kiDNApped (A Tara Shores Thriller) (41 page)

Port visits by Solar Island were few and far between. Foreign visitors, as Lighter referred to anyone who didn’t work on Solar Island, were also rare, and when they did occur the utmost security was implemented. Employees who left the isle were patted down by security guards who weren’t merely going through the motions, as well as searched by metal detectors. No media storage devices of any kind were allowed on or off the island without Lightner’s direct approval. That meant no laptops, cell-phones, cameras, PDA’s, magnetic discs of any kind. And Lightner further extended his definition of “media storage” to include paper. No paper was allowed on or off without consenting to a search. Lightner was aware that his engineering designs as well as the precise layout of the island could be sketched. In a world where gasoline prices routinely set unprecedented highs, proven alternative energy designs were in the spotlight, and Solar Island ranked high among them.

But Bernard Riley and Chris Tenner, during the course of many late night brainstorming sessions in which they discussed their career options at Solar Island, had still come up with a way to export a schematic of one of the most sought after alternative energy designs in the world.

“Let’s go, tape it on!” Bernard prompted.

“Stand up straight, don’t move,” Chris said. He slapped the manila stencil on Bernard’s bare back. Then Chris used a roll of waterproof medical adhesive tape to attach the stencil firmly in place on Bernard’s back.

“Okay it’s on, but be careful, don’t move too fast. Lay down right here.”

With careful, guarded movements to avoid dislodging the stencil now affixed to his back, Bernard eased himself first to his knees, then to a prone position on a beach towel he had laid on the deck. Chris consulted his watch.

“I have 8:43. What do you have?”

“Same.”

“Okay, I’ve got to get going to my station. At 3:00 I’ll take a break and meet you in your quarters to remove the stencil. Here’s some water.” Chris set a 2-liter plastic bottle next to Bernard on the ground.

“Gee, where’s my iPod, a trashy novel and a margarita?"

“Sorry, Bernie. You gotta stay focused. You need to listen for anyone coming and, at the very least, roll onto your back if you can’t hide. But there’s no reason for anyone to come by.”

With a heavy sigh, Bernard Riley settled down for a six hour bake in the merciless tropical sun.

3:09 PM, Bernard Riley’s quarters on Solar Island

Bernard peeled off the shirt he had worn for the trip back to his quarters. He appraised himself in front of the mirror in his small bathroom. His face was fine but his ears had gotten a little too much sun, he decided, even with the application of fifty-factor sunscreen. Not too bad, though. He turned to look at his back, where the stencil still sat.

Bernard winced sharply with the effort. His burnt skin sent jolts of pain with the movement. It was difficult to get a steady look, turning around over his shoulder, but he was shocked by what he could see, if not surprised. The area immediately surrounding the stencil, that which was too close to the precious imprint to risk the application of sun factor, was an irregular ring of vibrant, fire engine red. He touched it gingerly in one place, and instantly a white spot formed before fading back to red.

A soft knock came at the door and Bernard jumped. He listened for the agreed upon coded knock. Three sets of three’s. A few seconds after the third set, Bernard opened the door a crack. It was Chris Tenner. Alone. Bernard let him in.

“How’d it go?” Chris asked in a soft voice. Bernard shut the door behind him and locked it before answering.

“Didn’t see or hear anybody the entire time. Good thing this place is so huge. And so automated.”

“Turn around, let me see.”

He spun Bernard around so that his back was facing him. “Looks good so far,” he said. “I’m going to take it off.”

“Take it easy when you do it. Hurts like a mother.”

Chris started to peel the upper strip of tape from Bernard’s Back. The skin was bright red above the tape.

“Oh, crap!” Bernard whispered.

Then Chris ripped the tape strip off in one swift and powerful motion. Bernard didn’t scream, but let out a rasping exhalation. Chris let the tape drop to the floor.

Over the next few minutes Chris ripped away the rest of the tape from Bernard's back, until the stencil was stuck in place only by his day's worth of sweat. Chris slowly peeled away the stencil, letting it drop to the floor as it separated from Bernard's back.

