Treasure of Khan

-33-

The blue-spotted grouper cast a steely eye at the large figure swimming toward him. It moved too slowly to be a shark, and the neon-blue skin was too dazzling to be a dolphin. And it propelled itself in an odd manner by yellow appendages where the tail should be. Deciding the figure was neither friend nor foe, the grouper eased out of the way and headed for another section of the reef to scour for food.

Summer Pitt paid scant attention to the big fish as it darted into the blue murk. Her focus was on a yellow nylon line stretched across the seafloor that she followed like a marked trail. Her lithe body moved gracefully through the water at a steady pace, skimming just a foot or two above the gnarled heads of the coral reef. A digital video camera was clasped in her hands, capturing the colorful images of the reef on either side of the yellow line.

Summer was documenting the reef as part of a NUMA project assessing the health of coral reefs in the Hawaiian Islands. Sedimentation, overfishing, and algae outbreaks due to pollution and global warming had wreaked a slow and steady degradation of coral reefs around the world. Though the reefs of Hawaii had mostly been spared, there was no guarantee they would not succumb to the severe bleaching and mass mortality that had been witnessed in reefs surrounding Australia, Okinawa, and Micronesia. By monitoring the health of the reefs, the influence of man-made activities could be detected and addressed proactively.

The methodology was remarkably simple. Video frames from a surveyed reef were compared with sample images taken months or years earlier at the same locale. A count of the fish and "benthic," or seafloor, organisms provided a scientific snapshot of the reef's relative health. Dozens of reefs around the islands were targeted by the NUMA project to provide an assessment of the entire region's waters.

Summer kicked lazily along the track line until reaching the end point in a sand gully, marked by a stainless steel pin driven into the seafloor. A plastic card marked in grease pen was attached to the pin.

Summer reached down and turned the card toward the camera, filming the designated line and waypoint before turning the camera off. As she let go of the placard, something in a nearby burrow of sand caught her eye. Kicking her yellow fins in short scissors kicks, she glided over to a cluster of small rocks. A small octopus was sliding about the rocks, puffing its body up and down as it drew water through its gills.

Summer watched the intelligent invertebrate as it changed color, turning nearly translucent as it expanded its mantle before squirming away toward the reef. Gazing back at the rocks, she noticed a small round object protruding from the nearby sand. A miniature face seemed to smile up at Summer, as if happy to be discovered. Summer fanned away a light layer of sand, then plucked up the object and held it in front of her mask.

It was a tiny porcelain figurine of a maiden, wearing a flowing red robe, her black hair rolled high in a bun. The statuette's plump cheeks were tinged with red like a cherub while the narrow eyes were unmistakably Asian. The artistic handiwork was somewhat crude, and there was an ancient look to the dress and pose. Just to assure herself, Summer flipped the figurine over, but found no made in Hong Kong stamp on the bottom. Sifting her free hand through the soft sand, she found no other buried objects nearby.

A few yards away, the silvery air bubbles from another diver caught her attention. It was a man, kneeling on the edge of the reef taking a sediment sample. Summer swam over and hovered in front of the other diver, then held up the porcelain figure.

The bright green eyes of her brother Dirk glistened in curiosity as he studied the object. Lean and tall like the father he shared names with, Dirk secured the sediment sample in a dive bag, then stretched out his legs and motioned for Summer to show him where she found it. She led him away from the reef and across the sandbar to the gravelly patch where she had spotted the smiling face. Dirk pulled alongside, and the two of them swam in a wide circle around the sandbar, gliding a few feet off the bottom. The undulating field of sand abruptly ended in a gnarled bed of lava as they circled toward the shore. Moving away from the shoreline, the sand bed dropped away in a steep incline that didn't reach bottom for another fifteen thousand feet. A small patch of coral appeared in the middle of the sand field, which Dirk swam down to examine.

The coral stretched in a linear path for ten feet before disappearing under the sand. Dirk noticed the sand appeared darker along a continuing line before meeting the lava wall. Summer swam toward a small round clump that rose from the bottom, then waved Dirk over to take a look. Dirk kicked over to what appeared to be a large rectangular stone nearly six feet across. He dove down and felt its hard growth-encrusted edge with a gloved hand, then probed along its surface. The hardness gave way as his fingers pressed into a dense growth of sea urchins at its center. Nodding his head with interest, Summer moved in with her video camera and filmed a close-up shot of the object. The two divers then abandoned the item and completed their circular sweep, finding no other objects. Reaching a drop line near where they started, they kicked to the rippling surface thirty feet above.

Their heads bobbed up in the sapphire blue waters of a large cove near Keliuli Bay on the southwest shore of Hawaii's Big Island. A few hundred yards away, the surf crashed into a rocky shoreline, which rose steeply to encircle the cove in high cliffs of black lava. The crash of the waves striking the rocks reverberated off the steep walls in a thunderous roar as a ring of white foam settled on the surface.

Dirk swam over to a small inflatable boat tethered to the drop line and bellied himself over the side.

Unfastening his tank and weight belt, he reached over the side and helped pull his sister aboard. Summer spat out her regulator, barely catching her breath.

"What do you make of that coral outcropping in the middle of the sandbar?" she asked.

"It showed some linearity."

"I thought so, too. I'd like to excavate some of the sand around its fringes and see if there's anything there not devoured by the coral."

She pulled the porcelain figurine from her dive bag and studied it under the sunlight.

"You think you've got a shipwreck in the coral, eh?" Dirk chided, releasing the bowline and starting a small outboard motor.

"This had to come from somewhere," she said, holding up the figurine. "How old do you think it might be?"

"I haven't a clue," Dirk replied. "For my money, the rectangle stone is much more intriguing."

"You have a theory?"

"I do," he said, "but I don't think I'll make any outlandish claims until I've had a chance to peruse the ship's research computers."

Dirk gunned the throttle and the small boat leaped over the waves toward a ship moored in the distance.

The NUMA research vessel was painted a bright turquoise blue, and as they approached from the stern the black-lettered MARIANA EXPLORER could be read on the transom. Dirk idled the boat to the port side, drifting beneath a small crane that hung over the water dangling a strand of cables. As Dirk and Summer attached the cable ends toD hooks mounted to the rubber boat, a man's torso leaned over the rail. With a muscular build, thick mustache, and steely blue eyes, the man could have been the incarnate of Wyatt Earp, reborn with a Texas accent.

"Hang on to your pants," he shouted, pressing the controls on the hydraulic winch. In an instant, Jack Dahlgren raised the boat out of the water and deposited it on the ship's deck. As he helped rinse off and stow the dive equipment, he asked Summer, "Did you capture the final reef here? The captain wants to know if he can pick up and move to the next survey area, Leleiwi Point, on the east side of the island."

"The answer is yes and no," Summer replied. "We've completed the data collection, but I'd like to make another dive on the site."

Dirk held up the porcelain figure. "Summer thinks she has a treasure wreck on her hands," he grinned.

"Cultural treasure would be just as fine with me."

"What signs of a wreck did you find?" Dahlgren asked.

"Nothing obvious, but Summer did find an interesting stone object," Dirk offered. "We need to go look at the videotape."

Dirk and Summer showered and dressed, then met Dahlgren in one of the research ship's laboratories.

Dahlgren had hooked the video camera to a monitor and was replaying the images over the large screen.

When the rectangular stone appeared, Dirk reached over and pressed the PAUSE button.

"I've seen something like that before," he said, then sat down at an adjacent computer and began tapping the keyboard. "It was at an underwater archaeology conference, from a paper presented on a wreck discovered in Malaysia."

After a few moments of searching, he located a website that contained a copy of the scientific paper, along with photographs of the excavation. Dirk scrolled through the images until he stopped at an underwater photograph of a stone slab. It was a rectangular piece of granite, tapered on one end, with a pair of holes carved through the center.

"Clear away the growth and I'd say you have a close match to the object in Summer's video," Dahlgren asserted, comparing images.

"Yes, not only the same shape but the same relative size," Dirk noted.

"Okay, I'll bite," Summer said. "What is it?"

"An anchor," Dirk replied. "Or, rather, the stone weight that fitted into a wooden grappling anchor.

Before the days of lead and iron, it was a lot simpler to construct an anchor from wood and stone."

"You're talking the ancient days of sail," Dahlgren said.

Dirk nodded. "That's why it is intriguing. Summer's anchor looks to be an identical match for this one,"

he said, pointing to the screen.

"We all agree on that," Summer said. "But what's it from? What kind of wreck did they excavate in Malaysia?"

"Well," Dirk said, scrolling down the screen to a computerized drawing of a four-masted sailing ship.

"Would you believe a thirteenth-century Chinese junk?"

-34-

The air over Kharg Island was hazy brown. Oily smoke spewed up by the holocaust at Ras Tanura a week before still choked the skies over the Persian Gulf. Even at Kharg Island, a rocky limestone spit on the Iranian side of the gulf one hundred eighty miles from Ras Tanura, taking a breath of the thick polluted air left the greasy taste of petroleum in one's mouth.

The toxic air was an environmental match to the waters east of the small island, which were topped with a perpetual layer of oil. The water pollution was homegrown, however, in the form of leaks and spills from the adjacent crude oil transport facility. A huge T-shaped jetty on the east side of the island held berths for up to ten tankers. Off the west coast, a man-made island could fill the bellies of several Ultra Large Crude Carrier supertankers, fed by gravity from an assortment of storage tanks built on the central heights of the island. Though just a tiny land mass, Kharg Island is Iran's largest oil export terminal, as well as one of the biggest oil transport facilities in the world.

Dusk was approaching when a battered black drill ship chugged past the fleet of tankers aligned in a row along the eastern terminal. Angling north, the drill ship turned and approached the island, mooring close to the bluffs at the tip of the northern coast. An Iranian military boat patrolling the coastal waters cruised by but paid no thought to the old ship, which flew the flag of India.

None of the oil workers ashore paid much attention either, especially after night fell. But that's when the drill ship quietly sprang to life. The ship moved slowly back and forth, surveying the black waters before settling on a desired spot. Fore, aft, and side thrusters were activated, gluing the ship to a stationary point despite the effect of wind and current. Under low-wattage deck lighting, the ship's crew scurried about wearing black jumpsuits. A short drill string was assembled beneath the derrick and lowered through an open moon pool. The end of the drill string didn't hold the usual roller cone drill bit for oil drilling, but rather an odd trio of oblong cylinders bound in a tripod fashion.

The tripod was lowered to the bottom, then the deck crew slowly disappeared and the ship grew quiet.

But twenty minutes later, an explosive boom emanated from beneath the ship. A loud but muffled clap was all that could be heard on the surface, barely discernible to the neighboring ships and island workers.

But fifty feet beneath the ship, a high-powered sound wave was blasted into the gulf floor. The downward-directed seismic wave bounced and refracted harmlessly through the earth's crust. Harmless, except for a single point of convergence from the three oblong cylinders, which focused their blast of sound at the exact depth and position of a marked fault line.

The brief acoustic burst was followed by a second discharge, then a third. The concentrated acoustic blasts bombarded the subterranean fault line with vibrating seismic waves until it reached a point of irreversible stress. Like Ella Fitzgerald shattering a glass with her voice, the pounding acoustic vibrations fractured the fault located a half mile beneath the surface.

The rupture reverberated to the surface with a savage shake. The U.S. Geological Survey would clock it at 7.2 on the Richter scale, a killer quake by all accounts. Loss of life was minimal, with major damage limited to just a few Iranian coastal villages near Kharg Island. Since the Persian Gulf waters were too shallow for a tsunami to form, the damage was restricted almost entirely to a section of Iranian shoreline near the gulf's tip. And to Kharg Island.

On the tiny oil-pumping island, the damage was catastrophic. The whole island shook as if a nuclear bomb had detonated beneath it. Dozens of oil storage tanks ruptured like balloons, spilling their black contents in rivers that slopped down the hillside and into the sea. The huge fixed oil terminal off the eastern shore broke into several free-floating pieces that battered and punctured the moored tankers.

The supertanker terminal on the western side of Kharg Island disappeared altogether.

The small black drill ship didn't wait around to survey the damage, instead steaming south in the early hours of the morning. The flurry of helicopters and rescue ships streaming to the rocky island took little notice of the old vessel headed away from the destruction. Yet in its wake, the drill ship had single-handedly devastated Iranian oil exports, jolting the global petroleum market once again while plunging China into a state of chaos.

-35-

To the teetering oil futures market, the report of the destruction at Kharg Island hit like an atomic blast, unleashing a fear-driven free-for-all. Frenzied traders jumped over the oil futures contracts, bidding the price of sweet crude up to a stratospheric one hundred fifty dollars per barrel. On Wall Street, the Dow headed in the opposite direction. A reeling stock market was forced to shut down early as trading curbs halted activity after a massive sell-off erased twenty percent of the market's value in half a day.

Across the U.S., anxious motorists reacted to the news by racing to the nearest gas station to fill their cars up on cheaper fuel. The stampede buying quickly exhausted the thin margin of surplus refined gasoline and fuel shortages soon sprouted across every state. Sporadic violence flared over the waning supply in some regions as a sense of panic gripped the country.

At the White House, the president called an emergency meeting of his top security and economic advisers in the Cabinet Room. A no-nonsense populist elected from Montana, the president listened quietly as his chief economic adviser recounted a litany of disastrous consequences resulting from the oil shock.

"A near doubling of oil prices in less than a month will produce unprecedented inflationary pressures,"

touted the adviser, a balding man with thick glasses. "Aside from the obvious distress to the entire transportation sector, there are countless industrial and manufacturing bases that rely on petroleum content. Plastics, chemicals, paint, textiles ... there's hardly an industry that is not directly impacted by the price surge. The dramatic rise in oil costs will have to be passed on to the consumer, who is already suffering from shock at the gas pump. An immediate recession is a foregone conclusion. My fear is that we are standing at the precipice of a deep and prolonged economic depression of global proportions."

"Isn't this price hike a knee-jerk reaction?" the president asked. "After all, we don't import a drop of oil from Iran."

"There is a major element of panic, no doubt about it. But the damage to Kharg Island disrupts the global supply of oil, which impacts the price in the U.S. even if our own import supply remains steady. Of course, we are already seeing a shortfall in imports from the destruction at Ras Tanura. As a result, the markets are on edge. The anxiety is partly being fueled by rumors, one of which says that a terrorist element was responsible for the damage to both Persian Gulf facilities."

"Anything to those claims?" the president asked his national security advisor, a studious man with a lean face.

"None that we've ascertained," the man replied in a staid voice. "I'll task Langley with a further look, but all evidence points to naturally occurring earthquakes. The fact that two damaging rattles took place in close relative proximity appears to be a fluke of nature."

"Fair enough, but let's not take chances with any homegrown fanatics who want to capitalize on the situation here for a headline. Dennis, I'd like Homeland Security to elevate the terrorist threat advisory for all seaports. Let's make sure surveillance is boosted at our oil terminals, particularly along the Gulf Coast."

"Consider it done, Mr. President," replied the director of homeland security, seated opposite of the chief executive.

"Garner, I think a quick means to quell the public hysteria would be to immediately release some stocks from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve." The suggestion came from Vice President James Sandecker, a retired admiral and former head of NUMA. He was a small but intense man with blazing eyes and a fiery red Vandyke beard. An old friend of the president, he seldom addressed his boss by title. "The oil markets should cool down over time. Releasing a portion of the reserves should dampen the immediate public fear of an outright oil shortage, and perhaps boost confidence in the markets."

The president nodded. "Write up a Presidential Order to that effect," he barked at an aide.

"A sales pitch from the bully pulpit might not hurt, either," Sandecker added, glancing toward a large portrait of Teddy Roosevelt hanging on a side wall.

"I'll do my part," the president agreed. "Contact the networks and schedule a televised address for tonight," he directed. "I'll advocate voluntary gas rationing for the next thirty days. Might help the refineries catch up on supplies. We'll get the public calmed down first, then try to figure a way out of this mess."

"There must be some options to consider," mused the chief of staff. "Temporary price freezes and mandatory fuel rationing could be instituted quickly."

"Might be wise to promote some conservation measures publicly while privately twisting some arms,"

Sandecker said. "We can probably entice some of our other foreign suppliers to boost oil production.

Maybe our domestic producers can help as well, though I understand the Alaska Pipeline is now operating at capacity again."

"Yes, the arctic drilling has increased production," the economic adviser confirmed. "We would otherwise be in a lot worse shape right now. But that just means the upside from our present condition is limited. The measures mentioned are all fine and good, but they will only have a minor effect on domestic demand. The ugly reality is that they will have almost no impact on the global markets. A major supply fix is what's needed and that will take months for Saudi Arabia and Iran to sort out. I'm afraid to say, there is very little we can do right now to impact the global price of oil in a meaningful manner."

The dire assessment silenced the room. Finally, the president spoke.

"All right, gentlemen, put everything on the table. I want to look at all options and every worst-case scenario. And I suspect we'll have to move fast. With the oil price holding at the current level, exactly how much time do we have before completely losing the economy?" he asked, his dark eyes boring into the economist.

"Difficult to say," the adviser replied nervously. "Perhaps a thirty-day window before we see the first major work stoppages and associated layoffs. Once the markets have digested this initial shock, the price pressure may abate. But we'll need to see a price retreat of at least thirty to forty dollars to avoid a severe recession. The flip side is that the markets are in a very tenuous state. Another shock of any sort and we could have a global calamity on our hands."

"Another shock," the president said softly. "God help us from that."

-36-

The empty patch of sand that yielded Summer's porcelain figurine now looked like an underwater construction site. Aluminum grids and yellow ropes stretched in all directions across the seabed, punctuated by tiny orange flags staked into the ground. What had started as a sample test pit dug near the rocky outcropping had grown into a full-blown excavation project after Dirk and Summer uncovered a large framing timber buried two feet under the sand. Additional test pits confirmed that the porcelain figure and stone anchor were no random objects tossed over the side but part of an entire wreck buried between the two coral reefs.

Beautifully crafted blue-and-white porcelain plates and bowls, along with votives and carvings of jade, all hinted at a wreck of Chinese origin. Portions of the ship's frame also correlated with the design of a massively sized Chinese junk. To Summer's amazement and chagrin, the potential discovery of an early Chinese ship in Hawaiian waters had caused a sensation. Media representatives from around the world descended on her like vultures to capture the story. After a slate of repetitive news interviews, she was only too happy to slip on a tank and fins and escape the bedlam underwater. The news-hounds would lose interest in the story quick enough, she knew, and then the excavation could be resumed uninterrupted.

Summer floated over the grids and past a pair of divers blowing sand away from a large timber believed to be the sternpost. A few yards away, manual probes driven into the sand had detected another large section of wood that might be the rudder. Gliding to the edge of the work site, she kicked toward the surface alongside a drop line, holding a balled fist over her head until she broke the surface.

A brown metal barge was now moored over the site, and Summer swam the few yards over to its side ladder. Tossing her fins onto the deck, she climbed up and onto the small barge. It was little more than an open deck, with a dingy tin hut constructed at one end. A wall rack full of dive gear hung against the side of the hut, while the deck rail was lined with a generator, water pump, and several compressors. A pair of surfboards lying on the tin shack's roof offered the only hint of frivolity to the work site. The boards belonged to Dirk and Summer and were deemed standard equipment whenever they worked in Hawaii.

"How's the water?" drawled the voice of Jack Dahlgren. He was hunched over one of the compressors, screwdriver in hand, as Summer stowed her tank and dive gear.

"It's Hawaii," she smiled. "Always a delight." She toweled her hair off, then walked over to Dahlgren.

"Be up and running soon?" she asked.

"Just waiting for a final fuel and supply drop from the Mariana. We've got one compressor to run an airlift and another to provide surface-supplied air. They'll make diving in these purty waters a breeze."

"I'm more excited about applying the airlift to the last few buried areas."

The airlift was little more than a hollow tube with compressed air fed into the lower end. The pressurized air ascended up the tube, producing a vacuum effect ideal for sucking away sand and loose debris from a wreck site.

"Mariana Explorer to Brown Bess," crackled a handheld radio strung to the side rail. Dirk's voice was instantly recognized on the other end.

"Bess here. Come on back," Dahlgren replied.

"Jack, we've got the fuel and hot dogs and are ten miles away. The captain says we'll tie up on your leeward side to offload the fuel."

"We'll be waiting." Dahlgren peered across the horizon, spotting a turquoise dot cruising toward the barge. Then the radio crackled once more.

"And tell Summer that she has yet another visitor who would like to talk to her about the wreck.

Explorer out."

"Not another reporter," Summer cursed, rolling her eyes in disgust.

"Summer says she'll be happy as a clam to host another interview. Bess out," Dahlgren replied into the microphone, laughing at Summer's taciturn look.

The NUMA vessel arrived within the hour and tied up alongside the barge. While Dahlgren oversaw the loading of a fifty-five-gallon drum of gasoline, Summer climbed aboard the Mariana Explorer and made her way to the wardroom. There she found Dirk having coffee with a dark-skinned Asian man wearing slacks and a navy polo shirt.

"Summer, come meet Dr. Alfred Tong," Dirk said, waving her over.

Tong stood up and bowed, then shook Summer's outstretched hand.

"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Pitt," he said, looking up into the gray eyes of the taller woman. He had a powerful grip, she noted, and skin like her own that had seen much of the sun. She tried hard not to stare at a prominent scar that ran down his left cheek, instead gazing at his intense walnut-colored eyes and jet-black hair.

"Thank goodness," Summer blushed. "I was expecting another TV reporter."

"Dr. Tong is a conservator with the National Museum of Malaysia," Dirk explained.

"Yes," Tong said and nodded, then continued in choppy English. "I was attending a seminar at the University of Hawaii when I heard of your discovery. An associate at the university put me in touch with a local NUMA representative. Your captain and brother were kind enough to invite me out for the day."

"The logistics were well timed," Dirk explained. "The Mariana Explorer happened to be in Hilo picking up fuel and supplies for the barge and will be returning that direction this evening."

"What is your interest in the wreck?" Summer asked.

"We have a sizeable collection of Southeast Asian artifacts in the museum, as well as an extensive exhibit from a fourteenth-century Chinese vessel excavated from the Straits of Malacca. Though it is not my specific area of expertise, I have some knowledge of Yuan and Ming dynasty pottery. I am interested in what you have retrieved, and thought I might offer assistance in identifying the age of the vessel through its artifacts. I, like many others, would revel in the discovery of a thirteenth-century Chinese royal vessel in the western Pacific."

"Identifying the age of the vessel is a key question," Summer replied. "I'm afraid we've uncovered just a limited number of ceramic artifacts. We sent a sampling to the University of California for analysis, but I'd be happy to let you examine the remaining items."

"Perhaps the context of the artifact finds will be useful. Can you share with me the condition and configuration of the wreck?"

Dirk unrolled a large script of paper sitting on the table. "I was just going to walk you through the excavation profile before Summer walked in."

They all took a seat at the table and examined the chart. It was a computer-aided diagram of the wreck site from an overhead view. Sections of timbers and scattered artifacts were displayed in a horseshoe-shaped region next to the lava bed. Tong was surprised by the tiny amount of remains and artifacts documented in the drawing, hardly indicative of a large sailing vessel.

"We've worked with the archaeologists from the University of Hawaii to excavate nearly all of the accessible portions of the wreck. Unfortunately, we are only seeing about ten percent of the entire vessel," Dirk said.

"The rest is under coral?" Tong asked.

"No, the wreck actually lies perpendicular to two reefs under a sandbar, with her nose to the shore,"

Summer said. She pointed to the diagram, which showed two coral mounds on either side of the excavation field. "The sand has protected the existing artifacts from consumption by the coral. We think this section of sand may have been a natural channel cut through the reef eons ago when the seas were lower."

"If the coral has not imprisoned the wreck, then why are there not more remains visible?"

"In a word, lava." Summer pointed to the closed end of the horseshoe, which showed a rocky bed that ran off the chart in the direction of the shoreline. "If you look out the window, you can see that this section of coastline is one big lava field. The rest of the wreck, I'm sorry to say, is buried under a bed of lava rock."

"Remarkable," Tong said with a cocked brow. "So the rest of the wreck and its cargo is intact under the lava?"

"The rest of the ship is either under the lava or was consumed by it. If the ship sank and was buried under sand before the lava flow arrived, then it may well be preserved intact beneath the lava field. The timbers we've found adjacent to the lava field are well buried, which suggests that the rest of the ship may indeed still be there."

"The upside is that we may be able to use the lava to help age the wreck," Dirk said. "We have a local vulcanologist studying the historical record of volcanic eruptions and associated lava flows on this part of the island. So far, we know that there has been no volcanic activity in this immediate area for at least two hundred years, and possibly much longer. We hope to receive more definitive information in a few days."

"And what of the actual ship have you identified?"

"Just a few pieces, which appear to be from the stern section. The timbers are thick, indicating a potentially large ship, perhaps even two hundred feet or more. Then there is the anchor stone, which is consistent with known Chinese design, and also indicative of a sizeable vessel."

"A vessel that size and age would most certainly be Chinese," Tong said.

"Yes," Dirk replied, "the European vessels of the day were half as large. I've read of the legend of the Chinese admiral Zheng He, who purportedly sailed around the world with his massive Treasure Fleet in 1405. This is no six-masted, five-hundred-foot behemoth, though, like Zheng He supposedly sailed, if such massive ships even existed."

"History tends to exaggerate," Tong said. "But crossing half the Pacific a hundred years before Zheng He's purported voyage would be an astounding accomplishment."

"The ceramic artifacts recovered present the most intriguing evidence that the wreck is that old," Summer said. "We've found comparable design patterns in our research which suggest the ship may date to the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. Perhaps you can confirm our assessment with an examination of the ceramics?"

"I am most interested to see what you have recovered."

Summer led them down a flight of stairs to a brightly illuminated laboratory. Racks of plastic bins lined the back bulkhead, all filled with various artifacts recovered from the wreck and now soaking in fresh water.

"Most of the items recovered were fragments of the actual ship," she explained. "The cargo holds and living quarters must all be under the lava, as we recovered few personal artifacts. We did find a few everyday cooking utensils and a large pot," she said, pointing to an end rack, "but you will probably be most interested in these."

She pulled two trays off one of the racks and set them on a stainless steel table. Inside the trays were several plates, a bowl, and numerous fragments of porcelain. Most of the items were sugary white in color, though the bowl was made of black clay. Tong's eyes lit up as he slipped on a pair of reading glasses and began examining the artifacts.

"Yes, very nice," he muttered as he quickly ran through the inventory.

"What can you tell us about the design?" Summer asked.

"The patterns and material are consistent with the product of the Chinese kilns at Jingdezhen and Jianyang. The overall quality appears less advanced than the work produced during the later Ming Dynasty. The fish emblem here," he said, holding up one of the plates. "I have seen this before on a Yuan-period bowl. I would concur with your assessment, these ceramics are characteristic of items manufactured in the Song and Yuan dynasties of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries."

