THE CARIBBEAN, JULY 2007

Munro was ten weeks out of Miami, trolling for go fasts before they headed back to port, when they spotted their first northbound freighter of the patrol. "Has she seen us yet, XO?"

The XO had binoculars glued to his eyes, feet spread to keep his balance in the slow swell rocking the ship. "I don't think so, Captain. Oh. Yeah." A long sigh. "Now they have."

"Damn it." Cal looked over his shoulder. "Launch both boats."

The coxswains, Garon and Myers, had been standing at his heels, waiting for the word. Their boarding teams had long since dressed out and were standing by the two small boats. "Aye, sir," they said in unison, and vanished down the ladder, probably afraid he'd scrub the boarding. Any day they didn't get their hands on a small boat was a bad day for them.

Although none of the crew relished the thought of taking migrants aboard. Most of them had probably been seasick by now and it was more than likely that the sanitation facilities were nonexistent. The last time they'd had to take on migrants the ship had stunk for a week afterward. He stifled a sigh. "Try to raise her again, Ops."

"Aye, Captain." Behind him Cal heard Lieutenant Terrell, the operations officer, key the mike for the marine radio. "Unidentified motor vessel, this is the USCG cutter Munro. Heave to, heave to, I say again, heave to, heave to."

Silence on the radio. They weren't responding. Cal heard the whine of the winch on the davit and went out on the starboard bridge wing. The hull of the orange rigid inflatable had barely touched the water before Garon started the engine and the wake boiled up behind the stern. The crew released shackles fore and aft, the sea painter was away, and Garon gunned the engine and the small boat pulled away from the Munro's hull in a wide arc, wake a white froth in a blue sea.

Cal went back inside the bridge and met the eyes of the XO coming in from the port wing. A quick nod told him the portside boat was safely away.

He squinted at the sky, a calm blue with a few cumulus clouds on the horizon, reflected in the glassy surface of the sea. At least they wouldn't have weather to contend with.

He returned to the bridge. Taffy was looking through his binoculars. Cal picked up his own and went to stand next to him. "How many?"

"Can't tell yet. There's about half a dozen people on deck. They say they're fishing but they've got no gear in the water or showing on deck."

Cal adjusted his binoculars and zeroed in on the tattered flag fluttering off the freighter's stern. A crew member had bent it on just moments before. "Haitian."

"Yeah."

"So they say."

"Yeah."

Over his shoulder Cal said, "Where are we, BMC?"

"Forty-two miles south of Providenciales Island, Captain," Bosun's Mate Chief Guilmartin said promptly, without looking down at the radar. "About a hundred and fifty miles north of Haiti."

Cal exchanged a brief glance with the XO. They had yet to take a migrant on board and already the crew was figuring out how long it would take to get them back to their country of origin and, more important, off Munro. Cal didn't blame them. Freighters smuggling migrants were all about the transportation and not at all about the hygiene.

Taffy muffled a curse.

"What?" Cal raised his glasses again.

When first sighted, the eighty-foot freighter had had maybe half a dozen people on deck, but when the white-hulled cutter with the orange stripe angling back down the hull bore down on them people began pouring up on deck. Like all coastal freighters encountered during Caribbean patrols, it was hard to see how this one kept her gunnels above water. She was wooden, her hull flaking paint and riddled with worm, her exhaust so black and her wake so uncertain Cal couldn't see how she'd made it out of whatever harbor she'd sailed from, let alone managed to get twenty miles off Miami Beach.

And now her hold was emptying itself onto her deck, where the sudden weight topside created a dangerously unstable condition on a ship that was already a hazard to navigation.

Inevitably, she began to roll, a little roll at first and then, very quickly, a lot, so that she was shipping water over the sides. They could hear the screams of the frightened passengers on the cutter's bridge. Cal bypassed Ops for the marine radio. "Unknown freighter, unknown freighter, this is the cutter Munro. Stop your people from packing the deck, you're going to capsize."

There was no discernable result and Cal went on the pipe and repeated the message, his voice booming out across the water.

"She must be taking on water," the XO said.

"Boat in that bad of shape, probably got the pumps running all the time. Probably shut them down to go all ahead full when they spotted us." To Terrell he said, "Tell the boats to keep their distance until things quiet down over there, they can't do any good if they get swamped by a bunch of panicked migrants."

Terrell gave the order. The two small boats veered off to idle on either side of the freighter. Seeing this, the people on the freighter began to shout and wave with one arm, flailing for something to hold on to with the other as the freighter's wallows increased in angle and velocity. The crowd on deck continued to increase as more people clawed their way up from below.

They were close enough now that Cal could hear the shouts and screams. Again, inevitably, a man fell overboard, screaming, followed by a second, then a little girl. Three people jumped in after her, and then a rain of bodies overboard, too many to count.

The freighter rolled heavily to port and swamped the deck. The rushing water swept half the remaining people topside overboard. Relieved of their weight, the dilapidated little freighter swung even more rapidly to starboard, probably further impelled by water rolling back and forth belowdecks, as textbook a display of the free surface effect that Cal, watching helplessly half a mile off their starboard beam, had ever seen. She rolled again and this time she kept going, all the way over, water swamping the gunnel, lines, buckets, boat hooks sliding down to the gunnel and over the side, the house disappearing beneath the waves, until at last she was keel up, there to display a soft-looking hull playing host to an entire biosphere of seaweed.

And people everywhere in the water, screaming and splashing frantically and grabbing for each other. The few who could swim struck out away from the sinking ship and began to tread water. Some of them were already being picked up by the small boats, who had moved in and were tossing PFDs to the people in the water.

"Son of a bitch," Cal said. "Dead slow ahead. Pipe Doc and all EMTs and stretcher bearers on deck now."

"Dead slow ahead, aye."

"Doc's already on deck, sir."

"Every free hand on deck as well."

"Already there, sir."

"XO, get down there and direct traffic. Ops, call the beach and bring them up to speed. And call the mess deck and tell the senior chief that we've got what looks like about two hundred extra for lunch."

"Two hundred extra for lunch, aye, sir."

AT THE END OF THE DAY IT WAS 214, ALTHOUGH THE DEAD WEREN'T dining and many among the living were already victims of malnutrition and as yet incapable of ingesting solid food. Some, including many of the women, showed unmistakable signs of torture and abuse. Almost all of them were suffering from exposure and severe dehydration. Nine of them had drowned, including the little girl who had been third into the water. BM2 Hendricks, the bosun's mate who had been the boarding team leader on Mun 2, offered up this information still in his PFD and LE belt, his helmet under his left arm, speaking in a consciously dry, factual voice that was wavering just this side of cracking. His hair was a reddish sheen over his scalp, his eyes were normally a bright blue, and he had pale skin reddened by constant exposure to sun and wind. He was twenty-three. Today, he looked a shell-shocked twelve. It was moments like these that made Cal feel his age.