“We have reached depth six-zero and will soon die,” announced Vitaly from the helm, leveling the submarine out. The swishing of the fleet above was louder than ever. Propeller noises seemed to come from all around, echoing throughout every compartment.
“Noted,” said Jonah without looking up. “Sun-Hi, we’re being hunted. Our only chance to escape is to pretend we’re not illegal smugglers. Get on the radio and tell them that we’re a North Korean naval submarine and demand the fleet break off their pursuit.”
“Include many strange threat,” added Vitaly. “More authentic this way.”
Before Jonah could say another word, Sun-Hi grabbed the radio headset from Alexis and started screaming in rapid-fire Korean, turning beet-red as she waved her fists in the air and stomped the deck for good measure. No doubt she’d understood Jonah’s instructions, as he had to physically separate her from the transmitter to end her theatrical ranting. Seconds ticked by as he and Alexis stared at the communications console, waiting for the response. Sun-Hi stood in the center of the tense command compartment, glancing eagerly from one crewman to another as they all waited in silence.
“You think they bought it?” asked Alexis.
The response came without warning—a high-pitched buzzing sounded from outside the Scorpion’s hull, approaching with incredible speed.
“That’s not a ship—brace for impact!” shouted Jonah.
Alexis ripped off her noise-amplifying hydrophones just as the torpedo hit, slamming into the side of the Scorpion with the tooth-rattling concussion of a sledgehammer on a sewer pipe, shaking the submarine to her keel. The overhead lights winked out as emergency illumination bathed the command compartment in crimson red. Sun-Hi and the refugee passengers screamed in fear, adding to the chaos. Dalmar burst back into the command compartment, a snarl on his face as he braced for another torpedo blow.
“Swing us to starboard—initiate emergency dive— damage report!”
“No hull breach!” shouted Vitaly. “Secondary systems rebooting! Emergency dive, aye!”
“Receiving transmission!” Alexis said. The communications console flickered as the new message crawled across the screen, the computer circuits still resetting after the ringing blow.
// N I C E T R Y J O N A H B L A C K W E L L //
“What the hell, Captain?” demanded Alexis. “Do you know these guys?”
“No,” said Jonah, still wincing. “But they sure as shit know me. Vitaly—how the hell are we still alive?”
“Must have been training torpedo, no warhead!” said Vitaly. “It bounce off our hull! I tell you, twenty meters is suicide! We must go deep. Hide.”
Marissa slowly lowered her hands from her ears. “That was a warning shot?”
“Captain, I must have orders!”
Jonah said nothing at first. “Vitaly—Alexis—cut power and level off.”
“What?” demanded Alexis.
“Cease silent running. We’re outgunned, outmaneuvered, and we can’t outrun another torpedo. They won’t give us a second warning.”
Dalmar racked a round into his assault rifle, eyes wide. “We must prepare for a surface battle!”
“Belay that,” ordered Jonah. “We can’t duke it out with a naval fleet. Marissa, take Sun-Hi back to the crew compartment and stow her away with the rest. I need you to keep everybody calm and maintain order while we figure this out. Dalmar, stay up here with me for now.”
“We’re . . . giving up?” whispered Alexis as an eerie silence fell on the compartment. “Do you have any idea what they’re going to do to us when they board the Scorpion and see what we’re carrying?”
“Broadcast our unconditional surrender in English, all channels,” confirmed Jonah through clenched teeth. “Do it now. We may have a few cards to play yet, but they’re all dependent on getting to the surface in one piece.”
Sun-Hi nodded, shell-shocked as she retreated to the crew compartment on Marissa’s arm, head bowed low, Dalmar watching her retreat. Did the young refugee blame herself? Jonah shook his head in frustration—there wasn’t time to assure her otherwise.
“We approach surface,” said Vitaly, voice low. “If you have plan, now is good time.”
“Good—Vitaly, bring us to a fifteen-degree heel the minute we’re above the waves. Alexis, kick up the diesels as soon as the snorkels are clear, but I need you to run the engines as rich as you can without damaging the cylinders. I want our stacks rolling coal like an Alabama tractor pull.”
