Deep Time

by Rob Sangster

  He admired her more every day. Even though she was mad at him right now, she never wavered in doing what was best for the firm.

  “You lined up allies and set traps. Very impressive.”

  “That’s because my name is on the sign outside our door. It’s part of my job as a partner.”

  They walked together into a meeting with all their lawyers and staff to explain what had happened and what they were doing about it, leaving out sensitive details in case there were more defectors in the group. This was eating up their time just as Barbas had intended.

  Following the meeting, he asked Mei to put a virtual “Do Not Disturb” sign on his office. For the next two fourteen-hour days, he worked on the portions of the Armstrong arguments Debra had asked him to complete. When he finished, he knew what he had to do next. He picked up the phone and placed a call. “Hey, Gano.”

  JACK EASED THE rented Zodiac inflatable out of the mouth of the Powell River into the Strait of Georgia at eight knots, ridiculously slow given the powerful Honda 70 horsepower, four-stroke motor mounted on the frame behind him.

  “Want to kick it up a bit?” Gano prompted. “For God’s sake, let’s not look like a Social Security tour boat. Think like Tony Toll racing at Monte Carlo.”

  Jack wound it up to forty knots.

  Before long, Gano pointed at an island on his left. “That’s Texada where I rented the ultralight. You remember—”

  “That I’ll have to pay for it? Yeah, I remember.”

  “Worth every penny. Now keep your eyes sharp. There are lots of killer whales in the strait. Slam into one of those babies and you’ll be paying for this Zodiac too.” After they passed Texada, he pointed at the silhouette of a very small island ahead. “Ironbound.”

  Jack circled the island’s perimeter and saw no lights, no movement, but they were more than a hundred yards offshore. Damn little to go on. “Use the binoculars. I don’t want to get in close looking for a way through the rocks and find myself on the wrong end of a Winchester 12 gauge.”

  After a couple of minutes, Gano, without taking his eyes from the binoculars, said, “No signs of life, but I think I see a channel leading to an inlet. Take us past that row of boulders ahead then cut in toward the shore.”

  Jack used the big motor to fight the current that was trying to drive the Zodiac into the jagged rocks. No more banter. The channel was narrow and shallow, and the surge was so strong from behind that Jack had to jam the Honda 70 into reverse to keep forward motion down to one knot. When he reached the inlet and turned in, the current drove the Zodiac into the far bank. After it scraped past, it moved into calm water. Overhanging branches topping the granite cliffs turned the inlet into a dark tunnel.

  At the end of the cul-de-sac, a road paved in rough stones rose and curved out of sight on the left. On the right side, two fifteen-foot-tall steel panels were built into the cliff face. He killed the motor, let the Zodiac drift forward, and gestured at the panels. “There’s probably a cave behind those big doors where Barbas hides his boat. Could even be a tunnel cut from inside the cave all the way to the lodge to give him real security.”

  “Well, I’m not feeling secure,” Gano replied in a hushed voice. “Barbas could be up in those trees sighting at us through a scope.” He looked up, waved his hand back and forth, and dodged to his right. Nothing happened. Then he reached inside his jacket and withdrew his Glock 23. He checked the chamber and stuck the gun back in his shoulder holster. He bent over, pulled up his right cuff, and released a .38 Special snub nose from its calf holster. “Carry this with you.”

  “No thanks. Every time you get out your guns, someone winds up dead.”

  “Great overstatement, but at least it hasn’t been us. And, by the way, every time you refuse a gun, you wind up with your ass in a crack—or my life on the line. So take the damn thing, or you can play this out on your own.”

  “Give it to me.” He stuffed it in his pocket.

  “No, no, no, Mr. Earp. Look at it before you stash it. See which end the bullets come out of. Find the little thing you squeeze to make it go ‘bang.’”

  While a Navy officer, Jack had qualified as an Expert Marksman with a rifle and .45, and Gano knew that, but he was right about familiarizing himself with this weapon. He pulled the .38 back out, examined it, and tucked it away.

