Kurt noticed Joe nodding, or perhaps it was an involuntary muscular response to keep his core temperature up. Either way it was time to get back inside. “Let’s get to the operations room and see if anyone was out here.”
Chapter 5
Gamay Trout sat at a computer station with three flat-screen monitors arranged around her like a bay window into an electronic world. The setup was similar to those used by day traders on Wall Street, or video game players immersing themselves in a virtual world. Activities that were far more intense than watching the slowly unfolding display of a sonar scan as it swept across the featureless plane of the seabed below.
Knowing she was going to be staring at screens for hours on end, Gamay had made sure to dress comfortably. She wore a NUMA hoodie, fleece sweatpants, and thick wool socks—she’d long since kicked off her shoes. A ball cap kept the light out of her eyes and kept her red wine-colored hair in place.
Sitting in a club chair with her legs crossed—no easy feat, as she was five foot ten—she watched the screens with a look of disinterest, a coffee mug the size of a soup bowl cradled in both hands. She’d only taken a few sips so far, preferring to absorb the warmth of its contents through her palms while breathing in the satisfying aroma with its hints of caramel and vanilla.
An icon on the central screen flashed as a tiny speaker chirped forher attention. Gamay pressed a key on the keyboard in front of her, silencing it.
The central screen displayed the readout from theLyra’s powerful towed array sonar. The screens to either side of her were broken into multiple boxes showing the similar data that was coming in from a small fleet of underwater autonomous vehicles, or UAVs, that were currently plowing along the same path, spread out on both sides of theLyra. All together this underwater fleet was covering a strip ten miles wide; five miles on either side of the signal line. The images were flat, featureless, and dull: a digital rendition of the smooth, sedimentary bottom six hundred feet below.
The alarm on the main screen chirped again. Gamay tapped the computer key once more. But this time an image appeared: a large object and its elongated shadow on the bottom. The shadow wasn’t cast by sunlight—it was completely dark at that depth—but by sound, as the object blocked the sonar signal the way a wall would block the light.
Gamay squinted, studying the object as she typed a note to mark its size, shape, and location.
“You find something?” a voice called from across the compartment.
Gamay glanced at her husband, Paul, who crouched in front of a similar set of screens. At six foot eight, he looked out of place in the cramped compartment.
“A sunken fishing boat,” she told him. “Judging by the sediment that’s piled up against the hull, it’s been there for a while.”
“So not a U-boat or giant airplane,” Paul said.
“Neither one,” she said, returning the screen to its multi-box format and leaning back in her chair once again. “Not even close.”
Paul and Gamay were a team in every sense of the word, husband and wife, close friends, coworkers at NUMA. She had degrees inmicrobiology, while he was a chemist and geologist. If it was a living thing, she could classify it, describe it, and discuss its life cycle in detail. If it wasn’t imbued with the spark of life, that made it Paul’s territory.
Over the years at NUMA, they’d become skilled members of the Special Projects Team, which meant they had to be familiar with all types of nautical equipment. They’d driven submersibles, raced on hydroplanes, and had used every type of search and scanning device known to man.
Gamay had become an expert on underwater systems like the towed array sonar and the UAVs they were currently using, while Paul had become interested in drone technology, even building a few from scratch. On the other side of the compartment, he was managing a small squadron of the machines. They flew an interlocking search pattern scanning the sea for floating debris, fuel slicks, or anything else that might have come from the missing plane.
“Any luck on your side?” Gamay asked.
The drones covered a hundred square miles every fifteen minutes. Their sensors could pick up something as small as a life jacket from a thousand feet up. They’d found nothing of interest so far. “Just waves and whitecaps,” Paul said. “Haven’t even seen a flying fish.”
“As they prefer tropical waters, that would be quite a surprise,” Gamay informed him.
“Good to know,” Paul said. He leaned back in his chair, yawning and stretching while tipping the chair back to its absolute limit. He nearly toppled over when the compartment door swung open and Kurt and Joe barged in.
Gamay lifted the coffee mug to her mouth to hide the smile and the laugh that almost escaped. She loved her husband endlessly, and the fact that he was comically uncoordinated at times only made her love him more.
As Paul righted himself, Gamay looked at the intruders. “To what do we owe this glorious interruption?”
“We’re looking for a ship,” Kurt said.
“This explains our lack of success,” Gamay replied. “We were told to look for an airplane.”
“And before that a submarine,” Paul added, having righted himself.
A grin on Kurt’s face suggested his appreciation of the joke. Other than that, it didn’t faze him a bit. “It’s the fact that we haven’t found an airplane—or any parts of one—that has me thinking we need to switch it up.”
Gamay looked at Joe. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”
“Don’t be too hard on him,” Joe said. “His brain is still thawing out.”
Kurt pulled up a chair, swinging it around so he could sit with his arms resting on the back. He explained his theory, insisting that the hijackers crashing into the sea by accident was unlikely and that even ditching the plane on purpose was a stretch, unless they had a ship in the area to pick them up.
