RED SUN ROGUE

by Taylor Zajonc

  “Wear your warmest,” advised Hassan, standing up from his place next to the helm. “It’s negative fifteen degrees outside with forty-five knot wind gusts. Frostbite can set into exposed skin in as little as five minutes. We picked up weather broadcasts in Japan on the way over—forecasters are saying this is the worst winter in a century.”

  “North Korea was already in rough shape,” said Alexis. “Can’t imagine how bad it’s gotten in a hundred-year winter.”

  “NGO’s estimate they already lost over a million tons of grain reserves to seasonal flooding earlier this year. Hundreds of thousands may die before the next harvest.”

  “Hate to be pragmatic, but that’s why their families are paying double,” Marissa added.

  Alexis and the doctor just frowned.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she protested, dismissing both with a wave of her hand. “I’m just saying.”

  Alexis tried not to let the comment distract her as she prepared the Scorpion to surface through the ice, setting all control planes to a neutral position using a series of hydraulic wheels. Vitaly slowly filled their auxiliary ballast tanks with pressurized air, displacing heavy seawater.

  “Why don’t you just make the computer do it?” asked Marissa, quizzically watching Alexis as she strained against the manual systems.

  “She doesn’t speak to me when I use the automated protocols,” said Alexis, releasing the wheel to catch her breath. “But when I use my hands, she spills her guts—if she’s strained, if she’s bowed, if she’s leaking, if something is about to break down. Everything is connected to everything else, but you can’t feel any of it through a keyboard. And in a situation like this, I need to hear, to feel, her every word.”

  “Alexis has point,” Vitaly said as he pressed a single digital button, filling up the last of the auxiliary tanks with air. “But sometimes she make things too difficult also.”

  The leading edge of the conning tower crunched against the ice, and the frozen crust cracked and squeaked as the buoyant submarine started to break through. Alexis knew the rudders and twin propellers would take the worst of it; she hoped they hadn’t missed anything important during the recent retrofit. And then they were through. The conning tower emerged from the snowy pack to the wince-inducing cacophony of steel against ice.

  “Vitaly, maintain your post,” ordered Jonah. “The rest of us are going topside to see what we’re dealing with.”

  “Da, da,” said Vitaly. “Someday Jonah steer ship while Vitaly breathe fresh air.”

  Carrying two black, angular assault rifles from the weapons locker, Dalmar ducked as he stepped into the command compartment. He passed one to Jonah, keeping the other for himself. Alexis had to admit the captured military-grade weapons were a big step up from the Depression-era armaments they’d first used to take the Scorpion. And yet Jonah still wore a shiny silver antique on his hip, a weapon more suited for cowboys than a modern-day underwater smuggler.

  “We must add a flamethrower to our arsenal,” boomed Dalmar in an authoritative voice. “A group of my enemies once barricaded themselves in a bunker below the ruins of the presidential palace, laughing at our bullets and grenades. But they did not laugh at my flamethrower. I learned that day that nothing burns quite like a man.”

  “Duly noted,” said Jonah, only half-listening as he turned his attention to the interior conning tower ladder, ascending the first few rungs. “Have Vitaly put it on the requisition list.”

  “Excellent,” said Dalmar in a satisfied tone. “You will not regret the purchase. It will pay for itself with the first use—this I guarantee.”

  Alexis followed the two men up the conning tower, with Hassan and Marissa close behind. Jonah grunted as he opened the main hatch, ears popping as the slight pressure differential equalized throughout the submarine with whispering hiss. Blowing snow drifted down the ladder, swirling in the wind as Jonah disappeared out of the hatch.

  Windswept ice and snow assaulted Alexis’ senses as she, too, emerged into the blizzard. She winced, squinted, and then held up a hand to shield her eyes from the storm. Roaring winds whipped across the cracked, shifting pack ice, already piling snow drifts against the hull. There may as well have been a sign that said Texans Go Home—she didn’t belong out on the pack any more than she belonged on the moon.

  Hassan passed binoculars and spotter scopes to everyone, each taking a different watch position on the conning tower, scanning the endless ice sheet. Alexis couldn’t make out the horizon; the only landmark was the conning tower beneath her feet, everything else was lost to the cold, grim whiteness.

