“Where was the tracker’s last ping?” Nicholas asked, and Adam pointed to the screen. He’d been tracking Kitsune the old-fashioned way, like a submariner tracking a whale, with small Xs drawn on the chart to show her last known coordinates.
“You can see exactly where she went off the map. There’s nothing there. It’s ocean, miles and miles of empty ocean. No land, nothing.”
Nicholas watched as Adam pulled up another file and started running an algorithm on the previous geo-located marks. “What are you looking for?”
“This,” Adam said, pointing at his screen. They gathered around him to see he’d pulled up a map up on his tablet with Kitsune’s trajectory outlined in white. “From the velocity and speed the tracker was traveling, we know they were on a plane. But”—he swiped to a new image, and enlarged the map—“when the tracker started to move again, it was at a much slower pace. They flew into Preston, then put her on a boat.” He tapped his finger on the screen, which obligingly magnified the areas. “And this is where the signal abruptly stopped.”
Mike leaned down and used two fingers to enlarge the map, then minimize, enlarge, minimize. She traced the edge of the tablet with her finger. No matter what she did—there was still nothing in the spot Kitsune’s tracker disappeared, only miles and miles of blue water.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Mike said. “There’s simply nothing there, nothing to account for the tracker not working. And we’re sure she’s still with the Kohath twins? I wonder if they dumped her off somewhere.”
“Wouldn’t matter,” Nicholas said, “the tracker would still work. I think they’re with her and Grant, somewhere. But where? Not a clue.”
Adam looked at each of them, drew in a breath and said, “I’ve got a theory.”
“A theory? Okay, Mr. Hot Shot,” Louisa said. “Tell us what you’ve got.”
“The only thing is, it’s sort of out there.”
Nicholas laughed. “Everything on this case is ‘out there,’ Adam. Launch away.”
Adam said, “Remember Ben told us that way back at the beginning of the twentieth century, Appleton Kohath worked with Tesla, and they developed the Coil using all kinds of electromagnetic power, right?”
“Yes.”
“And now, they’ve managed to push the limits, create storms that are incredibly sophisticated, probably more advanced than we can imagine, right?”
“Spit it out, Adam,” Louisa said.
“Watch this.” He had a video queued. It was an animation of the GPS tracker, overlaying a map of Europe.
“Okay, this is the first time we lost her signal—she’s in the tunnels beneath the Kohath palazzo, then her signal magnifies, and then it simply goes silent. Remember, Nicholas, we were thinking maybe the EMP had knocked it out? And then, inexplicably, it came back on and stayed on?”
They watched the screen shift to the Caribbean. “Now we’re here, over an empty expanse of water, and her tracker signal’s strong. Watch this. The blip magnifies, just like the first time, and then it’s gone, totally gone.”
Adam ran the video three more times.
Louisa said, “This is seriously weird.”
“I would have agreed with you until I did some research on the ingestible GPS trackers, and guess what?” He gave them a maniacal grin. “The suckers can be affected by magnets.”
Nicholas said, “So if you hold a magnet near enough to the tracker, it will go offline.”
Adam nodded.
Louisa said, “You take the magnet away, the tracker comes back online.”
“Yep.”
Mike said, “Okay, it’s a glitch in the design, but who would imagine wearing a tracker next to a magnet? The designers probably didn’t even consider it.” She smacked Adam’s shoulder. “Good thinking, Adam. But what does it mean? Kitsune is sitting near a big-ass magnet?”
“It’s more than that.” Nicholas and Adam said together, both smiling like loons, “We’re talking about a cloaking device.”
Mike’s eyebrows shot up. “Come on, guys, what do you mean, a cloaking device? Like the Romulans on Star Trek? That sort of cloaking device?”
Adam said, “Yep, exactly that sort of cloaking device. Look here.” He tapped the screen, right where Kitsune’s tracker disappeared the first time. “I asked myself, if a physical magnet can make the tracker go offline, what would an electromagnetic field do to it?”
