Gray searched the faces around him. He had a thousand more questions, but a shout in Mandarin rose from the wheelhouse above.

  Xue straightened, listened, then shared the news. “We’re nearing the waters where the Tenebrae sank.”

  Gray looked up. “Then let’s go see if the past can save the present.”

  9:48 A.M.

  As the boat slowed to a trolling pace, Seichan gripped the butt of her holstered Glock. She kept vigil at the stern and appreciated the pistol’s cold steel as she faced the fiery destruction.

  Off to the east, the horizon had been set ablaze, but above it all towered a black peak. Its flanks streamed with rivers of lava. Its caldera gushed with arcs and sprays of molten fire. Those flames lit a black column of smoke. Lightning flashed in a continual corona of energy throughout that ominous cloud.

  She knew that monster’s name.

  Mount Tambora.

  Seichan breathed through the damp cloth over her mouth and lips. Still, she tasted and smelled the fiery brimstone. Her eyes watered from the falling ash. But she had no reason to complain.

  Closer at hand, their boat crept along the coast of West Nusa Tenggara, passing the outlying islands of Panjang and Saringi. Small villages burned along the shoreline. Out on the water, fishing boats had become floating torches, both near the coasts and out to sea.

  There had been no escape for the villagers.

  She spotted no movement along the shores, no shifting shadows limned against the flames. All lay quiet and dead. They were the only ones still moving, a lone sentinel in the dark.

  Is this what the entire region will soon look like?

  She cast her gaze farther out.

  What of the rest of the world?

  Hopelessness weighted her shoulders, dragging her eyes down, too. This close to Tambora, the sea was covered in great rafts of floating pumice. Some rocks were still red and smoldering. They scraped the hull and scratched in a continual chorus.

  The rest of the sea was blanketed by ash. She tried to pierce that veil to the waters under it. As she did, something small poked into view, pushing through the powder from below. They looked like a handful of black sticks. They cut through the ash, rolling and spinning, revealing themselves to be balls of coral, the same as Crawfurd had sketched.

  Brought to her attention now, she spotted dozens of others, all across the sea, cutting briefly into view, then away again. One rattled out of the water, riding atop a pumice raft, trying to beach itself, then tumbled off.

  Seichan returned her attention to the burning skiffs and fishing boats. They were all wooden. Such vessels had no chance of crossing this fiery minefield. She imagined the bodies hidden under the ash or sunk into the depths. An ominous sense of foreboding settled over her.

  We shouldn’t be here.

  A commotion drew her attention from the watery graveyard. Gray led a party from the wheelhouse to the stern deck. He waved to clear a space.

  “We need a good ten feet,” Gray called out.

  Seichan stayed at the stern as others pressed toward her. Her mother spotted her and elbowed over to her side. Zhuang followed. A majority of triad members kept close around them. The Falcon commandos remained on the other side, framing the doorway into the wheelhouse where Captain Wen watched with darkened brows.

  He clearly had little faith in this endeavor. She had caught him grousing earlier to his teammates, forgetting that she was fluent in Mandarin. Or maybe he hadn’t cared who heard him.

  In truth, she shared his pessimism.

  “We had better pray this works,” Guan-yin murmured through the fold of cloth over her face.

  “It won’t,” Seichan said. “We’re chasing ghosts out here.”

  She pictured the sunken wreckage of the Tenebrae somewhere below them.

  Xue and Heng came forward with the steel box and opened it.

  “We should have Kadir wield the bullroarer,” Gray said. “He’s the most familiar with the tool.”

  Xue nodded and offered the open box to the museum director.

  Kadir hesitated—then Tambora boomed with a thunderous blast and a great gout of fire. The director plucked out the bullroarer and unwound its tether.

  He stepped to the center of the deck. “Even if Stamford and Crawfurd were correct in their judgment, we can’t know if a certain pitch or tone needs to be achieved with the bullroarer. Or maybe a code has to be generated by a pattern of cadence.”

  Gray tried to reassure him. “If there was, we have to trust that Stamford would’ve hinted at it in his papers.”

