The ox’s eyes suddenly widened and rolled upward. His mouth contorted into a warped circle. His face twitched. The muscles under the skin of his forehead and cheeks seemed to move independently of each other, like they were pulling part. He made a gasping sound and then a wheeze and then a thin, high whistle like his throat had closed up in three distinct, spasmodic stages. Veins bulged out in his forehead. A thick gob of saliva ran down from his mouth into Carmody’s face. Then it started gushing out of his mouth.

Carmody kept his hands clenched around his throat. Its muscles were pulsing and stiff.

The guy took another whistling breath and thrashed on top of him. His arms flailed. His legs kicked out like he was swimming.

Carmody pushed up hard, rolled the man sideways and off him. He went over onto his back and lay there juddering and twitching and flopping like a fish out of water. His face was bluish-purple. His tongue was swollen grotesquely and lolling out of his mouth. His head was banging against the ground with some strange serial muscle contractions. Carmody stood up, covered with dust, and drew his pistol from his holster. He spared a second to think about the knife blade and wonder what the hell might have been on it. Then he shot the guy once in the forehead and looked up the trail for Grigor.

He saw him right away in the ghostly predawn light, about forty feet above him, nearing the rim of the crater. The trail running up to the rim curved around a knobby projection and then rose straight and steep to the top. Grigor was scrambling to reach it, climbing like a crab on all fours.

Carmody had no clear shot at him from his angle. He wasn’t going to hit him, and he didn’t try. He holstered his gun and went after him.

Seen on Fucillo’s livestream, the spray from the MK-48’s underwater explosion looked oddly like a huge white flower blossoming open in the darkness.

“Madam President, we have a hit,” Admiral Kealey said a second later. She could see him from headquarters, Pearl Harbor, on a separate screen. “Thank dear, sweet God.”

Seconded. Fucillo sat very still as her advisers broke into cheers and applause through some of the Situation Room’s other video displays—Woodridge howling so loudly through the speakers it hurt her ears. The events in Hawaii had developed so quickly there had been no time for them to gather in person, putting her alone in the room except for some hastily roused young White House staffers. They were also clapping their hands in monumental relief.

She gave them a minute to settle down, then turned to the one nearest her at the table.

“OK, Jimmy,” she said. “We’re just getting warmed up. I want President Tsao on the line. Right now.”