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  Best location BB n of sixty-six. Sci fac.

  Best location for Bluebird, north of the sixty-sixth parallel. Science facility.

  The sixty-sixth parallel was basically the location of the Arctic Circle, minus a few degrees. Though sparsely populated, there were a considerable amount of scientific outposts north of the imaginary line. If the information was correct, one would be Bluebird. The problem was, which one?

  Five teams had been sent out, each designated by a color: orange, green, purple, yellow, and brown. Lines were drawn from location to location, indicating the path a particular team was taking. Those places already checked and cleared were circled in black. So far the tally was twenty-seven. Those that had been checked but with inconclusive findings were circled in blue. There were only two of these. Once Bluebird was found, it would be circled in red.

  The missing team’s color was yellow. Matt retraced its progress from where the team had started along the northern edge of Greenland, then across the Lincoln Sea to Ellesmere Island in northern Canada, Axel Heiberg Island, Yanok Island, Amund Ringnes Island, Ellef Ringnes Island, and then nothing.

  “The weather’s pretty rough up there right now,” Leon Owens said. “Could be they got caught in a storm.”

  That had definitely been a chance they’d taken, sending their teams out as winter was approaching, but given the deadline, they couldn’t very well just wait until spring. At first they’d been aided by a mild fall that seemed to affect the entire Northern Hemisphere. Matt had hoped that would continue, but always knew it was unlikely.

  He touched the X on Ellef Ringnes Island. This was where the team’s last transmission had originated from. The outpost they had checked there was a relatively new facility constructed only a few miles away from a permanent automated weather station that had been on the island for years. Was it possible that the facility was Bluebird? Had they, perhaps, hidden their identity enough so that yellow team had reported the location as checked and cleared, then been eliminated by the Project? Or had the team made it to its next destination, only to be captured or killed soon after arrival?

  Matt followed the line to what yellow team’s next stop would have been. Lougheed Island. By the schedule, the scouts should have arrived there two days ago, right around the time they stopped reporting in. So could that be where Bluebird was?

  It just didn’t feel right. It was too…easy.

  “Josh?” Rachel called out. “Can you play the yellow team’s last message for me again?”

  Josh was one of the people manning the communication terminals. “Sure,” he said.

  Matt glanced at his sister. He could tell something was bugging her and she was trying to work it out. He refrained from asking her what she was thinking, though, knowing from experience it was better to just let her go.

  The room was wired so that communications could either be heard over headphones worn by the people at the terminals, or on a speaker system that broadcasted the voices to the whole room.

  After a few seconds, a voice fighting through static said over the speakers, “Yellow calling Bravo Four. Yellow calling Bravo Four.” Bravo Four was the code name for the Ranch.

  “Bravo Four. Go, Yellow.” The new voice was crisp and clear. Matt recognized it as belonging to Gary Atkins, a member of the communications team.

  “Lake hunter. Repeat, lake hunter.”

  There was a pause as Gary no doubt was checking the list of codes to make sure yellow team had used the correct one. Each was used only once, and in a specific order.

  “Roger, Yellow. Quiet night.” That would be the return code.

  “Status, Y6 clear. Proceeding to Y7.” Ellef Ringnes clear. Proceeding to Lougheed Island.

  “Roger, Yellow. Y6 clear. Proceeding to Y7. Good luck.”

  “Thanks, Bravo Four. Yellow out.”

  The recording cut off.

  “Play it again,” Rachel said.

  The message once more filled the room, but whatever Rachel had noticed, Matt had yet to pick up.

  When it was through, she said, “Play the reports from the last four stops.”

  They listened as the yellow team reported in from two different locations on Amund Ringnes Island, one on Yanok Island, and one on Axel Heiberg Island. Each report was basically the same: target checked and cleared, moving on.

  When they finished, Matt couldn’t help but ask, “What is it?”

  Rachel frowned and shook her head. “I…I don’t know. I thought I had something, but…”

  “What?”

  Again, she shook her head. “Nothing, I guess.”

  He knew that was a lie. Whatever it was, she was still mulling it over. But that was her way. Once she had it figured out, if she ever did, she’d share it with him.

  He looked back at the map. “We can’t ignore the fact that they might have found Bluebird. We’re going to have to divert one of the other teams to check this out. Leon, correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like brown team is almost done with its route.”

  Leon nodded. “They’re due to report in this evening. Once they’ve done that, they’re freed up.”

  “Good. Send them to Lougheed. Let’s find out what happened to our people.”

  “Will do.”

  Leon and the others returned to their desks, leaving Matt and Pax standing at the map.

  “And if it is Bluebird?” Pax said.

  Matt knew exactly what his old friend was asking. It was something he’d also been giving a lot of thought to. “It’ll be time to bring him in.”

  5

  I.D. MINUS 14 DAYS

  Brown Team Leader Gagnon looked out the window from his seat behind the controls of the seaplane at the circle of light on the choppy ocean below. Wright, his partner, sat in the seat behind him, operating the wireless remote that controlled the spotlight attached to the bottom of the plane.

