“If you’re included in that offer, I’ll have to take out a loan to pay for it,” Locke said, before introducing Juan and Eric. “This is Grant Westfield, Gordian Engineering’s top electrical engineer and the bane of all-you-can-eat buffets everywhere.”
Eric went slack-jawed as he shook Westfield’s massive paw. “Grant Westfield? You’re kidding! Murph is going to have a seizure when he finds out I met The Burn. We play you all the time in Pro Wrestling All-Stars.”
“I sincerely hope that’s a video game,” Juan said.
“It’s a real honor, Mr. Westfield,” Eric said, ignoring Juan. “I admire your decision to leave wrestling to join the Rangers after 9/11, but it would be fun to see you in the ring again.”
“I’m having too much fun on this job to go back to getting slammed in the head with folding chairs. So Tyler tells me that you have a pressing need to learn the results of our analysis.”
Juan nodded. “It relates to an investigation of our own. The good doctor here implied that this was no accident.”
“No way. The Navy’s initial conclusion was that the drone locked onto the control signal emitted by the boat’s antenna and homed in, but that’s not possible.”
“Why not?”
“Because we found that the cable to the antenna was disconnected before the impact. The boat was going over twenty knots at the time and using evasive maneuvers to shake it. The drone should have lost its lock once the signal stopped transmitting, but it hit the boat perfectly amidships.”
“Do you know how it did that?” Eric asked.
Locke produced a charred piece of equipment. “By homing in on this. It’s a beacon that was hidden inside a laptop. We think someone used it to guide the drone no matter what was done to dodge it.”
Juan took the destroyed circuitry and turned it over in his hand. It was easily small enough to smuggle inside a computer case. “Do you think the saboteur was someone on the project team?”
“More than that,” Westfield said, “we think it was someone on the boat. Whoever redirected the drone had to do it from a workstation on board.”
“Pearson was on the boat at the time?”
“Four people were,” Locke said. “The boat’s captain and the three project leaders: Douglas Pearson, Frederick Weddell, and Lawrence Kensit. We found the bodies of only two of them, the captain and Weddell. Weddell was on deck at the time of the explosion and the captain was on the bridge. The control center was hit dead-on by the drone.”
“Because of the intense heat, we were lucky to find any remains inside the boat after it sank,” Westfield said. “Just a few bones, but it was enough for DNA testing of the marrow.”
“I’m guessing you only found DNA evidence for Kensit,” Juan said, “and Pearson’s bones were nowhere to be found.”
“That did seem to be the case,” Locke said. “But we found a big inconsistency when we simulated the impact.”
“‘Simulated’? You mean you can reconstruct what actually happened at the moment of the explosion?”
Locke nodded. “My company, Gordian, developed the software. We create three-dimensional models of the craft involved. Then we input the deformities caused by the impact and explosion, the speed at which both craft were traveling, and the approximate locations where the pieces were recovered from the seabed floor, and the program crunches the numbers to produce a crude simulation of the event.”
Westfield handed him the tablet and Locke tapped on it until the screen was showing a surprisingly detailed representation of the boat frozen atop the water’s surface, trailing a wake behind it. The drone was suspended above it, poised in a dive.
“The video is slowed by a factor of one hundred.” Locke pressed the PLAY button and the drone inched toward the boat until its nose crumpled against the deck. It continued to deform until it erupted in a fireball. Fragments of the boat flew away before it, too, exploded. The video ended when all of the airborne pieces had fallen in the water. Juan was amazed they could have recovered anything at all, let alone the substantial portion they’d fitted back together.
“Now that you know what the impact looked like from the outside,” Locke said, “let’s take a look at it from inside.”
He pulled up another video, this one showing a re-creation of the control center that was nearly photo-realistic. Only one figure was in the room, a generic representation sitting in a chair.
“Where are the rest of them?” Eric asked.
“The captain is on the bridge, and Weddell had gone up to disconnect the antenna cable manually,” Westfield said. “Our simulation shows that only one person remained in the control center.”
“Pearson must have jumped overboard before the drone hit,” Juan said.
“The DNA evidence did show that it was Kensit in the center,” Locke said, “but watch this.”
He started the video, and at the moment of the drone’s impact, the person and chair were flung backward, smashing into the opposite wall, before disintegrating in the fireball.
Juan didn’t see anything unexpected. “I must be missing something.”
“Douglas Pearson weighed two hundred and fifty pounds,” Locke said. “Kensit was one-sixty. If Kensit were the one in the chair, the impact profile would have been significantly different, at least six inches higher than where we found pieces of chair and DNA embedded in the equipment we recovered from that side of the boat. Kensit didn’t die in that room, Pearson did.”
“Are you sure?”
“I estimate the probability at eighty percent,” Westfield said. “We had a photo of the interior to work with, but we can’t be sure of the exact configuration that day.”
“But the Navy said the DNA evidence was a match for Kensit,” Juan said.
