AS SOON AS THE PLANT BLEW, Mark Murphy toggled the explosives Mike Trono and his team had planted in the glacier overlooking where the Silent Sea had been sunk by Admiral Tsai Song five centuries earlier. They had drilled deeply into the ice and repacked the holes with water that had frozen solid so as to contain the blast. The multiple explosions were timed precisely and built a harmonic resonance that was powerful enough to shear off a massive slab of ice as neatly as a knife. The newly calved berg was the size of a Manhattan office tower. Two hundred and fifty thousand tons of ice slammed into the bay and actually fractured when it crashed against the seafloor. The wave it spawned encompassed the entire water column and swept from shore to shore. Its momentum was such that anything caught in its path was borne away like leaves in a gutter. The magnificent Treasure Ship, so long preserved in its frigid realm, was no exception. The wave tumbled it across the seafloor and onto the long slope that led down into the deep waters of the abyssal plain. When the waters finally calmed, there wasn’t a trace that it had ever existed at all.

ERIC STONE FELT IT the second the ship was free, and he cut the power to the drive tubes.

“That’s it,” he said, staring at the big monitor on the front wall of the op center.

The camera that was mounted in the nose of an unmanned aerial drone revealed hell on earth, with fire shooting a hundred feet and higher over the processing plant and pockets of gas above the bay still aflame. It looked as if the very seas were burning. Gomez Adams was at the tiny plane’s remote controls, and he used a joystick to fly it across the sprawling facility. It was a testimony to his skills as a pilot that he could keep the unstable craft flying through the storm. Small pockets of fire dotted the landscape where debris blown from the gas plant continued to burn. But another fire drew his attention. A building well away from the blast had flames licking through its roof.

“Looks like Eddie and Linc are making their move,” he said.

A second later, Eddie’s panting voice filled the high-tech room from ceiling-mounted speakers. “Eighteen present and accounted for.”

Max Hanley couldn’t care less. “Have you heard or seen the Chairman?”

“Negative. Last I knew, he was in the plant. He hasn’t gotten word to you?”

“No, damn it! All he said was, he’d find his own way out.”

“What do you want us to do?”

As much as Max wanted to delay, he knew that Eddie and his group of freed captives would eventually draw attention. “Get to the submersible as fast as you can. Maybe Juan’s already on his way. His radio could be dead.”

“We’re moving.”