Celtic Empire (Dirk Pitt 25)

She led him along the dock to a small skiff with an outboard motor. “You know how to handle yourself on the water?”

He smiled. “Since I was a kid.” Pitt pulled the starter rope, and the little outboard fired right up.

“Just be wary of the wind if it starts to pick up,” she said with a wink. “Best fishing is generally off the castle.”

“Much obliged.” Pitt gave the woman a wave as he pushed away from the dock and navigated into the loch. He glanced through the trees toward the main road and spotted the BMW pulled off to the side.

Pitt motored offshore in clear view, then turned east toward Inverness. He traveled a short distance, then cut the motor and let the boat drift as he assembled his tackle. He selected a spoon lure and began casting and retrieving his line. The BMW, he saw, had tracked his position.

He lingered for half an hour, then started the motor and cruised back to the west. Bypassing the inlet to Drumnadrochit, he fished in front of Urquhart Castle for an hour, then hopscotched west until reaching the waters off McKee Manor. He eyed the doors to the boathouse, which were painted to match the castle’s stone walls. As he studied the manor, the BMW crept along the road above, maintaining its view of his boat.

Pitt moved farther offshore, where, to his dismay, the fish began to bite his line. In quick succession he hooked a trout and two bass, which he promptly tossed back. Between strikes, he kept his eyes glued across the lake. On the opposite shore, through the trees, the lab was just barely visible. To Pitt’s favor, the current was carrying him in that direction, and he gradually drifted closer.

It wasn’t so much the lab he was interested in, but the offshore activity. The tanker he’d seen was now gone, replaced by another of similar size. Like the first, it sat moored a short distance from the shore. There was no name on the ship, only the Roman numeral IX.

He spotted a pair of workmen on deck, engaged with some sort of equipment on the opposite side. After an hour the ship weighed anchor and made its way southwest down the loch toward the town of Fort Augustus.

Pitt continued to fish, reeling in a small salmon that gave a good fight. As he released the hook and slipped the fish over the side, Pitt looked up to see yet another tanker creeping up the loch from the direction the other had just sailed. It pulled up to a tiny red float and moored in the exact same spot. This ship was identified as XVII.

Pitt pulled out his cell phone and snapped a picture, then sent it to Rudi Gunn in Washington. A few minutes later, his phone rang with a call from Gunn.

“Is that a tanker of Scotch whisky you’re sending home?” Gunn asked.

“You’ve been hanging around Hiram too much. And, no, whatever it’s carrying, I wouldn’t want to drink it on the rocks.”

“Was the photo taken on Loch Ness?”

“About five minutes ago.” Pitt explained his meeting with Perkins and the discovery of the hidden lab. “Can you tap some satellite reconnaissance on these tankers and see where they’re going? They must be sailing through the Caledonian Canal at Fort Augustus and running into the Atlantic.”

“Are they ocean-worthy?”

“They appear to be. They show no names, just Roman numerals.”

“I’ll get with Hiram and see what we can do,” Gunn said. “Backtrack imaging in that region may be iffy, but we can put in place some sort of forward coverage.”

“One more thing,” Pitt said. “Can you pull the history of a freighter named Alexandria, out of Malta?”

“The Alexandria.”

“You know of it?”

“I’ll say. A few months ago, the Alexandria was involved in a fatal collision with a small collier in the Ismailia Canal near Cairo. The crew all died, and a chemical release occurred. Your friends at BioRem Global were there for the cleanup.”

“I found the ship documented in McKee’s office, along with the Mayweather. That makes two ships that sank in a collision with a full loss of crew.”

“I’m afraid it’s a lot worse than that. Hiram and I found a significant pattern of industrial waterway accidents like the ones in Cairo and Detroit. In each case, BioRem Global ended up on-site, releasing their waterborne microbes. And in each case, cholera-like outbreaks occurred, resulting in local fatalities.”

“Cholera? Perhaps that was in the water at El Cerrón Grande.”

“Strictly speaking,” Gunn said, “it’s not exactly cholera, but something that shares its more harmful traits. We’ve found numerous recent outbreaks throughout the world that can’t be easily explained. Even worse, the CDC is finding the same bacteria in water samples from all over. They say it’s a pathogen they’ve never encountered before and they can’t explain its sudden widespread distribution. Hiram and I have found that in nearly every instance, there’s evidence that BioRem Global was operating in the vicinity. We suspect the disease has killed untold children beyond just El Salvador. The CDC thinks the pathogen is highly susceptible to mutating into a much deadlier form, and fear it could turn into an uncontrollable pandemic.”

“Have there been any outbreaks in Detroit?”

“While no fatalities or illness have been reported, the CDC just tested a city water sample and found a similar pathogen. It turns out that Detroit draws most of its drinking water just downriver from where the Mayweather sank.”

“And just downriver from where BioRem Global was dispersing their bacteria,” Pitt added. “Perhaps Mike Cruz discovered they were directing their product into Detroit’s water system.”

“It could be a different agent than we tested in the NUMA labs,” Gunn said. “None of it makes any sense. Could they really be trying to boost sales by staging environmental mishaps? And why would they allow their product into the water supply if it’s so dangerous?”