As he looked around at the computer monitors glowing with blue light and the blinking faces of the digital readouts, the truth dawned on Mason. He and his men were the only human beings on the great ship.

CALLS WERE COMING in from the other Omega teams. Louis and Carmichael reported that the Ataman II and III were deserted. As he listened to the reports, Mason detected a change in the ship's movement. He was sure of it. The ship had stopped its forward motion. He went over to the big window that overlooked the deck and stared out into the darkness. Something was definitely happening. He couldn't be sure, but the ship seemed to be moving laterally.

“Lieutenant,” one of his men called. “Look at this.” The man was standing in front of a large computer monitor. Pictured on the screen was what looked like an archery target. The image of a ship was slightly off to one side of the bull's-eye. The ship was turning on its axis as it moved closer to the center of the concentric circles. Red lights flashed intermittently on both sides of the ship image. The situation became clear to Mason in an instant. The ship was a drone. The vessel and its sister ships were being controlled from another location.

Mason ordered his 2IC to secure the bridge and called the choppers and told them to land. Then he instructed Joe Baron to assemble with the squad members trained in explosives on the foredeck. He called the other Omega teams and instructed them to proceed to the main objective, the bombs. Mason raced down to the first level and led the way inside the ship, with Baron and the other SEALs pounding down the stairs behind him until they came to the sealed door they had seen on their first exploration.

The lieutenant checked their location against the ship's diagram. They were outside the bomb chamber. Baron got to work right away and taped strips of plastic explosive C-4 onto the door. He inserted the blasting cap into the puttylike material and ran an attached wire around a corner. Mason and the other men cleared out of the area and squatted a safe distance away, with their hands covering their ears. Baron squeezed the M-57 firing device attached to the other end of the wire. A loud, hollow thump echoed through the passageway. They rushed back to the smoking door, now marked by a ragged-edged square hole. Baron, who was as skinny as an eel, easily wriggled through. The others handed their packs to Baron, then squeezed through the opening after him. Flashlight beams stabbed the darkness. Then someone found a wall switch, and the chamber was flooded with light.