Polar Shift Page 4

  Sweat glistened on the kayaker’s rugged, sun-burnished features. His piercing, light blue eyes, the color of coral under water, took in the broad expanse of the sound, the fog-shrouded San Juan Islands and, in the distance, the snowcapped Olympic Mountains. Kurt Austin gulped the salty air into his lungs and spread his lips in a wide grin. It felt good to be home.

  Austin’s duties as the director of the Special Assignments Team for the National Underwater and Marine Agency constantly took him to far-flung parts of the world. But he had acquired his taste for the sea on the waters around Seattle, where he was born. Puget Sound was as familiar to him as an old flame. He had sailed boats on the sound almost from the day he could walk, and had raced boats since he was ten. His big love was racing boats; he owned four of them: an eight-ton catamaran, capable of speeds of more than a hundred miles an hour; a smaller, outboard hydroplane; a twenty-foot sailboat; and a scull that he liked to row early in the morning on the Potomac.

  The latest addition to his fleet was the custom-made Guillemot kayak. He had bought it on an earlier trip to Seattle. He liked its natural wood construction and the graceful design of the thin hull, which was based on an Aleut craft. Like all his boats, it was fast as well as beautiful.

  Austin was so intent absorbing the familiar sights and smells that he almost forgot that he was not alone. He glanced over his shoulder. A flotilla of fifty kayaks trailed a few hundred feet behind his ribbonlike wake. The heavy, fiberglass, double-cockpit kayaks each carried one parent and one child. They were safe and stable, and no match for Austin’s racehorse. He removed a turquoise NUMA baseball cap, revealing a jungle of prematurely gray, almost platinum hair, and waved it high above his head to urge them on.

  Austin had not hesitated when his father, the wealthy owner of an international marine salvage company based in Seattle, had asked him to lead the annual benefit kayak race he sponsored to raise money for charity. Austin had worked six years for Austin Marine Salvage before being lured into a little-known branch of the CIA that specialized in underwater intelligence gathering. After the Cold War ended, the CIA closed down the investigative branch, and Austin was hired by James Sandecker, who headed NUMA before becoming vice president of the United States.

  Austin dipped his paddles in the water and steered the kayak toward two boats anchored about a hundred feet apart, less than a quarter of a mile ahead. The boats carried race officials and press people. Stretched between the boats was a huge red-and-white plastic banner with the word FINISH written on it. Rafted together on the other side of the finish banner was a barge and chartered ferryboat. At the end of the race, the kayaks would be pulled up on the barge and the participants would be treated to lunch aboard the ferry. Austin’s father was watching the race in a forty-eight-foot white-hulled powerboat named White Lightning.

  Digging his paddle in, Austin was preparing for a sprint to the finish when he noticed a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned to his right and saw a tall curved fin cutting through the water in his direction. As he watched, at least twenty more fins popped up behind the first one.

  Puget Sound was home to several pods of orcas, who fed on salmon. They had become local mascots, and a big boom to the economy, attracting tourists from all over the world who flocked to Seattle to come out on whale-watch boats or take part in kayak adventures. The killer whales would come right up to the kayaks and often put on a show, breaching partially or jumping clear out of the water. Typically, the orcas would glide harmlessly past, often within a few feet of a kayak, without disturbing it.

  When the first fin was about fifty feet away, the orca stood on its tail. Nearly half its twenty-five-foot length was out of the water. Austin stopped paddling to watch. He had seen the maneuver performed before, but it was still an awesome sight. The whale inspecting him was a big bull, probably the leader of the pack, and must have weighed at least seven tons. Moisture glistened on its sleek, black-and-white body.

  The whale splashed back into the water, and the fin again moved rapidly in his direction. He expected from experience that at the last second the orca would duck under the kayak. But when it was only a few feet away, the whale again reared up and opened its mouth. The rows of razor-sharp teeth set in the pink mouth were close enough to touch. Austin stared in disbelief. It was as if a beloved circus clown had morphed into a monster. The jaws began to close. Austin jammed the wooden paddle into the creature’s maw. There was a loud snap as the teeth closed on the paddle.

  The whale’s massive body came down on the front part of the thirty-five-pound kayak and smashed it to splinters. Austin went into the cold water. He sank for a second, then bobbed to the surface, buoyed by his personal flotation device. He spit out a mouthful of water and spun around. To his relief, the fin was moving away from him.

  The pod of whales was between Austin and a nearby island. Rather than head in that direction, he began to swim farther out into the bay. After a few strokes, he stopped swimming and rolled onto his back. The chill that danced along his spine was not caused by the cold water alone.

  A phalanx of fins was chasing after him. He kicked his water shoes off and slipped out of his cumbersome flotation vest. He knew that the gesture was a futile one. Even without his vest, he would have needed an outboard motor strapped to his back to outrun an orca. Killer whales can swim at speeds up to thirty miles per hour.

  Austin had faced many human adversaries with an icy coolness, but this was different. He was driven by the primeval horror his Stone Age ancestors must have experienced: the fear of being eaten. As the whales neared, he could hear the soft watery sound they made as air was expelled through their blowholes.

  Souf-souf.

  Just as he expected sharp teeth to sink into his flesh, the chorus of steamy exhalations was drowned out by the roar of powerful engines. Through water-blurred eyes, he saw sun reflecting off a boat’s hull. Hands reached down to grab his arms. His knees banged painfully against the hard, plastic side of the boat, and he flopped onto the deck like a landed fish.

  A man was bending over him. “Are you okay?”

  Austin gulped in a lungful of air and thanked the unknown Samaritan for his help.

  “What’s going on?” the man said.

  “A whale attacked me.”

  “That’s impossible,” the man said. “They’re like big, friendly dogs.”

  “Tell that to the whales.”

  Austin scrambled to his feet. He was on a well-appointed power-boat around thirty feet long. The man who had pulled him from the water had a shaved bald head with a spider tattoo on the scalp. His eyes were hidden behind sunglasses with reflective blue lenses, and he wore black jeans and a black leather jacket.

  Set into the deck behind the man was a strange, cone-shaped, metal framework about six feet high. Thick electrical cables sprouted from the framework like vines. Austin stared at the weird construction for a second, but he was more interested in what was happening out on the water.

  The pod of orcas that had chased him like a pack of hungry sea wolves was swinging away from the boat and was now headed toward the other kayakers. A few people had seen Austin go over, but they had not been close enough to witness the attack. With Austin gone, the racers were in a state of confusion. Some continued to paddle slowly. Most had simply stopped dead in the water, where they sat like rubber ducks in a bathtub.

  The orcas were closing in fast on the bewildered racers. Even more frightening, other pods of whales had appeared around the kayak flotilla and were gathering around for the kill. The racers were unaware of the sharp-toothed danger headed their way. Many of them had paddled the sound and knew that the orcas were harmless.

  Austin grabbed the boat’s steering wheel. “Hope you don’t mind,” he said as he punched up the throttle.

  The man’s reply was lost in the roar of twin outboard motors. The boat quickly got up on plane. Austin pointed the bow at the narrowing gap between the kayakers and the moving fins. He hoped that the noise
of the engines and hull would disrupt the orcas. His heart sank when the whales split into two groups and went around him, still intent on their targets. He knew orcas communicated with each other to coordinate their attacks. Within seconds, the pod hit the kayak fleet like a spread of torpedoes. They rammed the light boats with their huge bodies. Several kayaks went over and their passengers were thrown into the water.

  Austin slowed the boat’s speed and steered between the bobbing heads of children and their parents and the knifelike orca fins. The White Lightning had moved closer to some capsized kayaks, but the situation was too chaotic for it to be of any help. Austin saw one of the tallest fins bearing down on a man who was floating in the water holding his young daughter in his arms. Austin would have to run over the other kayakers to get to them. He turned to the boat’s owner.

  “Do you have a rifle speargun on board?”

  The bald man was fiddling frantically with an instrument box that was connected to the framework by a cable. He looked up from what he was doing and shook his head.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Look!” He pointed toward the mass of overturned kayaks.

