“What about Monk, Kat, and the girls?” Gray asked.

  He was prepared to pass Jack to Seichan and go look for them. Monk’s family had taken up residence in a guest cabana adjoining the walled garden. The girls had insisted on being close to the koi ponds and the many ducks that floated or patrolled the grounds.

  “Zhuang went to fetch them,” Guan-yin said. “He will keep them safe.”

  Her confidence was proven well founded when a side door crashed open on the far side of the garage. Past that door, a breezeway connected to the gardens. Zhuang and another triad guard rushed Monk and Kat into the garage. They hurried behind the row of cars. Monk and Kat each carried one of the girls.

  Through the open doorway, the sounds of the firefight erupted louder. A war was being waged out in the gardens. A sharper blast echoed above, followed by the brighter tinkle of glass. Someone had shot a grenade into the villa. The attackers had mounted a full-scale assault, likely taking advantage of the quake’s confusion to strike.

  Gray knew street battles periodically broke out between the city’s aggressive triads. The clashes were often as fierce as any urban warfare, but he had thought no one would dare assault the Duàn zhī Triad, which ruled Hong Kong and Macau with an iron fist and was respected and feared throughout Southeast Asia. An open assault upon the dragonhead’s personal home was especially surprising. According to triad code, such an act was deemed dishonorable and was considered a blood sin, one that would require retribution, often spanning generations. Centuries-old feuds and vendettas were waged for far less of an affront.

  From the anger shadowing Guan-yin’s features, she would use all her resources to exact her revenge. She also had pacts and oaths with a dozen other triads. Whoever had attacked the villa had lit a powder keg that would soon rip across Hong Kong and beyond.

  Monk rushed across the long garage with Kat. Monk was in boxers and a T-shirt with a Georgia Bulldog growling on it, which matched his expression. Kat wore a belted robe, her auburn hair disheveled and loose. The girls, both dressed in bright pajamas, were not taking the chaos and uproar as quietly as Jack. Both sobbed and clung chokingly to their parents.

  Rage fired Monk’s eyes. The furious flush to his face had risen over the top of his shaved scalp. The arm that carried Penny was bunched into a protective knot of muscles. Kat looked no less ferocious, only her expression was tempered by worry.

  Before they had crossed half the distance, huge explosions blasted three of the garage doors off their tracks, sending panels flying inside. With reflexes born of his Green Beret training, Monk scooped Kat and Harriet under his free arm and ducked them all behind an Audi SUV. Debris crashed into windshields and across hoods and roofs. Smoke billowed heavily into the garage.

  Zhuang dove next to them, cradling a SIG Sauer P226 in his hands. The other triad member was a step too slow and got struck by a twirling panel, nearly decapitating him in the process.

  Gunfire strafed the garage. Outside, assailants blindly fired through the pall. Guan-yin’s men returned the volley with chattering rips from their assault rifles. Unfortunately, her men shot just as wildly, but for the moment, it was enough to deter the attackers from entering the garage.

  Gray turned to pass Jack to Seichan, ready to go help Monk and Kat. But Seichan snatched a rifle from one of the gunmen’s grips and raced across the garage, firing one-handed. Gray had forgotten how lightning fast she could be, especially when fueled by adrenaline and fury. With no other choice, Gray retreated a few steps down the ramp to shelter Jack, but he kept the garage in view.

  Seichan reached the others, gathered them up, and got them running low, sticking to the shelter of the row of vehicles.

  They had nearly made it across when a figure came rushing into the garage, low, an FN SCAR at his shoulder. The battle rifle was outfitted with an undermount grenade launcher. Guan-yin’s men fired at him, but the assailant ducked between an Aston Martin and the Bugatti, aiming his weapon straight at Seichan and the others.

  Not even Seichan was quick enough to respond to the ambush.

  Her mother was.

  Guan-yin struck a fist against a large button on the wall next to her. The turntable under the Bugatti lurched as it was activated, throwing the gunman off balance. It was enough for Zhuang to bring his SIG around and fire three quick shots. Two to the chest and one to the head.

  The man dropped, allowing Zhuang and the others to cross the last of the garage.

  “Get below,” Guan-yin ordered.

