After spending $110,000 supporting my family, I returned from a 21-day Navy mission to find my father giving my $4 million Lake Tahoe villa to my sister—but one message from my attorney was about to turn their champagne celebration into a nightmare.

The plasma torch sliced through the primary steel rigging with a shower of superheated bubbles. With a dull *groan* that resonated through the water, the winch cable whipped upward, its tension abruptly released. The heavy recovery pod tilted, slipping off its guide rails and plunging backward down into the abyssal trench, carrying Vanguard's illicit mining data straight to the lakebed where only military deep-sea salvage could reach it.

An alarm immediately began sounding through the hull of the *Avalon* above me. I could hear the rapid thrum of deckhands scrambling across the metal superstructure.

I surfaced the mini-sub on the blind side of the *Avalon*’s stern, right beneath the dive platform. Pop-up exhaust vents masked the sound of the hatch unsealing.

Weapon drawn, I stepped out onto the wet non-skid deck of the research vessel. The rain had turned to sleet, frosting the handrails with a slick glaze.

Two armed contractors, wearing black foul-weather jackets with Vanguard insignias, burst through the hatchway of the main deckhouse, carrying automatic shotguns.

"Secure that winch line!" one yelled over the roar of the ship's generators. "The sensor pod just broke away—"

He stopped dead as he saw me standing on the dive platform, drenched in lake water, the laser sight of my P226 painting the center of his chest.

"Move an inch and you find out what twelve hundred feet of water feels like without a tank," I said.

The second contractor tried to raise his shotgun. I fired a single precision shot into the steel deck right between his boots. The ricochet threw up a blinding shower of sparks that stung his shins, knocking him off-balance onto the wet grating. Before he could recover, I closed the gap, drove the butt of my pistol into his jaw, and kicked the shotgun skittering across the deck into the open water.