Chapter 27: Bad Company

  JJ was already moving when Naomi's voice cut through his radio a second time.

  "JJ, get to the Bridge, now."

  He hit the ladderwell at a jog, the corridor outside the brig narrowing behind him. The two security guards posted outside Morales' door watched him pass without comment.

  The bridge was busier than he'd left it. Three radar techs were working simultaneously, voices overlapping in clipped shorthand. Kimo stood at the forward windows, binoculars up. The main overhead lights were off, replaced by the red-tinted operational strips.

  Naomi met him at the hatch.

  "Vargas is still on the line," she said, low and fast. "Contact is confirmed surface vessel. Kimo confirmed. It’s an Independence-class frigate.”

  "Did you hail them?" JJ asked.

  “They made no response." She handed him a printed contact report. "AIS transponder just went active, though. It was off and then turned on just now."

  JJ scanned the report. Vessel name, registration, flag state.

  He stopped. ‘Pacific Meridian Maritime Security.’

  "Same organization as the helicopter?" he asked.

  "Same organization as the helicopter," Naomi confirmed. "I've been pulling the registration chain since you went below. Three holding companies." She lowered her voice. "I haven't hit the bottom yet, but I'm close."

  JJ crossed to the radio console and picked up the handset for the Vargas line. "Director."

  Vargas's voice came through, steady and dry. "Senior Muldoon. The second vessel has identified itself to my coast guard as a private maritime security asset operating under a civilian protection contract." A pause. "They are claiming your vessel is operating in disputed waters in connection with an unauthorized incursion onto restricted territory."

  JJ tightened the grip on the receiver. "Director, need I remind you, Isla Nublar isn't a designated restricted zone. It was abandoned. My operation was sanctioned by your ministry and cleared by Senator Gutierrez's office."

  "I am aware of your authorization," Vargas said. "I am telling you what they are claiming." Another pause, shorter. "What I am telling you is that this situation is developing political complications that require careful management."

  "Careful management," JJ repeated.

  "Senior Muldoon." Vargas's voice hardened fractionally. "You have a prisoner aboard. You have survivors from an incident on a politically sensitive island. You have two unidentified private vessels in my territorial waters, and my coast guard is two hours away." He let that sit. "I need you to hold your position and not fire on anyone unless fired upon first. Can you do that?"

  "We've been doing that, Director."

  "Good. Keep doing it." Vargas exhaled. "My cutter will relieve you of the prisoner when it arrives. I strongly suggest you use the next two hours to get your documentation in order."

  The line clicked off.

  JJ set the handset down and looked at the radar screen. The second vessel had slowed. It was holding position approximately three nautical miles off the Challenger's starboard beam, running full lights, its AIS broadcasting its name to every receiver within range.

  Kimo lowered the binoculars. "They're not going to board us with Vargas's cutter inbound."

  "No," JJ agreed.

  Hector's voice came through the bridge door as he entered. "What'd I miss?"

  "Corporate and political bullshit," Naomi said.

  Hector looked at the radar screen. "Fantastic."

  "Don't worry," JJ said. "You won’t have to deal with them."

  He turned to Naomi. "How close are you to that registration chain?"

  "Give me twenty minutes."

  "You have fifteen." He turned to the rest of the bridge. "Keep watching that vessel. Any change in bearing or speed I want to know immediately." He looked at Kimo. "You have the bridge."

  Kimo nodded once.

  The war room was quieter than the bridge, lit with the chart table's low glow and Naomi's laptop screen. Little Bear was already there when JJ arrived, sitting in the corner with a topographical printout across his knees.

  Naomi came in two minutes later, legal pad in one hand, laptop under her arm. She set both down on the chart table and turned the screen to face JJ without preamble.

  "Pacific Meridian Maritime Security," she said. "Registered in the Cayman Islands, twenty-two months ago. Subsidiary of Coastal Asset Holdings, Luxembourg." She flipped a page on the legal pad. "Coastal Asset Holdings is wholly owned by Global Biosystems Research Group, Delaware." She looked at him. "Global Biosystems Research Group is a research division of Biosyn Genetics."

