CHAPTER TWO
Fifty feet below the surface, the alien intruder skimmed over the sea bottom, emitting a sinister hum and scattering silvery explosions of codfish as it burbled through the water. The box-shaped object was the color of a Yellow Cab and about the size of an old steamer trunk that had been flattened in transit, and its edges had been slightly rounded. Four stubby supports, like the legs on an overweight dachshund, extended to sled runners from the plastic housing.
Printed in black on the plastic battery housing were the words:
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
The vehicle stopped in front of a sliding gate that barred the way into a maze made from a framework of pipes covered in chicken wire and joined together like an old Tinker Toy. The vehicle’s camera fed the image of the gate to its computers, which sent an order to the mechanical arm at the front of the vehicle. The arm slowly unfolded, and an aluminum claw gripped the edge of the gate and pulled the barrier aside.
The vehicle swam through the opening and navigated the maze like a mouse in a lab test. Encountering a dead end, it backed out and tried another route. With each mistake, new information was added to the submersible’s data base until the vehicle popped out of the maze and headed toward a plastic storage box.
Hovering above the ocean bottom around twenty feet from the maze, Matt Hawkins watched the submersible’s antics through a video camera view-finder. He filmed the submersible as the mechanical claw removed the lid and pulled a plastic bag from the box. The vehicle pivoted slowly, stopped for a few seconds, then moved toward Hawkins and placed the bag on the sea floor. Hawkins patted the plastic housing and picked up the bag. The submersible then rose to the surface, plowed through the water a short distance, and slid into a horse-shoe shaped docking station floating on pontoons next to a white-hulled fishing boat.
Hawkins breast-stroked to the boat’s stern ladder. He handed up the bag, unclipped his weight belt and passed it and the camera to a man wearing a tan duck-billed baseball cap. He shed his SCUBA gear, climbed the ladder onto the deck, and peeled his neoprene hood off to reveal a thick mane of salt-and pepper hair and a gray-streaked beard. He stripped down to his bathing trunks and let the summer sun bake away the drops of moisture beading a muscular body that looked as if it had been carved from oak wood.
Hawkins had inherited his warm complexion, rugged profile, and lava-black eye color from his mother’s Micmac Indian forebears. His big-boned physique, with its broad shoulders and six-foot-two inch height, were gifts passed down from his English-Irish ancestors.
After stowing his dive gear in a locker, he turned to the man in the tan cap, Howard Snow — Snowy to friends — and raised his hand in a high-five. Snowy’s crinkled face had been weathered by years of exposure to sun and wind as a commercial fisherman. He removed the cold stub of the cigar clenched in his teeth.
“Congratulations, Matt,” he said, returning the high-five. “Watched the whole thing over the TV hookup. Fido behaved like a champ. Hell, he would have wagged his tail if he had one.”
“I’ll hook up a mechanical tail in time for the demo,” Hawkins said. His dark eyes twinkled with good humor. “The navy brass will get a kick out of seeing a mine detection vehicle acting like a puppy-dog. Maybe I can make him pee on an admiral’s leg.”
Snowy chortled. He knew Hawkins was capable of doing exactly what he’d suggested.
Hawkins untied the bag and pulled out a foam cooler wrapped with plastic twine, which he cut with his dive knife. Inside the box was a bottle of double-malt whiskey.
Snowy shook his head. “Heard on the docks that Fido is worth close to half a million bucks.”
The right tip of Hawkins’ mouth tweaked up in a half smirk. “Let’s just say that the navy owes me more than a bucket of clams for developing the little guy.”
“Hope the navy doesn’t mind spending that kind of dough for an underwater booze fetcher.”
“Fido is a retriever. No one will complain after they see these tests, Snowy. The artificial intelligence that allowed Fido to navigate the maze is going to make the navy and the scientists very happy. Fido can do all sorts of things, from defusing a mine to retrieving a salinity detector. And he works cheap.”
Hawkins’ answer summed up the symbiotic ties between the navy and the world-renowned Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Using funds from the navy and the resources of the institution had allowed Hawkins to design an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle that would serve both masters.
As one of Woods Hole’s leading robotic engineers, Hawkins embodied the arrangement. His SeaBot Corporation was given wide latitude that allowed him to hire Howard Snow and buy the forty-two-foot trawler Osprey for sea tests. Snowy, a wiry third-generation fisherman, had an encyclopedic knowledge of the sea, and his handyman’s skills were considerable. He had constructed the maze in his workshop. The Osprey had transported the sections to the test site over several days and they were lowered to the bottom. Hawkins dove and joined the sections together.
They winched Fido and the docking platform on board and anchored a radar buoy to warn net fishermen away from the site. Minutes later, they were cruising at twenty knots north toward Cape Cod. When they were close enough to Woods Hole to see the brick buildings that housed the institution’s labs and offices, Hawkins ducked into the cuddy cabin and changed into faded jeans, a chambray work shirt and work boots. He had radioed ahead, and the Water Street drawbridge was being raised to let the boat into Eel Pond.
They tied up at the dock and used a boom to lift the submersible and docking station onto the back of a vintage fire engine red pick-up truck. Then they pulled away from the dock, hooked the anchor line onto a mooring buoy in the pond, and used a pram to get back to shore. Snowy asked Hawkins if he wanted to celebrate the tests with a beer at the venerable Captain Kidd bar that overlooked the pond.
“Maybe later,” Hawkins said. “I want to work on my report while the stuff is still rattling around in my skull.”
“Don’t be too long. People will think that you’re unsociable.”
Hawkins was aware that his colleagues admired his unrelenting approach to work, but that he was also considered a lone wolf and eccentric even by Woods Hole standards. Hawkins was wrapped in his shell as tightly as a barnacle and the hard edge behind his easy quiet-spoken manner made some people nervous.
“Hell, I already know what they think,” Hawkins said with a shrug. “They think I’m weird.”
Snowy rolled his eyes. “Weirdness isn’t exactly in short supply in these parts.”
Snowy had a point. The tiny village at the heart of one of the world’s most prestigious centers of ocean exploration and research was loaded with brilliant oddballs.
They parted company at the dock and Hawkins got into the 1978 three-quarter ton Ford he had painstakingly restored. He turned onto Water Street, the main drag that ran along the harbor, passed the old stone Candle House that was built in the village’s whaling days, and took a right near the Georgian-style building that housed the Marine Biological Laboratory.
A few blocks back from the harbor, Hawkins turned onto a crushed shell driveway and drove into the former carriage house of a two-story mansard-roofed Victorian summer place. As he got out of the truck and walked toward the house with a slight limp, a dog ran down the porch steps and slammed into his thigh so hard that Hawkins almost lost his footing. He reached down and scratched the ears of the squirming golden retriever. The dog was a female he had adopted from the Animal Rescue League. He had called her Quisset, meaning Star of the Sea in the language of Cape Cod’s Wampanoag Indians.