From the brief glimpse he'd had of the lagoon through the channel hours earlier when the Periwinkle had passed the entrance, he estimated that it stretched in a straight line approximately a third of a mile from the sea. Feeling the impetus of the waves slacken until they were little more than two feet high, he alerted Giordino to hang on as he engaged the thruster again.

In less than fifteen minutes, the stars above opened and spread across the sky as they passed under the high cliffs into the open lagoon. Pitt angled the thruster off to the side of the beach and kept the power on until he could feel sand beneath his feet. Only then did he shut it down.

There was no indication of inhabited structures on the beach, but the lagoon was far from deserted. Two vessels lay moored side by side in the middle of the lagoon. Their shapes and outlines were indistinguishable in the dark. As Pitt suspected, they were made even more formless by camouflage netting that was draped over both ships. But for a few dim lights emitting from their ports, they were unrecognizable. Without a closer look, it was impossible to identify the Deep Encounter in the black night.

"Take off your face mask," Pitt whispered to Giordino. "The lights might reflect off our lenses."

Leaving the thruster on the beach, they swam toward the larger of the two ships. She was anchored with her bow facing into the channel. The vessel had a graceful raked bow, the same as the research vessel, but they had to be positive. Without the slightest hesitation, Pitt pulled off his fins, handed them to Giordino and began climbing the anchor chain. It was damp but reasonably free of rust and slime. He pulled himself up until he was even with the hawse pipe and hung there for a full minute.

From the light from an open port, he could just barely make out the name on the welded letters on the bow.

They read, Deep Encounter.

The hawse pipe was a good ten feet below the top edge of the bow gunnels. Without a rope and a grappling hook, there was no way Pitt and Giordino could climb onto the foredeck. The rest of the hull held out little hope of boarding either. No protrusions beckoned as a means of climbing on board. Pitt cursed his lack of planning for such an elementary contingency.

He lowered himself back down the anchor chain. "She's Deep Encounter," he informed Giordino quietly.

Giordino gazed upward, and his expression in the dim light was one of puzzlement. "How do we get aboard without a gangplank or a ladder?"

"We don't."

"Naturally, you have an alternate plan," he said mechanically.

"Of course."

"Give me the bad news."

Pitt's slight grin was lost in the darkness. "The hijacker's ship is smaller. We can probably go over the stern, then work our way on board Deep Encounter."