Exodus 2022 (22 page)

“Yes, sir, but—”

“Show me the range recording. I want to see the last sixty seconds of the previous two loops.”

“Yes, sir.”

Beck followed the attendant into the booth and watched as he called the final moments of the scenarios onto his monitor.

There were multiple cameras mounted throughout the range—cameras whose sole purpose was to record a shooter’s actions and performance during the simulation. The cameras were there to assist with training. To help soldiers see what they were doing wrong and improve.

The cameras captured multiple perspectives inside the range, and Beck was clearly visible in all of them.

He watched himself freeze. Watched himself look directly at the Afghan woman. Watched himself lift his MP5N, open fire, and tear her to shreds.

It didn’t make sense. On the floor, in the range, he had seen Ellis.

But the cameras didn’t lie. The cameras couldn’t lie. The cameras showed the sim as it actually occurred. In real time.

I saw something that wasn’t there. I heard something.

You will carry me.

Heart pounding, Beck left the range without saying a word. Without looking at the attendant. Without looking back.

He left with a raging headache, wondering if he was losing his mind.

JOE AND ELLA SAT
in the St. Anthony’s church van at the very front of the car deck on the Bremerton-to-Seattle ferry.

They’d made it to the terminal okay, working their way through streets clogged with holiday revelers, and Joe was fairly certain that no one had followed them. Fairly certain that the St. Anthony’s van was not bugged, and that Mia had successfully disabled all of the circuits embedded in his flesh.

The adrenaline that had propelled him since his leap from the Manette Bridge was finally wearing off and he felt tired. Very tired. But also relaxed. Perhaps the most relaxed he’d felt in days.

He cleared his mind, and let the sensation spread.

Ella sat next to him. Peaceful. Placid. Staring out the windshield as the MV
Chelan
motored through Rich Passage—the narrow, winding saltwater channel between Bainbridge Island and Manchester.

The Fourth was off to a brilliant, warm start, and boats were everywhere: Sailboats. Powerboats. Kayaks gliding close to shore. Sunlight danced on the wave tops.

Joe leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

Mia must have come this way last night
, said Ella.
On her way to meet you. And on her way back out. Toward open water.

Yes, she did
, Joe replied.
She travels fast, Mia and her friends.

What does she want, Joe?

Help.

With what?

Sound.

What sound? What do you mean?

I don’t know. I’m not sure. I just know that it has to do with sound.

And if you help her with the sound, then what?

Something big will happen. Something monumental. Something that will change everything.

Silence. Save for the soothing rumble of the ferry’s engines.

Can you help her? Can we help her?

I’m not sure. Maybe. We have to try.

Silence.

Ella lurched forward and slammed against her seat belt. Joe’s eyes flew open.

“Joe,” she gasped.

“Yeah?”

“What the hell was that?”

“What?”

“We were talking.”

“Yeah.”

“Except we weren’t. I didn’t say anything. And neither did you. Not out loud.”

They looked at each other.

“I was daydreaming,” said Joe. “Only”—he stared at her—“did you tell me that Mia must have come this way?”

“Yeah.”

“And then you asked me what it is she wants and I said—”

“Sound,” said Ella. “That she needs help with sound.”

Joe nodded. “I thought I dreamed all that.”

“Me too. Thought I was dreaming…and then it felt like a real conversation and I realized we weren’t speaking.”

They sat for a long time, gazing out at the water as the ferry cleared Restoration Point and angled toward Seattle.

An armada of gray Navy ships—in town for the Seafair celebrations—lay silhouetted against the waterfront far ahead. It was a big day. There would be hydroplane races on Lake Washington, flyovers by the Blue Angels, and multiple fireworks displays. Most of the Navy ships would be open for tours.

Ella scanned the vast expanse of Elliott Bay, looking for plumes of spray.

Mia communicates like this
, said Ella, again without speaking the words.

Yes.

And now we can do it, too.

Apparently.

“That’s
so
freaky,” said Ella, switching back to speech. “I can hear your voice in my mind.”

Joe took Ella’s hand and they fell silent once more.