A broad smile crossed Summer's lips and she gave a happy wink to Dirk. Tong reached over and pulled the last artifact from the tray, a large teal-and-white plate with a pie-slice section missing from the platter.

The glazed image of a peacock strutted across the center, while smaller images of a cheetah chasing a herd of deer circled the plate's perimeter. Tong studied the plate with a renewed intensity, looking again and again at the ornate glazing and animal portrayal.

"One of the lab conservators found a similar design in the database used by Yuan royalty," Dirk said.

"Yes, it is," Tong muttered, then put the plate down and backtracked. "Similar, that is, but surely not made for royalty. A close design used for trade, most likely," he added. "But I would agree that it is from the Yuan era, which, as you know, lasted from 1264 to 1368. Well ahead of Admiral Zheng."

"That's what we believe, remarkable as it is to think a ship of that era found its way to Hawaiian waters."

The door to the lab opened and in walked the Mariana Explorer's captain. A towering sandy-haired man, Bill Stenseth commanded the respect of the entire ship by his quiet intelligence and his good-natured sense of fair play.

"Dahlgren has completed loading the fuel and supplies onto your floating hotel. Whenever you two are set to jump ship, we'll be on our way."

"We're about finished, Captain. Dirk and I will get our things and join Jack on the barge."

"You are still working on the wreck?" Tong asked.

"We have a final section of timber to uncover, which we believe may be part of the rudder post,"

Summer explained. "If so, it will give us a better idea of the ship's dimension. The Mariana Explorer needs to continue a reef survey project on the other side of the island, so Dirk, Jack Dahlgren, and I are going to camp out on the barge for a few days and complete the excavation work."

"I see," Tong replied. "Well, thank you for sharing the recovered artifacts with me. When I return to Malaysia, I will research our museum's records and see if I can't provide you some additional information about the ceramics I have seen today."

"Thank you for taking the time to visit us and share your insights. We are excited that you have confirmed our initial assessment of the ship's age and possible ancestry."

Dirk and Summer quickly threw together a few personal belongings and jumped onto the barge, where Dahlgren was busily removing the ship's mooring lines. With a blast of the horn, Captain Stenseth backed the Explorer away from the barge and in a short while the turquoise ship disappeared around the jagged coastline heading toward Hilo.

"Well, what did you two find out about our Chinese lava ship?" Dahlgren asked, digging into a large cooler for a drink.

"Dr. Tong agrees that the age of the ceramics matches our initial readings, which put the wreck at seven to eight hundred years old," Summer replied.

"The good doctor seemed mighty interested in the plate our lab boys thought had royal markings, though he wasn't willing to bite," Dirk said.

"Professional jealousy, I think," Summer grinned. "It's a royal ship, I just know it."

"Royalty," Dahlgren said, plopping into a canvas chair with a can of beer and hoisting his feet to the side rail. "Now, don't that beat all?"

-37-

Five thousand miles to the east, Pitt and Giordino tramped into the lobby of the Continental Hotel in Ulaanbaatar looking like a pair of worn saddlebags. Their wrinkled clothes were laden in dust, which permeated their hair, skin, and shoes. Sunbaked blisters tainted the portion of their faces where scraggly growths of beard failed to sprout. All that was missing was a circle of flies buzzing around their heads.

The hotel manager looked down his nose with disdain as the two stragglers approached the front desk with bleary eyes.

"Any messages for rooms 4024 or 4025?" Pitt asked, his white teeth sparkling brightly behind his blistered lips.

The desk manager raised a brow in recognition, then briefly retreated to a small side room.

"One message and a delivery, sir," he said, handing Pitt a slip of paper and a small box plastered with overnight-shipping labels.

Pitt took the message and handed the package to Giordino while stepping away from the desk.

"It's from Corsov," he said quietly to Giordino.

"Pray tell, what does our favorite KGB agent have to say?"

"He was called away to a Foreign Ministry conference in Irkutsk. Sends his regards, hopes our foray south was productive. He'll contact us in a few days when he gets back to town."

"Very polite of him," Giordino said with a touch of sarcasm. "I wonder if Theresa and Jim will have the luxury of awaiting his return." He ripped open the overnight package, revealing an old leather book and a heavy jar of vitamins. A small card fell out, which he picked up and handed to Pitt.

"From the wife?"

Pitt nodded, silently reading the handwritten note inside.

"A book and vitamins? Not very romantic of Mrs. Pitt," Giordino chided.

"Ah, but it is my favorite story. Always packs a wallop." Pitt held up the leather-bound novel, displaying the spine to Giordino.

"Melville's Moby-Dick. A tasteful choice," Giordino said, "though the adventures of Archie and Veronica work fine for me."

Pitt opened the book and flipped through the pages until a cutout section revealed itself. Buried in the center of the mock book was a Colt .45 automatic.

"I see she comes with a harpoon, Ahab," Giordino whispered, letting out a low whistle.

Pitt popped open the vitamin bottle cap, displaying a dozen or so .45 caliber rounds that matched the Colt.

"Wouldn't a congresswoman get in a bit of trouble for shipping firearms around the world?" Giordino asked.

"Only if she got caught," Pitt smiled, sealing the bottle and closing the book.

"With a little canned heat, there's no sense in waiting for Corsov," Giordino urged.

Pitt shook his head slowly. "Nope, I think we make for a quick turnaround. It probably wouldn't be safe lolling about here for long anyway, once Borjin fails to hear back from his Buddhist hit man."

"A shower and a beer should aid the planning process."

"First some facts," Pitt said, walking to a cramped business center off the main lobby. He fished into his pocket and pulled out the silver pendant taken from Borjin's lab and laid it on a copy machine. He scribbled a note on the resulting photocopy, then fed it through an adjacent fax machine, dialing up a long-distance number by rote. He then fed the pages from the seismic-imaging manual through the fax, dialing a second number.

"That ought to keep a few pair of idle hands out of the devil's workshop," he said to himself as he made his way up to his room.

***

The exterior of the Georgetown carriage house looked like any other upscale residence in the swanky quarter of Washington, D.C. The weathered-brick structure had freshly painted eaves, its nineteenth-century glass windows were sparkling clean, and the small surrounding yard was neatly manicured. It was a stark contrast to the home's interior, which resembled the book depository for the New York Public Library. Polished wooden bookshelves lined nearly every wall in the house, each packed to the brim with historical books on ships and seafaring. More books littered the dining table and the kitchen counters, in addition to strategic stockpiles at various locales on the floor.

The home's eccentric owner, St. Julien Perlmutter, wouldn't want it any other way. Books were a major passion for one of the nation's preeminent maritime historians, who had assembled a reference collection that librarians and private collectors salivated over. Generous with his archives, he gladly shared his knowledge and resources with those like him who had a love of the sea.

The beep and whir of a fax machine startled Perlmutter awake from an overstuffed leather chair, where he had fallen asleep while perusing the ship's log from the famous ghost ship Mary Celeste. Hoisting his rotund, nearly four-hundred-pound frame from the chair, he walked to his den and retrieved the fax. He stroked a thick gray beard as he read the brief note on the cover page:

"Airag? That's bloody blackmail," he muttered with a grin.

Perlmutter was a grand gourmand who loved rich and exotic food, as evidenced by his immense belly.

Pitt had touched a culinary nerve with a bribe of the Mongolian fermented mare's milk. Perlmutter closely examined the following fax pages, which showed the front and back side of a silver pendant.

"Dirk, I'm no jeweler, but I know who just might peg this," he said aloud. Picking up a telephone, he dialed a number and waited for a voice to answer.

"Gordon? St. Julien here. Say, I know we had lunch scheduled for Thursday but I could use your help on something. Could you meet today instead? Fine, fine, I'll take care of the reservation and see you at noon."

Perlmutter hung up the phone and gazed again at the image of the pendant. Coming from Pitt, that meant there was probably a wild tale behind it. Wild and dangerous.

***

The Monocle near Capitol Hill was bustling with a workday lunch crowd when Perlmutter walked in the door. A popular haunt of Washington politicians, the restaurant was filled with senators, lobbyists, and Hill staffers. Perlmutter quickly spotted his friend Gordon Eeten in a side booth, as he was one of the few occupants not wearing a blue suit.

"St. Julien, good to see you again my friend," Eeten greeted. A large man himself, Eeten had a humorous demeanor mixed with the observant eye of a detective.

"I see I have some catching up to do," Perlmutter grinned, eyeing a nearly empty martini glass on the table.

Perlmutter hailed the bartender for a Sapphire Bombay Gibson, then the two men ordered lunch. As they waited for the meal, Perlmutter handed Pitt's fax to Eeten.

"Business before dining pleasure, I'm afraid," Perlmutter said. "A friend ran across this brooch in Mongolia and would like to know its significance. Can you shed any light?"

Eeten studied the photocopies with a poker face. As an antiquities appraiser with the famed auction house of Sotheby's, he had assessed literally thousands of historic artifacts before they were put up for public auction. A childhood friend of Perlmutter's, he regularly tipped off the marine historian when a pending auction contained items of maritime interest.

"Difficult to gauge the quality," Eeten prefaced. "Hate to give an estimate over a fax copy."

"Knowing my friend, he could care less about its value. I believe he is more interested in its age and historical context."

"Why didn't you say so in the first place?" Eeten replied, visibly relaxing.

"So you know what it is?"

"Yes, I believe so. I've seen something similar in a lot we auctioned a few months ago. Of course, I would have to examine the piece in person to verify its authenticity."

"What can you tell me about it?" Perlmutter asked, taking notes in a small book.

"It appears to be Seljuk in origin. The double-headed eagle, a very unique motif, was a favored symbol of the dynasty."

"If my memory serves, the Seljuks were a band of Turkish Muslims who briefly controlled a large chunk of old Byzantium," Perlmutter said.

"Yes, they overran Persia around 1000 A.D., but their power peaked about two hundred years later, before they were crushed by the rival Khwarezmid Empire under Ala ad-Din Muhammad. The Seljuks were fine artisans, particularly in carving stone, but were also skilled in metallurgy. They even minted coins of silver and copper for a time."

"So this pendant is within their skill base."

"Absolutely. The minute calligraphy is consistent with a Seljuk practice of inscribing an Islamic prayer or dedication on their later metalwork. There's a professor at Columbia who could translate the inscription for you, which is probably written in Kufic. Who knows, perhaps it is a personal inscription to a sultan."

"Royalty implications?"

"Yes. You see, the Seljuks seldom used silver and gold in their artwork. The materials were regarded as luxury items and therefore inconsistent with the Islamic ideal of simplicity. Of course, the rules didn't necessarily apply to the sultans, some of whom hoarded the stuff. So if this pendant is made of silver, which it appears to be, then there's a strong likelihood of a sultan connection."

"So we are talking Seljuk manufacture, dating approximately 1100 to 1200 A.D., and possibly sultan pedigree," Perlmutter summed up, scribbling in his book.

"Most likely. The items we examined and auctioned recently were part of a cache linked to Malik Shah, a Seljuk sultan who died in 1092. It is interesting that your friend found this piece in Mongolia. As I mentioned, the Seljuks were sacked by the forces of Ala ad-Din Muhammad, who in turn was defeated by Genghis Khan around 1220. This may well have been one of the spoils of war brought home by the armies of Genghis Khan."

A waiter arrived and set their lunches on the table, a rib-eye steak for Eeten and an order of calf's liver for Perlmutter.

"Some remarkable insights, Gordon. I don't suppose a great deal of twelfth-and thirteenth-century Asian artifacts reach the marketplace very often."

"It's a funny thing. We seldom used to see artifacts from that era. But about eight or nine years ago, we were contacted by a broker in Malaysia who had a consignment to sell and he has provided us a steady stream of artifacts ever since. I bet we have sold over one hundred million dollars' worth of similar goods in that time. And I know Christie's has been auctioning similar quantities."

"My word. Any idea of the source of all those relics?"

"I could only speculate," Eeten said, chewing on his steak. "The Malaysian broker is a most secretive fellow and refuses to divulge his sources. I've never even been allowed to meet the man face-to-face. But he has never shipped us anything phony. Every consignment has contained the genuine article from top to bottom."

"Seems a little odd that kind of volume emanates from Malaysia."

"True, but the goods could be routed from anywhere. He's just a broker. Neither he nor his firm's name even sounds Malaysian."

"What's that?" Perlmutter asked, finishing his meal.

"An odd name. It's called the Buryat Trading Company."

-38-

Theresa felt a slight sense of relief when the door to her room opened and a guard motioned for her to step into the hallway. If they were going to kill her, then so be it, she thought. It would be better than an endless confinement in fearful anticipation.

It had been two days since she was first locked in the room without explanation. There had been no contact by anyone, save for the occasional tray of food shoved in the room. Though she knew nothing of the visit by the Chinese delegation, she had heard the caravan of cars arrive and depart. Of greater mystery was the heavy gunfire that had erupted from the rear of the compound. She strained to peer out the tiny window at the back of her room but could see little more than swirling dust. Idly staring out the window again the next day, she had observed the horse guards on patrol trotting by, though their numbers seemed smaller.

Now walking out her door, she was glad to see Wofford standing in the hall, leaning on a cane. He flashed her a warm smile.

"Vacation's over," he said. "Guess it's back to work."

His words proved prophetic, as they were escorted back to the study. Borjin sat waiting for them, inhaling a thick cigar. He appeared more relaxed than the last time they saw him, his effusion of arrogance stronger than ever.

"Come sit, my friends," he said, waving them over to his table. "I hope you enjoyed your time off from work."

"Sure," Wofford said. "Staring at four walls was most relaxing."

Borjin ignored the comment and pointed to a fresh stack of seismic reports.

"Your work here is nearly complete," he said. "But there is some urgency in the appropriate selection of well sites in this region." He unfurled a topographic map covering a two-hundred-square-mile area.

Theresa and Wofford could see from the markings that it encompassed an area of the Chinese Gobi Desert just southeast of the Mongolian border.

"You have already provided inputs on a number of detailed sites within this region. I must say, your assessments have been most insightful," he said with a patronizing tone. "As you can see, the blocks you have already examined are marked on this regional map. I ask that you evaluate those blocks in relation to the entire region and identify a prioritization of test-well sites to maximize potential production."

"Aren't these sites located in China?" Wofford asked, pressing the point.

"Yes, they are," Borjin replied matter-of-factly, offering no further explanation.

"You know that the potential reserves are rather deep?" Wofford asked. "Probably why they have been overlooked in the past."

"Yes. We have the appropriate equipment to drill to the required depths," Borjin replied with impatience.

"I need to have two hundred high-producing wells in six months. Locate them."

Borjin's arrogance finally rankled Wofford. Theresa could see from the rising flush of red to his face that he was about to tell the Mongolian to shove it. She quickly beat him to the punch.

"We can do that," she blurted. "It will take us about three or four days," she added, stalling for time.

"You have until tomorrow. My field manager will meet with you in the afternoon for a detailed briefing on your analysis."

"Once completed, will we be free to return to Ulaanbaatar?" she asked.

"I will arrange a vehicle to transport you the following morning."

"Then we better get down to work," Theresa replied, grabbing the folder and spreading its contents across the table. Borjin nodded with an untrusting grimace, then stood up and left the room. As he disappeared down the corridor, Wofford turned to Theresa and shook his head.

"That was quite the show of cooperation," he whispered. "Turning over a new leaf?"

"Best that he thinks we believe him," she replied, holding a report in front of her mouth. "Plus, I didn't want you to deck him and get us both killed."

Wofford smiled sheepishly, realizing how close she was to the mark.

Still wary of the security camera, Theresa pulled a map out from the bottom of the file and casually flipped it over while scattering some other reports about. On the blank back side, she took a pen and wrote "Ideas for Escape." Jotting a few notes beneath it, she slid it across the table to Wofford. He picked the chart up and studied Theresa's comments with interest. While he was holding it up to his eyes, Theresa noticed the map on the reverse side depicted the Persian Gulf. A series of red jagged lines were imposed across various sections of the map. Theresa saw that a red circle was drawn at two points over a couple of the heavier lines. One circle, she noticed, was around the city of Ras Tanura, and the other around a small island off the coast of Iran.

"Jim, look at this map," she interrupted, flipping the chart over for him to see.

"It's a fault map," Wofford said after studying the colored lines. "It shows a tectonic plate boundary running right along the Persian Gulf and major fault zones running off it."

Isolated since their abduction, neither knew anything about the devastating earthquakes that had recently struck the gulf. While Wofford studied the two red circles, Theresa rummaged through the rest of the file and produced two similar maps. The first was an enlarged view of Lake Baikal in Siberia.

"My word, look at this," she said, holding up the map. Her finger pointed to the top of the blue-colored lake. Just beyond her fingertip, at the lake's northern shoreline, was a large fault line circled in red. A newly constructed oil pipeline was also marked on the map, running just a mile or two north of the lake.

"You don't suppose they did something around the fault that triggered the seiche wave on the lake?" she asked.

"Short of setting off a nuclear device, I don't see how," Wofford replied, though his voice was thin on conviction. "What's on the other map?"

Theresa slid the other map to the top of the pile. They both immediately recognized it as a map of the Alaskan coastline, running from Anchorage down to British Columbia. Highlighted in yellow was the Alaska Pipeline, which stretched inland from its end point at the port city of Valdez. The four-foot-thick pipeline carried crude oil from the rich Prudhoe Bay fields on Alaska's North Slope, supplying a million barrels a day to the U.S. domestic market.

With a growing apprehension, Theresa pointed to a thick fault line marked on the map running just off the coastline. A dark red circle was drawn around a point on the fault, directly off the port of Valdez.

In silent dread, they both stared at the mark, wondering what Borjin had in store for the Alaska Pipeline.

-39-

Hiram Yaeger wolfed down a grilled-chicken sandwich with green tea, then excused himself from his cafeteria companions. The head of NUMA's computer resource center seldom left his precious bay processing hardware for long and quickly headed back to his lair on the tenth floor of the Washington headquarters building. Exiting the cafeteria, he smiled to himself as a pair of visiting politicians in blue suits gave the fiftyish man in the Rolling Stones T-shirt a slanted look.

The lanky computer whiz flaunted his nonconformity by dressing in jeans and cowboy boots while wearing his long hair tied in a ponytail. His skill had overshadowed his appearance, as indicated by the massive computer center he had built and managed from scratch. Within its databases was the world's most exhaustive collection of research related to oceanography and underwater studies, as well as real-time sea and weather conditions processed from hundreds of monitoring stations around the world.

Yaeger found the computer center a double-edged sword, however. Its vast computing power spurred a constant demand by NUMA's array of research scientists eager to apply its horsepower to the latest pet project. Yet Yaeger was never known to turn down a request for computer time within the agency.

As the elevator doors opened on the tenth floor, Yaeger walked into his cavernous computer lab, fronted by a large horseshoe-shaped console. A solid, slightly balding man with a friendly face sat waiting in one of the swivel chairs that lined the console.

"I can't believe it," the man smiled. "I actually caught you away from the roost."

"Unlike my beloved computers, I've still got to eat," Yaeger replied. "Good to see you again, Phil," he added, shaking hands. "How are things down in the gravel pit?"

Dr. Phillip McCammon chuckled at the reference. As head of NUMA's Department of Marine Geology, McCammon was the resident expert in the study of undersea sediments. As it happened, the department was located in one of the underground levels of the headquarters building.

"We're still pounding rocks," McCammon said. "I could use your help with some computing resources, however."

"My kingdom is at your disposal," Yaeger replied, waving a hand at the computer center around him, which represented the processing power of nearly a half dozen supercomputers.

"I won't need to monopolize the castle for long. I received an unofficial request from an associate at Langley to take a look at some seismic data. I guess the CIA is interested in the two recent earthquakes that have pulverized the Persian Gulf."

"It is an interesting coincidence that there were two big quakes so close to each other and they both put a crimp on the oil supply. If there are any more spikes in the price of gas, I'll soon be riding my bicycle to work," Yaeger griped.

"You and a lot of other people."

"So, what can I do to help?"

"They have arranged for the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado, to transfer a copy of their complete historical record on global seismic activity for the last five years," McCammon said, handing Yaeger a sheet of paper with the relevant contact information. "One of my analysts has written a software program to evaluate the specific characteristics of the Persian Gulf quakes. Those parameters will then be run against the global seismic database to see if there are any other similar profiles."

"You think there might be something to it?"

"No, I can't imagine how there could be. But we'll help our friendly neighborhood spooks by covering the bases."

Yaeger nodded. "Not a problem. I'll have Max pull the data in from Golden this afternoon. Send up your software program and we'll have some answers for you in the morning."

"Thanks, Hiram. I'll get the program to you straightaway."

As McCammon headed toward the elevator, Yaeger turned to a keyboard and monitor and began typing in a string of commands. He stopped tapping when he noticed a multipage fax lying in his in-basket. He groaned when he spotted that it originated from the Continental Hotel in Ulaanbaatar.

"When it rains, it pours," he muttered as he skimmed over the fax. Then he set it down and resumed his keystrokes.

In an instant, a beautiful woman materialized on the opposite side of the console. She wore a sheer white blouse and a pleated wool skirt that fell to her knees.

"Good afternoon, Hiram. I was beginning to wonder if you were going to call today."

"You know I can't keep away from you, Max," he replied. A mirage of sorts, Max was in fact a holographic image created by Yaeger as a user-friendly interface to his computer network. Modeled after Yaeger's wife but with the perpetual figure of a twenty-year-old, Max had become very real to Yaeger and others in the NUMA building who relied upon her artificial intelligence for solving complex problems.

"Compliments will get you everywhere," she cooed slyly "What is it today? Big problem or little?"

"Some of both," he replied. "You might be pulling an all-nighter tonight, Max."

"You know I never sleep," she replied, rolling up the sleeves on her blouse. "Where do we begin?"

"I guess," he said, pulling the fax in front of him, "we better start with the boss."

-40-

The tropical sun climbed slowly over the hills of lava and coconut palm trees until it bathed the anchored barge in rays of golden light. On board the craft, the rhythmic sounds of a Hawaiian steel guitar band bellowed from a boom box, masking the background hum of a portable generator.

Summer, Dirk, and Dahlgren had already risen from their cots in the small covered shack and were preparing for a long day's work underwater. As Dirk topped up the gas tanks on a pair of compressors, Summer finished eating her breakfast of fresh papaya and bananas, washed down with a glass of guava juice.

"Who's on first?" she asked, gazing at the calm morning seas surrounding the barge.

"I believe Captain Jack has assembled a work schedule," Dirk said, nodding toward Dahlgren.

Dressed in swim shorts, flip-flops, and a faded Hawaiian shirt, Dahlgren was bent over inspecting the regulators on a pair of lightweight dive helmets. The captain moniker derived from a tired blue hat he wore on his head. It was the classic captain's hat favored by rich yachtsmen, sporting crossed gold anchors on its prow. Dahlgren's hat, however, looked like it had been run over by an M-l tank. "Aye,"

Dahlgren barked in a gravelly voice. "We'll work ninety-minute shifts below, two divers at a time, then rotate after a break. Dirk and I will take the first shift, then you can join me below for the second shift while Dirk works on his tan," he said, nodding toward Summer.

"That reminds me, I didn't see a blender on board this plank," Dirk said with disappointment.

"I am sorry to report that the last of the rum rations disappeared last night anyway. For medicinal purposes," Dahlgren added.

As a panicked look crossed Dirk's face, Summer rolled her eyes with a "Why me?" look. "All right, my future AA recruits, let's get to work. If by luck we have found the rudder, then we have a lot of excavating to do. We still need to disassemble and stow away the grid markers, and I'd like to leave some time before the Mariana Explorer returns to survey some additional areas."

Dahlgren stood up and took off his captain's hat and flung it across the deck. The hat spiraled perfectly, striking Summer square in the chest. Reacting with a start, she managed to catch the hat after a bobble.

"There," Dahlgren said. "You make a far better Bligh than I do."

As Dirk laughed, Summer blushed, then retorted, "Careful or I might accidentally cut your surface air while you are downstairs."

Dirk fired up the two air compressors then joined Dahlgren in slipping on a warm-water wet suit. They would dive sharing surface-supplied air from one of the compressors. Eliminating the cumbersome air tanks made it easier to work, while extending their bottom time. Since the water depth was only thirty feet at the wreck site, they could theoretically work all day underwater without fear of the bends.

Summer gathered up the airlift and lowered the big piece of PVC pipe over the side. A hose from the second compressor was attached to the business end of the airlift, which provided the air feed through a controllable valve. Summer slowly lowered the pipe via the air hose till it struck the bottom and the tension slacked on the line.

Dirk slipped on his fins, then glanced at his watch. "See you in ninety minutes," he said to Summer, then pulled his dive helmet over his head.

"I'll leave the lights on," Summer replied, shouting over the drone of the compressors. She moved to the rail and sorted a trio of air lines that would tail the underwater operation. Dirk threw her a wave then stepped off the side of the barge, followed by Dahlgren a second behind.

The bellow of the compressors evaporated as Dirk struck the surface and he submerged into the turquoise water. Clearing his ears, he thrust his head down and kicked to the bottom, quickly locating the airlift. Grabbing the pipe, he chased after Dahlgren, who was swimming toward deeper water. They stopped at a pair of small orange flags that poked up from the sandy bottom. Dirk lifted the airlift, standing it on end, then flipped the control lever to the air line. A rush of compressed air burst into the lower end of the pipe, then gurgled up toward the surface, drawing sand and water with it. Dirk swung the base of the airlift back and forth above the seabed, digging a small hole as he cleared away sand around the marker.

Dahlgren watched for a moment, then took up position a few feet away. In his hands, he carried a stainless steel shaft with a cross handle at one end. He began twisting the metal probe into the sand, driving it down nearly two feet until it struck something solid. His experienced hands could tell by the vibration that the probe had struck wood. Yanking the probe out, he moved over another foot and repeated the process. After a few more probes, he began marking the perimeter of the buried object with small orange flags.

The hole created by the airlift in Dirk's hands grew slowly. He had worked his way down to a flat surface that was heavily encrusted. Looking at the outline of marker flags Dahlgren had started laying down, he realized the object was of an immense size. If it was indeed a rudder, they might have to rethink the entire scale of the remaining ship.

On the deck of the barge, Summer checked the compressors once more, then took a seat in a beach chair across the deck but within sight of the air lines. A cool offshore gust blew across the barge, sending a shiver up her spine. She was thankful the morning sun was quickly warming up the deck.

She happily soaked in the surrounding environment, admiring the rugged Hawaiian coast and delicious smells of the nearby flora that wafted from the lush island. Gazing seaward, the rolling Pacific waters seemed to shine with an exotic intensity from its blue depths. Absently noting a black ship steaming in the distance, she took a deep breath of the fresh sea air and leaned back in her chair.