  “Let’s get started.”

  “That’s a problem,” Gano said. “Either that rocky road is blocked farther up by a gate, probably remotely controlled, or Barbas is tempting visitors to use it and be sitting ducks.”

  Jack pointed up the cliff face. “Don’t worry, we’re going that way.”

  “Not me, Spider-Man. I can’t climb that.”

  “I’ll show you how. The first ten feet of the wall next to the road will be easy. Then we’ll traverse above the metal plates. Past that, we zigzag the rest of the way up.”

  “I told you, I can’t do it. When I was a kid, I fell out of a tree. Then off a roof. Next—hell, point is, I just stopped climbing up things.”

  “I’ll use that rope in the boat to make a safety line. If you fall, I’ll have the other end around a tree trunk to stop you. No problem.” He knew Gano wouldn’t stay in the boat and miss whatever action there might be up there.

  “All right, damn it.”

  Jack studied every detail of the rock surface and identified the holds he would string together. It was steep but had no overhangs. All in all, it was nothing compared to the climb he’d made in Tikal. “Okay, watch where I put my hands and feet.” He knew Gano didn’t have a climber’s memory, so it would be tough for him. “I’m starting up.”

  Moss and lichen forced him to alter his route twice, but the climb was so short that fatigue wasn’t a factor. He hauled himself over the top and sat, bracing his feet against the trunks of two spruce trees. He tied one end of the rope around one of the trees, tossed the other end to Gano, and waved for him to start up.

  Gano was completely out of his element, so his progress was painfully slow. Each time he moved closer, Jack hauled in on the lifeline.

  Then the inevitable happened. Gano tried to move his right foot up too far, putting all his weight on his left foot, which promptly slid off a narrow outcrop. He grabbed for a handhold that wasn’t there and fell. The safety rope caught him after a few feet, and he didn’t flip upside down. “Son of a bitch,” Gano snarled, trying to keep his voice low.

  “Do exactly what I tell you,” Jack called down.

  Ten stressful minutes later, Gano pulled himself over the edge and collapsed against a tree. After his heart rate had slowed closer to normal, Gano said, “I hate to admit it, but that little hee-haw up this cliff took a lot out of me. I’m not built for hanging my whole weight off my fingernails.”

  “It gets easier,” Jack replied, “after about five years of practice.”

  “Maybe if you have spider blood in your veins. You’re like that Alex Honnold guy I read about who solo climbs Half Dome in Yosemite before breakfast.”

  They each had separate strengths and weaknesses, so Jack didn’t needle Gano about the climb. “Just in case we have to make a fast exit, I’ll leave the rope here so we can get back down.”

  “How the hell would we do that?”

  “Easy. Just grab the rope, lean back over the edge, and walk down the cliff.”

  Chapter 24

  July 26

  3:00 p.m.

  Ironbound Island, British Columbia, Canada

  THEY’D MADE THE steep climb through the woods without encountering any sign of human presence. “This place feels as deserted as a tomb after the grave robbers have left,” Gano said.

  Jack stopped at the edge of the woods and looked into the clearing. Fifty yards ahead stood the sprawling two-story, half-timber lodge and, beyond it, three metal buildings. He was finally about to
find out what Barbas used this place for and how it was connected to methane hydrate. He and Gano stood silently, still concealed, watching and listening. Nothing except conversation among birds.

  “No concertina wire on this side,” Jack said. “Barbas must think no one can get here from the direction we did.”

  A dozen steps away, backed up to the trees, was a big shed made of heavy timbers. They edged out of the woods and looked around one corner of the shed.

  “There are the tracks I saw from the air,” Gano said quietly, “and there”—his eyes followed the tracks across the wide clearing—“is the contraption I told you about. It looks like a tank with a long barrel but about one-quarter size.”

  Jack’s breath quickened. Right in front of them was the smoking gun, the link between Ironbound and the seabed. He wished he knew what it was for.

