“Bad news?” asked Gunn.
“If I read between the lines correctly, Hiram has gathered new data on the acoustic plague. He wants to brief us at the data center.”
“I hope the news is good.”
“Not from the tone of his voice,” Sandecker said soberly. “I suspect he discovered something none of us wants to know.”
Yaeger was slouched in his chair, feet stretched out, contemplating the image on an oversized video display computer terminal when Sandecker and Gunn walked into his private office. He turned and greeted them without rising from his chair.
“What do you have for us?” Sandecker asked, not wasting words.
Yaeger straightened and nodded at the video screen. “I’ve arrived at a method for estimating convergence positions for the acoustic energy emanating from Dorsett’s mining operations.”
“Good work, Hiram,” said Gunn, pulling up a chair and staring at the screen. “Have you determined where the next convergence will be?”
Yaeger nodded. “I have, but first, let me explain the process.” He typed in a series of commands and then sat back. “The speed of sound through seawater varies with the temperatures of the sea and the hydrostatic pressure at different depths. The deeper you go and the heavier the column of water above, the faster sound travels. There are a hundred other variables I could go into, dealing with atmospheric conditions, seasonal differences, convergence-zone propagation access and the formation of sound caustics, but I’ll keep it simple and illustrate my findings.”
The image on the viewing screen displayed a chart of the Pacific Ocean, with four green lines, beginning at the locations of the Dorsett mines and intersecting at Seymour Island in the Antarctic. “I began by working backward to the source from the point where the acoustic plague struck. Tackling the hardest nut to crack, Seymour Island, because it actually sits around the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula in the Weddell Sea, which is part of the South Atlantic, I determined that deep ocean sound rays were reflected by the mountainous geology on the seafloor. This was kind of a fluke and didn’t fit the normal pattern. Having established a method, I calculated the occurrence of a more elementary event, the one that killed the crew of the Mentawai.”
“That was off Howland Island, almost dead center in the Pacific Ocean,” commented Sandecker.
“Far simpler to compute than the Seymour convergence,” said Yaeger as he typed in the data that altered the screen to show four blue lines beginning from Kunghit, Gladiator, Easter and the Komandorskie Islands and meeting off Howland Island. Then he added four additional lines in red. “The intersection of convergence zones that wiped out the Russian fishing fleet northeast of Hawaii,” he explained.
“So where do you fix the next convergence-zone inter section?” asked Gunn.
“If conditions are stable for the next three days, the latest death spot should be about here.”
The lines, this time in yellow, met nine hundred kilo meters south of Easter Island.
“Not much danger of it striking a passing ship in that part of the ocean,” mused Sandecker. “Just to be on the safe side, I’ll issue a warning for all ships to detour around the area.”
Gunn moved in closer to the screen. “What is your degree of error?”
“Plus or minus twelve kilometers,” answered Yaeger “And the circumference where death occurs?”
“We’re looking at a diameter anywhere from forty to ninety kilometers, depending on the energy of the sound rays after traveling great distances.”
“The numbers of sea creatures caught in such a large area must be enormous.”
“How far in advance can you predict a convergence zone intersection?” Sandecker queried.
“Ocean conditions are tricky to predict as it is,” replied Yaeger. “I can’t guarantee a reasonably accurate projection beyond thirty days into the future. After that; it becomes a crapshoot.”
“Have you calculated any other convergence sites beyond the next one?”
“Seventeen days from now.” Yaeger glanced at a large calendar with a picture of a lovely girl in a tight skirt sitting at a computer. “February twenty-second.”
“That soon.”
Yaeger looked at the admiral, a polar-cold expression on his face. “I was saving the worst till last.” His fingers played over the keyboard. “Gentlemen, I give you February twenty-second and a catastrophe of staggering magnitude.”
They were not prepared for what flashed on the screen. What Sandecker and Gunn saw on the video screen was an unthinkable event they had no control over, an encircling web of disaster that they could see no way to stop. They stared in sick fascination at the four purple lines that met and crossed on the screen.
“There can be no mistake?” asked Gunn.
“I’ve run my calculations over thirty times,” said Yaeger wearily, “trying to find a flaw, an error, a variable that will prove me wrong. No matter how I shake and bake it, the result always comes out the same.”
“God, no,” whispered Sandecker. “Not there, not of all places in the middle of a vast and empty ocean.”
“Unless some unpredictable upheaval of nature alters the sea and atmosphere,” said Yaeger quietly, “the convergence zones will intersect approximately fifteen kilometers off the city of Honolulu.”
This President, unlike his predecessor, made decisions quickly and firmly without vacillating. He refused to take part in advisory meetings that took forever and accomplished little or nothing, and he particularly disliked aides running around lamenting or cheering the latest presidential polls. Conferences to build defenses against criticism from the media or the public failed to shake him. He was set on accomplishing as much as possible in four years. If he failed, then no amount of rhetoric, no sugarcoated excuses or casting the blame on the opposing party would win him another election. Party hacks tore their hair and pleaded with him to present a more receptive image, but he ignored them and went about the business of governing in the nation’s interest without giving a second thought to whose toes he stepped on.
Sandecker’s request to see the President hadn’t impressed White House Chief of Staff Wilbur Hutton. He was quite impervious to such requests from anyone who wasn’t one of the party leaders of Congress or the Vice President. Even members of the President’s own cabinet had difficulty in arranging a face-to-face meeting. Hutton pursued his job as Executive Office gatekeeper overzealously.
Hutton was not a man who was easily intimidated. He was as big and beefy as a Saturday night arena wrestler. He kept his thinning blond hair carefully trimmed in a crewcut. With a head and face like an egg dyed red, he stared from limpid smoke-blue eyes that were always fixed ahead and never darted from side to side. A graduate of Arizona State with a doctorate in economics from Stanford, he was known to be quite testy and abrupt with anyone who bragged of coming from an Ivy League school.
Unlike many White House aides, he held members of the Pentagon in great respect. Having enlisted and served as an infantryman in the Army and with an enviable record of heroism during the Gulf War, he had a fondness for the military. Generals and admirals consistently received more courteous recognition than dark-suited politicians.
“Jim, it’s always good to see you.” He greeted Sandecker warmly despite the fact that the admiral showed up unannounced. “Your request to see the President sounded urgent, but I’m afraid he has a full schedule. You needn’t have made a special trip for nothing.”
Sandecker smiled, then turned serious. “My mission is too delicate to explain over the phone, Will. There is no time to go through channels. The fewer people who know about the danger, the better.”
Hutton motioned Sandecker to a chair as he walked over and closed the door to his office. “Forgive me for sounding cold and heartless, but I hear that story with frequent regularity.”
“Here’s one you haven’t heard. Sixteen days from now every man, woman and child in the city of Honolulu and on most of the island of Oahu will be dead.”
Sandecker felt Hutton’s eyes delving into the back of his head. “Oh, come now, Jim. What is this all about?”
“My scientists and data analysts at NUMA have cracked the mystery behind the menace that’s killing people and devastating the sea life in the Pacific Ocean.”
Sandecker opened his briefcase and laid a folder on Hutton’s desk. “Here is a report on our findings. We call it the acoustic plague because the deaths are caused by high-intensity sound rays that are concentrated by refraction.