If this is work, she thought amusedly, then they can keep my vacation pay.

-41-

Pitt was already awake and dressed when an early-morning knock sounded on his hotel-room door. Opening it with some trepidation, he was relieved to find a smiling Al Giordino standing in the doorway.

"I found this vagrant panhandling in the lobby," he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "I thought you might know what to do with him."

A tired and disheveled Rudi Gunn peeked behind Giordino's thick frame with a look of relief on his face.

"Well, my long-lost deputy director," Pitt grinned. "We thought perhaps you had found yourself a nice babushka and taken up residence in the wilds of Siberia."

"I was only too happy to depart the wilds of Siberia. However, I would have stayed had I known that Mongolia was twice as uncivilized," Gunn harangued, entering the room and falling into a chair. "Nobody told me that there isn't a paved road in the entire country. Drove all night on something I'm not even sure was a road. I feel like I hopped on a pogo stick from New York to L.A."

Pitt handed him a cup of coffee from an in-room pot. "You were able to bring our search gear and dive equipment with you?" he asked.

"Yes, I got it all onto a truck that the institute was kind enough to loan me, or sell me, I'm still not sure. It cost me every ruble I had to grease the palms of the Russian border guards to let me into Mongolia. I'm sure they think I'm CIA."

"Your eyes aren't beady enough," Giordino muttered.

"I guess I can't complain," Gunn said, looking at Pitt. "Al told me about your traipse across the Gobi Desert. Didn't sound like any picnic."

"No, but a great way to see the countryside," Pitt smiled.

"This nutcase at Xanadu ... he's still holding the oil survey team?"

"We know Roy is dead. We can only presume the others are there and still alive."

A ring of the telephone interrupted the conversation. Pitt answered and spoke briefly, then slid the phone toward the center of the room and activated the speakerphone. Hiram Yaeger's easygoing voice boomed from the speaker.

"Greetings from Washington, where the local bureaucracy is beginning to wonder what has become of their favorite gurus of the deep," he said.

"Simply busy enjoying the delightful underwater treasures of greater Mongolia," Pitt replied.

"As I suspected. Of course, I'm sure you had a hand in the breaking political news coming from your part of the world."

The three men in the hotel room looked at each other blankly.

"We've been a little preoccupied," Pitt said. "What news?"

"China declared this morning that they are acceding the territorial lands of Inner Mongolia to the country of Mongolia."

"I noticed a gathering of people in the square down the street who looked like they were headed for a celebration," Gunn said. "I thought it might be a local holiday."

"China is playing it up as a friendly diplomatic gesture to their old neighbor, and has garnered all kinds of accolades from the United Nations and Western government leaders. Underground movements have been afoot for years to seek independence for Inner Mongolia, or reunification with Mongolia proper. It has been a point of embarrassment with the Chinese for years. Privately, analysts are saying it was less about politics and more about economics. Some have speculated that it involved a pipeline deal and trade agreement to provide oil or other resources needed to keep China's economy growing, though no one seems to think Mongolia actually holds much in the way of oil reserves."

"That's exactly what it is about. I guess you could say Al and I were indeed a part of the negotiations,"

Pitt said, glancing at Giordino with a knowing look.

"I knew you must have had something to do with it," Yaeger laughed.

"It has a lot more to do with the Avarga Oil Company and Tolgoi Borjin. Al and I saw some of his resources. He's got storage facilities already in place along the border."

"Pretty remarkable that he got hold of the keys to the castle so quickly," Giordino said. "He must have had some pretty good bargaining chips."

"Or misinformation. Hiram, were you able to track down any of the info that I faxed you?" Pitt asked.

"Max and I pulled an all-nighter, digging up what we could. This guy and his company are quite an enigma. Well funded, but operating in an almost clandestine fashion."

"A local Russian contact confirmed similar findings," Giordino said. "What did you make of his oil holdings?"

"There is no record of the Avarga Oil Company actually exporting any oil from Mongolia. But then, there isn't much to export. They are known to operate only a handful of active wells."

"So they are not pumping enough volume sufficient to make a dent in China's demand, or anybody else's, for that matter?"

"There is no evidence of it. Funny thing is, we uncovered a number of sizeable contracts with a couple of Western oil field equipment suppliers. With oil prices surging over one hundred fifty dollars a barrel, there has been a mad rush for new exploration and drilling. The oil equipment suppliers have huge backlogs.

Yet Avarga was already at the front of the line. They have apparently been purchasing a massive amount of specialized drilling and pipeline equipment for the last three years, all shipped to Mongolia."

"We found some of it here in Ulaanbaatar."

"The only item that was amiss was the tunnel-boring device. We found only one record of that model being shipped out of the country and it was exported to Malaysia."

"Perhaps a front company for our friends at Avarga Oil?" Pitt ventured.

"Probably. The particular model you saw is designated for shallow earth pipeline installations. Perfect, in other words, for burying an oil pipeline in the soft sands of the Gobi Desert. What I haven't been able to decipher is how this Borjin has obtained the resources to acquire all this equipment without any visible revenue stream," Yaeger said.

"Genghis Khan is picking up the tab," Pitt replied.

"I don't get the joke."

"It's true," Giordino said. "He's parked in the guy's backyard."

While Giordino told Gunn and Yaeger about the existence of the tomb in Borjin's sanctuary and the later discovery of Hunt's diary in the crashed trimotor, Pitt pulled out a ten-page fax he had received back from Perlmutter.

"St. Julien has confirmed as much," Pitt said. "Sotheby's and the other major auction houses have had a steady stream of consignments for the past eight years of major twelfth-and thirteenth-century mainland Asian art and artifacts."

"Loot buried with Genghis Khan?" Gunn asked.

"To the tune of over one hundred million dollars. Perlmutter verified that the artifacts have all been consistent with the geographic regions of Genghis Khan's conquests up to the date of his death. The pattern fits, as does the source. The artifacts have all been consigned from a shadowy Malaysian company named the Buryat Trading Company."

"That's the same firm that purchased the tunnel borer," Yaeger exclaimed.

"Small world, eh? Hiram, when we are finished perhaps you and Max can take a closer look at this Malaysian front company."

"Sure thing. I guess we should also talk about that bit of German strudel you sent me."

"Ah yes, the documents written in German. Did you and Max come up with anything?"

"Not much on the documents per se. Just as you noted, they read like the first pages of a technical operator's manual. You found them with a large electrical device?"

"A room full of computing equipment, powering a three-legged tubular device that stands ten feet high.

Any idea what it might be?"

"There wasn't enough data to determine its exact function. The pages were simply operator's instructions for an acoustic seismic array."

"Care to try that again in English?" Giordino asked.

"Mostly the stuff of lab experiments. Von Wachter evidently succeeded in taking the technology a leap forward."

"Who's von Wachter?" Pitt asked.

"Dr. Friedrich von Wachter. An eminent electrical engineering professor from the University of Heidelberg. Well known for his research in acoustics and seismic imagery. Max made the link between von Wachter and the acoustic seismic array. One of his last papers discussed the theoretical application of a parametric acoustic array for subsurface imagery."

Gunn helped himself to more coffee as the men in the hotel room listened attentively to Yaeger's voice on the speakerphone.

"Though the facts are murky, it appears that Dr. von Wachter developed a working model for acoustic seismic imagery," he said. "As you know, in the oil exploration business seismic imagery usually relies on a mechanical explosive, such as dynamite or a thumper truck, to send a shock wave into the earth. The refracted seismic waves are then recorded and processed by computer modeling to develop a subsurface image."

"Sure. The marine survey ships use an air gun to generate the shocks," Giordino said.

"Von Wachter apparently eliminated the explosives by developing an electronic means of producing the shock wave. The acoustic array, if I understand it correctly, transmits a high-frequency sound burst, which converts to seismic waves under the surface."

"Our experience with survey sonar systems is that high-frequency waves don't provide adequate penetration to 'see' very far beneath the surface," Giordino stated.

"That's true. Most of the waves are easily refracted near the surface. Apparently, von Wachter's concentrated burst allows a greater bombardment, if you will, of sound waves, ensuring that a useful percentage of waves penetrate deeply. From the preliminary data in the manual and your visual description of the device, it sounds as if von Wachter uses three rather large arrays to transmit the sound waves."

"I'll bet that is how they found Genghis," Pitt remarked. "His tomb was supposedly buried in a hidden location in the mountains, along with Kublai Khan and other related royalty."

"And they're obviously using it to hunt for oil," Gunn added.

"A valuable technology that the oil companies would pay dearly for. Dr. von Wachter must be a rich man," Giordino said.

"I'm afraid he's a dead man. He and his team of German engineers were killed in a landslide in Mongolia a little over a year ago."

"Why does that sound suspicious?" Giordino added.

"Need I add that they were working for the Avarga Oil Company at the time," Yaeger said.

"More blood on the hands of Borjin," Pitt said without surprise. The ruthlessness of the Avarga Oil empire and its head, Tolgoi Borjin, was becoming old news.

"None of it adds up," Giordino said. "A seismic survey team murdered, another abducted. A tunnel borer, specialized drilling equipment, a vast disguised storage facility in the middle of the desert. One of several, according to our camel herder friend, Tsengel. All tied in to a system of underground pipelines running hidden across an empty desert. Yet no visible sign of output. Why?"

The room fell silent for a moment, the turning gears in everyone's heads nearly audible. Then a knowing look spread across Pitt's face.

"Because," he said slowly, "they have been unable to drill where the oil is."

"Borjin has probably greased enough wallets to drill anywhere he wants to in Mongolia," Giordino countered.

"But suppose the oil isn't in Mongolia?"

"Of course," Gunn said, the answer suddenly apparent. "He's found oil in China, or Inner Mongolia to be precise. How he convinced the Chinese to turn the land over, that's what I'd like to know."

"They're in a bad way," Yaeger said. "Because of the earthquakes in the Persian Gulf and the fire at their main oil import terminal near Shanghai, China has lost more than half of its oil imports overnight. They're in a desperate situation and liable to act a little irrational in order to find a quick fix."

"It would explain the storage facilities located by the border. They might already have some secret wells in Inner Mongolia pumping to one of the other storage sites," Pitt speculated. "The Chinese would only see the end product shipped from Mongolia and not know the oil originated in their own yard."

"I wouldn't want to be on this side of the Great Wall when they figure that scam out," Gunn said.

"It might explain why Borjin abducted the oil survey team from Baikal," Giordino said. "He probably needs their expertise to pinpoint the drill sites and get the oil out of the ground quickly."

"Seems like he could have hired that expertise on the open market," Yaeger said.

"Perhaps. But he probably didn't want to risk leaking the secret of where the oil deposits are located."

"Maybe he'll release them, now that he's got his deal with the Chinese," Gunn said.

"Not likely," Pitt replied. "They already murdered Roy and tried to kill us. No, I'm afraid they are as good as dead once Borjin has the information he wants out of them."

"Have you contacted the local American embassy yet? We need to get the political forces working to save them," Gunn said.

Pitt and Giordino looked at each other in affirmation.

"Diplomacy ain't going to work in this case, Rudi," Giordino said. "Borjin is too well protected. Our Russian friends have been trying that route to no avail, and they've got a lot more clout in this part of the world than we do."

"We've got to do something," he countered.

"We are," Pitt said. "We're going in after them."

"You can't do that. Going in under the name of the U.S. government might create an international incident."

"Not if the U.S. government doesn't know anything about it. And by the way, it's not just Al and me going in. You're coming with us."

A sick feeling struck Gunn in the stomach and he could feel the color drain from his face.

"I knew I should have stayed in Siberia," he muttered.

-42-

Dr. McCammon entered the NUMA computer center just as Yaeger hung up the phone to Mongolia. On the opposite side of the console, the holographic image of Max turned toward the marine geologist and smiled.

"Good evening, Dr. McCammon," she said. "Working late?"

"Uh, good evening," McCammon replied, not sure if he should feel foolish for conversing with a computerized image. He nervously turned and greeted Yaeger.

"Hello, Hiram. Long day?" he asked, noting that Yaeger was dressed in the same clothes he wore the day before.

"Very," Yaeger replied, suppressing a yawn. "A late request from the boss yesterday kept us busy. We expected to see you hours ago."

"Some unexpected meetings managed to kill most of my day. I understand if you didn't get a chance to retrieve the data from the earthquake center," McCammon offered.

"Nonsense," Yaeger replied, as if insulted. "Max can multitask with the best of them."

"Yes," Max replied. "And at least some of us keep our demeanor in the process."

"We pulled in the data last night," Yaeger continued, ignoring the comment, "and ran your program early this morning. Max," he said, facing the image of his wife, "please print Dr. McCammon a copy of the program results. And while that is running, why don't you give us a verbal overview of your findings."

"Certainly," Max replied. A large laser printer at the side of the room immediately began humming with the printed output while Max chose her words.

"The data received from the National Earthquake Information Center reflected global seismic activity for the last five years, including the two large quakes that just recently struck the Persian Gulf. I ran your software program, which analyzed the two earthquakes, then filtered their key commonalties against the entire database. Interestingly, there were several unique characteristics associated with the two earthquakes."

Max paused for effect, then stepped closer to Yaeger and McCammon before continuing.

"Both events were classified as extremely shallow earthquakes, as their epicenters were less than three kilometers beneath the surface. This compares to most shallow-focus earthquakes, which are typically in the five-to fifteen-kilometer depth range."

"That's a meaningful difference," McCammon said.

"Of less significance, both were tectonic quakes rather than volcanic in origin. And, as you know, both were large quakes, measuring over 7.0 on the Richter scale."

"Isn't that quite rare to have a pair of quakes with that magnitude?" Yaeger asked.

"It's a little unusual but not unheard of," McCammon said. "An earthquake of that size in Los Angeles would capture plenty of attention, but the fact is there is a 7.0 magnitude or greater earthquake occurring on average once a month somewhere around the world. Since they mostly strike in nonpopulated areas or under the sea, we don't hear much about them."

"That is correct," Max said. "Though there is a statistically significant anomaly in that the two quakes of that magnitude struck in such close proximity."

"Any other similarities, Max?" Yaeger asked.

"Yes. Though difficult to quantify, it appears that the damage produced by these earthquakes was not commensurate with their size. Significant structural damage was recorded at both sites, which exceeded the norm for similarly sized earthquakes. The actual damage was more reflective of what an 8.0

magnitude quake would produce."

"The Richter scale is not always an accurate measure of an earthquake's destructive power,"

McCammon noted, "particularly for shallow-focus events. In this case, we had two shallow quakes that proved highly damaging. The intensity on the ground was likely much higher than the magnitude rating indicated."

Max frowned briefly as she rifled through her databases, then nodded at McCammon.

"You are absolutely correct, Doctor. The primary seismic waves were much smaller in magnitude than the surface waves for both quakes."

"Anything else, Max?" McCammon asked, finally finding a comfort level with the image.

"Yes, one final aspect. In both earthquakes, there was a record of low-magnitude P-waves registering before the actual quake-induced waves occurred."

"Foreshocks, I suppose," McCammon said. "Not at all unusual."

"Will somebody kindly explain all this surface wave and P-wave business?" Yaeger asked tiredly.

Max shook her head. "Must I teach you everything? Elementary seismology. The slippage from a common tectonic earthquake generates three types of seismic energy releases, or shock waves, if you will. The initial wave is called the primary, or P-type wave. It has similar properties to a sound wave, able to travel through solid rock and even the earth's core. A slower and hence secondary wave is called an S-wave. The S-waves are capable of shearing rock sideways to the direction of travel and produce the damaging vertical and horizontal movement of the ground when they reach the earth's surface. As both types of waves approach the surface, they refract to produce additional surface waves, which create the bulk of the shaking that is felt on the ground."

"I see," said Yaeger. "So they are essentially different frequencies sent out from an earthquake's epicenter."

"That's right," McCammon said.

"Is there a large fault line in the area where the two earthquakes struck?"

"The Persian Gulf actually lies near the boundary of two tectonic plates, called the Arabian and Eurasian.

Nearly all the seismic activity that takes place around the world is in narrow zones surrounding the plate boundaries. The large earthquakes we've seen historically in Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan would suggest that these two quakes in the gulf were not extraordinary but for their proximity."

"I guess your friend at Langley won't have too much to chew on," Yaeger said.

"I can't imagine," McCammon replied. "But thanks to Max, he'll have plenty of data to peruse."

As McCammon walked to the printer to retrieve the output, Yaeger threw one more question at the computer.

"Max, when you ran Phil's filter program did you match any other earthquakes to the same parameters?"

"Why, yes. It would be easier for me to show you graphically, so feast your eyes on the video board."

A large white screen behind Max was suddenly illuminated with a color map of the world. Two flashing red dots appeared in the Persian Gulf, marking the recent earthquakes. A few seconds later, a flurry of red dots erupted in several clusters, concentrated in an area of Northeast Asia. They were followed by a lone flashing dot slightly north of the others. McCammon set down his reports and approached the map in curiosity.

"A total of thirty-four seismic events were identified from the National Earthquake Information Center's data as matching the characteristics of the two sample earthquakes. The most recent occurred just over a week ago in Siberia," Max said, pointing to the lone red dot.

Yaeger's bleary eyes widened in shock. "And the locations of the other events?" he asked.

"Primarily Mongolia. Fifteen events occurred in the mountains east of the capital of Ulaanbaatar, ten in the southern Mongolian province of Dornogov, and another nine in an area just across the border in China. There was also one event in Siberia, at Lake Baikal."

"Mongolia," Yaeger muttered, shaking his head in disbelief. Slowly rising to his feet and rubbing his tired eyes, he turned to McCammon.

"Phil," he said, "I think you, me, and Max are going to need some coffee."

-43-

Listening to the latest Nils Lofgren CD on a portable MP3, Summer hummed along happily as she monitored the tension on the air lines snaking over the side of the barge. Boredom was just beginning to set in, and she found herself looking forward to getting back into the water and working the other end of the line. Standing up and stretching, she gazed seaward and caught sight of the black ship she had noticed earlier, now rounding Kahakahakea Point. Something nagged at the back of her brain as she watched the ship turn and aim its bow directly at the NUMA work barge.

"Please, no more media hounds," she said aloud, hoping it was not another boatload of reporters. But her deepening suspicions rang louder, and, as she studied the ship, she realized what it was.

The approaching vessel was a drill ship. Small by most drilling standards at less than two hundred fifty feet, the ship was at least thirty years old and had clearly seen better days. Rust appeared to grow from the ship's scuppers, while its deck and forecastle were stained with dirt and grease. It was less the appearance than the function of the ship that troubled Summer. What was a drill ship doing in Hawaiian waters? There were no oil deposits in the Hawaiian Islands to speak of, and the surrounding ocean depths quickly drop to over ten thousand feet, making any offshore drilling efforts a costly proposition.

Summer watched as the old ship continued churning directly for her, frothy sprays of white foam creasing away from its weathered bow. The ship was less than a mile away now and showed no signs of decreasing speed. When it closed to within a quarter mile still at speed, Summer glanced at a makeshift flagpole erected over the barge's sleeping shack. A large red diver's flag with the cautionary white slash across the middle fluttered in the morning breeze.

"I've got divers in the water, you idiot," she cursed as the ship continued its beeline track. The vessel was close enough that Summer could make out a couple of figures standing on the ship's bridge. She quickly walked to the facing rail then turned and waved an arm at the dive flag. Summer detected the ship finally starting to slow, but it was approaching without caution. It was clear by now that the drill ship intended to moor alongside the barge.

Summer hustled to the shack, where a marine radio was mounted to the wall. Spinning the dial on the VHF set to channel 16, she spat into the microphone.

"Approaching drill ship, this is NUMA research barge. We have divers in the water. I repeat, we have divers in the water. Please stand off, over."

She waited impatiently for a reply but there was none. With a greater urgency in her voice, she repeated the call. Again, there was no answer.

By now, the drill ship was only a few yards away. Summer returned to the rail and yelled at the ship while pointing to the dive flag. The ship started to turn, but, by its angle, Summer could see it was only preparing to pull alongside. Half expecting to see a horde of seasick reporters and cameramen lining the rail, she was surprised to find the ship's starboard and stern decks empty. A slight chill ran up her spine at seeing no one on deck, the men in the forecastle remaining concealed on the bridge.

With an experienced helmsman's touch, the drill ship glided alongside the barge until its starboard rail hung just above the lower side rails of the barge. The drill ship's multiple positioning thrusters were activated and the ship hung precisely in place as if physically moored to the barge.

The vacant ship stood perfectly still for a minute, Summer watching with a mixture of curiosity and concern. Then a faint yell erupted from inside the ship and a half dozen men came storming out of a bulkhead door. Summer took one look at the men, all tough-looking Asians, and shivered with fear. As they scrambled to the ship's rail and began leaping onto the barge, Summer turned and sprinted back to the sleeping shack. She could feel somebody chasing her but didn't look back as she tore into the shack and grabbed the radio.

"Mayday, mayday, this is ..."

Her voice withered away as a pair of thick-callused hands reached into the shack and tore the radio off the wall, ripping the microphone clutched in Summer's hands out of the socket. With a perverse grin on his face, the man took a short step and hurled the radio over the side rail, watching as it splashed into the water. Turning back toward Summer with a thin smile that revealed a set of dirty yellow teeth, it was his turn for a shock. Summer took a step toward him and let loose with a powerful kick to his groin.

"Dirty creep," she cursed as the man fell to one knee in agony. His eyes bugged out of his head, and Summer could tell he was teetering with dizziness. She quickly stepped back and swung her leg in another kick, delivering a roundhouse blow to the side of the man's head. The assailant crumpled to the deck, where he rolled about in obvious pain.

Two of the other boarders witnessed the takedown and quickly charged Summer, grabbing her arms to restrain her. She struggled to free herself until one of the men pulled out a knife and held it to her throat, grunting into her ear with stale breath. The other man found a section of rope and hastily tied her hands and elbows together in front of her.

Gripped with fear but helpless to act, Summer studied her assailants with deliberation. To a man, they were short in stature yet bullish in build. They were of Asian descent, but had high cheekbones and more-rounded eyes than the classic Chinese profile. Each was dressed in black T-shirt and work pants, and all looked like they were accustomed to hard work. Summer guessed they were Indonesian pirates, but what they wanted with a sparse work barge was beyond her guess.

Gazing at the opposite end of the barge, Summer felt her stomach suddenly tightened into a knot. Two of the boarders had carried axes with them and were now swinging them through the air, cutting into the stern mooring lines. With a few quick swings, they severed the lines, then walked toward the bow to repeat the act. A third man stood overseeing the work with his back to Summer. His profile looked familiar, but it wasn't until he turned around and exposed the long scar on his left cheek that she recognized him as Dr. Tong. He walked slowly toward Summer, surveying the equipment on the deck as the two hatchet men went to work on the forward anchor lines. When he came near, she shouted to him.

"There are no artifacts here, Tong," she said, figuring he was no doctor but simply an artifact thief.

Tong ignored her, staring at the running equipment with annoyance. He turned and barked an order to the man Summer had kicked, who was now limping around the deck trying to walk off the blow. The injured man limped to the shack, where the small portable generator was humming. As he had done with the radio, he hoisted the generator up in the air and shoved it over the side. The machine gurgled as it slipped under water, silencing the small gas motor. The man then set his sights on the two air compressors. Limping to the nearest one, he looked it over, searching for the kill switch.

"No!" Summer shouted in protest.

Finding the STOP button, the injured man turned to Summer and gave her a twisted smile, then pressed his thumb against the switch. The compressor immediately wheezed to a stop.

"There are men below on those air lines," Summer pleaded.

Tong ignored her, instead nodding to his minion. The man hobbled over to the second compressor and, with another smile directed at Summer, punched stop. As the roar of the dying compressor fell away, Tong walked over and stuck his face close to Summer's.

"I hope your brother is a good swimmer," he hissed.

A well of fury burned within Summer, replacing her fear. But she said nothing. The man holding the knife at her throat pulled tighter, then spoke to Tong in a foreign tongue.

"Shall I kill her?"

Tong glared at Summer's fit tan body lasciviously. "No," he replied, "take her aboard."

The two axmen finished cutting the bow anchor lines and walked toward Tong with their hatchets over their shoulders. The barge was now drifting freely, the current pushing it out to sea. On board the drill ship, the helmsman manually engaged the positioning thrusters and backed the ship in reverse to stay alongside the moving barge. Absent a fixed target, the drill ship had to bob and weave to keep from colliding with the free-floating barge. Several times they nudged sides, the barge slapping against the bigger drill ship with a clang.

"You—incapacitate the rubber boat," Tong barked to one of the men holding an axe. "Everybody else, back on the ship."

A small Zodiac had been secured to the bow of the barge, in case the NUMA team needed to go ashore. The ax bearer walked over and with a few quick swings cut loose the securing lines. He then pulled a knife from his belt and wedged it into the inflated pontoon in several spots, producing a loud rush of escaping air. For good measure, he stood the boat on end, then flipped it over the side rail. The deflated rubber boat bobbed on the surface for several minutes until a wave swamped its sides and sent it to the bottom.

Summer witnessed little of the sabotage as the thug at her side shoved her roughly to the rail. A thousand thoughts were surging through her mind. Should she risk trying to fight back with a knife to her throat?

How could she help Dirk and Jack? Would anything good come from stepping aboard the drill ship?

Every query led down a short path to something bad. There might be one chance, she decided, and that was if she could get into the water. Even with her hands tied, outswimming these roughnecks would likely be no problem, she figured. If she could jump into the water, she could easily swim under the barge to the other side. Maybe it would be enough of an annoyance to let her go. And maybe she could then help get Dirk and Jack aboard and mount a stronger defense. That is, if they were all right.

Summer feigned a lack of resistance and followed the other men as they climbed on top of the rail and pulled themselves onto the deck of the drill ship. The knife wielder gave her a boost, holding her elbows as she stepped onto the rail. One of the men on the ship knelt down and reached over to help pull her up.

Summer reached up but pretended to slip before she could reach the man's hands. She then flung her right foot backward, striking the knife holder flush in the nose with her heel. By the sound of the muffled crunch, she knew she had broken his nose but didn't turn to see the blood rushing out of his nostrils.

Instead, she ducked her head forward and dove for the thin patch of water between the two vessels.

She floated weightless for a fraction of a second, awaiting the splash of the cool water. But it never came.

Seeming to materialize out of thin air, a pair of hands sprung over the rail and clasped the back of her shirt and the cuff of her shorts. Instead of falling vertically, she felt herself flung sideways, bouncing harshly over the side rail before falling hard to the deck of the barge. She had hardly hit the ground when the same pair of hands jerked her to her feet. The hands belonged to Tong, who showed remarkable strength for a man who stood nearly a foot shorter than Summer.

"You will be going aboard," he spat.

