“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“We have a future, Alexis. I do not know what that future might hold, but I know it exists for both of us. Until we figure it out, I suppose we’re forced to fly under the banner of Jonah Blackwell’s Jolly Roger, flagged to the nation of Hooligan-istan.”
Alexis burst into choked laughter, masking the sound with the clenched fabric of his thin woolen sweater. He wished he’d washed it, wished it was soft and dry and not crusted with still-drying sweat and salt water, wished Alexis could smell fresh air and flowers when she pressed into him instead of oil and disinfectant. Hassan leaned down to peck her on the check but she didn’t let him, gently grabbing the tousled black hair on the back of his head as she kissed his mouth instead. Instinct took over as Hassan pressed her against the wall, almost forgetting the cold, the damp, the dreary fluorescent lighting, the ever-present groan of laboring machinery.
But then the engineer jerked away from him, pushing him off her body. The butt of his holstered pistol clanked awkwardly against a metal sink. Both he and Alexis froze, wincing at the noise.
“Was it something I said. . . ?” began Hassan.
“No, it’s not you.” Alexis cut him off, turning from him to run her hand vertically against the nearest bathroom wall. “The water pipe behind this bulkhead is warm. It should not be this warm.”
“Is it broken?” asked Hassan, more than a little bewildered at the timing.
“No, it’s not broken,” said Alexis with an anxious whisper. She glanced towards the closed shower curtain and pressed a single finger to her lips, mouthing a single word—Intruder. Hassan nodded, drawing his pistol and leveling it at the shower. Maybe they’d missed one of the knife-wielding North Korean spies in the chaos of the escape and subsequent boarding. The doctor steeled himself, determined not to miss should it come to violence. Careful to stay out of his line of fire, Alexis tensed her body and prepared to pull back the thick vinyl curtain. Jonah wouldn’t be happy about breaking the noise discipline with a gunshot, but putting a potential saboteur down would be preferable to allowing them to run amuck.
The engineer counted to three on her fingers before violently ripping the entire curtain off the hooks. Plastic rivets and water droplets flew across bathroom as Hassan closed one eye and aimed down the barrel of his cocked pistol, finger already beginning to depress the trigger.
But then Hassan froze, the barrel dropping as his eyes fell upon a cringing, shivering, and very wet Sun-Hi within the tiny compartment, the tiny woman wearing only a towel as she gingerly waved an apologetic hello from the puddle in the center of the shower. Her soaking, soapy clothes surrounded her; she’d been in the process of washing them as well as herself. Alexis and Hassan just looked at each other in complete disbelief.
“Um . . . hello?” was all Alexis could muster. It sounded almost more like a question than a greeting.
“What are you doing in here?” whispered Hassan as he slowly lowered and re-holstered the pistol. His hands shook and he could scarcely close his mouth as the latent adrenaline coursed through his veins.
“Your water so hot!” announced Sun-Hi, pointing to the shower nozzle. “And many bubbles.”
“It’s not that hot,” growled Alexis as she grabbed her from the shower and hauled her bodily into the bathroom, yanking the now half-empty shampoo bottle from her hands. “And another thing—those are my bubbles.”
“Bubbles not for everybody?”
Alexis dropped Sun-Hi’s wrist in frustration and turned to the doctor. “Hassan, help me out here. What are we supposed to do with her?”
“Well,” said Hassan, scratching his head. He didn’t know the first thing about dealing with stowaways. “First things first, I suppose . . . perhaps you ought to find her some clothes?”
“Me?” protested Alexis in a whisper as she poked a finger into Hassan’s chest. “You take care of her. You’re the doctor!”
“But you’re . . . you’re—” said Hassan, struggling for words.
“I’m what? If you say anything other than ‘chief engineer,’ I swear to God I’ll—”
“Hair so pretty,” said Sun-Hi as she reached up to touch a long strand of Alexis’ brunette locks.
“Yes—quite pretty indeed!” said Hassan as he took the momentary lapse in Alexis’ attention to apologetically back out of the bathroom door. “I’ll—I’ll let Jonah know what happened. About Sun-Hi, I mean. I’ll be right back, of course!”
