CHAPTER 17
Jonah woke to first light, the fire long since smoldered to ash. He sat up abruptly, aware that Sun-Hi’s impression in the black sand beside him was cold and empty. Pushing himself to his feet, he stretched, joints popping and cracking as if he were an old man. The beach had made for an adequate bed, but he still felt sharp, radiating pain from so many hours on its firm surface. He’d had too many years of decompression chambers and prison fights, the accumulated damage to his body only compounded by the stresses of command.
He walked the length of the partially collapsed concrete dock to find the Scorpion all but empty. Vitaly had strung up a hammock across the length of the command compartment, sleeping soundly. Jonah rapped on the periscope stalk with his knuckles, waking him.
“Cap’n!” stuttered the Russian, awkwardly trying to throw a leg over the side of the hammock and balance himself before getting out.
“No need to get up,” said Jonah. “Thanks for sticking around to keep an eye on our ride. Where is everybody?”
“Island,” Vitaly croaked, jabbing a thumb in the general direction of the abandoned airstrip.
“Anybody check in with you lately?”
“No. But Alexis come in last night and take two tank.”
“Two tanks?” Jonah scratched his beard, confused. “Tanks of what?”
“I think one nitrogen and one petrol?” said Vitaly. “She say she make birthday present.”
Jonah emerged from the jungle, walking alone towards the scattering of abandoned buildings on the far side the airstrip. Dalmar emerged from the largest structure and waved him over.
“Sun-Hi woke us,” Dalmar smiled broadly as he clapped a meaty hand on Jonah’s back. “She explored these buildings and discovered something of great importance.”
“Care to fill me in?” asked Jonah.
Dalmar waggled a single finger in his face. “It is always better to show.”
Jonah followed Dalmar into the largest of the darkened buildings, their feet crunching on broken glass and concrete fragments. A single interior metal door clung to its frame, bent and almost falling off its hinges. Dalmar pried it open, grinning at Jonah’s grimace when the rusting steel dragged loudly across the concrete. On the other side of the door was a narrow, cylindrical well with a steep spiral staircase leading into the depth below.
“She found a bunker?” asked Jonah.
“Yes—but it is so much more.”
Dalmar took the lead as they together walked down the stairwell. The last rays of sunlight disappeared as Dalmar ignited his flare, illuminating the narrow chamber in harsh, iridescent reds.
“This is unexpected,” said Jonah. “How deep does it go?
“Alexis says at least two hundred feet.” “Why didn’t anybody wake me?”
Dalmar stopped briefly to face Jonah. “Sun-Hi insisted you rest. Hassan agreed, and Dalmar always follows doctor’s orders.”
“Right.” Jonah eyed him suspiciously, but didn’t protest. After all, conspiracy among the crew typically ended in worse results than a few extra hours of uninterrupted sleep.
The spiral staircase stretched deep within the ancient layers of volcanic bedrock. There was no door at the base, just an opening into an underground tunnel. Jonah reached up and touched the walls—the stairwell had intersected a natural volcanic lava tube deep within the island. The tunnel walls were rough, barely hewn from the original rock, the floor of the cave made level by a thick layer of smoothed concrete.
“This way.” Dalmar pointed to a side passage. The natural lava tubes had formed an entire network of intersecting tunnels, massive in scale. Jonah followed him in, the tube opening up into a large bubble-like chamber illuminated by a half-dozen scattered lamps. Hassan sat cross-legged in the center of the room, sketching notes onto the dusty floor with a piece of charcoal. Surrounding him were endless rows of aluminum tanks and cisterns, snaking pipes and other industrial equipment. Jonah tried and failed to imagine the sheer amount of manpower that it would have taken to assemble the subterranean laboratory.
“Jonah!” exclaimed the doctor, yanking his head up from his scribblings. “I’ve learned a great deal about the island since we last spoke.”
“Let’s hear it,” said Jonah, squatting down beside him. “Is this some kind of abandoned World War II facility?”
“No—well, yes and no,” answered the doctor cryptically. “I knew what this facility was from the moment I laid eyes on this room. There’s a whole underground complex— some sections collapsed and inaccessible, of course— making this room just one of dozens. See these machines and equipment?”