  Xue agreed with a nod. “I noted that there were small holes drilled through the wooden paddle—as if the sacred totem that Crawfurd stole had been specially tuned for this role. I wager the noise we want to achieve will be created when the bullroarer reaches its maximum speed and volume.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Kadir promised.

  By now, he had fully untied the bullroarer. He held the rope’s looped handle and let the paddle hang at his ankles. Everyone pushed a step farther back. Kadir took a deep breath. Xue lifted his phone and recorded the action as the director began a slow spin over his head.

  A low hum rose from the twirling blade.

  “Faster,” Gray urged him.

  Kadir needed no such direction. He clearly had some skill, manipulating his wrist and arm to keep the plane of the paddle’s flight at a perfect angle. The blade grew into a blur. Its noise climbed in volume to that of a giant beehive.

  Still, Kadir increased his pace.

  Everyone looked on with expectation. Even Seichan’s heart beat harder, as if trying to match that tempo.

  Then the bullroarer’s old cord snapped.

  The paddle spun high over the deck.

  They all watched their hopes fly with it.

  Yeung leaped up with a raised arm. He caught the paddle in midair, demonstrating his swift reflexes. Seichan wasn’t sure she could’ve caught it so deftly.

  Yeung landed and lowered his arm. He crossed into the open and held out the wooden piece, offering the prize to Kadir.

  “Thank you,” the director said. “I should’ve thought to replace the old cord.” He turned to Xue. “I can make a new one. But it must be the proper length.”

  This was quickly accomplished. A fishing line was found and threaded through the drilled hole in the paddle. The length was measured, and a looped handle crafted at one end.

  They tried it again. In moments, Kadir had the bullroarer spinning. He flailed his arm, expertly guiding the blade’s flight with his wrist. The tool soon proved its name as the timbre of the paddle rose into a deafening roar.

  The noise cut through Seichan’s ears with its sharper undernotes, while its bass tones could be felt in her chest. It did sound like an angry chainsaw—but was it loud enough?

  Kadir panted, and his brow ran with sweat.

  Gazes shifted from the man’s efforts to the surrounding seas. But there seemed to be no reaction out there. To the east, the fiery monster continued to blaze. Distant booms echoed out of the gloom from other eruptions. A small quake trembled the waters.

  “Nothing’s happening,” Guan-yin moaned.

  Seichan was disappointed but not surprised.

  She stared down as one of those spiky balls rose into view next to the hull. It battered its branches against the boat’s side, but the fiberglass resisted its fiery touch. A few spikes broke off. They looked nearly a match to the coral branch resting inside the museum box.

  Stirred by the flailing ball, the powdery waters opened enough to offer peeks into the sea’s depths. A swirl of lights writhed down there, shimmering in electric blues and fiery crimsons.

  She squinted at it—then a sharp splintering snap made her jump. She twisted around as the roaring had cut off at the same time.

  Kadir cried out. Pieces of wood scattered into the crowd. The largest flew high, passing over their heads and out to sea. It struck one of the pumice rafts, then skidded across the surrounding ash before coming to a stop.

  As they all watched, one of the spiky mines rolled up, brushed against it, and spun back underwater. At its touch, the shard of wood kindled with a puff of smoke, then a moment later, it ignited into flames.

  Kadir sank to his knees. “The paddle must have been too dry or had a hidden crack in it.”

  Heng tried to console him, but his words were not reassuring. “It wasn’t working anyway.”

  Seichan glanced back to the stirring ash, remembering the glimpse of lights. She turned around to say something, to offer a bit of hope—a role that fit her awkwardly.

  A shout silenced her.

  Captain Wen yelled in Mandarin. “Enough of this bullshit. Kill them all!”

  Gunfire erupted.

  Seichan ducked low, yanking out her Glock.

  Zhuang threw himself in front of Guan-yin. A round clipped his shoulder, spraying blood. The impact jarred him backward—into Seichan’s mother.

  Guan-yin tumbled over the rail and crashed into the sea.

