It had taken him half the night to sort through the list provided by the Coast Guard and determine none of the sightings matched Toshogu. That left two possibilities: Either she hadn’t been spotted, or she had taken an altogether different route to her destination.
“What have you got watching the Arctic?” Oaken asked.
“Two satellites. A Keyhole over the Kamchatka Peninsula watching Ivan dismantle some SLBMs, and a commercial LandSat bird doing topography for Exxon in the Chukchi Sea.”
“A LandSat? How’d we get access to that?”
“Don’t ask.”
“Oh. Okay, let’s see what the Keyhole’s got.” Based on Toshogu’s cruising speed and the weather conditions, Oaken recited the general coordinates where he felt she might be found. “Let’s start there.”
Five seconds later, the screen was filled with a black-and-white image of the eastern shore of Siberia and a portion of the Arctic Ocean. Oaken watched, fascinated, as the image moved ever so slowly as the Keyhole orbited the earth.
“This is real time,” said Skip. “Given the area and time frame, this is about as good as it’s going to get.”
“Okay. Can you freeze it and put a grid on it?”
“Sure.” Skip typed a command, and a moment later the computer superimposed an alphanumeric grid over the image. “Just call out the coordinates. The Cray will do the rest.”
For the next two hours, they checked each and every square of ocean. They found forty-three possible targets, twenty-two of which the computer decided were icebergs. That left twenty-one. After another hour, Oaken determined none of them matched Toshogu.
“How close are the computer’s size estimates?” asked Oaken.
“Give or take a meter, I guess. What now, sir?”
“Let’s see the LandSat.”
“Thermal or standard?”
“Standard.”
The LandSat images showed more of the Chukchi, Siberian, and Alaskan peninsulas. As with the Keyhole image, there were dozens of shiplike dots on the ocean’s surface. Of these, eighteen turned but to be ships, but after two more hours, the Cray eliminated all of them as possible matches.
Where is she? Oaken wondered. Given her speed, range, and the prevailing weather conditions, she could have only gone so far. “Well, we might as well take a look at the LandSat’s thermal pics,” Oaken said.
“I wouldn’t recommend it, sir. It’s like watching grass grow. The computer’s got to convert the digital pixels into the visible spectrum. Looking at them now would be like trying to make sense of a bad Jackson Pollack painting.”
“How long?”
“Five, six hours. Leave me your number. I’ll call you when they’re ready.”
True to his word, Skip called the moment the computers finished. Oaken got dressed, whispered an explanation to Bev, and drove to the NPIC.
It was even colder than before in the amphitheater. “AC still works, I see.”
Skip laughed. “Yep.”
“Don’t you have a home? I hate to think there’s a wife out there cursing me.”
“She’s the understanding type. Take a look. I think you’re going to like this.”
An image appeared on the screen. The background was uniformly black but was speckled with dozens of white, blue, and red dots.
“Each of the dots represents a surface anomaly… icebergs, ships, whatever,” said Skip. “While you were on your way over, I matched this plate against the Keyhole pics and eliminated ships we’d already checked. This is what I got.”
One by one, the computer began erasing dots until all that remained were a dozen white blobs and one tiny blue dot.
“The white ones are icebergs,” Skip said. “The blue one is—”
“A ship,” Oaken finished.
“You got it. Same dimensions as our target, too. Its temperature signature is just a couple degrees above the bergs. That’s why we missed it on the Keyhole pictures.”
“I’ll be damned. Her decks must be iced over, the engines shut down.”
“That’s my guess. At that latitude, if you haven’t got crews working constantly, you can get some serious buildup real quick.”
“So how do we know it’s the one we’re looking for?”
“I backtracked her using the six previous hours of LandSat shots. Up until hour four — when she started drifting — her course matched the one you gave me.”
“Skip, you’re a miracle worker. Bring up the rest of the shots.”
“That’s the problem. This is the last one. The LandSat’s out of angle now.”
Oaken stared at the blue dot. “How old is this image?”
“Nine hours.”
“Damn,” Oaken muttered. “Plenty of time for her to capsize under all that ice.”
30
Nine hours after leaving Japan, Tanner and Cahil were nearing their destination.
Tired, sore, and anxious to be away from the constant hum of the Cessna’s engines, Tanner stared out the window at the barren shoreline jutting into the Chukchi Sea. They were 130 miles north of the Arctic Circle and 150 miles from mainland Russia. The water was a startling royal blue. In another month it would be a solid sheet of ice; already the surface looked slushy. Briggs could almost feel the cold in his bones.
“Reminds me of home,” Cahil shouted over the engines. Bear was a born-and-raised Monhegan Island fisherman.
“Glad you like it. Say, what’s the temp on the ground?”
“Midtwenties,” replied the pilot. “With windchill, five or ten degrees.”
Tanner grunted. “This is the last time I let Oaks plan my vacations.”
It had taken Oaken only a few hours to compute the wind and sea currents around Toshogu’s last known position and come up with a target area that stretched between Point Hope and Cape Lisbourne — almost 100 miles of desolate coastline.
Oaken said the Coast Guard had reported no distress calls from the area, which seemed to suggest Toshogu had not been in peril. So why had the crew allowed such a dangerous buildup of ice on the decks? Tanner wondered. One thing was certain: Rare was the disaster that could sink a ship so fast she couldn’t send a distress signal.
“Hold tight,” the pilot called. “We’re going in.”
They lined up over Point Hope’s single runway and touched down in a cross wind that whistled through the cabin and rattled the windows. They taxied toward a small Quonset hut. Hanging above its door a sign read, Point Hope International Airport — Hub to Nowhere.
“Enjoy, gentlemen,” the pilot said.
“Thanks.” Tanner said.
They climbed out amid swirling snow. The cold ripped the air from Tanner’s lungs. In all directions, all he could see was white. He slipped on his sunglasses.
“Hear that?” Cahil called.
“What?”
Cahil walked a quick circle. His boots crunched in the snow. “That. That’s how you know when it’s really cold.”
“Thanks, Bear, that’s handy information.”
The door of the hut cracked open, and an arm jutted out, waving them over.
Inside they found a bar, several pinball machines, and a short-order kitchen. The bartender/cook, who sat on a stool watching Wheel of Fortune, never looked up as they entered. The person attached to the waving arm was a bearded man in granny glasses. “Simon Braithwaite. Been expecting you.”
Tanner made the introductions. “How much did Walt tell you?”
“No more than I need to know. Come on, I’ve got somebody I want you to meet. I did some digging around.”
Tigara Tim’s bar was a squat log building sitting at the head of Point Hope’s docks. Through the swirling snow Tanner saw several fishing boats rocking at their moorings, and he caught the scent of tar and sea salt.