Margrave glanced at his GPS. “We'll be on target in the morning. It will take another hour to position the ship and deploy the coil. The sea is calm, so it might not be that long.”

Gant went over to the bar and poured two tall flutes of champagne. He gave one glass to Margrave.

“A toast would be appropriate.”

“Here's to the defeat of the Elites,” Margrave said. “To a new world.”

Gant raised his glass. “And new world order.”

NUMA 6 - Polar Shift

41

ZAVALA LEFT THE 747's cockpit and made his way back to the plane's abbreviated passenger section where Austin was working on a laptop computer. Zavala was smiling as if he had heard a joke.

“Pilots are funny people,” Zavala said with a shake of his head. “The cockpit crew would be pleased if you could tell them where to fly the plane.”

“I'll have a definite position soon,” Austin said. “For now, you can tell them to head in the general direction of the mid-South Atlantic.”

“That narrows it down,” Zavala said.

“This is the area we're looking at.” Austin pointed to the glowing computer screen. “That's a NASA diagram showing data collected by the ROSAT spacecraft. That blob you see extending from Brazil to South Africa is our hunting ground, the South Atlantic Anomaly.” He tapped the keyboard and zoomed in on a cluster of rectangles. “This area has the most pronounced dip in the magnetosphere.”

“Which means it would be the logical point to start a polar shift,” Zavala said.

“Yes and no. Here's where I think we should go.” He tapped the screen at a different location. “The earth's crust is thinner here, allowing for maximum penetration with the Kovacs waves.”

Zavala puffed his cheeks out. “That's still a lot of ocean to cover. A couple of hundred square miles at least.”

“It's a start,” Austin said.

He cocked his ear at the sound of an electrical hum coming from the cargo section. A moment later, Karla and Barrett came through the door. Karla's golden hair was in straggles, and she had dark circles under her large eyes. Barrett's hands and face were covered with grease.

Austin thought that even in her disheveled state, Karla could put the most pampered fashion model to shame with her graceful beauty. She raised the screwdriver in her hand like the torch on the Statue of Liberty.

“Ta-dum!” she said. “Time for trumpets and drumroll. We're done.”

“The dynamos are all on track and running,” Barrett said.

Barrett had hauled the last cable in less than an hour before, and the plane was airborne within minutes of shutting the door. Al Hibbet had watched with a sad expression as the plane took off. He had wanted to join the mission, but Austin said they needed to leave someone with an intimate knowledge of the mission behind. Just in case.