“If Kensit was the one responsible for reprogramming the drone,” Eric said, “someone with that level of expertise could certainly fake his own death by breaking into the computer records and switching the DNA profiles. I know Murph and I could do it, given enough time.”
“That’s exactly what our report is going to suggest,” Westfield said. “The Navy should check the actual stored DNA sample, if they still have it. It’s highly unlikely Kensit could have tampered with the original. They’re kept in a secure deep freeze in Rockville, Maryland.”
“When do you think the sample will be retested?” Juan asked.
“You know DoD bureaucracy. It could take weeks.”
“We don’t have that kind of time. Can it be expedited?”
Locke shrugged. “That’s up to the Navy, although you must have some pull just to get in here. We’ll deliver our preliminary conclusions before we leave tomorrow morning. We need to go to Cairo on an urgent project, so we won’t be able to follow up for a week or two.”
Westfield rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why we can’t go back to Seattle first. The Great Pyramid is five thousand years old and it can’t wait another few days?”
“In the meantime, Mr. Cabrillo,” Locke continued, “I would operate under the assumption that Lawrence Kensit is still alive. What he’s doing now or where he went, I couldn’t tell you. But if you’re after him, I recommend you proceed with extreme caution.”
“Why do you say that?”
The grim expression on Locke’s face was chilling. “Kensit is a meticulous planner who was willing to kill people he’d known for years to make himself disappear. Two years prior to the incident, he practically forced himself on the project, which was interacting with every new type of drone the Navy had in development, both in the air and on the water. He learned everything there was to know about drone operations, from the security precautions to how they were controlled. He must have had a very specific reason for faking his death.”
“Right,” Eric said, “to sell the Piranha sub technology to the highest bidder without anyone realizing he was the one who’d stolen
the plans.”
Juan caught Locke and Westfield exchanging worried glances. “I’d be surprised if that was why he did it,” Locke said. “We interviewed everyone on the drone project in the course of our investigation. Every single one of them said two things. First, Kensit, who earned Ph.D.s in both physics and computer science, was the most brilliant person they’d ever met, and this coming from some of the brightest minds in weapons development. Kensit and his intelligence weren’t challenged on a project like this, they said. He disdained others for their inability to keep up with his mental acuity, but he stayed on the project anyway.”
“And the second thing?” Juan prodded.
“Kensit didn’t hide his contempt for how America was wasting its opportunity to fix the planet and squandering its technological superiority, specifically its advantage in weaponry. He thought world leaders were too corrupt or weak or beholden to uneducated constituencies to solve the problems that he felt had simple solutions. Crime, war, famine, pollution, disease, energy and water shortages—all of those issues could be solved if one person with the right technology, intelligence, and ruthless vision unencumbered by sentimentality could focus on the big picture and force leaders to do what he thought was best for the planet. One guess who that person should be.”
Juan nodded slowly as the ramifications jelled in his mind. He now understood why the discovery that Kensit was the survivor alarmed Locke and Westfield. And while they knew he had killed three men to cover up his death, they didn’t know he was now employing Haitian death squads that had nearly wiped out Oregon’s entire crew by using an untraceable means of spying on them. Based on the assassin’s pronouncement that the world would change in less than four days, the physicist was either completely off his rocker or he was bringing to fruition a goal that was equally insane.
“Did Kensit have any friends at all? Anyone close that might have suspected his plans?”
“He had no family, and he didn’t hang out with anyone outside of work. One of his coworkers mentioned overhearing Kensit speaking to Pearson about a diary he’d received as an inheritance. Pearson spoke German and Kensit wanted him to do some translation. The coworker thought it unusual because it was the only time Kensit talked about a personal matter. And he remembered there were just a few snippets of the conversation before Kensit abruptly shut Pearson down and never spoke about it again: something about a German scientist, a ship called the Roraima, and a reference to Oz.”
“Oz as in The Wizard of Oz?” Eric asked.
“I asked the same thing,” Westfield said. “He said that’s what it sounded like.”
“Kensit could have been referring to Australia,” Juan said, meaning the nickname Aussies gave their own country.
Westfield shrugged. “It’s hard to know without more to go on. We looked up the Roraima. There are three that we know of. One is a small cargo ship currently sailing under a Brazilian flag. The second was a nineteenth-century steamship that ran aground, but the vessel was saved and the captain subsequently built a Victorian mansion named after the ship. It’s a bed-and-breakfast now.”
“And the third?” Juan asked.
“That’s the most interesting one,” Locke said. “It sunk in Saint-Pierre Harbor in 1902 when Mount Pelée erupted. I understand it’s a tourist attraction now. The question is why Kensit would be interested in any of those ships. We couldn’t come up with a reason.”
“I know someone who might be able to.” And it was just their luck, Juan thought, that St. Julien Perlmutter was only a short drive away in Washington, D.C.