  “Let’s take a look in the shed.” The ten-foot-wide door was secured by a heavy new padlock, but its jaws were open. He pulled and they ducked in. To his left were a Bobcat backhoe, a compact Caterpillar excavator, and racks of power yard tools, coils of rope and wire, and other gear needed to make the place self-sustaining. To the right was a very well-equipped machine shop.

  “Must have something to do with the mystery tank,” Gano said.

  Jack wanted to examine the machine shop more closely but was worried about time. “Let’s move on.”

  They turned back to the doorway, and Gano pointed to their left. “Over there on the ground. A body, small one. I hope it’s only a coyote. Hard to tell because it’s so chewed up, like it was used for target practice. Someone with a weapon was here.”

  “Or is here. Barbas probably has more defenses than just concertina wire.”

  “Not dogs, or they’d be bitin’ our butts by now, but he might have cameras that sweep the house and buildings. Could even be monitored on Chaos. Or maybe there’s a guard inside the lodge. Just in case, I’ll stick this rake around the corner like in the old Westerns and see if someone shoots at it.”

  He did. Nothing happened, so he pulled it back. “Hmmm. Don’t know if that means all clear, or someone just knows a rake when he sees it.”

  “Listen,” Jack whispered. “Sounds like tires rolling across dry leaves—and some kind of whirring.”

  “I’ll try the rake again.”

  A split second after the rake went out a red circle appeared on the tines. “I’ll be damned,” Gano exclaimed. “If that’s what I think it is we’re in deep—”

  A hail of bullets ripped the rake out of Gano’s hands. They dove deeper into the shed and hit the floor. The second volley sewed a stream of bullets horizontally across the shed, including hundreds through the half-open door before it moved on.

  The salvoes stopped. So did the whirring and sound of tires rolling.

  “Could be an automatic rifle with a laser sight, motion detector, and heat sensor,” Gano whispered. “If the heat sensor leads the shooter in here, we’re in deep bat guano.” The Glock in his hand seemed pathetic.

  Jack grabbed an ax leaning against the wall. “Gano, get that shovel and stand on the far side of the door. When he comes in, we’ll attack from both directions.”

  “You been smokin’ some crazy shit, Chief, but I got nothing better to keep us from winding up like that coyote.”

  “Gentlemen, throw out your guns.” The voice was soft, but authoritative.

  “That was no machine,” Gano whispered.

  “Not Barbas’s voice either.”

  “Whoever it is, I noticed he didn’t say the part about ‘and you won’t be harmed.’”

  “Maybe we can sucker him into a cease fire,” Jack said. From behind the Bobcat, he called out, “Come in here with your arms up.”

  “Throw out your guns . . . now.”

  Gano looked at Jack. “Might as well. We ain’t going to win a shootout with what we’re packin’.” He skidded his Glock out the door. Jack followed with the .38.

  Hands at his sides, apparently at ease, Dr. Renatus Roux stepped into the doorway. “I will explain,” he said.

  “Renatus, for God’s sake, what are you doing here?” Jack was struck by how calm the man was. He’d just caught two trespassers with guns, but he wasn’t angry, not even excited. “And why aren’t you amazed to see us?”

  “When I motored into the inlet, I was surprised to see another boat there. I have security cameras placed around the property, so I used my iPhone to call up saved images on the boat landing camera. There you were. But the camera on the road showed nothing. That meant you’d climbed the cliff, and that shows me I need barbed wire and cameras there. Anyway, I walked up the road and easily got here ahead of you.”

  “You walked into this shed without a weapon. Weren’t you afraid?”

  “Of course not. You’re not killers.”

  “So now that we’re all here,” Gano said, “shall we dance?”

  “Clarify.”

  “We came to see what Barbas is doing here,” Jack said. “Are you going to show us?”

  “You do pose a problem. If I force you off my island, you’ll try to come back. If I confine or kill you, that might draw attention to Ironbound. So . . . follow me.”

  Jack noticed he had used the phrase “my island” and had made no reference to Barbas. My God, maybe his assumptions had been wrong from the beginning. Gano hadn’t actually seen Barbas on the helo. Whatever was going on here might be about Renatus, not Barbas.

