Kat nodded. “And you sent him out to be your eyes and ears in the area?”

  “We did, especially as he had a personal connection. An uncle—a volcanologist who had been already working at the Titan Project nearly from the start.”

  “And what has your agent heard?” Gray asked.

  “He didn’t just hear. While investigating an unusual swarm of quakes along the Tonga Trench, he and the geology team discovered a wrecked sub, in waters ten thousand meters deep.”

  Monk whistled. “At those depths, the story of any survivors seems even more unlikely.”

  Kat reached to her husband’s shoulder. “Not necessarily. They could have escaped before the boat hit bottom.”

  Gray had never stopped frowning. “But I don’t understand. All of this seems like a matter for our respective militaries. What can TaU or Sigma hope to accomplish? And more importantly—” He stared hard at Painter. “How does any of this explain the attack on us in Hong Kong?”

  “I’ll let Director Higashi answer that,” Painter said.

  She nodded. “Before the sub was discovered a few hours ago, our agent had reported a possible regional threat last week, one posited by his uncle. He believes the swarm of seaquakes that drew them to the sub could be the source for the escalating number of tectonic events throughout the region. Let me share their research data.”

  Aiko ran through a series of maps, showing the maze of fault lines and deep-sea trenches throughout the South Pacific, followed by the epicenters of quakes, then a chart dotted with hundreds of volcanos.

  “Our agent and his uncle,” Aiko continued, “believe whatever is happening in the Tonga Trench—something possibly connected to the sunken sub—could threaten all of Southeast Asia, destabilizing the region’s fault lines and volcanic arcs, leading to a catastrophe beyond measure.”

  Gray sank back in his seat. “How certain is your agent’s data and extrapolation?”

  “We’ve consulted with a dozen other seismologists. Ten of them concur. Two do not.” Aiko stared straight out at them. “It’s why—a few days ago—when I had heard of your group’s arrival in Hong Kong, I had thought perhaps you were already made aware of the threat and had come to investigate. I made some discreet inquiries.”

  “Inquiries that reached the wrong ears,” Painter added. “Especially as Chinese intelligence surely already had you on their radar. They must have believed you posed some threat to their own efforts to recover the sub.”

  Gray sighed. “So, the Chinese outsourced our assassination, hiring mercenaries.”

  “To mask the Chinese government’s own involvement,” Kat added. “To give them plausible deniability for our deaths.”

  Gray rubbed his forehead. “And, of course, if Valya’s outfit heard about it, how could she refuse to take it up? It offered her the perfect chance to carry out her long-festering vendetta—and get paid to do it.”

  “What do we do now?” Kat asked.

  Painter sat straighter. “First, we need to get your children out of harm’s way. That’s already being arranged. Kat, I’d like you to accompany them and join me back in D.C. We’re heading into deep water—both literally and figuratively—and I could use your intelligence expertise in coordinating TaU and Sigma’s efforts. Plus, with the threat of something catastrophic happening in such a politically volatile area, it’s going to take someone with your experience and contacts to keep this from escalating into a global war.”

  Kat nodded. “Of course.”

  “Monk, you’re to take Kowalski and head out to Titan Station and join Director Higashi’s agent. He is heading out on an exploratory trip to that area in the morning. I want you both there. Something strange is going on in that trench, and we need to know what it is before it’s too late.”

  “What about me?” Gray asked.

  “I’ll let Director Higashi explain. It might be a wild goose chase, but if not, I want you involved. Seichan, too, if she’s willing.”

  “Involved with what?” Gray asked.

  Aiko answered. “Six hours ago, word reached us of another avenue of pursuit by the Chinese, from an operative with Cambodia’s General Directorate of Intelligence.”

  Kat’s brow wrinkled. “Cambodia?”

  Aiko explained. “The search for the lost submarine is being orchestrated out of Beijing, but from the start, there has been a flurry of communiqués with a Chinese installation at the Réam Naval Base in Cambodia. Despite denials by both Phnom Penh and Beijing, it’s a poorly kept secret that China constructed a secret military research installation there, a strategically significant site in the Indo-Pacific region. The scientists at the site are said to be testing new weaponry and equipment.”