“Yeah,” said Jonah, glancing around at the unfamiliar technology. “I don’t know what any of this stuff is.”
“Very few people would,” said Hassan. “It’s biological research equipment. Active material tanks, fermentation cisterns, spray dryers, filling machines. Everything you’d need to refine and weaponize anthrax, cholera, even plague.”
Jonah hesitated suddenly, wondering if he should stop breathing.
“Oh, it’s perfectly inert now,” said Hassan dismissively. “Has been for decades. I’d recommend a tetanus booster to the crew, but only given the degree of rust that has accumulated.”
“So this is from the second World War . . . but it isn’t’?”
“Precisely!” said Hassan, almost leaping to his feet in excitement. “The Imperial military experimented extensively with pathogens, testing and deploying them against tens of thousands of prisoners and noncombatants. They developed the most advanced biological weapons of the war, bar none.”
Jonah paused, unable to quite articulate his next question in a way Hassan would answer. “But you just said this was a post-war facility.”
“The war ended,” Hassan said, “but the research didn’t. Imagine—Japan falls, coming under the military umbrella of the United States and her allies. But not all of the surrendered were resigned to the idea of Japan as a wholly disarmed client state. They were determined to find a way to protect themselves without a military.”
“So they turned to unconventional weapons.”
“Yes—and the effort could have been easily funded by powerful Japanese nationalists for decades, perhaps even to this day. Just look at these aluminum cisterns—the designs are clearly from the late ’60s, perhaps even early ’70s, decades after the war ended.”
Jonah looked closely at the tanks, but had no basis for verifying Hassan’s observations. “But if it was such an important program, why was the facility abandoned?”
“Japan’s post-war economic miracle?” Hassan said, venturing a guess. “I’m thinking rapid economic expansion and rebuilding throughout the 1950s set the stage for her ‘Golden Sixties’, and high-technology and automotive economy. Perhaps this facility became politically obsolete. Why continue to develop weapons of mass destruction if one could wield staggering economic power instead? I imagine any non-military innovations made by this laboratory were ultimately folded into Japan’s corporate research programs on the mainland. However, recent events would suggest a remnant of this clandestine organization continues to this day.”
Hassan joined Dalmar and Jonah as they walked out of the germ research laboratory. The lava tubes were a labyrinth; Jonah could barely keep his sense of direction.
“She’s this way,” said Hassan, leading the trio. He pointed toward a chamber at the end of a snaking, partially collapsed tunnel. Inside, Alexis worked intently over a dimly-lit metal workbench, while Marissa sat on a stool reading through the German doctor’s logbook. Jonah was glad to know where the logbook had ended up. All he’d known was that he woke up on the beach without it. Marissa must have noticed it and taken it out of his pants while he slept.
Alexis didn’t so much as look up from her work, just waved an acknowledgement as she heard the men come in. Sun-Hi briefly stuck her head out from behind a long bank of moldering reel-to-reel magnetic tape computers before returning to further disassemble the antiq
ue units.“Find anything interesting in the logbook?” asked Jonah.
“A little,” said Marissa. “My German sucks these days, but I can still read a bit. My guess is that you found a doctor’s campaign journal. Has entries on all the various complaints and illnesses faced by the crew. He seemed to have had a lot of down time. When nothing else was happening, he wrote a lot about his captain. I think they must have been friends. Beyond that, it’s mostly worrying about his wife and daughter back home.”
Another captain, another doctor, another time. “Any insights?”
“A lot of venereal disease,” said Marissa. “I mean, like a lot. And then it ends abruptly in May—”
“When the sub was presumably captured by the Japanese,” added Hassan.
“Can you blame them?” asked Jonah. “No way they’d let all that vital technology and war material surrender into Allied hands.”
“What did his last entry say? Any reference to possible hijackers?” said Hassan.
“No—but he was fixated on a finding the source of a mysterious illness that was affecting a couple of crewmen in the aft torpedo room.”
“What were the symptoms?”
“Nausea, diarrhea, headache, fatigue, bleeding gums, that kind of thing.”
