“Just a few more days.”
10
It was a huge success! The new system worked, and it worked well. Lee and Juan huddled around the custom vest, running diagnostics to see if there were any problems. The unit’s processor in the waterproof compartment didn’t have enough power to do faster live translation, but it had no problem offloading that piece to the IMIS supercomputer.
The diagnostics looked clean. No glitches, no wireless drops, no sign of voltage issues or leaks. It was better than they had hoped for. But it didn’t mean those problems wouldn’t happen. They still had a few more days of testing before they could do what everyone was so eagerly waiting for: to take the vest out into the open ocean.
Downstairs, Alison and Chris stood in front of the tank, grinning from ear to ear. It was a marine biologist’s dream come true. To really communicate with another species was incredible enough. Now to be able to do it “out there,” in their native habitat, was a huge leap in oceanography research. They couldn’t imagine what they were going to learn outside of the tank.
They stood in a daze, gleefully watching Dirk and Sally being fed by Kelly up above, when someone spoke up behind them. “Are we too late for the big event?”
Alison recognized the voice immediately and turned breathlessly with a grin that managed to get even wider.
John Clay was standing behind her, along with Steve Caesare. Clay was smiling back at her.
“I thought you were in Brazil?”
Clay gave her a hug. “We left early, and Borger is working on something at the moment.” He glanced at his watch regretfully. “We’re due back in D.C. in five hours.”
Alison tried to hide her disappointment. “Well, I’m glad you made a stopover.”
“It’s the least I could do.” Clay squeezed her tight and looked up over her shoulder. “Hi, Chris.”
“Hello, John. How are you?”
“A little tired, but good, thank you.”
Chris was closest to Caesare and he reached out a hand to him. “Mr. Caesare. It’s nice to see you again.”
Caesare shook Chris’ hand and almost scoffed. “Come on Chris, I’m not that old yet.” He winked. “Clay makes me seem older.”
“Well, well, look what the cat dragged in.” They all turned to see DeeAnn looking at Caesare as she entered the room. She had met him several times before. The two had instantly fallen into a friendly but rather sarcastic relationship. “How did we get so lucky?”
Caesare raised an eyebrow at her. “Ah, Dr. Draper. What a pleasure. You’re looking…older.”
After what seemed like a long moment, they smiled at each other playfully and laughed. DeeAnn flicked his thick, muscular arm as she passed. She turned warmly to Clay. “Nice to see you again, John.”
“Good morning, DeeAnn,” Clay said. “How are things going with Dulce?”
“We’re making excellent progress, thank you. In fact, the translations are coming faster and faster. Your girl here,” she said, with a wink at Alison, “runs quite a ship.”
Clay didn’t see the nervous look Alison gave DeeAnn after being referred to as John’s “girl.”
“So,” Clay said. “I take it the test went well, judging by the look on everyone’s face.”
“It was flawless,” Alison beamed. “Lee and Juan are upstairs checking things out. It was only for about five minutes, but it worked perfectly.”
“I’m not surprised,” Clay nodded. “I guess that means it’s a “go” for your big trip.”
“Hopefully. We still have more testing to do, but assuming we don’t have any major problems, we’re set to leave in a few days. So cross your fingers. I think Dirk and Sally are getting impatient.”
“This is very cool, Alison,” Caesare said, folding his arms. “Translation out in open water is exciting stuff.” He flashed her a devilish grin. “Come to think of it, maybe you could use some help from a couple old ‘sea dogs.’”
Clay laughed. He could imagine Langford’s reaction.
Caesare held up a hand in an innocent gesture. “Hey, let’s not forget Alison’s got some pull with the Admiral.”
Alison remained close to Clay, smiling, but said nothing. It was true, she still had a few favors to call in, but that wasn’t something you did lightly with Admiral Langford. No, she was saving her favors for a very rainy day. Not one involving Caesare lounging around on her boat and soaking up the sun with a beer in his hand. She liked Steve Caesare a lot. He was both tough and smart, but from what she’d heard, parties had a habit of finding him.
