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Page 18
orca. To her it looked like the top few feet of the sail of a submarine. She handed Jake the camera so that he could look through the lens.
He looked and said, "Now, what the hell is a sub doing here, of all places?"
Sean flew with one hand, held the glasses with the other. "I've seen your goddamned navy stooging around up in the Parry Channel and Davis Strait, but never down here. Let's have a closer look." Sean was Canadian and he thought Americans held Canada lightly. He remembered the diplomatic quarrels about violations of Canada's territory in the far north. American naval vessels had made several trips through the Northwest Passage without obtaining permission. The Americans contended that the passage was international waters. The Canadians denied it.
Could the government possibly have given permission for this kind of intrusion, Anna wondered. The Prime Minister and the President were friendly, but any show of American imperialism would make a great deal of trouble in Ottawa.
Sean banked the Cessna steeply and started down. Jake continued to watch the slowly moving sail. A hatch opened and a figure appeared, a man looking up through binoculars at the descending bush plane.
"They've spotted us," he said uneasily. "Don't crowd them."
Anna retrieved the Hasselblad and resumed taking pictures. As she worked the shutter, four heads broke the surface of the water near the submarine. A second man joined the first on the sail.
Sean banked away sharply, reaching for the radio microphone. At the same instant, Anna saw a white flare and a trail of fire.
"My God, they've fired a missile" Jake shouted in a strangled voice.
Sean threw down the microphone and racked the floatplane into a steep dive, away from the rising pencil of hot light. The

 
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