“Make sure you cut the stencil into little pieces before you throw it away,” he said. Then he gazed in wonder at his associate's back.

Chris had had doubts that the sunburned image transfer would have sufficient clarity to render the complex schematic serviceable. But the sharpness of detail spread across Bernard's back was unmistakable. The regularity with which hundreds of electrical components were represented on the canvas of Bernard's back was very nearly as good as the stencil itself. There might be some imperfections, but Chris figured that what doesn't come out good enough will likely be able to be inferred later by a team of experts. The overall effect was that of some kind of extensive tribal tattoo, Chris thought.

So mesmerized was he by the abstract beauty of it that he hadn't heard Bernard asking him how it came out. Chris reached a hand out to touch the fire engine red representations of flow lines and multiple arrays of capacitors, transistors, integrated circuits, diodes, photodiodes and thermistors.

"That hurts!" Bernard spun around. "Don't touch me again! What the hell?"

Chris backed up a step. He was almost a foot shorter than the bearish Bernard, which was another reason he thought Bernard should be the bearer of the schematic. "Sorry. But it worked fantastically, Bernie! It's a vivid picture."

"It's vivid alright. I'll be sleeping on my stomach for a week."

The sunburn was horrendous. In a few days his skin would start to peel, destroying the delicate imprint. But that should be enough time to accomplish their mission.

“Stay in your room tonight. Don’t talk to anyone. Tomorrow in Okinawa we go our separate ways off the shore boat. I’ll meet up with you tomorrow night at 8:00 in the lobby bar of the Miyako Hotel.”

Next day, 8:15 A.M., local time

Chris Tenner finished dressing and hurried out of his quarters. At 8:30 A.M. he was scheduled to board the small boat that would take those scheduled for shore leave from the island to Okinawa. Once on Okinawa, he’d meet Bernard and there they would begin the process of copying the schematic to a more permanent and usable form. Chris was prepared to purchase a laptop in Naha, the Japanese prefecture’s capital city. Even without their clandestine goal, Chris was aware that he hadn’t stepped foot off their floating home for nearly eight months, and so the chance for shore leave was that much more desirable.

Stepping onto the perimeter jogging track, which featured pull-up bars, rings, or some other kind of exercise apparatus placed at regular intervals, Chris could immediately see that something was wrong. The land visible in the distance should have been the looming coastline of Okinawa, not more than three miles away. He should be able to see a shoreline dotted with buildings. Instead, he could barely make out the dim outline of a landform that was probably fifty miles away.

Chris increased his pace on the jog track. This was not good. Solar Island was an enormous structure that moved at a near glacial pace. Even if wind and current favored their course, and Lightner ordered full speed ahead with Solar Island’s twin tugboats, they would not reach Okinawa until sunset. And Chris noted that the wind currently blew away from Okinawa.
We must have been heading away from the coast all night to be this far away now. Probably even with the tugs pulling us.

He hurried to the shore leave staging area where a small crowd was gathered. Normally there would have been a short line of employees waiting to get through the security check before boarding the launch. But now he saw a disorganized, nervous huddle. A machine shop technician walked toward Chris, shaking his head on the way past. "Shore leave cancelled. We're stuck on the panel."

Chris' walk slouched as the news hit him. "The panel" was the employee nickname for Solar Island, much as residents of Hawaii sometimes referred to their island as "the rock," a reference to the isolation of living on an oceanic island.
We're stuck on the panel.
The phrase echoed around Chris' brain as he approached the staging area.

Then he heard a message being broadcast over the loudspeaker system. Dr. Lightner's rich, bass voice boomed out over the decks in a neutral tone: "Attention all personnel: Shore leave has been cancelled due to logistical considerations. Talks with Okinawa officials will proceed via teleconference in lieu of an in-person meeting. You will be notified of future shore leave plans. Also, please now direct your attention to the community monitor screens for an urgent message. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation."

Chris was flabbergasted. Shore leave cancelled, the energy talks relegated to video conference? What the hell was going on? Regardless, his plans for the schematic had been ruined. He had to find Bernie right away.

