by Bob Finley
"Of course," Marc replied, with a cold smile.
"On the other hand," Kim continued, "there is a ‘garage door opener’ in the mini-sub, like the one we use, so the sub's pilot can let himself back in." Kim paused and waited.
"But..."
It was Kim's turn to smile. "But...the electronic operating device had been removed the day before for ‘repairs’. So the pilot couldn't open the hatchway to get back in. In his haste to escape...of course...he didn't think of that."
Marc pursed his lips and stared across the dimly-lit room at Kim.
"Under attack. Locked out at twelve thousand feet, in the cold, in the dark. No food or water. Finite air supply. The only people who know where he is have been carted off to who knows where. If he surfaces, he’s in the middle of the Atlantic, fifteen hundred miles from anywhere."
Kim nodded.
"He's sho' 'nuff twixt a rock and a hard place," Marc observed in a neutral voice.
"There's more," Kim's eyebrows rose and fell and he smiled tightly.
"But of course," Marc returned the same tight smile.
"Since he'd lost track of time, but it seemed to have been a long time since the kidnappers left, when we arrived he assumed they'd deposited his friends somewhere and had come back to find him. Having no realistic hope of rescue, afraid to surrender, and by now riddled with guilt for having offered no resistance before on behalf of his colleagues, he decided to disable or destroy the enemy's sub by ramming it with his own."
"In true Kamikaze style," Justin observed.
"That was before my time," his young Asian friend countered. Justin smiled.
"Anyway, that's his story," Kim concluded.
Marc stared out the ‘window’ in thought. Then he turned back to Kim.
"Okay. What about the timing?" he asked.
Kim shrugged. "Like he said before: about ten-thirty night before last."
Marc's eyes glazed and his head sagged slowly to his chest for several seconds. Then he raised his head again and looked directly at Kim.
"Anything else?" he asked.
"There was...one other thing," Kim replied in a quiet, smug voice.
"Oh?" Justin was suddenly very alert. He knew Matsumoto well.
"Uh-huh. Now that he's had time to think about it, he ‘remembers’ something we ‘might be able to use’." Kim smiled.
"And that would be?"
"Before he bailed out in the mini-sub, while he was still eavesdropping on the intruders' conversation, one phrase popped up several times. An...unusual phrase." He paused. He didn't have to wait long.
"Yeah? You gonna tell me or not?"
"It oughta be worth three days off when we get home. Three guaranteed days off, not just promises."
"No problem. I'll just get that kid in the Harbor Master's office...what's his name?...Powell...to fill in for you. He'd jump at the chance. Prob'ly work for free, too."
"Some people have no appreciation for genius," Kim pouted.
"Some people have overrated opinions of their own worth," Justin retorted. "But, if it means I won't have to look at you for three days, you got it!"
"Guaranteed?"
"Wha'd I say? Now give it up."
The smile faded from Kim's face and he watched his boss's face closely as he said it.
"Centinela."
Justin stared intently at his assistant.
"Sentenella?"
"Sounds right," he smiled. "It's Spanish. Means 'sentinel'."
Marc Justin looked away and his eyes lost focus as he seemed to stare out of the red-lit room into the darkness outside.
"So what's a ‘sentinel’ ?" he mused aloud.
"A guard," Kim intoned.
Justin shot him a killing look. "I know what ‘sentinel’ means...what I want to know is what ‘Sentenella’ means."
"That's ‘Centinela’. C..e..n..t..i..n..e..l..a.."
"Thank you, professor," Justin's sarcasm was almost tangible. "But that doesn't answer the question."
"Maybe you haven't asked the right question," Kim suggested.
Marc looked at him. His face sagged with resignation. "And just what might be the ‘right question’ ?"
Kim smiled. "Well, you could try: ‘Kim, would you, with your ingenuity and superior intelligence, happen to have any idea what the significance of Centinela might be?’ "
Marc Justin looked away long enough to smile. Then he turned back to the waiting Matsumoto.
"Well, do you?" he demanded sternly.
