“—nah Blackwell!” came the intercom transmission through the helmet’s tinny speaker. “Jonah—answer me goddamn it!”
“I’m still here,” confirmed Jonah, barely hearing his own impossibly high-pitched voice over the hissing air valve.
There was a pause on the other end. “What the fuck was that?” she finally demanded. “You were completely off-line for almost ten minutes!”
“Umbilical must have gotten a kink,” said Jonah as he continued to descend the tower stairs, the hard drives in his mesh bag awkwardly knocking against the metal hand railings with each step.
“Bullshit. You think I’m a complete idiot?”
Jonah was just about to make up another excuse before Marissa cut in again.
“Don’t even bother making something up to get me off your back,” she said. “You may not give a shit about your own life, but there are other people down here that do. Tell me this: did you even stop to think about anybody else before you disconnected? The fact that I spend the last ten fucking minutes thinking you were dead, trying to imagine what I’d have to say to your crew?”
“Doesn’t matter—I got what I came for. Coming back now.” Jonah let silence fall between them. If she wanted more information, she could get it from his point-of-view camera feed.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Jonah stopped for a moment to coil his umbilical before continuing to retrace his steps down the corridor. He stopped dead at a double-wide hatchway, recognizing it as one of the ship’s galleys. The thick metal doors hung slightly ajar, just wide enough for Jonah to catch a fleeting glimpse of several emaciated bodies within. He clapped a gloved hand over his camera lens, stopping the video transmission.
“What happened?” demanded Marissa from the other end of the intercom. “I’m still getting camera telemetry, but the view is obstructed.”
“Is Sun-Hi with you?”
“She’s watching the monitors with the rest of us—but I have you on my headset, it’s just you and me talking.”
“Give her something to do in another compartment. Tell me when she’s gone.”
The transmission went silent, muted from the other end. A few moments passed before Marissa’s voice crackled back over the helmet speaker. “She’s gone. What’s going on?”
Jonah silently pushed the oversize hatch doors open, his helmet light illuminating the drowned bodies of nearly a hundred North Korean refugees within the cafeteria. Some still wore their thin cotton rags and sandals, the ghostly fabric of their ill-fitting clothes dancing in the eddy created by his movement. Others still in heavy Japanese work coveralls. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to envision their last, terrified moments, the fruitless sacrifices they’d made as they fled across the frigid North Korean icepack.
Marissa paused for the longest time before speaking. “What should I do about Sun-Hi?” she asked.
“I’ll tell her when I’m back,” was all Jonah could mumble. But despite saying it out loud, he didn’t know if he could.
Hassan watched Jonah’s return to the Scorpion over Marissa’s shoulder. There wasn’t enough room by the lockout chamber console; he was forced to hang onto the conning tower ladder like a lineman as they together watched the external camera feed on a too-small screen. Jonah clambered up onto the submarine’s submerged deck, waddling in his ungainly neoprene suit and heavy helmet, dragging two unfurled mesh grab bags behind him, umbilical coiled over one shoulder.
“I think I see the hard drives,” said Marissa. “What’s he got in the second bag?”
Hassan squinted at the feed. Jonah was closer now, half-walking, half-hopping his way down towards the open lockout chamber. He made it seem so simple, so effortless, almost more comfortable in the cold depths than his own skin. As he approached the camera, Hassan started to make out details of the several dozen compressed plastic packages in the other mesh bag.
“They look like . . . prepackaged meals,” said the doctor. “Perhaps military rations?”
“MRE’s,” confirmed Marissa with a smile. “Normally, I’d rather eat wet cement, but right now they’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Does that mean you’ll give Jonah a pass on disconnecting his umbilical?”
“Hell no. He’s still getting an ass-whuppin’ for that.”
Jonah situated himself inside the chamber, pulling the last of the long tether in after him. He secured the exterior lockout hatch and gave Marissa a thumbs-up through the tiny glass portal. She returned it and began the chamber drainage cycle, water rushing back into sucking vents beneath Jonah’s Wellington boots.
