Fang turned his head to see that Smith was watching the digital readout on his GPS. Everyone else was watching him.

“How long?” Fang said, voicing the thought that was on everyone’s mind.

“Soon now.”

Fang looked around at the men, swinging in hammocks, huddled in sleeping bags. They’d run out of fuel for the stove and the lanterns the night before. This morning they’d eaten dry noodles for breakfast. Everyone looked as cold as he felt. He wondered how well everyone would be moving when Smith finally set the plan in motion. Although one benefit of the cold was that the smell was much less noticeable.

He wondered, not for the first time, what they were doing here, and rued, perhaps for the last time, the greed that had led him to this place.

Smith said something. Fang stared at him, uncomprehending.

“One hour,” Smith repeated.

“One hour till what?”

“We take the ship,” Smith said, and held up the GPS. Fang took it and squinted at it. “Here,” Smith said, and pushed a button which lit up the display. “When we hit fifty-nine degrees forty minutes north latitude, we take the ship. If we wait any longer, they’ll call for the pilot.”

“Pilot?” one of Smith’s men said.

“Every ship needs a pilot to get them into port. Someone who knows the local waters.” To Fang he said, “Tell your men to get ready.”

Fang was still squinting at the GPS. Fifty-nine degrees thirty minutes latitude, one hundred forty-nine degrees and thirty minutes longitude. He tried to imagine the nearest port to that location and came up with Anchorage, Alaska. What the hell were they doing here?

“Get ready,” Smith said, more sharply this time, holding his hand out.

Fang gave him the GPS and went to get his men suited up.

“BEST SPEED CAH7 BE more than twelve knots, XO,” Ostlund said. “She’s only got one engine. We’ve got six knots on her.” The Sojourner Truth’s top speed was eighteen knots.

“We’ve lost her,” Chief Edelen said.

Sara ignored him. “What’s our location, Tommy?”

“South-southwest of Rugged Island, XO.”

“Mr. Rincon?”

Hugh was leaning over Tommy’s shoulder, staring intently at the readout on the Transas. “Pan up a little, Tommy, would you? Thanks.” He pointed. “Right here. What’s that?”

Tommy pointed and clicked. “Caine’s Head.”

“What are those, feet or meters?”

“Feet.”

“So the point’s a little under seven hundred feet high, and the mountain in back of it?”

“Fifteen hundred.”

Hugh stood up and looked at Sara. “They’ll want a straight shot right up the valley. My guess is they’ll light it off when they’ve cleared this point.”

“Caine’s Head?”

Hugh nodded.

“EO?” Sara said.

“We’re peddling as fast as we can, XO.”

“Vessel in sight!”

PO Barnette’s shout caused a surge toward the windows.

It was indeed the Star of Bali, gaining on the southern end of Rugged Island.

“Yeah,” Sara said, binoculars trained on the ship, “that’s our baby all right. Well done, everyone.”

“I think she’s got engine problems, XO,” Barnette said, eyes still glued to his binoculars. “She’s barely making way.”

“Mr. Ostlund, assemble your team.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

When Hugh started to follow him Sara, said, “Hold up, Mr. Rincon. Anything from the Agafia, anyone?”

“No, ma’am,” Ops said.

“Pull one of the emergency VHF radios from the lifeboats and start trying to raise her.”

“Those radios only have a reach of two miles, ma’am.”

“I know, Ops, but she’ll be on our tail, and I want to know as soon as she’s within reach.” Yes, ma am.

“All right, let’s tell the troops what’s going on.” Sara caught a down swell to port and was at the microphone in two steps. “Attention all hands, attention all hands, this is Lieutenant Commander Lange,” she said, wincing a little as her voice boomed back at her from the speaker. Tommy reached quickly for the volume knob and Sara thanked her with a nod. She only hoped that the pipe wasn’t reaching across the water to the Star of Bali.

“Yesterday I told you what we’ve been doing and why. We are going into action again against a bunch of suspected terrorists who present a serious threat to the nation. They must be stopped and they must be stopped now, before they get any closer to their target. I don’t have to remind you that there are two hundred and sixty thousand people living in and around that target. Our communications are still out, so we have no way of alerting anyone on shore to the threat. We can’t risk letting them out of our sight, so it’s up to us.”

She paused to take a breath. “This is going to be tricky and dangerous. To be on the safe side, I want every one of you with a survival suit in arm’s reach. Chief Saunders is standing by in the portside equipment locker ready to issue them. Proceed there directly following this pipe and then report to your duty station.”

She wanted to be able to say something inspirational but all that came to mind was lame words about duty, honor, and country. She remembered the blood all over the bridge after the attack, the limp bodies of Captain Lowe and Seaman Razo as they were carried from the bridge. Captain Lowe would have been much better at this than she was.

It never occurred to her that Captain Lowe had had twenty years on her, during none of which had he faced a situation like this one, so he probably wouldn’t have known what to say, either.

Sara said, “The sea is vast and our ship is small, but never doubt that we will prevail. That is all.”

She hung up the mike and looked at Hugh, who was standing in front of the open portside hatch. She jerked her head, and he nodded. “I’ll be right back, Chief,” she told Mark Edelen, and left the bridge, Hugh following behind.

SHE LED THE WAY to her stateroom and closed the door. He raised an eyebrow. “Won’t people talk?”

“Shut up,” she said, and walked into his arms.

They held each other as the precious seconds ticked by. She pressed her face against his heart and heard its steady reassuring beat even through the Mustang suit. He might have kissed her hair, she couldn’t tell, but she felt his arms tight around her, to where it started the wound on her arm aching again. She didn’t move.

Ostlund’s voice sounded on the pipe. “Boarding party, assemble aft, I say again, boarding party, assemble aft immediately.” His grip loosened. She looked up. “I love you, Rincon.” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Same goes, Lange.” On the way back to the bridge she blundered into Chief Katelnikof. If he saw the tears in her eyes, he was tactful enough not to say so.

THE FOG AND SLEET dissolved so suddenly it startled everyone on the bridge, especially when Rugged Island thrust up out of the heaving gray seas like a fifteen-hundred foot claymore in the hand of a vengeful ocean god. On this monolith of cracked granite, stunted evergreens clung to microscopic crevices all the way to the top, where a sharp-toothed peak gnawed at the belly of the gray skies.

“I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in my life,” Tommy said fervently, and no one contradicted her. Chief Edelen miracled them up a course that gave the small boat a lee to port and at the same time kept their starboard side to the Star of Bali, in case anyone on the other ship looked in their direction. So far their luck was holding, because it didn’t appear that anyone had. They lowered the inflatable and loaded the crew the way they always did. It helped that the seas had dropped five feet overnight, but the boarding team was still taking one hell of a pounding.

Sara watched them labor up a wave and disappear into a trough. She looked up at the sky. They’d planned the boarding for this hour specifically, that hour between darkness and dawn when the light played tricks on the mind and at least for a few moments no one could be absolutely sure of what they were seeing.