“Save it, Captain.” Carmody motioned to the hatch cover. “What’s below this thing?”

Chen said nothing.

“I asked you a question.”

Chen said nothing. Carmody looked at him. He was tired of asking things twice.

“Open it up,” he said.

Chen instantly looked flustered.

“It is a storage hold,” he said. “For equipment.”

“We’ll see.”

Chen crossed his arms. He was growing more rattled and overcompensating for it.

“I cannot allow you into the ship’s holds,” he said, digging in. “Not without approval from my employers.”

Carmody looked at him.

“The hatch,” he said. “Last chance.”

“It’s impossible. If you return tomorrow morning, I’ll try to arrange—”

Before he could finish, Carmody stepped forward, bunched Chen’s collar into his left hand and smashed the back of his right hand across the man’s jaw. Then he shoved him hard with both hands so he stumbled backward and fell to the deck.

Chen wiped the blood from his mouth. Carmody peripherally saw Harper straighten with disapproval. Or maybe he just sensed his tension. Or maybe the air transmitted it.

He didn’t care. Grigor Malkira had killed a man and abducted two children. He was here in Hawaii and connected to this ship.

He looked down at Chen, clutching his Sig.

“Tell somebody to open the fucking hatch,” he said.

The thirteen men brought ashore by the Gahjaes rounded the bottom of the tuff cone twenty or thirty yards north of the landing station, scampering down onto the private access lane below the spot where it met the local route.

Grigor was behind Jochi, letting him be his guide as they picked their way over the gray igneous bluff above the notch. He could see the station’s perimeter fence up ahead in the darkness.

Jochi paused and opened a shoulder pack. Inside was a Wi-Fi jammer the size and shape of a walkie-talkie. He thumbed it on and pulled out its telescopic antenna. The device would block the signals from the wireless security cameras and insert its own false signal into the network. A person monitoring their feeds would never detect any interruptions. What appeared to be a livestream actually would be a minutes-old delay.

They hurried closer to the facility, Grigor in the lead. After another ten yards he signaled a second halt. There was a security guard patrolling inside the fence. He was a short distance off, coming around from the left.

He pulled his silenced Glock 19 and stole forward alone. He felt only a mild stiffness across his side from his bullet wound. No pain. He knew it was the adrenaline. He also knew that could mask any further damage the lead fragments caused inside him. He would take the bargain.

Seconds passed. Grigor waited as the night guard came closer. Then he raised the pistol to place the laser dot in the middle of his face and fired once through the fence. The guard went straight down.