“Running rich,” confirmed Alexis as she adjusted the fuel-air mixture, preparing for a diesel engine restart.
“We act like football star Luis Suarez, fake injury?” asked Vitaly.
“Isn’t he the one who bites people?” said Alexis.
“That’s the idea,” said Jonah. “I’m hoping we have some bite left as well.”
“Playing possum,” said Alexis, nodding. “Got it—I’ll make sure we look busted to hell and back.”
“So that we might attack!” insisted Dalmar. “Not without my order. But be prepared for anything,” said Jonah. “We may only get one shot. Maybe none at all. All I can say for now is that I need to buy us time.”
Jonah didn’t mention the second part of his plan. They wouldn’t be playing wounded to plot an escape. He needed the time to cut a deal that didn’t involve the torpedoed wreckage of the Scorpion slamming into the ocean bottom. The one-sided battle had been over before it’d even begun.
The Scorpion rose from the cold ocean, bow wake streaming off her conning tower. Jonah raised the periscope, slowly rotating it 360 degrees to observe the surrounding fleet as Alexis’ diesel engines came online with a familiar throaty hum.
The largest of the fleet was at a standoff distance of less than a mile, an 800 foot, 27,000 ton flat-top naval behemoth. Two helicopters circled overhead, both Sikorsky SH-60’s equipped with anti-submarine listening devices and torpedoes. A formation of about a half-dozen armed helicopter drones dipped from the sky and buzzed the periscope, each equipped with high-tech sensors, guns, and rocket pods. Three smaller amphibious assault ships and a destroyer lurked at the periphery, semi-autonomous, six-barreled Phalanx cannons leveled at the Scorpion, every flat battleship-grey surface painted with a round red sun.
“It’s the Japanese Navy,” announced Jonah to his crew in a low voice. “We’re completely surrounded by what appears to be an entire carrier group.”
“Captain—what is plan?” hissed Vitaly.
“The plan?” said Jonah. “I’m coming out of our conning tower with my hands up. That’s all I have so far.”
“We actually surrender?” said Vitaly with dismay. “What do you say—no cards we play?”
“It’s up to them at this point. We may not have any other option that keeps us alive. I’ll do all the talking. If there’s a handshake deal to be had, I’ll take it—especially if it keeps you all out of prison and our refugees out of a North Korean concentration camp. Beyond that—my standing instructions to all crew and passengers is to surrender unconditionally, comply with any and all Japanese orders and accept their boarding parties without resistance.”
Dalmar slammed his fist into the metal hull, the meaty impact ringing out like a torpedo hit. As the rest of the crew quietly digested the plan, Jonah punched the ship-wide intercom, ordering the doctor to the bridge.
Within moments, Hassan walked into the command compartment. Jonah knew the doctor could read his expressions without a single spoken word. The wild ride was over, and now it was time to pay the toll.
CHAPTER 7
Jonah and Hassan emerged from the conning tower unarmed, carefully descending the exterior ladder to the tilting deck. The surrounding fleet was intimidating; it looked as though every Japanese ship within a thousand miles had been on their heels. True to his orders, Alexis had set the engines to belch out thick black smoke through the stack and into the clear winter air, feigning distress. Helicopter drones circled the rising column like buzzards, training thei
r rocket pods on the surfaced submarine.
“What happens now?” asked Hassan, shielding his eyes from the winter sun as he stared across the waters to the massive fleet.
“I have no idea,” said Jonah. “I’ve never had an entire navy after me before.”
The doctor bent down to examine where the training torpedo had struck, brushing his fingers across a punched-in exterior hull plate on the starboard side. Jonah didn’t have to look at the jagged metal fragments still lodged in the side of his ship—he knew it was a kill-shot, a direct hit to the command compartment. A warhead payload would have instantly imploded the hull, slaughtering the crew as the flooded metal husk of the Scorpion fell to the depths. The aborted battle wasn’t like going up against corporate mercenaries, local pirates, or even the underfed soldiers of a backward hermit kingdom. The Japanese navy was the real deal, and Jonah knew they never had a goddamn chance.
