Austin nodded. "South of our position. They're with a group of scientists on the NOAA ship Benjamin Franklin,looking into the biological implications of the giant eddies in the Atlantic Ocean."
"As I said, I wouldn't rule anything out. It's certainly worth looking into."
"We can talk to them about their findings when we get back to port."
"Why wait?" Adler said.
Adler's fingers played over the keys and a Web site popped up on the screen, followed by a satellite image showing the mid-Atlantic coast. "The ocean satellite taking this picture can pick up an object as small as a sardine."
"Amazing," Austin said, leaning close to the screen.
Adler clicked the computer mouse. "Now we're seeing ocean water temperature. That wavy band of reddish brown is the Gulf Stream. The blue area is cold water, and those circular blobs in tan are warm water eddies. I'll zoom in on our ship."
He worked the computer mouse so that one of the tan-colored swirls filled the screen. The outlines of two vessels were now visible near the whorl.
"That blip is the Throckmorton.The other one must be your NOAA ship. Wow! This stuff still amazes me."
Austin leaned over Adler's shoulder. "What's that smaller circle in the southeast quadrant?"
Adler enlarged the image. "It's a separate eddy. Acting real funny. The numbers in the little boxes show water movement speed and level. The level within the swirl seems to be dropping while the water is moving at increasing speed." Adler's eyes were glued to the screen. The swirl, now almost a perfect circle, continued to grow. "Migod,"he said.
"What's the problem?"
The professor tapped the screen. "We seem to be looking at the birth of a gigantic whirlpool."
7
Gamay Morgan-Trout carefully lowered the Van Dorn sampler over the port rail of the NOAA survey ship and watched the nine-liter plastic cylinder sink beneath the foam-flecked waves. She played out the thin connecting cable as the sampler plunged hundreds of feet to the ocean bottom.
After the bottle filled with water and automatically sealed, she began to winch it back on board with the help of her husband. Paul Trout hauled the dripping bottle the last few feet from the water, detached the sampler from the cable and held it to the light, as if he were testing the color of a fine glass of wine.
Trout had a twinkle in his hazel eyes. "This is absurd," he said.
"What's absurd?"
"Consider what we're doing."
Still puzzled, Gamay said, "Okay, we've just tossed a fancy bottle over the side and hauled it up filled with seawater."
"Thank you for making my point. Look around at this ship. The Benjamin Franklinis loaded with cutting-edge research gear. We've got stuff like specialized echo sounders, multibeam and side-scan sonar and the latest in computer hardware and software. But we're no different from the ancient mariners who smeared wax on their sounding lead to check out the composition of the ocean bottom."
Gamay smiled. "And now we're about to collect plankton using an old-fashioned fisherman's net. I draw the line when it comes to transport. No rowboat. How's the Zodiac coming?"
"Ready to go," Trout said. He read the surface of the sea with an experienced eye. "Wind's freshening. Could get choppy. We'll have to stay sharp." He pronounced it "shaap," betraying his New England roots.
Gamay glanced at the whitecaps starting to dot the grayish blue water. "We might not be able to go out again for days if we wait."
"My thoughts exactly." He handed her the Van Dorn sampler. "I'll meet you at the Zodiac davit."
Gamay delivered the sampler to the wet lab. The water sample would be analyzed for trace metals and organisms. She went to her cabin, pulled a hooded, foul-weather suit on over her jeans, Icelandic wool sweater and chamois shirt, and tucked her long, dark red hair under a multicolored "Friends of the Hunley"baseball cap. Slipping into her personal flotation device, she went out to the stern deck.
Trout was waiting next to the davits that held the twenty-three-foot-long, rigid inflatable boat. He was dressed impeccably as usual. Under a full suit of yellow commercial-grade, foul-weather gear, he wore designer jeans specially tailored to fit his six-foot-eight frame and a navy sweater made of cashmere wool. One of the colorful bow ties to which Trout was addicted adorned the button-down collar of his Brooks Brothers oxford-weave blue shirt. As a counterpoint to his casual elegance, he wore scuffed work boots, a holdover from his days at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where functional footwear was de rigueur. He wore a navy wool cap to protect his head.
The Trouts climbed aboard the rigid inflatable boat and the Zodiac was lowered into the sea. Paul started the Volvo Penta diesel inboard/outboard engine as Gamay cast off the tether line. They stood side by side at the steering console with legs braced in a charioteer's pose, knees bent to absorb the shock of the flat-bottomed hull slapping the waves.
The rugged inflatable craft planed over the seas like a playful dolphin. Trout steered toward a Day-Glo orange sphere that was bobbing in the water about a quarter mile from the ship. They had set the buoy earlier in the day to provide a reference point for the phytoplankton survey.
It was not the most hospitable work environment. Glowering clouds were moving in from the east, and the horizon line was barely visible where gray sea met gray water. The easterly wind had come up a few knots. The thick cloud layer blocking the sunlight was starting to spit light rain.
But as they prepared for the survey, Paul and Gamay wore that particular expression of bliss people born to the sea have when they are in their natural element. Paul had climbed aboard a fishing boat with his fisherman father as soon as he could walk. He had fished commercially out of the Cape Cod village of Woods Hole until he went off to college.
Gamay was unfazed by the gloomy weather, although her background was somewhat different from Trout's. Born in Racine, Wisconsin, she had spent many of her younger years sailing the sometimes cantankerous waters of the Great Lakes with her father, a successful developer and yachtsman.
"You must admit this is a lot more fun than wallpapering," Paul said as he maneuvered the boat closer to the buoy.
Gamay was readying the survey gear. "This is more fun than almost anythingI can think of," she said, ignoring the cold spray that splashed her face.
"Glad you qualified your statement with 'almost,' " Paul said with a leer.
Gamay gave him a sour look that didn't match the amusement in her eyes. "Pay attention to what you're doing or you'll fall overboard."
The Trouts hadn't expected to be back to sea so soon. After wrapping up their last mission with the Special Assignments Team, they had planned to catch some R amp; R. Trout had once observed that Camay's relaxation technique must have been learned from a French Foreign Legion drillmaster. A fitness and exercise nut, she was only home a few hours before embarking on an Olympic-level running, hiking and biking schedule.
Even that wasn't enough. Gamay had a habit of making a top priority of whatever happened to come into her mind at a given moment. Trout knew he was in trouble when, after a day together cruising through the Virginia countryside in their Humvee, she eye-balled the living-room wallpaper of the Georgetown town house they were constantly remodeling. He had nodded with learned patience as Gamay ticked off the remodeling projects she had piled on their plate.