Gray felt defeated.

  The level of human suffering and loss was already incalculable. Still, he knew they were only in the eye of this tectonic storm. If left unchecked, the eruptions would not only resume, but grow a hundredfold worse.

  We’ve only bought ourselves a brief window of time.

  He crossed through the wheelhouse to the stern. Out on the deck, Xue and Heng had rolled the bodies to the side and covered them with tarps. While they had worked above, Gray had helped Seichan get Guan-yin settled below in a cabin. Seichan remained at her mother’s bedside. Kadir was resting in a neighboring cabin in case she needed any help.

  Though Guan-yin’s fever had broken, the woman hovered at the edge of a weary delirium. Her body sweated heavily, as if trying to force the last vestiges of poison out of her skin. Seichan had bathed her mother’s brow and arms with a cool, wet cloth. It had seemed to help. A moment ago, Guan-yin had stirred, her eyes opening. She muttered under her breath and stared around in a daze, as if looking for someone.

  Both Gray and Seichan had known who that was.

  Even that effort took too much out of the woman. Her eyes had slipped closed, and she had sunk away again. Gray suspected a part of Guan-yin found it too painful to wake, preferring oblivion to facing the loss she had suffered.

  Out on the deck, Gray stared past the bow of the boat. Though it was midday, the heavy smoke layer still masked the sun. But in the distance, the clouds looked more gray than black. He hoped they had enough time to reach there.

  Xue noted where he was looking. “What is your plan, Commander Pierce? You’ve not been clear about it.”

  “I’m sorry. I wanted to get the boat moving.”

  “Why?” Heng asked. “Do you hope to move to a new location and broadcast the bullroarer’s call again?”

  Gray pictured them sailing throughout this region, trying to hammer those tectonic plates into submission in a massive game of Whac-A-Mole.

  “No,” he answered. “We’d never be successful. According to Stamford’s account, the waters around Mount Tambora were one of the Aboriginal thin spots of the earth. Only at those specific locations could a bullroarer work. And while there are supposedly many, we don’t know where they are.”

  “But we do know of one other,” Xue said.

  Gray agreed. “The most important one. The thin spot that marks the home of the Rainbow Serpents. According to Crawfurd, it was in the waters around the island that he had sketched.”

  Xue nodded, grasping his plan. “If we could repeat what we did at that site, it might stop what’s been started.”

  “But where’s that island?” Heng asked. “How do we get there?”

  Gray lifted up the e-tablet that he had retrieved from below. “Crawfurd’s description of the place was vague, saying it lies well beyond all islands, in seas rarely seen. But considering all that has happened, I have a fair idea of where it might be found. Or at least a general idea.”

  He woke the tablet and showed them Crawfurd’s sketches—the coastal views of the island and its general shape.

  Gray explained, “Crawfurd left enough clues for me to start a search.”

  “Where?” Heng asked.

  Xue answered, already moving a step ahead. “The island must be somewhere along the Tonga Trench. Where the clustering of quakes first started. And where we first picked up the ELF transmission during the Chang’e-5 mission.”

  Gray nodded. “There is a chain of islands that borders the length of the Tonga. The Kermadec Islands. I checked each one and compared their shape to Crawfurd’s drawing and found this.”

  Gray swiped the screen to reveal a satellite photo of an anvil-shaped island.

  Xue studied the photo, then looked up. “How far is this island from where the quakes were clustering?”

  Gray lifted a brow. “Less than ten miles.”

  “Then that must be the island,” Xue concurred. “The home of the Rainbow Serpents.”

  Gray prayed it was. “If we could transmit the sound of the bullroarer at that location, it might shut everything down at its source.”

  “But how do we get there?” Heng asked. “It’s thousands of miles away.”

  “More than four thousand. And with all the ash in the skies, getting there by air would be impossible. We barely made it from Jakarta to Bali.”

  Xue frowned. “We must do something. Our geologists predicted the tipping point for this region is less than half a day away, possibly far less.”

  “Then what do we do?” Heng asked.

