Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
“Sorry to drag you away from Katrina again,” Lennox said as Darwin walked off the back ramp of the Osprey to fall into step beside him as they crossed the flight line at San Nicolas Island to join the rest of their Team.
“But Seth called and wanted us here ASAP. The other guys and I got here two hours ago and then just sat on our hands. It’s like they wanted to have us here just in case. ”
Darwin didn’t like the sound of that. Lennox had called a few minutes before sunrise, telling him to get back to Coronado as fast as possible to hop on the bird waiting to bring him to the island.
Katrina hadn’t been thrilled he had to leave, but had nodded, then given him a fierce hug and a kiss, telling him to be careful and come back soon.
He’d hated leaving her just as much. After last night, all he wanted to do was spend the whole day in bed making love to her.
Because last night had been seriously amazing.
Darwin frowned as he dropped off his cell phone at the security station on the way to the same hangar they’d used for the mission briefs before. “If this takes as long as the other times we were here, there’s no chance I’ll make it back to Escondido for the wedding tonight.”
Which sucked.
“I have no idea what’s going on,” Lennox admitted as they walked down the hallway. “But I get the feeling something went wrong with the project.”
“What makes you think that?”
Lennox shrugged. “Everyone’s on edge. They’re all whispering to each other and looking over their shoulders to make sure no one overhears.
There are more people in suits around and a Navy Captain who looks like he’s ready to chew somebody’s head off.
His name is Reynolds, and we’ve definitely never seen him before. ”
“Maybe it has something to do with the fact that this phase was supposed to include a live ammunition portion?” Darwin wondered aloud. “Though I have no idea how they plan on pulling that off. I’m sure as hell not going to run around in the woods and let that damn drone shoot at me again.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Lennox said. “Reynolds is wearing a Naval Criminal Investigation Services badge. I can’t imagine why someone from NCIS would be out here unless something went wrong.”
Crap. That wasn’t good, Darwin thought. Especially given what he and Katrina suspected about her father and brother.
When Lennox opened the door at the end of the hall and led him inside, Darwin saw that it was a breakroom with a couple couches, a few chairs, a makeshift kitchenette, and the other members of their SEAL team.
“Hey,” Simon said from where he was leaning back against the counter. “How’s the destination wedding going?”
Darwin threw a nod his way, then did the same to Trace, Dean, and Colt. Flopping down on the other end of the couch from Lennox, he filled them in on the less-than-wonderful family dinner he and Katrina had with her family.
“To say Jameson doesn’t approve of me dating his daughter is the understatement of the century,” Darwin added.
“Then again, I don’t think he’d like me even if I wasn’t involved with Katrina.
But while dinner itself was a train wreck, we did have a chance to sneak into her father’s office and break into his safe. ”
Simon did a double-take. “Wait. What?”
Darwin told them what Katrina’s former nanny had told her about Jameson keeping notes on his more interesting business dealings in a journal locked in his safe.
“Luckily, Katrina was able to figure out the safe combination, and we got a look at the journal,” Darwin said.
“I sent everything we found to Kyla so she could do a little more digging, but even without that, Katrina and I figured out that her father and brother, along with Silas, Harold, and Arthur, are all major investors in the Genesis Project. And if we’re understanding the various conversations we’ve been eavesdropping on lately, it seems like some of them are thinking about backing out of the contract they have with the Navy in the hopes of getting a bigger stack of cash from someone else.
It’s almost certain his reluctance to go along with that idea is what got Arthur killed. ”
Colt shook his head. “This whole thing could only happen to one of us. You go to a wedding and end up involved in some kind of plot involving a classified Navy weapon. We probably should have seen this coming as soon as you stumbled over that dead body.”
True that, Darwin thought. The odds of everything coming together like this, meeting Katrina, getting invited to the wedding, being one of the SEALs assigned to the Genesis Project, should have been impossible. Yet, here they were.
“So, what do we do with this information?” Lennox asked.
That was a good question. How were they going to tell the Navy that one or more of the Genesis Project investors might be trying to sell the weapon system out from under them without tangible proof?
