Chapter 19

Kurt and Joe’s search for the tracking beacon took them to the stern of the ship, the main stairwell that led up into the accommodations block, and down into the ship’s engineering spaces. Along the way, Joe waved the receiver back and forth like a divining rod, narrowing their focus as the signal from the transmitter grew stronger and weaker.

Reaching the stairs, Kurt pulled open the watertight door, drawing a horrendous screech from the rusted hinges. It sounded like a hundred nails scraping a blackboard.

Joe shook his head as if he had to clear the sound from his system. “Could it be any louder?”

With Kurt holding the spring-loaded door open, Joe stepped through. Heading up half a flight of stairs and tilting the receiver, he found the signal strength weakening. He stopped and backtracked, descending again and pointing the receiver downward. “Slightly stronger. It’s below us. Somewhere in engineering.”

Searching the engineering spaces, they zeroed in on the signal. “This is it,” Joe said, stopping in front of a compartment on the starboard side.

“We’re pretty deep in the ship,” Kurt said. “No wonder the satellite couldn’t pick up the transmission.”

Kurt aimed his flashlight at the door. It was nothing more than a basic storeroom, but locked from the outside with a padlock.

“Maybe there’s a key under the mat,” Joe suggested.

Kurt aimed his light downward. “No mat.”

Looking for a way to break in, Kurt retrieved a fire ax from the emergency station. With Joe holding the flashlight, Kurt raised it up and then brought it down, smashing the blunt end into the padlock. The lock broke off and clanged to the deck, the sounds of both of the impacts reverberating through the otherwise silent passageway.

“You would not make a good ninja,” Joe said.

Kurt laughed. “You wanted in,” he said, waving toward the door, “I got you in.”

Joe slid the transmitter back into his pack and pulled out a flashlight of his own. He pushed cautiously through the door, pointing the narrow beam this way and that. What he found chased away the laughter. “Damn.”

Piled up against the far bulkhead—leaning on one another as they sat against the wall—were the bodies of four men in rag-like clothes. They were huddled below a small porthole that had been broken open and through which a makeshift funnel of sorts had been threaded. The funnel was attached to a small length of tubing that led to a metal cup.

“They were trying to get water,” Joe said. “They must have died of thirst. Compartment like this would turn into an oven in the tropical sun. That’s a pretty horrible way to go.”

Kurt agreed, suppressing a flicker of anger at the games that were being played. “With a clearer message we might have gotten here earlier.”

Joe reminded him that it might not be that easy. “Don’t forget, Hiram and Max think the sender is risking their life transmitting these messages. Maybe a clearer message couldn’t be sent. Besides, based on the track the beacon took, this ship wasn’t supposed to be their final destination. At some point after they reached the shipping lane, they either got picked up or came aboard as stowaways. Makes me wonder if the crew locked them down here.”

It was impossible to know, but Kurt considered that unlikely. “Easier to throw them overboard. I’m guessing whoever these guys are, they got aboard this ship and found a place to hide and then got locked in here by accident. Otherwise, they wouldn’t still have the beacon. Which reminds me, do you see it?”

Joe moved closer and crouched beside the group. He found nothing nearby. Figuring the men would have gotten the transmitter as close to the window as possible, he looked between them. “Not here.”

“What’s that around the last guy’s neck?”

Joe looked up. Hanging around the dead man’s neck was a thick band with electronic parts attached to it. Joe pulled out the receiver and held it close to the necklace. A squeal of feedback rang out. “That’s it,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure this didn’t come from the warehouse in New Jersey.”

“Looks homemade,” Kurt said. “Cobbled together out of spare parts.”

“Reminds me of something I made in shop class twenty years ago,” Joe said. “But it’s tuned to match our transmitters precisely.”

“Not an impossible task,” Kurt said. “But it would require some inside knowledge.”

“More evidence that your mystery texter is well-versed in all things NUMA.”

Kurt focused on the dead men. “So who are these guys? Don’t exactly look like children.”

Joe shined the flashlight on the nearest man’s face. His skin tone was reddish-brown. His lips were cracked and caked with either dried saliva or salt. His eyelids stretched tight over sunken eyeballs, shrinking due to the dehydration.

Joe rummaged through the rag-like clothing, but they had no pockets. “I don’t think these guys carry passports or wallets.”

“They have tattoos, though.”

Joe looked closer. Kurt’s light was trained on the nearest man’s neck. A horizontal stripe that reminded him of a barcode had been inked into the man’s skin beneath a series of numbers and letters.

“They all have the same mark,” Joe said, shining his flashlight at the other three. “Almost the same,” he said, correcting himself. “The first digits are the same, 6.28. The Greek letter is the same, but each one has a different fraction printed at the end.”