She turned and looked up at Clay. “So, how much time do you have before you have to leave for D.C.?”
“Probably a couple of hours.”
Caesare watched her frown with a look of mild disappointment. He rolled his eyes. “Oh, for crying out loud. Why don’t you two get out of here? I’ll hang out with my pal DeeAnn.” He gave her a wink. “Besides, I want to have a look at this new portable unit the boys have created.”
Clay looked down at her with raised eyebrows. “What do you say to an early lunch?”
“I would love that.”
“Just make sure you have him back on time.”
Clay nodded to Caesare, waved to the others, and grabbed Alison’s hand. “I’m all yours.”
Wasting no time, they headed for the outside door. She flung it open and pulled him outside into the bright sunshine. She paused for a few moments, letting the large metal door close behind them with a loud “click.” Before Clay could say anything, Alison pulled him close and kissed him.
11
Caesare followed DeeAnn back through the hallway to the habitat. She punched her code in and pushed the door open, then held it a moment for Caesare. As the two stepped up onto a gentle mound, they spotted Dulce sitting on the ground, playing with a large wooden game board. She promptly looked up and stared at Caesare.
“There’s my girl!” he called out.
Ecstatic, Dulce jumped up and covered the distance quickly, leaping into his big arms.
Caesare hugged her, then reached up and gently rubbed her head. “How’s my sweetheart?”
Steve here, Steve here, Dulce said, the words coming from DeeAnn’s computerized vest. Me miss you.
He matched her wide smile. “And I missed you.” He hugged her again and then leaned back and stared at the adorable gorilla in his arms. “You want to race?”
An hour later, Caesare was staring down at Lee and Juan’s new toy, lying on the table. “That’s pretty impressive, fellas.”
“Thanks,” Lee replied. “We got a little help with production, but the design is pretty close to what we drew up. The board is under here.” He touched an outside section of the vest’s material. “There’s obviously some processing needed locally but we tried to keep it to a minimum, pushing the rest to IMIS for translation. Unfortunately, even with the barest operating system, and a load of flash memory, it still sucks up a lot of energy. Especially with the constant, high-speed wireless connection.” Lee reached down and peeled the thick rubber seal away, releasing the plastic door to the battery compartment. “Less than five minutes underwater still used up quite a bit of power. Which means usage is going to be limited in open water.”
Caesare nodded and looked curiously at the large rectangular battery. He fingered it and gently pulled it out of its socket. “This lithium?”
“Yep.”
Caesare turned it over, noting the connection points. “You know, the Navy’s got a team working on a new battery prototype for some drones. They’re using a special nickel coated polymer which gives them a much higher storage density. I may be able to get you a few.”
“Really?” Lee and Juan looked at each other excitedly.
“Really. They even have one that’s a similar size. I might be able to get some overnighted. You may just have time to work it in before the trip.”
“That would be amazing!”
Caesare shrugged. “Don’t mention it. As a matter of fact, if you
print up the schematics for your board and the processor, including the frequency you’re using, Clay and I can take a look and see if there are any other areas where we can help reduce electrical draw. Our Electronics and Signaling group back in D.C. does this all the time. Between some frequency modifications and the prototype batteries, I bet you could increase your operating time quite a bit.”
“That would be fantastic.” Lee turned back to Juan, who was already at the computer looking for the schematics.
“So, I presume you guys are taking a server when you go out, to handle the translation.”
“Three, as a matter of fact,” Lee said. “IMIS does the heavy lifting, but we can offload the basics onto some smaller servers. Very much like we did last year on the Pathfinder with Mr. Clay. Of course, the vocabulary is more advanced now and we have the wireless bit.”
“And a more reliable boat,” Caesare teased.
Lee laughed. “Yes, definitely a more reliable boat.”