  As they walked out of the shed, Gano scooped up both guns and tucked them away. Renatus noticed but didn’t object.

  When they turned the shattered corner of the shed, Gano stopped abruptly. “That’s a goddamn robot.”

  He was looking at a cart with four fat tires for stability and a half-dozen antennae and cameras to collect data. An automatic rifle mounted in its center rested on a battery pack.

  “If I hadn’t been here,” Renatus said, “my guard robot would have killed you.”

  “It would have tried,” Gano said, but his bluster sounded hollow. “What’s that contraption at the end of these tracks that looks like a baby tank?”

  “It’s a model of something I use to collect biological specimens. I had the parts made in Seattle and shipped to me in Powell River to be assembled here. I needed to perfect it before I had the full-size one built.”

  Jack knew the full-size one now rested against the HTV. Its components, too, must have been built in Seattle, but were delivered to Chaos. That could only have been done with Barbas’s consent.

  Renatus walked on to a building marked with a large red number 1. He manipulated an electronic lock, opened the door, and they stepped into a small, chilly room that served as an airlock with a large triple pane window with a view into the space beyond. Renatus flicked a row of switches that bathed the interior room in a ghostly blue light.

  “This lab is a sterile space. Only I go in, and I always wear protective clothing.”

  A long, waist-high counter supported a row of what looked like tabletop copying machines. To its left were a desk, work table, freezers and refrigerators, racks of glass laboratory slide plates, and pieces of equipment he didn’t recognize.

  “Those are DNA sequencing machines,” Renatus said.

  “Like the machines Craig Venter used at Celera to map the human genome?” Jack asked.

  “Hardly. He needed fifty times more machines than I do, and they were bigger, slower, and ran much hotter. Mine combine robotics, chemistry, and optics and use nanopore sequencing to read strands of DNA as they’re pulled through a microscopic hole. Just a few years ago it took supercomputers and months of lab work to disassemble and reassemble a genome. I do it in hours and have also cut costs dramatically. Soon, the cost of sequencing an entire human genome will be less than $1,000.”

  “Everyone’s heard of DNA,�
� Gano said, “but I don’t know, well, exactly what it is.”

  The several seconds Renatus let pass before responding clearly expressed his contempt. “DNA molecules in every living organism are like a set of blueprints, or a recipe, that store information needed to build other components of cells and tell them how to function. The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes. The DNA in a single cell in your body contains about three billion pairs of chemical building blocks. My sequencing machines let me understand the DNA and its code. That’s just the starting point for my work here.”

  Jack didn’t want to get sidetracked into a lecture on DNA. “What’s in the other buildings?”

  “My computers are in Building 2. Come.”

  He unlocked the door into another airlock. Pointing through the view window, he said, “Those are computers stacked five high in racks. Technology has advanced so far since Venter’s work that now hundreds of computers and data storage devices fit inside a few cabinets instead of requiring thousands of square feet.”

  They backed out of the airlock and turned toward Building 3. Beyond it, dozens of rectangular stainless steel containers stood in rows, raised from the ground on stubby legs. Since each had a locking bar but none were locked, he thought they must be empty. He read the marking on one, Triton, but that told him nothing.

  In the Building 3 airlock Renatus pointed and said, “That’s ultra-high speed biotechnical equipment for preparing DNA samples, same as they use at the Human Genome Project at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. We’re after the same thing, the gold mine of information contained in the structure of genes. That information is the key to curing genetic diseases, but—” He looked away from them for a few seconds, took a deep breath, and composed himself. “Over there,” he pointed toward the far end of the room, “is where DNA is loaded onto glass plates. I’ve even learned how to use unique microbes to dissect strands of DNA in the preparation process.”

  Jack heard no pride or boasting in his voice, just flat statements of fact. He recalled other Renatus creations he’d seen—robots scurrying around the seabed carrying out the mining operation. He shook his head in admiration. “What does Barbas get out of this?”