Deadly Echoes

by Philip Donlay

  Floating containment booms encircled the North Star. Lauren counted two massive tugboats, plus three other support vessels poised to react to an oil spill. Inside the boom, a service ship was connected to the tanker by multiple hoses, making her wonder if they’d already began pumping oil off the tanker. Lauren watched as Janie swung around the superstructure and then brought the helicopter in until its skids kissed the metal in the exact center of the landing pad.

  “Nice landing,” Martinson said.

  “Piece of cake when the ship’s standing still,” Janie replied, giving Lauren and the others the signal they could open the doors.

  Lauren turned to Janie. “My plan is to get Donovan and Buck off this ship and head back to Anchorage.”

  “The Coast Guard said I can wait here until the next inbound chopper arrives, then I have to leave. I can loiter in the area for a little while, but then I might have to go to Valdez and refuel.”

  “Do whatever you need to do, but let’s try and cooperate with the authorities,” Lauren said, happy to be leaving the chopper. Even though Janie had tried to clean it up, Erica’s bloodstains were still visible in the aft cabin. Lauren still hadn’t taken the time to analyze her emotions at the sight of Donovan coming to her rescue the way he did. She cleared her head and stepped off the helicopter onto the deck of the North Star, as did the three other passengers. Besides Agent Martinson were Agents Boswell and Williams, both forensic-evidence specialists sent to collect and document as much of the crime scene as they could. Martinson looked around until she spotted what she was looking for, and then pointed toward several shell casings lying against the deck edging. Agent Boswell, mindful of the rotor wash, bagged the evidence, and then the four of them were escorted from under the spinning blades by a Coast Guard seaman.

  “Follow me,” the seaman said above the noise of the helicopter. “I do need to point out that the situation onboard is highly unstable. If the abandon ship order is given, you are to meet me at the starboard lifeboat station. See the enclosed orange lifeboat up there with the small round portholes? That’s ours. It’ll keep us alive in any kind of sea state—just don’t be late.”

  Lauren took in the view from deck level. The lifeboat seemed tiny against the enormity of the ship. The size of the North Star was almost overwhelming, and she knew the bulk of the one-thousand-foot-long supertanker lay underwater. Looking aft, six stories up from the deck were the row of windows that marked the bridge. Another level higher was the small radar stanchion where Buck and Jason had boarded. The small entourage fell in behind the Coast Guard crewman and headed for the bridge.

  “I understand there are victims in two different locations?” Martinson asked the crewman.

  “Yes, the mess hall and the bridge.”

  Martinson turned to Boswell. “You start in the mess hall. I want lots of pictures. We’ll go to the bridge and join you as soon as we can.”

  As they reached the bridge superstructure, Boswell peeled off. Lauren, Agent Martinson, and Agent Williams began the trek up the stairs. They walked onto the bridge directly into the middle of what looked like an intense discussion. Lauren spotted her husband standing next to Buck and a Coast Guard officer. Two other men were squared off, the heavier man was jabbing his finger onto the chart table as if to make his point.

  “Gentleman, I’m FBI Special Agent Martinson.” She held up her credentials and instantly silenced the room. “Captain Hughes, I’m well aware that this is your ship, but this is a crime scene, specifically an FBI crime scene, and I’ll need you to move this meeting somewhere else so my technician can process the scene.”

  “Agent Martinson, I’m Tim Gunnison, I’m with SERVS, and for the moment I’m in charge of this situation, and with all due respect, there’s a bigger crime in progress here.” Gunnison held out a stack of 8 x 10 color photos. “These are pictures my divers took of the ruptured hull of this tanker. We have a full-blown crisis on our hands and every warning light and bell is located on this bridge. We need to know the second things start to go from bad to worse.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Gunnison,” Agent Martinson replied, then turned to the man across from him. “Then you must be the Alyeska representative?”

  “Yes, ma’am, Larry Davis, and I’m going to have to insist we remain on the bridge as well as the technicians trying to repair the damage done to the electronics. We could lose this entire ship and a million barrels of oil if we don’t stay on top of this.”

