Page 21 of Clive Cussler Desolation Code

“True,” Gamay said.

“Which made me think this was more like a stampede,” Joe added. “More like the animals of the forest running from a wildfire. Only, these animals ran smack-dab into the island along the way.”

“They could have gone around it,” Paul suggested.

“Not if they were being hemmed in on the sides,” Kurt said. “Attacked and bitten by whatever left those marks.”

Gamay seemed open to this theory. “Possible.”

Joe continued typing, trying to log in to NUMA’s database. The internet was slow. He turned to look at Gamay. “The first animals on the beach were the larger and faster species. The sperm whale in particular would have been able to keep up the highest pace over the longest distances. It was the first animal to strand itself. The people who saw it come in said it charged into the bay and surged up onto the sand as if it wastryingto get out of the water.”

“Assuming you can trust that report,” Paul said. “Interested bystanders are notorious for inaccurate reporting.”

“Either way,” Joe said, “the larger, faster animals hit the beach first. And they were unmarked by the bites and the infection. The slower animals came in later. Most of them suffering from some kind of infestation.”

“You think the faster animals got away from whatever caused those bites,” Gamay guessed.

“By stampeding in whatever direction seemed safe,” Joe replied.

“Even if that’s true. It doesn’t tell us where they came from.”

“That’s where the sharks come in,” Kurt said. “Joe and I have been here for a month, trying to tag sharks and track them. The dead bull shark we found had a tracker on it. And when Kurt and I were releasing the first whale—and getting swarmed by sharks—I saw a transmitter on one of them as well. All I have to do is download the data from the tracking beacons and it should give us an idea where this aquatic stampede began.”

“Nice,” Paul said.

Gamay shot her husband a look that said,You’re supposed to be on my side, and then yielded to the logic. “That does sound like a good idea.”

At this point Joe had finally logged in to the NUMA server. After typing in his data request, he sat back, watching as a map of the ocean appeared on the screen, with thin lines depicting the various paths the tagged sharks had taken.

The shark data appeared random at first, with various animals moving haphazardly out in deeper waters. Then, at nearly the same moment, eleven distinct tracks turned south and began to pick up speed. All of them heading directly for the beach on the north side of the island.

One by one the tracks vanished, as if the transponders had failed. Only two of them reached the bay. The bull shark’s track ended on the beach, where the animal had died. The other tracker, which belonged to a thresher shark, circled the bay and then went off to the east at about the time they released the first whale. Joe wondered if it was fleeing the scene or perhaps following the injured sperm whale.

“This is extremely odd behavior,” Gamay admitted.

“Any idea what might cause it?” Kurt asked.

Gamay found herself grasping at straws. “Seismic activity,chemical pollutants, or toxins in the water. Whales are certainly known to be sensitive to man-made noise like sonar pulses and ultra-low-frequency radio transmissions. But without more data, I couldn’t really guess.”

“That’s why we’re going out there,” Kurt said. “To learn more.”

He finished the cashews, tossed the can aside, and picked up the house phone. “First, we’re going to order room service. As a wise man once said to me, ‘Never pass up the chance for a decent meal.’ ”

Gamay laughed and looked at Joe. They all knew who had the biggest appetite of the bunch.

As Kurt waited for the hotel kitchen to pick up, he felt the cell phone vibrating in his pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at the screen. Another cryptic message had appeared. It looked like the first one. No phone number attached. No name. A long string of numbers and letters scribbled across the bottom. It read simply:

I Sent Them to You. Have You Found Them?

Tired of the one-way conversation, Kurt typed a quick response.Found who?

He waited as the answer appeared one letter at a time:The children.

Chapter 13

On the tenth floor of the NUMA headquarters building in Washington, D.C., Hiram Yaeger stared at a pair of computer screens. On one he saw Kurt, Joe, and the Trouts using a videoconferencing app similar to FaceTime or Zoom. On the other was a screenshot of the latest text message Kurt had received. Yaeger found himself perplexed by the mysterious note.

Hiram Yaeger was NUMA’s director of technology. He’d been designing and building computers since he was a teenager, back when the printers were dot matrix and the screens were green and black cathode ray tubes. In the decades since then, he’d amassed nearly a hundred patents, been paid a small fortune in royalties from companies licensing his technology, and had become a fixture at NUMA, where he’d constructed one of the most powerful computers in the world, named Max. He was not the type to be flummoxed by a crank caller or spam message.

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