Unlike the night before, the flight deck was devoid of other sailors. With all hands at their battle stations to prepare for an imminent missile attack, he didn’t worry about the device’s glowing screen giving him away. He waited for it to connect to the satellites overhead, then tapped on “Receive” and held the device at arm’s length to wait for the progress bar to fill. Once complete, he looked down at the words on the screen, fearing he already knew what they would say.

NO NEW MESSAGES.

He felt tears ring his tired eyes with the sting of betrayal. It had all been fake. He hadn’t been important, hadn’t been worthy of Chen’s time or attention. She hadn’t loved him or thought his job was the most important one in the world. She wasn’t interested in him and had only used him to get what she wanted. She had abused his devotion to her, then tossed him out with the trash.

Adam reached back, then flung the Nintendo Switch as far as it would go into the inky darkness of the Pacific Ocean, watching it tumble end over end until it disappeared into the water. Suddenly, the R2-D2-looking Phalanx beneath him pivoted and tilted upward in a jerky motion.

“Missile inbound! Missile inbound! Brace for impact!”

Adam gripped the railing and watched the CIWS spin to the right. Then the night erupted with the sound of a dozen chainsaws as the Phalanx fired seventy-five armor-piercing tungsten penetrator rounds per second, sending a rope of fire arcing across the sky on the port side of the ship. He shrieked and covered his ears at the deafening roar but watched with morbid fascination as the 20mm Vulcan cannon engaged the supersonic cruise missile.

After five seconds of sustained firing, Adam saw a small explosion just above the water half a mile from the ship and tracked the ball of fire as it nosed over into the ocean with a quiet splash.

54

Santa Cruz Island, California

Punky stepped out from the shadows and looked down the beach at the woman hunched over the inflatable dinghy as she prepared to make her escape from the island. With shaking hands, she aimed her pistol at the woman and struggled to overcome the flood of conflicting emotions. On the one hand, only yards away was the woman who had killed her father’s best friend and deserved to die the most painful of deaths. But, on the other, she was the only one who could lead her to KMART.

It was only her sense of honor and duty that kept her from pulling the trigger.

“Don’t move,” she growled.

The woman whipped her head around, startled by Punky’s sudden appearance, and appraised her with narrow, surprised eyes. Punky side-stepped left, moving in a slow arc to put her back toward the water as she inched closer to her cornered prey. Even in the dim moonlight, she could see the woman’s unique camouflage that she suspected had masked her from infrared and night vision — the same camouflage that had made the gunman appear strange to her before Rose cut him down, and the same camouflage that allowed her to escape from the ridge.

The woman shuffled her feet and pivoted to keep Punky in sight.

“I said, don’t move!” She stepped into the cold surf, and her eyes flicked up to the Scorpion Ranch trail, where she had watched the woman make her approach. She heard the distant sound of a helicopter crisscrossing the island, pretending to search for the Chinese agent, and Punky lowered her eyes in time to see the woman’s ears twitch as confusion etched her face.

Punky grinned and tilted her head. “Oh, you hear that too?”

The woman pursed her lips and glanced toward the submachine gun resting on the ground six feet away.

“Don’t even think about it,” Punky said, reminding her with the muzzle of her SIG Sauer pistol that she still had the upper hand.

The woman looked back up at her, and they locked eyes. Punky felt a chill run down her spine at the pure evil emanating from the woman’s dark eyes. Her facial expression was passive, her body language submissive, but hidden behind those eyes was a hatred unlike anything she had ever seen before.

“Do you know who I am?” she asked.

The woman said nothing.

“On your knees,” Punky said. “Hands behind your head.”

The woman slowly lowered herself onto the sand and interlaced her fingers at the base of her skull. Punky shuffled closer, then reached down and grabbed a fistful of hair, jerking on it as she bent her forward to prevent her from standing up. She held her SIG close to her body, and her finger stroked the trigger, aching for an excuse to put several rounds into the Chinese woman’s head.

Any excuse.

“You’re going to die,” the woman said in flawless English.

Her words dripped with venom, and again Punky felt the hatred and violence oozing from the slender woman. She was slight in size, but Punky felt a restrained strength, as if she were pushing against bamboo, and she kept her guard up against an attempt to overpower her.