  The name hung heavily in the room. Little Bear looked up from his topographical printout.

  JJ stood with his hands on the edge of the chart table and looked at the corporate chain on Naomi's screen. The progression of names was so clean it was diabolically elegant. Four shells nested inside each other like a nesting doll.

  "Biosyn," he groaned.

  "Biosyn," Naomi confirmed. "They've kept a low profile since the San Diego incident. Publicly, they've been restructuring. Internally…" She opened a second document. "They've been filing preliminary intellectual property claims under international maritime law. The basis of the claim is that the biological organisms currently active on Isla Nublar constitute recoverable InGen intellectual property, specifically the genetic sequences embedded in living animals that are still present on the island."

  "They want the Dinosaurs," JJ said. “That’s probably why the island wasn’t torched like the government said it was. Paid the politico to leave the island alone.”

  "Most likely. We know they want the commercial rights." Naomi said. "They don't need to physically possess them yet; they need to establish a legal claim before anyone else does, and they need the island left undisturbed until they're ready to mount their own sanctioned operation." She met his eyes. "A rescue mission with survivor depositions and press attention creates legal exposure they can't afford right now."

  Hector had come in quietly and was leaning against the wall near the door. "That means Morales wasn't here to stop us from finding the kids."

  "He was here to contain the story," Naomi said.

  JJ straightened and looked at the chart. Grease-pencil marks still circled the Visitor Center from the first insertion. The ridge trail annotation. The east slope notation Little Bear had added during debrief.

  Four people are still on that island.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  "They've been watching," he said.

  Naomi hesitated before she reached into the folder beside the laptop and produced a grayscale printed sheet. She held it out.

  JJ took it. It was thermal imaging, high-resolution of the island's terrain. Clearly resolved in the heat-contrast mapping was the ridge line, the canopy, and the maintenance yard visible as a concrete heat sink in the lower left quadrant, and time-stamped in the corner.

  Yesterday morning. Approximately nine hours after the ridge group went silent.

  His eyes moved to the eastern slope.

  Near the base of the decline, sheltered against a rock formation that appeared on the schematic as a natural overhang, were four heat signatures. White against the cooler gray of ground temperature. The signatures were clustered, the way people cluster after something terrible has happened.

  He studied them. The outer signatures showed slight temperature gradients at their edges. He had seen that before. It was what happened when a body had been stationary long enough that heat began to dissipate from the extremities outward.

  He read the tracking notation at the bottom of the sheet.

  Imaging duration: six hours. Positional shift recorded: none.

  "Where did you get this?" he asked.

  "Biosyn's satellite monitoring array," Naomi said. "They've been running passive thermal surveillance of the island for fourteen months. The data broker they use had weak encryption." She paused. "It took me an hour."

  JJ stared at the four signatures.

  Six hours of imaging. No movement.

  He had been a rescue operator long enough to know what stationary meant on a thermal scan over six hours. He had known survivors who lay still for hours, injured, terrified, conserving heat.

  "When was this taken?" His voice was steady despite the racing of his heart.

  "Eighteen hours ago," Naomi said.

  JJ just stared at the sheet. Hector had been very still near the door. He wasn't still anymore; he'd let out a slow breath and was looking at the floor.

  Little Bear came to the table, stood beside JJ, and studied the imaging for thirty seconds. He didn't say anything. He walked back to his corner and sat down.

  JJ set the sheet on the chart table. He had interrogated Morales twice now. He thought about the things Morales had said in both conversations. The warning about what JJ would find. His eerie calm. The certainty with which he discussed the four missing teenagers.

  JJ pressed two fingers against the edge of the thermal imaging sheet.

  "Vargas wants him transferred to the coast guard cutter when it arrives," he said.

  "Yes," Naomi said.

  "Before that happens, I'm going back down."

  "JJ…"

  "He knew," JJ said. Quiet. Final. "He reviewed this data before he got on that helicopter, and he knew what it showed when he trespassed on this ship. He tried to intimidate us into walking away from those kids on the island." JJ picked up the thermal imaging sheet, looked at it one more time, and set it down. "I'm going back down."

