Wired Kingdom Page 24
“Go ahead.”
Tara looked at Anastasia and nodded at the computer monitor. “Refresh. . . . Please.” She wanted Branson to be able to give the underwater team the latest available data. Tara knew the researcher might be miffed at having a simple command barked to her, but Tara was here to work, Anastasia to cooperate in hopes of freeing her father. Thankfully, Anastasia complied. Tara relayed the numbers to Branson.
“Got it. Good work, Shores.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Now listen to me. I need you to continue to feed us the coordinates, say, every fifteen minutes, or if this big-ass fish starts to move. Understood?”
Tara tried to avoid looking disappointed in front of Anastasia. “Understood.”
“Let’s get this thing done.”
“Yes, sir.”
Branson clicked off.
A phone rang from the adjoining office. The renowned researcher trotted out of the lab to pick it up.
“Yeah,” Tara heard. “You’re kidding. Already? . . . No, I certainly wasn’t expecting it. . . . Let me check. . . .” Tara heard her clack away on the keyboard. And then, “Yes! How did you do that? . . . Well I hope you only use those powers for good, Anthony! . . . No, thank you.”
Tara walked into the office as Anastasia put the phone down, in time to see the Wired Kingdom site with the whale’s video feed playing. “Is that real-time?” she asked.
Anastasia whirled around in her chair. “Sorry, detective, I didn’t know you were off the phone.”
“Is that the Blue, off Catalina right now?” Tara squinted at the GPS numbers in the lower left corner of the screen. But it was the video that commanded Tara’s attention. Shifting rays of light pierced the opaline water, playing over what they could see of the Blue’s sun-dappled body. A beautiful, tranquil scene, though they could see that the water was not as clear as it had been farther north, with the exception of the seamount. On screen, the whale’s expansive melon faded into cloudy obscurity, whereas in the previous days’ video the outline of her entire body was crisply defined against the openness of the crystal-clear sea.
“Yes, that’s her. I can’t believe it, but one of our producers got the commercial site back up already. I have to tell my Dad.”
Tara could see Anastasia starting to become uncomfortable. The scientist stared off into space.
“Hold on,” Tara said, wanting to bring her back. “So it’s not just back up for you, everybody can see this?” Tara knew that the divers she’d seen would likely be monitoring the web site as well, waiting like pirates with a treasure map for it to come back online.
“Exactly!” Anastasia replied, perking up at the thought of it.
Tara contemplated this. With the telemetry unit broadcasting its position to the world, it wouldn’t be long before the Blue was surrounded by curious boaters.
Anastasia threw open a metal storage locker and pulled out a waterproof dry bag.
“What are you doing?”
“Going sailing.”
“To the Blue?”
“No, to Hawaii. Yes, to the Blue! I’ve got to see what happens to my girl.”
You mean you’ve got to see what happens to your million-dollar tracking instrument and to the ratings of your show after you appear live on the scene.
“You wanna go?” Anastasia asked without looking up from zipping her bag. Tara, transfixed by the Blue’s greenish surroundings, said nothing.
“It’ll just be you and I. No cameras. No crew.”
“Without the crew?”
“My personal sailboat. C’mon, it’ll be fun. And you’ll be on site to monitor things.”
Tara shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I told the field office I’d stay here to feed them the coordinates.”
“The web site is live now. I’ve got a laptop with a wireless connection that’ll work the whole way over there. You’ll always know the coordinates, and you’ll be able to see what the whale sees.”
Tara thought about what happened the last time she trusted someone to lead her to sea with a laptop. “I agreed to stay here.”
“No, what he actually said was, ‘I need you to continue to feed us the coordinates,’ to which you replied, ‘I understand.’ You never said you’d stay here.”
Tara watched the Blue on screen. She was moving, diving deeper into an emerald cathedral, the greenest water Tara had ever seen.
“Well, are you coming, or what?”