  “All I want is for you gentleman to take your pictures and charts, and walk twenty feet over there to a place where there isn’t blood on the carpet and continue doing your jobs. Now, which one of you is Mr. Buckley?”

  “I am,” Buck said.

  “Mr. Buckley, I understand you witnessed this man’s death?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “I’ll expect a full statement.”

  “Of course.”

  Martinson turned to Donovan. “Then you must be Mr. Nash. I need a word with you, in private. Now.”

  Lauren gave him a subtle nod that he should go.

  “You too, Dr. McKenna, both of you, follow me. Mr. Buckley, don’t leave the bridge.”

  Martinson led the way up one flight of stairs and out onto the roof of the bridge. Above them were the disabled radar antennas. Lauren could see dozens of holes where Buck’s shotgun had disabled the motors. From this vantage point, Martinson stood silent, taking in the entire scene, the radar platform, SERVS ships, the containment booms, the Coast Guard vessels, and the enormous tanker itself. Donovan turned up his collar to fight off the brisk wind and light rain that was still falling.

  Martinson turned and faced them. “Everything I’ve seen and heard today feels like it’s almost the truth, but not quite. I think the two of you know far more than you’re telling me, and it’s time for the real story.”

  “I can’t think of anything I’ve missed.” Lauren offered.

  “Mr. Nash. You didn’t have a hunch. You were tipped off about this weren’t you? Whoever did this enticed you into action so they could film you and use it against you. You were badly outmaneuvered here today, and your organization took a serious hit—but that’s your problem, not mine. What I want, right now, is the entire truth or both of you and the rest of your little group will be facing serious obstruction charges. The director’s words, not mine. Now, who are these people and why are they doing this?”

  Martinson’s satellite phone rang, and she stepped away while she answered the call.

  “What in the hell is happening?” Donovan said as the FBI agent walked out of earshot. “What film? What don’t I know?”

  “The terrorists filmed aspects of what happened today,” Lauren said. “They spliced it together to make it appear as if Eco-Watch attacked then hijacked the tanker and released it to CNN. I turned over a copy of the recordings from the da Vinci. The images aren’t good enough for the FBI to identify Garrick, but Nikolett and some of the other men are clearly visible.”

  “So we’re running out of time.”

  “Buck fired some shots at them as they were boarding the helicopter. Looks like he might have hit someone. If that person shows up at a hospital or a morgue, it might shorten the time we have to find Garrick ourselves. In addition, the FBI is going to put someone on Erica, monitor her because she’s an eyewitness. First thing they’re going to want to know is who she is, and for me, that poses a huge problem. I’m supposed to have alerted the CIA if I knew of her whereabouts—and I didn’t.”

  “Damn it!” Donovan said.

  “She’s off the phone,” Lauren said evenly, but the anger that flared in her eyes couldn’t be missed. “If at all possible, let me do the talking. I know what lies I’ve already told.”

  “I’m running out of patience,” Martinson said. “The woman who was shot and flown to Anchorage has now disappeared. She received treatment for a superficial gunshot wound, not deemed serious. She also had two cracked ribs, presumably from the twenty-five-foot fall she too
k from the deck of this ship. After all of that, she managed to sneak out of the hospital. My agent at the hospital tells me that all of the information she gave admissions was false. Did she have help from you two? Tell me who she is and where she’s headed.

  “Erica?” Lauren shrugged. “I have no idea. As I explained earlier, she was a volunteer.”

  “We’ve identified the woman who shot her. She’s one of the assassins who tried to kill you in Paris.”

  “These people are nothing if not thorough,” Lauren continued. “They kill everyone who isn’t inside their inner circle. That’s why we know nothing about them, no descriptions, and no names. Nothing. These people are ghosts.”

  “So you really have no idea who’s doing this to you?”

  “Not a clue,” Lauren said, hating all the lies and half-truths. She was in Alaska, separated from her daughter, exposed to assassins, lying to federal agents about the woman her husband had slept with—hating every moment of what she’d become. The cost of living in Donovan’s world just kept getting higher and higher.