  Naomi didn't argue. She sat down at the chart table and opened her laptop again, because there was nothing useful to say.

  Hector straightened off the wall. "You want company?"

  "Stay up here," JJ said. "I need someone watching that vessel." He looked at Little Bear. "Get some rest. Birds up at first light."

  Little Bear nodded once.

  JJ left the war room and walked the corridor toward the brig, past the ladderwell, past the crew quarters where the lights were off and the night watch had settled in. The ship rolled slowly on the swell. Through the steel hull, he could feel the ocean pressing against the Challenger's sides, patient and enormous.

  Morales looked up when the door opened.

  The smile was still there, but quieter now. Something had shifted in the hour since JJ had left him. He looked like a man who had run his available calculations and arrived at a result he found neither surprising nor particularly troubling.

  JJ sat across from him. He did not put anything on the table. He had not brought the imaging sheet because he did not want to show Morales what Naomi had found, not yet, not until Gutierrez had seen it and the coast guard had it in hand.

  He folded his hands on the table and looked at Morales.

  "Biosyn," he said.

  Morales tilted his head a fraction.

  "Fourteen months of satellite thermal monitoring," JJ said. "Passive acoustic sensors on the coastline. A maritime security vessel and a Helo." He paused. "That's a serious investment for an island that’s been officially purged."

  Morales looked at him with the kind of calm that came from experience. "You've been thorough," he commented flatly.

  "My operations manager is very thorough."

  Morales didn't smile. "What do you want, Muldoon?"

  "I want to understand the timeline," JJ said. "Your monitoring infrastructure would have detected a landing at the north dock within…" He thought. "Within the hour, based on the sensor placement, I'd estimate."

  Morales said nothing. He sat very still.

  "Which means you knew those kids were on the island," JJ said. "Before and while they were attacked." He kept his voice even.

  The room was very quiet. Morales looked at his cuffed hands. "That island," he said slowly, "is a designated monitoring site under a commercially sensitive operational framework. The presence of unauthorized individuals constitutes a trespassing liability that…"

  "Shut up," JJ said.

  Morales did. He watched JJ with a wary expression.

  "I'm not a lawyer, Morales," JJ said as he leaned forward, his eyes cold and hard. "I don't care about your boss’s operation. All I need to know is if Biosyn left those kids to die."

  Morales looked at him for a long moment. Something moved behind his expression; it wasn’t guilt, not exactly. Something more administrative. A man calculating what he was permitted to say and what he wanted to.

  "No…active decision…was made," Morales said finally.

  JJ studied him. "I see."

  Morales said nothing.

  "No call was made either. No, a call creates a record," JJ said. "A record could lead to exposure, and exposure complicates their IP claim."

  Morales looked at the wall.

  JJ stood. "Director Vargas's cutter is two hours out. When it arrives, you'll be transferred to Costa Rican custody." He pushed his chair back. "I'd strongly suggest you find something useful to say before that happens.”

  He went to the door.

  Behind him, Morales spoke. "The imaging from this morning," he said.

  JJ stopped.

  "The east slope." Morales paused. "The signatures recorded at 0400 were still warm."

  JJ's hand was on the door frame for another second, then he left without answering.

  JJ took the long way back to the war room, down through the lower corridor past the med bay where Samuel was asleep under observation, past the mess where two crew members were eating late and talking quietly, up the secondary ladderwell to the deck level where he stood outside for a moment in the cold air.

  The second vessel was visible off the starboard beam. Full running lights, sitting still, broadcasting their presence to anyone who cared to look. Three miles out, patient and waiting.

  The island was somewhere past the fog. He couldn't see it, but thought about the heat signatures on a thermal scan at 0400. He thought about what Morales had said in the brig the first time.

  JJ stood on the deck for another minute. Then he went back inside to find Naomi and tell her to start the briefing document for Vargas, because the Coast Guard cutter was ninety minutes out and there was a lot to cover.