kiDNApped (A Tara Shores Thriller) (33 page)

“So the cells will need to be put into cold storage?” one of the masked figures intoned. The lab was equipped with a small but high quality industrial freezer unit for storing samples at precisely regulated cold temperatures.

But Archer shook his head. “No. I said cold,
thin
air. The idea is to see how the cells perform in high altitude atmospheric environments, reduced pressure.”

Archer watched with satisfaction as the kidnappers grunted electronically processed syllables to each other, trying to grasp the meaning of what their captive was insinuating. He hoped like hell they wouldn’t pull a baro-chamber out from somewhere. Wouldn’t be surprising if they pulled one out of their asses the way these guys seemed to have everything money could buy, Archer thought. But he’d looked around the lab before he was put into lockdown mode, and he hadn’t seen one. He assumed they didn’t have a second lab somewhere else on the ship, although he had considered that they might, as a way to test their own practicability of Archer’s work.

“How do you propose we access cold, thin air?” the lead scientist queried. Archer had to concentrate hard not to breathe an audible sigh of relief. They had no pressure-regulation chamber on board or he wouldn’t be asking this question.

“The only suitable place in Hawaii is the peak of Mauna Kea.”

The lone sound following this statement was the purr of the yacht’s engines. Then there was a huddled conference of sorts by the kidnappers. At length, the lead turned to face Dr. Archer.

“On the Big Island?”

“That’s the one,” Archer said, crossing his arms as he sat on his stool. “All 13,796 vertical feet of it.”

“I see you know it well,” the lead said.

“If you recall, sir, I was on my own voyage through Hawaiian waters when you...” Archer paused, seeking just the right word. Not kidnapped. Not abducted, or seized, or any other word that would provoke them.

He turned around on his stool and paused the cell division simulator running on the computer, pretending it was a necessary action while buying him the extra few seconds he needed to think.

“...intervened,” he continued, spinning back around on the stool. “I identified Mauna Kea as a possible testing ground for GREENBACK long ago, but we were discovering so many new genes that I decided to skip the GREENBACK trials in favor of collecting new DNA.”

“So this ‘sample’ we released two days ago and marked the GPS coordinates of—it was spurious.” This from the lead.

“Not completely. GREENBACK was designed to be an aerial microbe that absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But the seas are also a big carbon sink, and a marine microbe that could expel an iron chelate as waste or as a byproduct of its chemical reactions could potentially stimulate phytoplankton growth in areas of low primary productivity. This would result in more CO
₂
being absorbed from the upper layers of the ocean, since, as you know, plant cells consume carbon dioxide. So it was a GREENBACK marine variant which shows some commercial promise, but not the true atmospheric GREENBACK you now have before you in this sample,” Archer finished, nodding at the array of culture media spread out before him on the lab bench.

The lead nodded. “So now we are supposed to trust you to lead us to the summit of Mauna Kea,” he said.

Archer shrugged and let out a long sigh. “I’m tired. There’s nothing else for me to do but to give you what you want. I’ve tried everything else, even turning myself into a killer in the process. I can only hope that you will prove to be decent men after I’ve handed you the pinnacle of my life’s work on a silver goddamn platter.”

“How will we know GREENBACK is working after a sample is released atop Mauna Kea?” one of the anonymous scientists asked, unmoved by Archer’s speech. The lead looked at Archer expectantly, or at least Archer took it as an expectant look in spite of the fact that the mask allowed no view of his facial features.

Archer raised his eyebrows. “You’ll know when the CO
₂
levels all around the mountain drop like a rock, that’s how you’ll know! All the plants are gonna die. The meteorologists are gonna have a cow trying to figure out what happened.”

“So you
do
believe your environmentalist detractors,” the lead said. “The negative effects of your global warming reversal bio-tool are true!”

Archer gave a barely perceptible nod. “Guilty as charged. Continuing to render the planet hospitable for human existence comes at a price. Take it or leave it.”

“We will take it,” the lead said, before turning to his number two, who gave a subtle nod. The lead spoke into his radio.

Archer couldn’t hear the response crackling from the lead’s headset, but after a few seconds he felt the boat begin to change course.

…TTGC
59
CGGA…

4:36 P.M.

The helicopter flew clockwise around the island of Maui. The north side passed in a blur of agricultural lands and pasture, the picturesque town of Hana receding behind them as they rounded the east end. There had been a few boats that warranted flyby’s, but on closer inspection none of them proved to be the
Nahoa
.

Now they hurtled along Maui’s eastern shore at low altitude, the black sand beaches an ebony blur rushing past. Lance shifted uncomfortably in the backseat and rubbed his eyes, tired from constantly scanning the waters below.

“What happens if we get to Lahaina without seeing anything?” he asked no one in particular.

The pilot answered him. “No matter what happens, I need to make a fuel stop at Kahului Airport, which is not far from Lahaina.”

“Okay,” Tara said. “Let’s say we go as far as Lahaina and then we’ll hit the airport. Take a couple hour break for refueling and eating lunch, and we’ll decide on where to next while we eat.”

In a few minutes the pilot was following Maui’s contours along its south coast. A few small boats were sighted and quickly ruled out as being the
Nahoa
. Soon Dave pointed out a small island off to their left.

“That’s Kaho’olawe,” Rob said, glancing quickly to his left before setting his eyes back on Maui’s coastline.

“Should we check it out—later after we refuel?” Kristen asked.

Rob shook his head. “It’s off limits to everyone. Military explosives testing ground. Heavily patrolled and enforced. No way any private vessels could be within a mile of it without being escorted out. There’s still a lot of live ordinance on the island and in the waters around it.”

That settled, they flew on toward Lahaina.

After flying sparsely populated coastlines for the past couple of hours, the minor explosion of human presence that surrounded Lahaina was a visual stimulant. Binoculars were passed around excitedly and fingers pointed. Hundreds of vessels dotted the waters outside Lahaina Harbor, and dozens more lay at anchor near shore. A traffic-filled road snaked its way along the beach.

It wasn’t Honolulu by any means, but compared to the rest of the Hawaiian island chain they’d seen, it looked like civilization. A large ferry was docking at a terminal some distance away from the small boat harbor. A handful of high-rises dotted the beach not far from the town. The flatlands of the town and its network of roadways gradually rose to form a relief map of green and brown hills in the distance.

Rob engaged in some technical chatter with the Kahului control tower and then angled the aircraft over land, headed northwest.

Tara scoured the water through her Nikon glasses as they left the ocean and cut over land. A couple of boats nose-to-nose in the shallow water over the reef in front of the harbor caught her attention. Focusing the binoculars, Tara’s breath caught as she fine-focused on what she recognized as a shipwreck protruding from the reef. Brow furrowed, she fought to hold the image while their craft veered away from the water.

Kahului Airport, island of Maui

Lance, Dave and Kristen had just sat down in a booth inside the small airport restaurant. Lance was about to take a bite of his pineapple teriyaki cheeseburger when Tara announced, “I just talked to Lahaina Harbor patrol. Those two boats we saw near that shipwreck when we passed over Lahaina were harbor patrol. They said they were sent to investigate reports of an explosion of some kind on a yacht, reported by tourists.”

Lance looked up from his burger.

“They also said that shipwreck has been there for years—the city of Lahaina is in a lawsuit with the boat’s former owner over disposal costs. Meanwhile, it just sits there.”

“That sounds like Hawaii,” Dave said.

Lance bit into his burger with renewed vigor.

“Just bring that with you. C’mon.” Tara was already headed for the door.

“Where are we going? We still have an hour and a half until we meet Rob back at the helicopter,” Lance said.

“I’ll call Rob on the way and tell him we’re going to be a little late. We’re taking a cab down to Lahaina to rent a boat.”

…TTGA
60
TTCA...

4:55 P.M.

Dave was at the helm of another rental boat, this one a twelve-foot Zodiac with a fifteen-horse outboard. Intended for leisurely touring around near shore coastal waters, the festively painted vessel labeled them squarely as tourist day-trippers.

Once out of the small harbor, Dave pointed their inflatable’s bow toward the shipwreck on the reef. Lance occupied the Zodiac’s starboard tube while Tara took the port. Kristen stood next to Dave, gripping the console’s handrail.

Dave cut power as they crossed onto the shallow reef. He picked his way around protruding coral heads. At times they heard the hissing scrape of the Zodiac’s belly coming into contact with the reef, and Dave would use a wooden pole to shove the craft into deeper water. Tara and Lance called out obstructions to him as they picked their way out across the sun drenched reef.

As the shipwreck drew near, the water deepened and Dave was able to open up the motor a bit without fear of hitting anything. There were no longer any vessels near the wreck. Dave brought the Zodiac up to the wreck and killed the motor. He tossed out an anchor, making an effort to avoid dropping it on live corals.

The four of them remained in the raft for a moment, saying nothing, listening to the sounds of waves lapping at the hull of the shipwreck, the distant shouts of kids playing in the water, surfers hooting as they caught a wave, a far away car horn. The summer sun beat down on them harshly.

Tara looked all around the wreck for signs of...of anything, she guessed, realizing that she had no idea what she was looking for. The Harbor Patrol had told her that they had investigated a reported disturbance of some kind but had found nothing, no boat in need of assistance, no swimmers in distress, nothing out of the ordinary. Incident closed.

Yet
something
had happened here. She didn’t relish the idea of going inside another shipwreck, but aside from walking around the shallow reef to see if she literally ran across something, there wasn’t much else to do.

“I’m going to have a look in that wreck,” Tara said, stepping over the side of the Zodiac into the foot-deep water. She wore only flip-flops, shorts, a T-shirt and her sun hat. Dave pulled on his hard-soled, neoprene dive boots and also stepped over the side.

“I’m going with you.”

“Me too,” Kristen said, hopping out of the raft. The three of them began picking their way toward the wrecked ship, stepping gingerly like storks through a marsh.

“No more dead bodies this time, okay?” Lanced joked as they walked away from the Zodiac.

“This time just make sure the boat’s still here when we come back out,” Tara called back.

Lance watched Dave take his sister’s hand when she almost tripped. He had no doubt that Dave cared for her, that he would keep her safe. But he did doubt that the wreck would yield anything. This old scow was not the
Tropic Sequence
. It was much smaller. There was no reason to suspect anything was actually in it; just the FBI agent's annoyingly thorough inquisitiveness.

He would get some rest while he could. He double-checked that the small throw-anchor was secure by pulling on the lines from different directions; he would not be able to live it down should something happen with the boat this time. Then, laying back on the Zodiac’s floorboards to wait for his companions to complete their exploration, Lance pulled his hat down over his eyes.

The exposed hull of the wreck cast a shadow over Tara, Kristen and Dave as they approached the marine debris.

“Let’s walk around the other side,” Tara said, seeing no entrance possibilities here. They went left, around the stern end. They were rounding the back of the boat when Kristen caught sight of something at her feet glinting in the sun. She looked down.

A flash of white. And something clear, rolling on the sand with the movement of her feet—glass, she saw, as the sun hit it again.

She bent down and plucked it from the reef.

“What is it?” Dave said, but he could see what it was before he finished the question. And for some reason it gave him the chills.

A test tube.

A clear glass tube, shaped like a cigar casing, capped on one end with a white plastic end piece.

“Test tube. Filled with a clear liquid. No obvious markings,” Kristen said, holding it up to the light at different angles.

Dave looked at the wreck. Looked down at the reef around them. There were sea urchins, cauliflower corals, and sponges. A small crab scuttled past Dave’s feet. Nothing seemed out of place. Except for the test tube in the middle of the reef. What were the chances? He knew damn well that lab equipment like this was far from common on the average coastal vessel.

Kristen stuck the tube in the pocket of her shorts.

“Let’s go inside,” she said, moving again as she rounded the stern.

…TTCC
61
TTTC…

Tara entered the wreck first. Kristen and Dave stared into the jagged opening in the old boat’s side, eyes struggling to pierce the gloom.