The commander of the 50th Space Wing groused under his breath. “You can bet Beijing will pick this up.”
Painter agreed. China would not miss a flaming piece of space garbage hurling toward them.
General Metcalf glanced hard at Painter. He understood that look. The advanced military technology aboard that satellite was classified. It couldn’t fall into foreign hands.
For a fraction of a second, the screen to the left flickered, then died again—a last hiccup of the dying satellite.
“Bird is gone!” the control officer finally declared. “All transmissions ceased. It’s a falling rock now.”
The telemetry data slowed to a crawl across the world map—then finally stopped.
Dr. Shaw’s hand suddenly clutched Painter’s forearm. “They need to bring up that last image,” she said. “The one before the satellite died.”
She must have noted something anomalous in the data, something that clearly had her scared.
Metcalf heard her, too.
Painter stared hard at his boss. “Do it. Make it happen.”
The order passed along the chain of command to the floor. Engineers and technicians worked their magic. After several long minutes to redigitize, sharpen, and clean up that brief flicker, that final image bloomed again on the large screen.
Gasps spread across the room.
Metcalf leaned to Painter’s ear. “If even a sliver of that satellite survived, it must be found. It must never reach our enemies.”
Painter didn’t argue, fully understanding. “I’ve got field operatives already in the region.”
Metcalf gave him a quizzical stare, silently asking how that could be.
Just dumb luck.
Still, he would take that bit of good fortune and mobilize a recovery team immediately. But for the moment, he gaped at the screen, unable to look away.
It displayed a satellite view of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, the photo taken as the satellite blazed a trail across the sky. It was detailed enough to make out the major coastal metropolises.
Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C.
Every city lay in smoldering ruin.
2
November 17, 11:58 P.M. CST
Macau, People’s Republic of China
They had crossed half the world to hunt a ghost.
Commander Gray Pierce followed the midnight crowd off the boat and into the ferry terminal. The high-speed catamaran had made the passage from Hong Kong to the peninsula of Macau in a little over an hour. He stretched a kink from his back as he waited to clear passport control in the crowded terminal building.
People were pouring into the peninsula to celebrate a special Water Lantern Festival in honor of the comet in the sky. A large party was under way this night, where floating lanterns were set adrift in the lakes and rivers as offerings to the spirits of the deceased. Hundreds of lights even bobbed in the waters around the terminal, like a scatter of luminous flowers.
Ahead of him in line, a wizened old man cradled a reed cage with a live goose inside. Both looked equally sullen, matching Gray’s mood after the seventeen-hour journey here.
“Why does that duck keep looking at me?” Kowalski asked.
“I don’t think it’s just the duck,” Gray said.
The big man, wearing jeans and a long duster, stood a head taller than Gray, which meant he towered over everyone in the terminal. Several people took pictures of the American giant, as if some craggy-faced Godzilla with a crew cut had wandered into their midst.
Gray turned to his other traveling companion. “It’s a long shot that we’ll learn anything from our contact here. You understand that, right?”
Seichan shrugged, seemingly unperturbed, but he read the tension in the single crease between her eyebrows. They had traveled this far to question this man in person. The meeting was Seichan’s last hope to discover the fate of her mother, a woman who had vanished twenty-two years ago, ripped from her home in Vietnam by armed men, leaving behind a nine-year-old daughter. Seichan had believed her mother was long dead—until new information had come to light four months ago, suggesting she might still be alive. It had taken all of Sigma’s resources and connections in the intelligence communities to get them this far.
It was likely a dead end, but they had to pursue it.
Ahead, the line finally cleared, and Seichan stepped forward to the bored customs officer. She wore black jeans, hiking boots, and a loose emerald silk blouse that matched her eyes, along with a cashmere vest to hold back the night’s chill.
At least she fit in here, where ninety-nine percent of the patronage was of Asian descent. In her case, with her mix of European blood, she struck a slightly more exotic pose. Her slim face and high cheekbones looked carved out of pale marble. Her almond-shaped eyes glinted like polished jade. The only softness to her was the loose cascade of her hair, the color of a raven’s wing.
All this was not missed by the border agent.
The round man, his belly straining the buttons of his uniform, sat straighter as she stepped forward. She matched eyes with him, moving with a leonine grace that was equal parts power and threat. She handed over her passport. Her documents were false, as were Gray’s and Kowalski’s, but the papers had already passed muster at the stricter entry point back in Hong Kong after their flight from D.C.
None of them wanted their real identities known by the Chinese government. Gray and Kowalski were field operatives for Sigma Force, a covert wing of DARPA, made up of former Special Forces soldiers who had been retrained in various scientific disciplines to protect against global threats. Seichan was a former assassin for an international criminal organization, until recruited by force of circumstance to ally with Sigma. Though she wasn’t officially part of Sigma, she remained its dark shadow.
At least for now.
After Gray and Kowalski also cleared customs, they hailed a taxi outside. As they waited for it to pull to the curb amid the milling crowds, Gray stared across the breadth of the Macau peninsula and its connected islands. A sea of neon beckoned, along with the blare of music and the echoing muffle of humanity.
Macau, a former Portuguese colony, had become the Sin City of the South China coast, a gambling mecca that had already surpassed Las Vegas in gaming revenues. Only steps away from the ferry terminal rose the gold tower of one of the city’s largest casinos, the Sands Macau. It was said that the three-hundred-million-dollar complex had recouped its costs of construction in less than a year. Other gaming powerhouses continued to pour in, with new casinos popping up regularly. The total count stood at thirty-three, all in a city one-sixth the size of D.C.