The blow came from her left side and Summer was a hair late warding it off. Tong's fist struck her on the side of the jaw and she immediately buckled to her knees. A flurry of stars danced before her eyes but she didn't pass out. In a dazed stupor, she was yanked aboard the drill ship and dragged up to the bridge, where she was locked in a small storage room at the back of the wheelhouse.

Resting on a large coil of rope, it seemed to Summer that the whole world was spinning around her head. A wave of nausea swept over her until she threw up into a rusty bucket in the corner. She immediately felt better and pulled herself up to a small porthole. Sucking in fresh air, her vision gradually cleared until she could see that the drill ship was positioned in the cove over the same spot where the barge had been moored.

The barge. She craned her neck, finally spotting the brown barge drifting out to sea, already more than a mile away. Squinting to try to improve her blurry vision, she fought to make out signs of Dirk and Jack aboard. But they were nowhere to be seen.

The empty barge was drifting out to sea without them.

-44-

Dirk's arms had begun to feel like spaghetti. The airlift had to be constantly wrestled into place against the invisible push of the surrounding waters. Though Dahlgren had relieved him a few times, he had been toting the pressurized tube for over an hour. The work had been made more strenuous by the building currents of an outgoing tide, which pushed the surface water seaward at nearly two knots.

The current was much lighter on the bottom, but manhandling the wavering airlift over the dredge site was like balancing a flagpole on the head of a pin.

Dirk glanced at his dive watch as he wrestled the airlift over a few inches. Only fifteen minutes to go till the end of the shift, then a break from the monotonous work. Progress was slower than he had hoped, but he had still uncovered a rough square about six feet across. The encrusted wood was thick but flat, consistent with the shape of a ship's rudder. Only the size was a little perplexing. Dahlgren's probe marks had encompassed an object nearly twenty feet long, an enormous dimension for a sailing ship rudder.

Following the ascent of his air bubbles as they rose to the surface, he gazed again at the undersides of the large black ship moored next to the barge. He and Dahlgren had heard the rumble of the ship's engines underwater as it drew near and they watched with curiosity as the dark shape brazenly drew alongside the barge. They had watched the positioning thrusters engaged and felt a slight assurance that the fool wasn't going to drop anchor on them. Another well-financed video documentary group, Dirk surmised. There would no doubt be an array of underwater photographers descending on them shortly.

Hooray, he thought sarcastically.

He shook off the annoyance and refocused on driving the airlift into the fine sand. Pushing the lip toward a small mound, he noticed that no sand was being sucked up, then realized that the vibration and whooshing noise of the compressed air had ceased. Summer must have shut off the airlift, which meant she was signaling them back to the barge for some reason or the compressor just ran out of gas. He sat for a moment, deciding to wait a minute or two before surfacing to see if Summer restarted the motor.

A few yards away, Dahlgren was driving his probe into the sand. Out of the corner of his eye, Dirk noticed him suddenly rise off the bottom. Something about the movement didn't seem right and Dirk looked over to see that his instincts were right. Dahlgren had let go of the probe and had his hands wrapped around his faceplate and air line, while his legs hung loose beneath him. He was being yanked off the bottom, Dirk realized, like a puppet on a string.

He had no time to react, for an instant later the airlift was ripped from his own hands, sailing off through the water in the direction of Dahlgren. Dirk looked up just in time to see his own air line pull taut in the water and then jerk him up off the seafloor.

"What the ..." he started to mouth, but the words fell away as he tried to draw a breath of air. He inhaled a slight puff and then there was nothing. The compressor supplying the air lines had been cut off, too. Like Dahlgren, he found himself grabbing hold of the air line to control his movements and not rip the connection from his dive helmet. Beside him, the airlift swung wildly in the water like a pendulum out of control. The big plastic pipe came barreling at him, slamming into his leg before bouncing off in another direction. Out of air, yanked like a rag doll, and pummeled by the airlift, Dirk faced enough sensory obstacles to drive most people to panic. From there, it would be just a short step to drowning.

But Dirk didn't panic. He had spent the better part of his life scuba diving. Technical failures underwater were nothing new to him. He had sucked a tank of air dry on shallow-water dives many times. The key to surviving an emergency, underwater or elsewhere, he told himself, was to remain calm and think logically.

Air was the first necessity. His natural inclination was to kick to the surface, but that wasn't necessary.

While working on surface-supplied air, the divers all carried a small emergency bottle of air. Slightly larger than a thermos, the thirteen-cubic-foot bailout bottle, called a "pony tank," provided about ten minutes of air. Dirk let go of the air line with one hand and reached under his left arm, where the bottle was attached to his buoyancy compensator. Twisting the valve on the top of the tank, he immediately drew in a breath of air through the regulator. After a couple of deep draws, he could feel his heart begin to slow its racing beat.

His thoughts ran to Dahlgren, who was on the shared line of surface air. Thirty feet ahead, he saw a purge of exhaust bubbles rise from Dahlgren's helmet and knew that he was breathing off his emergency air as well. The dangling airlift had ventured over toward Dahlgren and was gyrating in the water close behind him. The airlift pipe was being dragged by its flexible outlet hose secured to the barge, which created an elastic springing action like a rubber band. The hose would stretch under the drag of the water-filled tube, then snap back, whipping the tube forcefully through the water. Dirk saw that the tube was pulled taut in a precarious position behind Dahlgren and he waved to get his friend's attention. The Texan was busy pulling himself up the air line and didn't see the airlift or Dirk's warning. A second later, the outstretched tube burst forward, launching straight toward Dahlgren. To Dirk's horror, the tube shot up like an arrow and struck the back of Dahlgren's head just beneath his dive helmet. As the airlift fluttered off, Dahlgren's body went limp.

Dirk cursed to himself as he felt his heart race faster again. He noticed that the seafloor had dropped away beneath them and that they were being pulled more forcefully through the water. On the surface, an offshore breeze had joined forces with the island currents to push the stubby barge along at over four knots. Under the waves, Dirk wondered why in blazes the barge was drifting and where Summer was.

Then he turned toward Dahlgren. There was no thought of surfacing yet. He had to reach Dahlgren and make sure he was still breathing.

With a frantic determination, Dirk began reeling himself up the air line to close in on Dahlgren. His tired arms ached in pain with each pull, made harder by the thirty-five-pound weight belt strapped around his midsection. He didn't dare jettison the belt yet, as he needed to stay at the same submerged depth as his friend.

Pulling himself up like an underwater mountaineer, he clawed his way to within ten feet of Dahlgren when his old nemesis reappeared. The dancing airlift came rushing toward him, swinging past just out of arm's reach. The big tube swung toward Dahlgren, flexed a moment, then reversed direction and bounded back. This time, Dirk stuck out an arm and caught hold of the tube as it swung by. The heavy mass of the water-filled tube nearly jerked him out of his fins as he straddled his legs around it and bounced through the water. Riding it like a bucking bronco, he carefully shimmied up to the top of the tube, where it was clasped to the thick rubber hose. Pulling out a small dive knife that was strapped to his leg, Dirk lunged at the hose with the blade and began sawing through it. The tube whipped violently beneath him as he muscled the knife through to sever the hose. The heavy plastic tube snapped away with the last cut and sank to the depths as Dirk slid off and gave it a farewell kick.

Free of the mad battering ram, Dirk turned his attention back to Dahlgren. Dirk's fight to rid himself of the airlift had caused him to lose his place on the air line and he found himself trailing Dahlgren by thirty feet again. His friend looked like a wet mop, towed through the water by the line from his neck. With his tired arms stinging, Dirk pulled himself up the line again, fighting foot by foot until he was even with Dahlgren. He coiled his own air line around his waist in a bowline knot, then kicked and swam his way over to his friend. Reaching over and grabbing Dahlgren's BC, Dirk pulled himself up and peered into his face mask.

Dahlgren was unconscious with his eyes closed. He was breathing lightly, though, as evidenced by a small stream of exhaust bubbles that floated out of his regulator every few seconds. Grabbing Dahlgren with one hand, Dirk reached down and unbuckled his own weight belt, then reached up to his buoyancy compensator and hit the button on the inflation hose. What little air was left in his emergency pony bottle surged into his vest, filling it half full before running out of compressed air. It was more than enough to propel them to the surface, with Dirk kicking his legs hard to accelerate the ascent.

No sooner did they break the surface then they were dragged forward, yanked under the water like a fallen water-skier who forgets to let go of the rope. A second later, they would resurface for a moment, then get pulled under again. As they bounded up and down, Dirk reached down and ditched Dahlgren's weight belt, then managed to twist off his own dive helmet. Grabbing gulps of air when they popped to the surface, he grasped the manual inflation tube to Dahlgren's BC. While pushed under the surface, he opened the thumb valve and exhaled into it. In a few cycles, he had Dahlgren's vest fully inflated, which helped reduce the duration of their immersions.

Fearful that his friend's head or neck might get injured by the tug of the air line, Dirk cinched up a few inches of the line and ran it through a D ring on Dahlgren's BC, then tied it in a knot. As long as the line didn't snap, he would safely be towed by his vest.

With his buddy mostly afloat, Dirk let go of him to grab his own air line again. He had to get aboard the barge now and began pulling himself hand over hand toward the moving platform. There was more than forty feet of line ahead of him, and he was already heavily fatigued from his time in the water. With his strength diminished, his progress slowed to just inches at a time. He repeatedly had to will himself to shake off the pain and a creeping urge to just let go. Instead, he reluctantly placed one hand ahead of the other and pulled, repeating the process without stopping.

For the first time, he looked up at the barge, hoping to see Summer standing at the rail. But there was no sign of her or anyone else on the open deck. Dirk knew his sister would never willfully abandon him.

Something had happened when the black ship came alongside and Dirk was afraid of the prospects. A renewed sense of urgency mixed with anger surged through his body, and he hauled himself up the last few feet of line in a possessed fury.

Finally reaching the side of the barge, he yanked himself up and through the railing and collapsed on the deck. He afforded himself just a few seconds of rest, then ripped off his dive gear and scanned the deck for Summer, shouting her name. Met with a silent response, he stood up and grabbed Dahlgren's air line and began reeling him toward the barge. The Texan disappeared under the water for several seconds before reappearing, as larger ocean-borne waves rolled over him. He had regained consciousness and slowly kicked his legs and arms in a mostly futile attempt at propulsion. With his arms fatigued nearly to the breaking point, Dirk pulled him alongside the barge, then tied off the air line on the rail. Reaching into the water, he grabbed Dahlgren by the collar and hoisted him aboard.

Dahlgren rolled onto the deck, then teetered to a sitting position. He clumsily pulled off his dive helmet and gazed at Dirk with blurry eyes. Rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, he winced as his fingers rolled over a baseball-sized lump.

"What in blazes happened down there?" he asked in a slurred voice.

"Before or after the airlift used your skull for batting practice?" Dirk replied.

"So that was the sucker that hit me. I remember getting yanked off the bottom, then my air went dry. I hit my pony tank and was preparing to ascend when the lights went out."

"Lucky thing you cranked on your emergency air. It took me a few minutes to ditch the airlift and get you to the surface amid the tow ride."

"Thanks for not throwing me back," Dahlgren smiled, his senses slowly returning. "So where's Summer?

And why are we twenty miles from shore?" he asked, noting the rugged coast of Hawaii receding in the distance.

"I don't know," Dirk said solemnly.

As Dahlgren rested, Dirk searched the shack and examined the rest of the barge for signs of Summer's disappearance. When he returned, Dahlgren could tell by the look on his face that the news was not good.

"Radio is gone. Zodiac is gone. Generator is missing. And all of our mooring lines were cut at deck level."

"And we're drifting to China. Pirates in Hawaii?"

"Or treasure hunters thinking we had a gold ship." Dirk stared back toward the island. He could no longer see the cove but knew the black ship was still there.

"The ship we heard roll in?" Dahlgren asked, his vision too fuzzy to see for himself.

"Yes."

"Then Summer must be aboard her."

Dirk silently nodded. If she was on the ship, then she might be all right. It was something to hope for. But hope was fleeing his grasp by the minute as they moved farther and farther away from land. They had to help themselves before they could help Summer. Drifting across the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a powerless barge, they could float for weeks before approaching a passing ship. Hope, Dirk thought grimly as he watched the island shrink in size, was for a quick means back to shore.

-45-

The last place in the world that Rudi Gunn wanted to be was back in the Russian-built truck bouncing over a rough dirt road. But that's exactly where he found himself. His back, rear, and legs all ached from the constant jarring. With every rut and pothole sending his teeth chattering, he was convinced that the truck manufacturer had neglected to install shocks and springs on the vehicle.

"The suspension on this thing must have been designed by the Marquis de Sade," he grimaced as they rolled over a harsh bump.

"Relax," Giordino grinned from behind the wheel. "This is the smooth section of the highway."

Gunn turned a lighter shade of pale, observing that the highway consisted of a weathered pair of dirt tracks through the high steppe grass. They had bounced across the open lands since midday, en route to Borjin's compound of Xanadu. They had to rely on Pitt and Giordino's collective memory to find their way there and several times were forced to guess which of the myriad of tracks to follow over the rolling hills. Familiar landmarks confirmed they were on the right route as they approached the small mountain range to the southeast that they knew housed the estate.

"Another two hours, Rudi," Pitt said, gauging the distance out the windshield, "and your troubles will be over."

Gunn silently shook his head, having the distinct feeling that his troubles were just beginning. A follow-up phone call from Hiram Yaeger before they departed Ulaanbaatar had added a new sense of urgency and gravity to their mission. The revelation that an odd series of earthquakes had been occurring in Mongolia was impossible to ignore.

"We're just scratching the surface on establishing a correlation, but this much we know," Yaeger said in a weary voice. "A series of earthquakes have rocked several areas in north-central Mongolia, as well as a dispersed area in and around the southern border of China. The earthquakes are unique from the norm in that their epicenters are relatively close to the surface. They mostly have been moderately sized quakes, as measured on the Richter scale, yet have produced high-intensity surface waves, which can be particularly destructive. Dr. McCammon has discovered that the foreshocks that preceded each quake are nearly uniform in intensity, which is inconsistent with a naturally occurring earthquake."

"So you think there is some sort of man-made activity that is inducing the earthquakes?" Pitt asked.

"As unlikely as it sounds, the seismological records seem to indicate as much."

"I know that oil drilling sometimes generates earthquakes, and underground nuclear testing has suspected links. I recall that when the old Rocky Flats Arsenal near Denver began injecting contaminated water deep into the ground, earthquakes shook the surrounding area. Have you determined if there is some sort of major drilling operation going on? Or perhaps some nuclear testing by Mongolia's neighbor to the south?"

"The epicenters in the northern part of the country have been located in a mountainous region east of Ulaanbaatar, a remote and rugged area, from what we've been able to determine. And a drilling-induced quake would not show the uniform preshock seismicity, according to Max. As far as the southern-area quakes, we would see it in the seismic profiles if a nuclear test blast had occurred."

"Then let me take a guess and say that brings us to the late Dr. von Wachter."

"Give that man a cookie," Yaeger said. "When Max told us that von Wachter had been killed in a landslide in the Khentii Mountains east of Ulaanbaatar, the light went on. The coincidence was too great.

We concluded that his acoustic seismic array, or an offshoot of the technology, must have something to do with the earthquakes."

"That doesn't seem possible," Gunn said. "You would need a tremendous shock wave to set things off."

"That's the general perception," Yaeger replied. "But Dr. McCammon, working with Max and some other seismologists, has a theory on that. We spoke to a colleague of von Wachter's, who had been told by the doctor of his success at reflection imagery. The secret of his detailed imaging, if you will, was the ability to condense and packet the acoustic waves emitted into the ground. Normally transmitted sound waves behave like a pebble thrown into a pond, rippling out in all directions. Von Wachter developed a means of packeting the waves so that they remained concentrated in a narrow band as they penetrate the earth. The resulting waves, as they reflect back to the surface, apparently produce a crisp, detailed image far beyond any existing technology. Or so the colleague stated."

"So how do you get from a seismic image to an earthquake?" Gunn persisted.

"By two leaps of faith. First, that von Wachter's system produces a detailed image that visibly identifies active subterranean faults and fault lines. That is hardly a stretch of the imagination for shallow faults, which existing technologies can already detect."

"Okay, so von Wachter's seismic array can accurately pinpoint active faults beneath the surface," Gunn said. "You would still need to disturb those pressure points in some manner, say by drilling or with explosives, in order to produce a rupture and subsequent earthquake."

"That's our second leap. You are correct, the fault would need to be disturbed in order to trigger an earthquake. But a seismic wave is a seismic wave. The fault doesn't care if it comes from an explosion ..."

"... or an acoustic blast," Pitt said, finishing Yaeger's sentence. "It makes sense. The ten-foot hanging tripod is a transducer array system that generates the acoustic blast. From the size of the transducers and the power supply that goes with it, it looked to me like they could generate a sonic boom."

"If the acoustic blast is pinpointed at a fault line, the resulting vibrations from the seismic waves could induce a fracture, then, bammo, instant earthquake. It's just a theory, but McCammon and Max both agree it could work. Perhaps von Wachter's imaging technology was never intended as such but was discovered as an inadvertent side effect."

"Either way, it is in the hands of Borjin now. We've got to assume he possesses the technology and the ability to use it," Pitt said.

"You've already seen the effects up close," Yaeger said. "One of the quakes that matched the profile was at Lake Baikal. Perhaps by accident, it set off the underwater landslide, which created the seiche wave that nearly killed you. We now suspect their real target was an oil pipeline at the northern end of the lake, which they succeeded in rupturing."

"That explains why they tried to sink the Vereshchagin and destroy our computers. We told Borjin's sister, Tatiana, of our seismic studies in the lake. She must have realized that our equipment would have detected the man-made signals that preceded the earthquake," Giordino said.

"Signals that we could have traced to a vessel on the lake ... the Primorski," Pitt added.

"So they've already put the technology to destructive use," Gunn said.

"It's worse than you think. We don't know the purpose or motivation behind the earthquakes in Mongolia and China. But the characteristics of those quakes exactly match the two recent Persian Gulf earthquakes that have devastated oil exports from the region."

The men in the hotel room were shocked. That the technology existed to induce an earthquake was startling enough. More unbelievable was that it was being used to instigate a near-global economic collapse, and that the trail led to the enigmatic mogul who lived in the hinterlands of Mongolia. Borjin's games of deception and destruction were becoming clearer to Pitt now. With his apparent discovery of oil reserves in Inner Mongolia, he was positioning himself to become the de facto oil king of East Asia.

Pitt doubted his ambitions would end there.

"Has this been elevated?" Pitt asked.

"I've been in touch with Vice President Sandecker and have a briefing scheduled with him. The old bull wants to see something concrete. He promised he would have the president convene a National Security Council special session if the facts warrant immediate attention. I told him of your involvement, and he asked that you provide proof that the earthquakes can be specifically linked to Borjin." Admiral James Sandecker, now Vice President Sandecker, was Pitt's former boss at NUMA and still maintained a close relationship with Pitt and his staff at the marine agency.

"The proof," Pitt said, "is in the laboratory on Borjin's compound. He's got a seismic array sitting there, though I don't think it is the same one used at Baikal."

"Perhaps the Baikal device was flown to the Persian Gulf. We have to assume that there are at least two of the devices at large," Yaeger said.

"Three might be a safer bet. I guess you've proven by the Baikal and gulf quakes that they can trigger the device aboard a ship."

"Yes. The epicenters of both Persian Gulf quakes were located offshore."

"The ships might be the link," Pitt noted. "The vessel at Baikal had a moon pool and a derrick on the stern deck. You might start the hunt in the Persian Gulf for a similar utility or research vessel."

"It's a frightening prospect that they might be able to set off earthquakes all over the globe," Yaeger replied. "You boys be careful. I'm not even sure what the vice president can do to help you in Mongolia."

"Thanks, Hiram. You just track those ships down and we'll see about putting the finger on Borjin."

***

Pitt didn't wait to hear the results of Yaeger's briefing with Sandecker. He knew there was little that could be done in the short term. Though Mongolia and the U.S. had strong developing ties, it would take days, if not weeks, to generate government intervention. And the evidence against Borjin himself was circumstantial at best.

With the lives of Theresa and Wofford at stake, Pitt instead formulated a plan of infiltration with Giordino and Gunn, then set off for Xanadu. Borjin certainly wouldn't be expecting visitors, he knew. With a little stealth, and a large dose of luck, they just might be able to free Theresa and Wofford and escape with incriminating proof against Borjin.

The dust-caked truck crested a small hill, then Giordino applied the brakes as they approached a side road. The smoothly grated lane, fronted by a small gate, signaled the entryway to Borjin's retreat.

"The happy trail to Xanadu," Giordino stated.

"Let's hope the opposing traffic is light today," Pitt grimaced.

Dusk was drawing near, and Pitt figured it wasn't likely that anybody would be departing the compound late in the day, with Ulaanbaatar a four-hour drive away. There was still the risk that one of Borjin's horse-mounted patrols would be making the rounds beyond the gates, but there was little they could do about that.

Giordino turned onto the side trail and followed the empty road as it wound up and into the heart of the mountain range. After cresting a steep summit, Giordino slowed the truck as the river appeared alongside the road. An unusually strong summer rainstorm had just struck the mountaintop and the river raged with its powerful runoff. After days of encountering dry dust, Giordino was surprised to find the road turned muddy from the recent rains.

"If my memory serves, the compound is roughly two miles from the point here where the river first makes an appearance," Giordino said.

"It's the aqueduct we need to keep a sharp lookout for," Pitt replied.

Giordino drove on slowly, all eyes keeping a sharp lookout for both the aqueduct and wandering security patrols. Pitt finally spotted a large pipe sprouting from the river, which fed into the concrete-lined aqueduct. It was the landmark they were looking for that told them they were within a half mile of the compound.

Giordino found an opening off the road and pulled the truck into a strand of pine trees, then shut off the motor. The dust and mud-splattered truck blended well into the surroundings, and it would take an observant eye to spot them from the road.

Gunn looked nervously at his watch, noting it was a little before eight o'clock.

"What now?" he asked.

Pitt pulled out a thermos and poured a round of coffees.

"Relax and wait until dark," he replied, sipping at the steaming brew, "till it's time for the bogeymen to come out."

-46-

The steady tropical breeze blew briskly across the barge as Dirk and Dahlgren stripped off their wet suits, shook off their fatigue, and set about getting back to land.

"This tub's too unwieldy to try and sail, even if we had a mast and sailcloth," Dahlgren said.

"Which we don't," Dirk replied. "First things first. Let's see if we can at least slow our drift rate."

"A sea anchor?"

"That's what I was thinking," Dirk said, walking over to one of the air compressors.

"A rather expensive anchor," Dahlgren noted, gathering up sections of their mooring lines.

They fashioned a thirty-foot line to the compressor, tying the opposite end to a stern bollard. Together they muscled the compressor to the side rail and dumped it over the edge. Dangling under the surface, the compressor would act as a makeshift sea anchor, partially slowing the wind-borne portion of their drift.

"One bite into that baby ought to keep the sharks away, too," Dahlgren joked.

"That's the least of our problems," Dirk replied. He scanned the horizon, searching for another vessel that they might be able to attract. But the seas around the far southwest end of the Hawaiian Island chain were completely empty.

"Looks like we're on our own."

The two men turned to the equipment on board the barge. With the Zodiac gone, there was no apparent means of ditching the barge and sailing to shore. A remaining compressor and water pump, plenty of dive gear, and some food and clothing were all they had left aboard.

Dahlgren rapped a knuckle against the side of the shack. "We could build a raft out of this," he said.

"We've got some tools and plenty of rope."

Dirk considered the idea without enthusiasm. "It would take us a day to build, and we would have a pretty tough go running it against the wind and current. We're probably better off staying put and waiting for a passing vessel."

"Just trying to think of a way to get to Summer."

The same thought was on Dirk's mind. There was no question of their survival. They had plenty of food and water aboard. Once the Mariana Explorer returned to the cove and found the barge missing, an all-out search-and-rescue operation would ensue. They would be found inside of a week, he was certain.

But how much time did Summer have?

The thought made him sick with dread, wondering what kind of people had abducted her. He cursed their predicament, sitting powerless as they drifted farther and farther away from shore. Pacing the deck, he caught sight of Summer's surfboard atop the shack and felt an added pang of helplessness. There had to be something they could do.

Then the light went on. It was right there in front of him. Or maybe Summer had willed him the answer.

A knowing beam crossed his face as he turned to Dahlgren.

"Not a raft, Jack," he said with a confident smile. "A catamaran."

***

The gray-and-white herring gull flapped off the water with a loud squawk, angry at nearly being run over. Circling overhead, the bird warily eyed the offending watercraft skimming along the surface, then flew down and settled in its wake. The bird had never seen a sailing craft quite like it before. Nor had many people, for that matter.

Dirk's brainchild had been to construct a catamaran from his and Summer's surfboards, and the two men turned the crackpot idea into a workable design. The buoyant fiberglass boards made for a perfect pair of pontoons. Dahlgren came up with the idea of using their sleeping cots to attach as cross-members.

Stripped of their fabric covering, two of the aluminum frames were laid crossways and secured to the boards with looped ropes, then sealed in duct tape for good measure.

"If we could drill or knock a small hole in the center of the boards, we could run a safety line through to ensure that the cross-members don't go dancing off in the first head wave," Dahlgren suggested.

"Are you crazy? These are vintage Greg Noll boards. Summer would kill us both if we damaged her board."

They took the third cot frame and rigged it into a mast supported by several guylines. Along with the fabric from the first two cots, they fashioned a sail from the bright blue material. In less than two hours, they had completed a miniaturized, bastardized version of a sailing cat.

"I wouldn't take her on the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race, but I do believe she'll get us back to the Big Island," Dirk said, admiring the finished product.

"Yep," Dahlgren drawled. "Ugly as sin, yet perfectly functional. You have to love it."

The two men slipped back into their wet suits and attached a satchel of food and water to the mast, then launched the craft over the side. Cautiously climbing aboard, they checked its stability, then Dahlgren let loose a towline to the barge. The barge quickly floated away as the two men kicked their feet to angle the cat's sail against the wind. Dirk pulled the makeshift sail taut and tied it down to the rear cross-member. To his surprise, the tiny little craft nearly jumped ahead through the waves under the force of its rectangular blue sail.

The men each lay on one of the surfboards until they were satisfied that the cot frames would hold fast.

Their rope work had been effective and the two boards attacked the waves as one, while the cross-members showed very little movement. Rising to a sitting position on each board, the men still got doused by the head waves.

"Feels like I'm water-skiing in a lawn chair," Dahlgren grinned as a large wave rolled over them.

The little cat held steady and skimmed quickly along, held true in part with the aid of a paddle that Dirk had rigged to the stern member as a rudder. Steering was limited, however, so they held a steady line for an hour or two before tacking. Dirk would drop the sail and then the two men would kick the nose of the craft around ninety degrees, then pick up the breeze on the opposite side of the sail.

