“I’ll start on it immediately,” Yaeger assured him.
Gunn and Yaeger rose from their chairs and left the conference room. Sandecker sat there, slouched in his chair and puffing on his cigar. His eyes moved from sea battle to sea battle, lingering for several moments on each before moving to the next. Then he closed his eyes tightly as he collected his thoughts.
It was the uncertainty of the dilemma that clouded his mind. After a while, he opened his eyes and stared at the computer-generated chart of the Pacific Ocean. “Where will it strike next?” he spoke aloud to the empty room. “Who will it kill?”
Colonel Leigh Hunt sat at his desk in his basement office-he disliked the more formal administration offices on the upper floors of Walter Reed-and contemplated a bottle of Cutty Sark. Out the window, darkness had settled over the District of Columbia, the streetlights had come on, and the rush-hour traffic was beginning to dwindle. The postmortems on the five fishermen fished from the cold waters of the Northwest were completed, and he was about to head home to his cat. The decision was whether to take a drink or make a final call before leaving. He decided to do both at the same time.
He punched the numbers on his telephone with one hand while he poured the scotch into a coffee cup. After two rings, a gruff voice answered.
“Colonel Hunt, I hope that’s you.”
“It is,” replied Hunt. “How’d you know?”
“I had a gut feeling you’d call about now.”
“Always a pleasure to talk to the Navy,” said Hunt affably.
“What can you tell me?” asked Sandecker.
“First, are you sure these cadavers were found on a fishing boat in the middle of the sea?”
“They were.”
“And the two porpoises and four seals you also sent over here?”
“Where else would you expect to find them?”
“I’ve never performed postmortem examinations on aquatic creatures before.”
“Humans, porpoises and seals are all mammals under the skin.”
“You, my dear admiral, have a very intriguing case on your hands.”
“What did they die from?”
Hunt paused to empty half the cup. “Clinically, the deaths were caused by a disruption of the ossicular chain that consists of the malleus, incus and the stapes of the middle ear, which you may recall from your high school physiology class as the hammer, anvil and stirrup. The stapedial foot plate was also fractured. This caused debilitating vertigo and extreme tinnitus, or a roaring in the ears, all culminating in a rupture of the anterior inferior cerebellar artery and causing hemorrhaging into the anterior and middle cranial fossae inside the base of the skull.”
“Can you break that down into simple English?”
“Are you familiar with the term ‘infarction’?” asked Hunt.
“It sounds like slang.”
“Infarction is a cluster of dead cells in organs or tissue that results from an obstruction, such as an air bubble, that cuts off circulating blood.”
“Just where in the bodies did this thing take place?” inquired Sandecker.
“There was swelling of the cerebellum with compression of the brain stem. I also found that the vestibular labyrinth—”
“Come again?”
“Besides relating to other bodily cavities, ‘vestibular’ also pertains to the central cavity of the bony labyrinth of the ear.”
“Please go on.”
“The vestibular labyrinth appeared to be damaged by violent displacement. Somewhat as in a fall into deep water, where the hydraulic compression of air perforates the tympanic membrane as water is forced into the external ear canal.”
“How did you arrive at this conclusion?”
“By applying a standard protocol to my investigation, I used magnetic resonance imaging and computer tomography, a diagnostic technique using X-ray photographs that eliminate the shadows of structures m front of and behind the section under scrutiny. Evaluation also included hematologic and serologic studies and lumbar puncture.”
“What were the symptoms at the onset of the disorder?”
“I can’t speak for the porpoises or seals,” explained Hunt. “But the pattern among the humans was consistent. The sudden and intense vertigo, a dramatic loss of equilibrium, vomiting, extreme paroxysmal cranial pain and a sudden convulsion that lasted less than five minutes, all resulting in unconsciousness and then death. You might compare it to a stroke of monster proportions.”
“Can you tell me what caused this trauma?”
Hunt hesitated. “Not with any degree of accuracy.”
Sandecker was not to be put off. “Take a wild guess.”
“Since you’ve put my back to the wall, I’d venture to say your fishermen, the porpoises and seals expired from extreme exposure to high-intensity sound.”
January 22, 2000
Near Howland Island, South Pacific
To the crew lining the rails of Mentawai, an Indonesian freighter bound from Honolulu to her next port of call, Jayapura in New Guinea, the sight of an awkward-looking craft in the middle of the ocean was highly unusual if not downright remarkable. Yet the Ningpo-design Chinese junk sailed serenely through the one-meter-high swells that rolled against her bow from the east. She looked magnificent, her brightly colored sails filled with a southwesterly breeze, her varnished wood sparkling under a golden-orange rising sun. Two large eyes that I crossed when sighted head-on were painted on her bows, born from the traditional faith that they would see her through fog and stormy seas.
The Tz’u-hsi, named after the last Chinese dowager empress, was the second home of Hollywood actor Garret Converse, never a nominee for an Academy Award but the biggest box-office action hero on the silver screen. The junk was twenty-four meters in length with a beam of six meters, built from top to bottom of cedarand teakwood. Converse had installed every amenity for the crew’s accommodations and the latest in navigational technology. No expense was spared. Few yachts were as luxuriously embellished. A master adventurer in the mode of Errol Flynn, Converse had sailed Tz’u-hsi from Newport Beach on a round-the-world cruise and was now running on the final leg across the Pacific, passing within fifty kilometers of Howland Island, Amelia Earhart’s destination when she disappeared in 1937.
As the two ships plodded past each other on opposite courses, Converse hailed the freighter over the radio.
“Greetings from the junk Tz’u-hsi. What ship are your”
The freighter’s radio operator replied, “The freighter Mentawai out of Honolulu. Where are you bound?”
“Christmas Island, and then to California.”
“I wish you clear sailing.”
“The same to you,” Converse answered.
The captain of Mentawai watched the junk slip astern and then nodded toward his first officer. “I never thought I’d see a junk this deep in the Pacific.”
The first officer, a man of Chinese descent, nodded disapprovingly. “I crewed on a junk when I was a young boy. They’re taking a great risk sailing through the breeding grounds of typhoons. Junks are not built for heavy weather. They ride too high and have a tendency to roll crazily. Their huge rudders are easily broken off by a rough sea.”
“They’re either very brave or very mad to tempt the fates,” said the captain, turning his back on the junk as it grew smaller in the distance. “As for me, I feel more comfortable with a steel hull and the solid beat of engines under my decks.”
Eighteen minutes after the freighter and junk crossed paths, a distress call was heard by the United States container carrier Rio Grande, bound for Sydney, Australia, with a cargo of tractors and agricultural equipment. The radio room was directly off the spacious navigation bridge, and the operator had only to turn to address the second officer, who stood the early morning watch.