"Didn't enter the Antarctic," repeated Hollis mechanically. "Face the facts, man. The last satellite photo of the ship showed her halfway between Cape Horn and the tip of the peninsula, steaming hell-bent to the south."
"She had no place else to go," protested Dillenger.
Pitt tapped a finger on the ragged mass of islands scattered around the Straits of Magellan. "Want to bet?"
Hollis stood frowning, baffled for a moment. And then he caught on. His confusion vanished and total understanding beamed in his eyes. "She doubled back," he said flatly.
"Rudi had the key," Pitt acknowledged. "The hijackers weren't about to commit suicide, nor were they going to risk detection by infrared photos. They never had any intention of heading into the ice pack.
Instead, they cut northwest and skirted the barren islands above Cape Horn."
Gunn looked relieved. "The temperatures are not nearly as severe around Tierra del Fuego. Everyone on board would be damned uncomfortable without warmth, but they'd survive."
"Then why the iceberg scam?" queried Giordino.
"To appear as if they calved from a glacier."
"Calved, like in cow?"
"Calving is the breaking away of an ice mass from an ice front or wall,"
Gunn clarified.
Giordino stared down at the infrared photo. "Glaciers this far north?"
"Several flow down the mountains and meet the sea within eight hundred kilometers from where we're docked here in Punta Arenas," replied Pitt.
"Where do you'reckon she is?" Hollis asked.
Pitt took a chart showing the desolate fringe islands west of Tierra del Fuego. "Two possibilities within the Lady Flamborough's sailing range since she was last spotted by satellite." He paused to place an X beside two names on the chart. "Directly south of here, glaciers flow from Mounts Italia and S ento."
Hollis said, "They're off the beaten track all right."
"But too close to the oil fields," said Pitt. "A low-flying oil-company survey plane might notice the phony ice cover.
Me, if I was calling the plays for the hijackers, I'd head another hundred and sixty kilometers northwest. Which would put them near a glacier on Santa Inez Island."
Dillenger studied the small island's irregular shoreline on the chart for a moment. He glanced at the colored photograph, but the southern foot of Chile was blotted by clouds. He pushed it aside and peered through the magnifying glass at the upper half of the infrared image Pitt had folded to condense the search region.
After a few seconds he looked up in wonder and delight. "Unless Mother Nature makes icebergs with a pointed bow and a rounded stern, I think we've found our phantom ship."
Hollis took the glass from his subordinate and examined the tiny oblong shape. "It's the right contour all right. And as Pitt said, there's no sign of heat radiation. She's reading almost as cold as the glacier.
Not quite pure black, but a very dark blue."
Gunn leaned in. "Yes, I see. The glacier flows into a fjord that empties in a bay crowded with small islands. One or two medium-size bergs, broken from the glacial wall. No more. The water is reasonably free of ice." He paused, a curious expression in the eyes behind the glasses. "I wonder how they moored the Lady Flamborough directly under the glacier's forward wall."
Pitts eyes narrowed. "Let me have a look." He squeezed between Dillenger and Gunn, bent over and gazed through the powerful glass.
After a time he straightened, his face clouded with a rising anger.
"What do you see?" asked Captain Stewart.
"They mean for every one to die."
Stewart looked at the others, puzzled. "How does he know?"
"When an ice slab fractures off the glacier and falls on the ship,"