Besides, he’d promised Katrina they’d figure this whole mess with her family out together.
He couldn’t say anything to the Navy until he was sure her father and brother were involved.
Darwin and his Teammates were still talking about that when one of the engineers from the program office stuck his head in the door a few hours later and told them that they were all wanted in the hangar.
“About damn time,” Simon muttered as they left the room and headed back down the hallway.
The moment Darwin stepped into the main hangar, he immediately understood what Lennox had been talking about earlier when he’d said everyone was tense and on edge. It was impossible to miss the tension filling the room. Or the worried look on Captain Reynolds’ face.
Scanning the crowd, Darwin noted that Silas and Harold were nowhere to be seen. Then again, he hadn’t seen them hanging around the first two times either.
“We’ve finally gotten authorization for a full disclosure of last night’s events,” Seth said, moving to the front of the rows of folding chairs that had been set up near one side of the hangar, near the wall covered with TV screens and computer monitors.
“If everyone will take their seats, we’ll get started. ”
Darwin and his Teammates quickly grabbed some chairs off to one side of the group as Stevens waited for everyone to quiet down.
“At 0300 this morning, during a random sweep of the hangar next door, security discovered that the Genesis system had disappeared,” Seth said.
It was clear that Captain Reynolds from NCIS already knew that, along with Giles and the rest of the engineer types operating the computers over by the wall. The rest of the room, however, was clearly stunned. Darwin and his Teammates were right there with them.
“What do you mean, disappeared?” Darwin asked, his mind immediately going to Jameson and all the other suspects at the resort. “Are you saying someone broke into the hangar and stole it?”
Seth nodded, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “That’s one possibility. Though it isn’t the only one.”
Darwin frowned. What the hell did that mean?
“Meaning?” one of the lieutenant commanders standing near Reynolds asked bluntly. “Either someone broke in and stole the weapon, or they didn’t. It’s not like the Genesis system flew itself out of that hangar.”
The silent glance that passed between Seth and Reynolds spoke volumes. Not that Darwin had any idea what it was saying. Just that things seemed to be getting more complicated by the second.
“Actually,” Seth started slowly, “with the Genesis system, there’s a chance that’s exactly what happened.”
He had to be joking, right?
“Before you start throwing the BS flag, you need to understand that the Genesis drone possesses certain capabilities that have remained restricted even to the majority of the people read into the program,” Reynolds said loudly, stepping forward and raising his hands to interrupt when everyone started talking at once.
“The information was deemed too sensitive and limited to the minimum number of personnel with a specific need-to-know. But now that the platform has disappeared, it’s been determined that the people in this room need to be aware of what we’re up against.”
While Darwin realized this was the first time anyone had confirmed Genesis was actually a drone, he couldn’t help but wonder why he and his fellow SEALs needed to be aware of what they were up against. Phase three of the testing was clearly on hold, maybe permanently.
It wasn’t like they’d be of any help in finding the thing.
“As background for those not up to speed,” Seth added, motioning toward an engineer sitting behind one of the nearby computers, who brought up a picture of the matte black drone Darwin had caught a glimpse of the other day in the hangar next door.
“Genesis is a covert surveillance and attack platform capable of operations in any environment, be it in the jungle or the middle of a heavily populated city. The vehicle is capable of flight mission times in excess of five hours. It’s whisper silent, unobservable by radar, impervious to all current forms of jamming, spoofing, and electronic tracking.
When its sniper pod is loaded, Genesis can engage targets with pinpoint accuracy at ranges out to a thousand meters. ”
Various pictures had come up while Seth was talking, showing different views of the weapon. No wonder Darwin and the other guys had such a hard time dealing with Genesis during the first two phases of the test. This thing was beyond state-of-the-art. But something told him there was more to this.
Something big.
“As Captain Reynolds mentioned, there are several unacknowledged aspects to the Genesis design,” Seth continued. “Most important among those aspects is the fact that the platform is controlled by a fully autonomous artificial intelligence mission computer.”