“Gross,” said Alexis without looking up. The doctor squinted at the information, but didn’t say anything.
“How about you, Alexis?” asked Jonah. “Any amazing discoveries?”
“Yeah—there’s some great stuff down here,” said Alexis, still intent on her work as she finished tightening one last hose clamp. “Tons of old tech, pretty much all of which is obsolete. Weapons, engines, even a bunch of silk parachutes. But this is my favorite.” She stood and turned to proudly display the business end of a massive flamethrower, complete with handles and triggers, attached by a hose to a two-tanked backpack sitting on the metal workbench.
“Could it be…?” breathed Dalmar, daring to hope.
“Yep—it’s an operating, no-shit military flamethrower prototype,” confirmed Alexis with a sly smile. “The tanks were crap, so I swapped them out with spares from the Scorpion. Beyond that, most of the critical components were in surprisingly good shape, just need a little oil and a whole lotta love.”
She tried to pick up the tanks, but they were too heavy to even budge. Motioning everyone to step away, Alexis instead pointed the nozzle towards a rocky wall on the far end of the workshop, nearly thirty feet away. She clicked a button on the butane nozzle lighter, frowning when it didn’t ignite. Alexis shook the assembly a little, slapped it with her palm a couple of times, and tried again. The lighter sparked and a tiny jet of butane fuel flashed bright in the dark room.
And then she pulled the trigger. A prodigious grout of thick fluid spurted from the end of the flamethrower, instantly igniting as it hit the hissing butane. The liquid stream exploded, erupting outwards in a roiling, uncontrollable fire, all but blinding everyone with sudden, searing heat. Jonah felt like he’d briefly stepped onto the surface of the sun.
Sun-Hi clapped her hands in amazement as the last gush of flames petered out to a dribble of still-burning fuel. Jonah felt for a moment that the bright, cheery Sun-Hi he’d first met was still within her—but she wouldn’t so much as look at him, instead returning to continue disassembling the ancient computers.
“Alexis—do be careful!” Hassan stared with his mouth open, horrified at the sheer magnitude of the weapon’s output.
“Um, yeah,” said Alexis a little gingerly. The size of the explosion had taken her by surprise as well. “I’m still experimenting with the mixture. It could probably use a little more fine-tuning.”
“This is . . . this is for me?” whispered Dalmar, almost at a loss for words as he stepped gingerly towards the flamethrower, transfixed.
“Of course it is, you big galoot,” Alexis said, setting the nozzle back down on the table. “I don’t know anybody else who could even lift this goddamn thing—it weighs a metric shit-ton.”
Dalmar brushed past her to pick up the prototype flamethrower, easily hefting the thick canvas straps over his shoulders as he put the tanks to his back. He turned the weapon from one side to the other, admiring the original craftsmanship, as well as Alexis’ careful maintenance and innovations.
“I shall call her Florence,” growled Dalmar, arching his eyebrows at Alexis. “The most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”
“Okay . . . you’re welcome?” said Alexis. “Just watch where you point that thing.”
Jonah laughed out loud, patting her on the back before glancing over towards Hassan. But the doctor simply stared into the darkness, distracted. “Remind me—what were the symptoms in the physician’s journal?”
“Uh, let me look,” said Marissa as she picked the logbook back up again. It took a moment to find the correct page. “Looks like headaches, bleeding gums, barfing, and the shits. That mean anything to you?”
“It may well have been radiation exposure,” whispered Hassan. “The Germans were moving refined uranium eastward as their war effort collapsed. Allied forces believed they’d captured it all—perhaps they were wrong. This clandestine organization, whatever it is, may have made off with a great deal.”
“How much?”
“Certainly enough to make a bomb.” “Well that’s just fucking awesome,” Alexis sank down in a chair.
Jonah looked around the room. “The submarine and laboratory have been picked clean; anything of value is long gone. Let’s get a Geiger counter down here just in case, but my guess is that it won’t pick up so much as a stray rad. Whoever used this island—whoever still uses it—almost certainly has access to a nuclear weapon. Refining uranium is the tough part, any third-year physics grad student could build a bomb with the right components. And the Germans handed them those components on a silver platter.”
