p.m. With each passing moment, the chances of finding Cassandra alive were shrinking and I was tense, so when the phone rang it jarred me. I grabbed it. “Pat here.”
“Dr. Bowers, it’s Aina Mendez. Agent Hawkins told us that Hunter might go after an inhabited building.”
“It’s possible.”
“Well, because of that, we brought the bomb squad to his apartment. They found traces of radioactive isotopes on Hunter’s clothing.”
“What?” I gasped.
“Cesium-137. It’s nasty stuff. Faint, but definitely present. It might have come from something as innocent as visiting a chemo lab at a hospital, or from someone working on a dirty bomb. The team is doing a more extensive sweep now, but I thought you should know.”
The case cycled through my head, facts tumbling over each other.
“Aina, have your team check the fire sites, see if they find any traces of the cesium there. Start with last night. I’m wondering if Hunter might have added something else that we didn’t think of to the paste he used as an accelerant. And hurry. We don’t have much time.”
“But we’ve already done that.”
“You have?”
“Si. San Diego is one of the world’s most important seaports and military hubs, so MAST regularly does sweeps through the city to look for radioactive isotopes, for any evidence of terrorist activity.
In the past we’ve identified traces of cesium-137, but mostly that’s from the medical research facilities here.”
“Cross-check the records.”
I knew I was getting tense, and I think she could hear it in my voice because it was a long moment before she said, “All right. I’ll let you know what we find.”
We ended the call. I looked at the clock.
5:37 p.m.
Lien-hua Jiang watched the video of Cassandra over and over again, each time pausing at different places. At last, she opened her notepad and wrote, “It isn’t the killing that excites him the most.
It’s the power, the high he gets from holding another person’s life in his hands. And he wants to make that feeling last as long as possible.”
She paused. Yes. Cassandra’s terror would go on for hours as she watched the water slowly rise around her-all the while knowing she couldn’t escape. And he would be enjoying every minute of her suffering. Lien-hua put her pen to paper again, “Once the victim is dead, the thrill is over, so killing once isn’t enough for him. He wants to experience it again and again. That’s why he’s taping her death.”
When Lien-hua closed her eyes, she saw the face of a woman staring lifelessly through the water. A face pale, and shaded with death. She’d seen a face like that floating in the water once.
A long time ago.
She opened her eyes, rewound the video to the beginning, and started watching it again.
I felt the familiar tug in my heart: dad vs. FBI agent.
I needed to pull away and be a dad for a couple minutes. I tried Tessa’s number. No answer.
Of course not.
I was a little worried about her, so I punched a few buttons on my cell phone to see if I could find her. Then I stood to stretch and clear my head, walked around the room twice.
When I took my seat and looked at my screen, my video chat icon was flashing. I clicked it and Terry’s face appeared. “There you are, Pat. Good news. The video of Cassandra isn’t on the Internet.”
“How can you be sure?” I asked.
“Angela’s team scanned the web with their latest image-based search engines. We don’t have to type in text anymore, just grab an image and go. It’s like worldwide facial recognition. Web looks clean.”
“Good. What else?”
“We deciphered the encrypted files. It’s mostly all shark research, something about the ampullae of-”
“Lorenzini.” I was getting antsy. “I got that too. Anything else?”
The clock on the wall.
5:49 p.m.
“Well, there’s a Project Rukh and some guy named Dr. Osbourne.
I looked him up. He works for Drake Enterprises. First thing we thought-maybe the kidnapper, right? We did some checking on him, though, he’s speaking at a convention in Boston. Been there for the last three days. Won’t be back in town till tomorrow.”
I thought through flight times and time zones and realized he couldn’t have flown to San Diego and then back to Boston during the night to be part of the abduction. But I wrote down his name.
I could follow up on him later. “What’s Project Rukh, Terry? Do we know?”
“Looks like a DARPA project, although the Pentagon is pretty guarded about its defense contracts, and my intel is patchy. All I could come up with is that Drake Enterprises landed the contract.”
Drake Enterprises again.
So, Cassandra did have a grant from the government after all.
In my mind I flew through a few of the things I knew about DARPA: theoretical weapons research-technology that’s still twenty to fifty years out, sometimes they subcontract weapons systems to civilian organizations. But why an aquarium? Why a biotech firm? “Terry,” I said, “DARPA. Talk to me. Quick summary.”
“They’re way out on the lip, Pat. If I wasn’t here I’d be there.
NASA grew out of DARPA, so did modern computer operating systems, artificial intelligence, voice recognition…” He must have been a bigger fan of DARPA than I thought. He continued to rifle through his list: “Hypertext, virtual reality, laser technology for space-based defense systems, submarine technology, and the Internet-all DARPA babies.”
For just an instant I felt like saying that I thought Al Gore invented the Internet, but this wasn’t the time to joke around. “So, what are you thinking?”
“DARPA doesn’t just subcontract the big projects like jets or armored vehicles anymore. They use private firms to develop lots of smaller, high-tech items.”
I thought back to my conversation with Maria at the aquarium.
“What about killer ray guns?” I asked.
Silence. “What’s going on here, Pat? This isn’t just an abduction case, is it?”
That’s when the door banged open and Ralph burst in. “Hunter struck,” he said. “There’s been another fire.”
5:53 p.m.
“Terry,” I said. “Keep looking into the DARPA connection. I’ll talk to you later. I have to go.” I closed my computer and directed my attention on Ralph. “Casualties?”
“Unknown.”
“Dirty bomb?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
I slipped my computer into its bag and gathered my notes. “How do we know it’s Hunter?”
“Aina can explain when we get there.”
“So where is it?”
“You’re not gonna believe this: Coronado Island. One of the buildings on the Navy SEAL Amphib Base. They call it Building B-14.”
I was already halfway to the door. “Game on.”
General Cole Biscayne paced to the window and stared into the night. Sickly moonlight wandered over the hills surrounding his West Virginia home.
He’d seen someone out there in the yard last week, just on the edge of the tree line. He knew he had, even though he couldn’t be absolutely sure, even though the military police he’d brought in to investigate the area hadn’t found anything. Still, Cole knew he’d seen someone. And he had a feeling he knew who it was.
Sebastian Taylor.
Years ago they’d worked together in the CIA, back when Cole served as the handler for a team of covert agents in South America.
He’d trained Sebastian himself. Honed him into one of his unit’s top operatives. But since Taylor had disappeared last October, the ex-assassin had contacted the general twice and made it quite clear that he blamed him for his fall from grace. Cole had done everything in his power to track down his protege.
And had failed.
Cole scanned the yard again and saw nothing unusual, nothing out of the ordinary.
He was turning away from the window when the dogs began to bark.