Nicholas said slowly, “You told me you never saw the Kohaths leave the mountain and you couldn’t explain it except with magic flying brooms, and you were watching like a hawk.”
“Right. And when they cleared their palazzo and their mountain, Kitsune’s tracker suddenly came back online. Actually, it came back online when they were exactly thirty miles away from Castel Rigone. It’s like they’ve managed to figure out how to use electromagnetic interference to hide themselves. And I’m not talking mirrors, stealth, reducing their radar signature, nothing like that. I’m thinking it’s something like a portable electromagnetic jammer they use whenever they want to get out of town unseen.”
Nicholas chewed this over, then said slowly, “So they drove away from their palazzo, flipped the switch, and poof—they’re invisible.”
Louisa said, “But that’d sure be dangerous, I mean, if you’re driving, and other drivers can’t see you?”
“And that’s why I think they were in a helicopter,” Adam said. He scrolled back on his tablet. “Look at the satellite shots. There’s nothing there. Then thirty miles away from their mountain, the signal appears, flying low. It had to be a helicopter. They transferred to a plane and headed south.”
Mike said, “So forget magic brooms, it’s more like Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak. Imagine the technology to do that. I don’t know, Adam, it sounds like more than science fiction to me.”
“I wish I could find another explanation,” Adam said, shrugged. “But I can’t. Actually, the first time her tracker stopped, I chalked it up to a malfunction with my software until—”
“Until Kitsune disappeared again,” Nicholas said.
“Yeah, no explanation, same as the first time. Talk about science fiction—if the Kohaths can control the weather, why not extend their discoveries, it’s all along the same line, all based on electromagnetics. I gotta say though, a portable EM cloaking device is pretty impressive. Even cooler than your micro EMP, Nicholas.”
“But here in the middle of the ocean? And not a thing for miles? This isn’t a portable, Adam,” Louisa said. “This is something else entirely.”
Mike said, “You’re telling me we could be looking right at them and not see them? They’re cloaked?”
Adam nodded to Mike. “That’s it. Can they see us? Of course they can. We know Appleton Kohath worked extensively with Tesla for a number of years and Jason Kohath is supposed to be an über genius with electromagnetic fields.”
Louisa said, “I’ve always thought it kind of stupid, what Sherlock Holmes said, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ Now I’m not so sure.”
Nicholas was shaking his head. “It’s hard to get my brain around this, but if it’s true, which it appears to be, then it’s groundbreaking science. Imagine the applications—if it can be applied to moving objects as well as stationary, you could send squadrons and troops into place without anyone knowing they’re coming. It’s war-winning technology.”
Mike looked at the screen again, where Kitsune’s tracker had disappeared the second time. “So they’re hiding or cloaking something really big. Right here, in the middle of the ocean.”
Nicholas was looking off into the distance, past her left shoulder. She knew what that meant—he was making a big leap of logic. She grinned as she counted down in her head, Three, two, one, and Nicholas said, “Adam, pull up a map of the Bermuda Triangle.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Adam and Nicholas were bent over their laptops, maps at their elbows, their fingers typing rapidly, grunt
s, smiles, head shakes. Louisa and Mike were watching and listening as they cleaned their weapons, Mike’s in greater need since it had gone swimming in Lake Trasimeno.
Nicholas raised his fist, “Yes, it fits, Adam. It’s inside the lines. The Bermuda Triangle.”
“I think our team just scored,” Louisa said, and blew gently along the muzzle of her Glock. “It’s fun to watch them spark off each other.”
Mike called out, “What fits? What’s this about the Bermuda Triangle?”
Adam said, “Nicholas thinks they might be responsible for all the planes and ships lost in the Bermuda Triangle.”
“No, no, that’s not what I’m saying at all,” Nicholas said. “I think the Kohaths took advantage of the bizarre happenings attributed to this part of the ocean that have resulted in dozens of lost ships and planes. They knew people avoided the area. What better place than a mythical triangle of ocean to have their home base, where no one can find them or see them? But most important—they don’t have to worry all that much because people don’t want to come here in the first place.”