  Since the previous afternoon, they’d been searching for any sign of yellow team. They would have started sooner, but a severe storm had passed through the area, grounding them for over forty-eight hours.

  The real miracle, if one wanted to call it that, was that the sea hadn’t completely iced over yet. That was global warming for you, Gagnon thought. Even this close to winter, there were still ice-free parts of the Arctic Ocean that had never been that way at this time of year in the past.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  “Just water.”

  It was all that Gagnon had seen, too. “Let’s move on to the next sector.”

  He straightened out the plane, and headed for the next grid coordinates.

  They were both acutely aware that it could have been the middle of summer with twenty-four-hour daylight, and they might still not spot any wreckage if something had happened to the yellow team’s boat. A rogue wave could have swamped the vessel and taken the whole thing down, or the rough seas could have broken everything into tiny bits and spread it far and wide so that there’d be nothing to draw attention. The fact that it was less than two weeks shy of winter, and the only light they had to cover the hundreds of square miles below them was a small spotlight, made the task seem impossible.

  Two more hours, Gagnon decided. If nothing turned up, they’d call it a night and radio the Ranch to see if they should continue the search tomorrow or pack it in.

  The island was small, found on only the most detailed of maps. At its widest, it was only a quarter-mile across. It was, in the most generous terms, a rocky, ice-covered piece of nothing.

  Five hours earlier, two men, a camouflage shelter, and the equipment they would need for their assignment had been flown in. At the time of their drop-off, they’d been unsure how long they were going to have to stay, but at most, it would be no more than two nights, and it was quite possible they’d be sleeping in their own beds back at Bluebird that very evening.

  Ten miles away, a Project boat, looking very much like a fishing vessel slowly making its way back to port somewhere to the south, was scanning the skies with a c
ompact yet powerful radar system. The information it collected was transmitted real-time via satellite to a handheld device that was part of the equipment the two men had brought with them.

  For nearly an hour, they had been watching a blip weave back and forth across the screen, slowly growing closer to the island. It was getting late, though, so at some point the plane would undoubtedly break off and head back to the small village several hundred miles away that its occupants had been using as a base. If that happened, the men would definitely be spending the night.

  “We could try it now,” the junior of the two suggested.

  Without looking away from the screen, the other man shook his head. “Not yet.” It was important that this worked so he didn’t want to risk any mistakes.

  Over the next thirty minutes, the plane continued to move closer. Finally, when it was within two miles, the man in charge looked up.

  “Now,” he said.

  The younger man picked up a second device, a tablet computer synced in to a localized network they’d set up when they first arrived. The man brought up the appropriate screen, and pressed the appropriate button.

  Ten seconds later, on the other side of the island, a radio beacon went live.

  BOWOP-BOWOP.

  The signal came in bursts of two, each set separated by a second of silence. It was so faint at first that it didn’t even register with Gagnon or Wright. When it finally did, the pilot looked over at the radio, surprised.

  The receiver had been tuned to the frequency that would be utilized by the yellow team’s emergency beacons, but since the searchers had started the day before, they’d picked up only silence. They assumed any beacons were either at the bottom of the sea or no longer working.

  Gagnon turned up the volume.

  Bowop-bowop.

  Bowop-bowop.

  “Is that them?” Wright asked.

  Gagnon looked at the radio. “It’s the right frequency.”

  “Which way is it coming from?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  Gagnon banked the plane to the south to see if the signal strength would grow, but instead it diminished to almost nothing. When he turned back in the other direction, its intensity increased for a minute or two, then started to fade again. He brought the plane around once more, heading back to the point where the signal had been strongest. From there, it would have to be coming from somewhere off to one side or the other, but which one?

  “You see anything out there?”

  Wright was moving the light around. “No.”

  As they neared the height of the signal, Gagnon mentally flipped a coin, then turned the plane east. Instead of fading this time, the signal got even stronger.

  After a few seconds, Wright said, “Is that an island up ahead?”

  Gagnon studied the ocean ahead of them. Sure enough, about a mile away, there was the tiny silhouette of a rocky hill sticking out of the water.

  “Maybe they’re just stranded there,” Wright suggested, unable to keep the hope out of his voice.

  Gagnon wasn’t quite ready to jump for joy yet. “Let’s find the signal first.”

  As they flew closer, it was clear the signal was indeed coming from the island, specifically the northwest side. As soon as they were within range, Wright fired up the spotlight and aimed it at the tiny piece of land. At first all they saw were just rocks and a few patches of snow and ice. No sign that anyone had ever been there. But then, as the northwest edge came into view, they found what they were looking for.

  Both of them stared silently at the debris caught in the circle of light. It was piled haphazardly on the beach. Not even close to a full boat’s worth, but enough for them to know that whatever vessel it had belonged to was unlikely to still be afloat. Wright panned the light over everything, then held it steady on one point as they flew by.

  “There it is,” he said.

