"The speed of our latest nuclear carriers is still classified, but Pentagon leaks indicate they can cut the water at fifty knots. Ample time to make the crossing between San Francisco and Honolulu before the deadline."
"Seventy-two hours," said Gunn, "from departure to deployment at the site."
Sandecker stared at a desk calendar with the previous dates crossed out. "That leaves exactly five days to find a reflector, get it to San Francisco and deploy it at the convergence zone."
"A tight schedule, even if you had a reflector in hand," said Ames steadily.
"How deep does it have to be rigged?" Yaeger asked Ames' image.
Almost as if she were cued, a pretty woman in her mid-twenties handed Ames a pocket calculator. He punched a few numbers, rechecked his answer and then looked up. "Allowing for the overlapping convergence zones to meet and surface, you should place the center of the reflector at a depth of 170
meters."
"Current is our number one problem," said Gunn. "It'll prove a nightmare trying to keep the reflector in place long enough to bounce the sound waves."
"Put our best engineers on the problem," ordered Sandecker. "They'll have to design some kind of rigging system to keep the reflector stable."
"How can we be sure that by refocusing the converging sound waves we can return them on a direct channel back to the source on Gladiator Island?" Yaeger asked Ames.
Ames impassively twisted th
e ends of the mustache that extended beyond his beard. "If the factors that propagated the original sound wave, such as salinity, water temperature and the sound speed, remain constant, the reflected energy should return to the source along its original path."
Sandecker turned to Yaeger. "How many people are on Gladiator Island?"
Yaeger consulted his computer. "The intelligence reports from satellite photos suggest a population of around 650 people, mostly miners."
"Slave labor imported from China," muttered Gunn.
"If not kill, won't we injure every living thing on the island?" Sandecker asked Ames.
Another of Ames' students unhesitantly passed a sheet of paper into the acoustics expert's hands. He scanned it for a moment before looking up. "If our analysis is close to the mark, the overlapping convergence zones from the four separated mining operations scattered throughout the Pacific will drop to an energy factor of twenty-eight percent when they strike Gladiator Island, not enough to maim or cause harm to human or animal."
"Can you estimate the physical reaction?"
"Headaches and vertigo along with mild nausea should be the only discomforts."
"A moot point if we can't set a reflector on site before the convergence," Gunn said, staring at a chart on the wall.
Sandecker drummed his fingers on the table thoughtfully. "Which puts us back in the starter's gate before the race."
A woman in her forties, fashionably dressed in a conservative blue suit, stared contemplatively at one of the admiral's paintings, the one illustrating the famous World War II aircraft carrier Enterprise during the battle for Midway. Her name was Molly Faraday, and she was a former analyst with the National Security Agency who had jumped over to NUMA at Sandecker's urging, to be his intelligence agency coordinator. With soft toffee-colored hair and brown eyes, Molly was all class. Her gaze swiveled from the painting to Sandecker and fixed him with a somber look.
"I think I might have the solution to our problems," she said in a quiet monotone.
The admiral nodded. "You have the floor, Molly."
"As of yesterday," she lectured, "the Navy's aircraft carrier Roosevelt was docked at Pearl Harbor, taking on supplies and making repairs to one of her flight-deck elevators before joining the Tenth Fleet off Indonesia."
Gunn looked at her curiously. "You know that for certain?"
Molly smiled sweetly. "I keep my toes dipped in the offices of the Joint Chiefs."
"I know what you're thinking," said Sandecker. "But without a reflector, I fail to see how a carrier at Pearl Harbor can solve our dilemma."
"The carrier is a side bonus," explained Molly. "My primary thought was a recollection of an assignment at a satellite information collection center on the Hawaiian island of Lanai."
"I didn't know Lanai had a satellite facility," said Yaeger. "My wife and I honeymooned on Lanai and drove all over the island without seeing a satellite downlink facility."