Chapter 28

NUMA Headquarters

Washington, D.C.

Rudi Gunn leaned back in his office chair listening to Gamay Trout report on her findings in the Indian Ocean. Listening, because despite the high-definition screen linked directly to NUMA’s satellite network, the feed from the Isabella was glitchy and continued to freeze up, which he found distracting at best and unwatchable at worst.

“Should have sent one of our ships down there,” he said under his breath.

“What was that?” Gamay asked.

“Nothing, go on.”

She’d already explained the discovery of the dead aquatic animals gathered en masse and the recovery of samples from the water and the carcasses. “The gelatinous globs are a form of organism I’ve never seen before. A pathogen to be sure, but it’s not bacterial, even though it seems to act that way. Soft-bodied parasite is the best way I can describe it. But reproducing at an astronomical rate and consuming tons of whale and shark flesh every hour. Fully half of the initially discovered animals are already gone. The rest are rapidly being skeletonized. And based on what Chantel and I saw down below, who knows how many creatures this pathogen has fed on.”

“Are you saying you’ve discovered some kind of seaborne plague?”

“It seems that way,” Gamay said. “Although a blight is a more accurate term based on how it consumes vegetation.”

“Sure,” Rudi acknowledged. “What makes you think this is more than a local phenomenon?”

“Chantel was able to access data from a French satellite called GeneSat that studies seawater for things like oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and other gases. Because of how GeneSat works, it also gives us a pretty good idea of how healthy the sea is in a particular area. The waters appear an opaque green color when they’re healthy and populated. They appear reddish when there’s an unhealthy algae bloom and a lack of oxygen. And they show up as clear blue when the waters are barren.”

“And?” Rudi asked, preferring not to be kept in suspense.

“I have a couple of images to show you,” Gamay said. “Let me send them to you. I promise they’re worth more than a thousand words.”

Rudi turned toward the screen, where a satellite image showing the western Indian Ocean had appeared. On the left side he could see the familiar shape of Madagascar and the coastline of Africa. Most of it was a healthy green, with a few small circles of red off the coast of Madagascar. But smack in the middle of the green zone was a dark blue stripe. It stood out as clearly and remarkably as the first strip mowed in an otherwise overgrown lawn. The Isabella sat near the end of that strip.

“Everything in dark blue is basically sterile ocean at this point,” Gamay said. “No plankton, no krill, no fish, and thus no predators that feed on those fish. It’s like something carved a line into the ocean and removed all the nutrients.”

“You’re telling me this pathogen is eating its way through the sea in a straight line?”

“And widening as it goes,” Gamay said. “Which suggests it’s reproducing and growing more plentiful as it moves along.”

Rudi considered what he was looking at. “No wonder Kurt and Joe couldn’t find any sharks off the coast. If there’s nothing for the sharks to eat, they go elsewhere.”

“Or get eaten themselves when they show up at the wrong dinner table,” Gamay said, referencing what they’d discovered.

“You said you had a number of images,” Rudi asked. “What’s next?”

“The bad news.”

“This wasn’t the bad news?”

“This was the prologue,” Gamay said. “Stand by.”

Rudi waited for the new image to download. The file must have been much larger because it took a minute. When it finally popped up on the screen, Rudi saw side-by-side images of the entire Indian Ocean with Africa on the left, the shark tooth–like shape of India at the top, and the Indonesian islands and the western edge of Australia on the right.

“The first image is from last summer. And the second image was stitched together this week.”

The first image was speckled, but relatively uniform. Plankton and algae and thus sea life everywhere. The second image was markedly different. While much of the sea remained speckled in light green, large swaths of dark blue were spreading out across the sea in multiple directions.

He counted six bands in all, one heading west toward Africa, another tracking due north toward the Saudi peninsula. A third heading north and slightly east in the direction of India. The fourth band angled toward the archipelagoes of Southeast Asia, while the longest, and now widest, band carved a path to the east, as if making a beeline for Australia. The last of the bands was the shortest and darkest. It went south, passing east of Reunion, ending just after crossing south past the Tropic of Capricorn.

Viewed from space, the pattern resembled a distorted asterisk. Rudi calculated that roughly thirty percent of the Indian Ocean had been affected. Considering the size of that body of water, it added up to an astronomical number of square miles. Eight million or so. Three times the surface area of the continental United States.

“And you believe these swaths have been…cleared of sea life?”

“Cleared. Stripped. Cleaned out,” Gamay replied. “Describe it however you want to, but if these areas are anything like the waves we have been sailing through, they’re essentially barren. Wastelands in the middle of the sea.”

Rudi had heard reports suggesting the commercial fishing harvest was down sharply off the coast of India, but that was being blamed on a huge Chinese fishing fleet that had been moving through the area. But even a thousand ships with the largest nets couldn’t do what seemed to have been done here. It was more like a forest that had been clear-cut than an area that had been overfished. Privately, Rudi wondered if the Chinese fleet had been on the move because it wasn’t finding anything worth trawling a net for.

“I’ll get some assets into these other areas to see if they’re as compromised as what you’ve found,” he said. “Send over a full report as soon as you’ve finished your analysis. This suddenly seems a lot bigger than a group of whales stranding themselves.”

“We’ll get it over to you ASAP,” she said, and then signed off.

Rudi sat in silence for a moment, compiling a mental list of who he could dispatch to regions in question and which units he might be able to divert from other missions. Though they weren’t members of the science department, he suddenly wished he hadn’t let Kurt and Joe run off on a wild-goose chase to India. Especially as he hadn’t heard from them in days and was being hounded by the Indian government regarding their whereabouts and reasons for being in the country.

He made a few notes before being interrupted by his assistant, who announced over the intercom that his lunch had been delivered. It was a curious report, considering he hadn’t ordered anything and had dined in the cafeteria two hours ago.

He assumed it was a mistake and suggested as much. The reply surprised him. “The note says this was specially ordered for you by Kurt Austin.”

Rudi looked up from the notepad. “Speak of the devil and he appears.”

He put the notes aside and went to pick up the delivery, finding a college kid in a green polo shirt with mustard on his sleeve. A logo stitched on the shirt read: Adam’s Delicatessen. A place Kurt frequented when he was in D.C.

“Kurt ordered this for me?”

The kid nodded. “He called it in.”

Considering Kurt was in India, Rudi would have been surprised if he’d placed the order in person. “I don’t suppose he tipped you?”

“Oh, yeah. Twenty dollars.”

That was a healthy tip considering the sandwich might have cost eight or nine.

“And,” the kid added, “I get a hundred-dollar bonus if you come back to the shop and take a long-distance phone call.” The kid’s eyebrows went up and down knowingly. “Some kind of prank, right?”

“Almost certainly,” Rudi groaned. “But who am I to deprive a man of his hard-earned bonus? Lead on and I shall follow.”