“Six point two eight,” Kurt said, looking at the marks. “That mean anything to you?”

“It’s tau,” Joe said. “The same as this Greek ‘T’ symbol. Engineers use it in place of pi sometimes. It represents a full circle, a line that never ends. It’s like pi in that no matter how many places you calculate it to, it never repeats itself.”

“What about these other numbers?” Kurt asked.

“They’re sequential,” Joe said. “Almost like identification numbers. Like the tattoos the Nazis used on the prisoners of the concentration camps.”

He wondered if they might be jumping to conclusions. Other than the neck tattoo, there was not another permanent mark on the man’s body. The others were in similar condition. No additional ink, no scars, freckles, or skin discolorations. In fact, there was little Joe could pick out that would tell them apart. They had the same facial structures, the same cheekbones, the same thick black hair, smallish ears, and dimpled chins. “These guys are identical.”

Kurt had noticed it, too.

Joe asked the question in both their minds. “What are a set of tattooed quadruplets doing in the hold of a dead ship, carrying a dummied-up NUMA beacon?”

“No idea,” Kurt said, “but this isn’t the time to talk about it. Get the beacon off that guy and get some DNA samples. Hair, skin, something. We need to see if we can figure out who these guys are.”

Joe leaned forward and gently lifted the necklace over the man’s head. As it came free, the man looked up, eyes opening wide. His hands shot forward, grabbing for Joe as he let out a raspy shout.

Joe pulled away as the seemingly dead man came to life. He landed on his back and pushed across the deck with his feet to get out of range. The man reached for him again and fell, unable to stand.

While Joe recovered from his fright, Kurt moved closer, blinding the man with his flashlight for a second and then aiming it elsewhere as the man held a hand up to block the light. “It’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you.”

“Wah…ter,” the man cried in a hoarse, dry whisper. “Water. Please.”

Expecting only a short trip, they hadn’t come with canteens, but Kurt had the bottle of filtered water he’d used to rinse the masks. He pulled it out and gave the man several small sips, as too much at once might make his tongue swell up.

“Who are you?” Kurt asked.

“I’m called Five,” the man whispered.

“Five,” Kurt said. “Like the number?”

The man nodded. Kurt noticed that it matched the last number in the sequence on his neck. He reached for the bottle again.

Kurt let him have another sip. “What are you doing here?”

“We came to find NUMA,” the young man said. “Is this NUMA?” He looked up at Kurt’s head. “You have silver hair? Are you NUMA?”

“I’m part of NUMA,” Kurt replied. “My name is Austin. Kurt Austin.”

“Austin,” the man said. “Silver hair. You’re NUMA. We were sent to find you.”

Kurt let it go. “Who sent you to find me? Who made the beacon for you?”

“Bee…kon…?” He didn’t understand.

Joe held it up. “The necklace. Who made it for you?”

The man looked at Joe and then came back to Kurt. “The Gray Witch. She whispered in our ears. She left this for us. ‘Take it. Go to NUMA. Austin will find you. Silver hair. NUMA.’”

Kurt suddenly felt as if he were talking to a child. There was no language barrier. The man spoke English with an American accent that would have been at home anywhere on the West Coast. But the words he used and the way he struggled to put a full sentence together made him seem like a five-year-old.

The children , Kurt thought, remembering the text.

Kurt gave him another sip of water as Joe moved closer and checked the other men for any signs of life. He looked at Kurt and shook his head. They were gone. Only Five remained.

“How did you survive?” Joe asked.

Five pointed to the funnel-like arrangement that extended through the porthole. “Rainwater. It comes in. They gave it all to me.”

As Joe and Kurt considered what that meant, an almost silent chirping sounded on Joe’s wrist. He checked his watch, silencing the alarm. “King tide in fifteen minutes. If we’re going to go out while that tanker is coming in, we need to get moving.”

“Can you swim?” Kurt asked Five.

“Swim?” he asked.

“In the water.”

Five frowned. “We don’t go in the water. To touch the water is death.”

“Maybe around here,” Joe muttered.

Even if the waters weren’t quite that deadly, they were cold, and the current was strong. Considering the young man’s condition, Kurt knew there was little chance they’d be able to get him to the boat without causing hypothermia or bringing on shock from exhaustion. “We need to find another way off the beach.”

“Sounds like a backup plan might be forming,” Joe said.

“It’s in the beginning stages,” Kurt said. “In the meantime, let’s get him up and walking.”

Leaning on Kurt, Five managed to stand up and remain vertical, but his legs were numb. Joe tucked himself under the man’s other shoulder so that he was supported on both sides as they began to move. The three of them stepped out of the compartment and into the corridor. They made it back to the stairwell, and halfway up the first flight, only to stop in their tracks at the unmistakable screech of the rusted door above them swinging wide open.