Stared at the water. At Alki Point. The Magnolia Bluffs. The Space Needle.

Downtown Seattle lay directly ahead now, looming larger and larger as the ferry motored on. The Cascade Mountains stood behind the city, a jagged, white-topped wall against the blue horizon.

Ella turned to Joe, a look of little-girl wonder in her eyes. “Will we always be able to do that, or is it just temporary?”

Joe laughed, shook his head. “I have no idea. Better enjoy it while we can.”

Ella shut her eyes. “She’s close,” she said. “Mia, I mean.”

“Yeah,” said Joe. “I think you’re right.”

Ella looked at him again. “How does that work? How can we know where she is? Whether she’s close or far away?”

“We’re connected.”

Ella laughed. “Yeah, I’m ‘connected’ to my mom and dad, too, Joe, and I think about them often—but I don’t know where they are moment to moment. I’m thinking about them, but they could have flown to Ecuador yesterday and I wouldn’t have a clue.”

“When I think about Mia,” said Joe, “I get an answer back.”

Ella laughed at the strangeness of it. Nodded in agreement.

The fleet of gray Navy vessels grew closer. They could see sailors, dressed all in white, on several of the ships now.

Ella asked, “Why did you think Lorna Gwin was your daughter?”

“I have some ideas about that,” Joe replied, gazing at the ships. “Mia has been trying to make contact with people for weeks, I think. I don’t understand it, but I know her need is urgent. Dire.

“She knows about humans—a few things—from something that happened to her a long time ago.”

He paused, thinking. Concentrating. Trying to understand. He had an image of an old man in his mind. The man had a beard and sunburned cheeks.

A scientist…a professor.

It was no one he had ever met. The image had simply appeared in his head.

Is this who Mia learned from?

Joe said. “Communicating with us—with humans—is hard. Nearly impossible. Think about how difficult it is for us to comprehend their whistles and clicks. It’s the same for them. Human speech sounds like gibberish.”

Ella said nothing.

“We’re essentially alien to one another, right? I mean, we inhabit different worlds, lead utterly different lives. We share the same DNA, but we’ve evolved differently for…what? The last hundred million or so years?”

“Give or take,” said Ella.

“So when she touched me, with these urgent, pressing thoughts in her mind, with this desperate need, it didn’t translate quite right. Mia didn’t know how to deliver her message to me, and I didn’t know how to receive it. I didn’t even know I’d been given a message, at first. I just thought I was going insane.

“All that came through when Mia spoke to me was grief. Loss. Pain. Sadness. Because those were the predominant thoughts in her mind.

“When we were kayaking and Mia came up out of the water—when she rose up and I touched her with my hand—I felt something. A jolt in my hand and arm and head.”

Ella nodded. She’d felt the same sensation when she’d touched Mia the previous night.

“I didn’t think about it at the time,” said Joe. “Not with orcas surfacing all around our kayaks. I attributed the tingling in my arm to excitement. But I know now that it was more than that. Something passed between us.”

“Communication,” said Ella.

“Yeah. Mia planted thoughts…images…feelings—in my mind. And—this is my theory anyway—those emotions sort of percolated there in my subconscious. Coalesced. While I slept.

“By the time I woke up, at the Breakwater, Mia’s messages had taken on a life of their own—inside my head.”

“You believed you had a little girl.”

“With all my heart,” said Joe. “And I knew from the instant I opened my eyes that something awful had happened to her. That she was dead. Mia’s grief became my grief.”

Ella said, “To get into somebody’s head like that, enter your mind, push aside all your other thoughts—”

Joe laughed without any trace of humor. “Mia,” he said, “is a force of nature. Her thoughts hit you like a river at flood stage. Maybe it’s how they all communicate. Whales, I mean.

“Last night,” Joe said, “Mia was aware of you. Probably because you were the predominant thought in my mind.”

Ella smiled.

“She wanted to meet you. I asked her to take it easy.”

“Thanks,” said Ella. She looked again at her hand, which still tingled, and wondered if more “communication” was coming.

Joe peered through the windshield and studied the Navy ships. They lay just ahead now. Gray. Huge. Intimidating. 

