Zero Hour (NUMA Files 11)

Pitt waited for him to sign off, but he didn’t. “Anything else Paul?”

Static buzzed for a moment. “You didn’t ask. But I thought I should tell you we haven’t found Kurt or Joe.”

“Keep looking,” Pitt said.

“We will. Gemini out.”

The line went quiet, and Pitt leaned back in his chair. He glanced through the window at the lights twinkling in the dark on the other side of the Potomac. He could not in good conscience order the Gemini to risk the same fate as the Orion, but how else could they hope to find Thero and stop him?

He jabbed at the intercom switch, pressing in the number for Hiram Yaeger’s floor.

“Yaeger here,” a tired voice said.

“Tell me you have something new, Hiram.”

“I have something,” Yaeger said sheepishly. “But I don’t think it’s going to help.”

“I’ll take anything at this point,” Pitt said.

“I have the computer on an autosearch mode,” Yaeger said. “It’s looking for anything of significance. The same way it found connections between the obituary notices of Cortland and Watterson.”

“And what has it found this time?”

“It’s discovered another odd coincidence,” Yaeger said, “regarding the handwritten notes sent to the ASIO.”

“Go on.”

“By comparing the samples, the computer determined with a ninety percent probability that both the handwritten threat sent to Australia and the documents sent to the ASIO by the informant were penned by the same person.”

Pitt sat back. “I thought the ASIO had ruled that out. One written by a lefty and the other by someone who was right-handed.”

“The handwriting is disguised to make it seem different,” Yaeger said, “but the word choices, pressure points, and stroke lengths are similar.”

Pitt’s mind raced to the conclusion. “But the threat letter has already been matched to Thero’s handwriting sample.”

“I realize that,” Yaeger said. “So either the computer is wrong or this man Thero is acting as both the perpetrator of the crime and the informant.”

Pitt had no idea what this latest bombshell might mean, but he guessed there was some sinister reason behind it. Certainly he knew better than to second-guess Yaeger’s computer.

He glanced at the clock on the wall as the minute hand ticked over to the wrong side of midnight. Whatever the significance of this latest twist, it would have to wait till later.

“I don’t care how you do it, Hiram, but you have two hours to figure out another way for us to find Thero. After that, I have to order Gemini to power up their sensor array.”

Yaeger grumbled something that Pitt couldn’t make out and then said, “I’m on it.”

Pitt cut the line and turned back toward the window. It was the dead of night in Washington, D.C., but broad daylight over Australia. If they didn’t find Thero and stop him, it might be the last peaceful day that nation experienced for a very long time.

THIRTY-THREE

The Russian helicopters had launched from the pitching deck of the MV Rama in the middle of a snow flurry. Loaded down with maximum fuel, they lumbered westward into an oncoming weather front. Turbulence shook them almost constantly. The visibility dropped to less than a mile. And, soon enough, the temperature had fallen so far that ice was forming on the inside of the unheated cabin.

Hayley scratched some of it off and it fluttered down like snow. “Reminds me of my freezer back home.”

“Condensation,” Kurt said. “From our breath.”

“Never thought I’d know what a box of frozen peas felt like,” she replied.

A new wave of turbulence buffeted them, and Hayley gripped the arm of the seat.