Tag: The Alibi

No, not completely brand new. Pieces from previous chapters rearranged and edited for story flow and continuity.

I’ve learned to live with such things. Hope you can, too.

Enjoy.

 
Rexall Shaul stood quietly at the top of thirty flights of stairs. He made it through antoher day without suspicion. As before, he was the last one to leave the offices.

But he hadn’t left the building yet.

And Thorne was a nasty bitch when fucked with. She didn’t like being out of the loop. Any loop.

Her he could handle. Her and five or six of her people? Not so much.

He received word the NXS had gone active but he didn’t know where. Somewhere along the Atlantic shelf, he suspected but couldn’t be sure.

He hadn’t seen any more ghosts since close to a month ago.

He hadn’t heard any Beatles, either. That cleaning crew quit a few days later.

Connection?

He handed it off for others to handle.

He’d discretely pumped Thorne about any new tech SkyHook had in the works. Nothing. And he knew her tells. She was good, he was better.

He missed the Beatles music and smiled. That cleaning crew really had a thing for the Yellow Submarine album.

Check his watch, relax, breathe.

Two-forty-five seconds later he walked around his Exige, the pilot inspecting his craft before takeoff.

Satisfied, he stopped at the driver’s door, pulled out his phone, tapped a number.

The Exige rumbled to life and the driver’s door opened. Patches of the Exige’s antireflective coating glowed as if several flashlights shone all it, all in close proximity. Shaul turned around.

Nobody.

More tech? Something popped and he looked up.

A crack started in the concrete wall behind the Exige. Shaul watched it crawl like a crazy ant down to the corner of the garage. His jaw ached. He clutched his ears. Tinnitus like coming up too quickly from a dive, or climbing too high without oxygen.

An explosion shook SkyHook HQ’s building down to its foundations, and pieces of Rexall Shaul embedded themselves in the concrete walls at the front of his car.

Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery)

Yes, brand new. I know it is. So there. Phphttt!

Enjoy.

 
Jensen hurried to Bates’s sonar station. “What is it?”

Bates put an incoming signal on speakers. “Hear that?”

Jensen looked at the speakers. “It’s what we heard before, right? Or something similar? This sounds more like some kind of church organ or calliope. Some kind of music. This is from in the water?

Bates turned volume down. “You’re close regarding instrumentation. Don’t know if it’s music. What you’re hearing are what musicians call voices. Like in an orchestra, each separate violin is a voice within the strings, each trumpet is a voice within the brass.” She adjusted some sliders on her boards. “Here they are with more separation.”

Jensen’s eyes went wide. “My god, how many voices is that?”

“Sherlock separated close to a thousand ranging from infra- to utra-sound.”

“Whoever’s doing this has some incredible sonoscopic equipment. Better than ours?”

Bates made more adjustments. “Listen again. What do you notice?”

Jensen shrugged.

Bates handed her a second set of earphones. “Now listen. What do you hear?”

Jensen closed her eyes, focused, and a moment later removed the headphones. “Can’t be. You bullshitting me?”

Bates put the signal on speakers. “Breathing. And organic, not machine-made. Sherlock scanned for AI telltales and came up with none.” She flipped some switches and a monitor showed eight waveforms, two across and four down. “Notice anything else?”

“There all the same note? Frequency? Pitch?”

“Close enough and only becuase Sherlock’s showing it that way. Those voices – that chorus – is probably the most powerful LRAD in existence. Except it produces a much tighter and more concentrated phonic beam. It’s an acoustic laser.Imagine a sound so concentrated it can explode things, like a soprano shattering a wine glass, except this could explode water. Lots of water. Sonoluminescence on overdrive, on steroids, like nobody’s ever imagined before.”

“Origin?”

“There’s the rub. It’s coming in from about three-hundred miles out. At the shelf break.”

Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery)

Brand new. I swear. A lot. I swear a lot.

I think this is brand new since I last populated this blog with excerpts. What was Chapter 23 is now Chapter 24 so I’m not putting that in. Hopefully this chapter is brand new…ish.

Let me know if I’m mistaken.

Enjoy.

 
Sean put a rack of clean towels in his spare room, moved out some fins and tanks, pushed two scuba suits over to the side to make room in the closet, and wheeled in an extra-thick mattressed cot complete with fluffy pillow. A quick check of his watch told him Seamus should be in the air by now.

His mobile chirped Bloody Sunday. He tapped Seamus’ winking face and heard his cousin railing before the phone got to his ear.

“Start over again, Seamus. I missed part of that.”

“My flight’s delayed. Some kind of engine trouble or other nonsense. I’m booking another flight. I’ll…Cac! There’s no flights to Boston today. How far is New York from you?”

“Add four hours minimum to your flight time. Anything for Portland, Maine?”

“I can get to Montreal. How far is that?”

“Adding customs? Not worth it. How important is this?”

“Cac! Now there’s a problem with my credit card. Hold on. I’ll use my university card.”

Seamus’ image left the screen and returned a moment later. His wife hovered in the background, smiled, and signed HELLO // to Sean. He signed back YO //.

Seamus grimaced. “Fuck! There’s a hold on all my cards.”

His wife handed him her card. “Ah. Okay. Now we’re…Íosa Críost! It’s not my cards, it’s me! I’m not allowed international travel! What the fuck? I’m known internationally in half a dozen fields! I hold professorships in universities all over the world! I – ”

Sean interrupted him. “Seamus, has this ever happened before?”

“Never! Countries are thrilled to have me lecture and study. I – ”

“It’s happened to me before.”

“What?”

“Sometimes I’m doing sensitive work. Sometimes I – ”

“You mean Alphabet City work?”

Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery)

Brand new. I swear.

Enjoy.

 
Master Chief Sonar Technician Boyd and COB Jensen stood like recalcitrant schoolgirls in Captain Hudon’s quarters, their faces bowed, their hands clasped behind them.

Hudon, elbows on her desk like two legs of unshakable tripod, rubbed her hands together in front of her face. “Let me get this straight. You want me to take this boat into North Harbor becuase somebody’s making a phone call and the two of you and Sherlock can’t eavesdrop from out here?”

Jensen perked up and smiled. “Well, when you put it like that, Captain, I – ”

Harod closed her eyes. “Perhaps you better let Sonar Chief Boyd handle this?”

Boyd spoke up. “Sherlock’s pulling a blank. I suspect the source is some kind of LRAD – ”

Jensen leaned forward. “Long Range Acoustic Device. A kind of high power loudspeaker that – ”

Hudon held up a hand and kept her eyes on Boyd.

Jensen leaned back. “Sorry, Ma’am.”

Hudon lowered her hand.

Boyd continued. “Along some kind of parametric array. They’ve got to be using a non-linear transduction system to reduce side-lobe – ”

Jensen leaned forward again. “They have tech at our level or better.”

Hudon’s hand went back up.

“Sorry, Ma’am.”

Boyd continued. “From out here the Harbor Tunnels are giving just enough interference to disrupt the pattern, but only because it’s highly directional so any off-axis signal is – ”

Jensen interrupted without leaning forward. “We have to be on top of it to figure out what it is.”

Hudon continued focusing on Boyd. “Did I assign Holmes and Watson to my boat? I don’t remember seeing their names on my manifest.”

“Sorry, Ma’am.”

Boyd opened her mouth and Hudon’s hand went back up. “You want me to sail this boat over the Boston Harbor Tunnels?”

Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery)