Aboard Al Calipha, South of Angaur, Palau Islands
The captain sent a plume of fragrant pipe smoke into the breeze blowing across the bridge wing and scanned the easterly skies with his binoculars. There was nothing immediately visible beyond a scudding cumulus cloud bank in the direction of Angaur but the search radar indicated an aircraft was approaching from that direction at an altitude of between eighteen and twenty thousand feet on a bearing that would intercept the yacht’s current course. That wasn’t particularly unusual. The yacht’s expensive air-sweep radar had regularly picked up commercial airline traffic in this area, headed one way or another between various population centers.
What had the captain concerned was the altitude of this contact. It was too low for an internationa
