“Okay, that’s another thing, excuse me, Captain,” Ryan said. “What’s the range of a mobile missile launcher? Because Elmendorf is twelve hundred miles from the Maritime Boundary Line.”

“The range of your standard Scud is three hundred kilometers,” Hugh said.

Ops got that faraway look in his eyes he always got when he was carrying the one. “That’s less than two hundred miles.”

Ryan looked at the captain, and the tension around the table relaxed.

“I think that’s the whole point of loading the weapon onto a commercial vessel,” Hugh said. He was speaking slowly and deliberately, displaying no impatience. “There’s hundreds, thousands of them in and out of port cities every day. We can’t look at them all or we’d bring global commerce to a halt.” Click, click.

“What kind of a commercial vessel?” the captain said.

“Initially I thought a freighter. A Scud would fit very neatly into a forty-foot container. All they’d have to do is make sure it was loaded on top.”

“Could it be controlled by remote?”

Ryan stirred. “Logistically, sir, given the distances involved, they’d have to launch it themselves.”

The captain looked back at Hugh. “You said initially you thought a freighter. Has something changed your mind?”

“A source in Hong Kong tells us I was right about the container but wrong about the ship. It’s a fishing vessel, a catcher-processor, one big enough to load empty containers on board, which they then fill with product. Only two won’t be empty.”

“One for the weapon, one for the terrorists.”

“Yes, sir.” Click, click.

The captain’s head turned toward Ops. “Ops?”

“Still no joy on the sat phone, sir,” Ops said. “And our e-mail is still down.”

There was no point in killing the messenger, but Sara could tell that Lowe was greatly tempted. So could Ops, who was regarding the table with a rapt look, as if by not making eye contact the captain might forget that he was present.

“There’s always the VHF,” Ryan said.

“With the entire Bering Sea listening in,” Sara said. “Including, always supposing they exist, these terrorists.”

Hugh’s gaze was level and flat, his tone impersonal, without inflection. She could have been a total stranger. “They exist.” Click, click.

The silence hung heavy over the room. The captain pushed back from the table and rose to his feet. “XO, with me.”

Sara followed the captain from the wardroom into the pantry. The captain shut the door behind them-the door into the companionway had long since been secured, with BMOD Meridian braced against it and staring stolidly ahead, pretending to be deaf-and turned to face her. “How reliable is this guy?” he said bluntly.

“Very reliable,” Sara said, and added irresistibly, “in everything except marriage.” And then wished very much that she had not.

Lowe’s eyes narrowed.

“He’s not a nut case, Captain,” she said, unconsciously straightening to attention. “We’ve been married for ten years. I’ve known him all my life. He’s intelligent, very well educated, and not prone to flights of fancy. The CIA recruited him before we graduated, and however little I may like the CIA they don’t recruit dummies. Most of the time he’s a by-the-book kind of guy. He wouldn’t have gone to such extraordinary lengths to get here if he didn’t think the threat was real.”

“He sure as hell convinced Sams and Laird in St. Paul. Of course, they’re aviators and they’ll believe anything that’ll get them into the air.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lowe jerked his head toward the door. “You didn’t sound even a little bit convinced by his argument in there, XO.”

“Devil’s advocate, sir,” she said sturdily. “Part of my job.”

Lowe looked at her for a long, long minute. He reached past her to open the door into the wardroom. They filed in and took their seats.

“All right,” the captain said. “What are we looking for?”

There was a collective exhale of breath. “A fish processor slash stern trawler,” Hugh said. “Three hundred forty feet long. She’s leased to a Russian fishing consortium by a series of limited liability corporations. Niue flagged.” He looked up to find everyone looking back at him with an enraptured gaze. “What?” he said.

Mark Edelen had to clear his throat to get the words out. “What’s her name, Mr. Rincon?”

“Oh.” Hugh looked down at the notes he’d spread on the table in front of him. “The Agafia.”

TOMMY WAS A LITTLE startled when the whole horde thundered up the ladder and erupted onto the bridge. “XO?” she said.

“Where’s the Agafia, Tommy?”

Tommy, mute, pointed at a steady green blip on the radar screen. “She’s heading southwest.”

Sara looked up to peer through what was now a stygian gloom. She saw no lights on the horizon. She saw no horizon. They had felt the ship begin to roll more heavily in the wardroom, and she was beginning to pitch and yaw as well. The storm was well and truly upon them, but by now it wouldn’t have felt natural if it hadn’t been.

“And-” Tommy said.

“Wait a minute,” Sara said. “Who the hell is this?” She indicated a second blip not far from the first, both of them lying less than a half mile off.

“It’s the Sunrise Warrior, ma’am,” Tommy said reproachfully. “I tried to tell you on the phone. She hove up over the horizon just as you all went below.”

Captain Lowe jumped up into his chair. “Get them on the horn.”

“Belay that,” Sara said. She stepped to the captain’s side and lowered her voice. “Forgive me, Captain, but are you thinking of ordering them from the area?”

“That was my plan, yes,” the captain said. “The last thing we need right now is a bunch of idealistic civilians getting in our way. I want them long gone before whatever goes down out here goes down. You have a problem with that, XO?”

Sara refused to be intimidated by the implied menace. “Firstly, sir, I don’t think they’ll take to being ordered. They don’t, as a rule, if you recall.”

They both remembered last August and the whole whaling debacle. “No,” he said, “they don’t, do they. Secondly?”

“Secondly-” Sara hesitated.

“Spit it out, XO.”

“Well, sir, I was thinking that we might be able to use them.”

“Use them how?”

“It’s a big ocean, captain. If Hugh-if Mr. Rincon is right and there are terrorists on board the Agafia, and if they do have a weapon they are preparing to launch, we might be able to use another ship. The Sojourner Truth and the Sunrise Warrior are both faster than the Agafia.”

Lowe snorted. “That’s a stretch. What’s her top speed, five, six knots? A baby stroller is faster than she is.”

“Yes, sir. For another thing, I’ll bet both of us are more seaworthy than she is, too. You remember what the Pheodora was like when we boarded her.”

“If the Agafia’s in that bad shape we can run her down on our own.”

“Still, sir, it wouldn’t hurt to have another ship standing by. Just in case. And…” Sara paused. She hadn’t wanted to draw this card, but there wasn’t a whole lot of choice left to her. Besides, in this she knew she was right. “I know the international campaigner she’s got on board.”

“The international campaigner?”

“The ship is here on what they call a campaign. It was someone’s idea, and that someone, once they sell the idea to Greenpeace headquarters in Amsterdam, usually heads up the campaign when it goes into action. I know the point person on board.”

“How?”

Sara looked at the overhead. “I arrested her once.”

The captain stared at her, disbelieving what she had just said. “You what?”

“I worked one year at Prudhoe Bay, sir, when the freight barges were coming in. Greenpeace was getting in the way with inflatables. Vivienne Kincaid was ramrodding that campaign with a crew of six. I was with the detachment that arrested them.”

“And because of this history you think she’s going to help us?”