  “I have never seen snow before,” grunted Dalmar. “It is very unpleasant and I do not like it.” The former pirate dropped the binoculars from his eyes for a moment to sweep a few flakes from his shaved head.

  “What do you think, Doc?” Jonah asked. “You see anything?”

  “Visibility is very poor,” answered Hassan.

  “How about you, Alexis?”

  “I can’t see fucking shit out here,” complained the engineer. “It’s whiter than a Wilco concert. So far, North Korea is even more depressing than I imagined.”

  “I’ll cancel the seaside crew retreat,” chuckled Jonah. He seemed to appreciate the tone of her answer much more than painfully proper Hassan’s. “Marissa picked a good spot. Most ships won’t make it through this ice, and it’s too thin for tanks or military vehicles. All the same, let’s find these people and get them on board so we can get the hell out of here.”

  Alexis slowly scanned her sector of the horizonless expanse, searching for a visual anchor among the endless white. And then she saw the movement of slight human figures in the distance, a huddle of rags and blankets trudging across the ice, their forms almost lost to the wind and snow.

  “There!” called Alexis, pointing without dropping the binoculars from her eyes. “I see them!”

  The other four swiveled in her direction, seeking out the refugees. “Count off—how many do you see?” demanded Jonah. “Did they all make it?”

  “I’m seeing maybe . . . forty?” said Alexis. It was only a rough guess. She could barely make out one figure from another in the shuffling group as it slowly advanced towards the surfaced submarine.

  “Good,” said Jonah, dropping the binoculars to the strap around his neck. “It will be tight, but we can handle forty.”

  “Are you sure about that count?” asked Marissa, uncertainty in her voice. “Looks like more than that to me.”

  “I do not see forty,” announced Dalmar.

  Alarmed, Alexis swiveled her binoculars. The whiteout before her cleared for a moment, allowing her to see that the single group of refugees was actually one of two, the trailing group more than twice as large as the first.

  Shit. And they were running. Closer now, she could see they were dressed in rags, some wearing no more than sandals against the cold, thin cotton bed sheets held tight for warmth, rushing towards the uncertain safety of the submarine.

  “This is not the deal,” said Dalmar stubbornly, pointing to the approaching mass of humanity. “We must charge extra now.”

  Marissa and Alexis just stared at the massive Somali pirate with a strange mixture of fury and empathy as they struggled to find the words.

  “Not the time,” interjected Jonah, searching across the ice with his binoculars. “Something is wrong—they shouldn’t be moving this fast.”

  “What should we do?” demanded Alexis.

  Jonah bent over the conning tower hatch and shouted to Vitaly below. “Prepare for emergency dive!” he ordered.

  “Look at them—we can’t leave them out here!” shouted Marissa. “They’ll die!”

  “We’re not leaving anybody,” said Jonah. “Dalmar— Marissa—I need you to open the main deck hatch. We can load the Scorpion twice as fast if we don’t use the conning tower. Doc—I need you in the crew compartment. These people look like they’ve been walking for days. We could have dozens of exposure and frost
bite cases.”

  Hassan mumbled a checklist to himself as he made for the supply closets, rattling off words like heaters, hot water, blankets, first aid. The remaining crew scrambled as the first of the refugees reached the submarine, pounding the outer hull as they pleaded to be let in. Dalmar and Marissa rolled a boarding net over the side, allowing the first and strongest of the masses below to step across the cold, broken ice and grab ahold of the fraying net. They crowded the hull in expanding numbers, the young and able-bodied helping children and the elderly ascend first. Once on the main deck, some stood transfixed before Dalmar and Marissa, scarcely able to tear their eyes from the pirate or the American.

  “Why are they just standing there?” demanded Alexis. “They’ve probably never seen foreigners before,” said Jonah softly.

  Alexis nodded, not entirely convinced. She had an itchy, uncomfortable feeling all over her body, the same one she got when they first crossed into Somali waters a lifetime ago—this was dangerous territory, and the operation was already taking entirely too long. Confirming her unease, Alexis began to hear a growing rumble in the distance, a slow, building roar almost entirely lost to the blizzard. She turned to Jonah. “Do you hear that sound?” Her voice was scarcely louder than a whisper.

