“Been there before.”

Grimsdottir said, “I’ve analyzed the paths the dock workers have been taking. My route will skirt those areas.”

Fisher checked his OPSAT. The Trego’s blueprint, shown in a rotatable 3D view, was overlayed with a dotted amber line, starting with his position—shown as a blue square—and ending at the Trego’s engine room—shown as a pink square.

“Got it,” Fisher replied. “Grim, just so we’re clear—”

“You have my word, Sam. The inspectors have to wear those suits. Government regs. Hell, you know better than anyone how persnickety government is. I’ve done the calculations backward and forward. As long as you’re out of there in an hour, you’re fine.”

And at sixty-one minutes?he thought.

Over the years he’d faced every nightmare an operator can imagine, but like most people, radiation held a special, dark place in his mind and heart. Invisible and virtually inescapable, radiation mutated the human body at the core level, destroying and twisting cells in monstrous ways. He’d seen it up close and in person. It was a horrific way to die.

His mind immediately went to Slipstone. If in fact the town’s water supply had been poisoned with some type of radiation, he hated to imagine what the surviving residents were going through: nausea, vomiting, skin burns, hair loss, lungs filling with fluid, accelerated tumor growth. . . .

Eyes on the job, Sam. Deal with what’s in front of you.

The bottom line was he trusted Grimsdottir and Lambert with his life and had done so dozens of times before. He would do so again now. “Okay,” he said. “I’m moving.”

TOavoid interfering with the NEST team’s equipment, the Trego’s generators had been powered down and switched over to the dock’s power grid, so the passageway was darkened, lit only by red emergency lanterns affixed to the bulkhead at ten-foot intervals.

With one eye fixed on the OPSAT and one eye scanning for movement, Fisher padded down the passagway to a T-turn. Right led further aft; left, forward to the bow. He went left. The engine room was eighty feet forward of his position and down three decks. To get there he’d have to navigate five ladders and two deck scuttles.

As he reached the next intersection and started down a ladder, the OPSAT’s screen flickered. The Trego’s blueprint began to pixelize before his eyes. He pressed himself against the bulkhead and got on the radio: “Who forgot to pay the cable bill? My OPSAT’s losing signal.”

“Grim was afraid of that,” Lambert replied. “The NEST people are degaussing.”

Degaussing was a fancy term for demagnetization. Over time, steel-hulled ships pick up a magnetic charge that can interfere with radio and navigation systems. In this case, the charge was making it hard for the NEST inspectors to nail down the signature of whatever material was hidden in the Trego’s ballast tanks, so they were using degaussing emitters.

“Switch to internal,” Grimsdottir said. “You’ll still have the blueprint, but no overlay.”

“No problem,” Fisher said. “I’ll improvise.”

HEreturned to the head of the ladder and drew his SC- 20 from its back holster.

Compact and lightweight, the SC-20 was equipped with a flash/sound suppressor and it fired a standard NATO 5.56mm Bullpup round. That, however, was where similarities to other weapons ended. The SC-20’s modular under-barrel attachment gave Fisher an unprecedented array of options, including a gas/frag/chaff grenade launcher; LTL (Less-Than-Lethal) weapons such as ring airfoil projectiles (RAFs) and sticky shockers; an EM (Electro-Magnetic) pod with a laser-based directional microphone, a signal jammer, and a laser port sniffer for at-a-distance data transfers with IR computer ports; SPs (Surveillance Projectiles) such as a self-adhesive remote camera nicknamed, predictably, a “sticky cam,” and finally a gadget Fisher had dubbed the ASE, or All-Seeing-Eye, a micro-camera embedded in a tiny parachute made from a substance called aero-gel.

Consisting of ninety percent air, aero-gel could hold four thousand times its own weight and had a surface area that boggled the mind: Spread flat, each cubic inch of aero-gel—roughly the size of four nickels stacked atop one another—could cover a football field from end zone to end zone. In the case of the ASE, its palm-sized, self-deploying aero-gel chute could keep the camera aloft for as long as ninety seconds, giving Fisher a high-resolution bird’s-eye view of nearly a square mile.

Unfortunately, tonight, he wasn’t likely to need the ASE; he was hoping he wouldn’t need the SC-20 at all, but then again, ring airfoils and sticky shockers could turn out to be his best tools should he encounter trouble aboard the Trego.

He flipped his NV goggles into place and heard the faint electronic whistle in his earpiece as the they powered up. He scanned the darkened deck below. He saw nothing.

“Proceeding belowdecks,” Fisher radioed.

9

WITHthe SC-20 held at ready-low, Fisher crept down to the next deck, turned the corner, and headed aft. He was halfway down the passageway when he froze. With exaggerated slowness, he crouched down, crab-stepped to the left, and pressed himself against the bulkhead.

Thirty feet down the passageway he’d seen a pencil-eraser-sized red spot on the bulkhead.

Sensor,he thought. But what type? Infrared, motion . . .

The spot moved. Not a sensor. It was the tip of a cigarette. Whether it was a security guard or a NEST person, he couldn’t be sure, but someone was leaning against the bulkhead behind a stanchion, taking an illicit smoke break.

Moving on flat feet, Fisher started easing himself backward.

The figure moved, stepping from behind the stanchion.

Fisher raised the SC-20 and pressed his eye to the scope.

The man was in a white bioharzard suit, the hood tilted back onto his forehead. On his hip was a model- 1911 Colt .45 automatic—standard issue for armed Navy watch personnel.

Other way, sailor. Turn the other way.. . .

The man turned toward Fisher. He went still. His body tensed. He cocked his head, obviously seeing something in the dim light, but not sure what. His hand drifted toward the hip holster.

Fisher fired. The SC-20 coughed, a barely perceptible thwump.

The RAF struck high on the man’s sternum. He crumpled, unconscious before he hit the deck. Fisher trotted forward and knelt down beside the man. He felt for a pulse; it was strong and steady. While classified as an LTL weapon, a ring airfoil projectile had a punch to it, and Fisher had seen it kill men, usually from a lung clot.

He unholstered the guard’s Colt, ejected the magazine, and hid it inside a pipe bundle near the ceiling, then reholstered the gun. If things went to hell, this would be one less gun shooting at him.

He found a dark corner for the guard’s body, covered it with a few scraps of discarded cardboard he found nearby, then pulled the man’s hood back in place and fired a dart into the man’s thigh for good measure.

He doubted he’d need more than the two hours the tranqulizer would buy him, but as with the Colt, if things went to hell, this would be one less guard to deal with.

HEreached the passageway outside the engine room and crouched before the hatch. He switched his goggles to IR, then rose up until he could see through the porthole. Having been powered down for the past eighteen hours, the engine room was a field of dark blue structures broken only by still-warm yellow pipes and the lighter blue outlines of the engines. He saw no one moving about.