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Adam had his own concerns about this lost submarine. “Is there any way to estimate its age?” he asked Phoebe.
“Not with sonar alone. Not at these depths. We’d need eyes on it to say with any certainty when it sank.”
“Then that’s what we’re going to do,” Byrd said. “I have a submersible that can reach depths of—”
A loud klaxon cut him off, rising from a computer across the lab.
“It’s another quake,” Adam said, straightening with concern. Thatworkstation’s alarm only sounded when there was a seismic event greater than 7.0 on the Richter scale.
Another of the geologists rushed to the computer. He studied its screen, then called over. “An eight point two!”
Adam winced and shouted back. “Where?”
“South China Sea! Near the Manila Trench. Not far from the one reported forty-five minutes ago. Only this one’s much stronger.”
“So it can’t be an aftershock,” Haru said.
Adam nodded. “The first one—as bad as it was—must have been aforeshock, a precursor to this one.”
“Or this could be another foreshock, too,” Haru warned dourly. “With worse yet to come.”
Adam turned to the neighboring monitor, which still glowed with the maps he had devised. He stared at the large arrows pointed straight at the South China Sea. A second window displayed the hundreds of volcanos throughout the region.
“I fear this is just the beginning,” Haru said.
From the cold certainty in his uncle’s voice, they could all guess what was left unspoken, what Haru feared stating aloud.
It could be the beginning of the end.
6
January 23, 12:22A.M.HKT
Deep Water Bay, Hong Kong
Gray kept a vigil at the end of the pier with the other men. Across the breadth of Deep Water Bay, dozens of boats were moored throughout a buoy field belonging to the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. The vessels ranged in sizes from small sailboats to midsized cabin cruisers to a hundred-foot superyacht. The clubhouse itself was on its own island out in the bay, but it required a ferry to reach it, and it was not operating due to the quake.
Instead, a lone Zodiac sped across the flat midnight waters, heading away from the bayside pier where Gray and the others waited. The pontoon boat was piloted by Zhuang and carried Seichan, Kat, Guan-yin, and the three children. The Zodiac aimed for a forty-foot catamaran—a Leopard Powercat—moored far out in the bay.
Gray hated to be separated from the others, but the small skiff could not hold any more people. Once the women and children were offloaded onto the catamaran, Zhuang would return for the men.
Monk shifted closer to Gray, glancing back toward shore, plainly still worried. “If Seichan is correct about Valya leading the attack, why ambush us here? And why now after so long?”
Gray took a deep breath of the salty air, trying to shed the anxiety that kept his muscles taut. He tugged the windbreaker tighter across his shoulders. After Gray had reached Deep Water Bay, Kowalski had arrived shortly thereafter with a pair of triad members who had secured a change of clothes for all of them: hooded sweatshirts, loose pants, light Gore-Tex jackets, and boots of various sizes.
“I don’t know,” Gray answered, having wondered the same thing about Valya.
Monk scowled, his voice growing heated. “Of course, it was too much to hope that she had died. Still, maybe now I’ll get a chance to pay her back for what she did to Kat and the girls.”
Two years before, Valya had led an attack on Gray’s house. She had kidnapped Seichan and Monk’s two girls, while also shooting Kat. Monk’s wife had barely survived the encounter. Earlier, when Kat had heard about the Russian assassin’s reappearance, she had looked ready to return to the Peak and exact her own revenge—not for herself, but for her girls, whom Valya had put in danger both in the past and now.
Kowalski grunted his own assessment, fingering the taped cut over his cheek. “Someone needs to put that bitch in the ground once and for all.”
Bolin Chén winced, searching around. The fourteen-year-old wore a dark blue hoodie and a ballcap. He was far too young to be here, but he kept his place next to a fully vetted member of theDuàn zhi, a steely-eyed triad deputy named Yeung. The latter was a tattooed wall of muscle, a tank on two legs.
The pair had hauled in a load of scrubbed weapons. Gray had nabbed a SIG P229, now holstered under the flap of his jacket. Monk had grabbed a Glock G45, fitted with a thirty-three-round magazine. Kowalski had claimed a snub-nosed Israeli Tavor X95 bullpup. The large man didn’t even try hiding the assault rifle. It was slung across his massive chest.
Monk frowned at the bay. “For Valya to show up now, she’s gotta be here for a reason. Especially after playing dead for two years.”
