Prince Edward Island, South Africa
November 12, 9:57 A.M.
It was at once as beautiful and dangerous a thing as Lieutenant Grace Lee had ever seen. As the dinghy rounded the main island and reached Ship Rock, the gaping maw was an alternately melted and jagged display of bright gray rock and deep shadow. And there was an almost indistinguishable gossamer over it all—a faint, pale-lemon sash rising upward, like the sashes she had seen on high-leaping acrobats in the Beijing Opera.
Even Rivette was transfixed by the five-foot-high opening.
“It looks like a place where disease would grow,” the lance corporal observed.
“And die,” Grace added.
“If you’ve got a high-explosive non-fragmentation grenade.”
Their attention shifted as the trip around the island brought the stranded patrol boat into view. Two armed men stood on the prow, both by the ladder, which did not surprise her. Unfortunately, the approach of the corvette did.
“Crap,” Rivette muttered when he saw the big boat just a quarter mile off and closing. “Ideas?”
“We still have to get on the boat, get the doctor, and find something to close that cavern,” she said.
“That means taking the boat,” Rivette said. “It won’t last a minute against those 30mm cannons and antiship missiles.”
“They may hesitate just a minute before killing their own sailors,” Grace pointed out.
“If no one answers a hail, they’ll figure it’s a lost cause.”
In combat, a minute could make the difference between death and survival.
As they closed in on the patrol boat, the radio came on.
“He wants the ID,” Grace told her partner.
He raised the radio to his mouth. “Xìntiānwēng!”
The men in the prow seemed to relax slightly but they did not lower their rifles. The man yelled something back.
“He’s impressed with the defector’s Chinese,” Grace translated.
Rivette snorted into the mask and raised the QBZ-95 in acknowledgement. “I’ll give him some Chinese.”
“Steady, Jaz.”
“Yeah, but how far do we let this rope play out?” Rivette asked. “Somebody’s gotta draw first blood.”
Grace was distracted by something aft, on the sea. “Movement behind the PB.” She listened. There were banging sounds. “Dammit. Repair crew—probably from the corvette.”
“Gonna be a lot of shooting,” Rivette warned.
Grace was rethinking the approach even as they reached the prow. She had wondered, after Yemen, just how the team was selected. Were she and Rivette tapped for their skills alone or because they also fit some kind of sociopathic algorithm, with Major Breen as a counterbalance and Williams as a colossus astride both worlds?
She both suspected—and feared—the answer was yes. She had to guard against it. Black Wasp was not a Triad hit squad, Hong Kong gangsters for whom murder and sometimes massacre was a way of life. But some of that wall they saw, the one that let loose the toxin, had been chewed away by hand. These people were here to harvest, refine, and distribute death. And perhaps to civilian as well as military targets. China was an overpopulated nation that enforced misogynic birth control.
What is the ethical center of the mission? Grace asked herself. The answer described the more difficult path. Not to be like the enemy.
“Major Breen may be rubbing off, but I’m thinking we return fire only,” Rivette said. “We gotta be able to justify.”
“You’re a good man,” she said.
“Nah, I can still outdraw them.”
“You go first. Once they see I’m a woman—”
“They’ll go for first blood.” Rivette answered his own query.
“If you can take the bridge by surprise—”
“Yup.”
The dinghy was just a few feet from the boat. Rivette grabbed the lowest rung of the aluminum ladder. The seaman just above had his rifle trained straight down on the new arrival. To that man’s left, the other sailor had his gun facing Grace. She began to second-think her expressed tactic. Both men were trembling. It could be from the cold, exhaustion, or the knowledge that only a mask separated them from death. In any case, they projected a hair-trigger, shoot-first vibe.
From the dinghy, the only place she could conceivably move was into the sea, which would not help the mission and would leave her hypothermic, drowned, or shot.
Maybe we should have just taken these two out and boarded, she thought. There was a reason The Art of War and Daoism were quite separate studies.
The lance corporal ascended the five-foot ladder with his own Chinese weapon slung loosely across his back—an odd place since it seemed to be out of reach. He was also climbing slowly, as if sea spray had slickened the metal. He planted one hand and gripped firmly before reaching up with the other. He moved his left hand faster than his right.
Grace turned her face down and, finding the mooring rope, tied the dinghy to the eye beside the ladder. She listened, though. Part of her training as a young girl was to be able to fight in the dark. For that, you had to filter extraneous sounds and not just listen but visualize—in this case the boots on the rungs, movement of the fabric, the location and number of voices, of breath.
