The Navigator (NUMA Files 7)

When she regained consciousness, she was lying on her back in semidarkness. Her head throbbed with pain. She rolled over on her side and saw that she was wedged between two wooden cartons inside the container. Light streamed into the space from a rectangular hole framed by ragged edges from the cutting torch.

She tried to stand, but it was difficult to get her feet under her with her hands bound behind her back, and the effort made her dizzy. As she lay on the cold steel floor with her chest heaving from exertion, she saw a shadow against the crates. A man peered in at her through the hole. His face was slightly plump around the cheeks, but the round eyes that stared out of the cherubic face had a demonic intensity.

Carina’s blood ran cold. It was one of the most frightening faces she had ever seen.

Her expression must have mirrored her thoughts because the man smiled.

Carina was almost grateful when she passed out again.

Chapter 9

THE ORANGE-AND-WHITE HERCULES 130HC long-range surveillance aircraft had taken off at dawn from St. John’s and headed east on a seven-hour flight for the International Ice Patrol. Cruising at three hundred fifty miles an hour, the high-wing aircraft would cover a thirty-thousand-square-mile expanse of ocean before its patrol ended.

The Coast Guardsman at the plane’s radar console was daydreaming about his upcoming date with a young Newfoundland woman. He was working on a plan to get her into bed when he saw the suspicious blip on the plane’s radar screen.

Training set in. The radarman put aside his prurient thoughts and focused on the radar screen. The four-engine turboprop carried radar that looked forward and sideways. The side-looking radar, or SLR, had picked up the large object in the water around twenty miles to the north.

Iceberg detection had come a long way since 1912, when the ice patrol was created to prevent a repeat of the Titanic disaster. Despite the technological advances, identification is considered more of an art than a science.

The radarman tried to decide whether the object was an iceberg or an anchored fishing boat. A smooth-edged moving target would denote a vessel. The blip was almost stationary and showed no sign of a wake. His practiced eye picked out the radar shadow, where there was no radar return on the far side of the target, a phenomenon that indicated that the target was taller than a ship.

Iceberg.

He notified the cockpit of the sighting and its location, and the plane veered off on a northerly course change.

The fog hanging over the ocean surface prevented visual identification until the very last minute. The plane dropped down until it was several hundred feet above the water. The mists cleared to reveal an iceberg with a tall, narrow pinnacle at one end. Then the fog closed in again. The brief glimpse was all that was needed.

The plane sent the iceberg data to the ice patrol’s operations center in Groton, Connecticut. There, a computer figured out the iceberg’s probable drift. A warning was broadcast over the radio as a bulletin to the maritime community. The report was picked up by a Provincial Airlines Beech Super King that had been patrolling the Grand Banks under contract to the offshore drilling industry.

The two-engine plane homed in on the broadcast coordinates. The fog was clearing, and the plane found its target with no trouble. After making a couple of low-altitude passes, the plane radioed a confirmation of the sighting to the drilling platforms and vessels in the vicinity.

THE Leif Eriksson had been cruising at a lazy meander when the vessel received the urgent message. Immediately, the ship’s twin ten-thousand-horsepower diesels flexed their muscles in a noisy display of power. Leaving a creamy wake in the gray seas, the vessel raced off like a motorcycle cop chasing a speeder.

Austin had been in the bridge poring over a chart with Zavala when the report came on over the radio’s speaker.

“Our missing Moby?” Austin asked the captain.

“Could be,” Dawe said. “She fits the description. We should know soon enough.”

Dawe ordered the ship’s engine room to cut speed. Cottony wisps of fog were curling around the ship’s plunging bow. Within minutes, a colorless miasma wrapped the ship like a wet dishcloth. Visibility was reduced to spitting distance. The ship groped its way along relying entirely on its electronic eyes.

The captain kept close tabs on the radar screen and called out commands from time to time for the helmsman to adjust course. The ship was moving at a crawl, and the tension on the bridge was thicker than clam chowder. The ship was traveling through the haunted waters near the grave of the Titanic. Even with electronics that could pinpoint a toy boat in a rain puddle, ship collisions with ice were not uncommon, and sometimes fatal.

The captain emitted a cryptic grunt and looked up from the radar screen.

He grinned and said, “Did I ever tell you what a Newfie uses for mosquito repellant?”

“A shotgun,” Zavala said.

“The mosquito will crash when you shoot out its landing lights,” Austin added.

“Guess you heard that one. Don’t worry; we’ll make Newfies out of you yet.”

With the tension broken, the captain turned his attention back to the radar screen. “Fog’s let up a bit. Keep an eye out. Any second now.”

Austin scanned the grayness. “We’ve got company,” he said, breaking the cathedral quietness on the bridge.

The ghostly outlines of an enormous iceberg loomed ahead like something in a dream. Within seconds, the mountain of ice became more solid and less spectral. The berg angled up from one end to a lofty pinnacle that rose as high as a fifteen-story building. A stray shaft of sunlight had penetrated the fog. Under the glare of the heavenly spotlight, the berg glowed with a bone white sheen except for the sky blue crevasses where the refrozen meltwaters were free of bubbles that reflected white light.