  Jonah cocked his head, a newly concerned expression crossing his face. He hadn’t heard it, but she had—and that was enough. “Any radar contact?” he asked, shouting down to Vitaly in the command compartment below.

  “Nyet!” answered the Russian. “Weather terrible, cannot see nothing onscreen!”

  Alexis looked back toward the horizon just in time to see a low, massive military hovercraft in the distance, still all but hidden by the blowing snow. Double-shit—less than a third of the refugees had made it on board. Just two hundred yards out now, the intruder would be on top of them inside sixty seconds. Dalmar and Marissa hadn’t noticed the craft yet, and were arguing with each other as they struggled to lower a shawl-wearing grandmother down the deck hatch.

  “Hey!” shouted Jonah, slamming his palm against the side of the conning tower loud enough to get their attention. Wordlessly, he pointed. Dalmar and Marissa turned to stare, stopping their bickering as they let go of the old woman, dropping her into the waiting arms of family below.

  Marissa sprinted up to the base of the conning tower. “What happens to these people if we leave?” said Jonah, calling down from above.

  “The unlucky ones die in a concentration camp!” shouted Marissa over the howling blizzard.

  “And the lucky ones?”

  “They’ll shoot them right here on the ice!”

  “Forget the hatch,” said Jonah, yelling to both Marissa and Dalmar. “Just get them all up on our hull!”

  The refugees had seen the hovercraft, too. Frightened screams and cries rang out from the crowd as they began to push and shove, crowding around the boarding net, dropping their few possessions as they frantically tried to save themselves. A young boy slipped and fell into the freezing water between the pack ice and the submarine hull, only to be yanked to safety moments later by his older brother.

  Dalmar leapt from his post, slid down the side of the submarine, and splashed into the ankle-deep water among the broken ice. He began to grab children and physically hurl them onto the deck from the snowy ice below. Rather than protest, parents surrounded the massive pirate, pressing their children into his hands. Time was all but out. Through the whipping snow, the hovercraft was now close, dangerously close.

  “Are they going to shoot everybody?” whispered Alexis, her voice betraying her fear.

  Jonah shook his head—but somehow she didn’t quite believe him this time. “If they were going to shoot, they would have already,” he said. But she wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince her, or himself. And then she saw it . . . the first spark of a plan entering his mind.

  “It’s too windy for walkie-talkies,” said Jonah, jumping over the railing to the exterior ladder. “Stay here—relay my instructions to Vitaly!”

  “What should I do?” called Alexis after him.

  “Tell him—on my signal, full power to the engines!” shouted Jonah. She tried to ask him what the signal was, but he’d already reached the base of the ladder. Jonah pushed himself through the throngs of refugees, joining Marissa as she crammed frail bodies into the deck hatch, one after another. Having thrown the last of the children onto the deck, Dalmar jumped onto the boarding net and dragged himself back aboard.

  Alexis looked down the interior of the conning tower, catching sight of the top of Vitaly’s head from above. “We have an incoming NK hovercraft, danger close! Jonah says full power to the engines on his signal!”

  “Da, da!” Vitaly yelled back, readying his computer terminal. “I will be ready!”

  “He didn’t tell me what the signal is!” Alexis shouted from above.

  “Signal is explosion!” called Vitaly. “With Jonah, signal is always explosion!”

  Alexis looked back over the deck, wishing she could be as confident about anything as Vitaly was about the nature of the signal. All she could see was the incoming hovercraft—the fucker was massive, seventy-five feet in length and thirty across, ringed by a thick rubber skirt with huge airplane propellers howling at the stern.

  “Lock it down!” shouted Jonah, waving his hands into the wind. “Shut all hatches!”

  Dalmar glared at Jonah just long enough to defiantly shove a soggy, half-drowned boy through the opening and into a mass of waiting arms below. With a snarl, the pirate slammed the hatch shut as the refugees around him began to scream in fear and distress.

  “Everybody get down!” shouted Jonah, waving his arms. “Down, down, down!”

  The refugees didn’t understand the language but the gesture was clear. They began to kneel and sit on the deck, Dalmar and Marissa crouching amongst them. Soon, only Jonah was standing amongst the crowd, waiting for the hovercraft to close the final few meters to the submarine.