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
The stench from the harbor made checking the cargo an odious task, but this equipment was too important for Lawrence Kensit to leave to the crew of Russian scientists and technicians he had hired from a defunct nuclear fusion weapons laboratory. The contents of this container were critical if testing for Sentinel Phase 2 was to finish on schedule. He had to know right away if anything was damaged or missing, which was a distinct possibility considering he was buying all of his hardware on the black market.
The physicist called out the checklist to the team unpacking the crates that were to be loaded onto trucks for the rough ride over cracked and potholed roads to their final destination. Despite his small stature and reedy voice, Kensit was confident that his team would follow his orders to ensure the fragile instruments would make the trip intact and be ready for testing.
The barely functional harbor, severely damaged by the 2010 earthquake that killed a quarter of a million people, served as a strong reminder of why the world needed Kensit to take drastic action to save it from itself. Garbage was piled everywhere. Buildings that had crumbled in the temblor remained unusable. A gantry crane teetered in the middle of the harbor like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, its base completely submerged. Gaunt children rooted around in the refuse for whatever useful scraps they could find and sell.
The scene was representative of the laziness, corruption, and lack of will rampant in every country. Kensit thought of himself as too intelligent to believe in fate or destiny, but he did know an opportunity when it presented itself and the inheritance he had received nearly three years before was just that. If it had gone to anyone else, it would have been wasted; in his hands, the radical theories could usher in a new direction for civilization, with Kensit as its guide.
Lawrence Kensit had been unlike anyone else as far back as he could remember, which he saw as their deficiency, not his. His parents constantly told him that he was special, a fact that he considered self-evident in his ability to master calculus by the age of ten. He didn’t connect with other children, and adults found him to be an oddity or an amusing diversion trotted out to perform tricks.
Kensit found the isolation strangely appealing. People were annoying and tedious, with their small talk and need to placate others’ feelings. Instead, he immersed himself in online worlds where he could take on the persona of a powerful dark knight or sorcerer, someone equal to the stature that he could not hope to achieve in the real world because of his small build and meek appearance. In the real world, his towering intellect provoked jealousy and discomfort from those around him that radiated from their pores, but online he could make them submit to his will whether they wanted to or not.
After graduating from Caltech at eighteen with Ph.D.s in both physics and computer science, he had been recruited by the top universities. Although the idea of shutting himself away to ponder the deepest questions of the universe was intriguing, weapons design was far more fascinating to him. Drone warfare was in its infancy, but he saw the potential for transforming his video game experiences into reality.
The end result was more frustrating than he’d imagined it would be. His elegant software designs were used inefficiently by politicians who were more concerned about limiting civilian casualties than killing the terrorists or winning the wars the drones were meant for. Kensit’s eyes were opened to all of the other problems that faced the planet. When he saw the answers in his mind, they seemed so simple to him, but when he explained them to others they seemed strangely repulsed by his solutions.
Then one day three years ago a lawyer called him up and told him that a great-aunt he’d never met had died. Because his parents had both succumbed to cancer at an early age, Kensit was his aunt’s last living relative and she had left him a small inheritance that included a diary from her uncle, a German scientist named Gunther Lutzen who had died in the volcanic eruption of Mt. Pelée in 1902. Kensit nearly chucked the thing without reading it, but he casually flipped it open and found his uncle’s equations, one of the few times in his life that he’d been truly stunned academically.
Kensit at once recognized that his genius had been familial. The equations he understood, but Pearson’s prying when Kensit had asked him to translate some of the words made him realize he would need a professional translator to decipher the German text for him. When Kensit rea
d the results, he knew he alone had to carry on his distant relative’s work. If he turned the radical concepts over to his employer, the U.S. government, they would just waste them like they wasted his drone technology.
That was the day he began plotting to fake his death. It took two years to accomplish, followed by another nine months of eighteen-hour days, but he was nearly finished with the next step toward attaining the power to remake the world however he saw fit.
When the final checks of equipment were finished and the trucks drove off, it was time for his phone call. He found a quiet section of the loading dock and dialed Admiral Dayana Ruiz.
“Yes,” she answered on the fourth ring.
“Admiral, didn’t you see who was calling?” His voice was transformed by a modulator so that NSA eavesdropping software wouldn’t recognize his voice.
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Then you should answer faster next time. You waste our time when you play petty mind games.”
“I waste our time?” she said. “You were the one who didn’t sink the Ciudad Bolívar. I lost twelve men on the operation, and I’m having to answer questions about why Venezuelan Navy seaman were aboard her when she was discovered. And where are my drone subs?”
“I had to sink them.”
“You what?”
“They were about to fall into American hands. I couldn’t let that happen.”
Ruiz shouted so loudly that Kensit had to hold the phone away from his ear. “When I find you, whoever you are, I will destroy you!”
“Your focus is on the wrong person,” Kensit said. “You should be after Juan Cabrillo.”
“Who is that?”
“You know him as Buck Holland, captain of the Dolos. His ship is actually called the Oregon, and you didn’t really sink it. It was all an elaborate ruse.”