  “And your Cambodian contact?” Gray asked. “What has he told you?”

  “It was from him that we learned about the supposed recovery of a handful of submariners. But then, a short time ago, he also reported that a strike team had been dispatched to Singapore to secure something from a museum there.”

  Gray scowled at the unusual tack of this conversation. “From a museum?”

  “On the campus of the National University of Singapore. The Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum.”

  “What could they want from there?” Gray asked.

  Aiko shrugged. “We don’t know.”

  Painter lifted a brow. “That’s what we want you and Seichan to find out. And if possible, to secure it instead.”

  Monk did not look happy with their assignments. “I’m off to the high seas with someone who likes to blow stuff up. And you two get to go on a museum heist.”

  Gray glanced to Seichan, who hadn’t spoken a word. She stood with her arms crossed. From the hard set of her lips, she was still furious at the attack. From the pinch in her brow, she was already calculating, weighing the odds. If the Chinese had dispatched a team to Singapore, there was no doubt who Seichan hoped to find there.

  She finally uncrossed her arms and gave Painter her answer.

  “Sounds like fun.”

  8

  January 23, 5:02 A.M. ICT

  Phsar Réam, Cambodia

  Captain Tse Daiyu climbed from the backseat of the black Xpeng G9 SUV, while her driver idled the vehicle. Its electric motor was as darkly silent as her mood. The sun had yet to rise over the Gulf of Thailand, which bordered the Réam Naval Base. The morning was still warm and humid after a sweltering night.

  She took off her glasses and used a handkerchief to wipe the fog that had immediately steamed her lenses after she had exited the air-conditioned interior. She dabbed the same dampness from her brow. She hated the heat. She had grown up in the city of Mohe, in the northern province of Heilongjiang, where the aurora borealis would often shine and the weather was cold and dry year-round.

  Not like this infernal sweatbox.

  She headed across the parking lot. Men and women—a mix of enlisted and officers—bustled throughout the fortified corner of the Cambodian base. They all wore blue fatigues in oceanic camouflage, which showed only a few insignias, in an attempt to keep their ranks hidden. It was a cynical ploy to mask the depth of PLA involvement on Cambodian soil. Not that anyone was fooled. The role-playing was more for the benefit of the Cambodian government than any real worry from Beijing.

  As the commanding officer of the base, Daiyu refused to participate in this game. She wore crisp gray pants and a white, open-necked coat with hard epaulets and bar insignia of her rank. She carried her hat under one arm. Her hair was neatly trimmed to her collar. Her only concession to vanity was the dye that masked the few strands of gray.

  At forty-eight, she was only the second female in the PLA Navy to reach the level of captain, and she did not intend to stop here. She aspired for an admiralcy.

  As the only child of factory workers, she carried the burden of her family’s honor. Her parents had wanted a son but had to settle for a daughter, trapped by the “one-child policy” of the time. Still, afterward, her parents had doted on her and loved her, instilling self-confidence, along with pride of country, family, and self—if not necessarily in that order.

  When her mother died twelve years ago, it had been the impetus for her to join the PLA. Her ambitions could not be fulfilled in the civilian sector. By then, she had already made her parents proud. She had graduated from Sun Yat-sen University with a PhD in geosciences, then worked at the Guangdong Southern Marine Science and Engineering Laboratory. There, she worked on deep-sea research projects for the navy. So, her transition into the military had been an easy one. After a post as a navigator aboard an aircraft carrier, she returned to the same lab.

  Since then, for the past decade, she had overseen the advancement of China’s bathyscaphe project. Her crowning achievement, though, had been the completion and testing of an AI-driven ship, the Zhu Hai Yun. The marine research vessel needed no crew. It served as the mothership for a collection of unmanned drones and submersibles, allowing it to operate independently, with minimal human involvement.