  “Special Agent Martinson!” A Coast Guardsman called from the top of the stairway. “Ma’am, you have a priority phone call on the bridge. Mr. Nash, the chopper that’s inbound from the Orion is twenty minutes out—we’re going to need your helicopter clear of the pad by then.”

  “We’ll pick this up later,” Martinson said over her shoulder as she headed for the bridge.

  “Wait,” Donovan stopped Lauren from following Martinson. “We need to talk.”

  “Why?” Lauren yanked her arm away. “So we can coordinate the rest of the lies we’re going to tell? Maybe sometime you can fill me in on you leaping from a helicopter to an abandoned ship. Did that involve a woman as well?”

  “It’s about Captain Flemming. I know him. He was on the advisory board that oversaw the design of the Constellation class ships. We worked together for months. I can’t afford to run into him. He could recognize my voice. We need to go with Janie.”

  “The deceptions to protect the lies just keep coming, don’t they? You get to lie from here on out. I’m done.” As Lauren headed back to the bridge, she felt as if she were being squeezed in a vise, and everyone around her was taking turns tightening the screws.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Everyone was clustered around the chart table studying a set of photographs when Lauren and Donovan entered the bridge.

  “The pictures the divers took aren’t definitive,” Davis said to Gunnison. “One set of architects insist the hull shouldn’t rupture at low tide. Another group of marine engineers says, yes, it will. They’re telling us to hurry up and offload as much of the forward oil as we can and then to pull the tanker off at high tide. They say we’ll have a spill, but a smaller one and we can maintain full containment.”

  “Maybe,” Gunnison replied. “What if pulling the ship off the reef puts us in danger of capsizing the ship and leaking all of its oil?”

  “This is a nightmare.” Davis rubbed the whisker stubble on his face. “The risk of either one of us being wrong is the kiss of death for Prince William Sound and the oil business. Lawyers are already on jets—it’s a goddamn mess. No one wants to stick their neck out—they’re the only two solutions we have and they both suck.”

  “You’re wrong,” Lauren said as all eyes turned toward her. “There’s another solution.”

  “I’d like you to meet my wife,” Donovan said. “Dr. Lauren McKenna.”

  “With all due respect, Dr. McKenna,” Gunnison replied. “We have a combined eighty years of marine experience and there are no other options.”

  “Hang on a minute,” Buck said as he stopped studying the photographs. “Dr. McKenna has a Ph.D. from MIT and she consults for the Defense Intelligence Agency. I can promise you she’s the smartest person in this room. I, for one, want to hear what she has to say.”

  “Go on, then.” Gunnison replied.

  “We create a higher tide and float the ship off the reef, gently. More or less.”

  “Ma’am, only the good Lord can do that,” Gunnison said.

  “At the north end of Unakwik Inlet is the Meares Glacier. If we can coax a large enough section of the ice to calve into the bay, we’ll in effect create a controlled tsunami that will lift the hull free and sweep the ship out into deeper water.”

  “How would we do that exactly?” Davis asked. “Blow up the glacier?”

  “Yes,” Lauren replied. “We’d do a little math first, and use some precision detonation, but yeah, in the end, we’d blow up enough of the glacier to make our wave.”

  Everyone except Donovan and Buck paused and looked at each other, as if waiting for someone to say she was crazy. No one did.

  “Has something like this ever been done before?” Davis asked.

  “Of course not, not intentionally anyway,” Lauren replied. “Show me a chart that covers this area of Prince William Sound.”

  Buck selected the correct chart and laid it on top of the schematics of the ship.

