Sandecker smiled slyly. "After I explained the seriousness of the situation, he was most cooperative."
"Much hell will erupt," Yaeger prophesied, "once the local brotherhood of fishermen and the dead crew's family members discover that the bodies were found and autopsies performed a week before they were notified."
"Especially," Gunn added, "when they learn we shipped the bodies to Washington for the postmortem."
"We were too early in the hunt for the news media to play havoc with wild stories about how an entire crew and their pet parrot were found dead on a ship under mysterious circumstances. At the time, we didn't need another unexplained-phenomena blitz while we were groping in the dark ourselves."
Gunn shrugged. "The proverbial cat's out of the bag now. There's no hiding the Polar Queen disaster.
After tonight it will be the lead news story on every TV news program around the world."
Sandecker nodded at Yaeger. "Hiram, you delve into your library and extract every piece of data dealing with underwater acoustics. Search out any experiments, commercial or military, involving high-energy sound waves through water, their cause and effects on humans and underwater mammals."
"I'll start on it immediately," Yaeger assured him.
Gunn and Yaeger rose from their chairs and left the conference room. Sandecker sat there, slouched in his chair and puffing on his cigar. His eyes moved from sea battle to sea battle, lingering for several moments on each before moving to the next. Then he closed his eyes tightly as he collected his thoughts.
It was the uncertainty of the dilemma that clouded his mind. After a while, he opened his eyes and stared at the computer-generated chart of the Pacific Ocean. "Where will it strike next?" he spoke aloud to the empty room. "Who will it kill?"
Colonel Leigh Hunt sat at his desk in his basement office-he disliked the more formal administration offices on the upper floors of Walter Reed-and contemplated a bottle of Cutty Sark. Out the window, darkness had settled over the District of Columbia, the streetlights had come on, and the rush-hour traffic was beginning to dwindle. The postmortems on the five fishermen fished from the cold waters of the Northwest were completed, and he was about to head home to his cat. The decision was whether to take a drink or make a final call before leaving. He decided to do both at the same time.
He punched the numbers on his telephone with one hand while he poured the scotch into a coffee cup.
After two rings, a gruff voice answered.
"Colonel Hunt, I hope that's you."
"It is," replied Hunt. "How'd you know?"
"I had a gut feeling you'd call about now."
"Always a pleasure to talk to the Navy," said Hunt affably.
"What can you tell me?" asked Sandecker.
"First, are you sure these cadavers were found on a fishing boat in the middle of the sea?"
"They were."
"And the two porpoises and four seals you also sent over here?"
"Where else would you expect to find them?"
"I've never performed postmortem examinations on aquatic creatures before."
"Humans, porpoises and seals are all mammals under the skin."
"You, my dear admiral, have a very intriguing case on your hands."
"What did they die from?"
Hunt paused to empty half the cup. "Clinically, the deaths were caused by a disruption of the ossicular chain that consists of the malleus, incus and the stapes of the middle ear, which you may recall from your high school physiology class as the hammer, anvil and stirrup. The stapedial foot plate was also fractured.
This caused debilitating vertigo and extreme tinnitus, or a roaring in the ears, all culminating in a rupture of the anterior inferior cerebellar artery and causing hemorrhaging into the anterior and middle cranial fossae inside the base of the skull."
"Can you break that down into simple English?"
"Are you familiar with the term ìnfarction'?" asked Hunt.