  The big fin had stopped moving. It remained stationary, playfully wobbling in place, only feet from the man and his daughter. Then it began to move away from the broken kayaks and their hapless paddlers.

  The other fins followed. The surrounding pods that had been closing in broke off their attack and meandered back into the open waters. The big bull breached in a high, playful leap. Within minutes, none of the orcas was in sight.

  A young boy had become separated from his parent. His flotation vest must have been donned improperly, because his head was slipping below the surface. Austin climbed up on the gunwale and launched his body into the air. He hit the water in a shallow racing dive and stroked his way to the boy. He reached him just before he went under.

  Austin treaded water, holding the youngster’s head above the surface. He only had to wait a few moments. The White Lightning had launched its inflatable life rafts, and racers were being plucked from the water. Austin handed the boy up to his rescuers and pivoted in the water. The bald man and his boat had disappeared.

  KURT AUSTIN Senior was an older mirror image of his son.

  His broad shoulders had a slight sag, but they still looked fully capable of battering their way through a wall. His thick, platinum-silver hair was worn shorter than that of his son, who tended to be away from barbers for long periods of time.

  Although he was in his mid-seventies, a strict regimen of exercise and diet had kept him trim and fit. He could still put in a workday that would have exhausted men half his age. His face was tanned from sun and sea, and his bronze skin was laced with a fine network of wrinkles. His coral, blue-green eyes could blaze with lionlike ferocity, but, like those of his son, they usually looked out at the world with gentle amusement.

  The two Austins were seated in plush chairs in the White Lightning’s luxurious main cabin, nursing oversize shots of Jack Daniel’s. Kurt had borrowed a tailored sweat suit from his father. The waters of Puget Sound had been like a bathtub filled with ice cubes, and the liquor trickling down Kurt’s throat was replacing the chill in his outer extremities with pleasing warmth.

  The cabin was furnished in leather and brass and decorated with polo and horse racing prints. Kurt felt as if he were in one of those exclusive English men’s clubs where a member could die in his over-stuffed chair and not be discovered for days. His hard-driving father was not exactly the English gentleman type, and Kurt guessed that the atmosphere was designed to smooth the rough edges brought on by his hardscrabble fight to get to the top in a competitive business.

  The old man replenished their glasses and offered Kurt a Cuban Cohiba Lanceros cigar, which he politely refused. Austin lit up, and puffed out a purple cloud that enveloped his head.

  “What the hell went on out there today?”

  Kurt’s mind was still a blur. He reconsidered the cigar offer, and as he went through the manly ritual of lighting up he ordered his thoughts. He took another sip from his glass, and laid out the story.

  “Crazy!” Austin said, summing up his reaction. “Hell, those whales never hurt anyone. You know that. You’ve sailed the sound since you were a kid. You ever hear of anything like that happening?”

  “Nope,” Kurt said. “Orcas seem to like being around humans, which has always puzzled me.”

  Austin replied with a loud guffaw. “That’s no mystery. They’re smart, and they know that we’re badass predators just like them.”

  “The only difference is that they kill mainly for food.”

  “Good point,” Austin said. He went to pour another shot, which Kurt waved off. He knew better than to try keeping up with his father.

  “You know everyone in Seattle. Ever come across a bald guy with a spider tattoo on his head? Probably in his thirties. Dresses like a Hell’s Angel, in black leather.”

  “The only one who meets that description is Spiderman Barrett.”

  “Didn’t know you were into the comics, Pop.”

  Austin’s face crinkled in laughter. “Barrett’s a whiz kid computer geek who made it big out here. Sort of a minor-league Bill Gates. Only worth three billion bucks, maybe. He’s got a big house overlooking the sound.”

  “I feel for him. Do you know him personally?”

  “Only by sight. He was a fixture on the local nightclub circuit. Then he dropped out of circulation.”

  “What’s with the head art?”