“Cool, I’m looking forward to hearing how things go. This is pretty exciting.”
“Oh, yeah, very! It’s too bad you can’t come with us.”
Caesare smiled, thinking of his joke earlier to Alison. “Unfortunately we’re in the middle of something.” He reinserted the battery and laid the corner of the vest back down, now thinking of the Forel sub and the reason they had to get back. He hoped Borger had a little insight into the data they had sent him from Belem.
He was about to find out that Borger had much more than that.
12
Clay stared through the side window and watched the Mercedita runway fall away as they climbed over the south end of the island, banking to the left. The late sun reflected brightly over the crystal blue Caribbean water, and Clay gazed down wistfully at the dozens of sailboats below them.
He’d loved the ocean since the first day his father took him out on the boat. It was just a small daysailer, but he loved every minute of it. From then on, it was something they did religiously, every time he visited his father in Florida. Ultimately, it was that very same relationship with the ocean behind his enlistment in the Navy. Now he looked forward to the day he could cast off for good, traveling the globe through the blue water with nothing but a sturdy boat, stars in the sky…and of course, a woman to share it with.
Clay leaned his head back and thought of Alison, letting his lips crack into a smile. She seemed as happy to see him as he was to see her. After a few minutes, he took a deep breath and reached down for his pack on the floor.
Caesare sat across from him, studying the schematics Juan had printed out. He noticed Clay pull a shiny object from his bag. Caesare glanced up to see a small silver brick, reflecting brightly from the incoming sunlight. It was about the size of a deck of cards and Clay sat gazing at it curiously.
“You still carrying that souvenir around with you?”
Clay didn’t look up. He simply nodded and flipped it over, rubbing it gently with his thumb.
“Any idea how it works yet?”
“Not exactly.”
He’d had the device for over a year, since a harrowing event which nearly ended in a global catastrophe. In the end, few people knew what really happened. That was the way it always was when the government was involved.
Clay turned the object over again in his hand. “Borger and I put it under an electron microscope but couldn’t determine what it was made from. It’s plated in silicon and its core is deuterium. But the rest is made out of elements that we can’t identify.”
“Well, you already know it’s a fusion device,” replied Caesare. “Maybe you’re not supposed to know how it works.”
Clay looked up at Caesare thoughtfully. “Then why would he let me keep it?”
“Clearly, it was to drive you insane.”
Clay smirked. “Clearly.”
Caesare watched Clay quietly examine the object. They had worked together for over twenty years, beginning with their service as Navy SEALs. Eventually moving out into Investigations once their aging bodies began to object to the constant physical punishment. There were also the questionable missions that the teams were increasingly instructed to carry out, which ultimately left some of the SEALs wondering just which side of the fight they were really on.
Caesare had seen his friend in a number of binds, even some in combat. He’d come to know the man inside and out. Through it all, he had learned one unswerving fact about John Clay; the man never gave up. No matter what the predicament, Clay’s mind simply never stopped working. He would continue studying that silver object, chipping away at logic until he figured something out. The question really was just how long it was going to take.
He mused and gave Clay a minute before changing the subject. “So listen, I’ve been looking at the design of that new vest Alison’s team developed. It’s pretty impressive. Tighter than I was expecting.”
“Yeah, IBM helped them with it.”
“There are a few things we can help them with too, particularly around the wireless. There are better frequencies they could be using, but it would probably mean testing another prototype.” He reached out and handed the sheet to Clay.
Clay reluctantly dropped the silver block back into his bag and studied the sheet, holding it up to the window for a better look. “You know, with a thicker design, I bet they could make this thing self-contained.”
Will Borger stole a look at his watch and looked back to the screen. He wasn’t going to make it.
The program he’d written was still crunching through the data, and the meeting with Admiral Langford was in fifteen minutes. In fact, the job was barely halfway done.