A black, rubber-ringed Zodiac boat sped away from the nearest destroyer at high speed, moving to intercept the Scorpion. It was only the first—nearly a dozen emerged from behind the shelter of their mothership, following close behind the first. The six men onboard the lead boat bristled with MP5 machine pistols and a mounted 50-caliber gun. Jonah recognized the distinctive balaclava-clad combat soldiers as the Special Boarding Unit, the British SBS-trained counter-terrorism force created to combat North Korean spy ship incursions.
Jonah pursed his lips as he considered the sheer volume of firepower heading their way. “I didn’t think we rated this much attention so far away from the Horn of Africa,” he said. “The world has gotten too small, my friend.”
“Quite.”
The Special Forces troops beached their inflatable boat on the deck of the Scorpion and sprinted across the deck with guns leveled. Jonah and Hassan were thrown face-first onto the wet hull as zip ties went around their wrists.
“It was nice knowing you, Doc,” shouted Jonah over the din of stomping combat boots, his face shoved into an oily puddle. “It was fun while it lasted. Maybe we can arrange adjoining prison cells if I ask nicely.”
“I thoroughly disagree that it was ever fun,” snapped Hassan, his voice lost to the commotion.
Two of the Special Forces soldiers sat on Jonah’s back, keeping him pinned to the wet hull as a half-dozen inflatable boats disgorged soldiers until the Scorpion’s deck was thick with troops.
Jonah and Hassan were roughly yanked upright and thrown against the base of the conning tower. As they watched, a single soldier opened a metal folding chair and placed it facing them before retreating. A tall Japanese man in his late forties, with thick black hair and a thin beard, sat down in the folding chair, wordlessly staring down Jonah and Hassan with penetrating, intelligent eyes. Their captor had no military uniform, sporting instead, a clean and pressed collared shirt with the knot of his tie barely peeking from behind his expensive cardigan. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a Banana Republic catalog, not the deck of Japan’s Special Forces-laden naval carrier flagship.
Preparing to enter the interior, the boarding party opened the main deck hatch, aiming their machine pistols down the opening as the first of the terrified refugees emerged from within. A small, wailing girl no older than eight crawled onto the deck, followed by her shaking, frantic mother. The little girl screamed as her mother was zip-tied, bodily hauled towards the nearest inflatable boat, and hurled in face-first. The refugees came out of the hatch faster now, each grabbed and violently heaved into boats. None of the boarders could enter—the refugees were emerging in waves now, blinking against the winter sunlight as soldiers shoved them to their hands and knees.
“Hey!” protested Jonah, struggling to his feet to address the well-dressed man on the folding chair. “Let’s figure this thing out without all the rough stuff, okay? There’s kids down there, no need to—”
Their captor leapt to his feet within a heartbeat and put himself nose-to-nose with Jonah, staring him down like a prizefighter at a weigh-in. And then he struck, burying a clenched fist into Jonah’s gut. Jonah wheezed and collapsed, earning himself a too-brief reprieve before his captor aimed three calculated, brutal kicks to the ribs.
“We’re cooperating!” protested Hassan, his wrists straining against the zip ties. “Leave him alone! You’re terrifying these people!”
Jonah barely managed to shoot a single warning glance toward Hassan, shaking his head to silence the doctor. With gasping coughs, Jonah again pushed himself to a sitting position against the base of the conning tower and closed his eyes, grimacing in pain.
“There’s no cause for violence,” insisted Hassan, ignoring Jonah’s warning. “We’ve surrendered unconditionally. Please conduct yourselves peacefully and allow us to assist with our passengers!”
Pensively nodding, their captor touched a single finger to his chin as though he were seriously considering Hassan’s words. And then he grabbed Jonah by the throat, raining violent open-palmed slaps across his unprotected face. Hassan winced with every blow, trying, but failing, to meet their captor’s wild, unblinking eyes. Breathing heavily as he dropped his raised hand, the man smoothed his cardigan, sat down in his chair, and casually crossed his legs.
“Please stop talking, Doc,” groaned Jonah, his face red with hand-shaped imprints.
“So much for a handshake deal,” mumbled Hassan, barely loud enough for Jonah to hear.
“Don’t rub it in,” whispered Jonah. “Not my fault we drew Happy McSlappy as chief jackass in charge instead of a proper naval admiral.”
