly them, because I have one at home.”

  “Exactly.” James says. “So we thought you might want to join in the fun.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  I probably shouldn’t, but I get a bit carried away by it all. It’s kind of exciting to be doing something like this. More exciting than my course anyway – I do hope that gets a bit more challenging next semester. I do feel bad about not telling Lily of course, but I can’t tell her – James is right about that, anytime I mention her family’s business she’s touchy about it. And obviously I don’t tell anyone else, and that includes Eric. Apparently Oscar hasn’t even told Jennifer.

  There’s the problem of how to get there. I assumed at first we would just go in James’ car, but when I suggested that he gave me a look like he couldn’t believe how naive I was – I forget how they’re much more experienced at this sort of thing. So Oscar asks me if I can handle booking a rental car, and then the ferry. I think it was a bit of a test. And while it might sound easy, it’s not as straightforward as you might think. Even if I wanted to rent the car in my name, I couldn’t because I’m too young. But obviously I don’t want to do it in my name because that would mean leaving a super-obvious trail. Oscar told me he could help me get fake documents together, but I didn’t need help because I asked my dark web contacts to source them for me.

  I had a bit of fun with the name, I choose Hans Hass. That’s a joke, he’s a really famous marine biologist who came up with something called the Energon theory. It says everything boils down to the transfer of energy, which implies there can be no right or wrong. So even though what we’re doing is a little bit illegal, that doesn’t make it the wrong thing to do, because there is no right or wrong. I tried to explain this to James and Oscar, but I don’t think they really appreciated it.

  I’m surprised how fast it all moves though. I mean, I understand that we have to get the evidence before the public meeting on Fonchem’s expansion. But it still seems a bit rushed.

  We meet at James’ again to go through the plan. I’ll pick up the car – I might have to show my fake documentation, but it’s more likely I’ll just need to show the email receipt that I’ve paid. And James is going to repay me when we get back – they have a little fund set aside for covering the c
osts of their operations. Once I’ve got it, I’ll take it onto the Lornea Island ferry. Oscar and James are on the same boat, booked on separately as foot passengers. I don’t know what names they’ve used – we’re going to pretend we don’t know each other, wherever there’s any chance of us being on CCTV. Then, once we get there, I’ll pick them up just outside the ferry terminal. We’ll drive to my house to pick up my drone, and then we have to wait until it gets dark, which will make the images clearer. From there we’ll monitor the site, and come back on the morning ferry.

  I’m excited. It’s going to be fun.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  I’ve been on the ferry quite a few times before, but never under a false name. It’s a really weird feeling. I walk around as Hans Hass, then buy myself a coffee and an actual newspaper in the café – because that’s what someone called Hans would do. And I sit reading. I feel sure that Hans Hass would have been a smoker, but obviously you can’t smoke indoors these days, so I make do with a slice of cake. I see James, while I’m eating it, and he makes eye contact for a second, but other than that we pretend we don’t know each other. I don’t see Oscar at all.

  As the ferry docks, the drivers have to go back to their cars, so I line up, and then wait until the bow doors open, and slowly we drive off. It’s weird to be back on Lornea. Weird but nice. I like it this time of year, when it’s empty and cold.

  I see James and Oscar just past the entrance to the ferry terminal, and slow down to pick them up. They’ve both got big backpacks on – part of their disguise as foot passengers, and they fill up the trunk. Then we drive south, down through Newlea, and out towards Silverlea. This is the trickiest part of the plan. I just have to hope Dad’s not home, so I can go in and grab the drone, without being spotted. If he does see me, well it doesn’t matter, but it’s going to be a bit hard to explain. I don’t have a plan for how to handle this until I actually arrive in Littlelea, and then – instead of driving right up to the house, I park on the road a minute away. I tell James and Oscar to wait for me. Then I cut through to the cliff path, and run along that until I can see the house. No truck, I’m in luck.

  I have my key, so I let myself in, and run up to my bedroom. It’s the first time I’ve been back since going to college, and it’s strange to be back, to see the bed I’ve slept in since I was just a little boy. It makes me think about Lily. How I’m not little any more. How I’m a man now. It almost makes me think about what I’m really doing here, and whether it’s such a great idea after all – but I don’t have time, not with James and Oscar waiting in the car. So instead I grab the drone and quickly check it over. The battery won’t be fully charged, but I can give it a boost from the socket in the car. I chuck it all in my bag and get out of there.

  Then we drive back the way we came, but this time past the ferry terminal in Goldhaven and right up to the northernmost tip of the island, where the Fonchem site is. We decide to wait until it gets dark. It’s unlikely there’ll be anyone around, especially this time of year, but there might be someone walking their dog, around the footpaths that surround the fence, so it makes sense to be cautious. But then it’s too cold waiting in the car, so we drive away again, and wait in a bar, where we get some food. There’s a TV on in the corner, and it says it’s going to snow. I hope not. That could be a problem, for the drone I mean.

  We don’t talk much as we wait, there’s a ball game on the TV, and James and Oscar watch that, while I get on with converting the camera on the drone to infrared. I had to buy a kit to do it, and it was $350, but James said he’d put it on his credit card. It’s pretty simple, so when I’ve done that I do a little research on my phone on how to set the drone up to fly in the snow. I find out you can do it, but it’s not exactly recommended. There’s a risk that the batteries will lose voltage, which means the drone will crash, or you could get moisture in the electrics, or an ice buildup on the body of the drone, or even the rotors. And if any of that happens it could crash as well. I explain all this to James, but he seems more concerned that we maintain the pretense that none of us know each other.