  Gray looked up. “We need to reach clear air, away from the static energy of these heavy ash clouds. I’ve tried using my sat-phone for the past half hour. I managed a connection, but it lasted only seconds.”

  Xue stared toward Mount Tambora. “Some of the interference may be from the electromagnetic effects of the volcanic eruptions. Now that they’ve subsided, transmissions may open up again.”

  “Even so,” Heng said, “who do you plan on calling? Who could get there in time?”

  Gray faced the others. “There’s a research ship in the area. If we could send them the bullroarer’s recording, get them to broadcast it, maybe the gods will listen.”

  Xue looked at his toes.

  “What?” Gray asked, sensing his consternation.

  He looked up. “We have forces there, too. Or at least they were on the way before we lost communication. They were supposed to lock down the area.”

  Gray scowled at the man for not sharing this before. He pictured the huge research yacht—and who was out there.

  Monk.

  He pointed at Xue. “Then we both try. No matter who is in control, someone must do what we cannot.”

  Xue nodded, but he still looked worried.

  “What else?” Gray asked.

  “My father,” Xue said. “Once the area was secured, he had been planning on sending out the ELF signal again. To confirm that it can indeed trigger earthquakes. He’s waiting to hear from the commander of that mission.”

  Gray closed his eyes. “If he does, it will bring down the world.”

  “We know that now.”

  Gray turned to Xue. “You must stop your father, convince him of the threat. Or pray that the mission commander never makes that call.”

  Xue swallowed, looking sickened, as if he knew the commander.

  Heng swore under his breath, indicating he did, too. “Then we’re surely doomed.”

  41

  January 24, 4:17 P.M. NZDT

  Eight miles under the Pacific Ocean

  Daiyu lowered her acoustic headphones and scowled upward.

  “Any more updates?” Yang asked, his brow damp with sweat, his face deathly pale.

  The lieutenant stared out the window. They had just dropped out of the fissure when a massive quake started. Sand, pebbles, and larger rocks continued to rain down. Several struck the Qianliyan with resounding clangs.

  Yang cringed and ducked at each one.

  “I’m hearing nothing from topside,” Daiyu reported. “The quake’s noise is blocking all communication.”

  “Then we should blow ballast and head back up.”

  Earlier, they had received a frantic message from the submarine’s commander, detailing the destruction of the Dayangxi—by Captain Tse’s own weaponry. Daiyu had been awaiting further word. Anger and humiliation warred within her.

  “Captain Tse,” Yang pressed her, his voice anxious.

  “No.” She shook her head. “We stay on mission.”

  Another large stone struck the Qianliyan.

  “Fuck that,” Yang blurted out.

  He lunged to the row of ballast switches. He managed to flip one. Piston-driven pumps pushed water from one of the tanks. The Qianliyan’s descent slowed.

  Daiyu had been expecting such a rash act, noting Yang’s growing panic. His fingers scrabbled for another switch. Daiyu swung her arm. She already had a dagger in hand—a QNL-95 knife. She stabbed the long blade into Yang’s neck.

  He jerked back in shock, his hands grabbing for his throat.

  She twisted the blade and blood sprayed across the sphere, soaking her uniform. Yang struggled and gasped. His body slid down the seat, as if trying to curl away from his pending death.

  There would be no escape.

  She held onto the hilt until Yang stopped moving. His mouth opened and closed a few more times, then stayed wide, his expression shocked.

  She left the blade there and wiped her palms on her pants. She intended to complete her mission. She needed a win below to make up for her failure above.

  I can still salvage this.

  She knew that if she could help secure Aigua’s new weapon system, one that could change the destiny of China, the loss of a single ship would not matter.

  She reached to her controls and reversed the ballast tank’s pistons. Water refilled the space. With the added weight, the Qianliyan dropped faster, plunging her toward her destiny.

  She had no need for Yang. The submersible had plenty of eyes of its own. It was equipped with multiple detection devices: side-scanning and forward-looking sonar, a dozen underwater cameras, even space-based sensors.

