Scorpion in the Sea

TWO

Maryann Winters was fuming. Her boss, Harry Johnson, had groped her again, and she was getting sick and tired of it. It had been the usual scene — she standing over the optics of the analyzer table, which unfortunately pointed her curvaceous bottom at whomever might come into the lab, and Harry ambling over, ostensibly to see what she was working on. Maryann was twenty-six, single, and shapely, and Harry always managed to stand close enough to brush her backside with his right hand when she was running the photo analyzer. He had this really terrific technique: bend over with her, let his hand wander, and breathe heavily near her left ear. Unfortunately, he was a smoker, and his breath stank of stale cigarette smoke. He undoubtedly thought that he was being Mr. Cool. Maryann was ready to file a sexual harassment grievance against him with the Civil Service Board.

Rhonda from the adjoining central files office had suggested that she try stepping back on his instep with her high heels, which was how Rhonda had cured Harry when he played touchy-feely with her. Maryann, however, was determined to inflict some real retaliation through civil service channels, if she could only find a way to prove it. Her boyfriend, who worked for the Naval Investigative Service, had suggested putting some purple hands powder on the back of her skirt. This, he explained, was the invisible stuff they used to sprinkle bait, such as a wallet, for thieves. A thief would handle the wallet, and after a day or so his hands would turn purple, exposing him. Maryann was thinking seriously about trying it.

She bent down to look once more into the analyzer optics. The picture was from one of the new RQ-9X birds, and it was a sweep of the southern Mediterranean littoral. She loved doing the satellite imagery. This satellite swept across all the countries of northern Africa before moving up across the middle and eastern portions of the Soviet Union, the principal target. The Mediterranean pass was targeted to update North African naval and air orders of battle, but since Maryann worked in the naval section, she performed analysis only on the harbors and bases. She scrolled the image from left to right, duplicating the satellite’s pass across its terrestrial footprint. She consulted her list of target installations, and then moved the crosshairs to stop at Ras Hilal, right on the coast, and initiated magnification. Counting carefully, she recorded the medium and small patrol boats, and noted that the six Foxtrot class submarines were still in place. Stepping away from the optics, she punched in a code on a computer terminal, and hit Enter. She bent back down to the eyepiece. In view now was the same pass, at the same coordinates, taken one month ago and superimposed on the current one, a standard photointerpretation technique used to detect changes. She did the count again, finding one more patrol boat in the current frame. She entered that change into the computer, thereby automatically updating the appropriate naval order of battle file.

Harry Johnson came back into the analysis room, and Maryann turned her head to see who it was, almost defensively, but his hands were full of files this time. He nodded to her, smiling as if they shared some intimate secret, and left through the side office door. Just you wait, jerk, she thought. She went back to the analysis. Entering three more codes, she turned on the infra-red display, which depicted the targets in black-white contrast as a function of heat differentials. The satellite was a fancy bird: it shot visuals and infrared at the same time. She looked back into the optics, and found something unusual. Two submarines tied up across from one another at one pier were different. One showed the normal calico tones of hot and cool patterns distributed over the length of the hull. The other showed completely homogeneous heat, from one end to the other, as if the sub had been put in an oven and brought up to one uniform temperature.

That’s weird, she thought. She called up the previous month’s image, and found that both subs moored to that pier had similar calico hot and cold patterns. OK, so we’ve got a change, but what’s it mean, she wondered. She knew, and suddenly dreaded, the next step. She was supposed to tell Harry. She thought about it for a moment. If she called Harry now, after he caressed her bottom this morning, he would think she was interested, which was the last thing she wanted to have happen. Old zoo dirt breath getting encouraged.

She thought about it. So the heat patterns are different. Ragheads probably painted the damn thing the day the pass was made. Who could tell what the crazy ragheads would do. If it showed up again on the next downlink she’d mention it to Bob Voss, the other naval imagery analyst. He could tell Harry. She looked at her watch. It was almost lunchtime; she could do Egypt before lunch. She called up the next set of images; she loved to see the pyramids on the stereo scope.