  He didn’t have to elaborate. Gagnon had seen it, too. An empty life vest, stuck in the middle of the debris. The light near the top was blinking weakly in the night, at almost the same rhythm as the message of distress coming from the radio beacon buried somewhere inside the vest.

  “Do you see them anywhere?”

  “No. Go by again.”

  In the end, they made four passes of the wreckage, and two complete circles around the island, but there was no sign of anyone, alive or dead.

  “I don’t like it,” Gagnon said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Gagnon frowned. “Just enough wreckage to prove that something happened to the boat, with a life vest that still has an active emergency beacon conveniently washing ashore where it could easily be found? Does that seem likely to you?”

  Wright was silent for a moment. “It could happen. The current could have washed it up.”

  Gagnon stared back at his partner. “Did you look at the water? There weren’t a lot of waves on that beach. If there were, that stuff would be even more broken up than it is. I’ll bet you the current runs right past that end of the island.”

  Wright looked out the window again. “You’re right. It does feel wrong.”

  Gagnon took one last glimpse of the wreckage, and turned the plane back toward the small village where they were staying. Once the course was set, he picked up the satellite radio and called the Ranch.

  “Bravo Four,” a voice at the Ranch answered.

  “This is Brown,” Gagnon said.

  “Go ahead, Brown.”

  “Blair House,” he said, using the active code.

  “Wanda June.”

  Satisfied he was indeed speaking with the Ranch, Gagnon said, “Wreckage found. No apparent survivors.”

  Momentary silence on the other end. “Please confirm. No apparent survivors.”

  “Roger, Bravo Four. No survivors.”

  “Any idea what happened?”

  “Rough seas, maybe. A storm. It’s pretty rough out there. I’d say this is an unfortunate accident.”

  Another pause. “Confirming.”

  “Roger, Bravo Four. That’s what it is.”

  “Roger, Brown. Get some rest. Will touch base in the morning with new assignment.”

  “Will do, Bravo Four. Out.”

  “They’re leaving,” the senior man said into the encrypted radio.

  “You think they will be back?” Major Ross asked. He’d been patched in from Bluebird.

  “No, sir. They’re returning to the outpost, then will be getting a new assignment in the morning. I think it worked.”

  “Good. Return to base.”

  Pax knocked on the door of Matt’s office.

  “Come in,” Matt called out.

  Upon entering, Pax found Rachel and Matt in the more casual sitting area in the front end of the room. “Sorry, but you wanted to see this.”

  “Brown team found something?” Rachel asked.

  Pax nodded grimly. “Yeah, but there’s more.”

  He handed over a transcript of the conversation that had just come in. Rachel and Matt read it at the same time. Their first reaction was to the news that by all appearances, yellow team was dead. Their second was to the hidden message contained within brown team’s words.

  “‘An unfortunate accident,’” Rachel read. She looked up. “That means…”

  “…yellow team found Bluebird,” her brother finished.

  6

  The Director of Preparation tapped the lever another half inch toward Hot. Within a second, steam began to rise from the water washing over him. While Bluebird was always kept at a warm, comfortable level, the frigid view outside often made him feel like he was freezing. Other than avoiding the windows, the best remedy was always a hot shower. He took at least two a day, sometimes three. Though the official allotment was one, that didn’t apply to him-like most of the other facility rules.

  He was just starting to feel thawed out when the soft bong of his doorbell sounded in the other room. There was a time when he could have afforded to ignore it, but not now,
not when they were this close to activation.

  He turned off the water, and stuck his head out of the narrow stall. “One moment!”

  He toweled off quickly, pulled on his slacks and shirt, then flipped on the monitor next to the door. His visitor was Carl Herlin, one of his aides.

  The DOP opened the door. “Yes?”

  “Sorry to disturb you, sir, but Major Ross wanted me to tell you they have the information, and that he would be in the map room if you’re looking for him.”

  “Tell him I’ll be there in a moment.”

  He shut the door without waiting for a response, finished getting dressed, and headed out.

  Technically, the map room was called Conference Room B. It received its unofficial name from the table that dominated the space. Using touch controls on either side, a map of any location on the planet in any format could be projected onto the tabletop from underneath. With another selection of the controls, the user could draw whatever they wanted on top of the map-lines, words, circles-and the resulting image could be saved and printed out.

  Ross was leaning over the table when the DOP stepped inside. He instantly straightened up.

  “Good evening, Director.”

  The DOP walked up to the table. “I hear you have some news.”

  “We think we’ve been able to pinpoint Bravo Four’s location, and by the size of it, I would guess that it’s their main headquarters. May I show you?”

  The DOP dipped his head, and Ross touched the controls. On the table, a map of an area that encompassed parts of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado appeared.

  “Their return messages have been coming from here.” Ross touched a button, and a red circle appeared in the western portion of Montana, less than a hundred miles from the Canadian border.

  Ross zoomed in on the map, then switched to a satellite view. The circle was in a wide valley with mountains blocking off the western end, and rolling hills to the north and south. Trees and meadows took turns filling the valley, but from the height the image was taken, the DOP could see no roads.