To an outsider, he looked as if he was playing a video game. In truth, he was maneuvering a multimillion-dollar state-of-the-art robot sub, directing it down the length of Toledo’s number-two torpedo tube and out into the icy darkness of the Barents Sea.

The tiny robot responded to Schwartz’s commands as he guided it downward, diving toward the seafloor. When it was a hundred feet above the soft, silty bottom, Sea Scan leveled off and began to move horizontally, starting a planned grid search of the area. Tiny electric motors drove the robot sub forward. Its magnetometers probed the bottom for any hint of metal that might be disturbing the earth’s magnetic field while the side-scan sonar looked for any signs of debris. All of this information was fed back to Schwartz through the hair-thin fiber-optic line that stretched from the back of Sea Scan to where it penetrated the torpedo tube door on Toledo.

It was torturously slow and exacting work. The robot sub could only search a thousand-yard swath at a time and its forward speed was three knots. They were searching for a very small needle in a very large haystack. Schwartz settled back and sipped at his coffee as the Sea Scan did its work. When he thought he saw something, he would replay a piece of data on the video screen for either the magnetometer or the sonar. Every time it proved to be a false alarm, either a lone rock jutting up from the seafloor that attracted the attention of the sonar or a piece of junk metal, likely dumped there from some passing freighter. These waters served as a main supply route to Siberia during the few months when the ice receded, and the sea bottom was well littered.

Hour melded into hour as they searched fruitlessly. Schwartz stood to change the CDs that were recording all the data for later analysis. He stretched his aching muscles and attempted to find a comfortable position on the hard deck. Nothing out there but mud, rock, and junk. The novelty of watching the monitor had long since passed and the curious crew members had wandered off to other duties.

Dan Perkins and Joe Glass had come down to the torpedo room to look over his shoulder, too. They stared at the screen for a bit, feigning interest as they watched the screens display nothing at all. After a couple of hours, Glass, too, wandered off, heading back up to the control room, while Perkins stayed on.

Just when he was on the verge of dozing, Schwartz saw something. His eyes grew wide behind his thick spectacles. It was a blip, starting to develop on the magnetometer. It got stronger as the Sea Scan approached whatever it was. It became steadily more pronounced until the signal was jumping off the screen.

This was no stray refrigerator washed off some Russian icebreaker! This was something big!