  34

  January 24, 1:50 P.M. NZDT

  Pacific Ocean, six hundred miles NE of Auckland

  With his wrists cuffed behind him, Monk marched down the long hall that crossed through the bowels of the Titan X. Two commandos flanked him, both with QSZ-92 pistols in hand and rifles slung over their shoulders. They wore full battle gear, including helmets.

  He knew the ominous reason he had been hauled out of the yacht’s small brig. An hour ago, he had heard the arrival of the massive ship—the helicopter landing dock. The LHD’s lumbering engines had reverberated through the hull of the Titan X. One of his captors had been fluent enough in English to explain why Monk was being moved.

  Once Captain Tse returned from her dive, the Chinese forces were going to blow up the yacht and sink it with all aboard. But Monk—as a member of DARPA—would be transferred to the landing dock, destined for some Chinese black site.

  Still, he was not about to resist.

  I’ve waited two long hours for this opportunity.

  With his arms behind him, he unlatched his prosthetic hand from its magnetic attachments to his wrist. Like everyone else, his guards had failed to recognize the lab-grown skin over a titanium skeleton as anything but a normal hand.

  The cuffs fell away from his left wrist. He coughed to cover the slight jangle of the steel chains. With his prosthesis gripped in his real hand, he willed its mechanical fingers to flex. Even with the hand detached, a wireless cortical implant allowed him to communicate with and manipulate the prosthesis.

  Satisfied all was operational, Monk moved swiftly. He whipped to the guard on his left and jammed the prosthetic hand at the man’s neck. The fingers clamped to his throat, strong enough to crush bone. The strangling throttled away any scream.

  The sudden attack, especially from a bound prisoner, caught his other captor by surprise. Monk grabbed the first man’s pistol, shoved it under the second guard’s chin as he turned, and fired a muffled blast. His helmet kept the gore from splattering the wall.

  Both men slumped to the floor at the same time.

  Monk pushed the pistol into his belt, retrieved his hand, and snapped it into place. He then hauled both men into a side cabin. Once there, he stripped the strangled soldier of his battle armor and helmet and quickly donned the gear. If he kept his face down, he hoped the black-and-blue camo would hide him.

  Out in the hall, he faced the aft end, picturing the giant glass sphere of Science City. All the prisoners were under guard there.

  With a shake of his head, Monk turned and headed the opposite way, while making a silent promise.

  I’ll do what I can.

  Still, he knew there were others whom he could not help at all.

  1:52 P.M.

  How could this be?

  Phoebe gazed in awe out her window.

  Throughout the last hundred meters of the Cormorant’s freefall, she had held her breath. Ninety minutes after entering the fissure, they neared its bottom. The sonar had warned them what to expect, but the sight still drew gasps from them all.

  The walls of the crack fell away to either side, revealing a hollow, cavernous void. It opened under and around them. It was as if they had dropped into outer space. Dazzling lights blinked and flashed all around. They formed shining constellations that defied the eye.

  “Can you slow us to a hover?” Phoebe asked Bryan.

  “Gladly. Dropping ballast now.”

  Phoebe had incrementally lowered their rate of descent once the end of the fissure had come into view on their sonar. She had good reason to be cautious. They all did.

  Datuk reported behind her. “The sensors are picking up more than four hundred rem out there. Enough to trigger acute death if it climbs much higher.”

  “What about inside here?” Adam asked.

  “We’re just shy of a hundred. Not immediately fatal. But in a few hours, we’ll start experiencing mild radiation sickness. Fatigue, vomiting.” He shook his head. “Let’s not stay down here for that long.”

  Bryan had his own concern. “We just crossed thirteen thousand meters. We don’t dare go much deeper.”

  Phoebe understood. The crush depth of the Cormorant was only another thousand meters down. She leaned forward as they came to a hover. Amazement kept her fears at bay. The cavern, while vast, was not empty.

  “How could all this coral still be growing down here?”

  She gaped at the sheer expanse, trying to comprehend it, to take it all in. According to the sonar, the cavern stretched miles in all directions. The coral hidden here had to be ancient, far older than the forest above. The trees rose from the bottomless depths to the arch of roof overhead, as if holding everything up.

