He checked his dosimeter reading on the OPSAT: All green. What was the rule with these things? Fisher thought. Green, good; red, dead.

He undogged the hatch and slipped inside.

HEfound the section of catwalk between the engines just as he’d left it: pried back and tossed to one side. The fire hose he’d used to stop the Tregowas also still there, a charred and tangled mass wrapped around the reduction gear. Aside from the ticking of cooling pipes and the occasional hiss of steam, the space was quiet.

He heard the metallic thunkof a hatch opening. He switched his goggles to NV and turned around. A pair of figures in bio-hazard suits were stepping through the hatch.

“. . . I told you: I don’t know why,” said one of the men. His voice was muffled inside the hood. “The boss wants another reading, so we’re getting another reading.” He held up a Geiger counter and panned it through the air; it gave off a steady but slow chirping.

“Yeah, well, this place gives me the creeps.”

“Join the club. Come on, let’s get it done.”

They started down the catwalk, circling the space’s outer bulkhead. Fisher waited until they were out of sight, then reached up, grabbed a pipe, and lifted his legs off the deck and hooked them over the pipe. He reached again, this time snagging the edge of a ceiling I-beam with his fingertips. He rolled himself onto his belly with his thighs and chest resting across the conduits.

Below, he heard the clunk of the men’s footsteps on the catwalk.

The chirp of the Geiger counter grew louder.

Fisher drew his pistol. He thumbed the safety off and switched the selector to DART.

In his peripheral vision, through a tangle of pipes, Fisher caught a glimpse of a biohazard suit coming closer. The men appeared at the head of the catwalk and walked beneath Fisher. They stopped at the open grating. “You have any idea what this is all about?” one man asked.

“Just the rumors. Somebody was in a hurry to stop the ship.”

“Well, hell, I’d say they got the job done. No way they’re going to be able to cut that outa there. That gear is fried, but good.”

“Not our problem.” The man passed the Geiger first over the engines and then the grating, then knelt down and checked the fire hose. The chirping remained steady. “I got nothing. Control, this is Peterson.”

“Go ahead, Pete.”

“Second engine room sweep is done. All clear.”

“Good. Come topside. Time for you to rotate out.”

ONCEthey were gone, Fisher lowered himself back to the deck and slipped feetfirst through the grating. Using the loops in the fire hose as handholds, he lowered himself to the deck, which was ankle-deep in a frothy mix of bilgewater and firefighting foam. The latter had been pumped aboard by the first rescue ship on scene, a Navy destroyer, in hopes of pre-smothering any fires before they had a chance to start. Fire is a ship’s worst enemy, and it was deadlier still aboard a ship carrying hazardous materials.

True to the blueprints, he found the Trego’s twin-diesel engines mounted atop massive dampening springs. Each spring was the size of a fire hydrant and was secured to the deck by bolts as big around as his wrist and as long as his forearm.

As he’d feared, the tightly packed springs made it impossible to wiggle under the engines, so he pulled out his flexi-cam, affixed the telescoping extension, then snaked the lens underneath. He flipped on the cam’s light. The rough metal exterior of the engine casing appeared on the OPSAT’s screen. He started scanning, moving inch by inch.

It took three minutes, but finally the serial number plate came into focus. Fisher steadied the cam and hit the shutter button. He withdrew the cam and tucked it away. He keyed his subdermal, but got only a squelch in return. He looked up. Too much steel overhead.

He climbed back to the catwalk and retraced his steps to the hatch and into the passageway. He keyed his subdermal again. “I’m out. Got the numbers.”

“Good work,” Lambert said. “Change of plans. Go to Extraction Point Bravo.”

Extraction Point Bravo was the designated emergency pickup.

“What’s happened?” Fisher asked.

“We think we know what happened to the rest of the Trego’s crew.”

10

THIRD ECHELON SITUATION ROOM

THEsatellite feed had been siphoned from a commerical LANDSAT by an NSA picket station, so the angle was heavily oblique and the colors faded, but there was no mistaking the single ship in the middle of the plasma screen.

“The Trego, I presume?” Fisher said.

“The one and only,” Lambert replied. “Two hundred miles off the coast of Virginia the morning before your encounter with her. Okay, go ahead, Grim.”

Sitting at the other end of the conference table, Grimsdottir tapped a few keys on her laptop and the image changed. A second ship, clearly smaller than the Trego,appeared in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. “Now we move ahead thirty minutes. Note the Trego’s wake has disappeared. She’s sitting dead in the water.” She tapped the keyboard again. “Ahead forty-two minutes.”

The Tregoand the second ship were sitting next to one another.

“Ahead twelve minutes. Zooming in.”

The image flickered, then zoomed in until the two ships filled the screen. In the water between them Fisher could make out what looked like a Zodiac raft.

“The whole operation took twenty-two minutes,” Lambert said. “The Zodiac goes over to the Tregowith one man aboard. Nineteen minutes it comes back with nine more men.”

“The Trego’s crew minus one,” Fisher said.

“Right. We’re guessing the intervening time was used to set up the automation system.”

“And to draw straws to see who stays behind. Speaking of which, anything from our prisoner?”

“Still not talking,” Lambert said.

Shortly after the man had woken up handcuffed to a bed in Third Echelon’s medical bay, Redding had begun questioning him. It was another tidbit Fisher didn’t know about Redding: He was in fact a Marine Corps-trained interrogator.

“We’re turning him over to the FBI; let them take a crack at him. Okay, back to the Trego. Here’s what we know: Ten minutes after the Trego’s crew boards the mystery ship, they both get under way and part company, the Tregoheading west toward the Atlantic Seaboard, the other ship heading south.”

“Please tell me we know more than that.”

Grimsdottir tapped some more keys. Another satellite image appeared. “Welcome to the harbor at Freeport City, Bahamas. Check the center-right of screen. Behold our mystery ship: the oceangoing yacht Duroc. She’s been anchored there since yesterday. I’m working on the registration.”

Fisher stared at the yacht for a few seconds, then turned to Lambert. “When do I leave?”

THIRDEchelon maintained a private airstrip outside Hanover, eight miles northeast of NSA headquarters. It was just past one in the morning when Fisher pulled his car onto to the tarmac beside a Boeing V-22 Osprey.

The Osprey was Third Echelon’s workhorse, used for insertion and extraction missions. Billed as a half-helicopter, half-turboprop aircraft, the Osprey had twin engines, each one mounted on a rotatable nacelle, combining the maneuverability and vertical takeoff capability of a helicopter and the high speed and altitude limits of a standard airplane.

The Osprey’s rotors were already spinning at idle. Through the lighted cockpit window Fisher could see the pilot, Bird, and his copilot, Sandy, going through the preflight. Bird was a typical Southern boy, with an awshucks drawl and a carefree personality to match. Sandy, on the other hand, was all business, one of the first women to break into the typically male-dominated special operations community.