  They all fled down the concrete ramp. The secret door sealed behind them. Sconces in the shape of winged dragons lined the walls. The ramp ended in a low-roofed space a quarter the size of the garage above. Gray had expected the bunker to be a fortified safe room, but it was another garage.

  Only here there were no expensive sports cars or luxury sedans. Three armored and rivetted vehicles were parked side by side. Matte-gray plating sealed the exterior of a trio of Alpha Titans—armored Mercedes G550 4×4s. They sat on tall tires. The windows were surely bulletproofed and ballistically rated.

  “Split up and get inside,” she ordered them. “We’re heading off this mountain.”

  “Can’t we stay here?” Kat asked, clutching hard to Harriet. The girl’s sobbing had quieted to shaking gasps. “The quake has ended, and you’ve got an army out there.”

  Monk nodded, hiking Penny higher in his arms.

  Amidst all the chaos, Gray hadn’t noted the ground had finally stopped rolling. He understood Monk and Kat’s concern for their frightened girls. By now, even Jack had woken with a pinched expression, heading toward a wail.

  Still, Gray stared up at the cracks in the concrete roof overhead. Dust and sand trickled from them. “No, Guan-yin’s right,” he warned. “There could be aftershocks. We don’t want to be in here if there are any strong ones.”

  Seichan hefted her rifle to her shoulder. “And we can’t count on the enemy not finding this place. They clearly knew the layout of my mother’s villa, well enough to purposefully herd us into the first-floor garage, to lead us into that ambush. They must have tortured staff to get such details.”

  “Two maids never showed up to work this morning,” Guan-yin admitted. “I attributed it to too much celebrating on New Year’s Eve.”

  Seichan turned to her mother. “Did either of them know about this bunker?”

  “No, only Zhuang and a handful of my deputies know about it. But some of my staff may have heard rumors.”

  Gray waved to the Titans. “Then we can’t stay here. The enemy likely only missed this bunker because they acted hastily, deciding to take advantage of the quake versus waiting for a fuller reconnaissance.”

  “Then let’s not give them a second chance,” Monk said.

  They all got moving. Even with GPS, the Peak’s roads formed a tangled labyrinth. Needing the expert guidance of locals, their group had to split up. Zhuang led Monk, Kat, and the girls off into one of the Titans. Gray got behind the wheel of another with Guan-yin riding shotgun. Seichan climbed into the back with Jack and another triad member. The third vehicle was loaded with more Duàn zhī gunmen.

  Upon Guan-yin’s signal, the bunker doors rolled up. The way opened out into an overgrown niche off Mount Kellett Road. The tangled roots of a huge rubber tree masked the camouflaged exit. The Titan packed with gunmen took the lead. Gray followed, with Zhuang and the others trailing behind.

  The road was pitch black. Streetlights had been extinguished by the blackout. Their group traveled dark, with headlights off. The only illumination came from the Titan’s brake lights. Still, it was hard to mask the throaty growl of their vehicles’ V8 engines.

  They rolled as fast as they dared down the tortuous road, with a wall of rock rising on one side and a precipitous cliff dropping on the other.

  In the rearview mirror, the generator-powered lights of the villa were cloaked in smoke and brightened by flames.

  So far, it seemed the enemy had failed to note their escape.

  Let’s hope it stays that way.

  A portable radio on the dashboard squawked, then Monk’s voice came over the air. “What about Kowalski?” he asked, a reminder that one of their group was still missing.

  11:07 P.M.

  And I thought cancer was going to kill me.

  Kowalski forded across a street full of milling people. He held a bundle of napkins pressed to the side of his face, where a piece of broken glass had sliced his cheek.

  Before the quake, he had been holed up in a SoHo-district bar called the Old Man. He had chosen the place for its name. He certainly felt old after his cancer treatments. The bar had also been small and dark, which matched his mood. It was open until two in the morning, and he had planned on closing it down. He had started with a drink called Men without Women, a coffee-tasting blend of clotted Irish whiskey, stout cream, and salted arabica.