CHAPTER 38
AVALON, CATALINA ISLAND
Fifteen minutes after the Blue’s webcast began, a line of boats formed at both of the picturesque harbor’s fuel docks. She was close and getting closer, came the word from Avalon’s many watering holes where the televisions ran the news channels after the owner of the town’s only Internet café had put out the word.
For many it seemed like just another island day. At the end of the town’s pier, passengers boarded a glass-bottom boat for a tour of the nearby kelp forests, where towering columns of giant brown algae, the fastest-growing plant in the world, stretched from the seafloor to the surface. At the other end of Avalon Bay, scuba divers entered the water in front of the Casino Point ballroom, many as part of classes to obtain their certification.
Inside The Pelican's Nest, Ernie Hollister lit up a Camel as he flapped an arm in an attempt to quiet the clientele. Somebody cut the volume on the jukebox, and Jimmy Buffet faded to the background.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Ernie began. “I just was over at the Internet café and they’re all taking about how the wired whale—you know the big Blue they have that TV show about—well that whale is here, right now, right off Avalon.”
The television over the bar was tuned to a baseball game.
“So, you wanna drink to the whale, Ernie?” somebody wisecracked.
“I wanna take my boat out for whale watch tours,” Ernie said, “but I need a first mate. And maybe someone to help with the customers. Collect money, show ’em on board, that kind of thing.”
There was nothing but stunned silence.
“Your boat working, Ernie?” Bill the bartender asked.
“Been working on her all day. Needs a little tweaking, but she’ll do. All we gotta do is take some looky-loo’s just outside the harbor to take a gander at this whale.”
“Ya gotta bring ’em back, too, Ernie,” somebody pointed out to rowdy guffaws.
“Hey, I’m serious,” Ernie continued. “There’s thousands of people walkin’ around out there right now. All the big boats are in for the day. I say we offer whale watch trips for forty bucks a head. We can probably fit ten on my boat, that’s . . .” He struggled with the calculation.
“Four hundred bucks, Ernie,” Bill finished for him.
“Four hundred, for a piddly-ass little boat ride! Maybe we can squeeze in three or four trips. Set a time limit. Since we can track this whale on the computer, we can keep making runs as long as it sticks around.”
“Four hundred ought to just about cover your bar tab and the damage your cart did to my door,” Bill said, cocking his head toward the entrance. At this there was much cackling but also a few boat captains who nodded, beginning to see Ernie’s logic—except for one small problem.
“Ernie, your boat’s not ready.” This from submarine pilot Walt Johnson, making a semi-rare appearance at The Nest. While he was known to stop in for a brew or two now and then, he was not a permanent fixture like the majority of its patrons.
They all knew that Ernie, back in the day when The Pelican’s Nest logo on his cap was still legible, had run a small charter fishing operation. In his pleasantly inebriated state, Ernie saw the wired whale as his way to get back into the fishing business.
Ernie spun clumsily on one heel and faced the bar. “That’s it, Walt! The sub! Let’s take tourists out to see this whale from the damn sub!”
Walter set his beer mug down on the bar and turned around. “Sub’s in for the day, Ernie.”
“She’s done for today, Ernie. Her batteries aren’t even fully charged yet, plus my regular crew is leaving right now for the Bahamas to train their local guys on how to run a new submersible operation there,” he added, looking at his dive watch.
“I know, Ted told me when he towed me in. I’ll be your crew. Weather’s good. This is a special occasion. The whole point of a submarine is to explore the underwater world, right?”
Walter nodded, discarding some peanut shells on the floor.
Ernie went on. “So here’s a blue whale sitting within easy cruising range. Imagine the publicity your operation will get after a bunch of super-happy people get off your sub and talk about how they saw that whale underwater.”
A few of the other patrons nodded in agreement.
The bartender said, “That would be something if you got close enough to the whale in that sub, and the folks out on the Internet could see the people inside the sub wavin’ at ’em.”
