Shock Wave(60)

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 great 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.

Then he picked up a remote control and pressed a series of codes. Four green lights glowed on opposite corners of the holographic chart.

"By borrowing the global monitoring system of hydrophones placed by the Navy around the oceans to track the Soviet submarine fleet during the Cold War, we've managed to trace the source of the destructive sound waves to four different points in the Pacific Ocean." Yaeger paused to pass printed copies of the chart to everyone seated at the table. "Number one, by far the strongest, appears to emanate from Gladiator Island, the exposed tip of a deep ocean range of volcanic mountains that surfaces midway between Tasmania and New Zealand's South Island. Number two is almost on a direct line toward the Komandorskie Islands, off the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Bering Sea."

"That's a fair ways north," observed Sandecker.

"Can't imagine what the Russians have to gain," said Gunn.

"Then we head east across the sea to Kunghit Island, off British Columbia, Canada, for number three,"

Yaeger continued. "The final source as traced by a data pattern from the hydrophones is on the Isla de Pascua, or Easter Island as it is better known."

"Making the shape of a trapezium," commented Gunn.

Giordino straightened. "A what?"