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Paul took the cup with a disappointed look on his face.
“It’s good for you,” Gamay said.
He nodded. “How do things look up top?”
“No one on deck,” she told him. “Too cold and miserable to be outside.”
“That’s one thing in our favor,” Paul said. “We’re only a few miles from the target zone, closer than I thought we’d be. We should probably wake up the Remora and make sure all systems are go.”
“I’ll get to it.”
Gamay settled in and turned on her laptop while Paul opened the cabin’s window. Brisk air poured in, freshening the room.
“Who needs coffee when you have salt air?” Gamay said.
“Me, for one,” Paul said. Standing beside the window, he removed a tightly wound bundle of cable from their luggage. With a twist of his hand, he attached a waterproof transmitter to the end and began feeding the cable through the open window. It slid down the side of the ship, drifting back with the wind until it eventually reached the sea.
“Transmitter is in the water,” Paul said. “Let’s hope no one looks out the window and wonders what this black wire is doing on the outside of the ship.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Gamay said. “As far as I can tell, every passenger on this ship has congregated in the hall. I’m ready to transmit.”
“All clear.”
She tapped away at the keyboard and sent a signal to the Remora, commanding it to power up. After a short delay, she was rewarded with a signal from the ROV and the appearance of a remote command screen on her computer. It looked like a video game display, with virtual controls and dials acros
s the bottom and a forward-looking camera view across the top. A bank of indicators on the right side of the screen displayed readings from the magnetometer and other sensors.
“All systems green,” she said. “Disconnecting from the hull.”
At the touch of a button, the electromagnets in the Remora’s hull shut off and the ROV pitched down, diving to the right and away from the ferry’s spinning propellers. Turbulent water could be seen on the screen until the Remora cleared the ship’s wake.
“What’s the new course?” Gamay asked.
“The target area is almost directly south of us,” Paul said, glancing at his chart. “Set a heading of one-nine-zero.”
Gamay punched in the course, adjusted the dive angle and let the Remora do the rest. They were three miles from the target zone; it would take nearly twenty minutes to get there. “Better hope the batteries are charged.”
Paul grinned. “First thing I checked when we picked it up at the airport.”
With little to do as the submarine moved through the dark, Gamay began flicking through the instrument readings. Almost immediately, she noticed something odd.
“Check this out,” she said.
Paul leaned closer. “What am I looking at?”
“Based on the speed setting, the Remora is traveling through the water at eleven knots. But its position marker is barely making seven. We’re fighting a current.”
“Shouldn’t be,” Paul said, looking at his charts. “Considering our location and the time of year, the current should be in our favor, giving the Remora a push to the south.”
“Maybe so,” she said. “But we’ve got the nautical equivalent of a four-knot headwind.”
“That might explain why we’ve been traveling north of the shipping lane for the last four hours instead of on the south side. Anything on the bottom profile yet?”
Gamay pressed another key. A graphic display of the seafloor beneath the Remora appeared. “Flat as a pancake.”
“So much for my mountain range theory.”
“We’re still a few miles from the target zone.”
