The storm hit at 17:41, earlier than predicted. One minute, the catamaran was skimming the top of a gentle swell; the next, the sky folded in on itself like a slammed book. Rain came sideways, hard as bird-shot. The wind found the carbon mast's frequency and made it sing a high hysterical note.
Manning braced against the bulkhead of the salon, shoulder into the wall, legs spread wide. The aluminum briefcase sat wedged between her feet; the Glock, safety on and pressed cold against the small of her back. Every third wave punched the hull hard enough to rattle the glassware in its clamps. She tasted diesel and adrenaline.
Zhao's voice cut in over the intercom. "Port foil's losing lift. I'm throttling back to twenty-eight knots. Everybody stay strapped."
Xu Xiao appeared through the companionway, hair slicked to his forehead, suit jacket abandoned somewhere below. He wore a form-fitting black merino base layer, drenched with spray, and a thin headset that curled around one ear. "We ride this for forty minutes," he told Manning. "Then we duck into the lee of the Zhoushan archipelago. Radar says there is a freighter shadowing us—five nautical miles back."
"Triad?" she asked.
"Or coast guard paid to look the other way. Same difference." He handed her a child-size life jacket in bright orange, ridiculously cheery. "Put this on. If we go in the water, the current runs north at four knots. I'll find you."
Her gaze met his. "What if you don't?"
Xu Xiao grinned. "Then you keep swimming."
The yacht lurched; cutlery went flying from the tray across the salon and smashed into the opposite wall. Xu Xiao staggered, held onto the table edge, and pulled Manning up. "Bridge," he yelled over the wind. "Now!"
One by one, they climbed up the companionway ladder, timing their movements to the roll. Rain pierced the flybridge like needles. Zhao was harnessed into the helm chair, hands clamped down on the wheel, knuckles white. The digital chart blazed electric green; red triangles—other vessels—winked angrily.
"The freighter's closing in—three miles," Zhao reported. "No AIS signature. Running dark."
"Course?"
"Dead astern. Speed thirty-two knots. They'll overtake in six minutes."
Xu Xiao keyed the mic. "Deploy countermeasures."
Zhao grinned, a shark. "Aye."
The hatch aft lifted, and two cylindrical drones—very sleek, very torpedo-shaped—crashed into the water without a splash. The chart updated, revealing new signatures: ghost echoes shooting away at forty-five degrees. The pursuing freighter was hesitating, vector now shifting.
"Smoke and mirrors," Xu Xiao whispered into Manning's ear. "Gave us perhaps ten minutes."
Flashes of lightning forked across the sky, casting stark monochrome light over the scene. For an instant, she glimpsed the freighter—a low, black hull, no running lights—rising on a swell like a submarine surfacing. Then darkness swallowed it again.
"Hold tight," Zhao warned. He spun the wheel; the cat posted hard on. Manning's shoulder smashed into the coaming. The Glock jammed into her spine like an accusation.
Below, something metallic shrieked and ripped apart. The port foil indicator flashed crimson.
"Hydraulic line rupture," Zhao muttered. "We are going to displacement speed."
Xu Xiao's face turned grim. "Can we still make the lee?"
"Negative. We are wallowing. Freighter will be alongside us in four minutes."
Manning tasted blood—she had bitten her tongue. "What if we split up?"
Both men stared at her.
"You take the tender," she went on, breath quickening. "I stay on the main hull. They want me, not you."
Xu Xiao's laughter was short and sharp. "Not how this works." "Then how?" He glanced at Zhao. "Emergency protocol?" Zhao nodded once. "Seven minutes to rig." Xu Xiao grabbed Manning's good hand. "Come." They scurried down the ladder again, water knee-deep in the starboard corridor. Emergency lighting painted everything submarine red. He led her to a narrow locker beneath the salon sole. Inside: two black dry-bags, compact rebreathers, and fins. "We scuttle the yacht," he said. "Inflatable raft drops automatically. We ghost south underwater. They'll circle the hulk, lose us in the storm." Manning simply stared at him. "You planned for this." "Plan for everything. Hope for nothing." They suited up in silence, while the storm drummed on the hull like war drums. The rubbery taste of the rebreather mouthpiece touched with mint tablets came back to her. Xu Xiao adjusted the straps, his fingers brushing along the nape of her neck. "Breathe normally. Stay on my fins. If we get separated, surface, activate the strobe. I'll find the light." "And if they find us first?" He zipped her dry-bag shut then, sealing the Glock inside its plastic wrapping, he met her gaze through the mask lenses. "Then we improvise." - They slipped over the port rail at 18:03, at that very moment when the freighter's searchlight speared through the escarpment of rain. The water was black and warm, like blood. Manning tasted salt, felt the current grabbing her like a hand. Xu Xiao's shape ahead—sleek and dark like a seal—kicked once, twice, then vanished below. She followed. Beneath the surface, the storm was only sound: a distant roar, with muffled thuds as the yacht's hull rolled. The cry of the rebreather hissed in her ears, each exhalation a soft mechanical sigh. She counted kicks—one, two, glide—keeping the faint green glow of Xu Xiao's chemical light stick in her line of sight. Behind them came a deeper thudding—engines in reverse. The freighter was here. They swam parallel to the swell, fifteen meters down. Manning's splinted wrist hurt inside the neoprene sleeve; with each stroke the fracture complained angrily in her. She chose to ignore it. Ahead, that light stick had stopped. Xu Xiao was hovering, pointing. A shadow loomed under the water-were they looking at an underwater cliff? No, the underside of the freighter itself, barnacled and massive, propellers idling. They were directly beneath it. The hull groaned like a dying whale. Manning's heart was thudding in time with the thumping of the rebreather mouthpiece. Xu Xiao motioned: Up. They surfaced in the narrow pocket between Freighter and Yacht, hidden by the towering steel wall. Rain lashed their faces; waves slapped their shoulders. Above them roared out orders in a dialect she did not recognize. A spotlight swept over the yacht's empty deck, then the water around it. Xu Xiao's hand found hers under the surface. He squeezed once: wait. They treads water together, letting the current carry them south, away from both vessels. Integers flow intense were ten minutes while the light gradually dimmed, voices dissolved in the wind. The yacht looked ghost lit by lightning as it listed slowly to port. One last strangled cry that came out of its smokestack, and then it sank beneath the waves like some dying animal. The freighter circled around it twice, thoroughly baffled, before angling north. The automatic deployment line for the raft yanked at Manning, a bright orange splotch blossomed twenty meters away. They swam to it, boarded it. Inside were foil blankets, flares, a hand-crank GPS already blinking their position-32.7°N, 122.4°E. Forty nautical miles from land. She collapsed, panting. Xu Xiao revolved the beacon for a low-power strobe. Rain pounded like thrown gravel against the canopy of the raft. "First checkpoint," he said, his voice ragged. "Fishing trawler rendezvous at 02:00. Then we disappear." Manning let out a short, incredulous laugh. "All of this for a locket no bigger than my thumb." He regarded her through the strobe's flickering glow, eyes dark and unreadable. "Not the locket. What it opens." Another fork of lightning illuminated them alone on an endless plain of black water. Manning tugged the foil blanket around her, felt the Glock's weight against her ribs—safe for now. The storm carried them south, invisible and untraceable. Somewhere beyond the horizon, dawn was still six hours away.