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“She is a lot farther south than the other ships, but the solar activity has backed off considerably We should be getting a signal Have you received any radio calls?”

“They’re on a ‘run silent’ protocol,” the specialist reminded her

“Who’s on board?”

“Austin and Zavala”

Ms Conry sighed “Those two are bad enough about reporting in to begin with Who put the run silent order on?”

“Came from Dirk Pitt himself”

The vast majority of NUMA’s ent off without any type of conflict, at least nothing greater than the usual bureaucratic riginning, the organization had been willing to tangle with those ere up to no good in one way or another If a “no contact,” “run silent,” or “monitor and track only” order was in place, it usually nment was in the works That ship or teaht risk alerting other parties to its presence

Satellite coave them a way around that The bursts could be coded and then sent and received without giving a ship’s position away like radio broadcasts could if they were intercepted But if the satellites were being interfered with by a solar storm, it left the distant ships, and the supervisors ere supposed to keep track of them, in the dark

“Anything unusual in their last transmission?”

The specialist shook his head “All data was norn of trouble Nor has Orion’s eency beacon been activated”

The eo off when a ship sank even if there was no one around to activate them But Bernadette Conry recalled at least one instance of a ship going down so fast that the beacon never had a chance to send out a e

“What’s the weather report?”

“Nothing to write home about,” he said “Westerly swell, five to six feet Moderate-sized stor about five hundred miles from their last-known position”

Not bad weather at all, she thought And it was Austin and Zavala “Keep an eye out for any change,” she said “I’ to let the Director knoe’ve lost their telemetry”

Dirk Pitt nodded at the report He had a sense that so was reinforced by the next call, which caer