“I thought we were going to have to sedate Rudi,” Yaeger said. “Your leg okay, Summer?”

“Just fine. I think the coach seat from Johannesburg was more painful than the bends.” She eyed a collection of dirty coffee cups on the table before breaking the mood. “What’s the latest on Dad and Al?”

Both men turned grim. “Unfortunately, there’s not much to report,” Gunn said. He described Pitt’s mission of protecting the ore carrier, while Yaeger dialed up a map of the eastern Pacific.

“They boarded the Adelaide about a thousand miles southeast of Hawaii,” Yaeger said. “A Navy frigate on exercise out of San Diego was scheduled to meet them when they neared the coast and escort them to Long Beach. The Adelaide never appeared.”

“Any sign of debris?” Dirk asked.

“No,” Gunn said. “We’ve had search-and-rescue craft from Hawaii and the mainland overflying the area for days. The Navy has dispatched two vessels to the scene, and the Air Force has even sent in some long-range reconnaissance drones. They’ve all come up empty.”

Dirk noted a white horizontal line beginning at the left edge of the screen that ended when it intersected a red line from Hawaii. “Is that the Adelaide’s track?”

“Her AIS beacon provided her track to that point shortly after your dad and the SWAT team went aboard,” Yaeger said. “After that, the AIS signal went dead.”

“So she sank?” Summer asked, her voice breaking.

“Not necessarily,” Gunn said. “She could have simply disengaged the tracking system, which would be an obvious move after a hijacking.”

“We’ve drawn a couple of big circles around her last reported position to see where she could have gone.” Yaeger replaced the ocean map with a split screen of two satellite ocean photos. At the bottom was overlaid a stock photo of a large green bulk carrier labeled Adelaide. “We’re looking at coastal satellite photos to see if she might have popped up somewhere.”

“Hiram has accessed every public and not-so-public source of satellite reconnaissance. Unfortunately, the point of disappearance is smack in the middle of a large dead zone in satellite coverage, so we’re jumping to the coastlines.”

“North, South, and Central America, for starters.” Yaeger stifled a yawn. “Should keep us busy till Christmas.”

“How can we help?” Summer asked.

“We’ve got satellite images for most of the major West Coast ports from the past four days. I’ll divvy them up and see if anyone can spot a ship resembling the Adelaide.”

Yaeger set up two laptops and downloaded the images. Everyone went to work, scouring the photos for a large green cargo ship. They worked all through the day, studying image after image, until their eyes burned. Yet hopes were raised as they pegged eleven ships from the sometimes fuzzy and obscured photos that appeared to fit the Adelaide’s profile.