  But that was no longer true.

  The earlier quake had not only split the rock overhead, but it shattered this section of forest. The tumbling crash of the submarine had further damaged the area, ripping through as it all fell. The leaking radiation had done even greater harm, burning a far larger swath.

  The nearest stretches of forest were shadowed and dark. Beyond the dead zone, seen in glimpses between the giant boles, distant regions still glowed and shimmered.

  Phoebe longed to pass through this blight to what beckoned so brightly.

  Datuk had his own opinion. “The growth down here looks less like a forest and more like roots.”

  She appreciated this sentiment. Unlike the straight trunks of the coral field above, the boles down here rose in twisted columns, forking out into curling branches, casting out questing rootlets.

  She studied the forest in this new light.

  Could Datuk be right? Was this vastness the wellspring of the forest above? Or was it simply another coral field, one trapped by the confines of the cavern to form such a twisted landscape?

  Adam reminded them of a more immediate concern. “Where is the Chinese submarine?” He leaned forward. “Phoebe, have you been able to detect the bottom of this cavern?”

  Focused elsewhere, Phoebe had momentarily ignored the sonar. “I’ll try pinging again.”

  She reached to her controls and directed a sonic wave toward the bottom. As it returned, the screen showed glimpses of the surrounding walls, which were indeed miles away. But the view was patchy. Some areas were blocked by the heavy coral, others showed up as endless black spots. Directly under the Cormorant, the sonar continued to show a black eye, a bottomless well of darkness.

  “Wait.” She squinted at the screen. “I’m picking up some haloing far below us. Only a few small spots. As if the sonar is registering something. Maybe peeks at the true bottom.”

  “How deep?” Adam asked.

  Phoebe sat back with a grimace. “Sixteen thousand meters.”

  “That’s at a total depth of ten miles,” Bryan said. “We’ll never reach there.”

  Adam scowled. “If the submarine fell that far, we might as well give up.”

  Phoebe refused to accept this. “We could drop to fourteen thousand meters.” She turned to Bryan. “The Cormorant could handle that, right?”

  “Theoretically,” the pilot warned.

  “Once at that depth, we could use our cameras and zoom in. Search what’s down below. Like we did before. Whatever’s there might explain what’s causing the Tonga’s swarm of quakes.”

  Datuk nodded, while working diligently at his station. “We’ve come this far.”

  From Adam’s deep frown, it looked like he wanted to argue, but he stayed silent.

  Satisfied, Phoebe turned around—then flinched back in her seat, startled by movement right outside the glass. She calmed herself once she recognized it was the Cormorant’s hydraulic arm. It extended out into the water.

  Datuk must have taken control of it from his seat.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  The arm swung farther out. Its claws snagged something and drew it closer. It looked like a limp snake, but she recognized its smooth glistening surface. It was one of the glowing tentacles that they had spotted earlier. Only now, ripped away from its body, it had dimmed to this lifeless gray husk.

  “I was hoping to test it,” Datuk explained. “To try to understand how such a species could survive at these depths, under such pressure.”

  Phoebe had forgotten about the biochemist’s interest in piezophiles and their relationship to exotic biosignatures of alien life. She watched him draw the sample closer. This lifeform could certainly be considered alien, if not in the exact context of Datuk’s research.

  “What are you testing for?” Adam asked, his voice still tinged with suspicion.

  “Before all this started, I had the Cormorant equipped with a MinIon sequencer. It’s a new tool for genetic analysis. It requires no amplification to detect DNA or RNA. It’s sensitive enough to discern between standard and modified bases, even differentiate polypeptides from other polymers.”

  “Which means what?” Adam asked.

  Datuk shrugged. “The nanopore sequencer was designed to search for the rudimentary signs of biological life. Besides using it for my own genetic studies, I’ve been commissioned to test it in real-world challenges. Like under extreme pressures. And now, unfortunately, under heavy radiation. It’s all to see how the MinIon might fare as an investigative tool aboard future exploratory spacecraft.”