Cover

Booklist

Also in the Net Force series
created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik,
and written by Jerome Preisler

Net Force: Dark Web

Net Force: Eye of the Drone

Net Force: Attack Protocol

Net Force: Kill Chain

Dedication

FOR SUZANNE

Quote

Bears, dragons, tempestuous on mountain and river,
Startle the forest and make the heights tremble.
Clouds darken beneath the darkness of rain,
streams pale with a pallor of mist.
The gods of Thunder and Lightning
Shatter the whole range.

—Li Bai, 701–762 AD

PART ONE

ASSASSIN’S MACE

1

The South China Sea
April 10, 2024

“You’re at two-zero-zero meters on the button,” said Murph.

Murph was John Murphy, the dive supervisor topside aboard the cable-laying ship CS Stalwart.

“Roger,” replied Zak through the pipe.

Zak was Isaac Tinian of Warwick, Rhode Island. He had been on the job five years, longer than most guys. Before that he was a police scuba diver, a solid line on a saturation-dive applicant’s résumé. But even with that unique level of experience, he’d needed multiple referrals to qualify for the training.

There had been twenty-five men and women in his class. Zak was the last still with the company. That was a ninety-six percent attrition rate.

Now he was nearly in the dark, with a whole lot of water on top of him. It meant a whole lot of depth pay on top of his salary. With good reason. He knew all the risks. But he also knew the thrill of it. That, and the big bucks, kept luring him back to sea.

Two-zero-zero.

For the average person, two hundred meters translated to about six hundred fifty feet underwater. At that depth, the pressure bearing on Zak was over twenty times what it would be on the surface. At half that depth only one percent of the light made it down. It was like being in outer space but with poorer visibility. Space was sterile and empty. The ocean was an organic soup swirling with particulate drift. Decaying aquatic plants and animals, an endless blizzard of fish poop. With all that gunk floating around, even high-intensity lights couldn’t reach very far. It played tricks with your mind. You felt lost in all that darkness.

But Zak had no room in his head for fear, uncertainty and doubt—FUD in sat-diverspeak. His ability to push all that aside was largely what made him one of the tiny percentage of people who could do what he did over the long haul.

“Systems look good from here,” said a second voice in his ear. “How you feeling?”

“Nice and steady.”

“Let’s keep it that way.”

“Check, Rawl.”