Sea of Greed

It made sitting still their best bet, but remaining in place didn’t mean inaction.

Joe watched Tessa and her people until they disappeared behind another aircraft. With nothing more to see, he returned to the cargo bay. “How’s it coming?”

Priya was sitting on the floor, surrounded by electronic parts. Some of the parts had come from the helicopter’s old avionics system, others had been taken from the Mercedes. She made a soldering iron from a copper wire, powered it with electricity from the SUV’s battery and began building a receiver and transmitter from scratch.

“I still have work to do on the transmitter,” she said, “but the receiver is ready to test. Care to do the honors?”

Joe disconnected power from the soldering iron and rerouted it to the radio receiver.

Using a dial taken from the helicopter’s audio system, Priya applied power slowly. Too much, too quickly, could melt down some of the connections.

Joe sat down beside her and placed two leads on a small speaker they’d lifted from the Mercedes. As Priya adjusted the frequency, they heard static, silence and then finally a station playing Arabic music.

“Not exactly the Top 40 countdown,” Priya said.

Joe smiled. “Still a beautiful sound. What else can you pick up?”

“We should be able to pick up anything that’s transmitting,” she said. “We can go all over the dial.”

With precise movements, she tuned the radio to lower and lower bands. The static returned in various forms and intensities. “We might need a better antenna.”

“Wait,” Joe said, holding up his hand. “Go back… Right there… Stop.”

“What is it?”

Joe had his ear next to the speaker. “English.”

The reception was so weak and the volume so low that Joe couldn’t make out what was being said.

“Can you fine-tune it?”

Priya put her fingers on another dial, making tiny adjustments. The voices vanished completely for a second and then came back, slightly louder and significantly less garbled.

Joe listened closely. He could barely believe what he was hearing.

Priya heard it, too. “It’s Tessa.”

“And one of her men,” Joe said as another voice chimed in. “But how?”

“We’ve locked onto the bug Kurt placed. It’s still transmitting,” Priya said. “It’s sound-activated, so it stays in battery-saving mode until it picks something up.”

Joe held his ear closer to the speaker, struggling to make out the words. “They just stepped inside the plane,” he said. “They’re standing next to the doorway.”

“Let me boost the power,” Priya said.

She adjusted another dial and the audio came through with more clarity.

“Have you lost your mind?” the man was shouting. “If Buran and his people call your bluff, we’re all dead.”

Tessa replied just as sharply. “Without something to hold over them, we’re dead anyway.”

Muffled sounds that were indistinguishable came next. Followed by more from Tessa.

“Buran and his friends are making unspendable fortunes. I promise you, they will do anything — absolutely anything — to keep the price of oil up in the stratosphere. They’ve spent billions cornering their own particular markets and they’ve been waiting decades for this opportunity. They’re not going to go back.”

“And what happens when they ask for a little proof?” the male voice demanded. “Surely you don’t expect them to hand over all that money without a demonstration? If we can’t show them the countermeasure and prove that it works, we’re right back where we started — dead all over again.”

“You think I don’t know that?” she said. “That’s why we have to find the counteragent.”

“We spent plenty of time looking three years ago. What makes you think we’re going to get lucky this time?”

“Because we’re going to let the experts do it for us,” Tessa said. “Austin and his friends.”