Kim spread his hands. "Maybe," he said. "I ran it through all our computer databases...codes, foreign languages, scientific...every way I could think of. There were seventeen references. Only one seemed to make any sense."
"And that was?"
Kim smiled. "Centinela Guyot."
"Guyot?!" Marc Justin exclaimed.
Kim nodded. "As in ‘flat-topped undersea mountain’. Usually what’s left of an old volcano."
"So where is this guyot?"
"Just this side of the continental shelf off the Moroccan coast of Africa. Actually, it's due west of the Strait of Gibraltar."
"At the mouth of the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea..."
"Yeah. 'Bout a hundred miles out from ‘The Rock’. Why?"
"I've never heard of it."
"I hadn't either. So I did a profile on it from NOAA's Submarine Cartography division. Wanta see it?"
Kim flopped into a chair and quickly tapped the keyboard. A flat-topped mountain appeared on the monitor. A scale rolled across the bottom and down the left side of the screen. Marc leaned down to better see Centinela Guyot.
"The top's only a hundred feet down. Seems like it'd be better known, what with heavy shipping running in and out of the ‘Med’ all day."
"Well," Kim offered, "it's not really a navigation hazard, being a hundred feet below the surface. Unless you’re a sub." Kim manipulated the CAD image on the screen so that it could be viewed from all angles, creating the illusion of circling the guyot from fifty yards away and from a high perspective. "And it's too far off shore for local divers to be interested in it. It's just...there."
"Yeah. And it's also here! In our faces!" Justin stabbed the air in front of himself. "Why would an obscure guyot a hundred miles off the Spanish-African coast that almost nobody knows about pop up...’several times’... as a conversation item in a gang of kidnappers and pirates?"
"Maybe it's a rendezvous point. For their sub to meet a surface ship."
"A minisub? Too far. A minisub would have to surface nearby ‘cause it wouldn't have more than a fifty mile range at best," Justin replied.
Kim's eyes suddenly widened. "What if it wasn't a minisub?"
"What do you mean?"
"What if it was a commercial sub...a cargo sub? Or maybe a military sub?"
Marc stared at him. "A military operation?"
"Yeah."
"I...don't think so. Doesn't have the feel of a military op. Too sloppy. They wouldn't have let their rendezvous slip. MARS was operating in international waters. And the political implications of any government taking civilians hostage would bring world opinion crashing down on them."
"What about commercial? A chartered sub? Or a stolen one?"
"Um. Could be. Seems the station would have picked up something that big on sonar. But they...supposedly...didn't have any warning."
"How 'bout a minisub operating out of a full sized ‘boat’? Like ours?"
"Could be. If the boat hung back so sonar wouldn't paint it, and the minisub sneaked in under cover and blind-sided the sonar."
"Terrorists, maybe?"
"Been almost two days. No demands. Doesn't fit the profile."
"Okay. But it seems to me the real question here is ‘why’. Why did they do it? Why did they kidnap the crew? And why did they just ride into the sunset and leave the station sittin' by the side of the road with its motor running?"
"Well..." Marc responded, "maybe they don't need the station, or know how to operate
it. I'm sure there are lots of security codes involved in whatever it takes to move the station. Maybe they only needed the people. The crew's the only thing they took, as far as we know. Right?"
Kim nodded. "Yeah. And?"
"And so the real question seems to be: ‘Why did they take the crew’?"
They were both quiet while they considered the possibilities.
"Hostages?"
"No demands. And they're just working stiffs. Not politicians. Not official spies. And they're ‘only’ scientists, not professional athletes, so they don't have any ‘real’' value."
Kim laughed. He knew how Marc Justin felt about professional athletes. ‘Poodles’, he called them. Pampered, Overpaid, Overrated, Demanding Lapdogs...POODL's. ‘Poodles’ who are paid millions in salaries for skills that produce nothing tangible, edible, or of lasting value. Whereas scientists whose discoveries and inventions vitally affect the global quality of life are relegated to insignificant wages and begging for funding of their work. A sore point for a scientist and inventor? Oh, yes, he knew how Justin felt.
"Okay. So forget hostages; forget military; forget terrorists. What's left?"
Marc nodded his head slowly as he gave Kim his full attention. "Yes. What is left?"
"You have an idea."
"Could be. Think about it. There's a ship that has to report in at regular intervals. If it doesn't, the cavalry comes ridin' in. No choice. Has to happen. So, they don't make the call. And we come ridin' in. Or somebody comes ridin' in. Could be a Navy sub...doesn't matter. Somebody comes lookin'. There sits the ship, nice and neat. Easy to find...well, not impossible to find. But there's nobody home. Why? It's a mystery. But wait! There's a clue! Not just a clue, but a doozie of a clue! We're not talking about a trail of breadcrumbs through the forest, here. We're talking a bakery truck with a broken rear door on an interstate highway! Somebody clumsily mentioned...‘several times’...a destination. And, would you believe it? There just happened to be somebody listening. And then...would you believe it...he gets away, to tell the tale...to us. Isn't that an amazing bit of luck? Now we know what we're supposed to do next. I love it." Justin grinned conspiratorially.
"You don't believe these are coincidences, then?" Kim asked rhetorically.
"They ain't no such thing as coincidence, son."
Kim shook his head. "You are a serious cynic," he said.
"I'm a serious realist," Justin gave him a cool smile. "Answer me one last question."
"From your tone of voice, I doubt it," Kim countered.
"Try." Justin slowly sat back down in the pilot's chair and deliberately crossed his legs. Kim didn't like the preamble.
"Explain to me how the kidnappers found MARS."
Kim just looked at him. "Well..." he began. But nothing else followed.
Justin was no help. He just sat and waited. Finally, he simply raised his eyebrows for emphasis.
"I don't know," Kim admitted.
"Let me help," Justin said ominously. "MARS III is a government-financed semi-military project manned by almost-civilians who nevertheless have top-secret clearance and are sworn in under the Secrecy Act. Is MARS's mission and location going to be common knowledge?"
Kim shook his head. "No," he said.
"Can we assume, then, that their whereabouts will be treated with the usual military security procedures...at the very least, on a ‘need to know’ basis?
"Probably. Most likely," Kim revised.
"Then how would an outsider find out their location? Their exact location?" Marc pressed.
"They'd have to know somebody...a contact with access to the information."
"Who? Where?"
Matsumoto was swept along by the logic. "Somebody on the project management team, or a computer hack, or..." he stopped abruptly. Justin was watching him closely.
"Or?" he prompted gently. He could see that Kim was resisting the thought.
"Or," Kim sighed, shoulders sagging, "it's an inside job, on this end."
"Mm-hm," Marc agreed. "Someone who knew exactly where MARS would be, and when; who had communications access; someone who wasn't kidnapped, so he could be here to steer us; who just happened to overhear the critical clue...the only clue...that would point us in the right direction."
Kim thought about it. Finally, he said, "It's all logical. And it fits. But it's still circumstantial."
Marc nodded in agreement. "Yes, it is. But there's one other thing I haven't mentioned...yet."
"What?"
"According to Wojecki, how many hours elapsed between the time he ‘escaped’ in the minisub and the time we showed up?"
Matsumoto quickly calculated. "About eleven and a half."
Justin nodded. "Keep that thought," he said. He got out of his chair and walked over to look out into the darkness. With its lights the only reference point in the black void, MARS seemed to hang suspended below them. He turned back to Kim.
"While you were quizzing Wojecki again, I had another look at his ‘damaged’ minisub." He waved off Kim's question. "If you were running for your life, would you be likely to have the presence of mind to try to control your breathing in order to conserve a limited air supply?"
Kim considered and shook his head. "No," he admitted.
"So, you're breathing heavily, you're panicky, and you use up a lot of air, fast."
"Yeah..."
"So, how much air should he have had left?"
Kim thought about it. "On a twelve hour tank, breathing fast, and eleven and a half hours in the sub, he must have been down to his last few breaths."
"Yep. He should have been. But he wasn't." Kim looked surprised.
"I put a gauge on the tank in the minisub."
