10,590 Meters Below Sea Level, Mariana Trench, Pacific Ocean

Sometimes history is made in the dark.

As he scanned the blackness, Zhu Jin thought about what his wife would be doing
right now. He couldnt see her, but he knew that ten kilometers above, Liu Fang
would be hunched over her keyboard, ritually tightening her ponytail to burn off the
tension. He could imagine her rough sneeze, knowing how the cigarette smoke from
the other geologists irritated her.
The screens inside the Jiaolong-3 Flood Dragon deep-water submersible were the
only portholes that modern science could offer the missions chief geologist. His title
was truly meaningful in this case. Lo Wei, the Directorate officer sent to monitor
them, had command, but ultimately, responsibility for the success or failure of the
mission fell on Zhu.
So it was appropriate at this moment, he thought, that he alone was in control,
deep below the COMRA (China Ocean Mineral Resources Research and
Development Association) deep-sea exploration vessel Xiang Yang Hong 18. This
particular pocket of the Mariana Trench belonged to him alone.
Zhu guided the course underwater with a series of gentle tilts of the softly glowing
control-sleeve gloves he wore. He was moving too close to the sheer trench walls to
consider using the autopilot. He exhaled to clear his mind. There was so much
pressure, poised to crush his vessel and everyones dreams at any moment.
He adjusted the headset with a nudge of his shoulder. There, just as he thought.
Blinking, he leaned forward, as if proximity to the lightly glowing video screen and
the crushing darkness beyond the subs hull could make the moment any more real.
This dive was the last; it had to be.
A wave of his hands, and the sub backed away from the wall and paused,
hovering. Zhu turned off the exterior lights. Then he turned off the red interior
lighting. He savored the void.
The moment had come. It was the culmination of literally decades of research and
investment. No other nation had even attempted to plumb the depths of the sea like
Zhu and his comrades, which was why 96 percent of the ocean floor still remained
unexplored and unexploited. Indeed, the training alone for the deep-sea dive had
taken a full four years once the team at Tianjin University developed the submersible.
Compared to that, the five days of searching on this mission was nothing.
This descent, with Zhu at the controls, was the missions last shot. At some point
soon, the team knew, the Americans would be paying them a friendly visit, or
maybe they would have the Australians do it for them. The Chinese were too close to
the big U.S. base in Guam; it was a wonder nobody had come to look into what they
were doing yet. Either way, the clock was ticking, both for the COMRA vessel and,
he worried, its crew.
He thought of Lieutenant Commander Lo Wei standing over Zhus wifes shoulder,
getting impatient, lighting cigarette after cigarette as she sneezed her way through the
smoke. Zhu could almost feel the crew scrutinizing her face with the same intensity

they viewed their monitors. They would think, but not say aloud, How could he fail
us, when he knew the consequences for us all?
Zhu had not failed.
The discovery itself was anticlimactic. A screen near Zhus right hand flashed a
brief message in blue and then flipped into a map mode. There had been indicators of
a gas field here, but as the data streamed in, he now knew why his gut had guided
him to this spot. He nudged the submersible on, sorting the deployments of the subs
disposable autonomous underwater vehicles, which would allow the team to map the
full extent of the discovery. Each vessel was, in effect, a mini-torpedo whose sonic
explosion afforded the submersibles imaging-by-sound sensors a deeper
understanding of the riches beneath the sea floor. The sound waves allowed the
computer to see the entirety of the field buried kilometers below the crust. The
mini-torpedo technology came from the latest submarine-hunting systems of the U.S.
Navy; the resource-mapping software had originated with the dissertation research of
a PhD student at Boston University. They would never know their roles in making
history.
After thirty-five minutes of mapping, it was done.
Enough time in the dark, Zhu thought. The transition between the deep and the
surface, he once confided to Liu, was the worst. To die there would be his hell,
trapped in the void between the light of day and the marvels of the abyss. But this
time it was his joy; the void filled with the sense of anticipation at sharing the news.
When he opened the submarines hatch, he saw the entire crew peering over the
port rail, staring down at him. Even the cook, with his scarred forearms and missing
pointer finger on his left hand, had come to gape at the Jiaolong-3 bobbing on the
surface.
He squinted against the bright Pacific sun, careful to keep his face expressionless.
He searched for Liu among the crew gathered at the ships railings. At the crowds
edge, Lieutenant Commander Lo stood staring at him with a sour face, an unspoken
question in his eyes. Zhu locked eyes with his wife, and when he couldnt contain his
discovery anymore, he smiled. She shouted uncharacteristically, leaping with both
hands in the air.
The rest of the crew turned to stare at her and then began cheering. Just beyond
them, a faint sea breeze lifted the Directorate flag hanging by the ships stern; the
yellow banner with red stars fluttered slightly. To Zhu, it seemed like perfection,
fitting for the moment. When he looked back to the rail, he noticed that Lieutenant
Commander Lo was gone, already on his way inside to report the mission results
back to Hainan.

Excerpted from GHOST FLEET: A Novel of the Next World War by P.W. Singer
and August Cole. Copyright 2015 by P.W. Singer and August Cole. Used by
permission of Eamon Dolan Books / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing
Company. All rights reserved.