Wall's good looks twisted for one moment and Thomas thought, Ah, there's the real man.

"Yes, after six hours. She must've sat on the bottom and hibernated."

"So you chased because she ran. What prompted the hail in the first place?"

Wall blinked. "Just a routine check. The operator is known to employ aliens and has been caught working in the EEZ with them in the past. We want to keep her honest."

Thomas decided to leave that one alone. "You carry a search-and-rescue helicopter on your fantail."

"Yes."

"Its crew seems to have opened fire on the submersible in violation of the rules of engagement."

Wall drew himself up. "According to who?"

Thomas winced. Whom. "Ms. Beenan."

"And you believe her?"

Another muffled shot came from outside, and all three men turned slightly before facing back to each other.

"Everything else she's testified about has independent corroboration. In this case, there's physical evidence." I hope. She said there was.

Wall blinked. "I'll look into it. Perhaps they fired warning shots. It wasn't in the encounter report."

"I'd be interested in your results. Why did you take three days to reportMachinist Mate McIntyre AWOL?"

Wall turned to Lieutenant Rodgers and said, "Check on that provisioning detail for me, Anthony."

"Yes, sir." Rodgers left quickly.

Wall moved toward the electronic intelligence consoles at the back of the room, away from the seaman on duty. He gestured toward one seat and took another.

When Thomas had sat, he said, in a lower voice, "I'll be honest, Becket. McIntyre was a bit of a puzzle. When he was assigned to this post, he had an excellent service record, commendations, and glowing fitness reports."

I know, Thomas thought!

"In the three months he was here, something happened. I don't know if it's the extra edge I demand of my personnel or if he had some sort of problem in his shore life that started affecting his behavior, but he started going downhill fast. There were several fights. One count of drunk and disorderly on duty. His execution of his duties became increasingly sloppy." Wall paused and spread his hands. "I'm a stickler for procedure but, frankly, I knew that if I reported him AWOL on top of the other violations he's racked up since he got here, he'd be dishonorably discharged. I was hoping he'd turn up immediately, and I could handle it with a captain's mast instead of turning it over to the JAG."

Thomas nodded. "Ah. And when he didn't show up, you went ahead and reported it."

"I did."

"I'll need to talk to the sailor who saw McIntyre get on the ferry at the Refugee Center."

Wall nodded and said smoothly. "Of course. I'll have to ask Lieutenant Rodgers for the name. He handled the inquiry."

The hair on the back of Thomas's head stood on end. And Lieutenant Rodgers said the XO handled the inquiry. Thomas realized his face was too still and coughed suddenly, covering his mouth. "Excuse me. Touch of bronchitis. I think I'll skip talking to the man for right now."

A loud stutter came from outside, much more distant, and Wall frowned and raised his eyebrows.

He'll know as soon as he has talked to his men, anyway. "That would be a ballistic sample from your helicopter machine gun. Sounds like my men are done.

Thanks for your cooperation."

"The machine gun in the helicopter isn't fifty-caliber."

Thomas smiled. "Well, yes. I know. 7.62 millimeter and it has six barrels, so weneeded ballistic samples from each one. Thanks for your time."

Wall stood with him and followed him to the bridge door but didn't follow him down the stairs. He met Jazz and Ensign Terkel at the gangplank. "All set, gentlemen?"

Jazz looked over his shoulder. The chief petty officer was right behind them, in earshot. "Ensign Terkel would like a word with you, Captain."

"What is it, Bart?" Thomas asked.

"If I could just show you something, sir," said Terkel, moving past Thomas and ostensibly closer to one of the deck lights.

As Thomas followed, he saw the Sycorax's chief start to move with them, but Jazz stepped in front of him, blocking him, and asking, "Perhaps you could tell me about Machinist Mate McIntyre, Chief?"

Thomas smiled and moved farther down the deck with Terkel. "Yes, Bart?"

"Sir, I checked the component-level inventory on their M-2 machine guns and the barrels match the inventory."

Thomas felt a stab of disappointment. "Oh."

"But the typeface is wrong." Terkel looked at Thomas as if this meant something.

