Deception Point, Page 35

  Tolland leaned over and whispered to Corky, "Did NASA happen to measure the titanium/zirconium ratio in the Milne rock?"

  "Of course not," Corky sputtered. "Nobody would ever measure that. It's like looking at a car and measuring the tires' rubber content to confirm you're looking at a car!"

  Tolland heaved a sigh and looked back at Xavia. "If we give you a rock sample with chondrules in it, can you run a test to determine whether these inclusions are meteoric chondrules or… one of Pollock's deep ocean compression things?"

  Xavia shrugged. "I suppose. The electron microprobe's accuracy should be close enough. What's this all about, anyway?"

  Tolland turned to Corky. "Give it to her."

  Corky reluctantly pulled the meteorite sample from his pocket and held it out for Xavia.

  Xavia's brow furrowed as she took the stone disk. She eyed the fusion crust and then the fossil embedded in the rock. "My God!" she said, her head rocketing upward. "This isn't part of…?"

  "Yeah," Tolland said. "Unfortunately it is."

  106

  Alone in her office, Gabrielle Ashe stood at the window, wondering what to do next. Less than an hour ago, she had left NASA feeling full of excitement to share Chris Harper's PODS fraud with the senator.

  Now, she wasn't so sure.

  According to Yolanda, two independent ABC reporters suspected Sexton of taking SFF bribes. Furthermore, Gabrielle had just learned that Sexton actually knew she had snuck into his apartment during the SFF meeting, and yet he had said nothing to her about it?

  Gabrielle sighed. Her taxi had long since departed, and although she would call another in a few minutes, she knew there was something she had to do first.

  Am I really going to try this?

  Gabrielle frowned, knowing she didn't have a choice. She no longer knew whom to trust.

  Stepping out of her office, she made her way back into the secretarial lobby and into a wide hallway on the opposite side. At the far end she could see the massive oak doors of Sexton's office flanked by two flags-Old Glory on the right and the Delaware flag on the left. His doors, like those of most senate offices in the building, were steel reinforced and secured by conventional keys, an electronic key pad entry, and an alarm system.

  She knew if she could get inside, even if for only a few minutes, all the answers would be revealed. Moving now toward the heavily secured doors, Gabrielle had no illusions of getting through them. She had other plans.

  Ten feet from Sexton's office, Gabrielle turned sharply to the right and entered the ladies' room. The fluorescents came on automatically, reflecting harshly off the white tile. As her eyes adjusted, Gabrielle paused, seeing herself in the mirror. As usual, her features looked softer than she'd hoped. Delicate almost. She always felt stronger than she looked.

  Are you sure you are ready to do this?

  Gabrielle knew Sexton was eagerly awaiting her arrival for a complete rundown on the PODS situation. Unfortunately, she also now realized that Sexton had deftly manipulated her tonight. Gabrielle Ashe did not like being managed. The senator had kept things from her tonight. The question was how much. The answers, she knew, lay inside his office-just on the other side of this restroom wall.

  "Five minutes," Gabrielle said aloud, mustering her resolve.

  Moving toward the bathroom's supply closet, she reached up and ran a hand over the door frame. A key clattered to the floor. The cleaning crews at Philip A. Hart were federal employees and seemed to evaporate every time there was a strike of any sort, leaving this bathroom without toilet paper and tampons for weeks at a time. The women of Sexton's office, tired of being caught with their pants down, had taken matters into their own hands and secured a supply room key for "emergencies."

  Tonight qualifies, she thought.

  She opened the closet.

  The interior was cramped, packed with cleansers, mops, and shelves of paper supplies. A month ago, Gabrielle had been searching for paper towels when she'd made an unusual discovery. Unable to reach the paper off the top shelf, she'd used the end of a broom to coax a roll to fall. In the process, she'd knocked out a ceiling tile. When she climbed up to replace the tile, she was surprised to hear Senator Sexton's voice.

  Crystal clear.

  From the echo, she realized the senator was talking to himself while in his office's private bathroom, which apparently was separated from this supply closet by nothing more than removable, fiberboard ceiling tiles.

  Now, back in the closet tonight for far more than toilet paper, Gabrielle kicked off her shoes, climbed up the shelves, popped out the fiberboard ceiling tile, and pulled herself up. So much for national security, she thought, wondering how many state and federal laws she was about to break.

  Lowering herself through the ceiling of Sexton's private restroom, Gabrielle placed her stockinged feet on his cold, porcelain sink and then dropped to the floor. Holding her breath, she exited into Sexton's private office.