  “Right here, Miners Lake,” Lauren pointed. “It’s all of, what, twelve miles away? This was the epicenter of the 1964 Alaskan earthquake that was measured at 9.2 on the Richter scale, the second strongest in recorded history. I can promise you that there was a hell of a wave that day, it killed people in Oregon and California. That inherent instability in the surrounding ground works in our favor. The Meares Glacier, which is up here, thanks to its proximity to the fault line, is riddled with fissures and crevices. Getting the explosives in the right position should be easy. If any of you have ever seen an explosion in an open-pit mine, they place precision charges into the ground, and then when it’s detonated the blast drops a measured slice of the mountain into rubble. Same principle, except what we’re doing is displacing water, which in turn has no place to go in the narrow fjord except out to sea, which is where we want it to go.”

  “Can you create a big enough wave?” Donovan asked, as he slowly moved toward the pile of glass where the photograph lay. He kept his eyes out the window as if he were picturing the wave Lauren was describing.

  “I flew over the glacier earlier this morning. It’s what, maybe two fifty, three hundred feet tall at the face?”

  “Yeah, that’s about right,” Captain Hughes replied.

  “Big chunks calve off all the time,” Lauren continued. “We know from history that the 1958 Lituya Bay tsunami in Southeast Alaska created a seventeen-hundred-foot wave after forty million cubic yards of earth slid into the water. We don’t want that big of a wave. We want one roughly twenty-five times smaller. At its edge, the Meares Glacier drops off into one hundred and eighty feet of water, that’s plenty of depth to get the kind of displacement needed.”

  “The biggest risk comes if the wave isn’t big enough and it moves the ship without lifting it up,” Buck said. “You’ll push it along the reef and, without a doubt, rupture the inner hull.”

  “Then, gentlemen,” Lauren said, “I suggest you make a big enough wave so that doesn’t happen.”

  “We’d like you to oversee this operation, if we decide to do it, that is,” Gunnison said.

  While all eyes were on Lauren, Donovan reached down, picked up the photograph, palmed it, and smoothly slipped it into his jacket pocket. When he looked up again, he was relieved to find that his move had gone unnoticed.

  “I’m more of a theoretical scientist.” Lauren held up her hands as if to slow Gunnison down. “You need real-world experts to make this happen. I might suggest, though, that you start the process immediately; you can always decide later whether or not to push the button.”

  “I agree,” Gunnison said emphatically. “I’m calling the CEO of Selkirk Mining. He should have the experts we need, as well as the explosives. Dr. McKenna, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could you theorize where this wave is going once it’s floated this ship off the reef? I think some folks are going to want to know the answer to that question.”

  “Sure,” Lauren replied. “But I’m goin
g to need a bigger map.”

  As people hurried off in different directions, Donovan went to his wife and whispered in her ear, “You’re a genius. I’ll send Janie back for you and Buck, but I need to get off this ship, get back to Anchorage, and start running damage control for Eco-Watch.”

  “Do whatever you need to do,” Lauren said. When she turned, anger flashed in her eyes.

  Donovan resisted trying to reason with her. She was furious with him and anything he said was only going to make things worse. There was no fixing anything at this point. He was a hostage to his past, and that past had once again dictated his actions. Donovan glanced around the bridge. Buck was here, so Lauren was safe. Everyone was occupied for the moment, and he used the opportunity to quietly slip away.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The Bell 407 lifted off the North Star just as the Coast Guard HH-60 with Captain Flemming arrived on the scene. Janie flew low and fast toward Anchorage. Donovan picked up one of the charts, pretending to study its features as he slipped the photograph from his pocket and used the chart to hide it from Janie. The image was faded and washed out; it showed Meredith standing just outside the door of a Gulfstream. She was wearing an evening dress, her hair was up, and she was waving. He recognized the airplane as one of the fleet of Huntington Oil corporate jets. There was nothing in the background that gave him the slightest hint to when or where the picture had been taken. He turned it over. Whatever had been written had been smudged to the point where he couldn’t make it out. Donovan had no idea what message Garrick had intended. He took another long look, and the only thing he noticed the second time was the faint image of someone in the left seat, waving good-bye as well. Closer inspection and he recognized himself, but then he often flew Meredith and himself to different functions so this could have been any one of dozens of trips they made together. He slipped the photo back into his pocket and closed his eyes to think. When he opened them, he discovered they were descending to land.