Walter stared into the depths of his beer for a moment, reflecting. He was more than an underwater bus driver, wasn’t he? He knew he wasn’t getting any younger, and the scenario—or anything close to it, like the one Bill had just outlined—would mean a lot of bragging rights, even to Walter Johnson. He looked up from his glass.
“Well, after today I know your boat needs some work, Ernie, and the last thing I want to see is you trying to take it out before it's ready. And I would like to help you get back on your feet again. So, okay, I’ll do it. But I get half of the take,” he declared. “And you stop drinking—right now.”
Returning from his first sortie away from Pandora’s Box, during which he had seen no indications of the Blue, Héctor González splashed the floatplane down beside the old black schooner. She was a warship now, the explosive-tipped harpoon gun riding menacingly atop her prow, but it was a change of a different kind that commanded his attention. As he taxied up to the ship and cut his engines, he could see that something had happened while he was in the air.
A crowd was gathered around a young woman cradling a notebook computer. Eric Stein was gesturing wildly. Héctor tossed a line to a deckhand on OLF’s boat. When the plane drew near enough, he jumped aboard.
“We’ve got the coordinates!” Stein shouted at the pilot as soon as he boarded.
“And so does everyone else,” Pineapple said. “We need to hurry.”
Stein explained to Héctor that the Blue’s GPS and web feed had come back online at the same time, and that the whale was now just off Catalina.
“Not good,” the pilot said. “For the plane, it is not very far from here, but there will be many people.”
The girl with the computer nodded. “I already saw two boats,” she confirmed.
“Get your divers over there. We’ll be right behind you with the big gun,” Pineapple said.
“Whale ho!” Stein shouted, pointing the way to the island.
Pineapple rolled his eyes. He knew Stein was acting out his fantasy of being a sea captain in days gone by, when killing whales rather than studying them was a way of life. Stein’s enthusiasm was contagious, however, and the ship became energized as everyone scrambled to do their part. Héctor ordered his two newest divers back into the plane to make the trip with him. Juan and Fernando would remain on the schooner.
Its spotter plane airborne, the first operational whaling vessel to ply American waters in decades set its sails for Catalina Island.
CHAPTER 39
MARINA DEL REY
Driving into Marina del Rey again did little to calm Tara’s nerves. To take her mind off it as she followed Anastasia’s Range Rover in her Crown Vic, she placed a cell call to the Imaging lab.
Herb Shock’s enthusiastic voice answered. Without being asked, he started to tell her about some state-of-the-art equipment he’d be getting next month.
“Listen, Herb, I can’t talk long now, I’m about to board a boat. I want to know if you turned anything up on the audio track analysis of the murder video.”
“Short answer: no. But we did isolate an unusual signal—non-vocal—that’s being processed now for ID.”
“How long?”
“Too early to tell, but aside from myself and the technicians doing the work, you’ll be the first to know.”
Tara thanked him and killed the call, watching as Anastasia parked a few stalls ahead. The marine biologist stepped out of her truck, waving for Tara to take the adjacent spot.
“My boat’s right over here,” Anastasia said, pointing at a nearby dock whose slips were occupied by small- to medium-sized sailboats.
Tara parked and exited her car.
She gazed at the row of boats but found it impossible not to stare through their bobbing masts out to the water beyond; water which had claimed her parents, and which now seemed all too eager to claim her, too. She reminded herself that she didn’t have to go. She had fulfilled her obligation to the case by providing the whale’s coordinates to Branson’s team. But there was a part of her that knew she had to go, that if she didn’t, she would always be a prisoner.
“Come on, Detective.” Anastasia hopped aboard a white sailboat. The vessel was neat, but obviously well-used, unlike some boats in the marina, which were in pristine condition because they were never taken out. “Watch your step coming aboard. Welcome to my ketch.”