  She employed them now as she searched below the Qianliyan. She fell swiftly toward her target, which continued to reveal its position with repeated pings. The other craft—the Cormorant—had reversed course and swept up toward her.

  As the two parties closed on each other, she saw no reason for further subterfuge. The enemy was toothless and unprepared. She targeted their vehicle with her acoustic system. They were close enough now that even the background rumble of the continuing quake could not block their communication.

  She pulled the headset on and raised the microphone to her lips. “Cormorant, this is the Qianliyan. Do you copy?”

  She waited for a response. With only a half kilometer between them, there should be no lag time.

  A voice reached her, full of wary confusion. She noted the heavy Aussie accent, marking the speaker as the vehicle’s pilot. “This is the Cormorant. What are your intentions, Qianliyan? Over.”

  “The People’s Liberation Army has full control of the surface,” she lied. “The Qianliyan is equipped with deep-sea weaponry. Stop your ascent. Tell us what you learned below. What you know. If we’re satisfied, you will follow us to the surface.”

  “We cannot comply, Qianliyan. Your submarine has been destroyed. And—”

  She cut him off. “Destroyed how?”

  “Sunk into a magma lake.”

  She heard the panic in his voice. Maybe he feared a nuclear explosion. She sneered at such foolishness. As an engineer, she knew molten fire would not ignite a warhead. At worst, it might blow the missile’s fuel tanks.

  Still, the pilot was plainly alarmed and explained why. “The quake is closing the fissure overhead. We leave now or not at all.”

  Daiyu searched up, trying to confirm this threat with her own eyes. She hit her sonar, pinging it for the first time. Focused below, she had failed to watch her backside.

  She lowered her gaze to her sonar screen. She pinged three more times, just to be certain. Her breath caught in her throat as each image refreshed, showing the incremental squeezing of the walls overhead.

  The others weren’t lying.

  She used the heel of her hand and flipped the ballast toggles—all of them. The Qianliyan trembled as its pistons emptied all its tanks. Explosive bolts cast off more weight. She also dumped batteries and three of the heavy torpedoes.

  The vehicle’s descent braked so hard that it threw her low. She felt a thousand kilos in weight. Then the Qianliyan reversed itself. It slowly rose, quickly gaining speed.

  The molten destruction of the navy’s nuclear submarine had completed one task assigned to her. Once the quake quieted, she could still send a message above, to be passed to Aigua Choi, to have him transmit the ELF signal. She could still observe its effect from the seas above the fissure.

  First, I must reach there.

  To ensure that, she needed to lighten the Qianliyan. Doing so would also complete her final mission in this cavern. She reached to the weapons console and used a joystick to fix her target. The Cormorant continued its noisy ascent. She settled the system’s crosshairs atop it and squeezed the trigger.

  The last of Qianliyan’s fangs shot away from the vehicle’s undercarriage. The Dú-yá torpedo sailed off into the darkness.

  At these depths, where the pressures turned the water leaden, its pace was sluggish at first, but its speed steadily increased. She followed its path as it pinged a continual barrage at its target, doggedly fixed to it.

  It was a slow dagger aimed at the heart of her enemy.

  The torpedo swept wide, then spiraled down toward the Cormorant.

  Satisfied, Daiyu turned her attention upward. According to her onboard computer, she still had time to make her escape.

  But just barely.

  4:28 P.M.

  “I’m picking up a target lock,” Bryan said.

  Adam needed no such warning. A rapid pinging had started bombarding the Cormorant. It was loud enough to sting his ears and was rising steadily.

  “They fired something at us,” Adam said. “Likely a torpedo. We must find cover.”

  “Where?” Phoebe asked.

  Recognizing the approaching threat, Bryan had already begun sucking water into their ballast tanks. Their ascent rapidly slowed, hard enough to lift Adam off his seat.

  He braced an arm and pointed out the window. “Into the coral forest. It’s our only hope.”

  And not much of one.

  Bryan engaged the vehicle’s thrusters and angled them to the side. He used the vehicle’s wings to swing them around.

