Winking, Norton said, “Only when I know where I’m going.”
At the rear of the lab, filled with equipment foreign to him, Cross saw a table; a khaki uniformed woman sat at its head.
On the way back, Norton motioned toward it. That’s our taskforce leader, Lieutenant Sherry Poole with the Orange County’s Sheriff’s Office.”
“Oh, is this a civil matter?” he asked, again questioning his involvement.
“You’ll soon see.”
THE THIRD FLOOR
They all rose as he entered, introducing themselves. I’m going to need a list of names, he thought. Almost on cue, Poole handed him a sheet of paper, “I’ve compiled a list of your teammates’ names and phone numbers. You’re on there, too.”
“Thank you for the roster, Lieutenant, I think I’m gonna need it. This is a big group.”
“It’s been bigger.” She smiled and offered him the seat next to her.
“That was Keller’s seat, but it’s yours now,” she said.
Then nodding to Norton, she commented, “Excellent timing Commander Norton, your punctuality is to be commended. Thank you for getting him here by our late start time. Now let’s get moving’”
He joked back, “Well I had to get our star marine sleuth here on time, and that was no easy task.”
“Yeah,” Cross said, smiling. “I traveled in two boats, a weird plane, and two automobiles getting here. I feel like I should be in southern Florida by now.”
A laugh arose around the table as members took their seats. Their acceptance comforted him.
Once the team sat, Poole looked around and somberly spoke, “I hope you all enjoyed your day off yesterday. Unfortunately, a few of our team did not. Strong and Dover found one of our pieces of evidence, the Sea Ray, cut loose from its moorings. The Coast Guard found it later drifting miles off the coast. It’s GPS had been damaged, obviously trying to cover something. We don’t know who did that but we suspect Fogner. Then Deputy Keller and another deputy, Higgins, returned to Fogner’s house after the SWAT attack. Both were fatally shot. Ambushed. We believe that was also Fogner, but we don’t know, the shooter escaped. Let us all bow our heads in silence for a moment, remembering Deputy Keller. He was a good man. Added tremendously to our group. He will be missed. His processional funeral is scheduled three days from now.”
Cross dropped his head and closed his eyes, wondering how that happened to Keller. And who was Fogner? He was sitting in Keller’s chair. Was it jinxed?
Poole finally started the meeting, reminding the group of Cross’s capabilities. Norton had created quite an impression for him: they felt like they already knew him.
She continued on, “Today, Ensign Dover and Agent Strong are back at our salvage marina trying to extract data from that GPS, and Briscoe from what I hear is in the hospital, checking out a few radiation side effects. Hope he’s okay. Captain Bell has returned to his ship, leaving Commander Norton as the Navy’s sole representative. Agent Strong and Special Investigator Combs are bowing out, now that the cipher is complete. I want to personally thank them for their help. Without it, the page I’m about to hand out would still be gibberish.”
Cross alerted at her introduction; he recognized a name from long ago. “Briscoe? I once knew a Briscoe. Is he Navy?”
“No, Mr. Cross, he’s a California Highway Patrol traffic officer. He found the threat. The evidence I’m about to hand out is the decoded version of that threat, inserted through his cruiser window at a coffee stop.”
Taking a short stack of papers from her briefcase, she passed them around. Cross received a thick folder with his page. The page everyone received was the deciphered poem, completed yesterday by KryptoKnight at Quantico.
It read:
Atomic Pie
Cross took the sheet and stared at the strange poem, ignoring the others for minutes, furrowing his brow, reading something he could never have imagined. Suddenly he felt fear. An inner, shaking fear. Like nothing he had ever experienced before. He wanted to call Lindy and tell her he might not be coming back.
“Mr. Cross? Mr. Cross?” In his mind, he couldn’t process her question. “Are you all right?”
He dropped the page onto the table and stared back at her. “Is this what I’m supposed to find? An armed thermonuclear weapon? On the ocean floor?”
“In a nutshell, yes, Mr. Cross. The poem’s creator, Simon Fogner, named the bomb Adam. It’s a W-88 nuclear warhead.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean.”
He put his hand to his forehead, shaking his head. “I just don’t know. What are the lines in the first paragraph referring to: ‘Across into around’ and ‘Pastoral ides’?” Is that a date? It says ‘less one day tops.’”
“Pi day. March 14.”
He jerked back, looked at the date window on his watch, and said, “Holy hell. That’s only nineteen days out. Not enough time.”
“Well Mr. Cross, we have no options on time,” said Poole.
“What makes you think this threat is real? Do you have any proof of the threat other than this poem?”
“Yes, it’s all in your folder, but to catch you up to date, everything associated with this case is extremely radioactive. I mean Fukushima, China-Syndrome-reactor, radioactive. Deadly. A CHP officer is in the hospital because he stood in the suspected delivery boat. Our SWAT team had to wave off an inspection of Fogner’s house because their dosimeters alarmed life-threatening radiation after five minutes. Deputies Keller and Higgins died because of that. Yes, it’s very real.”
Cross surveyed his team’s expressions. They all nodded yes, including Norton.
“Okay, it’s real. Can we narrow the search field?” asked Cross. “Without some constraints, we’re looking for one specific grain of sand on a large beach. And we’re doing it all underwater.” He imagined living aboard the Canyon Glider, never surfacing, growing old in the tiny shell of a submarine, fighting cobwebs from the controls. He closed his eyes and shook it off.
“We’re trying, but so far we’ve only run into dead ends. Using some simple assumptions, we can narrow the field down to about a hundred-and-twenty square miles, but that’s all. We’re assuming a ten mile radius from Dana Point, where he lives. There’s a boathouse there where he probably docked his boat. It’s also very hot with radiation.”
“Um-hmm. Anything else?” asked Cross.
“Everything he touches is radioactive. He must be very ill, dying from radiation poisoning. He’s a Nobel prize winning physicist, harboring a deadly grudge against his peers and society for defaming his character. It’s all in your folder. I suggest you study it. You’ll see a manic psychopath at work. A mad genius: evil personified.”
A shiver ran up his spine, leaving him cold. He excused himself from the meeting and found the bathroom just in time to throw up.
Two more chairs were filled when he returned. Strong and Dover sat expressionless, relating their story.