“I’ve got a NUMA map expert looking into the history of the atoll the Trouts found the coordinates for. If she comes up with any leads, I’d like to borrow your helicopter to check them out.”
“I’ll make sure it’s fueled and ready to go whenever you need it.”
Zavala thanked Campbell, and went down to the supply shed on the main deck. He had set aside an emergency life raft and was wondering if he needed additional gear when his phone trilled. Beth was calling back.
“I’ve got it!” she said.
“That was fast,” he said.
“Pure luck. I found what I was looking for in the British National Archives. Their stuff is on a database, categorized according to time period. What’s your e-mail address?”
Zavala gave Beth the information, and, before hanging up, made sure he had her personal phone number so he could call to set up a dinner date.
Zavala made his way to the ship’s communications center and borrowed a computer. He called up his e-mail address and seconds later the British Admiralty chart of 1850 filled the screen. He studied the chart for a moment, especially the dot labeled Trouble Island. Then he clicked the mouse. Pacific Chart 2683 appeared.
He put the earlier chart side by side with the corrected one. The circles on the corrected chart designated the position of nonexistent islands that the Admiralty hydrographers had removed. Trouble Island was not circled, but the name had been removed and the dot designated it as an atoll. Some time between 1850 and 1875, Trouble Island had become an atoll.
Zavala made a phone call to a NUMA colleague who specialized in old sailing ships and got an estimated sailing speed for a fully loaded whaler. Zavala then leaned back in his chair, laced his hands behind his head, and put himself in a ship captain’s place.
Song Lee had said that the plague killed within days of infection. The crew would have been in good shape immediately after leaving Pohnpei. He assumed that the ship had a fair wind filling its sails.
Zavala marked an X on the chart west of Pohnpei where the Princess would have been at the end of the first day. By day two, the fever would have started taking men down. The ship would have lost time. He marked another X to indicate the ship’s position at the end of the second day.
Day three would have been chaotic on board the whaler. Most of the crew and officers would have been out of commission or near death. The ship might have limped along. He marked a third X closer to the second one.
Okay, Captain Zavala, he almost said aloud, you’ve got a full load of valuable whale oil, your officers and crew are dying, and you’re sick. What would you do? I’d want to get to landfall, he thought. Not Pohnpei. It was the source of the plague. And it was out of reach anyhow.
Zavala linked the computer to a surveillance satellite and zeroed in on the atoll of interest. Was it possible this unnamed atoll had once been an island? Beth had said that an island that sank into the sea might leave an atoll in its place. An eruption or earthquake would have been noted by people living on nearby islands, but there was no time to check the historic record.
He zoomed the satellite camera in on the tiny speck. Typical Pacific atolclass="underline" a minuscule island with a few palm trees encircled by a lagoon and ringed with a coral reef that was mostly solid and with no opening big enough for a massive Typhoon-class submarine to pass through with the lab in tow. Nothing could be seen in the clear waters of the lagoon.
Zavala called the Search Command ship and reconfirmed that planes had flown over the island and ships had come close for a look, but it was too insignificant to merit further investigation.
Despite his doubts and those pesky facts, he kept coming back to the name: Trouble Island. Someone had designated the island as a source of misfortune. What kind of trouble?
Zavala tried Austin’s phone number, but there was no reply. He stared into space and contemplated his course of action. He could stay on the NUMA ship and twiddle his thumbs waiting for the search flotilla to hit pay dirt or he could join in the search, well aware that he was probably wasting time and fuel.
He hated inaction. He picked up an intercom phone, called the bridge, and told the captain he would need the helicopter to take a closer look at the atoll.
Crew members helped Zavala haul the emergency raft from the storage shed and load it onto the helicopter. He got into the cockpit and started to work the controls. Moments later, the chopper lifted off the pad, made one circle around the ship, and shot off on a northerly course.
Zavala kept the helicopter at an altitude of five hundred feet and a cruising speed of one hundred fifty miles per hour. Seen from this high up, the ocean was a sun-sparkled blue-green blur. He passed a couple of ships from the search flotilla, but most of them were looking in other areas. The blinding sheen off the water prevented him from seeing the atoll until he was almost on top of it.
He banked the helicopter and looked down at a handkerchief-sized patch of sand with its few palm trees. The atoll looked exactly as he had seen it on the satellite image. He confirmed that there was no break in the reef wide enough to have allowed a boat of any size to pass through. He headed down for a closer look, and brought the helicopter onto a soft pontoon landing a few hundred feet from the atoll’s island, which was oddly located at one end of the lagoon rather than at its center.
As the rotors whirled to a stop, Zavala unbuckled himself and stepped out onto one of the pontoons. It was absolutely silent except for the whisper of the waves on the shore. Looking down into the crystal clear water, he saw a crab scuttling along the bottom.
The raft was in an orange-colored plastic container that he muscled out of the cockpit. He set it in the water and yanked an inflation cord. There was a hiss from the carbon dioxide capsule, and the raft writhed into full inflation. Zavala climbed into the raft and paddled to shore.
He pulled the raft up on the blinding white sand and walked around the perimeter of the island. He felt like a shipwreck victim on one of the miniature desert islands that cartoonists like to draw.
The tropical sun beat down like a blowtorch on his uncovered head. He sought shelter in the shade of the few pitiful palm trees. He surveyed his surroundings, absorbing the remote beauty of the atoll, with its otherworldly light and color.
He walked the perimeter of the island again, retracing his own steps. He frowned. This insignificant speck of sand could never have been Trouble Island. It was just a rinky-dink atoll. He walked back to his raft and turned for a last look. A glint of light came from near the top of a palm tree.
Zavala went back and stood under the tree. He craned his neck but couldn’t determine the source of the reflection. He clambered onto the palm’s trunk, which grew at an angle, and climbed up to where the broad fronds branched out. He found the source of the reflection immediately. Sunlight was glancing off the lens of a miniature video camera attached to the trunk.
Zavala realized, as he looked at the lens, that it was possible the camera was looking back at him. He backed down the palm’s trunk only to stop halfway. The tree had a slick, unnatural feel to it. He unsheathed the knife at his belt and dug its point into the trunk, but it went in only so far. He peeled back a section of the trunk and got another shock: it seemed to be made of woven plastic fabric covering a hard metal core.
Zavala reached up and sliced off a section of palm frond. He stuck it between his teeth and bit down: more plastic. He sheathed his knife, and shimmied down the trunk to the sand. He walked several paces to the right, then to the left. The camera swiveled to follow him.
Oh, hell.
Zavala sprinted across the atoll, shoved his raft off the beach, and dug into the water with his paddle. He had to get back to the radio in the helicopter. He looked over his shoulder, expecting all the demons of hell to be after him, but was encouraged that no attempt was being made to stop him. A few more paddle strokes and he’d be in his helicopter.