Also, gunfire.
A wave had tossed the dinghy and the hood of the parka flew back just enough to reveal her hair—which was short but not buzzed-short. The seaman watching her cried out.
“A woman!”
Grace looked up in time to see the man’s gun discharge—and fire wide of her, but only by inches. When the man yelled, Rivette had thrust his free right hand into the deep pocket of his parka. It emerged with his .45 and, shooting from the hip, he put a bullet straight up under the man’s chin. The seaman staggered back and Rivette simultaneously swung around to the left as the man above him fired. The trembling Chinese seaman missed, but Rivette did not. Before the sailor could aim and fire again, the Colt discharged a second time. The young sailor was forcefully bent over backward and flopped to the deck.
Grace was not in the clear, however, since the first two bullets that stitched the water had clipped the side of the dinghy. It was deflating quickly and she hurried across the wobbly boat to the ladder. That was what he was doing with the parka, she thought. And also why he was moving slowly. More time for the hands to be free.
Adrenaline washed away any regret she felt.
Above her, Rivette had wasted no time or movement. He pulled himself up and over the rail of the patrol boat, shrugged his left shoulder down, and dropped the Chinese gun into his left hand.
Grace was right behind him, watching her footing on a deck now slick with sea water and blood. She did not bother telling him that they were stranded.
“I’ll take the crew, you keep the engineers in the water,” Grace said.
Drawing her knife, she ran ahead along the port side, the smooth steel-gray outside wall of the bridge to her left. Rivette was close behind, slightly to her right so he did not shoot her or run into her if she stopped suddenly.
The door ahead was open, the gunfire having drawn everyone who was on deck: two of the three crewmen were standing shoulder-to-shoulder outside the open door, guns aimed ahead; a tall, pasty South African was half-inside; and two officers were running toward them. They had apparently been at the stern, overseeing repairs.
The two armed seamen subtly adjusted their positions, bracing themselves for recoil. They had been trained to shoot but not to avoid telegraphing their intent. Rivette fired his pistol twice—just as the South African pushed the seamen, hard, toward the side of the boat. The bullets clanged off the open door, ricocheting and hitting the tall man in the left leg. He went down, writhing.
While Rivette continued toward the two officers, Grace relieved the fallen seamen of their guns, tossed them overboard, then entered the bridge. The helmsman was talking fast and low into the radio. The woman ran forward and hooked her right foot around his lower legs, twisted, and dropped him to the floor—both silencing and disabling him. She yanked the wireless headset away and dropped it on the flat instrument panel. She found and jabbed the green button that put the receiver on audio.
“Stay there!” she yelled in Chinese as she looked back at the South African.
The man was on his side, wincing and trying to examine the injury. She looked around for a medical kit. Outside was only silence—a good sign. It meant that Rivette had not shot the men, which suggested they had surrendered. A moment later they entered the small bridge, arms raised, followed by the two seamen.
Grace located a small plastic case with bandages and antiseptic. She knelt beside the stricken man and looked at the wound.
“I heard you speaking English,” he said.
Grace nodded.
“Let me,” the man said, taking the kit. “I’m Dr. Gray Raeburn, SAN.”
Grace did not introduce herself. She got up and went to the helmsman.
“I was trying to knock them over,” Raeburn said as he removed the scissors. Craning around painfully, he cut the fabric around the wound. “Whoever you are, there’s an infected body below. I was up here trying to convince them not to bring the disease onto the corvette. I don’t think anyone should have it.”
“No,” she agreed. “Are there explosives to seal that opening?”
“I don’t know. I assume so.”
Just then, the radio came to life.
“Captain Tang, what is your status? Over.”
Grace knelt, her knee in the small of Tang’s back, the knife point in the nape of his neck. “What will they do if you don’t respond?”
“Board or sink,” he said. “Probably sink.”
“Not enough masks to come closer?”
He nodded anxiously. “Let me tell them we have control, please! If they assume we’re dead, the boat means nothing.”
Grace rose. “Go ahead. Say anything but that and you join your dead crewmen.”
“Say nothing of the kind!” one of the engineers shouted in Chinese.
Rivette faced him. “Whatever you said, don’t say any more,” he warned.
The captain went to the instrument panel and Grace put the knife in the small of his back. He picked up the headset and put it on.
“Shangaro, this is Tang,” he said. “We have fallen.”