Polar Shift

"I think they gypped me and there's no engine," she said, placing her hands on her hips.

She was gambling that he would follow the male instinct to stick his head under the car hood. When he did, Trout stepped out of the shadows, tapped him on the shoulder, then dropped the guard with a powerful right cross. With Gamay's help, they gagged and tied the dazed guard with towels borrowed from the hotel, took his guns and stuffed him in the backseat of the car.

Trout put the man's cap on his head, slipped a flashlight into his windbreaker pocket and tucked the pistol in his belt. "Call in the cavalry if I'm not back in twenty minutes."

Gamay hefted the rifle. "Be careful," she said, giving him a peck on the cheek. "You're looking at the cavalry."

Trout would rather have Gamay at his back than a hundred John Waynes. She was an expert marksman, and anyone caught in her sights would have a short life. He swiftly climbed to the top of the gangway and looked around the deck. The fog that hung over the ship and dampened the deck lights would make him less visible, but it would also provide cover for any guards watching the deck.

He had seen the photos Austin and Zavala had taken of the ship exhumed by the whirlpool and had a general idea of the layout. He blindly navigated his way through the murk and managed to find the superstructure without slamming face-first into it. He felt his way along the exterior until his groping fingers came to a door. He stepped into a darkened space and flicked on the flashlight he had borrowed from the guard. A companionway led to a deck below.

Clutching the guard's pistol in his free hand, he descended the stairs and followed a maze of corridors. At the end of one passageway, he paused and put his ear against a metal door, then tried the handle. The door was unlocked. He opened it and stepped through.

His footsteps echoed as he slowly made his way to a railing and saw that he was standing on a balcony. He was in a cavernous space that must be the generator room Austin and Zavala had described. He flashed his light around and realized why there was only one man guarding the ships. There was nothing to guard. The room was empty.

Trout made his way back to the main deck. Austin had talked about a shaft that ran down through the hull from the deck to the water. He finally found it, along with the framework around the rectangular opening. But there was no sign of the cone-shaped structure. The ship seemed to have been stripped clean. He pondered the idea of checking out the control room, but decided that there wasn't time. Gamay would storm the ship in search of Trout if he didn't come back when promised. He headed for the gangway.

The guard had regained consciousness, and Gamay had to threaten him with his gun to quiet him down, but other than that there had been no incident.

"What did you find?" she said.

"Nothing. And that's what's so interesting. My guess is that the other ships are stripped down too."

They dragged the guard from the car and left him in the shadows. He had started struggling against his makeshift bindings. With a little more effort, he would be able to free himself. About a hundred feet from the guardhouse, they tossed his guns into the harbor.

There was little chance that he would raise the alarm once he got free. His employers would not be pleased if they learned he had fallen down on the job. He would have enough trouble explaining what happened to his weapons.

On the drive back to the hotel, Trout described his search of the ship and the surprising results.

"But why? And what did they do with all that stuff?"

Trout shook his head, picked up his cell phone and punched out a number from the directory.

"We'll let Kurt figure that one out."

40

Austin reached into his desk drawer, extracted a dart from a board game and had his hand poised to throw it at the chart of the Atlantic Ocean pi

"Hope I'm not interrupting anything important," Trout said.

"Not at all. I was bringing my scientific training to bear on a knotty puzzle. How's the girl from Ipanema?" Austin said.

"Gamay is fine. But there's something strange going on with the transmitter ships. I snuck on board one a few minutes ago. It's been stripped of its turbines and the electromagnetic ante

"Empty?" Austin raced through the possibilities in his mind. "They must have done the housecleaning when the ships were in the Mississippi boatyard."

"We should have figured that something fu

Austin was deep in thought and only half listening to Trout. "What's that you said about a liner?"

"The Polar Adventure. It was tied up next to the transmitter ships, but it left earlier today. Is it important?"

"Maybe. Joe says a liner left the shipyard in Mississippi about the same time as the transmitters."

"Wow! Think this is the same vessel we saw?"

"It's possible," Austin said. "They move the transmitters into the liner. Then, while we're watching the decoys, the liner sneaks away with the payload in broad daylight."

"So much for the navy's plans to tail the ships with a submarine."

"Classic 'bait and switch' operation. Damned clever."

"How long since the liner left port?"

"It was gone this morning."

Austin did a quick mental computation. "They could be hundreds of miles out to sea by now. That's a jackrabbit start."

"What do you want us to do?"

"Stay put for now, and keep an eye on the ships in case their owners have another card up their sleeve."

Austin clicked off. He was angry with himself for not anticipating that anyone intelligent enough to carry out a polar reversal would do everything possible to throw pursuers off their trail. He turned his attention back to the chart. It was a big ocean. With every passing minute, the liner came closer to losing itself in hundreds of square miles of open sea. He thought about calling the Pentagon with the news from Trout, but he was in no mood to waste his breath debating the assistant defense secretary.

Sandecker might be more successful, but even he would have to deal with the Pentagon bureaucracy, and there was simply no time. Screw 'em, Austin thought. If the world was going to end, he would rather have the responsibility on his shoulders than those of an anonymous government functionary with an attitude. This was going to be a NUMA deal, through and through.

Ten minutes later, he was in a NUMA vehicle driving through the quiet streets of Washington. He took the highway to Washington National Airport, where the guard at the gate of a restricted area checked his ID and directed Austin to a hanger in a far corner of the airfield. He could see the glow of lights, and easily made his way to where a Boeing 747 jumbo jet was parked on the tarmac.

Floodlights set up on stands ringed the huge plane and turned night into day. The plane was surrounded by drums of electrical cable and stacks of aluminum and steel. Workers crawled in and out of the plane like ants on a candy bar.

Zavala sat under the lofty tail of the plane at a makeshift table assembled from a sheet of plywood and a couple of sawhorses. He was going over blueprints with a man dressed in coveralls. He excused himself when he saw Austin and came over to greet him.