  The cocktail had seemed fitting as he was traveling without his girlfriend. Maria and her sister were in the second week of a six-week anthropological project outside Stuttgart, Germany. Before she had left, he and Maria had celebrated the New Year in D.C. Then Kowalski had realized he could indulge in a second New Year if he traveled to Hong Kong.

  He could not resist.

  Especially as he had plenty of reason to celebrate.

  His last biopsy result had shown no sign of a relapse. Ten months ago, he had undergone a bone marrow transplant to treat stage-three multiple myeloma, a cancer of his plasma cells. Three weeks ago, he had finished a regimen of immunosuppressive drugs. From here, it was all a matter of regaining his strength, eating well, and limiting his intake of alcohol. He had followed those instructions diligently—or at least, two out of the three. A guy needed a little fun in his life, or it wouldn’t be worth living.

  He had been in the middle of his second cocktail—a rum and lemon soda concoction called Soldier’s Home—when the entire bar started shaking. Bottles had rattled off shelves. Mirrors had shattered. He had ducked low, keeping his drink in hand, and rode out the five-minute-long temblor. Once it ended, he and most of the city had emptied out into the streets, vacating the tall buildings and skyscrapers, wary of an aftershock.

  With his cheek on fire, Kowalski crossed the street, crunching glass underfoot. He climbed the steps under a sign that read 光漢台花園 and under it, KWONG HON TERRACE GARDEN. The elevated park offered some clearance from the neighboring structures and a bit of height to view the damage. As he reached the top step, he found he was not the only one to have picked this spot.

  A mob crowded the grass and the children’s playground. Still, at six foot four, he could easily see over most heads. His muscular bulk and deep scowl cleared a path ahead of him. He aimed for a rail that overlooked the lower street and across the dark city. A few areas glowed with generator-powered lights. Other areas flickered with patches of flames. Sirens blared all around, adding to the cacophony of honking horns, shouted calls, and spats of gunfire.

  It reminded him of something that Painter Crowe, the director of Sigma, had once warned him: Despite appearances, the world is only one disaster away from barbarism. At the time, prone to creating those disasters, Kowalski had tried not to take the warning personally.

  Reaching the park’s rail, Kowalski surveyed the quake’s aftermath. Across the dark city, all the skyscrapers appeared to be still standing, though the corner of a nearby building had crumbled into the street. Lamp poles and streetlights had toppled across roads. Vast swaths of windowpanes had exploded out of their frames.

  As he stood there, a hand snatched his elbow and yanked him hard. He turned with a raised fist. Before he could punch down, he recognized one of the triad guards who had accompanied him down from the hilltop villa. He was a lean-faced strap of muscle.

  “Must go now,” he warned Kowalski.

  “Where?”

  “To meet the Mountain and the others.”

  Kowalski knew Guan-yin was sometimes called the “Mountain Master,” an honorific for her position as the triad’s dragonhead. The guard turned and led Kowalski back across the park. He shoved his way through the crowd. From the man’s haste, Kowalski knew something was wrong, though he wasn’t sure if this summons was just because of the quake or something more dire. He followed after the man, struggling to pick out his short form through the milling throng. He nearly lost him a few times. Then the guard swung around, clearly impatient. The guard raised an arm, as if ready to scold him, but blood poured from his lips instead.

  The man staggered a few steps, clutching the hilt of a knife impaled through his throat. A hand reached from behind and ripped the blade out with a savage twist. The man fell to his knees. The attacker—his face masked with a wrap of black—knocked the guard aside and stalked toward Kowalski.

  Another four masked figures closed from other directions. Kowalski back-pedaled and crouched lower, attempting to hide his height among the press of people, but it was like trying to bury a watermelon in a bin of oranges.

  He spotted two more masked assassins driving toward him.

  Seven against one.

  Bad odds.

  Especially as Kowalski had no weapon, except his fists. He balled them up, ready to fight. By now, others in the crowd had noted the dead man, the masked figures. People fled for the stairs on the far side of the park.

  As the mob thinned around him, the lead attacker tossed aside his knife and removed a pistol from a shoulder-holster under his jacket.

  The odds were worsening by the second.

  Kowalski slowed, ready to make his stand. The gunman’s companions closed to either side. By then, Kowalski had realized he was not entirely weaponless.

