The Poseidon Initiative (21 page)

Tanner searched the sky while Liam continued to scope out the water. Aircraft of all types were a serious threat, too. Small fixed wing planes, helicopters, drones…Hofstad had proven their versatility when it came to methods of attack. Of concern to Tanner right now were the numerous sky-ad planes that pulled banners over the bay, visible all across town. Presently, one reading LABOR DAY SEAFOOD FEST IN THE PARK was being towed through the air. In Hawaii, Hofstad had used a tourist helicopter to camouflage their assault. One of these banner planes could achieve the same purpose — it could be used to dump STX over the President’s yacht, the whole Seafood Fest, or both.

They could issue an alert to the White House, giving them the same intel that OUTCAST had. But would tipping their hand really achieve anything? Either the President would dismiss the information and decide not to act on it, or if he did, what could he do? Evacuate Boothbay Harbor and cause a panic? Hofstad would simply move the strike somewhere else. It would cause a delay, but wouldn’t solve the problem. They needed to catch Hofstad in the act and stop them.

And there was already a palpable defensive presence here, Tanner noted, switching his attention back to the water. It was not as if threats in general had been ignored. A sizable Coast Guard cutter was stationed about a quarter mile out from the president’s yacht, while Boothbay Harbor Police and Harbor Patrol boats crisscrossed the harbor at regular intervals. Should a suspicious aircraft be sighted, fighter jets could be called to the space within minutes. Up here in the park, police patrolled on foot as well as on horseback. Volunteer Community Ambassadors, wearing bright yellow shirts and carrying radios circulated throughout the event, assisting visitors, looking for anything out of the ordinary and notifying police when necessary.

Tanner finished off the last of his food, savoring the rich flavors. He eyed the stately
Lincoln
, floating serenely out on the bay.

What could possibly go wrong?

Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Den Hoorn, Netherlands

Stephen Shah glanced at his watch again, pacing the laboratory like a tiger. Less than six hours to go and Jasmijn was still working away. She’d moved on from the sea anemones under the microscope and now stood in front of a centrifuge, test tubes full of a special solution whirling around inside the machine at hundreds of times per second, separating the various compounds by weight.

They’d had only a single interruption so far, when a university police officer knocked on the door. Jasmijn waited until the three OUTCASTs had put away their weapons and made themselves look like they were doing some kind of lab work before opening the door. The officer had simply asked if everything was all right, giving the lab a cursory glance. Jasmijn said she was fine, thank you for checking, and the man had left, assuring her that they now had extra men on patrol around the lab.

The centrifuge wound down and Jasmijn opened it and removed one of the tubes. She stuck this tube into another machine and then stood up and yelled, “Yes! I think I’ve got it!”

Next the operators watched as she went to the freezer with the biohazard warnings plastered all over it and removed the vial of STX sample. She loaded the vial into a special mister that would produce an aerosolized plume. They noted her extreme economy of motion around the sample. She passed around respirator masks to everyone in the room and told them to put them on.

Once all of the masks were secure, she ran to a cage with lab rats and extracted one. She held the rat on its back in one latex gloved hand and sprayed it with the mister. Then she put the animal in an empty cage by itself.

“In a few minutes it will start to die.” Jasmijn eyed the clock on her computer. She moved back to the centrifuge and used a hypodermic needle to collect fluid from one of the test tubes. She held the tube up to the fluorescent lights.

“My next gen STX antidote!”

“Does it work?” Naomi wanted to know, as did they all.

“We’ll find out in a minute,” Jasmijn replied, nodding at the lab rat, which stumbled once as it walked across its cage. When it reached the end of the cage and started to turn around, it fell over onto its side and didn’t get up. It scrabbled its front paws a few times in the air and then lay still, stomach rising and falling with labored breathing.

“Down for the count,” Dante said.

“It’s time.” Moving quickly, Jasmijn picked up the syringe containing the new STX antidote and pulled the dying rat from the cage. She held the animal on its back in one hand while she administered the prospective antidote through the syringe in her other hand. The rodent jerked its head once as the needle penetrated its skin and then lay still.

Stephen shook his head. “Looks pretty dead. How long should it—” He was interrupted by Jasmijn’s yelp of surprise as the rat wiggled in her hand. She set it down in the cage.

“It’s alive!” Dante grinned.

“Wow!” The surprise on Naomi’s face was evident.

The rodent ran around in fast circles, its movements hyper-quick. “Slow down, turbo!” Dante said.

And then the lab rat did slow down. It slumped against the wall of its cage and closed its eyes. It lay perfectly still.

“Is he—” Naomi couldn’t bear to finish the question.

Jasmijn reached into the cage and gently placed a fingertip against the rat’s abdomen.

“He’s dead.” She grimaced. “Something’s not quite right. This solution had more effect than the previous one — at least it temporarily revived the subject — but obviously the effect isn’t lasting. I think I know what it is, though…” She walked back over to the computer station as if in a trance, the three OUTCASTs watching her.

She turned to them as she sat down in the workstation chair. “I’m sorry. Unfortunately it’s sort of a trial and error process. I’ve got a long night ahead. I need to do a whole ‘nother round of redevelopment before we can try the test again.”

Nay headed for the coffee pot. “I’ll fire up the caffeine machine.”

Dante looked at Stephen. “Hopefully they have some good luck in Maine.”

Boothbay Harbor, Maine

They sat on a park bench, Tanner pretending to read a local newspaper as he overlooked the bay, occasionally directing Liam to scope out particular things in more detail with the binoculars. He flipped a page of the paper and then registered motion out of his peripheral vision. Well outside the bay, a speedboat appeared to his right, visible only as a white streak that Tanner knew was the huge wake from the craft’s powerful engines. He continued to watch the boat move from right to left.