“I find these on every machine,” announced Sun-Hi, emerging from behind the partially dissembled computer bank with a handful of metal tags.
Jonah squinted at the identical tags, turning them over in his hands. He couldn’t read the Japanese script. “What do they say?”
“SABC Electronics and Industry.”
“That’s one of the largest defense contractors in Japan,” Marissa said. “Still headquartered in Tokyo.”
Jonah nodded, considering the information.
“This is the best lead we’ve had yet—shall we follow it?” Hassan asked.
“I mean, we have to, right?” said Marissa. “They’ve got to be the ones with an answer.”
“If I require an answer, I will often find someone to ask—” began Dalmar.
“Wait for it,” interrupted Alexis.
“—at gunpoint,” Dalmar said, finishing his thought. “It is the best way to get truthful information.”
“Agreed,” said Jonah. “Enough fucking around. I’m going to take a page out of Dalmar’s book. We’re going to track down their CEO, kidnap him, stick a gun in his face, and get some answers.”
CHAPTER 18
Itching liquid snaked through Freya’s inner thigh, maddeningly hot. The pain rippling throughout her body was distant, indistinct, experienced only through the fog of a distant memory or a forgotten dream. Her mind swam in a twilight haze between conscious and unconscious—her racing thoughts indistinguishable, eyes soft and unfocused, limbs paralyzed. She moaned and shifted, and felt the thin cotton of a hospital gown against her skin, along with the slick plastic of a mattress pad. She wanted to drift away, fade to white. It would be so easy to just let go.
Focus. Breathe in. Breathe out. Think.
She tried to move, but her fingertips were dull and numb, and the tubes and wires running across her body were impossibly heavy. Her mind swam again, threatening to release her back into unconsciousness. She tried to call out, but her lips were frozen, immobile. So, she struggled to open her eyes and focus on the single blinding light above.
Focus. You were medicated again. It’s wearing off. Breathe. Think.
>
She tried to inhale deep and slow, but the air caught in her throat. Her stomach suddenly wrenched into a jolting contraction. She strained against the thick nylon straps crisscrossing her body, and twisted her wrists bound in their plastic restraints that were painfully chafing against heavy zip ties. A too-thin rush of vomit bubbled up and out of her throat. She groaned and coughed, flooding her oxygen mask with the foul-smelling bile. But it was too late to spit it out. The acidic liquid was sucked back into her burning mouth and nose as she struggled to breathe, choking.
Garbled voices erupted into a rapid-fire exchange around her. Freya’s mask was roughly yanked from her face and slid down around her neck as latex-covered fingers probed her mouth. A hand pressed her face firmly to one side as a second jammed a plastic tube between her teeth, its whistling nozzle sucking the vomit from between her tongue and cheek. The tube disappeared only to be replaced moments later with a metal irrigation straw, washing the bile from her mouth as she coughed and retched once more.
Freya’s eyes fluttered open. Freezing wind whipped across her thin gown and bare feet. She heard deafening helicopter blades and the roar of an engine straining against a buffeting storm. Lighting crashed, illuminating the endless ocean below the aircraft. Two fatigue-clad medics loomed over her, each bucking and pitching in their folding jump seats.
You’re in a military medical transport. Think.
But she couldn’t yet think through the fog of medication. She could only focus on single words, each slamming into her mind like a freight train of consequence.
Transportation. Extradition. Incarceration.
Freya moaned again, tugging against her plastic zip cuffs. She felt the abdominal stitches where the doctors had sliced into her and inserted tubes, pumping warm saline solution into her lower abdomen, irrigating her organs from within. She dully realized that the treatment must have lasted days, leaving her to drift in and out of dreamless sleep as her pain-wracked body slowly warmed from near-fatal hypothermia. Her memories of the Japanese military doctors and the shipboard surgical suite were incomplete, jumbles of images: boiling oil flung into the captain’s face, kicking the handsome grad student—what was his name? Oh, yes, Benny—down the stairs, watching the mob of students and crew attack, feeling their hands on her, then the momentary weightlessness before her plunge off the side of the research ship and into the cold ocean. All a useless blur.
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