"You might want to rethink that Sydney-to-Hobart race, ol' buddy. She sails like a dream," Dahlgren chided.

"True enough. Though I think I might want to pack a dry suit for that run."

They were both amazed at the crude efficiency of the craft. It wasn't long before the barge had completely disappeared from sight, while the Big Island appeared to grow larger on the horizon. As they settled in for the ride, Dirk's thoughts returned to Summer. As fraternal twins, they shared a close-knit bond that most siblings couldn't grasp. He could almost feel her presence, and he knew with certainty that she was alive. Just hang on, he silently willed her. Help will soon be on the way.

***

The dark lava slopes of Mauna Loa shimmered purple in the setting sun as they drew near the southwest shoreline of Hawaii. The jagged section of coast was largely uninhabited, the lava cliffs too foreboding for sea access but for the occasional black sand beach. Dahlgren pointed to a rocky point a mile or two to their south that protruded into the Pacific like a balled fist.

"Isn't that Humuhumu Point?"

"It sure looks like it," Dirk agreed, trying to identify the landmark in the fading light. "Which means Keliuli Bay is not far around the other side. We nearly hit the coast at the point we departed."

"A fine bit of surfboard navigation," Dahlgren said. He then peered up the coastline in the other direction.

"That means that the nearest spot to pull in and contact the authorities would be Milolii."

"Which is roughly six miles away."

"A healthy ride. Unless one is of the mind to go the other direction and visit the boys that sent us on our merry ride."

Dahlgren knew the answer from the gleaming look in Dirk's eyes. Without saying a word, they tacked the catamaran to the southeast and headed down the coast toward Keliuli Bay.

-47-

Trapped inside the tiny storeroom, Summer languished as the afternoon crept by at a snail's pace. After scouring the room unsuccessfully for any tools or objects that might aid an escape, there was little to do but sit and wonder about the fate of Dirk and Jack. She finally pushed an empty crate beneath the porthole and fashioned a crude chair out of the rope coil, which allowed her to gaze out to sea in some comfort while capturing the ocean breeze on her face.

From her nook, she could detect a flurry of activity on the ship's stern deck. A rubber boat was lowered over the side, and she watched as several divers investigated the wreck site. Summer took small satisfaction in knowing they wouldn't procure any artifacts from the exposed portion of the wreck, which had already been picked clean during the survey and excavation.

After the divers returned to the ship, she saw and felt the drill ship be repositioned. Then around sundown the activity picked up again, as shouting voices and the whir of a crane drifted up from the deck below. She was startled when the door to the storeroom suddenly burst open and she was greeted by a bullnecked thug with crooked teeth. At his prodding, Summer followed him onto the bridge and over to a chart table, where Tong was examining a diagram under a bright swivel light. He looked up and gave her a condescending sneer as she approached.

"Miss Pitt. My divers have confirmed that your excavation was most thorough. And you did not lie.

Most of the ship lies under the lava. There is work ahead to confirm her true designs."

He waited for a response, but Summer just gave him a cold stare, then raised her hands, still tied together at the wrist.

"Ah, yes. Very well, I suppose there is no place for you to run now," he said, nodding at Bull Neck. The underling pulled out a knife and quickly sliced through the ropes. Rubbing her wrists, Summer casually looked around the bridge. A lone helmsman stood by the forward window, gazing at a radarscope. The rest of the bridge was empty, save for her two immediate companions. Tong motioned for her to take a seat next to him, which she did hesitantly.

"Yes," Summer spoke quietly. "As we told you aboard the Mariana Explorer, which is due back any minute now, we have removed all of the artifacts from the lava-free sections of the wreck, which were in fact a fairly small quantity."

Tong smiled at Summer, then leaned over and put his hand on her knee. She wanted to slap him and run from the table, but she did neither. Instead, she just gave him an icy glare, fighting her hardest to hide her fear and revulsion.

"My dear, we passed the Mariana Explorer outside of Hilo," he leered. "She should be near her destination of Leleiwi Point by now, on the opposite side of the island," he added, laughing with a wicked grin.

"Why is this wreck so important to you?" she asked, hoping to steer his attention away from her.

"You really have no idea, do you?" he replied incredulously. Then he removed his hand from her knee and turned back to the chart of the table. It was a sonar image of the seabed, showing the site of the wreck excavation and the adjacent lava field. An X was marked on the chart near the center of the lava flow.

"Have you penetrated the lava field in your excavations?" he asked.

"No, of course not. I don't know what you are after, Dr. Tong. The artifacts have been removed and the rest of the wreck is sealed under lava. There is nothing you or anyone else can do about that."

"Oh but you see there is, my dear, there is."

Summer stared at Tong with fear and curiosity, wondering what these mercenary looters had up their sleeve.

Tong left Summer under the guard's eye and marched onto the bridge wing and down a flight of stairs.

Moving aft, he opened a side hatch and entered a large open bay. Racks of computers and electronic panels lined the walls, in a quantity that duplicated the test chamber at the family compound in Mongolia.

A short man with steely eyes stood next to a large desk lined with color monitors, gazing over the shoulder at the chief operator's display. He was the same man who had headed up the aborted search efforts in the Khentii Mountains after killing the Russian seismic survey team. He nodded as Tong approached.

"We have identified a minor fault and have the coordinates targeted," he said in a husky voice. "It is in close proximity, but may not be sufficient to create the desired fissure in the lava field. What you ask for is an impossible request, I'm afraid. We should not waste time here but proceed to Alaska as your brother requested."

Tong did not let the affront bother him. "A day or two's delay is worth the gamble. If we are successful and it is in fact the royal Yuan vessel, then the mission to Alaska will appear a mere trifle in comparison."

The short man nodded in deferral. "I recommend four or five incremental detonations, then send the dive team down to check the results. That should tell us if there is any hope of rupturing the lava."

"Very well, proceed with the acoustic bursts. We will work through the night. If there is no success, then we will abandon the site in the morning and proceed to Alaska."

Tong stood back and let the technicians take over. As in the Persian Gulf, a seismic acoustic array was lowered through the ship's moon pool to the lava field below, where the framed and weighted device stood upright on the seafloor. A nearby subterranean fault was pinpointed and targeted, then the computer processors and signal amplifiers activated. With a click of the computer, the first massive electrical pulse went shooting through the three transducer arrays five fathoms below. A second later, the muffled blast of the acoustic shock wave resonated up to the ship with a subtle vibration.

Tong stood watching the blast with an expectant grin, hoping the voyage would bring two successes.

***

A mile away, the low-riding catamaran skirted into the cove under a black nighttime sky. Dirk and Dahlgren resumed their prone positions on the surfboards and paddled their way along the high rocky shoreline. Spotting a shallow ledge just above the water level, they ground the boat beneath a nearly vertical wall of lava. Dirk stood and eyed the bright lights of the nearby drill ship, then dismantled the mast and sail to improve their stealth profile.

The two men sat and rested as they studied the ship, spent from their long day on the water. They were close enough to see a dozen or so men scurrying about the derrick on the illuminated stern deck. They watched as a tall tripod device was lowered through the deck into the water.

"Do you think they're actually trying to drill through the lava to get to the wreck?" Dahlgren postulated.

"Can't imagine what they would expect to recover that way."

The two men downed their supply of food and water and stretched their tired limbs. Slightly refortified, they were contemplating a plan of attack when a low-pitched rumble sounded near the ship. It was a muffled noise, as if emitted from deep within the ship or beneath it.

"What the Sam Hill was that?" Dahlgren drawled.

"Underwater explosion?" Dirk muttered. He looked at the water surface surrounding the ship, anticipating a rising burst of spray and bubbles, but nothing appeared. The surface water in the cove showed barely a ripple.

"Odd that it didn't affect the water. Must have come from within the ship," he said.

"Doesn't seem to be causing any excitement aboard," Dahlgren replied, noting that the deck crew had mostly disappeared and that the ship appeared calm. "How's about we take a closer look?"

They started to drag the catamaran back into the water when a second muffled boom erupted. Like the first, it made no impact to the waters in the middle of the cove. As the two men contemplated the strange detonation, a new, more thunderous noise began rumbling beneath their feet. The noise rose up as the ground began shaking violently, nearly knocking them off balance. Small chunks of loose lava and debris began raining down from the steep cliff face above them.

"Watch out!" Dirk shouted, spotting a nearby boulder break free and slide toward them. The two men barely dove out of the way as the rock rolled past them and over a corner of the catamaran before splashing into the water.

The ground vibrated for several more seconds before fading away. A few frothy waves stirred up by the earthquake slapped violently against the cliffside, then the waters of the cove fell calm.

"I thought the whole cliffside was going to drop on us," Dahlgren said.

"Might well yet," Dirk replied, eyeing the towering wall of lava warily. "Let's not hang around to find out."

Dahlgren stared toward the drill ship. "They created that earthquake," he said matter-of-factly. "It was triggered by the detonation."

"Let's hope it was accidental. They must be trying to rip up the lava field to get to the wreck."

"They can have it. Let's find Summer and get out of here before they bring the whole island down on our heads."

They quickly threw the catamaran in the water and shimmied aboard. quietly paddling away from the rocks, they moved cautiously toward the drill ship. Dahlgren eyed the board in front of him and noticed that the tip was flattened to the thickness of a pancake.

He didn't have the heart to tell Dirk it was his surfboard that was smashed by the falling rock.

-48-

Summer sat at the wheelhouse chart table contemplating a possible means of escape when the first acoustic blast was triggered. The muffled thump sounded directly beneath the ship, and she assumed like Dirk that it was some sort of explosion. The criminals must be trying to blast the lava off the wreck, she figured.

Bull Neck stared at her malevolently from across the table, baring a thin smile at the look of confusion and anger in Summer's face. His tobacco-stained teeth glared wider when a second underwater blast reverberated through the bridge a few minutes later.

Though Summer was repulsed by her captors, she became intrigued by their actions. Resorting to murder and wanton destruction of the wreck site meant they thought there was something of great value in her holds. Summer recalled Tong's interest in the porcelain plate and its possible royal markings. But he was interested in something more than pottery if he was blasting away lava to reach it. Gold or gemstones must their objective, she surmised.

As the second shock sent a slight vibration through the bridge, her thoughts turned again to escape.

Getting off the ship was the first order of business if she was to have any chance at survival. Summer was a strong swimmer. If she could get into the water, she could easily make it to the rocky rim of the cove.

Moving inland or down the coast would be no picnic, given the steep and jagged shoreline, but perhaps she could simply hide in the rocks until the Mariana Explorer returned. Whatever the difficulties, it was a better prospect than a continued voyage with the ship of thugs.

Alone on the bridge with just the helmsman and her brutish escort might be the best chance she got, she decided. The helmsman appeared to be little threat. He was nearly a boy, slight in stature and had a subservient look about him. He continually gawked at the six-foot-tall Summer as if she were Aphrodite.

She turned her attention to Bull Neck across the table. That's where the trouble lay. Violence was clearly no stranger to the brute with bad teeth. He had a look about him that said he would enjoy hurting a pretty woman and she shuddered at the thought. She would have to take him at his own game, but at least potentially she had the element of surprise on her side.

Mustering up the nerve, she finally told herself it was now or never. Rising slowly from the table, she casually strode toward the front of the bridge as if stretching her legs and admiring the black view out the window. Bull Neck immediately mimicked her movements, stopping a few feet behind her.

Summer lingered a moment, taking a deep breath to relax, then turned toward the portside bridge wing.

With a long stride, she quickly paced toward the open door as if catching an elevator. The guard immediately grunted at her to stop but she ignored the command. Striding light on her feet, she nearly made it out the door. The surprised thug jostled to catch up, bounding forward and placing a grimy hand on Summer's shoulder to stop her. The speed of her counter reaction surprised even herself.

Fully anticipating his lunge, she reached up and grabbed the man's wrist with both of her hands. She immediately spun to the side while shoving his wrist up and jamming his open palm backward toward the ground. Summer then backed into the man a step and dropped to one knee. The thug anticipated the attempted judo drop and hopped to the side, but she had him in a pain-inducing wristlock and could snap the bone with a flick of her hands. The angered man flailed with his free arm to strike Summer, but his blows lacked any leverage, only bruising her on the back. In response, she rose back to her feet and drove the heavier man backward with another twist to his hand. The man gasped in agony and flailed at Summer uselessly with his left arm. But the searing pain was too much and he finally staggered back. He crashed into the forward console near the helm, then fell to his knees incapacitated. As long as Summer maintained her grip, the burly thug was helpless.

A red light quickly flashed on the console as a slight shudder vibrated from the bowels of the ship. In his collision with the helm, Bull Neck had fallen against a button that deactivated the automatic ship thrusters, releasing them for manual control. The young helmsman, shocked at Summer's physical dominance over the larger man, backed away from the helm but chattered excitedly in Mongolian while pointing at the flashing light. With her heart pounding from the short engagement, Summer took a breath and glanced at the console.

The ship's controls were all inscribed in Mandarin, but beneath the factory markings somebody had taped plastic label translations in English. Summer glanced at the light and read the English translation below, which read, "Manual Thruster Control." An idea quickly chimed in Summer's head.

"Slight change of plans," she muttered to the uncomprehending helmsman. "We're going for a little ride first."

Summer scanned the adjacent controls until spotting a pair of dials marked PORT THRUSTER FORE and PORT THRUSTER AFT. She reached over with her free hand and turned the dials down to zero.

Almost simultaneously, a third burst erupted beneath them as the acoustic array was triggered again. The blast was good timing, Summer considered. The eruption masked the sound of the changing thrusters.

With luck, the crew might not notice that the ship was now moving laterally across the cove. It would take only a few minutes until the ship would collide with the lava rocks lining the cove. The ensuing confusion ought to give her ample opportunity to escape.

"Back off," she barked at the nervous helmsman, who had crept closer to the controls. The young man jumped back from the helm, eyeing with fright the twisted look of agony on Bull Neck's face.

The drill ship moved quietly and smoothly across the cove, pushed evenly by the bank of starboard thrusters. Summer thought she heard a minor clunk near the waterline, but the ship continued on its sideways path through the dark, the black night offering little in the way of visibility. If she could just hold on a little longer, she thought, as her grip on the thug's hand grew weary.

She nervously counted the seconds, waiting for the grinding impact of the ship's hull against lava. But her heart sank when a different sound emerged from the open doorway. It was the sound of a man's voice.

"What is this, now?" the voice grumbled.

Turning with dread, she saw it was Tong. And in his hand, he held an automatic pistol aimed at Summer's heart.

-49-

They had kicked and paddled the mastless catamaran to within a hundred yards of the drill ship, circling in toward the port bow in order to avoid the glaring spotlights that illuminated the stern deck. As they scanned the ship for nearby crewmen or lookouts, Dahlgren suddenly leaned toward Dirk and whispered.

"Take a look at the bridge. Quick."

Dirk glanced up at the ship's forward superstructure. Through the open side wing door, he caught a brief glance of a person stepping by. A tall person with flowing red hair that fell beneath the shoulders.

"Summer."

"I'm sure it is her," Dahlgren said.

A wave of relief fell over Dirk at seeing his sister still alive. With renewed vigor, he kicked the catamaran harder toward the ship. "Let's get aboard and find out what's going on."

It was a task easier said than done. The ship's lowest deck was still ten feet above them. And with the ship held in position by its thrusters, there was no anchor line in the water. Dirk hoped there might be an imbedded steel ladder on the ship's stern, a feature not uncommon on utility vessels.

They reached the bow and were quietly paddling aft when the third detonation erupted below them.

They could feel a minor vibration from the ship and noticed a few ripples in the water, but still no boiling torment of an underwater explosion. The lights around the moon pool illuminated the underside of the ship, and they could see a string of cables running down to the tripod device, which stood upright on the sea bottom.

They moved a few more feet down the ship's side when Dirk realized that the rumble of the nearby side thrusters had fallen silent. Before he knew what was happening, the ship's side hull smacked into the catamaran with a bang, then jerked the craft up on a building wave of water. The entire ship was moving laterally into them and quickly building speed. Sitting atop the side thrown high, Dirk could see that the catamaran was going to flip. The low surfboard was being pushed down and it was just a matter of seconds before the whole craft got sucked under the moving ship.

"Get off the board," Dirk yelled at Dahlgren.

He prepared to roll off the side himself when he caught sight of a line over his head. It was an unused mooring line that looped over the side of the ship, dangling down a few feet below the deck. With a desperate lunge, Dirk sprang up and off the twisting catamaran, barely grasping the rope with his left hand. Pulling his body around, he grabbed on with both hands, the line dropping taut under his weight to within a yard of the water.

He looked back to see the catamaran tumble down and under the advancing ship, swallowed beneath its side. Dahlgren was farther back, riding atop the cresting wave and swimming like a madman.

"Over here. I've got a line," Dirk implored in a low voice, hoping not to draw attention to their plight.

It was loud enough for Dahlgren to hear. He fought his way toward Dirk at a frantic pace that both men knew he could not sustain for long. The water seemed to swirl in all directions off the flat side of the ship, tugging Dahlgren one way, then another. When he finally surged close, Dirk reached out and grabbed a handful of his wet suit and yanked with all his strength. He pulled him far enough out of the water that Dahlgren was able to hook an arm over the line. He hung limp for a minute, catching his breath from the exertion.

"That was exciting," he muttered.

"And also the second time today that I've had to fish you out of the water," Dirk said. "If this continues, I must insist that you go on a diet."

"Ah'll take that under advisement," Dahlgren panted.

Resting for a moment, they proceeded to climb up opposite ends of the rope, emerging on deck a few yards apart. Though faint voices told them that a few crew members were on the stern, they were able to regroup undetected on the port beam. Dirk took a quick glance toward the high wall of lava that was quickly approaching in the darkness. There was clearly something amiss in the wheelhouse, as the ship was on a collision course and nobody seemed to be aware of it.

"Let's move," Dirk whispered. "I have a feeling we're not long aboard this ship."

As they started to move forward, another deep rumble began to sound in the distance. This time, the noise came from the shore.

***

Five thousand miles away, the elevator doors opened on the tenth floor of the NUMA headquarters building and a sleepy-eyed Hiram Yaeger eased toward his computer room toting a thermos of Sumatra-blend coffee. His eyes widened at the sight of Dr. McCammon seated at the console, an anxious look on his face.

"You got the jump on me again, Phil?" Yaeger asked.

"Sorry for the early intrusion. Something just came over the wire from the National Earthquake Information Center that looks important."

He spread a seismogram across the table as Yaeger slid into an adjacent swivel chair.

"A large quake struck the Big Island of Hawaii just moments ago," McCammon said. "A little over 7.0

magnitude. And it was a shallow quake. Its epicenter was just a mile off shore, in a place called Keliuli Bay."

"What do the foreshocks look like?"

McCammon crinkled his brow. "Very similar to the ones we've seen before. Man-made in appearance.

I just fed the data to Max for assessment. Hope you don't mind me taxing her talents while you were away," he added.

Max was standing near a computer bank with her arms crossed, looking deep in thought. She turned and smiled at McCammon.

"Dr. McCammon, I am delighted to assist you at any time. It is a pleasure to work with a gentleman,"

she added with a slight tweak of her nose in Yaeger's direction.

"Good morning to you, too, Max," Yaeger said. "Have you completed the analysis for Dr.

McCammon?"

"Yes," Max nodded. "As Dr. McCammon can show you, there were two primary foreshocks recorded before the quake. Each had nearly identical seismic readings, though there was a slight increase in intensity with the second foreshock. And both foreshocks appear to have originated near the surface."

"How do they compare to the foreshocks recorded before the two Persian Gulf earthquakes?" Yaeger asked.

"The foreshocks show near identical signal characteristics to those that preceded the earthquakes at Ras Tanura and Kharg Island. Like those shocks, they originated near the surface."

Yaeger and McCammon looked at each other with grim silence.

"Hawaii," Yaeger finally said. "Why Hawaii?"

Then with a shake of the head, he added, "I think it's time we contact the White House."

-50-

Summer kept her hands gripped around Bull Neck's wrist, despite staring down the barrel of a Glock automatic pistol. Tong stood still in the doorway, trying to assess the situation. Behind him, a deep rumbling echoed across the water, but he ignored the sound while silently admiring Summer's skill at subduing one of his toughs.

On the opposite side of the bridge, the helmsman regained his tongue and nerve, while keeping a safe distance from Summer.

"The port thrusters are disabled," he shouted at Tong. "We will strike the rocks." Waving animatedly, he pointed toward the lava cliffs now materializing off the port beam.

Tong listened without quite comprehending, then followed the helmsman's motions and looked out the bridge wing. As he turned, an unseen pair of thick arms, clad in the black neoprene rubber material of a wet suit, reached out of the darkness and grabbed Tong around the torso. The Mongolian instinctively squeezed the trigger on his pistol, but the shot fired harmlessly through the roof of the bridge. Tong then turned to fight off his attacker by whipping the gun around as a club. But his movements came too late.

His assailant had already taken a step forward, pitching Tong off balance. Tong staggered forward, trying to stay on his feet, but only added momentum to his captor. The assailant capitalized on the momentum with a gyrating lift, sweeping Tong completely off his feet. With a staggering lunge, he heaved Tong up and over the side railing, then let go. The stunned Mongolian let out a shriek as he disappeared over the side, his scream ending with a loud splash when he struck the water below.

On the bridge wing, the ex-calf roper Jack Dahlgren turned back toward the wheelhouse and gave Summer a quick wink and a grin. An instant later, Dirk rushed past him onto the bridge, wielding a gaff he had snared off the lower deck.

"You're all right," Summer gasped at the sight of the two men.

"Alive but soggy." Dirk smiled.

A jovial reunion was cut short by a jarring crash that knocked everyone to the deck. The four-thousand-ton drill ship, driven by the unabated power of its starboard thrusters, smashed broadside into the edge of the cove. The grinding impact of lava against steel echoed up from the waterline. The sharp volcanic rock sliced easily through the ship's hull, penetrating the lower hold in more than a dozen places. Seawater flooded in like a sieve, quickly tilting the ship to a port list. Somewhere in the darkened waters beneath the ship, the lifeless body of Tong swirled about, having found himself at the unfortunate point of impact between ship and shore.

The young helmsman was the first to find his feet, striking a ship's alarm bell, then fleeing out the starboard wing. Summer finally let go of Bull Neck's wrist, but the thug was in no mood to fight when Dirk jabbed the pike into his ribs and prodded him out the port wing door. Outside, the sound of men's shouts competed with the continued rumbling.

"Why did I have a feeling you had a hand in piloting the ship?" Dirk asked his sister with a grin.

"Desperate measures," Summer replied.

"Company on the way," Dahlgren said, peering off the bridge wing. Two flights down, a band of armed men were rushing toward the bridge.

"Can you handle a swim?" Dirk asked, leading the way up the sloping deck toward the starboard wing.

"I'm fine," Summer replied. "A dip was actually on my agenda before you arrived."

The threesome quickly scrambled off the bridge and down to the lower deck, where yells and shouts from the crew peppered the night air. On the bow, several crewmen were preparing to lower a lifeboat, though the water was already washing over the deck of the listing port side. On the opposite beam, Summer wasted no time in further encounters with the crew, climbing over the rail and sliding down the angled ship's flank until plunging into the water. Dirk and Dahlgren followed her in and quickly swam away from the ship.

The rumbling from the shoreline intensified until yet another earthquake rocked the ground. Stronger than the prior jolt, the quake rattled the unstable sections of the lava cliff face. All along the cove, chunks of lava were jarred free, tumbling down the cliffsides and crashing into the water with explosive eruptions of sea and foam.

The cliff towering above the drill ship shared in the instability, the quake carving out a large slice of volcanic rock. The huge piece tumbled once, bounding out from the cliff in free space before dropping directly onto the ship. The spire sliced through the rear of the bridge, collapsing the deck onto the computer room below. The base of the rock mashed into the port beam amidships, flattening a wide section of the ship. Panicked crewman dove into the water to escape the carnage, while the lone lifeboat finally broke free of the bow.

The rumbling from the quake finally fell away, and, with it, the crashing of the loosened rocks. The night air was now ruffled by the gurgling sounds of the dying drill ship, punctuated by the occasional shout of a crewman. A hundred yards away, Dirk, Summer, and Dahlgren treaded water while watching the old vessel's final minutes. "She'll make for a nice reef," Dahlgren noted as the ship tilted lower into the water.

A few moments later, the drill ship slowly rolled to her side, sliding off the rocks and disappearing under the waves to the seafloor seventy feet below. Only her tall derrick, sheared off during the roll and lying against the cliff wall, gave a clue to the ship's final resting spot.

"What did they hope to extract from the wreck?" Dirk asked.

"I was never able to find out," Summer replied. "But they were going to the extreme of ripping open the lava field to get to it."

"While generating a couple of earthquakes in the process," Dahlgren added. "I'd like to know what kind of black box they were using for that."

"I'd just like to know who they are," Summer said.

The drone of an airplane approached from up the coast and shortly banked over the cove. It was a low-flying Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules turboprop, with its landing lights glaring brightly across the ocean's surface. The plane began circling overhead, buzzing the lifeboat and the mangled derrick, before expanding its search for survivors in the water. A few minutes later, a pair of Hawaii Air National Guard F-15s from Hickam Field on Oahu screeched by at low altitude, then lazily circled overhead in support of the Hercules. Unbeknown to the NUMA crew in the water, Hiram Yaeger had persuaded the vice president to investigate the scene when evidence of the second earthquake appeared. An immediate military sortie had been ordered to the site of the earthquakes' epicenter.

"That's a sight for sore eyes," Summer said as the Hercules continued to circle overhead. "I don't know why they're here, but I'm sure glad they are."

"I bet a cutter and some choppers are already on the way," Dirk said.

"Heck, we don't need a darn cutter to pick us up," Dahlgren suddenly said and chuckled. "We've got our own rescue vehicle."

He swam off toward a nearby object floating in the water, then returned a minute later. Behind him, he towed the mangled but still intact catamaran.

"The cat. It lives," Dirk said in astonishment.

Summer looked at the object, then declared with a frown, "My surfboard. What's it doing here?"

She looked quizzically at a mangled aluminum frame that was roped to Dirk's surfboard, which she noticed was pummeled in several places.

"And what happened to your board?"

"Sis," Dirk said with a shrug, "it's a long story."

-51-

The hands of the clock had stopped. Or so it seemed to Theresa. She knew that the constant glances at the ornate timepiece on the wall of Borjin's study only acted to slow its movements. The pending attempt at escape was making her nervous until she finally willed herself to stop staring at the clock and at least pretend to focus on the geological report in front of her.

It was the second straight day they had worked into the night, sequestered in the study with only a break for meals. Unbeknown to their captors, Theresa and Wofford had actually completed the drilling analysis hours before. They feigned continued work in hopes that their evening escort would be just one guard, as occurred the night before. One of the two guards stationed at the door had disappeared after their dinner was cleared away, raising their prospects for escape.

Theresa glanced at Wofford, who was digesting a seismic-imaging report with an almost-happy glow.

He had marveled at the detailed imaging that von Wachter's technology had produced and devoured the profiles like a hog at Sunday brunch. Theresa quietly wished she could push the fear out of her mind as easily as Wofford seemed to.

The clock's hands were creeping past nine when Tatiana entered the study, dressed in black slacks and a matching light-wool sweater. Her long hair was combed neatly, and she wore a dazzling gold amulet around her neck. Her attractive external appearance, Wofford judged, was not enough to mask the cold and emotionless personality that ticked within.

"You have completed the analysis?" she asked bluntly.

"No," Wofford replied. "These additional profiles have impacted our earlier assumptions. We need to make further adjustments in order to optimize the drilling prospects."

"How long will this take?"

Wofford yawned deeply for effect. "Three or four hours should put us pretty close."

Tatiana glanced at the clock. "You may resume in the morning. I will expect you to complete the assessment and brief my brother at noon."

"Then we will be driven to Ulaanbaatar?" Theresa asked.

"Of course," Tatiana replied with a thin smile that bled insincerity.

Turning her back, she spoke briefly to the guard at the door then vanished down the hallway. Theresa and Wofford made a slow show of restacking the reports and cleaning up the worktable, stalling for time as best they could. Their best chance, perhaps their only chance, was if they remained alone and unseen with the guard.

After stalling as long as they dared without appearing obvious, they stood up and stepped toward the door. Wofford scooped up a stack of files to take with him, but the guard pointed at the reports and shook his head. Dropping the reports on the table, Wofford grabbed his cane and hobbled out the door with Theresa, the guard following on their heels.

Theresa's heart was racing as they walked down the long corridor. The house was quiet and the lights were turned low, lending the appearance that Tatiana and Borjin had retired to their private quarters in the south wing. The emptiness was broken when the short doorman popped out of a side room, holding a bottle of vodka. He gave a haughty glance to the captives, then scurried off toward the stairwell and the servants' quarters downstairs.

Wofford hobbled along with exaggerated effect, playing the role of harmless invalid to full effect.

Reaching the end of the main corridor, he slowed at the turn, quickly scanning the side passages to ensure there were no other guards or servants about. Passing through the foyer, Wofford waited until they were close to their rooms along the north hall before making his move.

By all appearances, it was simply a careless act. He poked his cane forward and a little out of line, tapping the ground in front of Theresa's right foot. Stepping forth, she caught her foot on the cane and lurched forward in a fall worthy of a Hollywood stuntman. Wofford followed suit, staggering forward as if to fall, then kneeling down on his good leg. He looked over at Theresa, who was sprawled flat on the floor, barely moving. It was up to the guard now.

As Wofford had predicted, the Mongolian guard proved himself more gentleman than barbarian and reached down to help Theresa up. Wofford waited until the guard grabbed Theresa's arm with both hands, then he sprang like a cat. Driving off his good leg, he jumped up and into the guard, whipping his cane up by the stock in a pendulum motion. The curved handle of the cane struck the guard flush under the chin, popping his head back. The force of the blow snapped the wooden cane in two, the loose handle clattering across the marble floor. Wofford watched as the guard's eyes glazed over before he tumbled backward to the ground.

Theresa and Wofford remained motionless in the still household, nervously waiting for a charge of guards down the corridor. But all remained quiet, the only sound in Theresa's ears being the loud thumping in her chest.

"You all right?" Wofford whispered, bending over to help Theresa to her feet.

"I'm fine. Is he dead?" she asked, pointing with a tentative finger at the prone guard.

"No, he's just resting." Wofford pulled out a drapery cord he had purloined from his room and quickly bound the guard's hands and feet. With Theresa's help, he dragged the man along the polished floor to the first of their rooms and across the threshold. Yanking a pillowcase off the bed, he gagged the guard's mouth with it, then closed the door and locked him inside.

"You ready to earn your pyromania stripes?" he asked Theresa.

She nodded nervously, and together they crept to the main foyer.

"Good luck," he whispered, then slipped behind a side column to wait.

Theresa had insisted that she return to the study alone. It made more sense, she convinced Wofford. He moved too slow and noisily on his game leg, which placed them both in greater jeopardy.

Hugging one wall, she scurried down the main corridor as quickly as she dared, stepping lightly on the stone floor. The hallway was still empty and quiet, save for the ticking pendulum of an old clock. Theresa quickly reached the study and ducked through its open door, thankful the guard had turned the lights off on the way out. The dark room gave her cover from the illuminated hallway, and she allowed herself a deep breath to help reduce the anxiety.

Feeling her way across the familiar room, she reached the rear bookcase. Grabbing a stack of books at random, she knelt down and began quietly tearing the pages out in handfuls, crumpling the sheets as they broke free of the bindings. Accumulating a small mound of kindling, she then built a pyramid-shaped stack of books around it, cracking open the spines and facing the loose pages inward. When she was satisfied with her handiwork, she stood and probed around the back of the study until finding a small corner table. Perched on the tabletop was a cigar humidor and a crystal decanter filled with cognac.

Theresa grabbed the decanter and began pouring its contents around the room, dumping the last quarter's worth onto her paper pyramid. She returned to the table and opened the humidor, feeling around inside until she found a box of matches that Wofford had discovered earlier. Gripping the matches tightly, she tiptoed to the front of the room and carefully peeked out the door. The main corridor was still quiet.

Creeping back to the book pile, she leaned over, lit one of the matches, and tossed it onto the cognac-soaked papers. There was no explosive ball of fire or immediate inferno, but just a small blue flame that traveled across the cognac-stained carpet like a river.

"Burn," Theresa urged aloud. "Burn this bloody prison down."

-52-

They looked like bogeymen, black-rubbery-skinned ogres moving ghostlike through the trees. Moving in silence, the three dark figures crossed the road in a cumbersome gait, then inched their way up to the side of the aqueduct. A few yards away, the rushing waters of the mountain river echoed across the hillside with a pounding fury. One of the figures stuck an arm into the aqueduct, then flicked on a small penlight. The clear water swirled past at an easy current, unlike the raging river beyond. Pitt turned off the light, then nodded at his companions.

They had waited an hour after sundown, until the forested hilltop was nearly pitch-black. A late-rising moon would allow them plenty of darkness for at least another hour or two. Climbing into the back of the truck with Giordino and Gunn, Pitt found their gear organized into three stacks.

"How deep is the aqueduct?" Gunn asked as he slipped into a black DUI neoprene dry suit.

"No more than six feet," Pitt replied. "We could probably get by with snorkels, but we'll use the rebreathers in case we need to stay under a bit longer."

Pitt had already zipped up his dry suit and was slipping on a Drager rebreather harness. Weighing just over thirty pounds, the system allowed a diver to breathe a contained supply of purified air recirculated with carbon dioxide scrubbers. Replacing the large steel air tank with a small tank and pack, the rebreather nearly eliminated visible exhaust bubbles as well. Pitt strapped on a weighted dive belt, then attached a waterproof dive bag. Inside he had placed his shoes, two handheld radios, and his Colt .45.

Climbing out of the truck, he surveyed the perimeter area, then ducked his head back into the rear.

"You gentlemen ready for a midnight swim?" he asked.

"I'm ready for a warm bath and a glass of bourbon," Gunn said.

"All set, just as soon as I load up my breaking-and-entering tools," Giordino replied. He rummaged around a toolbox until producing a hacksaw, monkey wrench, crowbar, and portable underwater torch, which he clipped to his belt, then hopped out the back. Gunn followed him out of the truck with an earnest look on his face.

The men made their way to the aqueduct in their black dry suits, each carrying a pair of lightweight dive fins. At the side of the V-shaped channel, Pitt took a final look around. The moon had yet to appear, and visibility under the partly cloudy skies was no more than thirty feet. They would be virtually undetected in the aqueduct.

"Try to keep your speed down. We'll pull out under the small bridge just inside the compound wall," Pitt said, pulling on his fins. He checked his regulator, then pulled down his mask and gently rolled into the aqueduct. Gunn splashed in a few seconds behind, then Giordino slipped in to follow from the tail position.

The bone-chilling river water would have frozen an unprotected man in minutes, but for Pitt in his dry suit, it felt like only a cool breeze. He'd nearly overheated hiking to the aqueduct in the insulated dry suit and was actually thankful for the cooling effect, despite the bitter chill around his mouth and face mask.

The gravity-induced water in the aqueduct flowed faster than he expected, so he shifted his feet forward and lay prone on his back. Lazily kicking his fins against the downward flow, he was able to slow his speed to a walking pace. The aqueduct followed the winding course of the road, and Pitt felt himself snake from one side to the other as he descended. The concrete channel was coated with a thin layer of algae, and Pitt bounced and slipped easily off its slimy walls.

It was almost a relaxing ride, he thought, gazing up at the sky overhead and the thick pine trees lining the bank. Then the trees gradually fell away, and the aqueduct channel straightened as it flowed through an open clearing. The dim glow of a light shined ahead, and Pitt could just make out the top of the compound wall rising in the distance.

There were actually two lights, one mounted atop the compound wall and another glowing from the interior of the guard hut. Inside the hut, a pair of duty guards sat chitchatting in front of a large video-monitor board. Live video feeds ran from nearly a dozen cameras mounted around the perimeter grounds, including one directly above the aqueduct. The grainy green night-vision images captured the occasional wolf or gazelle but little else in the remote setting. The studious guards refrained from the natural urge to sleep or play cards in order to relieve the boredom, knowing that Borjin had zero tolerance for indolent behavior.

At the sight of the compound, Pitt purged a shot of air from his dry suit, sinking his body a few inches below the surface. He craned his neck just before going under, spotting the dark image of Gunn floating a few yards behind him. He hoped Gunn would take the cue and submerge as well.

The water was clear enough that Pitt could easily detect the glow of the entry lights and the looming edifice of the compound wall. As he glided closer, he flattened his feet and bent his knees to brace for a possible impact. He wasn't disappointed. As he whizzed past the lights on his right, his finned feet collided with a metal grate that filtered large debris, and intruders, from passing through the aqueduct into the compound. Pitt quickly kicked to one side, then dropped to his knees and looked upstream. A black object quickly loomed up in front of him, and Pitt reached out and grabbed the murky Rudi Gunn a second before he collided with the grate. Not far behind, Giordino appeared, halting against the grate with his feet as Pitt had.

Inside the guard hut, the two security men sat oblivious to the three intruders in the aqueduct just a few feet away. Had they been monitoring the overhead video camera closely, they might have detected several dark objects in the water and gone to investigate. Had they even stepped outside their warm hut and listened attentively, they might have heard a muffled grinding noise coming from under the water. But the guards did neither.

The grate proved an easier obstacle than they expected. Rather than a tightly latticed plate that they would have had to cut through, the grate was a simple strand of vertical iron bars six inches apart. Feeling the way with his hands, Giordino grabbed the center bar and pulled himself to the bottom, where he attacked the base with his hacksaw. The bar was well rusted, and he was able to slice through it with only a few dozen strokes. He moved to the adjacent bar and cut through it with little additional effort.

Bracing his feet on the floor of the aqueduct, he grabbed both bars just above the cuts and pulled up.

With a burst from his burly thighs, he bent both bars up and away from the grate, creating a narrow passageway at the bottom of the aqueduct.

Gunn was resting on his knees when Giordino grabbed his arm and guided him to the access hole. Gunn quickly felt his way around the opening, then kicked through, twisting sideways to slip past the remaining bars. He turned and kicked against the flowing water until he detected the shapes of Pitt and Giordino slip through, then he relaxed and let the current pull him. They drifted through a concrete pipe passing under the compound wall, gliding through total darkness, until they spilled into the open aqueduct on the other side.

Gunn lazily kicked to the surface just in time to see the small footbridge passing over his head. He struggled to stop as an arm reached out of nowhere and yanked him to the side.

"End of the line, Rudi," he heard Pitt's voice whisper.

The steep and slippery sides of the aqueduct made for a difficult exit, but the men were able to pull themselves out by the bridge supports. Sitting in the shadow of the small bridge, they quickly stripped out of their dry suits and stashed them under the bridge footing. A scan of the compound revealed all was quiet, and no horse patrols were visible in the immediate area.

Gunn unzipped his dive bag and pulled out his glasses, shoes, and a small digital camera. Beside him, Pitt had retrieved his .45 and the two handheld radios. He made sure the volumes were turned down low, then clipped one to his belt and handed the other to Gunn.

"Sorry we don't have enough weapons to go around. You get in a bind, then give us a call," Pitt said.

"Believe me, I'll be in and out of there before anyone has a chance to blink."

Gunn's task was to sneak into the lab and photograph the seismic device, grabbing any documents he could along the way. If there were workers about, then he had Pitt's order to abandon the effort and wait by the bridge. Pitt and Giordino had the stickier objective of entering the main residence and locating Theresa and Wofford.

"We'll try to rendezvous here, unless one of us doesn't make it out cleanly. Then we'll head for the garage and one of Borjin's vehicles."

"Take this, Rudi," Giordino said, handing Gunn his crowbar. "In case the door is locked ... or an overinquisitive lab rat gives you trouble."

Gunn nodded with a humorless grin, then grabbed the crowbar and skulked off in the direction of the laboratory. He wanted to curse Pitt and Giordino for bringing him here, but he knew it was the expedient thing to do. They had to try to rescue Theresa and Wofford. And to simultaneously document the seismic array meant it was a three-man job. Heck, it was a hundred-man job, Gunn thought, glancing skyward in hopes that a company of special operations forces would magically parachute into the compound. But the heavens only offered a few scattered stars, struggling to twinkle through a light haze of clouds.

Gunn shook off the prayer and moved quickly across the open compound, dashing from shrub to shrub where cover availed itself. Only while crossing the entryway road did he slow down, crawling across the gravel road at nearly a snail's pace so as not to create an audible crunch underfoot. He followed Pitt's directions, moving past the illuminated open garage. The tinkling sound of banging tools told him that at least one person was up performing late-night mechanical duties.

He moved on toward the adjacent lab when the sudden braying of a horse froze him in his tracks. He could detect no movement around him and finally decided that the sound came from the horse stables at the end of the building. He studied the lab and was relieved to see only a few dim lights turned on on the lower level. Some brighter lights glimmered from the upstairs windows, and he heard the faint sound of music coming from above. The living quarters for the scientists who worked in the lab obviously were upstairs.

Checking again to see that no horse patrols were nearby, he crept to the glass entry door and pushed.

To his surprise, the door was unlocked and opened into the test bay. He entered quickly and closed the door behind him. The bay was illuminated by a few desk lamps and buzzed with the hum of a dozen oscilloscopes but was otherwise empty. Gunn noticed a coatrack near the entrance and grabbed one of several white, long-sleeved lab coats hanging on the hooks, which he slipped over his own dark jacket.

Might as well look the part, he thought, figuring it might be enough to deceive someone looking in from outside.

He walked to the main corridor, which stretched the length of the building, and noticed the lights were turned on in a few scattered offices. Fearful of being caught in the open hallway, he hesitated only a second, then stormed down the hall. He walked as fast as his legs could move without breaking into a run, keeping his eyes forward and face down. To the three other people still working at the late hour, he was just a quick blur past the window. All they could tell was that it was someone in a white lab coat, one of their comrades, probably on the way to the bathroom.

Gunn quickly reached the thick door at the end of the hall. With heavy breath and heart pounding, he flipped the latch and shoved. The massive door swung open quietly, revealing the huge anechoic chamber inside. Towering in the center of the room under a bright circle of overhead lights was von Wachter's acoustic seismic device, just as Pitt and Giordino had described it.

Thankful to find the chamber empty, Gunn climbed through the door and up onto the catwalk.

"We're halfway home," he muttered as he pulled out the digital camera. Noting the handheld radio on his belt, he silently wondered how Pitt and Giordino were faring.

-53-

If you can provide a distraction from the front, then I should be able to slip around and surprise them from the side," Pitt whispered, studying the two guards standing like bookends on either side of the main residence door.

"A visit from my pet monkey should do the trick," Giordino replied, patting the heavy red pipe wrench dangling from his belt.

Pitt lowered his head then released the safety on his Colt. That they would have to subdue the front-entry guards in order to gain entry to the residence was a given. The challenge would be to do so without firing a shot and alerting the small army of security forces that Borjin kept on the compound.

The two men moved quietly along one of the reflecting canals that flowed toward the house, advancing in short quick bursts. They dropped to the ground and crawled to a rose bed that circled around the residence's main covered entryway. They were within clear sight of the guards as they peered through a bed of ivory yellow Damask roses.

The guards stood leaning against the residence in a relaxed state, accustomed to the uneventful grind of the night shift. Save for an evening walk or a late return from Ulaanbaatar, neither Borjin nor his sister were seldom seen after ten o'clock.

Pitt motioned for Giordino to stay put and give him five minutes to reposition himself. As Giordino nodded and hunkered down in the rose bed, Pitt silently looped his way around toward the far side of the entrance. Following the rose bed, he reached the entry drive and, as Gunn had done, gently stepped his way across the crushed gravel. The grounds were open from the road to the house, and Pitt moved quickly across the area, running low to the ground. The front face of the house was dotted with shrubs, and he ducked behind a large juniper bush, then peeked through it to the front porch. The guards stood as they were, oblivious to his movements in the dark just a few dozen yards away.

Creeping forward, he picked his way bush by bush until reaching the edge of the covered portico. He kneeled to the ground, tightened his grip on the .45, and waited for Giordino to start the show.

Seeing no suspicious activities by the guards, Giordino gave Pitt an extra minute before moving from the rose bed. He had noted that the column supports for the portico roof offered a perfect blind spot from which to approach the porch. He inched to one side until one of the columns blocked his view of the guards, then stepped out of the rosebushes.

As he figured, if he couldn't see the guards, then they couldn't see him, and he angled his way right up to the back side of the column. The front door was less than twenty feet away, and he would have a clear shot at either guard. Without saying a word or making a sound, he casually stepped from behind the column, took aim at one of the guards, then hauled back and flung the pipe wrench like a tomahawk.

Both guards immediately saw the squat Italian step into view, but both were too startled to react. They stared in disbelief as a red object tumbled through the air at them, smashing one of them in the chest, cracking his ribs and knocking the breath out of him. The buffeted guard fell to his knees, wheezing a moan of shock and pain. The other guard instinctively stepped to his aid, but, seeing that his partner was not injured seriously, stood up to charge after Giordino. Only Giordino was no longer there, having ducked back behind the column. The guard stumbled toward the column, then stopped when he detected footsteps behind him. He turned in time to see the butt of Pitt's .45 strike his temple just beneath his helmet.

As the lights went out, Pitt managed to slip his hands under the man's arms and catch him before he collapsed to the ground. Giordino popped from behind the column and approached as Pitt dragged the unconscious guard toward some bushes. Pitt noticed a sudden glint in Giordino's eyes just before he yelled, "Down!"

Pitt ducked as Giordino took two steps and leaped directly toward him. Giordino stretched out and soared up and over Pitt, flying toward the first guard who now stood behind Pitt. The injured man had shaken off the blow from the wrench and staggered to his feet with a short knife, which he'd been preparing to plunge into Pitt's back. Giordino whipped his left arm forward midair, knocking the guard's knife to the side before tumbling into him with his full weight. They fell hard to the ground together, Giordino driving his weight into the man's chest. The pressure on the guard's broken ribs was unbearable and the wincing man gasped as he tried to suck in air. Giordino's right fist beat out the cry, crashing into the side of his neck and knocking him out before another warble left his mouth.

"That was a little close," Giordino gasped.

"Thanks for the leap of faith," Pitt said. He stood up and surveyed the compound. The grounds and house appeared quiet. If the guards had triggered an alarm, it wasn't apparent.

"Let's get these guys out of sight," Pitt said, dragging his victim again toward the bushes. Giordino followed suit, grabbing his guard by the collar and pulling him backward.

"Hope the next shift change doesn't arrive soon," he huffed.

As Pitt deposited his body by the bushes, he turned to Giordino with a twinkle in his eye.

"I think it may arrive sooner than you think," he said with a knowing wink.

-54-

Theresa watched as the tiny flames gobbled up the torn pages, then slowly grew higher and brighter as the fire danced over the open books. When it was clear that the fire would sustain itself, Theresa moved quickly to the study doorway, grabbing the file of reports that Wofford had earlier tried to take. Inside were samples of von Wachter's detailed imaging, along with the seismic fault maps and their unsettling red markings, including the chart of Alaska. Casting a glance back at the glowing yellow blaze beginning to erupt at the back of the room, Theresa turned and bolted down the corridor.

She moved in a shuffling run, fleeing as fast as she could without pounding the marble floor with a loud patter. Nervous adrenaline pumped through her veins as she dashed along, the prospect of escape at last a reality. The plan was simple. They would hide off the foyer until the fire drew the response of the front-entry guards. Slipping outside, they would try to commandeer a vehicle in the ensuing chaos and make a break at the front gate. The fire was now set, and Theresa felt a glimmer of confidence that their humble escape plan might actually work.

She slowed to a walk as she approached the foyer, searching for Wofford's hiding spot. He stood where she left him, standing beside a large fluted column. Seeing her approach, he looked at her with dread in his eyes. Theresa smiled in return, indicating with a nod that she had been successful. The normally jovial Wofford stood stone-still, his face in a tight grimace.

Then Tatiana stepped out from behind Wofford's shadow, waving a small automatic pistol at his back.

With a menacing smile, she hissed at Theresa. "A beautiful evening for a walk, no?"

Theresa gasped as a chill ran down her spine like the Polar Express. Then seeing the wicked smile on Tatiana's lips, her fear was replaced with anger. If her time was at hand, she decided, then she wasn't going to go down meekly.

"I could not sleep," she tried bluffing. "We are so close to finishing the analysis. I convinced the guard to let us retrieve some of the reports so that we could work in our rooms," she said, holding up the file under her arm.

It was a game effort, but Theresa could see by the look in Tatiana's eyes that she was buying none of it.

"And where is the guard?"

"He is closing down the study."

A conveniently timed tumbling of books sounded from down the corridor, the work of the fire burning through a lower bookshelf. An inquisitive look crossed Tatiana's face and she took a step toward the center of the foyer to peek down the hall, keeping the gun pointed at Wofford. He glanced at Theresa, who nodded slightly in return.

As if in a rehearsed move, Theresa flung her bundled papers at Tatiana's face while Wofford lunged for her right arm, the one holding the pistol. With a snakelike quickness that surprised them both, Tatiana instantly spun in a half circle, sidestepping Wofford's reach as the tossed files bounced harmlessly off the back of her head. Spinning forward, she stepped toward Theresa and jammed the gun in her cheek while the cloud of papers was still fluttering to the ground.

"I should kill you now for that," she hissed into Theresa's ear while waving Wofford back with her other hand. "We shall see what other tricks you have been up to."

Prodding Theresa across the foyer with the muzzle of the gun, a Makarov PM automatic, she led her to the front door. Reaching around with her free hand, Tatiana flung the door open.

"Guards," she barked. "Come assist me."

The two guards on the porch, dressed in Mongol warrior attire with their tin helmets pulled low, burst through the door and quickly sized up the situation. The first guard stepped toward Wofford and produced a handgun, which he jammed into the geophysicist's ribs. The second guard, a shorter man, stepped up to Theresa and grabbed her tightly by the arm.

"Take her," Tatiana ordered, pulling the gun away from Theresa's face. The guard obliged by roughly jerking her away from Tatiana. A wave of hopelessness fell over Theresa as she looked at Wofford with despair. Oddly, the look of gloom had passed from Wofford's face and he looked at her with a gaze of hope. Then the viselike grip around her arm suddenly eased. In an unexpected move, the guard let go of Theresa's arm and suddenly grasped Tatiana by the wrist. With the flick of his powerful hand, he twisted Tatiana's wrist while applying a pincerlike squeeze to her hand. The gun slipped from her hand before she realized what was happening, the pistol clanging across the marble floor. The guard then jerked her wrist again and shoved, sending Tatiana sprawling to the floor with a shriek of pain.

"What on earth are you doing?" she cried, rising to her feet while cradling her bent wrist. For the first time, she looked earnestly at the guard, noticing that his sleeves dangled from a shirt two sizes too large.

He smiled at her with a somehow-familiar grin that seemed out of place. She turned toward the other guard and saw that his uniform was way too small for his tall frame. And the gun he was holding was now aimed at her. Looking into the face, she gasped at the penetrating green eyes that stared back at her with morbid delight.

"You!" she rasped, losing her voice in shock.

"You were expecting Chicken Delight?" Pitt replied, holding the .45 aimed at her belly.

"But you died in the desert," she stammered.

"No, that would be that phony monk friend of yours," Giordino replied, picking up the Makarov. Tatiana seemed to shrivel at the words.

"Al, you came back," Theresa said, nearly welling up at the turn of events. Giordino squeezed her hand.

"Sorry to rough you around on the way in," he said. Theresa nodded her head in understanding and squeezed his hand back.

"We are sure glad to see you, Mr. Pitt," Wofford said. "We had little hope of getting out of here in one piece."

"We saw what they did to Roy," Pitt said with a cold eye to Tatiana. "This place isn't exactly a Girl Scout camp. All the same, you saved us the trouble of trying to find you in this palace."

"I think it might be a good time to make an exit, before any real palace guards show up," Giordino added, escorting Theresa toward the door.

"Wait," she said. "The seismic reports. We found evidence that they may try to disrupt tectonic fault zones in the Persian Gulf and Alaska."

"This is absurd," Tatiana declared.

"No one is talking to you, sister," Giordino replied, pointing the Makarov in her direction.

"It's true," Wofford said, bending down and helping Theresa scoop up the papers that littered the floor.

"They designated the destruction of the oil pipeline at the northern end of Lake Baikal that somehow triggered the seiche wave. They've also targeted specific faults in the Persian Gulf, and one near the Alaska Pipeline as well."

"They've already struck the gulf successfully, I'm afraid," Pitt said. "The data should fill in nicely with the photos that Rudi is taking as we speak," Giordino added.

Pitt saw the quizzical looks on Theresa and Wofford's faces.

"An acoustic seismic array sits in the lab across the way. Used to trigger earthquakes, we believe, which have already created extensive damage to oil port facilities in the Persian Gulf. Your documents would appear to support the contention. We didn't know Alaska was next on the hit list."

Theresa stood up with an armload of documents when a deafeningly shrill sound pierced the hallway.

The growing blaze of burning books had finally triggered a smoke detector outside the study, its alarm echoing throughout the residence.

"We set fire to the study," Theresa explained. "Hoped to use it as a diversion for Jim and I to escape."

"Maybe we still can," Pitt replied, "but let's not wait for the fire brigade to arrive."

