He fought the urge to struggle, knowing that this would both pull the rope tighter and exhaust him. Instead he hung motionless for a moment like the diver not three feet away, twisting in the current, playing dead. The diver pulled him close as he drew his knife to deliver the coup de grâce across Bourne’s neck.
Bourne reached back and pressed the PURGE button on the regulator. Air shot out with such force it caused the diver to loosen his mouth, and, with a thick plume of bubbles, Bourne tore the regulator free. The cord loosened around his neck. Taking advantage of the diver’s surprise, Bourne freed himself. Turning, he tried to pinion the diver’s arms, but his adversary drove the knife toward his chest. Bourne knocked it away, but as he did so the diver wrapped his arms around Bourne’s body so he couldn’t surface to get air.
Bourne pressed the diver’s octopus—the secondary regulator—into his mouth and sucked air into his fiery lungs. The diver scrabbled for his regulator, but Bourne fought him off. The man’s face was white and pinched. He tried again and again to position the knife so that it would cut Bourne or the octopus, to no avail. He blinked heavily several times and his eyes began to turn up as all the life drained out of him. Bourne lunged for the knife, but the diver let it go. It spiraled down into the deep.
Though Bourne was now breathing normally through the octopus, he knew that following a purge there would be very little air left in the tanks. The diver’s legs were locked around him, ankles crossed. In addition, the nylon cord had become entangled with both of them, building a kind of cocoon. He was working on freeing himself when he felt the powerful ripple. A chill rolled through him, rising from the depths. A shark came into view. It was perhaps twelve feet long, silvery black, slanting unerringly upward toward Bourne and the two dead divers. It had smelled the blood, sensed the thrashing bodies in the water transmitting the telltale vibrations that told it there was a dying fish, possibly more than one, for it to feast on.
Struggling, Bourne swung around, the diver in tow. Unbuckling the harness of the second diver’s air tanks, he pushed them off. Immediately the corpse sank down amid its black clouds of blood. The shark changed course, heading directly for the body. Its mouth hinged open and it took an enormous bite out of the diver. Bourne had given himself a respite, albeit a short one. Any minute now more sharks would be drawn to join in a feeding frenzy; he had to be out of the water by then.
He unsnapped the first diver’s weight belt, then pulled off his tanks. Then he fitted the mask over his face. Taking one last aborted breath, he let the tanks go—they were out of air, anyway. The two of them, locked in a macabre embrace, began to rise toward the surface. As they did so, Bourne worked on the nylon cord, unwinding it from around them. But the diver’s legs were still imprisoning his hips. Try as he might, he couldn’t unlock them.
He broke the surface and immediately saw one of the WaveRunners bouncing over the water directly at him. He waved. In the mask, he was hoping the driver would assume he was one of his divers. The WaveRunner slowed as it neared him. By this time, he’d managed to untangle the rope. As the craft swung around, he grabbed onto its back. When he tapped the driver on the knee, the WaveRunner took off. Bourne was still half in the water, and the vehicle’s speed loosened the diver’s death grip. Bourne pounded on the diver’s knees, heard a crack of bone, and then he was free.
He swung up onto the WaveRunner and broke the driver’s neck. Before he tossed him into the water, he unhooked the speargun from his belt. The driver of the second WaveRunner had seen what was happening and was in the process of turning when Bourne drove directly at him. The driver made the wrong choice. Drawing a handgun, he squeezed off two shots, but it was impossible to aim accurately on the bucking vehicle. By this time Bourne was close enough to make the leap. He swung the speargun, launching the WaveRunner’s driver off the vehicle even while he took control of it.
Alone, now, on the sapphire water, Bourne sped away.
Book One
1
One Week Later
“THEY’RE MAKING US look like fools.”
The president of the United States glared around the Oval Office, fixing his eyes on the men standing almost at attention. Outside, the afternoon was bright and sunny, but in here the tension in the room was so oppressive it felt as if the president’s own private thunderstorm had rolled in.
“How did this sorry state of affairs happen?”
“The Chinese have been ahead of us for years,” said Christopher Hendricks, the newly minted secretary of defense. “They’ve begun building nuclear reactors in order to wean themselves off oil and coal, and now as it turns out they own ninety-six percent of the world’s production of rare earths.”
“Rare earths,” the president thundered. “Just what the hell are rare earths?”
General Marshall, the Pentagon’s chief of staff, shifted from one foot to the other, clearly uncomfortable. “They’re minerals that—”
“With all due respect, General,” Hendricks said. “Rare earths are elements.”
Mike Holmes, the national security adviser, turned to Hendricks. “What’s the difference and who the hell cares?”
“Each of the rare earth oxides exhibits its own unique properties,” Hendricks said. “Rare earths are essential for a host of new technologies including electric cars, cell phones, windmills, lasers, superconductors, high-tech magnets, and—to many in this room, especially you, General, most important of all—military weaponry in all areas crucial to our continued security: electronic, optical, and magnetic. Take, for example, the Predator unmanned aircraft or any of our next-generation precision-guided munitions, laser targeting, and satellite communications networks. They all depend on rare earths we import from China.”
“Well, why the hell didn’t we know about all this before?” Holmes fumed.
The president plucked a number of sheets off his desk, holding them up like washing on a line. “Here we have Exhibit A. Six memos dated over the last twenty-three months from Chris to your staff, General, making the same points Chris has made here.” The president turned one of the memos around and read from it. “ ‘Is anyone at the Pentagon aware that it takes two tons of rare earth oxides to make a single new energy windmill, that those windmills we use are imported from China?’ ” He looked inquiringly at General Marshall.
“I never saw those,” Marshall said stiffly. “I have no knowledge—”
“Well, at least someone on your staff does,” the president cut in, “which means that, at the very least, General, your lines of communication are fucked.” The president hardly ever used foul language, and there ensued a shocked silence. “At worst,” the president continued, “there’s a case to be made for gross negligence.”
“Gross negligence?” Marshall blinked. “I don’t understand.”
The president sighed. “Clue him in, Chris.”
“As of five days ago, the Chinese slashed their export quotas of rare earth oxides by seventy percent. They are stockpiling rare earths for their own use, just as I predicted they’d do in my second Pentagon memo thirteen months ago.”