Sandecker was not conned easily. He knew he was being stroked. Ames had been notorious in Washington circles as a golf hustler. It was agreed by those on his sting list that if he hadn’t gone into physics he’d have entered the PGA tour as a professional.
They stepped into a golf cart and started off after their balls with Ames at the wheel. “How can I help you, Admiral?” he asked.
“Are you aware of NUMA’s efforts to track down and stop what we call an acoustic plague?” responded Sandecker.
“I’ve heard rumors.”
“What do you think?”
“Pretty farfetched.”
“The President’s National Science Board agrees,” Sandecker growled.
“I can’t say I really blame them.”
“You don’t believe sound can travel thousands of kilometers underwater, then surface and kill?”
“Output from four different high-intensity acoustical sources converging in the same area and causing death to every mammal within hearing distance? Not a hypothesis I’d recommend advancing, not if I wished to retain my standing among my peers.”
“Hypothesis be damned!” Sandecker burst out. “The dead already total over four hundred. Colonel Leigh Hunt, one of our nation’s finest pathologists, has proven conclusively that the cause of death is intense sound waves.”
“That’s not what I heard from the postmortem reports out of Australia.”
“You’re an old fake, Doc,” said Sandecker, smiling. “You’ve been following the situation.”
“Any time the subject of acoustics is mentioned, I’m interested.”
They reached Sandecker’s ball first. He selected a number three wood and knocked his ball into a sand trap twenty meters in front of the green.
“You too seem to have an affinity for sand traps,” said Ames offhandedly.
“In more ways than one,” Sandecker admitted.
They stopped at Ames’ ball. The physicist pulled a three iron from his golf bag. His game appeared more mental than physical. He took no practice swings nor went through any wiggling motions. He simply stepped up to the ball and swung. There was a shower of sand as the ball lofted and dropped on the green within ten meters of the cup.
Sandecker needed two strokes with his sand wedge to get out of the trap, then two putts before his ball rolled into the cup for a double bogey. Ames putted out in two for a par. As they drove to the second tee, Sandecker began to outline his findings in a detailed narrative. The next eight holes were played under heavy discussion as Ames questioned Sandecker relentlessly and brought up any number of arguments against acoustic murder.
At the ninth green, Ames used his pitching wedge to lay his ball within a club’s length of the hole. He watched with amusement as Sandecker misread the green and curled his putt back into the surrounding grass.
“You might be a pretty fair golfer if you got out and played more often, Admiral.”
“Five times a year is enough for me,” Sandecker replied. “I don’t feel I’m accomplishing anything by chasing a little ball for six hours.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve developed some of my most creative concepts while relaxing on a golf course.”
After Sandecker finally laid a putt in the hole, they returned to the cart. Ames pulled a can of Diet Coke from a small ice chest and handed it to the admiral. “What exactly do you expect me to tell you?” he asked.
Sandecker stared at him. “I don’t give a damn what ivory tower scientists think. People are dying out there on the sea. If I don’t stop Dorsett, more people are going to die, in numbers I don’t care to think about. You’re the best acoustics man in the country. I’m hoping you can steer me on a course to end the slaughter.”
“So I am your final court of appeals.” The subtle change in Ames’ friendly tone was to one that could hardly be called dead sober, but it was unmistakable. “You want me to come up with a practical solution to your problem.”
“Our problem,” Sandecker gently corrected him.
“Yes,” Ames said heavily, “I can see that now.” He held a can of Diet Coke in front of his eyes and stared at it curiously. “Your description of me is quite correct, Admiral. I am an old fake. I worked out a blueprint of sorts before you left the ground in Washington. It’s far from perfect, mind you. The chance of success is less than fifty-fifty, but it’s the best I can devise without months spent in serious research.”
Sandecker looked at Ames, masking his excitement, his eyes alight with a hope that wasn’t there before. “You’ve actually conceived a plan for terminating Dorsett’s mining operations?” he asked expectantly.
Ames shook his head. “Any kind of armed force is out of my territory. I’m talking about a method for neutralizing the acoustic convergence.”
“How is that possible?”
“Simply put, sound-wave energy can be reflected.”
“Yes, that goes without saying,” said Sandecker.
“Since you know the four separate sound rays will propagate toward the island of Oahu and you have determined the approximate time of convergence, I assume your scientists can also accurately predict the exact position of the convergence.”
“We have a good fix, yes.”
“There’s your answer.”
“That’s it?” Any stirrings of hope that Sandecker had entertained vanished. “I must have missed something.”
Ames shrugged. “Occam’s razor, Admiral. Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.”
“The simplest answer is preferred over the complex.”
“There you have it. My advice, for what it’s worth, is for NUMA to build a reflector similar to a satellite dish, lower it into the sea at the point of convergence and beam the acoustic waves away from Honolulu.”
Sandecker kept his face from showing any emotion, but his heart pounded against his ribs. The key to the enigma was ridiculously uncomplicated. True, the execution of a redirection project would not be easy, but it was feasible.
“If NUMA can build and deploy a reflector dish in time,” he asked Ames, “where should the acoustic waves be redirected?”
A wily smile crossed Ames’ face. “The obvious choice would be to some uninhabited part of the ocean, say south to Antarctica. But since the convergence energy slowly diminishes the farther it travels, why not send it back to the source?”
“The Dorsett mine on Gladiator Island,” Sandecker said, tempering the awe in his voice.
Ames nodded. “As good a choice as any. The intensity of the energy would not have the strength to kill humans after making a round trip. But it should put the fear of God in them and give them one hell of a headache.”
This was the end of the line. Pitt thought bitterly. This was as far as any human was expected to go. This was the conclusion of the valiant effort, the future desires and loves and joys of each one of them. Their end would come in the water as food for the fish, the pitiful remains of their bodies sinking a thousand fathoms to the desolate bottom of the sea. Maeve never to see her sons again, Pitt mourned by his mother and father and his many friends at NUMA. Giordino’s memorial service, Pitt mused with a last vestige of humor, would be well attended, with an impressive number of grieving women, any one of whom could have been a beauty queen.
The little boat that had carried them so far through so much chaos was literally coming apart at the seams. The crack along the bottom of the hull lengthened fractionally with every wave that carried the boat over its crest. The buoyancy tubes would keep them afloat, but when the hull parted for good and the pieces went their separate ways, they would all be thrown in the merciless water, clinging helplessly to the wreckage and vulnerable to the ever-present sharks.
For the moment the sea was fairly calm. From crest to trough, the waves rolled just under a meter. But if the weather suddenly became unsettled and the sea kicked up, death would do more than merely stare them in the eyes. The old man with the scythe would embrace them quickly without further hesitation.