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cycle appeared, a black and muscular Yamaha V-max. It roared into view, skidding sideways. Its headlamp was off. That’s what had set Gray’s nerves jangling. No spear of light had blazed up the street, fleeing ahead of the engine’s growl. The cycle was running dark.
    Without slowing, it skidded sideways. Rear tires smoked as it tried to make the sharp turn into their driveway. It hesitated, balanced, then ripped forward.
    “What the hell!” his father barked.
    The rider overcompensated for the turn. The bike bobbled, then the bump of the curb sent the vehicle careening to the side. The rider fought for control, but the rear fender caught the edge of the porch step.
    The bike went down in a showering skid of red sparks, becoming yet another Fourth of July display. Thrown, the rider shoulder-rolled end over end, landing in a sprawl not far from the open garage.
    Farther down the drive, the bike’s engine choked and died.
    Sparks blew out.
    Darkness descended.
    “Jesus H. Christ!” his father exclaimed.
    Gray held a hand back for his father to stay in the garage. His other hand pulled a 9mm Glock from an ankle holster. He crossed toward the prone figure, all dressed in black: leather, scarf, and helmet.
    A soft groan revealed two things: The rider was still alive, and it was a woman. She lay curled on her side, leathers ripped.
    Gray’s mother appeared at the back door to the house, standing in the porchlight, drawn by the noise. “Gray…?”
    “Stay there!” he called to her.
    As Gray approached the downed rider, he noticed something lying steps away from the bike, its black shape crisp against the white cement of the driveway. It looked like some stubby pillar of black stone, cracked from the impact. From its dark interior, the glint of a metallic core reflected the moonlight.
    But it was the glint of another bit of silver that caught his eye as he stepped to the rider’s side.
    A small pendant around the woman’s neck.
    In the shape of a dragon.
    Gray recognized it immediately. He wore the same around his own neck, a gift from an old enemy, a warning and a promise when next their paths crossed.
    His grip on his pistol tightened.
    She rolled from her shoulder to her back with another small groan. Blood streamed across the white cement, a black river forging toward the mowed back lawn. Gray recognized a raw exit wound.
    Shot from behind.
    A hand reached up and pulled back the helmet. A familiar face, tight with agony, stared up at him, framed in black hair. Tanned skin and almond eyes revealed her Eurasian descent and her identity.
    “Seichan…” he said.
    A hand reached to him, scrabbling. “Commander Pierce…help me…”
    He heard the pain in her words—but also something he’d thought he’d never hear from this cold enemy.
    Terror.

2
Bloody Christmas
     
    J ULY 5, 11:02 A.M.
    Christmas Island
     
    J UST ANOTHER LAZY DAY at the beach…
    Monk Kokkalis followed his guide along the narrow strand. Both men wore identical Bio-3 contamination suits. Not the best choice of apparel for strolling along a tropical beach. Under his suit, Monk had stripped to a pair of boxer trunks. Still, he felt overdressed as he slowly baked inside the sealed plastic. Shading his eyes against the midday glare, he stared out at the nearby horror.
    The western bay of Christmas Island frothed and churned with the dead, as if hell itself had washed up out of the deep. Mounds of fish carcasses marked last night’s high tide. Larger hillocks of shark, dolphin, turtle, even a pygmy whale, dotted the beach—though it remained hard to tell where one began and the other ended, flesh and scale melted into a reeking mass of bone and rotting tissue. There were also scores of seabirds, contorted and dead, on the beach and in the water, perhaps attracted by the slaughter only to succumb to the same poisoning.
    A nearby blowhole in the rock spewed a fountain of sludgy seawater with a ringing bellow, as if the ocean itself were gasping its