  “I’ve got the weapon up on our sonar,” Phoebe said. “Its speed is rapidly increasing.”

  “Steepen our angle of descent,” Adam warned. “We have to get into that forest.”

  “What do you think I’m trying to do?” Bryan quipped.

  On the screen, the blip of the torpedo closed on them. The pings of its targeting system repeatedly struck the sphere, ringing it like a bell.

  Bryan made a grim assessment. “We’re not going to make it.”

  4:31 P.M.

  Daiyu sped upward in the Qianliyan. The fissure’s cliffs swept past on both sides. More rocks pummeled the vehicle’s exterior shell, but it continued to shield the passenger sphere. A couple of stones bounced off the unprotected glass, making her jerk away.

  A moment ago, she had increased her rate of ascent by shedding the vehicle’s extra oxygen tanks, stripping the Qianliyan down to its barest essentials. At this point, all that mattered was getting clear of this fissure.

  To either side, the walls steadily pinched toward her. Through the acoustic headphones, she listened to the constant grinding of rock.

  I will not die like this, an ignoble and solitary end.

  She glanced at Yang’s corpse. He had voided his bowels and the stench filled the sphere with a putrefying rank.

  Not like this.

  She tried casting up a call to her forces miles overhead, to both alert them to her distress and to prepare Aigua to ready the ELF array in the Dabie Mountains. But all she got back was that ongoing rumble. The quake continued to deafen and mute her efforts.

  She clenched her jaws, taking solace in the fact that her onboard systems continued to show she had just enough time to clear the fissure.

  Then a loud cracking boom shook the Qianliyan. Out the window, a large slab of the cliff fell away, like an iceberg calving from a glacier. It tilted toward her.

  She cringed and goosed the thrusters on that side.

  She held her breath. Rock scraped down the Qianliyan’s shell as the vehicle shied past the slab’s top edge. Once free, she raced upward again, heaving out a sigh of relief.

  Below her feet, the massive shard fell away and knifed into the darkness. She returned her gaze skyward and repeated her promise to herself.

  Not like this.

  4:32 P.M.

  “Hold tight,” Bryan called out.

  Phoebe braced a palm on the curve of the roof. Adam had suggested this maneuver. She prayed it would work.

  Bryan unloaded their ballast again.

  It had quickly become evident that their angled descent would never allow them to reach the coral forest before the torpedo struck. Adam had offered a desperate alternative. A sudden reversal of their flight. He hoped it might throw off the torpedo’s targeting system, requiring it to reestablish a lock. And if not, the weapon was weighted down by the eight miles of water. Any sudden change in its trajectory could slow it.

  Maybe just enough.

  The Cormorant shot upward again. Bryan tucked their wings tight to the side, streamlining their profile. He lost some maneuverability, but he compensated by driving the thrusters at full power. As they climbed, the vehicle aimed for the forest.

  The curving trunks and twisted branches filled the world on that side.

  Adam leaned between the front seats. He ignored the view out the window and concentrated on the sonar. “The torpedo’s swinging around. It’s noted our change.”

  “It’s fucking smart,” Datuk said.

  “But it lost some speed making the turn,” Phoebe reported.

  “Still, it’s quickly compensating.” Adam pointed to the accelerating blip.

  Bryan yelled again. “Going to try something.”

  No one had time to ask him what it was.

  He hunched over his controls, tweaked some toggles, then yanked on the control yoke. A shadow rose to the left. The wing lifted on that side. The sudden drag, especially in the rapidly ascending Cormorant, threw the vehicle sharply toward the tree line. Bryan fought the thrusters to maintain their trajectory.

  Adam gulped in Phoebe’s ear. “I think it’s working.”

  “Don’t jinx us,” Phoebe warned.

  They all held their breath for the last twenty seconds—until the Cormorant shot into the forest like an injured bird with a broken wing.

  Adam announced the inevitable. “Torpedo’s still locked on us, following us.”

  Bryan tucked the wing again, fearful of it being ripped off if the vehicle swayed too close to one of the coral trees.