“I’m just replacing water with air; he’s still pressurized to depth,” explained Marissa. “He’ll be stuck in that chamber for a while, even if we surface, it will have to stay sealed. We’ll push it a little, but he’s still looking at about four days’ decompression.”
Hassan blanched a little, trying to imagine the claustrophobia he’d experience if trapped in the closet-sized space for so many endless hours.
Jonah popped the helmet off its ringed collar, shaking out wet hair and cracking his knuckles. His face and neck were covered with long red marks from where the seams of the dive suit had pressed and chafed. He held up the mesh bag of hard drives first, straining against their newfound weight out of water.
“Ready,” Marissa confirmed through the intercom. “Pass them through.”
Jonah nodded, opening a microwave oven-sized pass-through hatch designed to exchange food and tools between the differing pressure environments. He stacked the clunky hard drives in the small box and closed the door from his side, securing it tightly. Marissa depressurized the box to a single atmosphere, and opened the door to retrieve them.
“We got the drives!” Marissa shouted down the conning tower ladder. Dalmar appeared below, taking the hard drives as they were passed from Marissa and Hassan to the pirate like a bucket brigade. Satisfied that they were stacked on a chart table below, Marissa turned her attention back to Jonah’s intercom. “You need anything off the bat?”
“Nothing urgently,” said Jonah as he unzipped the last of the neoprene suit. There was always a strange pause after he spoke as the voice descrambler raced to catch up, the resulting disconnect between his lips and voice resembling a badly dubbed movie. Jonah stepped out of the suit and carefully secured the remaining valves. “A towel and a bedroll would be great once the chamber dries out a little.”
“I can help with that,” said Marissa, activating an interior fan.
Jonah dropped to his knees as he went through the prepackaged military rations. “Cheese tortellini!” he exclaimed. “Fuckin’ A. This stuff is legendary.” Setting it aside, he rifled through the rest, stacking them up on the floor in a haphazard pyramid three-dozen high. “I’ll pass the rest through the hatch. They’re calorie-dense, so rations are one per person per day. Oh, and watch out for the buffalo chicken. Either save it for last, or give it to somebody on your shit list.”
“But you’re the only one on my shit list,” joked Marissa through the intercom.
“What’s wrong with the buffalo chicken?” whispered Hassan. “Also . . . is it made of buffalo or chicken?”
“Chicken, at least theoretically. And it’ll give you the Mount Vesuvius of shits,” said Marissa, removing her finger from the transmit button. “The egg omelet, too. Don’t even bother with Tabasco sauce with that one; it will roast your sphincter from the inside out without even doing you the courtesy of improving the taste.”
Hassan just nodded uncomfortably as Jonah loaded the pass-through hatch with the rescued meals.
“Did you bring the magazines?” asked Marissa.
“Yes, of course,” said Hassan, reaching into a satchel around his shoulder to pull out a large stack of glossy titles, presenting them to her.
“Don’t show them to me—see which ones he wants.”
Hassan selected a gardening magazine and pressed the cover against the portal glass.
“Alr
eady read it,” said Jonah, punching the intercom.
“Next.”
The doctor picked a weapons and ammunition title next, presenting it for consideration.
“Christ, no,” exclaimed Jonah, angrily pressing the intercom button once more. “I think I’ve seen about enough of the real thing to last a goddamn lifetime.”
Hassan didn’t answer. Instead, he held up a dog-eared detective novel and several decade-old women’s magazines in quick succession, all left behind by the submarine’s previous occupants.
“Now you’re talking,” said Jonah with a smile. “Yes, yes, and yes.”
Marissa ran the pass-through hatch cycle again, exchanging the MRE’s for the magazines and novel. But despite his smile and jokes, Jonah still looked like he’d aged ten years in the space of a few hours.
Jonah punched the intercom on his end one last time as he slumped against the wall, ignoring the packaged meal he’d left for himself. Hassan could only imagine how Sun-Hi weighed on his mind. “I’m just going to sit here for a while,” he said. “Maybe try to sleep. Let me know if anything happens.”
“And Sun-Hi?”