Thomas shook thoughts of Wall out of his head and concentrated. "I'm not sure I know what you mean."

"Well, I've been crawling all over these M-2 machine guns for three days now and all the serial and part numbers stamped into these pieces use this one font. It's distinctive. The serial number on the Sycorax's number-two machine gun is in a slightly different face, with a serif, and bigger. The color of the metal is slightly off, too."

"What are you saying, Bart?"

"I'm saying they probably took another barrel, welded over the existing serial number, machined it down, and stamped the old serial number there, but they didn't have the manufacturer's number dies."

I'm not terribly surprised. "Did you tell this to Jazz where any of their personnel could hear you?"

"No, sir. I wrote a note under the inventory sheet and showed it to him."

"Very good, Ensign. Let's get off this boat quick."

"Don't you want to pull that barrel for metallurgical testing?"

"Talk later. Quick, march."Jazz, seeing them moving back to the gangplank, broke off his discussion with the chief. They followed Thomas off the ship in silence.

Seaman Guterson was waiting for them with a motor-pool Humvee. He'd arrived five minutes after the chandler's truck, when the cat was out of the bag. Thomas didn't say anything until they were behind the piers on a rim road that ran around the base of the dike.

"I didn't pull the barrel because I don't want them to know we're on to them.

Unfortunately, even if we prove the barrel has been changed, unless we have the barrel that does match our ballistics, it's extremely circumstantial. But most of all, I want them to think we're not really sure about them."

"Them, sir? Do you mean the entire crew-officers and men?"

"That's our initial assumption, gentlemen. With the possible exception of one Calvin McIntyre, may he rest in peace. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope so. It will make our job easier." He paused. "I asked Wall about McIntyre. He gave me a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger story about McIntyre's fitness reports. He said he didn't report the AWOL because he hoped McIntyre would be back in time for them to handle it internally, so it wouldn't get him discharged. But there was one thing he didn't say."

Ensign Terkel was twisted around in the right front seat of the Humvee. "What's that, sir?"

"He didn't ask me why I was asking about McIntyre. We've kept a lid on this.

Nobody but our unit and the old man knows our mystery corpse is McIntyre. So that means Wall knew McIntyre was aboard the Open Lotus when it went down. He knows we're asking because we've found his body."

"Pull the remote log, Bart."

Thomas, Jazz, Ensign Terkel, and Master Chief Bernstein were sitting in an office loaned by BBINS CID. Ensign Terkel was seated at his workstation, tied into the GulfOps administrative server.

"Yes, sir. There."

Every INS vessel over thirty feet burst-broadcast its GPS-determined coordinates along with its most recent log entries every five minutes. The coordinates were sent to determine dispatch priorities-which vessel was closest-for search-and-rescue or interdiction duties. Also, in the event of a disaster-an INS vessel sinking or under attack-response time was not limited by a request for position.

The file on Terkel's computer was ASCII, a series of paired longitude and latitude with a time/date stamp. Interspersed occasionally were log entries like, "Course change for radar bogie 325 deg. at 17.3 naut. miles." A bit later, "RPVlaunched for flyover of Bogie. ID US vessel Ready Wench, San Fran. CA. RPV recalled." Then, "RPV retrieved. Regular patrol resumed. 355 deg. 18 knts."

"Okay," said Thomas. "Give me a map plot of their position coordinates on the night of the twenty-seventh into the morning of the twenty-eighth."

Terkel held his hand before the screen, poised. "Animated or just the range with a course line?"

"No need to get fancy, Bart. Static with time marks."

"Aye, aye, sir." He went through a series of dialog boxes, bracketing the selected times and limiting the map to the western gulf.

The line appeared, starting from the south, about a hundred nautical miles southwest of BBINS, and moving northeast with four or five course changes to investigate radar-acquired subjects. At the assumed time of the attack on Open Lotus, the Sycorax was more than 150 nautical miles away from the wreck site.

Thomas stared at the data, frowning. His stomach rumbled. "Where's dinner?"

"Guterson should be back soon," said Jazz. "The data clears them."