Louisa called out, “But if there’s something physical out there, surely people have come across them. Even if they didn’t see them, sooner or later, someone would run smack into them, right?”
Adam frowned at his laptop screen. “That would mean then that they had to develop a way to steer people away if they got too close.”
Mike jumped to her feet, felt a moment of dizziness, saw the sudden alarm on Nicholas’s face, and said quickly, “No, no, I’m fine. Look, guys, wherever they’re hiding must be near the spot Kitsune’s tracker disappeared, got to be.
“Nicholas, we need to get out there and find out where they’re hiding. And we need to yell for help.”
“Yes, but tell them what? First we have to find the Kohaths.”
Adam said, “But, dude, we don’t even know what we’re looking for.”
“Adam,” Nicholas said, “we can’t see anything from the surface, what about looking below the water? Is there any way we can do that?”
Adam lit up like a Christmas tree. “Hold on, hold on, yes, I remember reading something—yeah, here it is, I bookmarked it to look at later for a computer program I’d like to write. Ah, here it is. Bathymetric LIDAR—it’s a remote sensing method that NOAA—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—uses to map seabeds. LIDAR stands for ‘Light Detecting and Ranging.’ They can map coastlines and seabeds to examine natural and man-made environments. If we can get our hands on the technology—”
Mike said, “That’d take too much time—”
“I’ll call a friend who works at NOAA, see if she knows.”
“Go, do it,” Nicholas said. “But be careful what you say. We don’t want anyone getting word of what we’re doing, especially the Kohaths. We don’t know the sophistication of their communications.”
Mike reholstered her spanking-clean Glock, hoped it worked. “You’re saying we now have a way to find them?”
Louisa propped her chin on her fisted hands. “So any sort of cloaking device wouldn’t extend to beneath the water. And maybe that means we’re looking for some sort of base they built, or—”
“An island,” Mike said. “What if they found a place to live out here and have managed to keep it off the radar—literally—all these years?”
Nicholas said, “So you’re thinking they found an isolated, uninhabited island and set it up as their home base? And this is where all their manufactured storms come from? Okay, that could work. Adam, is there any way to track where the storms were generated from? Are there any sort of coordinates that trace back to this area?”
“Nothing I can see. Sorry, Nicholas. Unless my friend has something for us to latch on to, we’re going to have to go out there and take a look around. I’ve also been looking at pre-twentieth-century maps of this area. No sign of an island in a thirty-mile radius of where Kitsune’s tracker went off. Okay, my call went through. Let’s see what my friend can do. Chill out, guys, we’ve still got thirty minutes before we land.”
Nicholas smiled, stepped away. He looked over at Mike. She was watching him as she put on her gear. She was moving slowly, but she did have some color in her face. He remembered her lying so still, not breathing—he brought himself back. No, she wasn’t dead, she was here, with him, locked and loaded. She was smiling. She was fine.
“Here, let me,” he said, and helped her with the Velcro panel of her bullet-proof vest. She rested her head against his shoulder for a minute, then straightened and passed her belt through the holster and settled it at the right spot on her hip. She grabbed Nicholas’s hand and gave it a good squeeze. “Wipe the worry out of your brain. I’m all right, Nicholas. Quite all right. And both my Glock and my ankle pistol survived their swim. Hopefully.”
He watched her fasten the small holster, then pull on her boots. She looked up at him, frowned. “The boots still feel wet. I doubt they’ll ever dry out.”
“Yeah, give them a decade.” And he brought her up, cupped her face in his hands. “Tell me the truth, and I’ll shut up. How do you feel?”
She lightly stroked her fingers over his scruffy cheek. “I’m good to go, I promise. I like the beard stubble, it’s sexy.”
He had to laugh. “You mean I can seduce you if I don’t happen to shave?”