“Keep her busy for now. I’ll tell her soon.”
Hassan descended the ladder to the command compartment slowly. He’d never seen Jonah quite so weary, the kind of bone-tired rooted more in soul than body. Best to leave him alone. After all, Jonah was never the sort to seek solace in others.
Vitaly was alone in the command compartment, the salvaged hard drives already partially disassembled into a snaking mess of cables and wet circuit boards. “How’s it coming?” asked Hassan.
“Broken data, my favorite,” said Vitaly without looking up from his computer console, his sarcastic tone a clear indication of his irritable disposition.
“Any success thus far?” pressed Hassan.
“No. But still easier than NK data. For them I had to run emulator to mimic very old system. New OS would not even read tapes.” He unplugged the first of the Japanese hard drives and booted up a second, their computer systems lapping up the massive repositories of data. The methodology made sense to Hassan—copy first, analyze later.
Distant noises from far above echoed throughout the Scorpion’s pressure hull, a strange mixture of churning swishes and pings as it passed. “What’s happening?” asked Hassan, a note of concern entering his voice.
“Many ship arrive,” said Vitaly, gesturing upwards with a small screwdriver without turning his head to look. “Coordinate rescue, I think. They will not find us here.”
Hassan considered the information for a moment. He wanted to press Vitaly for more, ask him why he wasn’t concerned, but finally decided against it. “Do you know what Jonah wants you to find in all that data?” he asked.
“No,” said Vitaly with a long sigh. “I am on—how do you say? Hunt of fish?”
“A fishing expedition?”
“Da, da, expedition of . . . ” Vitaly trailed off, glaring at a flashing cluster of red on the hard drive data map. “Chyort voz’mi, security footage ruined!” The Russian pounded a fist on the keyboard hard enough to make Hassan wince.
“Can it be recovered?”
“This not television. I am not Abby Sciuto of NCIS. No, I cannot magic recover data. Too many question— maybe you go away now?”
“Yes, of course,” stammered Hassan, backing up. “Can I get you anything, do anything else to assist?”
“Maybe get me MRE?” ordered Vitaly. “Any but enchilada of beef. I would rather eat shoe.”
Hassan sorted through the stacks of prepackaged meals in the galley. He was surprised with how well they’d held up in their immersion. Most were evenly crushed, but with their packaging, bilingual labels, ingredients, and preparation instructions were otherwise still intact. Setting aside the ones he’d been warned about, Hassan quietly unwrapped Vitaly’s meal—a macaroni and chili dish— and prepared it according to the written instructions. The small compartment was soon filled with powerful aromas, tempting Hassan to eat it himself and prepare another for the Vitaly instead. But he patiently scooped the mix out of the heated bag and onto a plate, walking it back to the command compartment. He resolved to silently leave it with the Russian and sneak away, bothering the helmsmen no further.
Vitaly was leaning over his computer console, intently tracing two long, intersecting lines southward from the North Korean coastline to their present location. Hassan gave him the plate, and Vitaly dug into the meal without even looking up from the screen.
“I find a . . . how you say? Da, I find common factor,” said Vitaly, mouth full of food.
“What is it?”
“Same object in radar data of both NK base and Japan carrier. Both cases small and discounted as threat by computer. Both detect less than ten minute before attack begin. Object size of bird only, maybe two bird, move very slow. But it fly too straight for bird. I trace both routes.” Vitaly tapped his screen, showing the two intersecting lines on the digital map. “The line cross here, at small island in north Philippines.”
“They have a common origin,” breathed Hassan as he leapt up to his feet. “Both attacks were launched from the same location.”
“But nobody believe us,” said Vitaly, a look of concern crossing his face. “The Japanese would sink us before we can show them. Even make phone call too dangerous.”
“You’re right,” said Hassan. “They won’t believe us. Not unless we come up with some kind of hard evidence. I’ll alert Jonah. Prepare to lay a course for the island—full silent running. Let’s find out who set us up.”