Behind him, his office in the Pentagon’s basement was crowded with enough computer and signaling equipment to put the displays at the Smithsonian to shame. To him, technology wasn’t just a job, it was an obsession, and Langford was happy to oblige him. Especially lately.
Borger jumped when the door opened behind him and the overhead lights suddenly came on.
“You really need to get an office with some sunlight,” Caesare announced. “We all need a little vitamin D once in a while.”
Borger swiveled in his chair, arms still folded over his stomach, which was protruding a bit from under his loud, orange Hawaiian shirt. “I take pills for that.”
Caesare raised his eyebrows. “Really?”
“No, but I should.” Borger looked to Clay, who had just closed the door behind them. “Hey, Clay. How was Brazil?”
“Who ever said getting thrown out of a country wasn’t exciting? How goes it, Will?”
“Pretty good.” Borger swung back toward his monitor. “Langford asked me to do something for him, but it won’t be done for quite a while yet.”
Caesare sat backwards in a small metal chair and rolled it up next to Borger. “What do we have here?”
“A deep scan of the North Atlantic, pixel by pixel.”
Clay and Caesare both raised their eyebrows curiously. “Pixel by pixel?”
“Just about. I got the last three months’ worth of data from the NSA, recorded by the ARGUS reconnaissance satellite.” Both Clay and Caesare were familiar with the government’s newest bird. They were also both familiar with the term reconnaissance when referring to a satellite. It was the preferred term over the more accurate label “spy satellite.” The ARGUS had recently been launched under the generic name of ‘NROL-39’ and was the first with real-time capability. All other previous spy satellites had the ability to take increasingly sharper pictures and at frame speeds faster than video. However, what they still lacked was bandwidth and the ability to send their ultra-high definition pictures back to Earth quickly enough for a real-time experience.
That limitation had finally been rectified in ARGUS. With most of the new system’s design focused squarely on transmission capacity, the ARGUS was literally able to stream live, ultra-high definition video back to Earth, where it was recorded twenty-four hours a day. And all with a field of view that was unprecedented. It
was a huge technological advance for a “reconnaissance” satellite and a capability that few countries, including allies, were even aware of.
Nevertheless, a pixel-by-pixel scan was an enormous undertaking. It was the digital equivalent of examining every grain of sand on a given beach.
Caesare leaned in closer to Borger’s monitor. “What on earth would you need three months of pixel data for?”
“For the Forel,” Clay murmured, peering over Caesare’s shoulder.
“That’s right.” Borger began typing on his computer again and brought up another window. He then used his mouse to drag the new window onto a second monitor. With a few clicks, the new window instantly filled with a blue frame of the Atlantic Ocean, detailed enough to easily make out several small white caps on top of one of the swells.
Clay and Caesare could see the computer making a thin white line as it zoomed horizontally across the image, one tiny pixel at a time. It finished scanning the frame in less than five seconds and started another. “How far along is it?”
“Maybe halfway.”
“You must be looking for a periscope,” Caesare said.
“Or the exhaust.”
“Correct again. It’s a long way from Russia to Brazil, especially for a diesel-electric, which means they would have had to surface many times to expel their stale exhaust and recharge their batteries. I’ve got almost a thousand servers backtracking through images for a three hundred square mile area, looking in both visible and infrared.”
“Find anything yet?”
“Nope.” Borger frowned and shook his head from side to side. He swiveled his chair back to them and smiled. “But that’s the bad news.”
“There’s good news?”
“The good news is I think I know what that equipment is for aboard the Forel.” He moved to yet another screen and brought up the video that Caesare had taken before they were thrown off the sub. Borger played the video until Caesare’s camera focused on the rack of equipment. He froze the image. “I spent some time going over this with several engineers in Pensacola, and we all agree that these devices are indeed amplifiers. And you see this?” He pointed to the bottom edge of the screen. “These appear to be power cables. These other cables,” he traced up the side of the still picture, “carry the audio.”
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