  Even from the conning tower, Alexis could see Marissa mouth to Jonah—You can’t, you don’t know what they’ll do to us. You just can’t.

  But Jonah only turned to issue Marissa a single, cold stare until she melted into the mass of refugees. Jonah was left alone, standing arms wide in surrender, an apologetic Aw-shucks-you-caught-me expression on his face, his assault rifle slung harmlessly behind his back. He didn’t look like he was facing down the North Korean military. He looked like he was trying to wriggle out of a ticket in a West Texas speed trap.

  The massive hovercraft came alongside the Scorpion, her flat, wide deck bristling with rifles as a dozen soldiers pointed their weapons at Jonah. They leaned against their metal railing, a triple-set of open airplane propellers roaring behind them. The North Korean soldiers on deck were a strange mix of Cold War-era camo snowsuits and AK-47’s, woolen caps, and plain green steel combat helmets, all led by a single young lieutenant. They were healthier than the refugees, fed at least, but still bore the small, bowed statures and lean features of the chronically malnourished. The soldiers wore stoic, angry expressions, barely concealing a kind of childlike wonder, even glee. It was as though they’d unexpectedly cornered a mythic species, a creature they’d known only through decades of propaganda-driven legend.

  Still feigning surrender, Jonah gingerly pressed his way through the cowed throng of refugees, slowly opening a small deck compartment to reveal a thick steel mooring cable. He picked up the loop at the end, gesturing that he wanted to throw it across, allow the soldiers to link their crafts together for boarding. The refugees huddled frozen in silent horror, some openly weeping with fear.

  The North Korean lieutenant returned the gesture, signaling Jonah to throw the cable and secure their capture. He made the motions of a soft, underhand toss. The soldiers began to lower their weapons, preparing to receive the line.

  Before they could react, Jonah suddenly hurled the thick loop towards the nearest propeller, the long steel cable singing through the air as it followed. It h
it with a sharp ping and a shower of sparks in the split second before the line caught in the rotor, screeching as the heavy line snapped taut. Alexis threw herself behind the lip of the conning tower as the hovercraft engine exploded, flames and smoke pouring from the engines, the steel line hopelessly tangled in the wreckage.

  Alexis stared down the interior of the conning tower just in time to see Vitaly spin up the Scorpion’s engines to howling full power. “Da, signal always explosion!” the Russian cackled as the lurching submarine slammed through the first of the icepack, bow splitting through the frozen, cracking crust. The refugees were thrown to the deck. Dalmar’s arm shot out to grabbed an old man in the moments before he tumbled into the freezing, propeller-churned water in their wake.

  Picking up speed, the Scorpion dragged the now-flaming hovercraft stern-first over the surface. North Korean soldiers scrambled, but could not bring their guns to bear. Great blocks of ice smashed into and flipped up and over the submarine’s shuddering foredeck even as Dalmar and Marissa threw open the main deck hatch again and tossed people into a human heap in the crew quarters below. Jonah abandoned the refugees and took up position behind the conning tower. He squinted into the frigid air as his automatic weapon poured an entire magazine of bullets into the black rubber cushion of the hovercraft. Thin, white jets of air hissed outward from pockmarked shots penetrating the craft, turning the rubber skirt into a ragged mess.

  Suddenly, the steel line broke with a ringing snap. The whipping ends recoiled over the heads of the refugees causing Dalmar to duck instinctively. Marissa cried out as the line whipped past where the pirate’s head had just been. A cheer went up from the refugees as they watched the burning hovercraft slowly shrink into the distance behind them. Jonah lowered the rifle, slung it over his back, and returned to Dalmar and Marissa’s side, the three together helping the last handful of refugees off the deck and into the hatch.

  Behind them, the North Korean soldiers managed to disconnect the stricken, flaming engine, vectoring thrust from the remaining two propellers to begin a long, lazy turn, and once again rejoined the chase. Floating over the ice, the hovercraft began to close the gap once more. Their soldiers weren’t waiting this time. A haphazard hail of bullets streamed across the icepack. Bullets clattered across the Scorpion’s deck as the final refugee disappeared into submarine. Marissa went in next, followed by Dalmar and Jonah, the hatch slamming shut behind him.