The ship dropped into the following trough, her steep bows cleaving a wedge of seawater at the very bottom before her twin props hauled her to the next crest. Mercer peered through the shimmering water still sliding from the armored glass in the ship’s wardroom. Ira Lasko was at his elbow. As his view cleared, he saw that the sea was calm. The wave had been a rogue. “Where’d that come from?” “Just Mother Nature reminding us not to get too comfortable,” Lasko drawled. “Waves like that are why I went into submarines. Twenty-two years in the Navy and the only times I ever got seasick were on bumboats and sub tenders.” They turned away from the window. Marty Bishop was at one of the Formica tables with Igor Bulgarin and another of his teammates, a German meteorologist named Erwin Puhl. Puhl was in his early forties but looked older because he was so tall and stooped. Little of his hair remained and what fringed his head was gray and poorly washed. He wore thick glasses perched on a large bony nose.
