a fangs-out operation now and a common enemy. Putting a few more cards on the table might be in order. As team leader I'll leave that to your good judgment. You're carrying the ball."
"Thank you, sir. Is there anything else?"
"Not at this time, Jon; we will keep you advised. Good luck."
The sat phone link broke.
Smith dropped the phone back into its cradle and frowned. Accepted as a given, the United States and the Russian Federation did have a common enemy in this affair. But did that necessarily make them friends?
"Okay, Chief, I'm out of your hair for a while," Smith said as he left the radio shack.
"Not a problem, sir," the radioman of the watch replied tolerantly. The Old Man had already passed the quiet word. The Army guy and his people were to be considered VIP-plus, and don't even think about asking questions.
Smith descended one deck level into officers' country and headed aft down a gray-painted passageway. It had been a number of years since he'd last experienced the vibrant undertone of a living ship at sea, the whirr of air through ductwork, the throb of engines, and the repetitive creak of the hull working with the waves. Not since the tour he'd spent cross-attached to the Navy aboard the hospital ship Mercy. The cruise where Randi's fiance...
He jerked his mind away from the thought. The past was dead, and there was no time for resurrections. He and his team were operating.
Smith ducked through a curtained doorway into the Haley's wardroom, a small living space with scarred artificial wood paneling on the bulkheads and a collection of battered steel-tube-and-leather furnishings. Randi sat half curled on one of the settees, her feet tucked under her.
"Good evening, Colonel," she said, glancing up from a paperback Danielle Steel, reminding him there was an individual present who wasn't supposed to know they were on a first-name basis.
The cabin's two other current occupants were seated at the big central mess table: Valentina Metrace and a middle-aged man in a wooly-pully sweater and heavy-duty cargo pants, a scattering of files open before them.
The man's rounded shoulders rendered him squat rather than stocky, and the thin frosting of graying hair over his skull was countered by a precisely trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. An expression of instinctive petulance had been ingrained on his features, and a look of automatic disapproval in his eyes, and he wore his outdoorsman's gear as though it were a poorly fitted costume.
"Colonel Smith, I don't think you've had a chance to meet my fellow academic yet, Dr. Rosen Trowbridge. Dr. Trowbridge, this is our team leader, Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith." A studied sweetness in Professor Metrace's voice spoke beyond her words.
Smith nodded pleasantly. He'd caught and registered the vibrations radiating from the man as well. "Good evening, Doctor. I haven't had a chance to apologize yet for the sudden change of our sailing schedule. I hope it didn't inconvenience you too badly."
"In fact it did, Colonel." Trowbridge spoke Smith's rank with a hint of distaste. "And, speaking frankly, I don't appreciate your not consulting me about it. The Wednesday Island expedition has been a meticulously planned research project, and so far it has been a success for the involved universities. We don't need any complications at this late date."
Smith called up and applied an appropriate sympathetic smile. "I understand fully, Professor. I've been involved in a number of research projects myself."
Enough of them to recognize you, my friend, Smith continued silently behind his smile. What you really mean is that your people in the field did good research while you sat in your cozy office signing off the documentation and absorbing credit by bureaucratic osmosis. Now you're probably scared to death that someone is going to upset the applecart before you can finagle your name onto the final paper.
"You're right, Doctor." Smith settled into a chair across from Metrace and Trowbridge. "I should have, but it was a matter of expediency. There are certain concerns about the weather conditions we might encounter around Wednesday Island. With the winter closing in, it seemed to me the faster we get to the island the better. By gaining a little more time on station with an early sailing, I felt my team's investigation of the crash site would be less likely to interfere with the extraction of your people and their equipment."
"Well, that does make a degree of sense, Colonel," Trowbridge replied, not happy at being mollified. "But still, the way this was done left a