by Josh Karnes
Chapter 44
Isla Roca, Puerto Rico
ASAC Ortiz had assembled his large team of five FBI agents and four Fajardo detectives in the visitor's conference room adjacent to the lobby of Thermion's Isla Roca facility. SAC Otero was in attendance but true to his word, he yielded control of the investigation to Ortiz. The Grady family was also in attendance. The Thermion staff members were not invited.
“Team,” Ortiz said, calling the meeting to order. “Let me go over recent developments since I left you in Vieques. First of all, as you may have noticed, the Coast Guard has taken over the search in the water and along the coastline. I am not getting direct updates from the Lieutenant running this search from their patrol boat, but they know how to get in touch with us if they find anything. They are running a systematic search using their patrol boat, their rigid-hull inflatable to search the rocky coastline, and a helicopter. If Joseph Grady is in the water or on the coast, be assured they will find him. That leaves it to us to search on the grounds of this island and within this facility.”
“Sir,” Special Agent Greg Miller asked, half-raising his hand. “This is private property, isn't it? Do we have PC to perform a search of this facility, or a warrant?”
“It's not that cut and dried,” SAC Otero responded. “The island itself belongs to the U.S. Federal Government, but it is leased to a private company here. For the moment, we are going to say the exterior grounds, the entirety of the island's surface, is fair game for a search. As for the interior of the facility itself, that's a little more of a gray area. I understand the CEO of Thermion is due to arrive here any minute, and I will ask him nicely to grant us access to the facility. If that doesn't work, we'll have to go to plan B.”
“That brings me to the second thing. This facility.” Ortiz continued his summary of the search effort. “We have been given a cock-and-bull story from the project manager here, Larry Duncan, that they are developing some kind of jammer-proof GPS guidance system, but it doesn't exactly wash. They are hiding something here and I want to find out what it is, even if we can't get permission to search the facility. I'm not sure searching their lab is going to tell us what they are doing anyway. We need to talk to the staff here. Janitors, security guards, anyone we can find who will talk, and see if we can get a few more pieces to the puzzle. But let me lay out the key data points that we have so far.” Ortiz paused to allow the team to begin taking notes if they so desired.
“These guys have laid out a grid of GPS-equipped smartphones that they are using, so they say, to monitor GPS timing errors around the island. They just set up this grid on Monday, the same day that Joseph Grady went missing. The Coast Guard asked them to shut down these phones and also shut down whatever testing they were doing that used these phones, and they agreed. So we should expect to see a bunch of Thermion geeks start to head out into the dark reaches of the island any minute now to go manually shut off these 'few dozen' phones. This is a prime opportunity to catch these guys in the wild and get them to talk. This will be our number one priority, squeeze the Thermion scientists while they are outside the building.”
“What, exactly, are we to be asking?” asked one of the Fajardo detectives.
“Ask what they are doing, get them to explain how the monitoring works, what they are trying to catch with these test stations, what kind of errors they are looking for, what might be causing the errors. Anything to get them talking. Record what they say. We'll compare notes later tonight and see what extra facts have entered into the narrative. Now,” he said, leaning on the table. “Four of these GPS monitoring stations are on buoys out in the water right next to El Pliegue. Remember the last time Grady was seen was at El Pliegue. Then yesterday, the Thermion scientists apparently had some cause to 'upgrade' the equipment on those stations with atomic clocks instead of smartphones. They couldn't really explain why. I want to find out what caused them to do that. Because that brings me to my third thing.
“Joseph Grady went missing sometime between when he was last seen actively SCUBA diving at El Pliegue, and when the dive boat he was on returned to Vieques. We have already combed through Vieques, Fajardo and Culebra thanks mostly to the detectives here, and there's no sign of him there. Also, Special Agent Morales has been diligently looking for any cause for us to think this might be a kidnapping, and she is confident that there is no reason to suspect it is. That basically leaves us with the probability that Joseph Grady went missing while diving, in El Pliegue. The Coast Guard are searching for him and they will find him if he's out there. But we need to do what we can to put the pieces together as to why. What caused him to go missing in the first place.” The room began to go abuzz with comments from all of the team.
“Wait, wait. I know, all signs point to drowning. But I will add this one thing that makes me curious about this. Mrs. Grady and her son Mark were on a Zodiac this afternoon with one of the Thermion scientists with a side-scan sonar trying to search the bottom of El Pliegue for Joseph. This should have worked. But for whatever reason, and I don't have any reason to think it was intentional on the part of Thermion, the sonar was not able to get a valid reading. They said there was 'distortion'. The Thermion scientist on the boat, Aaron West, said he tried to adjust it and make it work for an hour and could not get a single valid reading from it.” Again the room became noisy and Ortiz had to settle them down.
“Just a minute, let me finish. I know it sounds like they are hiding something and sabotaged their own equipment. But what happened next makes that sound very unlikely. Everyone who was aboard that boat, including Mrs. Grady and Mark Grady, agree with this story. They say the towfish, the part of the sonar that is under the water, was violently pulled by something under the water, pulled so hard that it rocked the entire boat, broke a carabiner holding the steel cable to the boat's deck, and then proceeded to drag the entire sonar unit under water with it.
“Now I know that sounds pretty far-fetched. But this is a story corroborated by three witnesses, two of which we know have absolutely nothing to hide. So let me recap this piece of the story. A., we have some kind of error with GPS, so they say, that makes them deploy a whole array of sensors all over the island to figure out what it is, on the day Joseph Grady went missing. B., there is something special about the four sensors that are mounted to buoys out at El Pliegue, exactly where Joseph Grady went missing, and I am willing to bet what is special is not the sensors, but the results of the measurements they were taking there. And C., we have this crazy story today of something reportedly in El Pliegue violently pulling the sonar unit out of the boat by the cable attached to the towfish. Now I don't know about you, but to me, those three things don't sound like a coincidence.
“In just three days, we have someone who is missing in El Pliegue, and something big happening on this island enough to make these scientists cobble together a field of sensors covering a square mile to track it, and then the focus of their tracking coincides with a really strange happening of another thing going missing, so to speak, off of a science vessel. I want to know what it is they were tracking. What in the hell are these guys doing here? I think they know what happened to Joseph Grady, and they are covering up something big. Any questions?”
They all had questions. They had nothing but questions. Ray Ortiz had just laid out an outlandish scenario that was so far outside the norm for this team that they didn't even know where to start. But Ortiz put together a story that, while crazy, was at least plausible. And worrisome. And if Otero wasn't disputing this right now, then it meant that the whole team was to get on board with Ray's theory.
“I have a question, boss,” Allison Morales said. “Aren't they going to shut down those atomic clocks out by El Pliegue too? Who's going to question those guys?”
“Yes, they are. And I intend to be on that boat when they go out to El Pliegue and I'll get eyes on those atomic clocks. I'll get them to talk while we are out.”
James heard Ortiz say this and he decided he would find a way to
join Ortiz on that boat.
“Any other questions?” Ortiz asked and waited a moment. When no further questions came, he continued, “All of you know what to do? Good. Everybody keep your cell on. Let's meet back here in this room at ten pm.”
The meeting broke up and the team each went their separate ways. SAC Otero approached Ortiz and said, “You heard the chopper land? Since all of our guys are here, that has to be—”
“Carson Lee. My thoughts exactly,” Ortiz said as Otero nodded. “Have you got this?”
“Yes, I'll go head off Lee and you head out to El Pliegue like you said. Find out what's happening out there on this island. I'll keep Lee and Duncan out of your way as long as I can,” Otero said, and then departed.