“And it was all fake,” Elise said.
“How?”
“A trick done by the cloaks and mirrors of a magician.”
“How, Elise?”
“A combination of glycol and water.”
“What?” Sam asked.
“Theatrical smoke on a grand scale.”
Sam shook his head, and a grin creased the corners of his lips as he thought about the complexity of the simple ruse. “Someone, put up a smoke screen, and then, what, projected a small island and a runway directly over the top of it?”
“Yep.”
“How did they get the projector so far above?”
“Drones, most likely. DARPA’s using a similar technique for camouflaging troops as well as heavy military machinery.”
“What shape would the drone be?”
Elise responded immediately, as though she’d seen one previously. “It usually takes the shape of a large sphere with hundreds of projectors.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sam’s fingers worked quickly over his laptop’s keyboard to bring up the image from the FDR video that he had captured on board the Dreamlifter.
He clicked on the image, and the entire screen lit up with the image of the metallic sphere.
He grinned. “Something like this?”
“Yes,” Elise confirmed. “Something exactly like that. Why? Where did you get this?”
“Because that was on board the Dreamlifter.”
Sam stared at the image in a new light. Despite appearing like something out of a bad science fiction movie, there were more than a hundred small protruding tubes. The purpose of which, he had no idea, but he now wondered if they could indeed be projectors?
He asked Elise, “What do you know about it?”
“Not much. It was a project DARPA was involved in nearly a decade ago when I still worked for the CIA. At the time, computer technology just wasn’t powerful enough to make it work, but there’s been recent speculation that the project has become possible with recent developments in computing.”
“So it would seem,” Sam said. Through narrowed eyes, he asked, “The question is, if we were doing it first, why was it built in Germany?”
Elise shook her head. “Only to be put on a cargo aircraft and flown to Quonset, Rhode Island?”
“Right.” Sam took a deep breath as he remembered the scene from the Dreamlifter’s cockpit of the artificial island and runway. The image was seamless. “And now we have reason to believe that regardless of whether or not we produced a successful version of the product, the Russians definitely have.”
Tom stood up from the workstation and crossed his arms. “If the Russians already have the technology, why did they risk everything to steal it?”
Sam thought back to the mysterious theft of the specialized shipping container from the Buckholtz.
Could there be some sort of connection?
The door to the bridge opened, and Gene walked in. “I’ve been told the Buckholtz is ready to move and the tugboats are ready for the tow.” He offered his hand. “I really appreciate everything you and your team did for us, despite the loss of the cargo.”
Sam stood up and gripped the man’s hand with a firm shake. “Not a problem. Sorry we couldn’t save it. All the best with the repairs.”
“It will be a big project, but much better than had the Buckholtz been stranded throughout the winter. If you ever need anything, I’m at your service.”
“Thanks,” Sam said. Then, turning his laptop around, he asked, “I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen a machine that looks like this?”
Gene stared at the sphere. His eyes were dazed and hazy. All color was gone from his face. “Yes.”
Sam expelled his breath silently. “Where?”
Gene opened his mouth, but nothing came out. His face twisted between horror and fascination. “Secured within the specialized shipping container.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Sam said. “That shipping container was 60-feet long and 8-feet wide. The image I just showed you was a perfect sphere.”
Gene shrugged. “I was told it was for some additional equipment, but also as a ruse to prevent it being stolen.”
Sam ignored the irony. “Who owned the device?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Reilly. Even after its loss, I’m afraid I cannot reveal who the owner was. I’ve already spoken too much. The loss was a tragedy, but there’s a lot more at stake, and I cannot reveal any more details.”
Sam knew that Quonset, Rhode Island built submarines, so there was very little doubt in his mind about who the buyer was. Still, he couldn’t work out why America would be sourcing such technology from a German manufacturer. And, more importantly, who would know enough to steal them.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t stop the theft,” Sam said. “Any news about who might have stolen the device?”
“No. Whoever was responsible certainly knew what they were doing.”
Sam met Gene’s eye. “So right now, all we have are those two bodies to go off of. We’d better hope the German Federal Intelligence Service can work out who they are and where they come from. They might just be the only lead we ever get.”
Gene sighed heavily. “That might be a little hard.”
“Why?”
The lines on Gene’s face deepened and his lips set in a hard line. “The German Eurocopter which had retrieved the bodies crashed approaching Berlin. The helicopter exploded on impact, and there were no survivors.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sam picked up his satellite phone and dialed a number off by heart.
A woman answered on the first ring. “Mr. Reilly. I hear you’ve been making friends in Germany.”
A small grin creased the edge of his lips at the secretary of defense’s reference to the scuba diver who’d nearly killed him. “Plenty of friends, but they seem to bring with them more mysteries and fewer answers.”
“Mysteries?” she asked. “About what?”
Sam filled her in on the two spheres that had been stolen through an elaborate, yet successful, plot to crash a modern jetliner and run a cargo ship aground. He finished by mentioning that the two unidentified bodies were most likely Russian, and how the helicopter carrying the German investigators had crashed and burned, destroying all evidence in the process.
When he had finished, the secretary of defense said, “And you’re telling me this, why?”
“Both the Boeing 747 Dreamlifter and the cargo ship were bound for Quonset, Rhode Island, meaning, I’m guessing the spheres were on their way to our submarine fabrication yard at Quonset.”
“I thought you said no one has admitted to what the spheres were and where they were headed.”
“No, but I figured that if two identical top-secret experimental devices that were en route to our submarine fabrication shipyard at Quonset under exceptional circumstances, you’d be pretty interested to hear about it?”
“What did the owner of the Buckholtz say?”
“It’s proprietary knowledge. And his customer doesn’t want that interrupted, despite the accident and subsequent… “accidental loss” of the specialized shipping container.”
“The owner of a German-registered cargo ship doesn’t wish to reveal his customer’s secrets — as he should not — as we should not pry into the lives of our European counterparts.”
“But I thought this might…”
“What?” she asked. “Concern the United States Department of Defense? This is about piracy at sea under the direct jurisdiction of the European Union. If they don’t want you involved, then you’re to accept it and sit this one out, do I make myself clear, Reilly?”