Dragon Song

Chapter 6

SIX

Eva surfaced to Oliver’s cursing the “bloody stubborn dolphins” and the sound of a boat approaching. It was the Aggressor, with Mel and Dr. Flores aboard, along with Mel’s friend Charlie, a fellow Vietnam veteran. Thankfully, Mel had had the sense to leave Eva’s mother and young Luis Junior behind.

Eva and Oliver climbed aboard Mel’s boat to find one more passenger aboard: Carlos, Charlie’s Chihuahua. As Eva ascended the ladder, the dog ran to her and licked her face. But after she had greeted him back, Carlos whined and growled. Clearly, he was out of sorts at the sight of the trapped wild dolphin pod stuck inside the enclosure, and he seemed to think Eva could do something about it.

Mel helped Eva out of her equipment and handed her a warm, dry towel along with one of her mother’s coverups. “Put this on or you’ll catch a cold, girl.” He was always prepared, and Eva was glad. She was shivering.

Oliver was already out of his equipment and didn’t bother toweling off. Usually calm and collected even under fire, he was obviously livid as he paced the deck. “Why won’t the bloody dolphins just leave? Who told them to stay in there, and why? What are we going to do? We can’t just make them leave! Who would want to poach our dolphins, anyway? Whoever they are, they’re going to pay for this!”

The abandoned mariculture farm was outside his jurisdiction as the RMP ranger, and Eva knew that was a good part of what frustrated him. And since Atlantis was also outside of Honduras’s territorial waters, Eva’s home country was unlikely to help either. They were on their own.

While Dr. Flores tried to calm Carlos, Mel and Charlie observed the dolphins in the enclosure. After a long moment they looked at each other, a look that spoke volumes.

“You thinking what I’m thinking, Chief?” Charlie said. “They’re like POWs.”

Mel nodded. “It’s not easy rounding up a pod of wild dolphins like that. It takes resources. And manipulating them to stay put even if they have a way out, that takes something more. Technology—and a knowledge of how to communicate with them to manipulate and threaten them to stay.” He turned to Eva. “Who else has access to that Delphi Imago program of yours?”

Eva gasped at the implication. “Just my team. It’s proprietary. I’ve published our findings—all the vocabulary we’ve deciphered and how image-based language works—but not the code behind my program. Any researcher who wants to use the program for their research must apply to come work for me. I check references and do background checks.”

“Is there any chance anyone has gotten access to your server?” Mel pressed.

Eva shook her head. “Not a chance. We even brought in an outside consultant to put lots of cybersecurity on it. Anything money can buy, it’s on there. It would take an army of hackers to get in there.”

Dr. Flores chimed in. “Do you think one of the theme parks could have done this? Or perhaps a private collector? Dolphins are trendier than ever with all of Dr. Paz’s discoveries. That’s probably fueling the black-market trade.”

Eva shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t know. Just feeding this many dolphins would be really expensive. It’s hard to imagine how this could be profitable for anyone.”

Oliver stopped pacing, and his eyes widened. “Government. Only a powerful government could have done something like this.”

“Exactly,” Mel and Charlie said in unison, as if they’d already come to the same conclusion.

Eva ground her molars. “You mean the US Navy? You think they’re rounding up dolphins for their Marine Mammal Program.”

“No,” Oliver said gruffly. “The US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, not even Germany would do such a thing. And none of the other European nations would have the capacity for it.”

Eva wasn’t so sure about that. She wouldn’t put the military of any country past doing something this unconscionable.

“But who then?” Dr. Flores asked.

“Russia,” Charlie answered. “They love military cetaceans. Remember that beluga whale that broke loose from them and ended up in that harbor in Norway? And I recall Thomas telling a story about running into another beluga in the Baltic. Russia has military dolphins.”

Mel nodded. “They’re definitely on our suspect list. But I wouldn’t limit it to Russia. There’s a few other—”

But before he could finish, Dr. Flores gasped and pointed at the enclosure. “There’s a dolphin in distress in there. It looks like the others are holding him up to breathe. I’ve got to get in there—now!”