He quickly stepped through the open door as Theresa and Wofford followed behind. Tatiana edged toward the back wall, trying to slip behind in the mass exit. Giordino smiled at her attempt, walking over and grabbing a fistful of her sweater.

"I'm afraid you'll be leaving with us, darling. Do you care to walk or fly?" he asked, shoving her roughly toward the door. Tatiana turned and snarled at him, then begrudgingly moved through the doorway.

Outside, Pitt quickly led the group across the portico to the outlying support columns, then stopped. The sound of galloping horse hooves far to his right told him a patrol near the northern edge of the residence had heard the alarm and was charging toward the entrance. Ahead and to his left, a yelling and commotion was erupting near the stables and security quarters. Pitt could see lanterns and flashlights hurrying toward the residence, carried by guards woken by the alarm and rushing there on foot.

Pitt silently cursed that Theresa had set fire to the residence. If they had gotten away a few minutes earlier, the confusion might have played into their hands. But now the entire security force was roused and rushing toward their position. Their only option was to lay low and hope the guards surged past them.

Pitt motioned toward the rosebushes behind the columns. "Everybody get down flat. We'll wait for them to enter the house, then we'll move on," he said in a low voice.

Theresa and Wofford quickly dove to the ground and slithered behind a row of the thorny flowers.

Giordino shoved Tatiana behind a budding bush, then clasped a hand over her mouth. With his other hand, he motioned the Makarov's barrel to his lips and said, "Shhh."

Pitt kneeled down and pulled the handheld radio from his belt then held it to his lips.

"Rudi, can you hear me?" he said quietly.

"I'm all ears," came an equally hushed reply.

"We're on our way out, but there's a party starting up. We'll have to meet up on the fly, in about five or ten minutes."

"I'll wrap up and head toward the garage. Out."

Pitt hit the ground as a trio of guards from the stables approached. Running on foot, they bolted by a few feet from Pitt, barely noticing that the entry guards were nowhere in sight before rushing into the residence. Only a few dim lights were turned on near the door, leaving Pitt and the others hidden in the covering darkness.

The horse patrol was still fifty yards away. Pitt contemplated moving past the rosebushes and into the compound grounds before they got closer, then thought better of it. The horse patrol wouldn't expect anyone lying around the entrance. With luck, Theresa's fire would be raging sufficiently that they would all be pressed into fire-fighting duty.

The horse patrol, numbering eight men, had been galloping fast toward the front entry when they suddenly pulled up hard on their reins as they reached the gravel drive. An uneasy feeling came over Pitt as he watched the horsemen fan out in a large semicircle at the edge of the portico, then stop. Two of the horses snorted in uneasiness as the riders held them still. Inside the residence, the ringing alarm suddenly fell silent as four additional guards approached on foot from the opposite side and stopped short of the drive. The fire was either raging out of control, or as Pitt feared, it had been contained before it could spread.

The answer came with a blinding glare of white light. With the flick of a switch, a dozen floodlights mounted in the portico's rafters popped on in a bright burst. The light from the halogen bulbs spilled over onto the surrounding grounds. Clearly illuminated under the glare were the bodies of Pitt and the others, stretched out beneath the rosebushes.

Pitt tightened the grip on his .45 and casually took aim at the nearest horseman. The guards on foot were positioned farther away and did not appear to be armed. It was a different story with the horsemen. In addition to their lethal bows and arrows, Pitt was chagrined to see they all carried rifles, now shouldered and aimed in their direction. Though he noticed Giordino now had the Makarov aimed at a horseman as well, their odds were not at all attractive.

The gunfight became moot when a flurry of footsteps echoed from the marble foyer and four bodies burst onto the porch. The three guards who had rushed across the compound took a few steps out, then stopped and stared at Pitt and the others. Smoke and ashes blackened their bright orange tunics, but there was no panic in the men's eyes. Of more concern to Pitt were the AK-74 assault rifles they now cradled in their arms.

Busting past the gunman was the fourth man, who charged to the center of the driveway as if he owned it, which he well did. Borjin was dressed in a blue silk robe, which contrasted with his beet red face flush with anger. He glared to the side bushes, where the stripped and unconscious bodies of the door guards lie visible under the bright lights. Borjin turned to Pitt and the others with an apoplectic gaze. Then in a measured voice, he growled, "I will have retribution for this."

-55-

A wave of curiosity replaced the fear surging through Gunn's body when he entered the anechoic chamber. He had seen soundproof test chambers before, but none filled with the array of high-powered electronic gear packed into this high-ceilinged compartment. Row after row of computers and power racks lined the outer platform, reminding him of the computer-processing equipment jammed into a Trident submarine. Of greater interest was the odd appendage in the middle of the room, the three conjoined tubes that towered ten feet high. Gunn stared at the acoustic transducers, a chill running through him at the thought of Yaeger's assertion that it could create an earthquake.

The chill quickly turned to sweat as he realized the temperature in the chamber was about 100 degrees.

He was surprised to find that the equipment in the chamber was on and running, engaged in a preprogrammed test of some sort. The heat generated from the assembly of power supplies running the electronics had turned the chamber into a dry sauna. Stripping off his borrowed lab coat and black foul-weather jacket beneath, he pulled out the digital camera and climbed up onto the center platform.

Starting at the far end, he hurriedly began photographing each piece of equipment. Sweating profusely, he stepped to the entrance and opened the door, allowing a blast of cool air to gush through. Knowing he could better hear approaching footsteps, and also receive calls on his radio, he left the door open and resumed his photography.

Gunn stopped when he reached a large console fronted by a plush leather chair. It was the system operator's control station for activating the seismic array. Gunn slipped into the chair and studied the brightly colored flat-screen monitor that faced him. A pop-up message was centered on the screen with the words test running flashing in German. Gunn had a rudimentary knowledge of German, having spent several months with a German research team studying the sunken World War II liner Wilhelm Gustloff, and deciphered the ongoing software test. He clicked on a box marked ABORT and a vivid abstract image suddenly popped onto the screen.

The monitor showed a three-dimensional image of sediment layers, each colored in a different shade of yellow-gold. A scale to one side indicated five hundred meters, and Gunn correctly guessed that it was a stratigraphic image of the sediment directly beneath the lab. Gunn reached for a trackball mouse on the table and slid it toward him. As the cursor moved on the screen, a loud ticking noise emitted from the towering transducers a few feet away. The ticking quickly stopped as the monitor readjusted to a new subterranean image. Gunn noticed that the side scale now read five hundred fifty meters.

Von Wachter had indeed perfected his seismic-imaging system to a remarkable degree. Gunn wheeled the mouse back and forth, admiring a crystal clear image of the sedimentary layers hundreds of feet below him. Alongside him, the acoustic array ticked away as an electric motor rotated the mechanism and its changing angle of penetration. Like a kid with a computer game, Gunn became temporarily engrossed in the images produced by the device, studying the aberrations in the ground layers. He barely noticed when Pitt called him on the radio, jolting him to rush toward the open chamber door so as not to lose the signal inside the protected chamber.

Signing off the radio, he took a quick peek down the hallway. Seeing no signs of life, he scurried back to the platform and finished taking pictures of the seismic array and ancillary equipment. He slipped on his jacket and started to leave, then rummaged through some documents and papers he saw on the console.

He found what appeared to be the operator's manual, a thick booklet clamped to a miniature stainless steel clipboard. The front pages were missing, presumably torn off by Pitt on his last visit. Gunn stuffed the manual and clipboard into a zippered chest pocket on his jacket, then made for the door. He was just about to exit when a voice erupted from his radio.

His heart dropped when he realized the voice was not Pitt's. And what it had to say meant that all was lost.

-56-

Pitt rose slowly to his feet, the Colt held down at his side so as not to incite any trigger-happy fingers from Borjin's machine-gun-toting guards. He waited until Giordino jerked Tatiana to her feet and turned her toward her brother, the Makarov held clearly visible against her ear. Tatiana tried futilely to break away from his grip but to no avail.

"Let me go, you pig. You are all dead men," she hissed.

Giordino simply smiled as he grabbed a fistful of her hair and forced the muzzle of the Makarov deeper into her ear. Tatiana winced with pain, then gave up the struggle.

With all eyes on Tatiana, Pitt slowly raised the Colt until it was pointed at Borjin's midsection. With his left hand, he unobtrusively brushed the TRANSMIT button on his radio, hoping to clue Gunn in to their predicament.

Borjin gazed at his sister's peril with a look of mild disinterest. When he studied Pitt and Giordino with a closer scrutiny, his eyes suddenly flared in recognition.

"You," he cried, then regained his composure. "You survived your ride in the desert to trespass on my property again? Why do you risk such foolishness? Simply for the lives of your friends?" He nodded toward Theresa and Wofford, who had wisely moved behind Tatiana.

"We came to put an end to your earthquakes and your murdering rampage for oil," Pitt replied. "We came for our friends. And we came for Genghis."

Pitt's reference to the earthquakes barely registered a reaction. But his mention of the Mongol warlord's name nearly sent a tremor through Borjin. His eyes creased together as his face turned red, and Pitt half expected flames to spring from his lips.

"Death will greet you first," he spat, nodding at the guards surrounding him.

"Perhaps. But you and your sister will accompany me on the journey."

Borjin took a hard look at the rugged man who threatened him so boldly. He could tell by the steely resolve in Pitt's eyes that he had stared down death many times before. Like his own idol, Genghis, he showed no apparent fear in battle. But he suspected Pitt had a weakness, one that he could play to his advantage to be rid of him once and for all.

"My men will cut you down in an instant," he threatened back. "But I do not wish to see my sister die.

Release Tatiana, and your friends are free to go."

"No," Theresa protested, stepping in front of Giordino. "You must let us all go free." Then in a whisper to Giordino, she said, "We will not allow you to stay behind and be murdered."

"You are in no position to make demands," Borjin replied. He pretended to pace back and forth, but Pitt could tell he was trying to remove himself from the field of fire. Pitt tightened the grip on his .45 as Borjin stepped behind one of the guards, then halted.

The boom erupted like a sledgehammer to an iron kettle only with an explosive echo. But the blast didn't originate from any of the weapons pointed around the entryway. Instead, the sound rumbled from across the compound, in the direction of the laboratory. Twenty seconds crept by with everyone frozen in confusion when a second boom erupted, identical to the first. Tatiana was the first to recognize the sound. With a foreboding sense of dread in her voice, she shouted to her brother.

"It is von Wachter's device. Someone has activated it."

Like the thundering crash of a temple gong, a third boom erupted, drowning her words as the echo shook from the laboratory.

***

Gunn had shown remarkable cool under pressure. He knew Pitt would have wanted him to take the photographic evidence and escape the compound, contact the authorities, and expose Borjin to the court of world opinion. But he just couldn't walk away and leave his friends to die. Armed with nothing more than a crowbar, he also knew that rushing to their side would result in little more than his own death. But perhaps he thought, just perhaps, he could turn Borjin's demon against its master.

Gunn stepped back into the anechoic chamber and pulled the door shut behind him, then raced to the console. He was at once thankful that the system had been left on and that he had taken a few minutes earlier to joyride with the controls. Jumping into the operator's seat, he grabbed the trackball mouse and quickly scrolled down, searching for an image he had seen earlier. As the tripod device ticked and hummed to follow the commands, Gunn frantically bounced the cursor about. Finally, he eyed the stratum that he was looking for. It was an odd jump in the sedimentary line, dividing two layers of sediment with a distinct cut. Around the cut were a dozen or so round blemishes, which were actually cracks in the rock.

He had no idea if it was actually a fault, or even if there was any pressure built up at the point. Perhaps with the acoustic seismic array, it didn't really matter anyway. Gunn didn't have the answers but rationalized it was the best prospect he had, under the circumstances.

He guided the cursor to the crown of the sedimentary cut and clicked the button. An illuminated crosshair began flashing over the indicated point as the tripod ticked again. Gunn rolled the cursor to the top of the screen and quickly scrolled through a series of dropdown menus. Sweat began dripping off his forehead as he worked frantically in the hot chamber. Each new command was in German, the software having been created by von Wachter and his team. Gunn desperately tapped the recesses of his brain, trying to resurrect forgotten words and phrases. He recalled Yaeger's report that von Wachter was using concentrated packets of high-frequency waves in his imaging, so he selected the highest-frequency setting. He guessed WEITE meant amplitude, and chose the highest power level, then selected a repetitive cycle interval of twenty seconds. A flashing red box appeared with AKTIVIEREN in bold letters. Gunn mentally crossed his fingers and clicked the button.

At first, nothing happened. Then a long sequence of software script rolled across the monitor at rapid speed. It might have been Gunn's heightened senses, but the power amplifiers and computers physically seemed to come alive in the chamber, bursting with a low hum. Wiping his brow, he was certain the room temperature had increased by at least ten degrees. He noticed the tripod was ticking again, but at a higher crescendo. Then with a flicker of the lights, an explosive boom erupted from the inverted tip of the tripod. It felt like a bolt of lightning had struck just inches away. The acoustic blast shook the building, nearly tossing Gunn from his chair. He staggered toward the door with his ears ringing, then stopped and gazed at the room in dismay.

The anechoic chamber. It was designed to absorb sound waves. Even the concentrated blasts erupting from the acoustic array would be seriously diluted by the sound-deadening floor panels. His effort at activating the system was for naught.

Gunn jumped off the catwalk onto the foam floor and vaulted over to the base of the tripod. He anticipated the next blast and covered his ears as a second acoustic burst was fired from the transducer tubes, expounding with a deafening bang.

The thunderclap knocked Gunn to his knees, but he quickly recovered and crawled to the base of the tripod. Frantically tearing at the foam floorboards beneath the device, he counted out loud to twenty in anticipation of the next blast. Luck was on his side, as the foam panels were not attached to the floor and lifted off easily in large sections. Beneath the foam, the floor appeared tiled, but Gunn saw from the dull silver finish that the tiles were made of lead as an extra sound deadener. Gunn was at the count of eleven when he lunged at the console and grabbed the crowbar he had left on the table. Jamming its blade into a floor seam, he quickly pried up one of the heavy tiles and muscled it aside. Ignoring his count of eighteen, he dove down and quickly ripped away three other lead plates, which together with the first had formed a square beneath the business end of the acoustic array.

Gunn had counted too fast during his adrenaline rush to clear the floor and stepped back just as the third acoustic blast fired. Jamming his palms to his ears, he looked down as saw that the device was now firing through a thin layer of concrete that had formed the foundation for the building.

"Nothing I can do about that," he muttered after the blast passed, and he made his way to the door.

Tugging open the heavy door, he half expected to face a legion of armed guards waiting for him to exit.

But the guards had all rushed to the residence, at least temporarily. Instead, he saw a small group of scientists, some in pajamas, swarming at the opposite end of the hallway. Stepping through the chamber door, Gunn was met by a yell from one of the scientists, spurring the angry mob to charge toward him.

With just a few yards of leeway, Gunn rushed to the nearest office on his right and stepped in.

Like most of the offices in the lab building, it was sparsely decorated, with a gray metal desk centered on one wall and a lab table covered with electronics to the side. None of the furnishings mattered to Gunn. The only thing of importance was the small picture window that faced the compound grounds.

Stepping to the window, he silently thanked Giordino for loaning him the crowbar now gripped tightly in his hands. With a powerful thrust, he jabbed the blunt end of the bar into a corner of the window, shattering the glass. Scraping the broken shards off the sill, he dove out the window. His body barely hit the ground when the fourth and final blast emitted from the acoustic array, the impact much less violent to Gunn now that he was outside the building.

A chorus of frantic yells could be heard through the broken window as the scientists ignored Gunn and rushed into the chamber. He knew they would deactivate the system before another blast would strike.

His rash gamble at inducing an earthquake was finished. So too, he thought with dread, was his chance at saving the lives of Pitt and Giordino.

-57-

When the sound of the second blast echoed across the compound, Borjin ordered two of the mounted guards to go investigate. They quickly galloped across the darkened compound as a slight rumble echoed in the distance. The deep boom of a third seismic blast quickly drowned out their pounding hoofbeats and the faraway rumble as well.

"You have brought friends as well?" Borjin sneered at Pitt.

"Enough to close you down for good," Pitt replied.

"Then they shall die with you."

A crash of shattering glass sounded from the laboratory, followed by the fourth detonation of the acoustic seismic array. Then all fell silent.

"It would appear that your friends have been introduced to my guards," Borjin smiled.

The sneer was still on his face when another distant rumble reverberated off the hills like the sound of approaching thunder. Only this time, the rumble continued to resonate, growing with the intensity of an approaching avalanche. Outside the compound walls, a pack of wolves nearby began howling in mournful unison. The horses inside the compound picked up the cue and began neighing loudly, in nervous anticipation of the pending cataclysm that their human counterparts could not foresee.

A thousand meters below the surface, a trio of condensed sound waves, fired from the three transducers, converged at the angled fracture targeted by Gunn. The sedimentary cut was indeed an ancient oblique fault. The first two blasts of the seismic array, dissipated by the chamber's shielding, had struck the fault with only a minor pulse. The third blast, however, hit with the full power of the convergent shock waves. Though the sediment held firm, the seismic waves rocked with a vibrating force that rattled the fault line. When the fourth blast arrived, it would prove enough to break the camel's back.

A fault line, by nature, is a rock fracture prone to movement. Most earthquakes are the result of energy released from a slippage in a fault zone. Pressure builds up at a point along the fault due to underlying tectonic movement until a sudden slippage relieves the strain. The slippage reverberates to the surface, sending out a variety of shock waves that create a surface-rattling earthquake.

For the fault beneath the Mongolian mountainside, the fourth and final barrage of acoustic waves struck like a torpedo. The seismic vibrations jolted the fracture, causing it to slip in both vertical and horizontal directions. The buckle was small, just a few inches spread across a quarter-mile rift, but because it was close to the surface the wave impact was dramatic.

The shock waves burst through the ground in a sinister turmoil of vertical and horizontal shaking. By the Richter scale, the resulting quake would measure a 7.5 magnitude. But the scale didn't reflect the true intensity on the surface, where the shaking felt ten times more powerful to those standing on the ground.

For Pitt and the others, the motion was preceded by the low rumble, which grew in intensity until it sounded as if a freight train was rumbling by underground. Then the shock waves reached the surface and the ground beneath their feet began to gyrate. At first, the ground shook back and forth. Then it seemed to break loose in all directions, steadily increasing in force.

Pitt and the guards eyed each other warily as the quake started, but the violent shaking soon tossed everyone off their feet. Pitt watched as one of the guards fell backward onto the porch steps, his machine gun sprawling at arm's length. Pitt didn't fight to stay standing but instead dove to the ground, throwing his arms and the .45 out in front of him. The smaller, lighter weapon gave him a sudden advantage over the guards, and he zeroed in on the closest man still standing and squeezed the trigger. Despite the vibration, Pitt hit his target, and the man sprawled backward to the ground. Pitt quickly swept his gun toward the second guard, who was crouching on his knees to stabilize himself. Pitt fired three times in succession as the guard let loose a return burst from his AK-74. Two of Pitt's three shots struck home, killing the guard instantly while the guard's errant burst peppered the ground to Pitt's left side.

Pitt immediately swung his muzzle toward the first guard, who had fallen down just in front of Borjin. The Mongolian tycoon had scrambled up the steps at the first gunshot and ducked behind the door as Pitt turned in that direction. The guard was scrambling after Borjin and just reached the doorstep when Pitt fired once. Another shot rang out behind him, fired by Giordino after he body-slammed Tatiana to the ground. The shaking was at its zenith and proved too great for either man to aim accurately. With a staggering lunge, the guard dove through the residence door unscathed.

At the other end of the driveway, the mounted guards had been of little concern. A chorus of snorts and whinnies still blared from the horses, who had no conception of why the ground was shaking beneath their hooves. Three of the terrified horses reared repeatedly, their riders clutching the reins for dear life. A fourth horse up and bolted, galloping full tilt across the drive, stomping the bodies of the dead guards as it streaked petrified toward the horse corral.

The violent bucking lasted for nearly a minute, making the prone observers feel as if their bodies were being tossed into the air. Inside Borjin's residence, there was a chaotic crashing of glass and fixtures as the lights began flickering out. Across the compound, a lone alarm wailed feebly from inside the lab building.

And then it ended. The rumbling ceased, the shaking gradually fell away, and an eerie calm fell over the compound. The lights around the portico had fallen dead, casting Pitt and the others in a thankful darkness. But he knew the gun battle was far from over.

Gazing at the others, he saw Theresa and Wofford were unhurt, but that a streak of red flowed down Giordino's left leg. Giordino perused the wound with a look of minor inconvenience.

"Sorry, boss. Caught a ricochet from Machine Gun Kelly. No bones, though."

Pitt nodded, then turned toward the horsemen, whose mounts were now quieting.

"Take cover behind the support columns. Quick," Pitt directed. He barely spoke the words when a rifleshot rang out from one of the horsemen.

With a slight limp, Giordino dragged Tatiana to the base of one of the columns while Theresa and Wofford hunkered down behind an adjacent column. Pitt fired a covering round in the general direction of the shooter before scrambling behind a third column. Tucked behind the marble columns, they were at least temporarily clear of the line of fire from both the residence and the horsemen.

With their horses settled, the five remaining mounted guards could freely open fire and randomly peppered the three columns. But while their quarry was now hidden from view, they stood exposed on open ground. In a quick lunge, Giordino leaned around his column and let loose two quick shots at the nearest horseman, then ducked back behind cover. The targeted guard took a hit to the leg and shoulder as his comrades returned fire, chipping the stone column concealing Giordino. The wounded rider dropped his rifle and made a hasty retreat toward some bushes behind the drive. With Giordino drawing fire, Pitt took a turn, leaning out and firing two shots, nicking one of the other guards in the arm. The patrol leader barked a command and the remaining horsemen bolted toward the rear bushes.

Giordino turned toward Pitt's position. "They'll be back. A dollar says they're dismounting and will counterattack on foot."

"Probably trying to flank us as we speak," Pitt replied. He thought of Gunn and reached down for his radio, but it wasn't there. It had been knocked off during the earthquake and lay somewhere in the dark.

"Lost the radio," he said, cursing.

"I doubt Rudi can do anything more to help us. I've only got five shots left," he added.

Pitt had only a few rounds left in his Colt as well. With Wofford and Giordino both hobbled, they couldn't move far in a hurry. The guards were no doubt forming a noose around the compound and would close in from three sides. Pitt looked to the open front door and decided the residence might be the best option for a defensive stand. It had been strangely silent. Perhaps he and Giordino had hit the guard after all and only Borjin was hiding inside.

Pitt rose to a knee and prepared to lead the others toward the entry when a shadow flashed by the doorway. In the faint light, Pitt detected what appeared to be the muzzle of a gun poking out. A sudden rustle in the rosebushes to his back told him it was too late. The trap had been set with no means of escape. Outgunned, outmanned, and with nowhere to hide, they would have to make a final stand alone where they stood.

Then a deep rumble echoed off the hillsides. It was similar, but strangely different, to the roar that had preceded the earthquake. And with it came a new and unexpected cataclysm of death.

-58-

Pitt listened, and noted that the rumble originated up the mountain rather than beneath the ground. It was a thundering noise that refused to wane, growing louder each second. The tone seemed to transform from a rumble to a rush as it drew closer. Everybody in the compound stared toward the main entrance, where the sound seemed to be heading. Unbelievably, the rushing noise grew still louder till it matched the roar of a dozen 747 jumbo jets blasting down a runway in unison.

Over the din, a pair of panicked shouts burst forth near the compound entrance. Unseen outside the walls, the two front-entry guards hurried to open the heavy iron gate. Their cries and bid to escape vanished under the crushing face of a giant wall of water.

A quarter mile upstream, the earthquake had triggered a deep chasm perpendicular to the riverbank.

The raging river waters swirled in a confused vortex as the force of gravity led it in a new direction. Near the mouth of the aqueduct, the entire river shifted laterally, staking a new course alongside the elevated dirt road.

The river had rushed toward Borjin's compound before pooling in a large depression. A high berm, built as an equipment causeway between the road and the aqueduct, created an unintended dam within sight of the compound. The surging waters filled the depression, turning it into a large reservoir before the surplus flow began dribbling over the top. The overflowing water cut a crack in the dirt wall that quickly expanded to its base. In a flash, the entire berm collapsed under its own weight, releasing a surging wall of water.

The accumulated pool of icy black water burst toward the compound in a ten-foot-high wave. The front guards, oblivious to the approaching floodwaters until it was too late, were crushed by the wave as it smashed into the gate and gushed over the compound walls. The torrent lost little momentum before ripping away the front gate while also breaching a large hole through the wall above the aqueduct. The two swells of water merged forces inside the compound and surged toward the residence in a six-foot-high rolling wave.

Pitt gazed at the approaching wall of water and knew there was no chance of them outrunning it, especially Giordino and Wofford. Sizing up the surroundings, he saw one chance at survival.

"Grab hold of the columns and hang on," he shouted.

The Doric marble columns supporting the portico were deeply fluted, allowing a firm grasp to be made on the vertically cut edges. Theresa and Wofford stretched their arms completely around a column and linked hands. Giordino reached a thick arm around his column, keeping the Makarov held tight in his other hand. Tatiana abandoned her fright of getting shot and fearfully wrapped her arms around Giordino's waist in the face of the watery onslaught. Pitt barely had time to lie flat, grab the column, and hold his breath before the deluge hit.

But the shriek of men's voices arrived first. Encircling the drive in stealth, the guards were caught flat-footed by the floodwaters. The men were swept off their feet and devoured by the wave as it rolled toward the residence. Pitt heard the agonized cry of one guard just a few feet away as he was propelled toward the house by the surge.

The wave followed the path of least resistance, rolling across the northern part of the compound and mostly bypassing the lab and garage. Accompanied by a deep rumble, the advancing wave slammed into the residence with a crash. As Pitt had hoped, the marble columns took the brunt of the impact, but his legs were still ripped off the ground and pulled toward the house. He gripped the column tightly as the initial surge passed over and then the forceful tug of the water gradually receded. The initial fear of being battered and washed away by the flood was supplanted by the shock of the icy water. The bitter-cold water sucked the air out of his lungs and stung his skin like a thousand sharp needles. Grabbing the column, he pulled himself to his feet, finding the floodwaters had dropped to thigh level. At the adjacent column, he saw Giordino pull Tatiana up from under the water, the Mongolian woman coughing and sputtering. A second later, Theresa and Wofford emerged at the next column, gasping from the cold.

The wall of water had barreled into the house on its quest for a new pathway down the mountainside.

Though two feet of water swirled through a crater-sized opening that had been the front door, the bulk of the floodwaters had been repelled from the heavy structure. The tormented waters finally surged around the northern end of the residence, pouring over the backside cliff in a wide waterfall. Faint screams echoed above the river's rumble from scattered men who had survived the impact only to be washed downstream. Nearby, a loud splash pronounced that the northern tip of the residence had crumbled under the force of the rushing waters.