  His oriental carpets felt soft and warm.

  107

  Thirty miles away, a black Kiowa gunship chopper tore over the scrub pine treetops of northern Delaware. Delta-One checked the coordinates locked in the auto navigation system.

  Although Rachel's shipboard transmission device and Pickering's cellphone were encrypted to protect the contents of their communication, intercepting content had not been the goal when the Delta Force pulse-snitched Rachel's call from sea. Intercepting the caller's position had been the goal. Global Positioning Systems and computerized triangulation made pinpointing transmission coordinates a significantly easier task than decrypting the actual content of the call.

  Delta-One was always amused to think that most cellphone users had no idea that every time they made a call, a government listening post, if so inclined, could detect their position to within ten feet anywhere on earth-a small hitch the cellphone companies failed to advertise. Tonight, once the Delta Force had gained access to the reception frequencies of William Pickering's cellular phone, they could easily trace the coordinates of his incoming calls.

  Flying now on a direct course toward their target, Delta-One closed to within twenty miles. "Umbrella primed?" he asked, turning to Delta-Two, who was manning the radar and weapons system.

  "Affirmative. Awaiting five-mile range."

  Five miles, Delta-One thought. He had to fly this bird well within his target's radar scopes to get within range to use the Kiowa's weapons systems. He had little doubt that someone onboard the Goya was nervously watching the skies, and because the Delta Force's current task was to eliminate the target without giving them a chance to radio for help, Delta-One now had to advance on his prey without alarming them.

  At fifteen miles out, still safely out of radar range, Delta-One abruptly turned the Kiowa thirty-five degrees off course to the west. He climbed to three thousand feet-small airplane range-and adjusted his speed to 110 knots.

  On the deck of the Goya, the Coast Guard helicopter's radar scope beeped once as a new contact entered the ten-mile perimeter. The pilot sat up, studying the screen. The contact appeared to be a small cargo plane headed west up the coast.

  Probably for Newark.

  Although this plane's current trajectory would bring it within four miles of the Goya, the flight path obviously was a matter of chance. Nonetheless, being vigilant, the Coast Guard pilot watched the blinking dot trace a slow-moving 110-knot line across the right side of his scope. At its closest point, the plane was about four miles west. As expected, the plane kept moving-heading away from them now.

  4.1 miles. 4.2 miles.

  The pilot exhaled, relaxing.

  And then the strangest thing happened.

  "Umbrella now engaged," Delta-Two called out, giving the thumbs-up from his weapons control seat on the port side of the Kiowa gunship. "Barrage, modulated noise, and cover pulse are all activated and locked."

  Delta-One took his cue and banked hard to the right, putting the craft on a direct course with the Goya. This maneuver would
be invisible to the ship's radar.

  "Sure beats bales of tinfoil!" Delta-Two called out.

  Delta-One agreed. Radar jamming had been invented in WWII when a savvy British airman began throwing bales of hay wrapped in tinfoil out of his plane while on bombing runs. The Germans' radar spotted so many reflective contacts they had no idea what to shoot. The techniques had been improved on substantially since then.

  The Kiowa's onboard "umbrella" radar-jamming system was one of the military's most deadly electronic combat weapons. By broadcasting an umbrella of background noise into the atmosphere above a given set of surface coordinates, the Kiowa could erase the eyes, ears, and voice of their target. Moments ago, all radar screens aboard the Goya had most certainly gone blank. By the time the crew realized they needed to call for help, they would be unable to transmit. On a ship, all communications were radio-or microwave-based-no solid phone lines. If the Kiowa got close enough, all of the Goya's communications systems would stop functioning, their carrier signals blotted out by the invisible cloud of thermal noise broadcast in front of the Kiowa like a blinding headlight.

  Perfect isolation, Delta-One thought. They have no defenses.

  Their targets had made a fortunate and cunning escape from the Milne Ice Shelf, but it would not be repeated. In choosing to leave shore, Rachel Sexton and Michael Tolland had chosen poorly. It would be the last bad decision they ever made.

  Inside the White House, Zach Herney felt dazed as he sat up in bed holding the telephone receiver. "Now? Ekstrom wants to speak to me now?" Herney squinted again at the bedside clock. 3:17 A.M.

  "Yes, Mr. President," the communications officer said. "He says it's an emergency."

  108

  While Corky and Xavia huddled over the electron microprobe measuring the zirconium content in the chondrules, Rachel followed Tolland across the lab into an adjoining room. Here Tolland turned on another computer. Apparently the oceanographer had one more thing he wanted to check.