The USS
Nimitz
was the biggest of all. It dominated the industrial waterfront south of the ferry terminal, dwarfing even the immense cranes and container ships lining the docks at the port.

Ella looked up in time to see two of the Blue Angels swoop into view above Safeco Field.

The jets fell into an invisible lane five hundred feet over Alaskan Way and accelerated, screaming along the waterfront.

“How can we help her?” Ella asked.

“
We
can’t.”

Joe lifted the newspaper, which was still open to the spread outlining the day’s festivities and the picture of Rear Admiral Wesley H. Houghton. According to the caption, Houghton would be greeting members of the public aboard the USS
Nimitz
from twelve to four.

He might be able to accomplish what she’s after.
Joe put the thought in the front of his mind. Held it there.

Ella looked from the article to Joe and back. “You’re serious?”

Joe nodded. “Yeah.”

“Mia told you we need to talk to an admiral in the Navy?” She pointed at the paper. “This guy?”

“No. She told me what she needs. I thought about it and put two and two together. If anyone can accomplish what she wants, it’s him. Or someone like him.”

The ferry neared the dock and a new realization formed in Joe’s mind, one that he withheld from Ella. One that he strove to conceal.

Mia was sad. Not for herself, but for him.

I’m going to die
, thought Joe.
That’s what she thinks. Mia feels bad because she believes I’m going to die. Soon. And she thinks it’s her fault.

And suddenly Joe could see them in his mind’s eye: Stahl and Galbreth and Whittaker. The Erebus divers and the gillnetter.

Mia touched them, and now they’re dead. She connected with them, just like she did with me. But the connections went wrong and the men died. The connection killed them.

Joe understood. Mia felt remorse for the deaths and feared that he would suffer the same fate. His heart rate jumped.

He breathed in and out. Kept his trembling hands firmly on the armrests.

Mia isn’t just fearful that I’ll suffer the same fate as the other men.

She’s certain of it.

SHELDON BECK STOOD
in the cool darkness of the War Room and stared at Orondo Ring’s computer monitor. The screen displayed an image of a weather-beaten fishing vessel. Old. Wooden-hulled.

“What the hell’s that?” said Beck, who still had a raging headache and was in an ugly, combative mood. The incident in the range, and the news that Joe and Ella had gotten away, tormented him like an acute, throbbing injury. He thought about summoning Collins so that he could break his neck. Thought about how cathartic that would be.

“It’s a charter fishing boat,” Ring said cheerfully, seemingly oblivious to his boss’s mental state. “Diesel. Fifty-eight feet long. Works out of San Diego.”

Beck massaged the painful knot between his eyes and kept his voice low, but there was an underlying rumble in his tone, like a volcano ready to erupt. “Please explain to me why I should give a Turkish crap about a goddamned piece-of-shit scow in San Diego.”

“Ah, but it hasn’t always been a charter fishing vessel,” said Ring, sounding bright and buoyant. He clicked to a different image, to an angle where the name of the vessel was clearly visible.

Beck sucked breath in through his teeth as he read the moniker on the hull. “The
Lorna Gwin
.”

“Yes,” said Ring. “Fascinating history. But the part that I find most relevant is the ten-year interval before it was moved to Southern California.”

Beck grabbed a chair and sat down, the throbbing between his eyes temporarily forgotten.

“Will Dieturlund,” said Ring, opening a picture of a sturdy-looking man with a beard and sunburned cheeks, “was a marine biologist, whale researcher, and owner and captain of the
Lorna Gwin
. He and his crew—mostly graduate students—spent nearly a decade researching transient orcas in the North Pacific. Tracking the animals from on board the Lorna Gwin.”

“
Transient
orcas?” Beck leaned toward the monitor as images of whales flashed on screen.

“Subspecies of killer whale,” said Ring. “Highly specialized. Extraordinarily lethal—if you happen to be a seal. Transient orcas eat only mammals. Seals, sea lions, sea otters, porpoises, other whales. Sometimes they’ll help themselves to a swimming moose or deer, as well. No fish, though. They hate fish.”