Thomas shook his head. "I'm not so sure. Do the same plot for today, from fifteen hundred on. You can animate it this time."

"Aye, aye, sir."

The blip started 150 miles southwest, in good radar range of the EEZ border; the dot was vaguely hull-shaped, and it moved northeast, slowly, staying the same distance from the edge of the EEZ. At the top of the screen, the clock changed in five-minute increments every five seconds.

"Speed it up, Bart."

"Yes, sir."

Thomas watched Terkel do something to the keyboard, and the five-minute increments started coming every second. The blip stopped moving for a long time, holding station apparently, and then suddenly seemed to vanish. No, there it is. It was ten miles from the Houston dikes and moving through the navigation channel for BBINS. Thomas stared at the time. "Did you speed it up again? No, the time isn't different enough. Take it back slowly."

Terkel moved a pointer on a bar, and the blip moved slowly, backing out of the channel; then, between 2040 and 2035 hours it jumped three inches on the screen out to sea.

"I understand that the Sycorax is a technology test platform, but unless the lab boys have discovered a way to make a fifty-nine-ton vessel move one hundred and twenty-five nautical miles in less than five minutes, then someone is messing with the data."Seaman Guterson came in with several paper bags. The sharp odors of Thai cooking permeated the room.

Jazz turned around and pulled a stack of printouts from the desk behind him. "As you said, they are an advanced technology platform. As a result, their personnel is a little advanced, too." He flipped through the pages. "Yeah. Master Chief Electronics Technician Benjamin Hughes. Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. Double master's degree in computer science and communications technology."

Thomas nodded. "Someone like that would certainly know how to modify the data stream." He reached across the table and snagged a stick of chicken satay from where Seaman Guterson was unpacking the food. "Why isn't Hughes an officer?"

Jazz flipped pages. "Uh, he's applied for OCS three times, but it doesn't say why he didn't get it."

"Where's the peanut sauce?" Thomas asked. "He had a master's degree, yet officer candidate school turned him down three times? I'll bet he failed the psych review. We can't get that from the reviewing psychiatrist, but we might be able to find out from someone on the admissions board."

Jazz made a note.

"Okay," Thomas said. "We're sure about this room, right?"

Master Chief Bernstein nodded. "Yes, sir. Not only did we sweep for bugs, but it was a random assignment-nobody could've known it was going to be this room-they'd just cleared it for a file room, but the cabinets haven't come yet.

We've had it occupied continuously since. It's clean."

Thomas nodded. "Good. I've felt nervous ever since we found out the nature of Sycorax's ELINT suite."

Sycorax's electronic intelligence suite included a continuously updated set of FBI public encryption keys, the facilities for satellite-relayed taps and bugs, and enough computing power to defeat some of the lower-level encryption schemes used internationally. Sycorax was currently testing the suite, but its ultimate mission was gathering intelligence to support the interdiction of illegal drug and alien traffic into the country.

It had put a real damper on his phone call to Patricia.

"How many African Americans aboard Sycorax?"

Jazz shook his head. "None."

"How many Hispanics?"

"None."

"How many Asians?""None."

"And no women? The service is fifteen percent black, twenty percent Hispanic, and eight percent Asian. And nineteen percent female." Thomas shook his head.

"There are probably other boats with monochrome crews, but it's suspicious. It couldn't possibly have been like that to start."

Jazz looked angry. "They probably treated them like Calvin McIntyre-made their lives a living hell, then gave them the chance to transfer out." He looked out the window. "It's been done in other units."

Personal experience, Jazz? "Well, they're not infallible. Tonight was a definite screwup. They were probably trying to avoid us-that's why they had the reported position out there, but the artifact is there, a clearly impossible blip."

Terkel was fumbling with his chopsticks, trying to break them apart, when they snapped at the wrong place. "Anybody got a fork?"

Seaman Guterson silently handed him a plastic fork.

"Thanks. If you look at the data, sir, you'll see they sent this one continuous position for as long as it took them to get inshore. Given currents and wind drift, it should've changed some, even if they were anchored. Maybe it was a malfunction.