  As the computer powered up, Tolland turned to Rachel, his mouth poised as if he wanted to say something. He paused.

  "What is it?" Rachel asked, surprised how physically drawn to him she felt, even in the midst of all this chaos. She wished she could block it all out and be with him-just for a minute.

  "I owe you an apology," Tolland said, looking remorseful.

  "For what?"

  "On the deck? The hammerheads? I was excited. Sometimes I forget how frightening the ocean can be to a lot of people."

  Face-to-face with him, Rachel felt like a teenager standing on the doorstep with a new boyfriend. "Thanks. No problem at all. Really." Something inside her sensed Tolland wanted to kiss her.

  After a beat, he turned shyly away. "I know. You want to get to shore. We should get to work."

  "For now." Rachel smiled softly.

  "For now," Tolland repeated, taking a seat at the computer.

  Rachel exhaled, standing close behind now, savoring the privacy of the small lab. She watched Tolland navigate a series of files. "What are we doing?"

  "Checking the database for big ocean lice. I want to see if we can find any prehistoric marine fossils that resemble what we saw in the NASA meteorite." He pulled up a search page with bold letters across the top: PROJECT DIVERSITAS.

  Scrolling through the menus, Tolland explained, "Diversitas is essentially a continuously updated index of oceanic biodata. When a marine biologist discovers a new ocean species or fossil, he can toot his horn and share his find by uploading data and photos to a central databank. Because there's so much new data discovered on a weekly basis, this is really the only way to keep research up-to-date."

  Rachel watched Tolland navigating the menus. "So you're accessing the Web now?"

  "No. Internet access is tricky at sea. We store all this data onboard on an enormous array of optical drives in the other room. Every time we're in port, we tie into Project Diversitas and update our databank with the newest finds. This way, we can access data at sea without a Web connection, and the data is never more than a month or two out of date." Tolland chuckled as he began typing search keywords into the computer. "You've probably heard of the controversial music file-sharing program called Napster?"

  Rachel nodded.

  "Diversitas is considered the marine biologist's version of Napster. We call it LOBSTER — Lonely Oceanic Biologists Sharing Totally Eccentric Research."

  Rachel laughed. Even in this tense situation, Michael Tolland exuded a wry humor that eased her fears. She was beginning to realize she'd had entirely too little laughter in her life lately.

  "Our database is enormous," Tolland said, completing the entry of his descriptive keywords. "Over ten tera-bytes of descriptions and photos. There's information in here nobody has ever seen-and nobody ever will. Ocean species are simply too numerous." He clicked the "search" button. "Okay, let's see if anyone has ever seen an oceanic fossil similar to our little space bug."

  After a few seconds, the screen refreshed, revealing four listings of fossilized animals. Tolland clicked on each listing one by one and examined the photos. None looked remotely like the fossils in the Milne meteorite.

  Tolland frowned. "Let's try something else." He removed the word "fossil" from his search string and hit "search." "We'll search all living species. Maybe we can find a living descendant that has some of the physiological characteristics of the Milne fossil."

  The screen refreshed.

  Again Tolland frowned. The computer had returned hundreds of entries. He sat a moment, stroking his now stubble-darkened chin. "Okay, this is too much. Let's refine the search."

  Rachel watched as he accessed a drop-down menu marked "habitat." The list of options looked endless: tide pool, marsh, lagoon, reef, mid-oceanic ridge, sulfur vents. Tolland scrolled down the list and chose an option that read: Destructive Margins/Oceanic Trenches.

  Smart, Rachel realized. Tolland was limiting his search only to species that lived near the environment where these chondrulelike features were hypothesized to form.

  The page refreshed. This time Tolland smiled. "Great. Only three entries."

  Rachel squinted at the first name on the list. Limulus poly… something.

  Tolland clicked the entry. A photo appeared; the creature looked like an oversized horseshoe crab without a tail.

  "Nope," Tolland said, returning to the previous page.

  Rachel eyed the second item on the list. Shrimpus Uglius From Hellus. She was confused. "Is that name for real?"

  Tolland chuckled. "No. It's a new species not yet classified. The guy who discovered it has a sense of humor. He's suggesting Shrimpus Uglius as the official taxonomical classification." Tolland clicked open the photo, revealing an exceptionally ugly shrimplike creature with whiskers and fluorescent pink antennae.

  "Aptly named," Tolland said. "But not our space bug." He returned to the index. "The final offering is… " He clicked on the third entry, and the page came up.