Tara stepped gingerly aboard. The instant both of her feet were set on deck, she realized that she’d forgotten her scopolamine patches. Again. “I know a ketch is a kind of sailboat,” Tara said, deliberately diverting her thoughts from the fact that another bout of seasickness was likely in her near future, “but what is it, exactly?”
Anastasia pulled a canvas cover off of a winch and made some adjustments to a line as she answered. “A ketch is a sailboat that has two masts, with the one in the rear, called the mizzen, shorter than the forward mainmast.”
“So most sailboats only have one mast?”
“Most smaller ones do. Like the one right there.” Anastasia nodded toward a boat a few slips away where four middle-aged men were preparing to sail while they passed each other beers from a cooler and fiddled with the radio.
Tara gave the boat a quick appraisal. She recognized that the men aboard were weekend warrior types. Their boat was considerably smaller than Anastasia’s but even with four of them aboard, they still looked like they wouldn’t be ready to sail anytime soon.
“How long is this boat?” Tara asked, watching Anastasia undo a line from a cleat without even looking at it while her eyes focused on a radar ball atop the mainmast.
“Forty-two feet. I think we’re ready.” The marine biologist pulled a small remote from her pocket and clicked it. An electric trolling motor fell into position up on the bow.
“Well isn’t that fancy,” one of the men on the neighbor boat said.
“Look at that, she’s outta here before we even got a sail ready,” another replied. “We need to make a run to the chandlery to pick up another line.”
Anastasia waved to the men. “Have fun shopping, boys. We’re going sailing.” As Anastasia led her boat out into the main channel, the would-be sailors had a good laugh at the name printed on the transom as she motored away.
Ketch Me If You Can.
33° 22’ 73.2” N AND 118° 13’ 45.0” W
The Blue was 175 feet down, rubbing her back against a rock outcropping to scrape the barnacles from her thick hide. Even at this depth, the animal had no trouble hearing boat motors buzzing overhead. She had been here for thirty minutes, and in that time a throng of boats had gathered at the site of her last GPS reading. She would not transmit another GPS data point until she surfaced again. Until then, the boaters circled aimlessly, wondering where the celebrated beast had gone.
After a final scouring of her miniscule hitchhikers, the Blue made her way to the surface in a lazy spiral. Entering the world of air, she
exhaled a geyser of mist which announced her position to the boaters. “Blow, eleven o’clock!” Boats maneuvered around one another in order to best see the famed creature.
Those on the water were so intent watching the Blue that they failed to notice a C-130 Hercules cargo plane approaching from the east. Passing low over the water, the huge aircraft lumbered directly toward the Blue. As it flew over the boats that now formed an almost complete circle around the wired whale, the letters “FBI” stenciled on the plane’s fuselage were clearly visible.
While people craned their necks to look at the aerial intruder, the giant plane dropped even lower. Flying only feet above the water, the C-130’s cargo bay doors opened and a stunned crowd of boaters watched in disbelief as the aircraft disgorged a speedboat.
The sixteen-foot craft fell from the plane’s rear doors and hit the water with a splash about two hundred feet from the circle of marine onlookers. Remarkably, the boat landed on an even keel. Bristling with antennae, radomes, and other apparatus not readily identifiable to the average recreational boater, there was something odd about the dropped vessel.
This feeling was confirmed when a male voice issued from loudspeakers atop the boat’s antenna mast. “Attention boaters: This craft is an unmanned surface vehicle operated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The whale and its tracking equipment are part of a federal investigation. All persons found to be interfering with this investigation will be charged with obstruction of justice and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. All boats and persons are ordered to stay at least one hundred yards away from the whale at all times. . . .” The message repeated in a loop.
The boaters realized that with such sophisticated equipment in use, the FBI meant business. In fact, the drone, or Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV), represented counter-terrorism technology developed in the wake of 9/11. A few of the spectators began to depart.
Overhead, the cargo plane circled back toward the Blue.
MARINA DEL REY