“Do not even leave me in here with her!” hissed Alexis as she threw her hands up in the air. Hassan just mouthed “I’m so, so sorry” as he slunk out of the compartment, his mind already racing with ways to make the cowardly retreat up to Alexis later.
Jonah barely looked up as Hassan ducked shoeless into the command compartment. The doctor gently tapped on Jonah’s shoulder and leaned over to whisper to him. “We have a stowaway,” he said.
“Is this stowaway about to sink our ship?”
“I doubt it.”
“Then we have bigger problems right now,” said Jonah. “Relieve Marissa at the hydrophone station.”
“Finally,” complained Marissa as she stood up. Hassan took the headphones from her, placed them on his ears, and listened intently as Marissa marched to the far side of the command compartment and leaned against a bulkhead, arms crossed.
Focusing, Hassan realized he could barely hear a slight ticking sound in the distance, but couldn’t tell if it was coming from within the Scorpion or not.
“I hear a sound—do we know the source?” he asked.
“We are being pinged,” whispered Vitaly. “Low frequency active sonar. Maybe 100 kilohertz only.”
“Could be an autonomous coastal array,” said Jonah.
“Most coastal array listen,” said Vitaly. “This is ping. I think maybe patrol sub hunting us.”
“It’s probably just a low-power active sonar buoy.” Jonah ran his hand over his beard. “I’ll bet it feeds to a small room with a very bored North Korean sailor sleeping in his chair. They’ll never even detect us as we slip through.”
Vitaly mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like worst captain ever as he worked to triangulate the source of the signal and collect as much passive sonar data as possible. The Scorpion’s computer system churned through the gigabytes of incoming data, using the refracted sonar signal to slowly assemble a digital facsimile of the underwater terrain around and below the submarine.
“There,” said Jonah, tapping his finger on the base of Vitaly’s display screen. “That trench—do you think you can use it to get us past the sonar array?”
Hassan leaned in to get a closer look. There it was, a long snaking trench just ten meters in width opening in the seafloor beneath them, its image painted on the screen in the shifting green tones of a 3D computer model. The doctor couldn’t help but appreciate Vitaly’s skill as a pilot, using the very information gathered from the penetrating signal to escape its detection.
Vitaly scowled and cocked his head in consideration before answering. “Very tight for Scorpion I think. Maybe unknown currents. Could pose problem.”
“Can we fit?”
“Da,” Vitaly finally said. “But only because number one pilot Vitaly.”
“Good. Begin descent and plot new course to coordinates through the trench.”
“Aye.”
“Is this going to work?” asked Hassan in a whisper as the bow of the Scorpion dipped subtly downwards. “Are you certain they won’t be able to hear us from within the trench?”
“DPRK tech tops out in the early Cold War,” Jonah shrugged. “So yeah. It’ll probably work. If not, we’ll slink back out before they can mobilize any significant naval assets to the area. This strategy wouldn’t exactly work at the big US naval base at Yokosuka, but we should be good for a lonely stretch of North Korean coastline.”
Vitaly gritted his teeth, and as he steered through the narrow underwater canyon, fingers danced across the console controls as thoug
h conducting a sixty-piece symphony orchestra. The Scorpion shuddered through a series of little shifts and tilts, Vitaly navigating with surgical precision. It reminded Hassan of tracing the line of an existing incision with a scalpel, but he knew full well the slightest error would steer the submarine into a rock outcropping, slicing through their steel hull. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the shifting 3D model on Vitaly’s console, their fragile ship impossibly close to the jagged walls of the sunken trench.
The low-frequency ping grew louder and louder above them. But it was muffled now, discordant as it bounced off rocks and sand and ten-thousand-year-old shell beds. And then, the Scorpion slipped past, the piercing signal fading in the distance behind them. Hassan breathed for the first time in what felt like hours. He listened intently from his station as the minutes ticked by until the ping disappeared entirely.
“The sound is gone,” said Hassan. “I can’t hear it anymore.”
“It has dropped from my sensors as well,” confirmed Vitaly.