"And?"
"There were nine hours or better still on a twelve hour tank."
"But the gauge in the sub said he was down to only a few minutes," Kim objected.
"If you'll check it, you'll probably find it's been tampered with. The actual tank, on a direct hookup, gauged a little better than a nine hour reserve."
"So Cy must have waited inside MARS until he picked up our approach, jumped in the minisub, and hid until the right time. With nine hours of air, he wasn't exactly taking any chances, was he?"
"Nope. With the Centinela clue, neither is whoever he's working with...or for," Marc agreed. Kim sat mute, the fingers of one hand drumming a silent melody against the back of the other.
"So we've got a plant aboard," Kim admitted.
"We've got more than a ‘plant’," Marc quipped. "We've got a Venus flytrap." Tightlipped, Kim looked down and slowly shook his head.
"I don't like being used," he finally said.
"Neither do I," Marc agreed.
"So, what now?" Kim wondered.
Justin shrugged. "No change, really. Bill Layton's still out there somewhere. We've gotta play the hand we were dealt. But with one difference."
"What's that?" Kim asked.
Marcus Justin smiled icily and Kim could see the frost in his gray eyes.
"Now we know for sure they're cheating." He paused. "Get everybody together up here, would you?" He turned to the control console.
"Oh..." he turned his head slowly in Kim's direction. "What we know...or think we know...about Wojecki stays between us."
Kim nodded. "Okay, boss." He turned back toward the door.
"Kim."
"Yes, sir?"
Justin gave him a long look.
"Be careful. There’s a snake in the woodpile."
Chapter 18
One advantage to a small ship is that word travels fast. The disadvantage to a small ship is that word travels fast. The sudden and violent encounter with a minisub that could have meant instant death for them all had heightened everyone's awareness of the fact that they were intruders into a hostile world where the word 'mercy' wasn't in the vocabulary. Even before Kim went looking for the three passengers, Janese Cramerton, Frank Sheppard, and Ben Masters had cornered Cy Wojecki in the galley. By the time
Kim arrived, they'd thoroughly pumped the 'man from MARS', as they'd quickly come to call him.
"Captain wants to see everybody up front," Kim announced.
"Good!" Janese exclaimed. "Because we want to see him, too."
"Captain," she said as they all marched into the control sphere, "we've been talking to Mr. Wojecki about what's happened, and we want to know what you're going to do about it!"
Marcus Justin slowly turned his command chair toward the group and speared Janese Cramerton with his gaze. His smile was slight and cold.
"Do you?" he countered quietly. "And what," he gestured minimally toward them, "do you all think should be done?"
A cacophony erupted as everyone spoke at once. Justin waited until the tumult subsided and, one by one, they fell silent under his gaze.
"Would you object to my summarizing our situation?" he asked with restraint. "No? Alright...how about this. I, my ship, and my crew were chartered by the U. S. Navy to locate the MARS III vessel. You all were enlisted, as more or less volunteers, to accompany me and assist me in your various specialties to locate, and if possible, salvage the government's property." He pointed a thumb over his left shoulder. "There she sits. The contract is fulfilled. Your job is done. So. You folks board MARS. We call a tow truck. And you go home." He interlaced his fingers, laid his hands in his lap, and waited. For about two seconds.
"Hey, wait a minute!" "What do you mean, 'we go home'?" "Oh, no you don't!" "You can't just..."
Justin held his hands up defensively, palms out. The objections died away.
"Problems? Ben?"
"I don't understand. If we go aboard MARS and the Navy picks us up, what are you going to do?"
"Yeah, what are you gonna do?" came the echoes.
Marc smiled slightly. "I've some unfinished business to take care of," he hedged.
"What kind of business?" "What do you mean?" "What are you...?"
Janese Cramerton's soft voice somehow cut through the bedlam.
"You're going after them, aren't you?" she asked. Their eyes met. He considered evading her question, but he nodded ever so slightly instead.
"Yes."
She held his gaze. Coolly. Deliberately.
"I'm going with you." It wasn't a question.
"Why?"