  Her goal was to usher the PLA Navy into a new era of oceanic dominance. If she was successful, the rank of admiral would be within her reach. Still, much resided on her new role here in Cambodia. She intended it to be the next jewel in her crown of achievements. She had orchestrated the installation’s construction, both the base shown to the world above and the layers of engineering labs buried and insulated deep underground.

  She crossed toward a steel-roofed warehouse, rising four stories, and looming over the neighboring water. The only sign on it was the number 零八 above the entrance, but it was the most important structure on the base. Two armed guards flanked the door, but neither saluted her, though it clearly strained them not to do so. They were all under orders to adhere to the role-playing while in the open.

  She swiped a keycard and entered the humid warehouse. Immediately, the dank smell of seawater and diesel fuel struck her. The structure contained two floors of offices and open workspaces, all centered around a deep-water bay in the middle. It opened out onto the Gulf of Thailand, but its huge doors were currently closed. A research ship was tethered at the dock, along with a prototype submersible that floated next to it.

  Daiyu’s office was on the second level. Though she had a long day ahead of her—and an important one—she aimed instead for an elevator near the warehouse entrance. She wanted to see if any progress had been made while she had been gone the past two days.

  Another swipe of her card opened the elevator doors. She entered and tapped the bottommost button, glowing with the number 五, marking the fifth subbasement of the installation.

  The doors slid closed, and the cage dropped thirty meters into the subterranean concrete bunker. It lay mostly under the neighboring parking lot. The cage bumped to a stop and the doors whisked open with a slight hiss of pressurized air. She entered a long gray hallway, with sealed airlocks opening into various labs.

  She crossed along it, glancing into the first room. Past the windows of its airlock, she spotted the three naked bodies on steel gurneys. Their corpses were blackened as if charred by a fire, each contorted in shapes of agony. She had once visited the ruins of Pompeii and had seen the chalk-plaster casts of ash-covered victims from Mount Vesuvius’s eruption. The trio inside the morgue looked much the same.

  Only these are not plaster casts.

  The three crewmen had been recovered from an escape chamber jettisoned out of the missing Chinese submarine, the Changzheng 24. It had taken the PLA Navy three days to hunt down the small pod bobbing in the South Pacific. A fierce storm had challenged their efforts, driving the chamber far from where it had been dispatched. The beacon, damaged during its ascent, had also fluttered on and off, further confounding the recovery. When the pod was finally discovered, it was found to be half-submerged, flooded by a pressure crack through one side, bodies floating inside.

  With a shudder, Daiyu continued past the door and entered the next airlock. She savored the cool blast of recycled air, then entered the biolab. It had been hastily outfitted ten days before, after the discovery of the strange state of the bodies. To study them, she had brought in microscopes and centrifuges, along with an ultra-low temperature freezer and a CO2 incubator. She had also commissioned a next-gen sequencer and a PCR system for genetic assays. Additionally, at the request of the lead researcher, an electron microscope and an X-ray diffraction system had been installed in an upstairs lab.

  After all the expense and effort, she wanted answers.

  She headed to the man who was expected to have them.

  Dr. Luo Heng bowed at her arrival. He was a brilliant bioengineer and physician from the University of Shanghai. At only thirty-two, he had garnered a slew of accolades for his research and was the current director of CSCB, the Chinese Society of Cell Biology.

  When Heng faced her, she noted the obstinate hardness to his eyes. He had not wanted to come here. At first, he had foolishly believed he had a choice.

  The man had grown up in Hong Kong. He was a child when the region was handed back over to China. Yet, he carried himself—all six feet of him—as if he remained caught between two worlds: between East and West, between civilian life and military authority. A stubborn and belligerent streak persisted in him, one she had already butted against since his arrival.

  Around the lab, four others worked at various stations, looking as if they were trying to avoid her gaze. Two had been handpicked by Heng. Daiyu had selected the other pair, a lieutenant and sublieutenant, to assist the doctor and watch over his efforts.

