Devil's Gate (NUMA Files 9)

“The Onyx,” Kurt said proudly.

Joe looked impressed but skeptical. According to the stats at the bottom, the ship was a 300,000-ton supertanker. “You’re telling me this guy has that kind of funding?”

“Didn’t you ever read Sherlock Holmes?”

“I saw the movie,” Joe said. “Does that count?”

“It’s elementary, my dear Zavala,” Kurt said. “Rule out the impossible, and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. This ship was docked offshore in every port Andras appeared in over the last year except Cape Town. But the sighting there was debatable. Also, she’s too wide for the Suez Canal, which may explain the long route around Africa to Freetown before they pulled their little bait and switch on the Kinjara Maru.”

Joe began to look convinced. “Who’s she registered to?”

“Some corporation out of Liberia that no one’s ever heard of,” Kurt said.

Joe stepped back, still looking concerned. “So let’s tell Dirk and Brinks we think this ship might have our suspect on it, call it a day, and go fishing.”

Kurt shook his head. They needed hard evidence. And if by any chance Andras had the scientists on the ship, they needed the element of surprise. Otherwise the people he was int

erested in saving — Katarina, in particular — would be in worse danger than ever.

“Since when has the machinery of government sprung into action because a regular Kurt or Joe thinks any particular thing?”

Joe looked away. “Not often.”

“Exactly,” Kurt said. “We need proof.”

“You want to get on board that ship?” Joe guessed.

Kurt nodded.

Joe looked resigned to helping him as usual but seemed none too happy about where this was going.

“And how exactly do you plan on boarding a hostile vessel, crewed by terrorist thugs and killers who are undoubtedly watching for any type of advance from any quarter or direction, without them knowing about it?”

Kurt smiled. He had a plan. It may have been even crazier than his last plan, but that one had worked.

“The same way you remove a tiger’s teeth,” he said. “Very carefully.”

46

USS Truxton, July 1

PAUL TROUT SAT with a sonar operator in the air-conditioned comfort of a darkened control room on the USS Truxton. The space around them was given over to flat-screen monitors and computer controls. Part of it resembled a mixing studio, which was appropriate as the recorded sounds were sliced and diced and spliced back together in segments.

Part of the problem in getting any coherent information out of the signal was the nature of the Matador’s sonar system. It was twenty years old and had been designed to map the seafloor in broad swaths for various survey teams. In its active mode, a sound wave would be sent from a bell on the bottom of the Matador and bounced off the floor and collected by the system’s hydrophones. In passive mode, it simply listened and picked up ambient noises.

Another limitation was that each hydrophone pointed downward, covering a thin but widening swath as it penetrated into the depths, like a cone of light beneath a streetlamp. The problem was, like the metaphorical streetlamp on an incredibly dark night, nothing outside the cone was visible.

One of the Truxton’s anti-submarine warfare operators, Petty Officer Collier, was with them. A wiry young man with a calm demeanor, Collier had been slicing and dicing the tapes with them for hours. While Paul found it tedious, the petty officer seemed to latch onto even the smallest thing and get enthusiastic about starting the process over.

“Okay, here we go,” he said for the fiftieth time.

Paul put a hand to the soft-padded headset and pressed it into his ears. He saw Gamay click a pen into writing mode and tilt her head in anticipation. The young petty officer pressed “Play,” and Paul heard the familiar sounds of the tape beginning for the umpteenth time. Each time there had been a slight difference as the ensign and his computers filtered out background noise or other sounds. This time, he’d added something.

“To better orient you with what you’re actually hearing,” Petty Officer Collier said, “we’ve synced up your voice records from communications with the surface with the tape.” This time, as the playback ticked over, Paul heard his own voice — it was he and Gamay, bantering with the Matador on the surface and then with each other.

It was all so surreal. It was him, he knew it was him, but he couldn’t recall saying any of the things he was hearing. Couldn’t recall what he was doing while the words were being spoken.

Gamay looked over at him. “Anything?” “You mean memory-wise?”