CHAPTER 14
Alexis sat on the command compartment chart table, legs swinging freely over the side as she absentmindedly contemplated the last of her cracker. It crumbled between her fingertips, stale and all but tasteless in the slowly souring air of the Scorpion. Sun-Hi was at the communications console, lost to the world as she concentrated on her oversize headphones. She’d probably played every file in the computer’s sound library ten, twelve times already. Yet she kept at the task with inexhaustible focus, barely even looking up when given her daily pre-packaged rations.
Vitaly stood watch at the helm station. He’d taken off his boots and propped his bare feet up over his computer monitor, letting the autopilot take the bulk of the navigational duties. Dalmar leaned against the nearest bulkhead, towering over Vitaly as the pair flirtatiously debated how long they could last without food before resorting to cannibalism. The Scorpion was all but silent, electric engines barely humming as the propellers gently fought a slight tropical current. Their island destination was close now, but Jonah’s internment in the decompression chamber had not yet come to an end.
“I’d eat you first! Chop-chop-chop!” announced Dalmar, reaching down to pinch Vitaly’s ribs just below his armpit. The Russian practically squealed in laughter.
“Nyet—I eat you!” retorted Vitaly as he slapped at Dalmar’s rear. Alexis stifled a snort as she watched the debate quickly devolve into a flurry of poking and poorly translated insults. It amazed her what a little sugar to the bloodstream, and a few regular meals, could do for crew morale.
Her chuckle turned to a sigh and then a yawn. It was nearly five in the morning and she’d already been up for two hours. She supposed it didn’t matter, not really. Day was no different than night within the belly of the Scorpion. The artificial light and lack of a regular watch rotation made it all but impossible to keep a schedule, which left her free to lose time in maintenance projects and her own drifting thoughts.
Dalmar retreated toward the stern, his booming laugh echoing down the narrow corridor. But that was Dalmar and Vitaly—drifting together and momentarily igniting like a crescendo of fireworks, only to drift apart once more. It wasn’t just the difference between cultures; it was something more fundamental than that. They were two wanderers content to share their worldly spheres—but only for a moment. It was as though they somehow knew larger forces would ultimately tear them apart, leaving them with no
thing more than fading, happy memories of each other.
Maybe it would be the same for her and Hassan. Thrown together, only to be driven apart. In her weaker moments, she felt she didn’t really know the stranger in her bed. They shared so little—different cultures, different lives, their few moments together shaped by the fear and violence surrounding them.
Sometimes her only guiding light was his tiny kindnesses, like the nights when she turned over to find him awake and watching her, his arm tucked under her warm cheek. The way he furrowed his brow and shook his head when she criticized herself, as though her doubt was not just misplaced but antithetical to how he understood the universe. The way he couldn’t pass her in the corridor without extending his soft hand to brush against her hips or waist, no matter how much engine oil and leaking fuel covered her.
There were difficulties. She’d often try to talk about her friends back in Texas, the television shows she’d once liked, favorite foods, her college roommates, her family. But these conversations would always fall into one useless tangent or another as she tried to explain the impossible—things like tailgating, barbeques, field parties, drive-through burger joints, or the differences between hooking up and going out and engaged to be engaged.
He’d try the same, but his culture was equally baffling. There were so many words like tahnziz and tabergig; the idea of navigating a romantic life surrounded by a thousand watching, judging eyes in a world where dating barely existed and marriage was one in the same with pregnancy. She wasn’t even sure if they’d ever gotten around to the fourth-date practicalities like childhood pets, favorite bands, meeting her parents, or if he’d ever thought about starting a family.
Maybe his kindness was enough. Once she stripped away every anxiety and miscommunication, she couldn’t imagine waking up without being held in his arms. Maybe the rest never mattered to begin with.
Jonah descended the last rungs of the conning tower ladder and dropped to the deck of the command compartment. He looked like some kind of crazy shut-in—he’d spent nearly four days in the same stained sweatshirt and pants, barefoot, his beard now a clumpy, matted mass, eyes sunken and bloodshot. He looked withered somehow, older. Marissa followed him down the ladder, scrunching her face and pinching her nose with visible discomfort and annoyance.
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