Austin knew from experience exactly what the captain was talking about, but they would have to postpone their philosophical discussion to another time. “I wondered if you would mind getting in touch with the oil platform operators,” he said. He told the captain what he and Zavala had in mind.

Lange got on the radio immediately. The rig operators were hesitant to send the helicopter over at first but changed their mind when Lange said the request was coming from the man who had saved the platform and its crew from destruction.

Twenty minutes later, the helicopter lifted off from the rig and flew the short distance to the containership. The chopper touched down on the wide foredeck. Austin and Zavala ran under the still-spinning rotors. The aircraft was airborne a moment later. They had barely adjusted their intercoms when the pilot said, “Where to, gents?”

The hijackers had a big head start, which meant that it was unlikely they would be anywhere near the ship. Austin asked the pilot, whose name was Riley, to head in any direction for five miles, then go into a low-altitude expanding spiral with the ship at its center.

Riley gave him a thumbs-up and flew the helicopter due west at about a hundred miles an hour.

“What are we looking for?” Riley said.

“Anything big enough to hold two choppers,” Austin replied.

Riley gave another thumbs-up. “I got ya.”

Several minutes later he put the helicopter into a banking turn and made the first circle. The fog had cleared and visibility was two to three miles. They saw a handful of fishing boats and big chunks of ice, including one which might have been Moby-Berg. The only large ship was a freighter. Its deck was too small to hold two copters and was obstructed by cranes that would have made takeoff and landing impossible.

Austin asked the pilot to make two more circles. On the second circuit, they saw a big vessel silhouetted against the ocean sheen.

“Ore carrier,” said Zavala from the backseat.

The helicopter dropped to an altitude of a few hundred feet and paced the black-hulled ship. Rectangular hatch covers that covered ore-storage holds were evenly spaced on the long deck between the tall crew house at one end and the high, raised bow at the other.

“What do you think?” Austin asked the pilot.

“Hell. It’d be easy to land a chopper on that deck,” Riley said. “It’s like an aircraft carrier.”

Zavala agreed. “If you wanted to hide something, there’d be plenty of room in those cargo holds.”

“Hafta modify a few things,” Riley said. “No big deal.”

Austin asked the pilot to check out the ship’s name.

The helicopter flew over the ship’s wake, offering a clear view of the big white letters on the transom: SEA KING

The ship was registered in Nicosia, Cyprus. There was a logo of what looked like a bull’s head next to the name.