  But, ultimately, the responsibility for any progress lay with Heng.

  She crossed to the bioengineer. “How is our patient?”

  “Come see for yourself, Captain Tse.” Heng led her to a window that looked out into the next room. “I don’t think he’ll last the day.”

  Daiyu stared at the figure propped up in a hospital bed in the sealed room beyond. A lone nurse decked in a white biohazard suit checked a morphine drip that ran into his arm, the only limb still unafflicted. Tubes passed through his lips and nose, connected to a respirator that rhythmically rose and fell.

  The submariner was a petty officer second class with the Changzheng 24. He was the only survivor found in the escape pod when it had been recovered ten days before. But he had not escaped unscathed. His legs were afflicted—hardened, blackened as the corpses. It was as if his lower half had been dipped in oil. Pain and delirium had kept him from answering any questions or explaining his condition.

  Over the past days, the affliction had spread and climbed his body. It now covered half of his chest and left shoulder and had seeped halfway down the same arm. No regimen of drugs or radiation therapy had been able to stem its spread. Only one treatment showed any efficacy. It required lowering the patient’s body temperature in ice baths and acidifying his blood. Still, it only slowed the progress and did not stop it.

  “We’ve had to resuscitate him twice overnight,” Heng reported with a lilt of fury. “He won’t last much longer, not even with the heroic efforts we’ve employed.”

  Daiyu read sympathetic pain in the doctor’s face. Heng had requested that she let the man die three days ago, but she had instructed Heng to keep him alive for as long as possible—or at least until they had more answers. At this point, no one knew if his affliction was due to the accidental exposure to an unknown toxin or if it was evidence of the deployment of an exotic bioweapon against the crew. Answers were needed, especially as recovery efforts were about to start on the lost vessel.

  “What progress have you made while I’ve been gone?” Daiyu pressed him.

  “It’s a mixed bag at best. We’ve made some headway in terms of what is happening to his body. As to why or how it’s happening, that continues to defy us.”

  “Show me what you’ve learned,” she ordered him.

  He drew her to a computer station. “His body is clearly undergoing a process of biomineralization. Take a look at this centrifuged sample of cerebrospinal fluid.”

  A pair of microscope images appeared on the screen. One showed a close-up of small crystals floating in a diffuse haze.

  “What are they?” she asked.

  “Calcium carbonate crystals.”

  She frowned. “Are those normally found in cerebral spinal fluid?”

  “Definitely not.” Heng glanced at her. “While carbonate naturally makes up about eight percent of our bodies, that’s not where these crystals are coming from.”

  “Then where?”

  “They’re derived from the victim’s bones.”

  “What?”

  “The process seems to dissolve and scavenge the calcium from skeletal bones to produce these crystals—which are then densely deposited into the cell membranes throughout the body. The interior of the cell remains intact, but it makes the outer walls brittle and hard.”

  “Turning the body stone-like.”

  “Exactly. There’s a condition called scleroderma, an autoimmune disease that produces too much fibrous tissue between cells, making the sufferer’s skin and organs turn hard and unpliable. But in this case, it’s not fibrous tissue that’s causing it, but calcium deposits.”

  “And what of the bones themselves?”

  Heng turned to the petty officer in the other room. “We took multiple scans of his legs. Though his limbs are stiff and solid, there are no bones beneath that hard shell. It’s as if the process is terraforming his body, turning his internal skeletal structure into an exoskeleton.”

  Daiyu grimaced. “And you have no idea how this is happening?”

  “All I know is that it’s a brutal process, deriving most of the energy to fuel it from the victim. When Petty Officer Wong arrived here, his body temperature was 107, but as his condition worsened, it rose to 122 degrees. It’s what sent him into a deep coma and maybe why the ice baths helped. Still, whatever is happening seems capable of unleashing the potential energy stored in a body—which is a tremendous amount. Our bodies are very efficient batteries for storing energy. It would take a car battery weighing a full ton to hold the same amount of energy retained in the fat stores of a healthy man.”