Page 9 of Clive Cussler's Quantum Tempest

He believed him.

4

The Pacific Ocean

Captain Lanxi sat at his cramped desk in his ship’s shabby cabin, working on a secret ledger. A dim lamp barely illuminated his scrawl. His final tabulation was worse than he had feared. He set his pencil down and rubbed his tired eyes.

The holds of his shark-harvesting boat were only half full of illicit cargo. Shark fins were an increasingly rare and expensive delicacy that sold for the price of silver in his country. Chinese people were crazy for shark fin soup, which supposedly had medicinal benefits. In truth, the expensive delicacy was primarily a display of ostentatious wealth. His people reveled in such spectacles, none more so than the government overlords, who secretly supported the illegal trade.

Lanxi’s operations, strictly speaking, were prohibited according to Chinese law, which had recently issued a moratorium. The international community had been outraged by China’s vast fishing fleet destroying stocks of fish around the globe after having depleted her own in the previous decade. In their ruthless efficiency, Chinese vessels harvested protected species on an industrial scale, including the squid and sharks rapidly disappearing in these waters.

But his employer—one of China’s largest criminal gangs—was protected by the government they dutifully served. In fact, it was a Chinese government satellite that had located the heat signature of a large school of sharks migrating in these cold waters.

Lanxi’s rusty ship with its ancient engines had only just reached the area a few hours ago. He deployed the longlines after his sonar confirmed the sharks’ course, depth, speed, and direction. Miles of steel cable with baited hooks now trailed behind him. With any luck, over the next twenty-four hours, those hooks would be filled with freshly caught sharks and reeled in, and his holds filled to capacity. He might yet keep his head attached to his neck and perhaps even pocket a handsome sum of gold if all went according to plan. And if not? He shuddered to think about it.

A sharp rap of knuckles on his door startled him. It was his sturdy Indonesian first officer.

“Captain, come see. Quickly!”

?

Captain Lanxi stood on the exterior bridge wing, his binoculars pinned to his crow-footed eyes. After thirty years at sea, he had seen inexplicable things. It was impossible to live on the vast ocean and not believe in the supernatural.

But this?

Beneath a blanket of stars, an ancient high-sterned pirate junk ablaze with St. Elmo’s fire ran broadside in the far distance, its translucent decks festooned with cannons.

Impossible.

“Radar?” Lanxi barked.

“Nothing, sir. No Doppler reflection at all. No AIS. Nothing.”

“Radio?”

“No response.”

Lanxi lowered his binoculars and glanced down at the deck. His young crew had gathered along the rail, pointing and shouting at the ghostly vessel. The old captain snorted. The men were mostly rural peasants tricked into indentured service on his boat. They were as superstitious as old women. They complained constantly about the lack of food and sleep and were on the verge of mutiny after so many daysat sea away from home without internet or phone connections. The apparition in the distance was sending them into a panic.

“What do you make of it, Captain? A patrol vessel of some sort?”

Lanxi was concerned. That boat could mean trouble. He had been plying the waters of the remote eastern Pacific for months, often crossing illegally into the territorial waters of Ecuador and the other bordering nations in search of his elusive prey. Those nations had become far more aggressive. An Argentine patrol boat had even sunk a Chinese vessel. In order to save face, the Chinese government would sometimes make examples of criminal fishing boats that were caught in the act, tossing their captains into prison.

“That’s no patrol boat,” Lanxi growled.

“Then what is it?”

Lanxi leaned over the railing. “You men down there. Back to work. Now. Or half rations.”

Suddenly an explosion of light erupted in the mast wires.

A giant, eyeless woman shrouded in billowing grave clothes stood high in the rigging, wielding a flaming sword.

His crew saw her, too, along with a dozen fiery minions who suddenly appeared, laughing and cursing them all.

The howling apparition pointed her sword at Lanxi.

“Captain, turn your ship around—now. Or face my wrath.”