“An admiral?” Hassan bitterly laughed. “A little presumptuous, don’t you think?”
Dalmar’s shaved head emerged from the deck hatch, his bulky shoulders barely fitting through the tight squeeze. The surrounding men took an unconscious step back as he raised himself to his full height, flexing as he stood an entire head taller than their largest soldier. Seeing Jonah and Hassan by the conning tower, Dalmar extended his hands forward and allowed the Japanese soldiers to respectfully bind his wrists. With one escort on each arm, the grinning pirate was lead over and gently deposited next to the captain and doctor. Jonah couldn’t help but feel a flash of annoyed resentment at the comparative treatment received by the former warlord.
“An entire fleet sent to capture me!” announced Dalmar. “I am very pleased this day.”
“You’re still going to prison with the rest of us,” retorted Jonah. “So don’t get too pleased just yet.”
“We shall see. I think I am too famous for prison.”
More refugees emerged, and then Vitaly. The squirming Russian was hog-tied and carried in the air by two men who roughly dropped him into a puddle at Jonah’s feet.
“Rodilsya cherez jopu! Pizda s ushami! Worst captain ever!” was all Vitaly could sputter as he twisted against his bound hands and feet, rolling back and forth on the deck.
The flood of North Koreans from below decks trickled off as the boarding party was forced to boost the elderly up the hatch ladder one at a time. Their initial zeal, now tempered by the sheer volume of the task, left the soldiers halfheartedly restraining and loading the stooped, white-haired refugees at a snail’s pace.
The relative peace was broken when two of the boarding party pulled a duct-taped, struggling Marissa from hatch, the soldiers having long since run out of zip ties. Swearing and shouting, Marissa kicked and thrashed until she connected with the nearest soldier’s toes, causing him to briefly loose his grip on her collar as he whelped in pain. Marissa tried to hop away, making it all of three feet before the soldiers grabbed her, kicked her taped legs out from underneath her, and threw her to the deck with the rest of the crew. Shaking their heads and murmuring astonishment at the fury with which she’d fought them, the soldiers returned to the open deck hatch and descended the interior ladder once more. Jonah couldn’t help but smile—the soldiers had no idea who they were messing with. Marissa had been taking on tough-talking bouncers and handsy drunks since she was old enough to see over a bar.
“Looks like they ran out of zip ties,” whispered Jonah.
“Or found them inadequate to the task at hand,” Hassan added dryly.
The well-dressed man chuckled and briefly uncrossed his legs before crossing them again.
“What’s so goddamn funny?” asked Jonah loudly, daring another flurry of blows. The man just smiled without answering.
Marissa blew an unruly strand of frizzy hair out of her eyes as she turned to glare at Jonah, daggers in her eyes. Jonah just mouthed “Milk run,” and shot her a knowing smirk.
“Where’d they find you?” whispered Hassan. “Did you try to hide?”
“Laundry bin,” snapped Marissa.
“The laundry bin?” laughed Jonah. “Probably the first place they looked. Not a great hiding spot.”
“Clearly not, you fucking asshole!”
One of the Special Forces soldiers emerged from the hatch, walked to their well-dressed captor, and whispered into his ear. The search appeared finished—at least for the moment.
“You see Alexis?” whispered Jonah to Hassan, his lips barely moving.
“No,” said Hassan with a quick shake of his head. “She wasn’t with the refugees when they came out.”
Jonah nodded. Wherever Alexis had hidden herself, the boarders hadn’t found her yet. Given her knowledge of every pipe, bolt, and duct of the submarine’s interior, the Japanese might not find her at all. Maybe there was a card left to play yet. Jonah’s mind raced with possibilities.
Their captor rose to his feet as though sensing Jonah’s scheming machinations. He folded up his metal chair and handed it to the nearest soldier before stooping, putting the two men at eye level.
“You caught us,” said Jonah, stating the obvious. “What happens now?”
The man chuckled and drew himself to his feet again. He pointed at the conning tower of the Scorpion and gave a long, mournful whistle as he mimicked a submarine settling to the bottom of the ocean with his hand.
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