“And if not? They’ll blow it out of the water.”

“You worry too much,” Drajan interjected. “The submarine is of Chinese design. Built with Chinese technology. The Americans would dredge up its wreckage and still point their fingers where you want them pointed. It would be unfortunate to lose the boat. But the core goal is still achieved.”

Koschei stood there with his eyes on Drajan’s face. Then he gave a slow, heavy nod.

“Send it,” he said.

Grigor Malkira and the other man were all the way up the slope before Carmody reached them. They had started out with a fifty-yard lead, and he’d been unable to close the distance in time. He saw them running to the top, then lost sight of them as they clambered over.

He went up after them. The draw was about fifteen feet high, not much of a climb. A minute and he was standing on the road shoulder.

He looked left, right. Didn’t see them. He looked across the road at the base of the tuff cone, craned his neck to look up the slope. Still no sign of them. He thought a minute. They could be up or down the road. But he didn’t think so. They had no escape vehicle. They had come on boats. If they stuck to the road on foot, it would be too easy to follow and find them.

He stared at the cone. It was probably fifteen hundred feet wide. Maybe two hundred feet high. Sheer and rugged on the side facing him. But he was betting they had gone up. There had to be a path around the base.

Which side? Left or right?

He thought quickly. It wasn’t quite a fifty-fifty choice. Left, east, was the windward side of the cone, facing the bays and coves down toward Waikiki and Honolulu. It would have more exposure to the elements than the western side, which curved inland. That meant more rain hitting it. More water running down the slope. More erosion. That side was likelier to have a path.

Carmody turned left on the road and got lucky. The trail was only a few yards east around the foot of the cone. He saw freshly crumbled sand, gravel and volcanic ash on the blacktop underneath it.

Then he looked up and saw them. They were about sixty feet above him. Climbing the slope. Not clawing, not scrambling. Upright, on their feet. But not exactly racing along either.

Carmody flipped up his goggles. Daylight was leaking into the sky and he didn’t need them. He ran up onto the cone behind the two men.