  "Bathynomous giganteus… " Tolland read aloud as the text appeared. The photograph loaded. A full-color close-up.

  Rachel jumped. "My God!" The creature staring back at her gave her chills.

  Tolland drew a low breath. "Oh boy. This guy looks kind of familiar."

  Rachel nodded, speechless. Bathynomous giganteus. The creature resembled a giant swimming louse. It looked very similar to the fossil species in the NASA rock.

  "There are some subtle differences," Tolland said, scrolling down to some anatomical diagrams and sketches. "But it's damn close. Especially considering it has had 190 million years to evolve."

  Close is right, Rachel thought. Too close.

  Tolland read the description on the screen: "'Thought to be one of the oldest species in the ocean, the rare and recently classified species Bathynomous giganteus is a deepwater scavenging isopod resembling a large pill bug. Up to two feet in length, this species exhibits a chitinous exoskeleton segmented into head, thorax, abdomen. It possesses paired appendages, antennae, and compound ey
es like those of land-dwelling insects. This bottom-dwelling forager has no known predators and lives in barren pelagic environments previously thought to be uninhabitable." Tolland glanced up. "Which could explain the lack of other fossils in the sample!"

  Rachel stared at the creature on-screen, excited and yet uncertain she completely understood what all of this meant.

  "Imagine," Tolland said excitedly, "that 190 million years ago, a brood of these Bathynomous creatures got buried in a deep ocean mud slide. As the mud turns into rock, the bugs get fossilized in stone. Simultaneously, the ocean floor, which is continuously moving like a slow conveyer belt toward the oceanic trenches, carries the fossils into a high-pressure zone where the rock forms chondrules!" Tolland was talking faster now. "And if part of the fossilized, chondrulized crust broke off and ended up on the trench's accretionary wedge, which is not at all uncommon, it would be in a perfect position to be discovered!"

  "But if NASA…," Rachel stammered. "I mean, if this is all a lie, NASA must have known that sooner or later someone would find out this fossil resembles a sea creature, right? I mean we just found out!"

  Tolland began printing the Bathynomous photos on a laser printer. "I don't know. Even if someone stepped forward and pointed out the similarities between the fossils and a living sea louse, their physiologies are not identical. It almost proves NASA's case more strongly."

  Rachel suddenly understood. "Panspermia." Life on earth was seeded from space.

  "Exactly. Similarities between space organisms and earth organisms make excellent scientific sense. This sea louse actually strengthens NASA's case."

  "Except if the meteorite's authenticity is in question."

  Tolland nodded. "Once the meteorite comes into question, then everything collapses. Our sea louse turns from NASA friend to NASA linchpin."

  Rachel stood in silence as the Bathynomous pages rolled out of the printer. She tried to tell herself this was all an honest NASA mistake, but she knew it was not. People who made honest mistakes didn't try to kill people.

  The nasal voice of Corky echoed suddenly across the lab. "Impossible!"

  Both Tolland and Rachel turned.

  "Measure the damn ratio again! It makes no sense!"

  Xavia came hurrying in with a computer printout clutched in her hand. Her face was ashen. "Mike, I don't know how to say this… " Her voice cracked. "The titanium/zirconium ratios we're seeing in this sample?" She cleared her throat. "It's pretty obvious that NASA made a huge mistake. Their meteorite is an ocean rock."

  Tolland and Rachel looked at each other but neither spoke a word. They knew. Just like that, all the suspicions and doubts had swelled up like the crest of a wave, reaching the breaking point.

  Tolland nodded, a sadness in his eyes. "Yeah. Thanks, Xavia."

  "But I don't understand," Xavia said. "The fusion crust… the location in the ice-"

  "We'll explain on the way to shore," Tolland said. "We're leaving."

  Quickly, Rachel collected all the papers and evidence they now had. The evidence was shockingly conclusive: the GPR printout showing the insertion shaft in the Milne Ice Shelf; photos of a living sea louse resembling NASA's fossil; Dr. Pollock's article on ocean chondrules; and microprobe data showing ultradepleted zirconium in the meteorite.

  The conclusion was undeniable. Fraud.

  Tolland looked at the stack of papers in Rachel's hands and heaved a melancholy sigh. "Well, I'd say William Pickering has his proof."

  Rachel nodded, again wondering why Pickering had not answered his phone.

  Tolland lifted the receiver of a nearby phone, holding it out for her. "You want to try him again from here?"

  "No, let's get moving. I'll try to contact him from the chopper." Rachel had already decided if she could not make contact with Pickering, she'd have the