“Give us another five hundred meters distance to be safe, and then bring us out of the trench,” ordered Jonah. “Are we close enough to see our destination?”
“I believe yes, Captain,” said Vitaly as the submarine silently ascended through the waters towards the stormy surface of the North Korean coastal sea.
“Good—bring us to periscope depth,” said Jonah. He pulled the optic from the ceiling by the handles as a small electric motor quietly whirred to bring the upper lens above the whitecaps. Jonah projected the periscope image onto the screens surrounding the command compartment, displaying an intimidating North Korean coastline of sheer rocky cliffs tumbling into the sea below. One massive swell after another slammed into the towering cliffs, disintegrating into foamy white spray.
Vitaly gave a long, low whistle at the savage display.
“Are we headed straight for the coordinates?” asked Jonah.
“Aye, dead ahead.”
“How far out?”
Squinting at his maps, Vitaly measured the distance out. “Less than half mile? Very close, Captain.”
“Well, that’s a problem,” said Jonah, tapping on Vitaly’s nautical charts with one finger. “Because according to this map, the coordinates aren’t coastal—they’re inland.”
Hassan glanced back up at the video monitors. Inland? How was that possible? The rugged coastline wasn’t exactly abundant with safe harbors.
“Coordinates are coordinates,” shrugged Vitaly as he stared up at the screen. “I check them myself. What we do?”
“I just don’t see how we can get over those cliffs,” said Hassan. “We wouldn’t even be able to get an inflatable raft to the rocks below without being dashed to pieces. And if we reached the cliffs, how could we possibly ascend them? We’re smugglers, not mountaineers.”
Jonah squinted, a small smile spreading across his lips. “Full stop. Give me a single ping,” he said. “Low frequency—minimum power.”
Vitaly nodded, inputting the command into his console. The engines slowed and died, complete silence falling within the command compartment. A single resounding ping emanated from the nose of the Scorpion, rippling as it spread into the sea. The reflected sound was sucked up by the submarine’s sophisticated sonar system, painting Vitaly’s screen in vivid green terrain data.
“Ty che, blyad?” exclaimed Vitaly, pointing at his own screen.
“English!” demanded Jonah. “You are literally the only person here that speaks Russian.”
“I say, ‘What the fuck?’”
Hassan could see it now, too. The green polygons of underwater bathymetric terrain data showing the underwater cliffs were interrupted by a perfect hollow archway just wide enough for a submarine. It was too perfectly formed to be a natural sea cave or lava tube. There was no doubt about it. There was an underwater entrance built into the cliffs.
“That’s what I thought,” announced Jonah, now wearing a grim smile. “It’s a hidden submarine base. We’re going in. Vitaly, make for the entrance—dead slow.”
The electric engines of the Scorpion slowly hummed to life, and the submarine pushed forward towards the mysterious entrance as angry waves swirled above. Hassan winced as they approached the final few feet to the passage, half expecting an abrupt impact against the base of the cliffs.
“Give me external cameras and running lights,” ordered Jonah. Several feeds leapt to the command compartment screens, showing the Scorpion from various angles as she maneuvered the short, pitch-black, sixty-foot tunnel into the earth, the submarine’s exterior lights the only illumination against the blasted rock.
“We have open ceiling,” said Vitaly, pointing to the conning tower feed. They’d made it inside the hidden base, the impossible blackness of the submerged tunnel now giving way to a massive chamber, sheer rock walls rising to a concrete dome thirty feet above.
Hassan realized he was starting to get his bearings on the horseshoe-shaped structure, eyes drifting to the length of the tunnel as it disappeared around a gentle curve to exit once more into the ocean. Hassan doubted any pilot could reverse out through the entrance. Even a pilot as skilled as Vitaly. The route was one way only, and he could only hope the other end was clear as well.
The Russian brought the submarine to a gentle stop at the underground mooring below thick concrete pillars, galvanized ventilation ducts, iron pipes, and endless bundles of black electrical wiring above them. Yellow-tinged halogen lights shone from above and below the waterline, stage-like in their blinding effect. A few flickered, dying unattended. Above it all was a single, fading red and blue North Korean flag painted against the uneven concrete of the ceiling, the emblem crumbling and ignored.
