‘Is that a shipwreck, Skip?’

‘Yeah. There’re no rocks out here. This section of the banks is nothing but sixty miles of flat silt. It’s just great I find the one shipwreck out here when my net’s down. Just fucking great.’

Ian continued to study the form on the sounder. It was fifty feet long and pretty flat, peaking at one end with a tall spike.

‘That’s a wreck all right, Skip. Reckon maybe that spike there’s a mast or something?’

Jeff looked closely. ‘Maybe.’

Tom pointed at the screen. ‘It doesn’t look like a ship.’

The other two turned to look at him.

‘I said I don’t think it’s a ship.’

‘Well, I don’t care whether it’s a ship, the body of Moby Dick or the lost city of Atlantis, the damn thing’s got my net and it’s going to chew it up pretty good before I get it back.’

Tom’s cheeks continued to burn under their withering gaze. But he knew that wasn’t the profile of a boat. It was obvious if you looked at it right.

‘So,’ said Jeff tiredly, the force of his anger spent leaving him feeling only exhausted resignation, ‘given that this is the seabed we’re looking at, if it’s not a ship, what the hell do you think it is?’

‘It’s a plane,’ said Tom with a voice he’d hoped would sound certain and confident, but in fact came out as little more than a whisper.

Chapter 1

The Assignment

Chris Roland adjusted the arrangement of photographs on the table in the conference room. He had spent last night in his hotel room at the Marriott reviewing the contact sheets and from this he had carefully picked out several dozen of the most striking images. He’d developed and printed them in the en-suite bathroom through the early hours of this morning.