"Thirty days. That's your timetable?"
Dorsett sat back, folded his huge hands across his chest and nodded. "I've had our mining crews working three shifts, twenty-four hours a day for the past ten years. In another month I will have accumulated a stockpile of over $2 billion worth of stones. With the worldwide economy flat, diamond sales to consumers have temporarily stagnated. All of the enormous sums the cartel has spent in advertising have failed to push sales. If my instincts are right, the market will reach bottom in thirty days before it rebounds. I intend to attack when it's down."
"What are you doing in the mines that causes death throughout the ocean?" demanded Maeve.
"About a year ago, my engineers developed a revolutionary excavator using high-energy pulsed ultrasound to carve through the blue clay that contains the major deposits of diamonds. Apparently, the subterranean rock under the islands we mine creates a resonance that channels into the surrounding water. Though a rare event, it occasionally converges with the resonance from our other mining operations, near Siberia, Chile and Canada. The energy intensifies to a level that can kill animals and humans. However unfortunate, I cannot allow these aberrant side effects to throw off my time schedule."
"Don't you understand?" pleaded Maeve. "Don't you care about the sea life and hundreds of people your greed has killed? How many more must die before this madness is satisfied?"
"Only after I have destroyed the diamond market will I stop," Dorsett said coldly. He turned to Boudicca. "Where is the yacht?"
"I sent it on to Kunghit Island after I debarked in Honolulu and flew home. My chief of security there has informed me that the Canadian Mounties are becoming suspicious. They've been flying over the island, taking photographs and asking questions of the nearby inhabitants. With your permission, I would like to rejoin the yacht. Your geophysicists are also predicting another convergence approximately five hundred kilometers west of Seattle. I should be standing by to remove any possible wreckage to frustrate investigation by the American Coast Guard."
"Take the company jet and return as soon as possible."
"You know where the deaths will occur next?" Maeve demanded in dismay. "You must warn ships to stay out of the area."
"Not a practical idea," Boudicca answered, "letting the world in on our secret. Besides, Daddy's scientists can only give rough estimates for where and when the sound waves will strike."
Maeve stared at her sister, her lips slowly tightening. "You had a pretty good idea when you put Deirdre on the Polar Queen to save my life."
Boudicca laughed. "Is that what you think?"
"That's what she told me."
"I lied to keep you from informing the NUMA people," said Deirdre. "Sorry, sister dear, father's engineers made a slight miscalculation in time. The acoustic plague was estimated to strike the ship three hours earlier. . ."
"Three hours earlier . . ." Maeve murmured as the awful truth slowly dawned on her. "I would have been on the ship."
"And you would have died with the others," said Deirdre as if disappointed.
"You meant for me to die!" Maeve gasped, contempt and horror in her expression.
Her father looked at her as if he were examining a stone he'd picked up at his mine. "You turned your back on your sisters and me. To us, you no longer existed. You still don't."
A strawberry-red floatplane with Chinook Cargo Carriers painted in white block letters on the side of the fuselage rocked gently in the water beside a refueling dock near the Shearwater Airport in British Columbia. A short, brown-haired man with an unsmiling face, dressed in an old-fashioned leather flight suit, was holding a gas nozzle in one of the wing tanks. He looked down and examined the man who walked casually along the dock, carrying a backpack and a large black case. He was dressed in jeans with a skier's down vest. A cowboy hat was set square on his head. When the stranger stopped beside the aircraft and looked up, the pilot nodded at the widebrimmed hat.
"A Stetson?"
"No, it was custom-shade by Manny Gammage out of Austin, Texas."
The stranger studied the floatplane. It looked to have been built prior to 1970. "A de Havilland, isn't she?"
The pilot nodded. "De Havilland Beaver, one of the finest bush planes ever designed."
"An oldie but goody."
"Canadian-built in 1967. She'll lift over four thousand kilograms off a hundred meters of water.
Revered as the workhorse of the North. Over a hundred of them are still flying."
"Don't see big radial engines much anymore."
"You a friend of Ed Posey?" the pilot asked abruptly.