He glanced around at the crowd in the Seafood Festival, seeing nothing that raised his internal alarm sense. But when he looked back out at the water, the white streak that represented the speedboat was oriented differently. Instead of lying horizontally, it now appeared as a vertical line, meaning that the vessel had changed direction. It was traveling toward the bay. There was nothing unusual about that, Tanner knew. Lots of fast boats plied the waters outside of the bay at high speeds. Inside the bay, though, traffic was heavier and the speeds were lower. He was sure this one was returning home after a day of boating and would slow down any minute as it approached the bay.

But as he continued to watch the incoming craft, its speed didn’t waver. When it reached the mouth of the bay and proceeded to motor toward the harbor at high throttle, Tanner nudged Liam, who had the binoculars trained on the president’s yacht.

“Take a look at the speedboat.”

Liam looked up from the glasses and immediately spotted the approaching watercraft. He lined up his spyglasses and focused the optics on the moving target. “Jet boat,” he observed, referencing a type of boat that used an unconventional engine to suck water in and expel it in order to provide high thrust, similar to a waverunner engine, but scaled up. “Only one man aboard. Don’t see any weapons.”

“Okay. Stay with him.” Tanner had the bird’s eye view of the boat’s overall direction relative to the president’s boat and the harbor, while Liam monitored activity onboard. They continued to observe in this manner for another minute, until it became clear to Tanner that something was wrong.

“I think we may have a problem, Liam. This boat’s not slowing down.”

“Oh crap!”

“What is it?”

“The pilot just put a plastic tank up onto the bow.”

Tanner’s heart sank. If it contained a liquid STX solution, it would likely shatter on impact if the boat hit anything. Yet as he watched, the swift boat veered sharply
away
from the
Lincoln
.

“Heading away from the target,” Tanner stated for Liam, who was still glued to the binoculars.

“Where to?”

Tanner assessed the view below. After the president’s yacht, he didn’t see an obvious target for the speeding boat. Was it possible that the pilot of the fast vessel was simply a recreational boater who had lost control of his craft — mechanical problems — the tank containing only extra fuel or perhaps even just water?

But then his gaze tracked inwards, all the way to shore, extrapolating the vessel’s current course. If it didn’t deviate from the heading it was on now, the boat would run into the seawall in front of a busy waterfront walkway, lined with shops and restaurants.

Damn!
Tanner felt helpless as he clutched his fists. They’d been so worried about the president that they hadn’t considered the general populace, like a football team concentrating all of their defense on covering the star receiver, and meanwhile the ball is handed off to a no-name running back with a clear path to the end zone. He hadn’t known what exactly they were expecting, but he didn’t think the attack would be so open, so brazen. If that’s in fact what this was.

“Ooooh!” Liam sucked in his breath. “He just ran down a paddle-boarder!”

“Accident?”

“Don’t think so. Even if for some reason you couldn’t shut down the boat’s power, you could still steer it out of the way. What are the chances that he’s lost both the ability to shut off the engine
and
the steering cable broke?”

“About the same as us being able to stop that boat from hitting whatever it’s going to hit.”

Boothbay Harbor, Maine

They witnessed the speedboat convert itself into a fireball. Impacting at what must have been full throttle into a stone wall — about sixty miles-per-hour — the explosion was instant and terrifying to behold. Tanner wondered what was in that tank on the bow. Then, with a sickening realization, he understood why it had been perched atop the boat, unsecured.

When the vessel hit the wall, the tank of liquid would have shot forward with the sudden loss of forward momentum. This motion would send it over the seawall and onto the crowded oceanfront walk. There, it would shatter on impact, releasing a deadly splash of STX. Not as effective as an aerosol mist, but certainly deadly to those in close range.

Tanner pondered this. If it was an STX attack, why the shift in dispersal method? The football stadium attack had utilized a mister…Waikiki beach — same. The methods of disseminating the aerosol were different, but they were definitely mist. Here, the liquid in the tank would only be able to affect anyone who was splashed by it, who breathed in the fine droplets. Still, it was a formidable threat, but the deviation from past protocols troubled Tanner. In his experience working Counter-terrorism, once a group succeeded in creating a death toll, they pursued that method, perhaps refining it, but never abandoning it until they were neutralized.

So why would Hofstad want to go through all the risk and expense of carrying out a terror strike only to take out a handful of victims at best, when they’ve been striking en masse? Especially when the POTUS was here. Simply to cause mayhem in the presence of the president in his homeland? But surely they would try to get to him even with a high probability of failure, given the significant degree of resources devoted to protecting President Carmichael on his yacht. Those resources would make it doubly likely that this small boat attack would be contained…

Tanner felt a surge of adrenaline as the realization struck. He slapped Liam on the shoulder to get his attention away from the binoculars.

“Liam! We have to get down there!”

The ex-SEAL tore away the glasses from the view of the walkway on fire.” What — why?”

“What if this—” He pointed down at the fiery fiasco below—” — is only a distraction for the main event?”

Slowly and with mounting awareness, Liam raised the binoculars to his face and aimed them in the direction of the
Lincoln
.

Tanner continued. “While emergency responders are focused on this…”

Liam nodded. “The
Lincoln
is more vulnerable. But I don’t see any unusual activity on board yet. The party looks like it’s in full swing,” he added, letting the binoculars hang around his neck. “What’s our best bet for helping once we’re down there? We won’t have this bird’s eye view anymore.”

“Good point. But I think it’s safe to say that we want to focus on the yacht. If we can rent a powerboat, we can get out on the bay and be able to respond in short order.”

Liam made one more scan of the yacht and the bay with his binoculars, then stood up.