"Can you find the sub if it's submerged?"
"Maybe. But if it comes to a fight, we're not exactly equipped for antisubmarine warfare."
"You leave the fighting to us," said Remo.
Sandy eyed them skeptically. "What are you two going to do-blow bubbles at them?"
"We'll think of something. Won't we, Little Father?"
"I will think of something," Chiun said sternly. "You will do the thing I think of."
"Just remember what's important, me, or getting that sub."
Chiun steepled his long-nailed fingers before his chest and made his eyes menacing. "Drowning the submersible vessel is very important. If you follow my instructions to the letter, possibly you will not drown, too."
Twenty minutes later the helmsman called from the pilothouse, "Contact!"
Rushing to the pilothouse, they found the helmsman monitoring the sonar scope.
"What do you make of this?" he asked Sandy.
She stared at the greenish scope. It showed a green grid with a bird's-eye view of the cutter's outline in its center. Ahead off the port bow was a tiny but very distinct green blip.
"It's not a sub. Too small," Sandy decided.
"It's metallic. Maybe it's a one-man sub."
They watched it for several minutes. The object was tracking an undeviating course.
"If it's a one-man sub, it's off a mother ship," Sandy said firmly. "We'll follow it and see where it goes."
The cutter stayed in its easterly heading, cleaving through the waves with only a slight bumping when they struck larger swells.
Abruptly the object changed course, and Sandy snapped out orders.
"Starboard. One degree!"
The helmsman spun the wheel expertly, and the cutter dug in as it moved to stay with the mystery contact.
"It's either a small sub or a torpedo," Remo suggested.
Sandy shook her head. "Torpedoes don't change course, not that I know of."
"This thing just did," Remo muttered.
Chiun drifted away, evidently bored. Remo found his thoughts wandering. The smell of the open sea was causing him to flash back to the previous night. He was trained to feel fear when fear was a useful survival tool. After a crisis was over, he discarded fear like a used Kleenex. But the memories of the previous night kept coming back.
He joined the Master of Sinanju at the rail. "I almost bought it out here," he told Chiun.
Chiun eyed a solitary petrel that was eyeing him back. "You did not."
"Been a long time since I came that close."
"Purge your mind of all such considerations. The past is the past."
"I gotta find Freya."
"And you will. If she does not find you."
Not long after that, the sonar scope began pinging excitedly, and Remo and Chiun returned to the pilothouse.
"What's happening now?" asked Remo.
"Our contact just ran into a schooled-up pod of fish," Sandy told them.
"What kind?"
"Hard to say. Maybe whiting."
"Whiting is not quality fish," Chiun said disdainfully. "Its bones do not digest well."
"You're not supposed to eat the bones," Sandy said absently.
"If you cook fish right," Remo told her, "you can eat the bones, too."
"And the heads," added Chiun.
"Must be whiting," Sandy remarked, her eyes intent on the scope. "It's about the most plentiful kind you could catch out here these days."
"Maybe it's turbot," said Remo.
"That's weird," Sandy suddenly stated. "The contact is changing course, and the fish are moving with it."
"Looks like they're running from it," the helmsman said.
"No, it's following them. They're not scattering before it."
"Then it's gotta be a fish," said Remo.
Sandy frowned deeply. "No, that's a metallic blip. We can tell these things."
"So why is it following those fish?"
"That," muttered Sandy, "is the question of the hour."
They watched the cluster of sonar blips as the cutter Cayuga thundered along.
"We're approaching the Nose," the helmsman warned.
"The part of the Grand Banks that Canada doesn't lay claim to," Sandy explained. "We're not exactly welcome in these parts, but it's still international waters, so we're out of our jurisdiction."
"The Canadians are our allies. What could they do?"
"Complain to our superior officers and get us cashiered out of the guard." Sandy frowned. "What do you think, helmsman?"
"Can't hurt to follow this thing a few knots more."
"Why do you not seek to catch it?" asked Chiun.
"Be interesting to try, but there's no way. If we could drop a net in front of it, at this speed it would pop right through."
"Remo can catch it," Chiun offered.
Sandy Heckman laughed, and up in the dead gray sky the petrel joined in raucously. Their voices had about the same tone.
"With what-an undersea butterfly net?" she scoffed.
"We have our ways," Remo said defensively.
"Remo, I command you to catch this mysterious fish that is not a fish," Chiun said sternly, pointing at the water.
"Aw, c'mon, Chiun. Don't bust my chops."
"Remo, you are commanded. Obey."
Remo sighed and said to Sandy, "Get ahead of it. I'll see what I can do."
"We have diving gear aboard," she offered.
Remo shook his head. "I don't need it."
"You can't go down without scuba gear."
"I do it all the time." Then, remembering the previous night, he added, "But I'll take a wet suit."
Sandy looked to the helmsman, who said, "Orders are to assist in any way possible."
"It's your lungs," Sandy said.
The Cayuga spurted ahead, got ahead of the underwater contact, then came to a slow, easy stop.
Stepping out of his Italian loafers, Remo donned a night black neoprene wet suit, drawing in a deep charge of oxygen as he stood on the afterdeck. He disdained the gloves and flippers.
He waited until everyone was looking the other way. Only Chiun was watching him. Then, from a standing start he back-flipped into the water. He made no discernible splash.
The water closed in on him, and the first cold clutch of fear took hold of his mind. Remo pushed the thought back.
His face tingled from the shock of the cold, then it went numb. He diverted warmth to his hands and feet, where he really needed it.
Remo let himself sink, eyes adjusting to the lessening light. Seawater filtered out the red-orange end of the spectrum. The blues and indigos soon shaded to a uniform gray.
The first thing Remo looked for was a submarine. The water was completely free of subs. Remo was not surprised.
But the school of small fish showed with increasing clearness. They formed an ellipse of well-spaced ranks over the ocean floor. In the filtered daylight, Remo was surprised by one thing. Other than the school, there were no fish in sight. This far out, that was unusual.
The school, its multitudinous eyes gleaming like perfectly matched silvery coins, swam toward him. Remo was impressed by the whiting's orderly lines. They might have belonged to some fishy army, they were so disciplined.
He spotted the thing following them at an even speed and distance.
Seen head-on, it looked as dull as a big blunt bullet. It was not a fish. What it was wasn't exactly clear.
Setting himself, Remo achieved neutral buoyancy by releasing air from his lungs while he waited for the blunt nose to come to him.
The whiting-if that's what they were-grew agitated when they came upon Remo. Still, they held their course, their tiny fins waving rhythmically.
Remo let the leading fish pass over and around him. They seemed to take his presence in stride.
It was a torpedo, Remo saw as the pressure of its approach touched his benumbed face. Remo scooted out of the way slightly and, as it passed, trailing a bubbly wake, he snap-kicked at its tail.