Island 731

horizon, Kam was one of the gang, despite being fifteen years younger.

“So,” Hawkins said when Kam was done laughing. “Fishing?”

Kam’s eyes all but disappeared when he smiled. “Definitely.”

“Maybe you’ll let the rest of us catch a few next time,” Joliet said with a smile.

Kam waved her away. “If that shark comes back, it’s all yours. Otherwise, not a chance.”

Drake cleared his throat. “Speaking of the shark…”

Kam’s smile fell. “Right. Sorry. I’m not here.” He slipped a pair of earbuds into his ears and lowered his head back down behind the screen.

Drake shook his head. “Kid’s ancestors must have been ninjas. Been here for ten minutes. Didn’t hear a sound.”

“Sir, about the shark, and the turtle,” Hawkins said. “The whole thing. I take full responsibility for it.”

Joliet’s head snapped toward Hawkins. “You do?”

“And here I thought chivalry was dead,” Drake said. “Truth is, both of you acted impulsively. I saw this one”—he motioned to Joliet—“swan dive into a milk jug. Then not ten seconds later, the Ranger here takes a twenty-five-foot plunge to rescue the damsel in distress.”

“I didn’t know who was in the water,” Hawkins corrected.

“You didn’t?” Joliet asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Drake said. “What matters is that two of the smartest people currently serving aboard my ship threw themselves in the Pacific Ocean, which at our current location is mired with trash so thick you’re lucky you didn’t become trapped beneath it.”

Hawkins remembered the rope around his leg. If he didn’t have his knife, escape wouldn’t have been so easy. The Garbage Patch frequently trapped seals, dolphins, sharks, and turtles.

Drake continued. “Not to mention that these waters teem with sharks, a fact you two are now intimately familiar with. And for what? To save a turtle. A dead turtle.”

Joliet stepped forward. “Captain, with all due—”

“Stow it, Joliet.” Drake turned back toward the view. “I actually think you two did a fine job.”

Hawkins and Joliet glanced at each other. The words coming out of Drake’s mouth were as strange as the deformed loggerhead waiting for them in the biolab.

Drake crossed his arms. “There could have been a bit more communication and a lot more coordination, but you got the job done. That turtle of yours is going to get a lot of news coverage and raise a lot of eyebrows. We’re here to collect evidence that this swath of shit is harming the environment, but all the data in the world isn’t going to change a thing. But you can’t ignore that turtle. A few more finds like that and maybe we’ll get someone to come out here and clean this mess up. And maybe I’ll get to enjoy this view again.”

Drake turned toward the stunned pair. “But I didn’t ask you here to pat your backs, either.” He paused, rubbing his bearded chin.

“What is it?” Joliet asked.

“I want you to know,” Drake began, but paused again. “The point is, you two are capable. You can do what we came here to do. But… you’re going to have to keep doing it on your own.”

“What are you talking about?” Joliet asked, her voice getting tense.

“The Darwin isn’t going to make it.”

The Darwin was the second of three ships in the privately funded science fleet. The ship, coming from Hawaii with supplies and ten more scientists, was scheduled to rendezvous with them in two days. The Magellan currently operated with a fourteen-person skeleton crew and Joliet was the only real scientist on board. Hawkins knew more than an average amount about wildlife and the natural world, and Bray, despite being a wiseass high school teacher and author, was a decent biologist, but neither of them were published in scientific journals, and neither had Ph.D.s—Bray didn’t even believe in them. Hawkins could write all the articles in the world, and Bray could Skype with high schools across the country, but without the collective minds of professional oceanographers, biologists, microbiologists, climatologists, and a slew of other experts, their discoveries might not be taken seriously.

“Before either of you can complain, you should know the reason the Darwin isn’t going to make it. There’s a storm, a big one, coming up from the South. High winds. Twenty-foot swells. Real rough seas. The Darwin sustained significant damage and—”

“God, is everyone okay?” Joliet’s brewing agitation disappeared. A lot of the scientists on board were her colleagues, if not friends.

“A lot of injuries,” Drake said. “No souls lost. But they were forced to return to port. Going to be at least another month before they can get underway again and three weeks after that before they reach us.”

“We’re scheduled to head back before then,” Hawkins observed.

Drake nodded. “Which is why I want you two to find as much compelling evidence as you can. Photograph it. Document it. Everything by the books. Maybe we can still make a difference.”

Joliet was nodding when Drake finished talking. “We can do this. Public opinion shapes policy, right? We’ll focus on the big picture. On what’s most shocking.”

“Glad to see you rolling with the punches, Joliet,” Drake said. “Now, you two best get to that turtle. Do what you need to do and secure the body in the freezer by twenty-two hundred.”

Hawkins took a step toward the door. While the Darwin’s return to port was a blow to their mandate, he appreciated the bold approach it required they take. It was more his style. But then he paused and asked, “Why so fast?”

Drake frowned. “That storm I mentioned? It’ll be here tonight.”

4.

The loggerhead’s plastron—the underbelly—came free with a slurp. Joliet had drawn a scalpel around the turtle’s soft flesh that divided its top and bottom shells. The cut on a healthy turtle would have been shaped like a stingray, but this specimen, pinched at the midsection, had a figure eight-shaped body.

“Slowly,” Joliet said, pulling on the top half of the plastron.

Hawkins held the lower half, lifting up so the entire shell could come free at once. Bray stood behind a video camera, documenting the dissection. All three wore blue surgical aprons over their shorts and T-shirts, but only Hawkins and Joliet wore bright blue, elbow-length rubber gloves.

The turtle lay on a table at the center of the biolab, a four hundred-square-foot space on the port side of the Magellan’s main deck. Foam blocks had been wedged under the sides of the turtle’s shell, keeping it from wobbling, or from slipping off the table. Bright fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling illuminated the body. The only other source of light came from a single porthole, through which the sun—now heading for the horizon—shone brightly.

As the plastron lifted away from the body, the tangy scent of turtle insides wafted into the sterile-smelling “clean” lab, which normally smelled like bleach. Hawkins nearly gagged. He wasn’t sure which smell was worse— guts or bleach—but combined, they sent a wave of revulsion through his body and made him wince.

Bray lowered the camera and said, “Good God, that reeks.”

Joliet paused and looked at Bray. “Keep the camera up.”

Bray lifted his shirt collar over his nose and continued recording the scene.

“The plastron came free after cutting along the seam between the marginal and inframarginal scutes, and then along the posterior margin,” Joliet said, describing the work she’d completed. She tilted her end up so that it was facing the camera. “As you can see, the subject’s body is quite deformed.”

“What was the cause of this deformity?” Bray asked.

Joliet appeared annoyed for a moment, but then nodded. They hadn’t recorded that portion of the dissection. Hawkins and Joliet placed the underbelly on an adjacent workbench.

“The deformity of this specimen was caused by a thick band of red plastic, which we cut away.” Joliet picked up the hard plastic ring and held it up for the camera to see. “I’m not sure what its original purpose was, but there is some faint Japanese script, here on the side.”