The slope was more precipitous than it appeared from the base. After a few yards the trail turned sharply, made a sheer jump, then made another abrupt turn. Carmody zigged and zagged between large humps of stone. He lost sight of the men, saw them again. They weren’t gaining on him, but they weren’t losing ground either.

He didn’t see them looking back at him. But they had to know he was behind them. There was no stealth up here. No being quiet. Not for any of them. The slope was crinkled and broken like the hide of an ancient elephant. Their soles crunched on dust and ash and fragments. Tumbled rocks and pebbles were everywhere. On the trail, alongside it. They rolled and shifted and dribbled and skittered underfoot.

Carmody gulped air, ran through a switchback, cutting one way, then another. The two men vanished above him. Reappeared. He thought he might have picked up a few yards on them. Then he hit another switchback and they were gone again.

He ran between two curving walls of stone. They bulged out on either side of the trail like swollen bellies, narrowing it around him. Then the slope banked steeply upward between them. Carmody had to scramble on all fours to a massive slab of rock on the left side of the trail. He found a handhold there and hauled himself up to his feet.

He was climbing past the slab when an arm suddenly came out from behind it, locked around his throat and dragged him backward hard, nearly pulling him off his feet. It was thick and muscular and strong as steel.

And it was choking off his breath.

“Sir, the object’s on the move,” Sensor One said over the Poseidon’s phones.

“You’re positive?” said Lieutenant Waller up front in the cabin.

“Yes, sir. Speed sixteen knots and accelerating. Bearing north by northeast.”

Straight for Oahu.

Waller inhaled. He was a third-generation air jock. His British grandfather had flown a Dambuster Lanc in the Second World War. His father an F-15 over the Balkans. Until now his navy career had consisted of breezy six-month deployments to Guam and Pearl. Eclipsed wasn’t the word. But lightning had struck with a summons to the airfield, then moments ago a direct order from COMPACFLT.

He exhaled. It did nothing to slow his heart rate. “Fire Control?”

That was FC Natalie Daubach.

“We have a lock,” she reported. “But it’s gaining fast. Up to twenty-four knots...thirty... This thing’s really gaining speed—”

“Then what are you waiting for? Fire.”

“Yes,sir...”

“Now!”

Ten seconds later she released the torpedo.