Page 29 of Tides of Fire

West Lamma Channel

Seated in the catamaran’s salon, Gray rested his head in his hands, exhausted and troubled. Seichan shared the leather banquette. Across a small table, Monk leaned against Kat with an arm around her.

Kowalski had retired below into the main cabin, joining the three children who found great comfort in his size and weight, as if he were an enormous teddy bear. All four of them had fallen asleep on the king-size bed, nestled in a big pile.

Above them, in the flybridge, Guan-yin and Zhuang piloted the Leopard Powercat. They guided the catamaran across the channel that separated Hong Kong from Lantau Island. They were all headed to Macau, thirty miles farther west.

Though they were all tired, Gray wanted to report in with Painter Crowe at Sigma Command after the attack by Valya Mikhailov. The director needed to know what had transpired. Also, Gray was certain Painter had heard about the quakes and the tsunami that had struck the region. The director would want an update on their status, especially in a country where Sigma was not welcome.

Luckily, Guan-yin had spared no expense in outfitting the boat’s communication equipment—which was no surprise for a woman who led criminal and legitimate enterprises across Southeast Asia. Once Gray was alone with his group, he had dispatched a code on the salon’sdesktop computer, requesting an encrypted connection to Sigma. They now waited for Painter to reach out to them.

Gray sighed, wondering what was taking so long. While it was the middle of the night here, it was midafternoon in D.C. Painter was surely at Sigma Command. Gray glanced at the computer’s monitor on the neighboring workstation. A tiny hourglass spun on an open window.

More than ten minutes had passed.

Monk looked equally frustrated. “Now is not the time for Painter to be taking a long lunch.”

A minute later, the computer finally chimed and the hourglass transformed into a ten-second countdown. Gray climbed to his feet and crossed to the workstation. The others followed and crowded behind him as he sat down before the computer.

When the countdown reached zero, a view into Painter Crowe’s office pixelated onto the screen. The director sat behind a wide mahogany desk with a trio of flatscreen monitors glowing on the walls behind him.

One blazed with a map of Southeast Asia.

Clearly, Painter had prepared for this discussion. He had shed his jacket and rolled the sleeves to his elbows, a sign that he had been working hard, possibly on this very matter.

The director leaned forward and combed fingers through his black hair, shifting a single white lock behind an ear. Painter looked exasperated, which darkened the burnished planes of his face.

“About time you all reported in,” the director started. “I’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”

“We ran into a bit of trouble. And not just earthquakes and tidal waves.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“Valya Mikhailov.”

Painter grimaced. “In Hong Kong?”

Gray nodded and filled the director in on all that had transpired this long night. As he did, Painter listened, asked a few questions, and nodded, almost as if he were unsurprised.

“That attack might not have been coincidental,” Painter said. He glanced back to the map on the screen behind him. “There’s trouble brewing across Southeast Asia. And like you said, not just earthquakes and tidal waves.”

“What do you mean?”

“Two weeks ago, the Chinese lost a nuclear submarine. One of their latest. A Type 096 SSBN. The Tang-class variant had been kept under tight wraps. The only sighting of it was a grainy photo taken by a geospatial intelligence satellite. It was docked at the Huludao Shipyard, in Liaoning province of northern China.”

“This new sub?” Monk asked, leaning over Gray’s shoulder. “What’s its capabilities?”

Painter shrugged. “No one can say with any certainty. I consulted a naval expert for the latest intel. The consensus is that the sub was equipped with a new pump-jet propulsion system to compensate for its predecessor’s noisiness. That grainy photo also showed rows of VLS cells—vertical launch systems for twenty-four Julang-3 ballistic missiles, all equipped with nuclear warheads. As you might imagine, China does not want anyone else to recover their sub—especiallywhereit was discovered.”

“Discovered?” Kat said. “So we found it?”

“Actually, it wasn’t us. A competitor beat us to the prize. Still, they reached out to Sigma for help. Especially as they knew you all were in the area. I also imagine—as young as their organization is—they felt more confident with their older, more experienced, brother getting involved.”

“Who are you talking about?” Gray asked, rubbing a temple, too tired for riddles.

Of course, Kat figured it out and sighed. “You’re talking about TaU. Did Aiko reach out to you?”

Gray glanced back at her. Three years before, they had dealings with Aiko Higashi, during a mission in Hawaii and Japan. She was the leader of a covert Japanese intelligence group, called TaU—orTako no Ude—which stood for “Arms of an Octopus,” an apt name for aburgeoning spy agency. Gray also knew thattauwas the next letter in the Greek alphabet aftersigma. The name was possibly a tip of their hat to their American counterpart. Or maybe it was meant as a challenge, that TaU intended to be one step ahead of Sigma.

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