The helicopter came into land. As its rotor blades came to settle and she noticed a young man waiting at the entrance to the main bridge. He wore a white V-neck shirt, cargo pants and no shoes. One glance told her that this man was athletic and had spent his life outdoors. He wore a happy-go-lucky grin that she recognized instantly.
He was the hero who was going to give her the Presidency.
Chapter Sixty Eight
Sam watched her step out of the helicopter. She was tall, but not overtly so. Maybe five-ten or six foot. Slim without being underweight. She wore a plain blue polo shirt and denim jeans over leather boots. A small button of the American flag over her right breast. It gave her the down to earth appearance of someone out to get a job done, rather than competing for the position of Presidency.
She approached him directly. There was a confidence in her stride. Her posture upright and energetic. Sam figured she could have been in the military or at least spent time performing some outside tasks which required her to maintain her physique. Definitely not a bureaucrat or a pen pusher, he decided. Sam couldn’t remember much about her background. He’d intentionally ignored much of the news and hype regarding the primaries. As far as he was concerned, until the parties had picked their nominees, the candidates were wasting his and their time, when everyone had their own jobs to do.
“Mr. Reilly?” she asked, offering her hand. “I’m Senator Vanessa Croft.”
He took it. She had a firm handshake, but not aggressively strong. “Yes, Ma’am. Welcome aboard.”
“Thank you. I’m pleased to meet you. I believe I, along with the American people, owe you a great debt of gratitude. You risked your life for the environment. Is there anything I can offer you in return?”
Sam smiled. “You’re welcome, but there’s nothing you can offer me that I don’t already have. I’m just thankful we got lucky and that we didn’t have another terrible oil disaster that wrecked our coastline.”
“You should be recognized and rewarded for your efforts.”
“Forget it. The owners accepted Lloyds Open Form, which means that I’m entitled to a percentage of the value of the vessel and all that she was carrying. It just so happens she was carrying nearly two million barrels of crude oil. Given she was on fire, and about to lose her entire hold, I’ll be applying for at least 50 % of her value. I’ll be well compensated.”
“I know who you are Sam Reilly, that sort of money means nothing to you. You did it because you wanted to save the environment and I’m here to commend you for that.”
Sam smiled again. So she’s met my father. He probably paid into her campaign coffers. “Come with me to the Mission Room and I’ll brief you on these rogue waves. I’m sure that’s a lot more important to you than making a show about a hero.”
In the Mission Room, Sam pulled a chair out for her, but she refused it. Instead she chose to stand while she examined a photo of a racing yacht under sail. The yacht was heeled hard to one side and on the other were several men and two young boys.
“This must have been your father. He looks to have been a similar age to you now. You and he look very much alike at a similar age. And that means one of these boys is a young Sam Reilly. The other must be your brother.” She stopped talking as she watched his face. “I’m so sorry. I forgot your family tragedy.”
Sam’s brother, Danny, had lost his life trying to protect him during a Sydney to Hobart race when they were still boys. Sam had spent a long time trying to run away from the ocean, and when he finally worked out that it was impossible, he spent the next years trying to recreate the events of that night — somehow in search of an answer, why Danny had lost his life and he didn’t.
“It’s all right. It was an accident. We were both young, and overconfident. My brother died trying to keep me safe. He was a better man than I ever was, and I’ve spent every day since then trying to live up to the man he should have had the opportunity to grow into.”
“I think he would be proud of who you are.” She stopped smiling for the first time since she’d arrived. She looked at the next photo, her expression pensive. “I’ve lost someone close to me. My child. It changes a person. Gives them the opportunity to be better than they ever could have, had they been given the life they wanted. Had they been normal. Do you understand what I mean?”
“I do, Ma’am.” And Sam did. He had taken risks to achieve things that he never would have if his brother was still alive. Danny’s death had changed him in ways that couldn’t be measured. He saw himself as having a higher purpose than his own immediate gratification.
She turned to face him. “Now, this is the fifth rogue wave we’ve had in the past five weeks. I believe you were about to tell me why this supposedly exceedingly rare event keeps on sinking our ships.”
Chapter Sixty Nine
In the mission room of the Maria Helena, Sam went through the tedious process of explaining all the events leading up to his current assessment of the suddenly frequent rogue waves. Starting from his father’s complaint that he’d lost three cargo ships in a month, to the loss of his old high school friend, Luke Eldridge. He told her about the Antiqui Nautae and the evidence that they once used the Bimini Road to create large and unnatural waves which they then used to target western vessels during the seventeenth century.
She paused for a few seconds. Maybe ten. She had worked in politics for the past eight years, but before that she was a scientist. Vanessa knew how to take in complex information and separate the relevant parts from the meaningless. Then she looked up. “You think the phosphorescent plankton has been genetically modified to create moving water, which then strikes the Bimini Road causing it to increase in height and form a perfectly vertical rogue wave?”
“No.” Sam’s response was immediate. “Plankton are drifters by definition, meaning they require the movement of seawater to bring nutrients to them or them to nutrients. But I am certain they are involved in the process. Maybe they attract larger creatures that then travel across the Bimini Road creating the movement required to create the wave, under already chaotic swells.”
“That’s seems pretty farfetched to me.”
Sam tapped on the desk. “Me too. Like I said, all I know, is that the story of an amazingly bright phosphorescence prior and during the rogue wave has been described by the captain of each vessel struck by a rogue wave in the past six weeks.”
“Bioluminescent plankton don’t always glow. It takes energy to make the chemicals that allow them to glow. It would be a waste of that energy to glow during the daytime, just like you would be wasting batteries if you used a flashlight on a sunny day. It’s normally used as a response to a predator. In theory, the light goes on, illuminating the larger predator, which then become the prey.”
“So, the question is. If the bioluminescent plankton is frightened — where is its predator?”
“Exactly.” She smiled, her most conceited politician’s smile. “Of course, I don’t even care who its predator was. What I want is stop these rogue waves, and from what you’re telling me, it seems pretty simple — we just destroy the Bimini Road.”
Sam grinned. He liked action instead of rhetoric and was surprised to find it from a politician. “Yes.”
“Some will see it as a terrible loss to the history of the region, but I’m far more concerned about the living right now.”