  “Story I heard is that when he was a kid, he was a big Spiderman fan. Cut his hair, had his scalp tattooed and let his hair grow back. As he got older and started to go bald, the tattoo showed, so he shaved his head. Hell, with the kind of money Barrett has he could decorate his body with the Sunday funnies and nobody would blink an eye.”

  “Eccentric or not, he saved me from becoming whale bait. I’d like to thank him, and apologize for commandeering his boat.”

  Austin was about to tell his father about the metal structure on Barrett’s boat, but a crewman came into the cabin and announced, “Someone from Fish and Wildlife is here.”

  A moment later, a petite, young, dark-haired woman dressed in the green uniform of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service entered the cabin. She was in her mid-twenties, although her black-rimmed glasses and serious expression made her look more mature. She identified herself as Sheila Rowland, and said she wanted to ask Kurt about his whale encounter.

  “Sorry to barge in on you,” she said in apology. “We’ve closed off further kayak expeditions in Puget Sound until we can get to the bottom of this incident. Whale watching is a big part of the local economy, so we’ve put the investigation on the fast track. The vendors are starting to scream about the ban, but we can’t take chances.”

  Austin told her to take a seat, and Kurt went through his story for a second time.

  “That’s so strange,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’ve never known orcas to hurt anyone.”

  “What about attacks in marine parks?” Kurt said.

  “Those are whales that are held in captivity and put under pressure to perform. They get angry at being cooped up and overworked, and sometimes they take out their frustrations on the trainers. There have been a few cases in the wild where an orca has grabbed a surfboard, thinking it’s a seal. Once they discover their mistake, they’ve spit the surfer out.”

  “I guess the whale I encountered didn’t like my face,” Austin said with dry humor.

  Rowland smiled, thinking that with his bronzed features and intense, light blue eyes, Austin was one of the most attractive men she had ever met. “I don’t think that’s the case. If an orca didn’t like your face, you wouldn’t have one. I’ve seen a whale toss round a five-hundred-pound sea lion as if it were a rag doll. I’ll see if there is any video coverage of the incident.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem, with all the cameras focused on the race,” Kurt said, “Is there anything you could th
ink of that would stir up the whales and make them more aggressive?”

  She shook her head. “Orcas have extremely fine-tuned sensing systems. If something gets out of whack, they might want to take it out on the nearest object.”

  “Like the overworked whales in the marine parks?”

  “Maybe. I’ll talk to some cetologists and see what they have to say.” She rose and thanked the two men for their time. After she left, Austin’s father went to pour another round, but Kurt put his hand over the glass.

  “I know what you’re doing, you old fox. You’re trying to shanghai me onto one of your salvage ships.”

  Kurt Senior had made no secret of his desire to lure his son from NUMA and bring him back into the family business. Kurt’s decision to stay with NUMA rather than take over the reins of the business had been a sore point between the two men. Through the years, what had been a bitter source of friction became a family joke.

  “You’re turning into a sissy,” Austin said with mock disgust. “You’ve got to admit that NUMA hasn’t cornered the market on excitement.”

  “I’ve told you before, Pop. It’s not all about excitement.”

  “Yeah, I know. Duty to country and all that. Worst thing is, I can’t blame Sandecker anymore for keeping you in Washington now that he’s vice president. What are your plans?”

  “I’ll stick around a couple more days. I’ve got to order a new kayak. What about you?”

  “Got a big job raising a sunken fishing boat off Hanes, Alaska. Want to come along? I could use you.”

  “Thanks, but I’m sure you can handle the project yourself.”

  “Can’t blame me for trying. Okay, then, I’ll buy dinner.”

  AUSTIN was sawing through a manhole-sized slab of beef at his father’s favorite steak house when he felt his cell phone vibrating. He excused himself and took the call in the lobby. Looking at Austin from the video phone’s tiny display screen was a dark-complexioned man with thick black hair combed straight back. Joe Zavala was a member of Austin’s Special Assignments Team who had been recruited by Sandecker right out of the New York Maritime College. He was a brilliant marine engineer whose expertise in designing submersibles had found a ready niche at NUMA.