Undetected Read Free

he wasn’t convinced the new North Korean leader had a rational view of the world around the isolated country. Bishop knew some of the classified captain’s-eyes-only tasking orders were launch package codes for North Korean targets.
    The world might be quiet tonight, but he didn’t make the assumption it was calm. Following the whales for a while sounded like a smart way to stay undetected.

    She needed to get out of Boulder, Colorado. Gina Gray peeled an orange and studied the night sky through the window above the kitchen sink. The conviction had been growing over the course of the last few weeks. She needed to make a major change.
    Breaking up with a guy was always difficult, but this hadn’t been her choice, and she hadn’t seen it coming. It put her in an uncertain mood. And continuing to cross paths with Kevin Taggert at work was too high a price to pay for her peace of mind. It was time to leave.
    She’d put off the decision for weeks, for she enjoyed working at NOAA’s Marine Geology and Geophysics Division. But her task of mapping the seabed of the world’s oceans using satellite data was essentially finished. She’d solved the last technical problem, incorporating the earth’s gravity map with the radar data. The algorithms were finished, and now it was just processing time. A set of detailed seabed maps for the Pacific were complete, and they were beautiful in their exquisite detail. They were already in use by the Navy. The rest of the world’s five oceans would follow as computer-processing time was available, and her colleague Ashley had that task well in hand.
    The maps were a major step forward in knowledge about the oceans. The satellite data significantly improved both accuracy and coverage, so much so that in two years of work she’d managed to render obsolete the accumulated knowledge of decades of previous maps of the ocean floors created by surface ships using side-scan sonar. Her maps were practically works of art. But not many would get to appreciate the full impact of what she’d accomplished. The military was exercising its right to classify the resolution of her maps and would only release a version to the public with a lower level of detail.
    She understood the reason the data would be classified. Telling an enemy—or for that matter, even a curious ally—the depths and locations of the underwater trenches and seamount formations along the Pacific Northwest would give them the ability to hide their own submarines more easily, to watch who entered and exited the Strait of Juan de Fuca, headed for the Naval Base Kitsap at Bremerton or the Naval Submarine Base Bangor. Other naval bases around the world would similarly become more vulnerable. Keeping the higher resolution maps classified would give the U.S. an advantage at sea that was worth protecting.
    Gina accepted the military decision, even though it complicated matters for her personally. Her résumé wouldn’t be able to show the true extent of her work, but those who appreciated what she could do with large data sets would see the notation on the page and know the actual work product was classified. At least this project wasn’t being classified at a level where she couldn’t even reference the work in her résumé—something that had happened with her sonar work.
    But she hadn’t taken this project on for the scientific credit it would give her. She’d taken on the seafloor mapping project to keep submariners—Jeff Gray, her brother, chief among them—safer. An accident like the USS San Francisco , which had hit an underwater formation, killing a crewman and nearly sinking it, wouldn’t happen again. Seamounts everywhere in the world’s five oceans would now be clearly marked on the new navigational charts incorporating her seabed data.
    Her brother was out on the USS Seawolf somewhere in the Pacific tonight and wasn’t due back in