  It’s not fun, by the way. I thought it was going to be fun, but now we’re actually here, James and Oscar are both quiet, and very serious, and I’m not enjoying myself at all. I think I liked the idea of doing this a lot more than actually doing it. But I’m here now, so I’ll finish what we’ve started. But after that I’m not going to do any more of James’ plans.

  At eleven we get back in the car, and drive back to the site. It’s already started snowing now, big fat flakes that are lit up by the headlights and flutter like moths. The road hasn’t been treated, and hardly any other cars have come this way, so we have to go carefully to avoid skidding off, but at least it’s flat up here in the north of the island, so we don’t get stuck. We leave the car half-hidden behind some bushes, and walk up to the fence, there’s a sign on the outside warning of security cameras, and CCTV and it makes me shiver. Or that could be the cold. Then I go back to the car to get set up.

  First I check the voltage of the batteries. They’re both at 100%, and I’ve kept them warm while we drove here by sitting on them. I don’t want to let them get cold now, so I slip them in my pocket. At the same time I take a roll of gaffer tape and use it to cover up all the vents on the drone’s body. That should keep the snow out. I fit the infrared camera, and check it’s communicating properly with my phone. Then I sweep the snow off the roof of the car, I’ll use that as a launch pad – so the exhaust from the rotors doesn’t blow up a blizzard the moment I try to take off. Finally I fit the drone batteries, and I’m ready to go. James and Oscar stand around looking nervous.

  I have the drone set up so I can see what the camera sees in real time, on the screen on my phone, which is mounted on the drone’s controller. It’s getting covered in snow, and my hands are freezing, but I can see clearly enough. I put it on the roof, and step back, then push the throttle. I don’t go too hard, like it said on the instructions for flying in the snow, because they cause the battery voltage drop. A second later, there’s the buzz of the motors, and I take off, hovering at head height.

  “It works!” I say, out loud. It’s the first thing any of us have said in a long while. James and Oscar are right beside me now, looking at the camera. I spin the drone around, so the infrared camera is pointing at us, and you see the three human heat signatures, mostly on our hands and faces, and the air where we’re breathing out. The hood of the car is also a deep red, from the heat of the engine block underneath. But everything else is black.

  I push the drone higher, up to the height of the trees that are sheltering us, forlorn and leafless, and then higher, so that I’m right up in the clear air. Only it’s not clear, the snow is really heavy, and you can see the flakes running past the camera, crazy thick. There’s a lag in controlling, which I’ve never seen before. And because I don’t have the normal camera feeding back to the screen, it’s super hard to control where I am, or where I’m supposed to be going.

  “What’s it doing?” James asks.

  “I don’t know.” I reply. I don’t want to say this, but it’s getting pretty obvious. “I don’t know if this is going to work.”

  I covered up the lights on the drone body, so although we can hear it, hovering somewhere above us, we can’t see it. And I can’t see where it is from the screen either. There’s a button I can press that will bring it home though, so I try to push it a bit further, aiming it towards what I think is the Fonchem compound, before shaking my head.

  “This is hopeless. I can’t see anything with the snow.” I try to gain altitude, but the drone won’t do it. I press the home button.

  “I’m bringing it back.”

  For a few seconds there’s silence, total silence, as the snow absorbs all sound. Then we hear the burr of the rotors again, and they grow louder, until the body of the drone suddenly appears at head height in front of me. Carefully I catch it, and power down the motors.

  “I can’t see where
I’m going with just the infrared camera,” I say. “If it wasn’t so cold I could fit a second camera, and use that to steer from. But in this temperature, the drone wouldn’t get off the ground.” I’m gutted. Despite how I’m not enjoying this, we still came to do a job, and I’m disappointed that it’s not going to work. Again though, James’ mood doesn’t seem to match mine, which I don’t understand. He seems quite cheerful about this.

  “Never mind Billy. We’ve got a plan B.”

  “What?”

  “Forget the drone. Pack it away, but grab the camera. And meet us at the fence.” And then he and Oscar trek off through the snow, where I can’t see what they’re doing.

  I do what he says. I unbolt the camera, and put all the drone equipment back in the box. I’ll have to dry it off properly before I next use it. I wonder if I should take it back with me to college, or leave it at home. Both are a bit problematic – if I take it, Dad might wonder why it’s not in my bedroom, and if I leave it there, I’ll have to pack it away where it was, and it might not dry properly, which could damage it. I’m still pondering this when I shut the car and follow James’ and Oscar’s footprints towards the fence. And when I get there, I’m stunned.

  There’s a large hole in the fence, big enough to crawl through. You wouldn’t even need to crawl.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Breaking in. We can still do this.” James replies. His voice is calm.

  “What? But this wasn’t the plan.”

  “Plans change Billy.” Oscar says. His voice is almost menacing. He turns away from me and starts packing the tools he’s used back into his bag.

  “Is that an angle grinder?” I spy what he’s holding, a battery-operated power tool. Heavy and bulky. “Why did you bring that?”

  “Billy,” James ignores my question, and he sounds different suddenly to how he’s been all evening. Now he sounds like he did when we were at his apartment, planning this. I realize there’s two James’ the one I first met, who’s arrogant and aloof, and another one, who’s charming and friendly – the one who wants you to do things for him.