The surge and current eased at the front of the house, and Pitt waded toward the others congregating at Giordino's column. He grimly noted the stiff bodies of several guards floating about the driveway.

Reaching the column, he found Theresa staring at him through glazed eyes while shivering uncontrollably.

Even the rocklike Giordino appeared numb, the effect of the gunshot wound with the icy immersion sending him on a path to shock. Pitt knew they would all be facing hypothermia shortly if they didn't escape the freezing water.

"We need to get to dry ground. This way," he said, motioning toward the lab, which stood on a slightly elevated rise. Wofford helped guide Theresa while Pitt made sure Tatiana didn't stray from Giordino. He need not have worried, as Borjin's sister was quietly subdued from the icy bath.

The diverted river had settled into two main channels through the compound. The primary flow ran from the front gate to the northern edge of the residence, where the waters continued to gnaw at the collapsing walls. A secondary flow swirled toward the laboratory before angling back to the residence's portico. A portion of the waters rolled through the house, while the rest rejoined forces with the main flow wrapping around the side.

It was the secondary swirl that encapsulated Pitt and the others. He quickly guided the group out of the deepest section, but they still faced ankle-deep flows of the chilly water in all directions. Around them, shouts and yelling echoed across the grounds as the scientists tried to prevent the waters from flooding the laboratory. Inside the garage, somebody shouted as a car was heard starting up. Further chaos ensued outside. The guards' horses had escaped the corral during the earthquake and the frightened herd stampeded back and forth across the compound in nervous confusion.

Pitt had his own problems to contend with. Watching Theresa fall to her knees, he rushed to aid Wofford helping her up.

"She's fading," he whispered to Pitt.

Pitt looked in her eyes and saw a vacant stare. The uncontrollable shivering had continued unabated, and her skin was pale and clammy. She was on the verge of hypothermia.

"We need to get her warm and dry, pronto," Wofford said.

Standing in the middle of the flooded compound, their options were limited. They suddenly got worse when a vehicle in the garage came barreling out the bay doors with its lights ablaze.

Nearly a foot of water covered the ground around the garage, but the car plowed through it like a tank.

Pitt watched anxiously as the vehicle turned in their direction, heading toward the residence's entry. The driver flashed on his high beams, then began weaving back and forth like a drunken snake. In less than a minute, the bright headlights flared across Pitt and the others and the driver suddenly ceased swerving and accelerated straight for their position.

The frozen group had stopped in a broad patch of open ground. There was nowhere to hide within easy reach. The black water swirling about their ankles prevented a quick escape, even had there been some nearby cover. Pitt calmly eyed the approaching vehicle, then turned to Wofford.

"Hold on to Theresa for a moment," he said, slipping her arm off his shoulder. He then raised his .45 and took aim at the car's front windshield and unseen driver behind the wheel.

Pitt held the gun steady, his fingers tightening on the trigger. The driver ignored the threat, charging forward, while streams of water gushed off the front bumper and fender wells. As the car drew nearer, it gradually drifted to one side, then started to slow. Pitt held his fire as the car, a jet-black supercharged Range Rover, cut a wide turn, then sloshed to a stop just a few yards in front of him. Pitt adjusted his aim to the driver's side window that now faced him and took a step forward with the Colt extended at arm's reach.

The car sat idling for a moment, hissing small clouds of steam that bubbled up from the vehicle's hot underside. Then the black-tinted driver's window rolled quietly down to the sill. From the dark interior of the car, a familiar bespectacled face popped through the window.

"Somebody call for a taxi?" Rudi Gunn asked with a grin.

-59-

Pitt placed Theresa in the backseat of the Range Rover as Giordino shoved Tatiana in, then climbed in beside Theresa. Wofford took to the front passenger's seat as Gunn turned the heater up high, quickly roasting the interior. Giordino stripped off Theresa's shoes and outer clothing, as his own shivering finally abated. The warm interior revived them all, and Theresa soon surprised everyone by sitting up and helping bandage Giordino's leg.

"Do we have you to thank for shaking up Borjin's abode?" Pitt asked of Gunn while he stood leaning on the driver's open window.

"Dr. von Wachter, actually. His seismic device is for real, and very user-friendly. I took a gamble and pressed the button and the next thing you know, instant tremor."

"Without a moment to spare, I might add."

"Nice shake, Rudi," Giordino grunted from the backseat, "but we could probably have done without the ice-water bath."

"I can't really take responsibility for the bonus elements of fire and flood," Gunn replied with feigned humility.

Pitt turned toward the laboratory and noticed for the first time a billow of smoke and flames pouring out the second-story windows. Somewhere in the building, a broken gas line had ignited, sending a fireball through the structure. A disheveled band of scientists were desperately pulling out equipment, research materials, and personal belongings before the whole building went up in flames.

Rid of her chill by the car's warm interior, Tatiana suddenly regained her feistiness.

"Get out," she hissed suddenly. "This is my brother's car."

"I thought it a nice choice as well," Gunn replied. "Remind me to thank him for leaving the keys in the ignition."

Gunn opened the door and started to climb out of the driver's seat. "You want to drive?" he asked Pitt.

"I'll climb in back with the wildcat."

"No," Pitt said, gazing toward the residence. "I want Borjin."

"Go ahead," Tatiana cursed, "so he can kill you dead."

Giordino had enough. With a quick jab, he rocked Tatiana's jaw. The screeching died as she melted onto the seat unconscious.

"I've been wanting to do that for some time," he said somewhat apologetically. He then turned to Pitt.

"You'll need backup."

"Not one with a bad wheel," he replied, nodding toward Giordino's bandaged leg. "No, you'd better support Rudi in getting everyone out of here, in case there's more trouble. I just want to make sure that our host hasn't disappeared."

"You can't last much longer in that icy water," Gunn said, noting a shiver from Pitt. "At least take my coat," he offered, slipping off his heavy jacket. "Not that you should cover up that fancy costume." He grinned at the soggy orange del Pitt was wearing. Pitt stripped off the waterlogged outfit and gratefully zipped up Gunn's dry jacket in its place.

"Thanks, Rudi. Try to get off the grounds before the whole place slides off the mountain. If I don't find you within an hour, then hightail it to Ulaanbaatar without me."

"We'll be waiting."

Gunn jumped back into the Range Rover and jammed it into drive, sloshing toward the compound entrance. The original gate and a twenty-foot section of adjoining wall had been toppled by the floodwaters, littering the grounds with chunks of concrete and debris. Pitt watched as Gunn guided the Rover to the large gap in the wall, then bounced the four-wheel-drive vehicle over the debris until its taillights vanished outside the compound grounds.

Wading toward the dark and flooded residence, Pitt suddenly felt alone and very cold as he wondered what Borjin might have in store for him.

-60-

Though the worst of the flooding had subsided, there was still a half foot of water seeping though the residence when Pitt waded up the front steps. He stopped in front of the open front door, spotting a body lying facedown in the water, its legs wedged behind a large planter. Pitt moved closer and examined the man. He wasn't one of the gunmen Pitt had shot at but apparently another guard drowned by the floodwaters. Pitt noted that the man still clutched a wooden spear in one hand, his fingers clenched in a rigid grip. Pitt bent down and ripped the orange tunic from the man's body, then pried the spear from his left hand. He drove the spear tip through the armholes of the tunic and let it drape down as if hung from a hangar. A fool's bait, he thought, but it was all he had to counter those lying in wait inside.

Crouching at the doorway, he quickly slipped into the residence, rotating his .45 in an arc around the foyer. The entrance was empty and the entire house quiet, save for the steady rush of water cascading down a distant stairwell. The electricity had long since been extinguished, but a handful of emergency red lights dotted the hallway ceiling, powered by a remote generator. The lights provided little illumination, casting only patches of crimson shadows through the empty corridors.

Pitt peered down the three separate hallways. He could see out the open end of the northern corridor, where the gushing river was continuing to wash away the end of the wing. Borjin couldn't escape that way unless he had a kayak and a death wish, he thought. Pitt recalled Theresa indicating that the study was down the main corridor, so he slowly moved off in that direction.

Pitt hugged the side wall, his Colt aimed ahead in his right hand. He brought up the spear and tucked it under his elbow, bracing the tip at an outward and forward angle with his left hand. The ripped orange tunic, acting as Pitt's point man, marched a few feet ahead of Pitt, dangling in the center of the corridor.

Pitt moved slowly, shuffling his feet so as not to splash the water and provide an auditory warning of his arrival. He actually had little choice, as his feet were so numb from the frigid river water that he felt like he was walking on stumps. There would be no high-speed foot chases from him, as he fought to maintain a precarious sense of balance.

He moved with measured patience, passing by several small side rooms without entering. He would stop past each doorway and then wait several minutes to ensure no one crept up behind him. A fallen credenza and some broken statuettes blocked his path and he temporarily moved to the center of the hallway. Approaching the residence kitchen, he melded back to the side wall, letting the dangling tunic lead the way down the center of the corridor.

Numbed by the icy water, Pitt concentrated on keeping his visual and auditory senses on high alert.

When his ears detected a faint swishing sound, he froze, straining to determine if the noise was something in his imagination. Standing still, he slightly jiggled the wooden spear back and forth.

The burst came from the kitchen, a deafening blast of automatic gunfire that echoed off the walls. In the faint red light, Pitt could see the orange tunic shredded by the burst, as the bullets continued their path and slammed into the corridor wall just a few feet in front of him. Pitt calmly swiveled his .45 toward the open kitchen door, took aim at the muzzle flash, and squeezed the trigger three times.

As the Colt's booming report receded down the hallway, Pitt heard a weak gurgled gasp wail from the kitchen. It was followed by the metallic clang of a machine gun banging against steel pans, then a loud splash as the dead guard tumbled to the floor.

"Barsijar?" shouted the voice of Borjin from down the hallway.

Pitt grinned to himself as he let the query be met with silence. He had the distinct feeling that there were no more henchmen between himself and Borjin. Dropping the spear and tunic, he moved aggressively toward the sound of Borjin's voice. His deadened feet felt as if they had lead weights tied to them.

Almost hopping through the water, he brushed his free hand along the wall to keep balanced. Ahead of him, he could hear the splashing footsteps of Borjin suddenly dissipate at the end of the corridor.

A loud crash echoed from the side of the house as another chunk of the north wing crumbled under the river's surge. The whole residence shook under the rapid erosion, which ate closer and closer to the center of the house. Perched as it was on the side of a cliff, Pitt knew there was a real danger of the whole structure sliding down the mountain. But he dispelled any notion of turning and heading for the exit.

Borjin was close now and he could take him alive.

Pitt moved quickly past a few small side rooms then hesitated as he reached the fire-blackened study.

He shook off a freezing shiver from the cold and wet and willed himself to focus on the environment around him rather than his own discomfort. A steady murmur of rushing water had grown louder as he neared the end of the hall. Under the dim glow of an emergency light, he saw that it was the floodwaters cascading down a stairwell just past the study. Faint though they were, Pitt could also see a pair of wet prints leading into the dry conference room at the hall's end.

Pitt moved slowly past the stairwell and out of the draining water, thankful to at last remove his feet from the icy runoff. He cautiously approached the jamb of the conference-room door and peered inside. The late-rising moon had crept over the horizon and cast a bright silvery beam through the conference room's high glass windows. Pitt strained to discern Borjin's presence in the cavernous room, but all was still. He quietly stepped in, the muzzle of his Colt moving with his eyes.

Borjin's timing was impeccable. The Mongolian popped up from behind the end of the conference table while Pitt was facing the opposite side of the room. Too late, Pitt turned toward the movement as a loud twang erupted from the spot. Off balance and wheeling around on numb feet, Pitt fired a single shot toward Borjin but missed wide, the bullet shattering the glass window behind him. Borjin's aim was to prove more accurate.

Pitt saw but a fleeting glimpse of the feathered arrow before it struck his chest just below the heart, penetrating with a dull thud. It struck with a powerful impact, knocking him right off his feet. Thrown backward to the floor, Pitt caught a lasting image of Borjin standing with a crossbow cradled in his arms.

The moonlight sparkled off his sharp teeth, which were bared in a satisfied, murderous grin.

-61-

After slogging the four-wheel drive through fallen bits of the entry wall, Gunn turned the Range Rover toward a small rise outside the compound and clawed his way to the top. He swung the vehicle around on the summit, then turned off the headlights. From the elevated perch, they had a perfect view of the disintegrating compound below. The raging mountain runoff pounded through the shattered entrance wall and rippled around the main residence, while smoke and flames grew higher from the laboratory on the opposite side.

"I'd be happy if there's not a cinder left of that place," Wofford remarked, eyeing the destruction with satisfaction.

"Seeing how we're one hundred fifty miles from the nearest fire department, there is probably a pretty good chance of that," Gunn replied. Sweating from the blasting car heater that was drying and thawing the others, he climbed out of the car. Giordino hobbled out behind him, watching the devastation below.

The sound of gunfire echoed from somewhere inside the residence, and then, a few minutes later, a single gunshot was heard.

"He shouldn't have gone back alone," Giordino said, cursing. "Nobody could have stopped him," Gunn said. "He'll be all right." But a strange feeling in his stomach said otherwise.

***

Borjin placed the medieval crossbow back among his collection of antique weaponry, then stepped to the cracked window and took a hurried look outside. A torrent of water rained down in back of the house, gathering on the rear ledge before tumbling over the cliffside in a wide waterfall. Of greater concern to Borjin was the growing pool of water accumulating in the courtyard and approaching the sanctuary. He gazed with distress at the stone structure. The main edifice was still intact, but the arched entryway had been shaken to bits during the earthquake.

Ignoring Pitt's prone body on the opposite side of the room, Borjin rushed out of the conference room and waded down the adjacent stairwell. The cascading water surged at the back of his legs, and he hung tightly to the banister as he moved down the steps. He stopped only momentarily to gaze at the dark portrait above the midlanding, nodding faintly at the painting of the great warrior khan. The rising water was nearly waist-high on the lower level, until he unbolted the side door and released an icy torrent onto the courtyard. Stumbling like a drunken sailor, he staggered across the flooded yard to the shattered entrance of the sanctuary. Stepping over a pile of fallen stones, he entered the torchlit interior and was relieved to find only a few inches of water running across the built-up floor.

After checking to see that the tombs were undamaged, he surveyed the walls and ceiling. Several large cracks stretched across the domed ceiling like a giant spiderweb. The old structure was in a perilous state from the rattling earthquake. Borjin nervously gazed from the ceiling to the center tomb, considering how best to protect his most prized possession. He never noticed a shadow flickering by one of the torches.

"Your world is crumbling down around you, Borjin. And you with it."

The Mongolian spun around, then froze as if he had seen a ghost. The specter of Pitt standing on his feet across the room, the crossbow arrow protruding from his chest, was unearthly. Only the Colt .45 in his hand, held rock steady and aimed at Borjin's chest, dispelled any notion of supernatural rejuvenation.

Borjin could only stare back in disbelief.

Pitt edged toward one of the marble tombs at the side of the chamber, pointing at it with the barrel of his gun. "Nice of you to keep the relatives around. Your father?" he asked.

Borjin silently nodded, trying to regain his composure at the sight of a talking dead man.

"It was your father who stole the map to Genghis Khan's grave from a British archaeologist," Pitt said,

"but that still wasn't enough to locate it."

Borjin raised a brow at Pitt's comment. "My father acquired information as to the general location. It required the use of additional technologies to find the specific grave site."

"Von Wachter's acoustic seismic array."

"Indeed. A prototype discovered the buried grave. Additional improvements to the instrument have proven most remarkable, as you have witnessed." The words dripped with irony, as Borjin's eyes scoured the room for a means of defense.

Pitt moved slowly to the center of the room and placed his free hand on the granite tomb displayed on the pedestal. "Genghis Khan," he said. Weary and frozen as he was, he still felt an odd reverence in the presence of the ancient warlord. "I suspect the Mongolian people won't be too thrilled to learn you've been keeping him in your backyard."

"The people of Mongolia will revel in a new dawn of conquest," Borjin replied, his voice rising in a shrill cry. "In the name of Temujin, we will rise against the fools of the world and take our place in the pantheon of global supremacy."

He barely finished the raving when a deep rumble echoed through the floor. The rumble grew for several seconds until resounding in a loud crash as the entire north wing of the residence, or what was left of it, broke free of its foundation and slid unceremoniously down the hillside.

The resulting impact shook the grounds all around the estate, jarring the remaining residence structure as well as the sanctuary. The mausoleum floor visibly vibrated under the feet of Pitt and Borjin, throwing them off balance. Wobbly and exhausted from the cold, Pitt grabbed hold of the tomb in order to keep his gun trained on Borjin.

Borjin fell to a knee, then stood as the rumble and shaking subsided. His eyes widened as a sharp cracking sound rippled from overhead. He looked up to see a huge chunk of the ceiling come hurtling toward the ground beside him.

Pitt flattened himself against the side of the tomb as the rear of the sanctuary collapsed on itself. A barrage of stones and mortar smashed to the ground, raising a thick cloud of blinding dust. Pitt could feel chunks of the ceiling smack the top surface of the tomb beside him, but none of the stones struck him directly. He waited several seconds for the dust to clear, as he felt the cool night wind rustling on his skin.

Standing in the remains of the now-darkened sanctuary, he could see that half the ceiling and the entire back wall had collapsed under the shifting ground. Through the piles of stones, he could see cleanly to the corral in back and the old car parked inside.

It took him a few moments to spot Borjin in the debris. Only his head and part of his torso were exposed from a mound of stones. Pitt walked near as Borjin's eyes fluttered open, dull and listless. A trickle of blood streamed from his mouth, and Pitt noticed the Mongol's neck seemed unnaturally distorted. His eyes gradually focused on Pitt and flashed with a glint of anger.

"Why ... why won't you die?" Borjin stammered.

But he never heard the answer. A muted choke grumbled from his throat and then his eyes glazed over.

His body crushed by his own monument to conquest, Tolgoi Borjin died quickly in the shadow of Genghis Khan.

Pitt stared at the broken body without pity, then slowly lowered the Colt still gripped in his hand. He reached down and unzipped the large pocket on the front of his jacket, then used the moonlight to peek inside. The heavy seismic array operator's manual with metal clipboard was right where Gunn had placed it. Only it was now perforated by a crossbow arrow that penetrated each and every page. The arrow had even dinged the metal clipboard, which had prevented it from ripping into Pitt's heart and killing him instantly.

Pitt walked over to Borjin and looked down at the lifeless body.

"Sometimes, I'm just lucky," he said aloud, answering Borjin's final query.

The collapse of the residence's northern wing had funneled more water into the courtyard. A heavy rush of water now flowed along the perimeter of the sanctuary and threatened to pour into the disintegrating structure. It was just a matter of time before the floodwaters would weaken the ground beneath the sanctuary and wash it down the mountainside. The tomb of Genghis Khan would be destroyed in the carnage, his bones lost for good this time.

Pitt turned to make his escape before any more walls toppled, but hesitated as he glanced through the open rear wall at the corral in back. He turned and gazed again at the tomb of Genghis, which had miraculously survived the collapsing sanctuary intact. For an instant, Pitt wondered if he would be the last man to see the tomb. Then it hit him. It was a crazy idea, he thought, and he couldn't help but grin through a cold shiver.

"All right, old boy," he muttered at the tomb. "Let's see if you've got one more conquest left in you."

-62-

The feeling was just returning to Pitt's feet with a painful tingle as he climbed out the back of the sanctuary and into the corral. He staggered to the side and quickly yanked several timbers off the wooden fence to clear an opening. Tossing boxes and crates aside, he burrowed a wide path through the junk and debris until he reached his objective, the dust-laden old car.

It was a 1921 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost open tourer, with a custom body by the English coachmaker Park Ward. Decades of dirt and grime covered a unique eggplant purple body paint. Long since faded, the color once complemented the car's burnished aluminum hood and wheel covers. More familiar on the streets of London, Pitt wondered how such a grand auto had ended up in Mongolia. He then recalled that T. E. Lawrence had acquired a Rolls-Royce armored car built on a 1914 Silver Ghost chassis, which he used in his desert campaign against the Turks in Arabia. Pitt wondered if the car's reputation for durability in the desert had reached the Gobi years before. Or perhaps a car built before the Mongolian revolution was the only vehicle of opulence that the Communist Party would allow Borjin's family to own.

None of that mattered to Pitt. What did matter was that the Rolls had a silver-handled crank protruding from its snout. Equipped as a backup for the early electric starters, the crank gave Pitt a small hope that he could start the car, even with a long-dead battery. Provided, that is, that the engine block wasn't frozen solid.

Pitt opened the right-side driver's door and placed the gearshift in neutral, then stepped to the front of the car. Leaning down and grabbing with both hands, he pulled up on the crank, driving with his legs. The crank held firm, but Pitt grunted out a second effort and the handle inched upward. He rested for a second, then gave another heave. The crankshaft broke free with the extra push, driving the six pistons up and down in their cylinders.

With his own small collection of antique cars at home in Washington, Pitt was well versed with the intricacies of starting up a vintage vehicle. Climbing back into the driver's seat, he adjusted the throttle, spark, and governor controls, which were set by movable levers mounted on the steering wheel. He then opened the hood and primed a tiny pump on a brass canister, which he hoped contained gasoline. He then returned to the crank and proceeded to manually turn the engine over.

Each pull of the crank led to a series of rasps as the old motor tried to suck in air and fuel. Zapped by exposure to the cold, Pitt's strength waned on every pull. Yet he willed himself to keep trying in the face of each dying wheeze from the engine. Then on the tenth pull, the motor coughed. Several more pulls produced a sputter. With his feet frozen, yet beads of sweat on his brow, Pitt heaved again on the crank.

The crankshaft spun, the air and fuel ignited, and with a put-put-put sound, the engine labored to life.

Pitt rested briefly as the old car warmed up, spouting a thick cloud of black smoke out its rusty exhaust pipe. Rummaging around the corral, he found a small barrel filled with chains, which he tossed in the backseat. Taking his place in the driver's seat, he slipped the car into gear, released the clutch with his numb left foot, and drove the Rolls shakily out of the corral.

-63-

It's been well over an hour," Gunn remarked, looking glumly at his watch.

He and Giordino stood on the rise, watching the scene of devastation below. The laboratory fire burned in a blazing tempest, consuming the entire building and adjacent garage. Black smoke and flames leaped high into the sky, casting a yellow glow over the entire compound. Across the landscaped grounds, a large chunk of the residence was missing, replaced by rushing water where the northern wing of the house previously stood.

"Let's take a quick drive down," Giordino said. "Maybe he's injured and can't walk out."

Gunn nodded. It had been almost an hour since they heard the automatic fire from inside. Pitt should have made it out long ago.

They started to walk toward the car when a low rumble shook from below. No earthquake this time, they knew, but rather the erosive effects of the flooding waters. They stopped and stared, dreading what they knew was next. From their vantage, it resembled a collapsing house of cards. The northern end of the structure began toppling one wall at a time. The structural failure seemed to build momentum, moving across the residence in a rippling wave of destruction. The central section of the residence simply folded in on itself with a grinding crash, then disappeared under the water. The large white spire over the entrance melted away, disintegrating into a thousand bits under the floodwaters. Gunn and Giordino could only see chunks of debris poking through the water as the bulk of the residence slid off its ledge and washed down the mountain. In just a few seconds, it was gone. Only a small section of the southern wing survived, standing next to a wide flow of water where the rest of the house had once stood.

With the destruction of the house, all hopes for finding Pitt alive had vanished. Gunn and Giordino knew that no one in and around the residence could have survived. Neither man said a word nor made a move.

Together, they stood and solemnly stared at the altered river as it glided over the foundation of the house and roared down the cliffside beyond. The rushing of the wild waters competed with the crackling from the lab fire to disrupt the otherwise quiet late-night hour. Then Gunn's ears detected another sound.

"What's that?" he asked. He pointed a finger toward a small chunk of the southern wing, which stood on dry ground and had survived the collapse of the main residence. The whirring pitch of a high-revving engine rumbled from the hillside behind. The motor sporadically coughed and stuttered but otherwise sounded like it was operating at its redline. The roar grew louder until it was matched with a pair of lights that slowly crept over the hill.

Through the smoke and flames of the burning laboratory, the object appeared like a giant primordial bug crawling out of a hole in the ground. Two round but dimly illuminated lamps probed the night like a pair of large yellow eyes. A shiny metallic body followed behind, clouded by dirt and dust kicked up by its clawing rear appendages. The living beast even breathed vapor, a white cloud of smoke rising from its head.

The creature, lurching with great effort, finally clamored over the hill, seeming to fight every step of the way. A sharp gust of wind suddenly blew the smoke and dust away, and, under the light of the burning fire, Gunn and Giordino could see that it was no overgrown insect but the antique Rolls-Royce from the corral.

"Only one guy I know would be driving an old crate like that at a time like this," Giordino shouted with a whoop.

Jumping into the Range Rover, Gunn charged the car down the hill and stormed back into the compound. Shining their headlights onto the Rolls, they saw that the old car was still struggling to lurch forward, and had a line of chain stretched taut off the rear bumper. The old beast was trying desperately to pull something up the side of the hill.

Inside the Rolls, Pitt threw a thankful wave toward the approaching Range Rover, then turned back to coaxing the old auto forward. His numb right foot held the accelerator to the floor while the gearshift lever was still locked in first gear. The rear wheels spun and clawed at the ground, the worn, airless tires gamely trying to find a grip. But the weight behind was too great, and the big car seemed to be losing the battle. Under the hood, the overworked engine began to protest with loud knocks. What little coolant that existed in the block and radiator had nearly all boiled away, and Pitt knew it wouldn't be long before the engine seized.

With a surprised look, he suddenly saw Giordino appear and grab hold of the doorpost with a wink and a smile. Bandaged leg and all, he threw his weight into pushing the car forward. Gunn, Wofford, and even Theresa appeared, taking up spots around the vehicle and pushing with all their might.

The extra manpower was just enough to propel the car in its last gasp. With a sudden lunge, the big car lurched forward. Thirty feet behind, a large block of granite teetered over the edge of the hill, then skidded forward easily under the car's newfound momentum. Chugging forward to a safe, dry spot, Pitt killed the engine under a whoosh of white steam.

As the vapor cleared away, Pitt saw that he was surrounded by a dozen scientists and technicians, along with a guard or two, who had given up fighting the lab fire to investigate his appearance. He cautiously climbed out of the Rolls and walked to the rear of the car. Giordino and the others had already gathered around and confirmed that the chained item had survived Pitt's tow intact.

Fearing for their safety, Pitt gripped his .45 as the crowd surged close to them. But he need not have worried.

At seeing that the sarcophagus of Genghis Khan had been rescued from the flood, the guards and scientists broke into a cheer and applauded him.