The distant whup-whup of rotor blades from over the lagoon announced the imminent arrival of the helicopter from the Concord. The Seahawk set down moments later. Austin and Lee climbed in, and the chopper lifted off. It was less than an hour, but it seemed like days to Austin, before the helicopter was setting down for a landing on the aft deck of the Concord.
Captain Dixon helped Lee off the helicopter, and said, “Welcome to the Concord, Dr. Lee. Your government has been trying to get in touch with you.”
“We were somewhat delayed in Pohnpei,” she said.
“Quite all right,” he said. “I told your people that you were on the way. We’ve got a teleconferencing setup you can use. I’ll have my communications officer take you there.”
While Dixon stepped off to the side to use his hand radio, Lee turned to Austin.
“You’ll have to excuse me, Kurt. Thank you for an interesting day.”
“My pleasure,” he said. “Perhaps on our next tour of Nan Madol, we can spend more time above water.”
“That would certainly be different,” she said with a smile.
The communications officer arrived minutes later and led Lee to her teleconference. Dixon welcomed Austin back to the Navy cruiser, and said he would show him on a chart where Zavala had disappeared. On the way to the bridge, the captain said aircraft in the vicinity had made several sweeps around the atoll, but there was no sign of Zavala or the helicopter.
“No debris or oil slick?” Austin asked.
“Nothing,” Dixon said. “But we’ll keep looking.”
“Thanks, Captain, but you can’t spend any more time looking for Joe. The lab is our top priority.” Noting the frustrated look on the captain’s face, he added, “Don’t worry about Joe. He pops up when you least expect him.”
Austin studied the atoll’s location, wondering what had attracted Zavala to the tiny speck of land, and then punched in the Trouts’ number on his cell phone. Gamay answered.
“Kurt! Thank goodness you called. We’ve been worried. What’s going on?”
“We had a run-in with one of the Triad leaders in Nan Madol. Guy named Chang. The Triad had an informant. We’re back on the Concord, but now Joe is missing. Captain Dixon said Joe borrowed a helicopter and went off to check out an atoll.”
“We gave him the atoll’s coordinates,” Gamay said. “It’s located approximately where Trouble Island was, the place Captain Dobbs stopped at with his whale ship a hundred fifty years ago.”
“You found the logbook?” Austin asked.
“No,” she said. “You’re not the only one who’s discovered that the Triad has a long reach. We contacted a book dealer who said he had a lead on the log, but someone killed him and tried to jump us. We got away by the skin of our teeth.”
“Glad to hear that,” Austin said with relief. “I’m puzzled, though. If you didn’t find the log, where did you dig up the information about the atoll?”
Gamay told Austin about Perlmutter’s lead to Caleb Nye, the visits to the Dobbs mansion and Brimmer’s store, and finding Brimmer’s body in the old mill. Austin fumed as he listened to the details of Brimmer’s murder and the attempt to ambush the Trouts. Even without Dr. Huang, the vast criminal organization seemed to have eyes and ears everywhere. He asked for the longitude and latitude coordinates from Nye’s diorama and said he would check them out immediately.
“What do you want us to do in the meantime?” Gamay asked.
“Call Sandecker and bring him up to speed,” Austin said. “I’ll get back to you when I know more.”
Austin signed off with a quick thank-you, then sat down in front of a computer and called up a satellite image on the monitor using Nye’s coordinates. Nineteenth-century navigation was not exactly precise, and the atoll Austin saw on the screen didn’t match the position on the map.
But a radar reading of Joe’s trajectory showed that he seemed to be heading directly for the atoll. Austin zoomed in on the tiny speck. The monitor showed a palm-studded, handkerchief-sized patch of sand encircled by a coral reef. Nothing unusual, except for a dark streak near one side of the lagoon. He ran through the possibilities: school of fish, coral, undersea vegetation, shadows . . . Nothing seemed to fit. He looked up earlier images of the island: the streak was larger then. He kept going back in time, hour by hour.
As he dug back into the satellite photos, he saw that the streak had disappeared. He went further back, and he stopped in his tracks. A cigar-shaped object had taken the place of the streak. The conning tower protruding from the object identified it as a submarine. He enlarged the image, and did a quick Internet search for an Akula-class submarine. He found a series of pictures, extracted one that had the conning tower in roughly the same position, and placed the two images side by side. The subs were identical.
With growing excitement, Austin backed up in the photo file even further. There was no submarine in the lagoon now, not even a black streak. But he saw a dark spot which, upon enlargement, showed the unmistakable outline of a helicopter. Starting with that shot, he rapidly played the pictures forward like images in a nickelodeon: empty lagoon, helicopter, submarine, no helicopter, black streak shrinking in length.
“Thank you, Caleb Nye,” Austin said loud enough to be heard by Dixon, who leaned over his shoulder to study the computer monitor.
“Who?” the captain asked.
“He was a nineteenth-century whaler, and he just helped me find Joe.”
Austin ran through the series of satellite photos.
“Damn,” the captain said. “I think you’ve got something, Kurt.”
“We need to get in for a closer look. I’m going to need your help.”
Dixon picked up the microphone that connected to the ship’s public-address system.
“I’ll call the ship’s officers together immediately,” he said.
Five minutes later, Austin was in the wardroom, running through the satellite series again for the benefit of the cruiser’s offers. A gunnery officer suggested surrounding the atoll with every ship in the fleet, then launching an invasion of it.
Austin shook his head.
“A full-fledged naval raid is out of the question, in my opinion,” he said. “There simply isn’t enough intelligence available on which to base an attack. One miscalculation might result in a massacre of the lab’s scientific team.”
The officer didn’t like being rebuffed.
“Who’s calling the shots here, Captain?” he asked. “The U.S. Navy or NUMA? That lab is Navy property.”
“That’s true,” Dixon said, “but I’ve got orders from the Navy brass to let NUMA take the lead.”
“I’m not concerned about competence,” the officer said. “It’s a question of firepower. NUMA’s a research agency, last time I heard.”
“We’ll back it up as best we can,” Dixon said. He was becoming annoyed.
The last thing Austin wanted was an argument over strategy. He intervened to help the gunnery officer save face.
“The officer makes a good point about firepower, Captain,” Austin said. “What about putting some ships within hailing distance? You could come to the rescue if I get in a jam.”
“Sure,” Dixon said. “We could position a few close by, with the rest ready to dash in if needed.”
“I’ll trust your judgment and that of your officers, Captain,” Austin said. “My main concern is getting into the lagoon undetected. Any idea what I’m likely to encounter?”
“We’ll have to assume that the atoll is protected by a sensor system,” Dixon said. “Night vision devices and radar are a worry, of course, but I’m most concerned about thermal sensors.”
“Any way we can get around those security measures?” Austin asked.
“A low-flying helicopter might be able to blend into the sea clutter on a radar screen,” Dixon said. “If the insertion was quick, there is a chance you could pull it off.”
Austin needed no further encouragement.
“That’s settled,” he said. “How soon can we leave?”
The captain glanced around at his officers, wanting to give them one last chance to pitch in.