Then he passed under the first community monitor, a massive LCD screen suspended from support struts that held up an awning covering this part of the deck.

Red font scrolled across the LCD. ATTENTION ALL HANDS. The message underneath: “URGENT: Missing Employee. Possibly Man Overboard within last 24 hours. Report any info about this man’s recent whereabouts to Operations immediately!”

There was a scanned photograph underneath. It was Bernard Riley’s Solar Island ID card photo.

Chapter 2

Three days later
       FBI Field Office, Honolulu, Hawaii

Special Agent in Training Dillon Marconi felt a presence in the room. He looked up from his screen. He was working late at the request of his supervisor, Assistant Special Agent In Charge Tara Shores, who presently walked over to his audio control station. Although Tara was not much older than he, Dillon’s respect for her was immense. Her exploits within the agency were legendary, her experience reputed to be beyond her years. Dillon had not summoned her now, either. He wondered how she knew that he’d be at wit’s end by just this time.

“What’s up?” Tara asked, the barest hint of a smile visible on an angular, attractive face framed by stylishly cropped black hair.

“I’m seeing something I don’t know how to interpret with that weird audio file you gave me.”

"You mean you’re
hearing
something you don't know how to interpret." A recording of low, indistinct rumbling noises played in the background.

Dillon spun around in his chair and frowned as he met Tara’s piercing green eyes. "Figure of speech, Agent Shores. I know there's nothing to look at."

"And therein lies the rub, Dillon."

He grinned mischievously. "I'm pretty sure there's a dirty joke in there somewhere."

Tara leveled a stare at him. "At least you can read me well enough to know that I wouldn't want to hear it. Because you're not reading this thing right," she said, pointing to the speakers atop his workstation.

He twirled a pen in his fingers. “It's garbled noise. What's there to read?"

"Take a look at the spectrum analyzer. You know, that screen on your computer that shows the waveforms when audio plays. I gather you haven't looked at it yet."

“Nope. I submitted the waveform file to Audio Analysis without looking at it. I did try playing the file backwards," he said, scrambling to bring up the waveform analyzer on his monitor, "like how they used to say there were satanic messages encoded into rock music if you played it in reverse, but it doesn't sound like much backwards, either...here’s the original message as recorded."

He pressed play on his audio program, this time bringing up the visual waveform view. The sounds filled the room again. They were vaguely musical, in the most abstract sense of the word, owing to a machine-like pulsing that contained rhythm and structure. But it was only a low hum that varied slightly in pitch and volume, punctuated occasionally by a low hissing noise.

“If this is what passes for top 40 these days, I’m sticking to jazz,” Dillon said, shaking his head. Tara said, “Maybe people who use those white noise recordings to sleep by would like it.”

The waveform pattern appeared on screen as a series of neon yellow spikes and valleys marching from left to right as the audio played out. Dillon shrugged. "Doesn't look too--"

Suddenly the cadence of the sound changed, alternately increasing in pitch and then bottoming out in a low, almost sub-sonic rumble, only to climb again. The waveforms changed with it.

The wave took the form of a distinct shape.

"Wow, that looks like a--is that a number two?" Dillon asked, cocking his head to one side while he looked at the waveform, which continued to visually represent the progressing audio track.

"Yeah, and this next one is a five," Tara said. Sure enough, as the graphical depiction of the sounds appeared on screen, it took the form of the number five. They watched in bewildered silence as a parade of numbers travelled from left to right across Dillon’s monitor. Ten digits paraded by in all.

"Wow!" Dillon said, as the last three digits scrolled past. "Holy crap!” he added. “You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"What're you thinking?"

He ran his hands through his thick head of dark, curly hair, his brown eyes alight with possibilities."Phone number. Somebody tweaked this odd sound recording until the waveforms it creates represented the shape of a phone number."

"My thoughts exactly," Tara said, removing a cell-phone from her pocket. She showed him the screen, the same ten digits from the spectrum analyzer already displayed there.

She dialed the number.

Also in the Tara Shores thriller series:
WIRED KINGDOM
, available now for kindle and mass market paperback: