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Yaeger gestured to a nearby door. "We can take the stairway."
When Pitt and the others entered the conference room, Sandecker and Gunn were studying the region where the latest case of unexplained death was projected on the holographic chart. The admiral and Gunn stepped forward to greet them. For a few minutes they all stood in a tight little huddle and deliberated the turn of events. Gunn anxiously probed Pitt and Giordino for details, but they were both extremely tired, and they condensed the wild series of incidents into brief descriptions.
Sandecker knew better than to crowd them. Full reports could be written at a later time. He motioned to the empty chairs. "Why don't you sit down, and we'll get to work."
Gunn pointed toward one of the blue globes that seemed to float over one end of the table. "The latest kill zone," he said. "An Indonesian freighter called Mentawai, with a crew of eighteen."
Pitt turned to the admiral. "The vessel that exploded after another ship's crew had boarded her?"
"The same," said Sandecker, nodding. "As I told you aboard Ice Hunter, actor Garret Converse, his crew and his fancy junk were reported sailing in the same area by an oil tanker that went unscathed. The junk and everyone on board appear to have vanished."
"Nothing on satellite?" inquired Giordino.
"Too much cloud cover, and the infrared cameras won't pick out a vessel as small as a junk."
"There is something else to consider," said Gunn. "The captain of the American container ship that found Mentawai reported a luxury yacht speeding from the site. He can't swear to it in court, but he's certain the yacht closed with Mentawai before he arrived, after responding to the freighter's distress call.
He also thinks the crew of the yacht are somehow responsible for the explosives that wiped out his boarding party."
"Sounds like the good captain has an overactive imagination," suggested Yaeger.
"To say this man is seeing demons is incorrect. Captain Jason Kelsey is a very responsible seaman with a solid history of skill and integrity."
"Did he get a description of the yacht?" asked Pitt.
"By the time Kelsey concentrated his attention on it, the yacht was too distant to identify. His second officer, however, observed it earlier through binoculars before it widened the gap. Fortunately, he's an amateur artist who enjoys sketching ships and boats while in port."
"He drew a picture of it?"
"He admits to taking a few liberties. The yacht was pulling away from him, and his view was mostly of the stern quarter. But he managed to give us a good enough likeness to trace the hull design to her builders."
Sandecker lit one of his cigars and nodded toward Giordino. "Al, why don't you act as lead investigator on this one?"
Giordino slowly pulled out a cigar, the exact mate of Sandecker's, and slowly rolled it between his thumb and fingers while warming one end with a wooden match. "I'll get on the trail after a shower and a change of clothes."
Giordino's slinky method of pilfering the admiral's private stock of cigars was a mystery that bewildered Sandecker. The cat-and-mouse game had gone on for years, with Sandecker unable to ferret out the secret and too proud to demand an answer from Giordino. What was particularly maddening to the admiral was that his inventory invariably failed to turn up a count of missing cigars.
Pitt was doodling on a notepad and spoke to Yaeger without looking up. "Suppose you tell me, Hiram. Did my idea of killer sound waves have any merit?"
"A great deal, as it turns out," replied Yaeger. "The acoustics experts are still working out a detailed theory, but it looks as if we're looking at a killer that travels through water and consists of several elements. There are multiple aspects to be examined. The first is a source for generating intense energy.
The second, propagation, or how the energy travels from the source through the seas. Third, the target or structure that receives the acoustic energy. And fourth, the physiological effect on human and animal tissue."
"Can you make a case for high-intensity sound waves that kill?" Pitt asked.
Yaeger shrugged. "We're on shaky ground, but this is the best lead we have at the moment. The only joker in the deck is that sound waves intense enough to kill could not come from an ordinary sound source. And even an intense source could not kill at any gre
at distance unless the sound was somehow focused."
"Hard to believe that after traveling great distances through water a combination of high-intensity sound and excessive resonance energy can surface and kill every living thing within thirty or more kilometers."
"Any idea where these sound rays originate?" asked Sandecker.
"Yes, as a matter of fact, we do."
"Can one sound source actually cause such a staggering loss of life?" asked Gunn.
"No, and that's the catch," replied Yaeger. "To produce wholesale murder above and under the sea of the magnitude we've experienced, we have to be looking at several different sources on opposite sides of the ocean." He paused, and shuffled through a stack of papers until he found the one he was looking for.