“I have bad feeling, Captain,” said Vitaly.
“Worse than usual?”
“Da. Very worse than usual.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that same feeling,” said Jonah. “I was expecting a North Korean welcome wagon of one sort or another. Where the hell is everybody?”
“Maybe it is abandon?” asked Vitaly.
Jonah shook his head. “Somebody is keeping all these lights on. This base might be partially decommissioned, but it is definitely not abandoned.”
Hassan bent over the nearest console and interrogated a suite of environmental sensor subsystems. “No radiological or chemical anomalies detected thus far. Wait . . . I’m getting something.”
“What’s the word, Doc?”
“Carbon monoxide concentrations are quite high. I’m reading over 6,400 parts per million, an atmospheric concentration of point-oh-six-four percent.”
“Doesn’t sound like much.”
“And yet extremely hazardous to human health. Exposure at these concentrations would lead to headache, dizziness, and nausea in under two minutes. Convulsion and complete respiratory failure in less than twenty. Followed by death, naturally.”
Jonah frowned. “That’s some seriously sour air. Like someone left the car running in the garage with the door closed.”
“It’s an imperfect metaphor—but essentially correct, yes.”
“My uncle die that way,” said Vitaly. “He die as he live—drunk behind steering wheel.”
Jonah glanced at Vitaly and turned back to Hassan. “We’re not talking about just one overlooked lawnmower are we?”
“No,” answered Hassan, scratching his head. “It would have taken an entire fleet of idling trucks to fill up a facility of this size with such a concentration.”
“Could the carbon monoxide have come from an accident? A fire, explosion, gas leak?”
“Certainly. A substantial fire could contaminate even the largest of sealed facilities barring proper lockout and ventilation procedures.”
Jonah sighed and ran his hands over his face in frustration. He was tired—no, exhausted. “It’s clear we’re supposed to be here—the Japanese made sure of that,” he said. “It’s the why that still scares the shit out of me.”
“What should we do?” asked Hassan.
“Should we wait for further instructions?”
“I doubt any more instructions are coming. Round up the crew. Let’s not sit here with our dicks in our hands waiting for something to happen. I’ll put together a landing party. Vitaly—”
“Da, da,” said Vitaly quickly. “Vitaly stay with submarine, like always.”
“You don’t mind? You’re always complaining about being left behind.”
“Vitaly stay with Scorpion no problem! You go now. Goodbye.”
“Are you sure?” teased Jonah, poking Vitaly in the ribs just inches from where he’d shot him on their first encounter. “Because I could always use a canary on my landing party.”
Vitaly rolled his eyes and punched the intercom. He ordered the remaining crew to the command compartment, effectively ending further discussion.
“Are you certain we don’t wish to wait?” asked Hassan. “If in doubt, we must practice caution.”
Jonah cut him off. “We’ll only keep the initiative if we keep the initiative. The longer we stay here, the more likely something shitty will happen. I’m not worried about the CO2; we’ll break out the firefighting gear and use the self-contained breathing masks and air tanks. It’ll be enough for thirty minutes or so. We’ll leave the sub, take a poke around, and be back inside half that time.”
“There’s something else,” added Hassan, hearing footsteps from down the main submarine corridor. “I hate to bring this up given other pressing matters—ahem—but we must discuss our stowaway.”
Before Jonah could respond, Dalmar and Marissa made their way into the command compartment followed by Alexis. The engineer pulled in wet-haired Sun-Hi by the hand, the young North Korean’s tiny frame now dressed in comically large work coveralls.
“Hello!” announced Sun-Hi. She broke away from Alexis and grabbed Jonah around his middle in a big hug, the top of her head not even reaching the bottom of his chest.
“Another stowaway?” demanded Jonah, holding his hands up in confusion. “Why does this keep happening to us? Forget it. We’ll discuss internal security procedures later. She looks familiar. Didn’t she do us a solid with the radio transmission leaving North Korean waters?”
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