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Tom noticed it a second later. “What in God’s name would cause that type of damage?”

Sam shrugged his shoulders. “I have no idea. A ship this size would ride up even the largest rogue wave, but this looks more like it was struck by a solid wall of water. Let’s speak to her Captain — see if he can shed some light on it.”

Sam nodded his head, and made the conference call.

“Captain Miller?”

“Speaking.” The old salt’s voice was slow, and laid back. The sort you’d expect from someone who’d spent two thirds of his life at sea.

“Sorry to interrupt you while you’re on leave. My name’s Sam Reilly. Can you talk?”

“Not a problem, sir.” Miller’s voice became crisp and professional. “Please, you can call me Leslie.”

Sam smiled. Leslie had worked for his father as long as he’d been alive. He recalled warmly the pleasure of being taken under the old man’s wing for his first ocean crossing when he was still a boy. Even so, the man had never forgotten that he was the owner’s son.

“As you know, the Global Star’s collision was the third in the past month to be struck by a rogue wave within the Bermuda Triangle. Considering it was the first collision in 25 years of any of his ships passing through the triangle it seems unusual all three should occur in the same month. My father was hoping that I could somehow make some sort of sense of it.”

The Captain laughed. It was a big boisterous laugh. “That sounds like your father. Always trying to put order to everything in business. Science, is his religion. And the simple fact that all three of us were struck by a “one in a million” rogue wave randomly is seen by James as nothing more than sacrilege.”

“I agree. I’m with you. Sometimes chance and luck have a strange way of showing their faces. Even so, you must admit it’s extremely unlikely three such events would occur within the same rough location, especially in the timeframe.” Sam grinned at the thought of his father and this weathered sailor clashing wits. “Oh, and it wasn’t a one in a million event. For a rogue wave approaching a hundred feet in height, the likelihood is approaching a one in a trillion event.”

“True. But, does that make you more likely to place the cause of such an event at someone’s hand, as an intentional event?”

“Funny you should say that, Leslie. Because someone recently came to me with just such an absurd theory.”

“Someone intentionally created a rogue wave?” the old salt sounded intrigued.

“From where I’m standing, it appears someone’s now created a total of four. Three of them damaged my father’s vessels beyond repair, and the fourth killed an old friend of mine who was racing in a sailing regatta at the time.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Tell me. As a man who’s spent his life at sea, is it possible that someone cracked the code and worked out how to create monster waves?”

“As in a weapon?”

Sam studied the damage to the ship. “A pretty deadly one by the looks of Global Star. Do you think it’s possible?”

“Everything’s possible. It’s just unlikely that anyone’s gone to the lengths required to achieve it. And for what purpose, I couldn’t imagine. The only person to get anything out of this event was your father. He was paid well by the insurance companies, but he had no reason to want to sink his ships. As you know, he’s not struggling financially.”

“No. That’s one thing I’m confident about. This wasn’t an elaborate plan concocted by my father.”

Over the years, Sam’s father, James Reilly, had diversified into an inordinate and varied number of areas with great success, ranging from oil, to natural gas, through to innovations in science and technology and even clean, renewable energies. Sam’s father had an uncanny ability to pick the next BIG thing, and invest heavily in time to reap the rewards. That was process by which his father had continued to expand his fortune.

At the back of his father’s fortune was the old man’s greatest expertise — shipping. He’d built his fortune on cargo ships, and it was the most stable income earner out of all of his investments. No, his father wasn’t behind this. There was no reason his father would want to sink his own fleet for the insurance claims.

Sam stared up at the image of the damaged cargo ship on the flat screen. “You’ve spent your life at sea. How would you do it?”

“Me? You’re asking the wrong person. You need an engineer and a scientist. What I know about rogue waves is that they’re the stuff of legends. Often exaggerated by frightened sailors, thankful for being alive, and that although rare, they are a fact of the ocean. There’s nothing you can do about it. Even if they only occur once in every few million waves — the ocean is filled with billions of waves every single day. That means, somewhere out there, hundreds of rogue waves are forming and most are likely never being noticed.”

“But how would you make one?”

“You’re better off speaking to a hydrologist or at least an oceanographer. But in theory, you could do so in four ways. First, you create the single rogue wave as the result of a secondary event. For example, by dropping a large bomb into the water. Second, you could create an air pocket underneath the water — as air rises from the depth of the ocean, it doubles in size for every ten feet. Therefore, if you planted a bomb with a large air explosion at five hundred feet, the compounded size would lead to a massive volume of air reaching the surface. The subsequent waves would proportionally travel in an outward direction. Three, you use a fault in the earth’s tectonic plates to create a tsunami. Fourth, you take the waves that are already there and point them in the same direction — each one compounding the next.”

“Do you have any idea how you would channel a number of waves together?” Sam asked.

“You mean synchronizing?” Even over the phone, Sam could mentally see Leslie Miller rubbing his grizzled, gray chin whiskers while he thought.

“Yes,” Sam confirmed.

“I’ve never tried, but I could imagine if you have a predominant series of waves coming in a perpendicular direction, you could then build a waterway to channel the two into a collision. That would result in all that energy being built up together and either cancelling each other out, or joining into a larger wave. Of course, if you wanted it as a weapon, you would still need to then work out how you’re going to position your enemy in the precise location at the end of the channel. It seems pretty useless to me. Kind of akin to having a rocket launcher fixed in a precise position, so your enemies need to gather in the one spot to be attacked.”

Sam thought about it. “An interesting idea.”

“Like I said, I’m not the specialist you should be talking to if you want to build it.”

“No, but a man with your experience on the ocean, must have some open ideas. And it was that which I wanted to explore with you.” The plane hit a pocket of turbulence, and Sam casually braced his hand on the secure desk. “All right, forget about building one for the time being, tell us about the one that you survived. By the looks of your ship, it must have been a real bitch.”

“You’d better believe it.”

“Okay, what can you tell me about that night?”

“There isn’t really much to tell. The weather was relatively simple for this time of year. It was entering hurricane season, but there weren’t any dangerously low pressure systems at the time. We had a moderate following swell of four to five feet in height, the wind was gusting to twenty knots, and we were under motor making way at 24 knots. It was 1015 p.m. when we saw it. I had just enough time to sound the warning alarm when it struck. I’d say that the wall of water was at least a hundred foot high and surreal.”

“Surreal?” Sam asked, surprised by the man’s use of the word. “How so?”