“Could be. Maybe. Probably.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Preston Airfield
Cuba
Louisa was standing on the tarmac, having a discussion in heated Spanish with the airport authorities, who were doing their best to make her and Adam get back on the plane and bugger off their tarmac. Clancy and Trident were still in the cockpit, Louisa had told them they couldn’t help, they didn’t speak Spanish. As for Adam and Nicholas, they were still studying maps and doing their computer magic.
Mike, who’d been listening and understood some Spanish, moseyed over. “Louisa, tell our friends here that I know the vice president of the United States personally. I’ll call her, let them speak to her about letting us use their airport.”
Louisa translated in rapid Spanish, and Mike had a feeling she was embroidering Mike’s message. Who cared? Whatever worked.
She saw the official finally nod. He stood there, his shoulders hunched, and kicked a pebble out of his path. Another man came to join him, but he said nothing, merely looked at Louisa, and if Mike wasn’t mistaken, there was admiration in his eyes. Finally, both men nodded.
“Good going, Louisa,” Mike said.
Adam had come out of the plane, stood at the top of the stairs, and stared at a culture completely alien to him—ancient airport, cars from the fifties, jungle creeping onto the runway, impenetrable tangled green as far as the eye could see. He’d watched Louisa, forensics queen of the universe, spewing out fluent Spanish, throwing her weight around. It was a fine sight to see.
He saw a speck on the horizon. Within moments, it grew larger, and he could hear the whine of an engine.
“Nicholas, come here now.”
Nicholas came down the stairs, shaded his eyes. “It’s an old Grumman Albatross coming in for a landing. Louisa, find out where that plane’s coming from.”
She launched into another barrage of Spanish. The first man spoke, then shrugged, and both men hightailed it back to the ancient corrugated steel building that looked close to collapsing in on itself, and disappeared inside.
Mike asked, “What did they say?”
Louisa looked disgusted. “They claim they have no idea. For whatever reason, they’re both afraid.” Louisa pushed her hair off her face and waited, tapping her foot, while the pilot of the Albatross landed and taxied in to the hangar. He came closer and closer, saw them, and saw the airport manager frantically waving him off. He veered away, gunned his engines, and headed back toward the runway.
Adam yelled, “That plane—It’s got the Genesis logo etched on the side—a stylized G! We’ve got to stop him!”
Louisa took off after the
plane in a dead run.
“Boy, can she move,” Adam said.
“I watched her in the New York City Marathon last year,” Mike said. “She came in fifth. And that’s why she carb-loads—fast fuel.”
“What if he runs over her?”
“He won’t,” Nicholas said. “Too dangerous for him. And Louisa’s got a gun.”
They watched the old plane do a full turn to make it back to the runway. Louisa put herself in front of it, right in the line of sight of the pilot. She raised her weapon, pointed it directly at the small windshield, and shouted in Spanish even though she strongly doubted the pilot could hear her over the engines, “Turn off the engine and get out of the plane, now, or I will shoot either you or your plane dead!”
The pilot didn’t stop, so Louisa pulled the trigger. She didn’t shoot the pilot, she nicked a panel right above the pilot’s head to show him she was serious.
The pilot stopped and killed the engine.
They watched him climb out of the Albatross with his hands up. Louisa stood facing him, her gun aimed at his chest. The airport manager and his buddies had stayed inside the hangar.
They all converged on the pilot. Nicholas asked him if he spoke English. The man looked insulted. “Of course. Everyone speaks English here. It’s required, well except for those fools who work here at the airport.”
“Who exactly requires you to speak English?”
“My employers.”
“What is your name?”
“I am Rafael Guzman.”
“Rafael, you will tell me where you flew the Kohaths.”
“I came back from Havana. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Nicholas sighed. “Rafael, forgive me, but I don’t have time to engage in a lively discussion with you. Your plane is owned by the Genesis Group, see the G on the side of your plane? And that means you are owned by the Kohaths.