  He reached into his jacket pocket and removed his only hope. He brought it to his lips—not to kiss it, but to pantomime a threat. He pretended to bite into it, then threw the spherical black pineapple toward the gunman.

  “Shǒuléi!” he shouted.

  Kowalski had learned the Chinese word for grenade when he had bought the Korean relic from a night market vendor. Kowalski was suddenly glad that Gray had forced him to remove it from the villa after Jack had picked it up earlier.

  The effect of his ruse was immediate. The gunman flung himself away and dove toward the retreating crowd. So did his companions.

  Kowalski turned and ran the opposite way. With the crowd cleared, he reached the rail of the terrace garden and leaped over it. He plunged to the street below. The impact threw him down hard, but he rolled over his shoulder and back to his feet.

  He fled into the crowd, limping a bit, and ducked around a corner.

  He had barely gotten two steps when another hand grabbed him. This time he did punch his assailant. The kid’s nose bounced off his knuckles. The teenager’s head snapped backward, and his legs went out from under him. Still, the guy refused to let go of Kowalski’s arm.

  Hanging there, the kid shouted, “Blue Lantern. Blue Lantern with Duàn zhī.”

  It took Kowalski a few more steps, dragging the teenager along with him, to recognize the term for an uninitiated member of a triad—a Blue Lantern—someone who hadn’t yet earned their stripes.

  Kowalski pulled the kid back upright. “What are you doing here?”

  “I followed you from the villa,” he gasped out, blood dripping from both nostrils. “Saw the others attacked, then watched you fly down here.”

  Kowalski frowned. Someone must have tipped off the attackers about the two guards sent into Hong Kong with him. But obviously the bastards had missed one, and Kowalski could guess why.

  “Guan-yin didn’t send you,” Kowalski said.

  “No,” the kid confirmed. “I came on my own.”

  Clearly, the teenager was trying to earn those stripes—which Kowalski especially appreciated at the moment.

  “Do you know a way out of here?” he asked.

  The kid finally let go of his arm and fled ahead. “This way!”

  11:16 P.M.

  In the backseat, Seichan cradled Jack under one arm and rested the butt of the Chinese carbine on her other knee. She held tight to her son as the Titan rocked with every sharp turn of the twisting road.

  She sat on the left side, which offered a dizzying view down a steep drop. Across the Titan, the rocky side of a hill filled the far windows. The road was unnervingly narrow, especially accounting for the size of the armored tanks that rolled down it. Worse, they still ran dark, not taking any chances, even with the villa a couple of miles behind them.

  Mount Kellett Road looped around this hilltop. Ahead, a Y-junction appeared, where the road circled back upon itself, forming a single road that descended into Hong Kong proper. Beyond the intersection, the roadway was packed with condominium complexes and smaller homes.

  Behind the wheel, Gray clutched the handheld radio to his lips. “Any word about Kowalski?”

  Zhuang answered from the Titan behind them. “No. I alerted the men who went with him, but I’ve not been able to raise anyone since. I’ve tried repeatedly. But cell signal is patchy due to the power outage and overloaded systems.”

  In the front passenger seat, Seichan’s mother shook her head. “They must’ve been ambushed, too,” she said, her voice matter-of-factly certain. “We must assume your friend is dead.”

  “You don’t know Kowalski,” Gray said.

  Seichan silently agreed. The man was nearly impossible to kill.

  Still, if Kowalski and the others were attacked in the city, it made no sense. The Duàn zhī Triad was seventy thousand members strong.

  So, why bother with a handful in Hong Kong?

  Ahead of them, the lead Titan reached the Y-junction. It slowed to merge onto the descending road. A thin crowd lined the road after fleeing the precarious perch of the cliffside homes. Several groups milled into the street.

  The Titan ahead honked to clear the way as it crossed the intersection. But Seichan noted a few pedestrians were already in motion, with panicked looks on their faces, seeing something their group couldn’t.

  She lunged forward to Gray. “Stop!”

  From the other leg of the Y, a huge tractor-trailer slammed into the side of the lead Titan, sending it spinning away. Smaller trucks followed behind the tractor, closing off the junction. From their open beds, armed men leaped out.