by Philip Roy
The thought that perhaps he had left the ship, too, with the buoy, and had used it to pull himself to the surface crossed my mind, and I waited to see if he would also appear, alive or dead. But he didn’t. He was biding his time. Perhaps he would climb out and use the rope as a guide to the surface. But maybe he wouldn’t want to do that until he knew that somebody was actually here. He couldn’t know that we had survived the wave too. If he did come to the surface, and there was no one here, he’d have only hours to live, or days, or maybe only minutes if he couldn’t swim.
The one thing I could do was dive with the sub and try to gently touch the hull of the ship in such a way as to let Sensei know we were still here. Then perhaps he would leave the ship and try to make it to the surface. That’s what I would do if I were him down there, even though I had never felt the pressure at that depth.
On the other hand, I knew that when you were down over a hundred feet in the middle of the sea, it could be quite dark, depending upon what was happening in the sky above, and hard to even know which way was up. You might think it would be obvious but it wasn’t. The pressure squeezes against your limbs, and your head feels as if it’s in a vice. Moreover, if the sea is dark on the surface, then it’s pretty much black at a hundred feet.
Maybe it would be overwhelming holding your breath under such pressure anyway. And maybe the distance was simply too far. I really didn’t know. Certainly it would be if you couldn’t hold your breath for more than a couple of minutes.
And so, I sealed the hatch, hit the dive switch and we went down. We dove quickly at first, but I pumped a little air into the tanks to slow our descent. As we approached 130 feet, I peered through the observation window, hoping to be able to see the ship, even though the sun did not reach down here.
But I did see her, at least the spooky silhouette of her lying upside down. It was hard to believe that Sensei was down here, just a few feet away on the other side of a wall of water and a wall of steel, and I couldn’t reach him.
As gently as possible, I dropped the sub onto the hull of the ship, and there was a bumping and scraping of metal on metal. I couldn’t tell if our keel had struck her keel, or her hull. I pumped air into the tanks to rise a few feet, and then let water in to fall. Five times I did this, as rhythmically as possible in the hope that Sensei would hear it and know I was sending him a message. I heard a clanging of metal coming from inside the ship, and it was possible he was banging against the inside wall with a pipe to let me know he understood, but I couldn’t know for certain. At least I felt hopeful we had communicated. With that hope I could now go for help.
But when we resurfaced, and I stood in the portal and looked down at the three plastic bottles, I was hit with a feeling of despair. Who was I kidding? I would never find them again. Even if I tied the rubber dinghy to the rope, it would still be no more than a speck on the sea. And though the sea was moving in a certain direction now, it could change its mind at any time, and swing this way or that, and I could be hundreds of miles off track. Wasn’t there something else I could do?
It occurred to me that if I could bounce radar waves off the dinghy I’d have a much greater chance of finding it. But how could I do that when the dinghy was made of rubber? I could put a metal plate on the side of it, so that it would reflect radar waves, but since it was sitting right on the surface, the ocean waves would block the radar waves until I was really close, when I’d be able to see it anyway.
But what if I fixed a pole in the centre of the dinghy, and attached a metal plate to it that stuck up eight feet or so? I could test it as we sailed away. That seemed like a good idea. Okay, but I had to hurry. The clock was ticking.
So I removed one of the plated steel doors from the interior wall of the sub—it was fourteen inches square, and weighed about twenty pounds—and I took the gaff, which was seven feet long, and fastened its hook to the plate using small C-clamps. I took my largest steel pot, cut it open with a hacksaw, and hammered it into a thin sheet of shiny metal. I drilled holes through it, and bolted it to the other end of the wooden gaff. Then I wrapped a thick layer of duct tape around the whole length of the pole, to strengthen it. Once outside on the sub, I inflated the dinghy, tied the heavy plate to loops on the floor, and then tied the dinghy securely to the rope that was coming up from the ship.
I stood back on the portal and watched the buoy behave in the breeze. It looked like a stop sign planted in the middle of a giant doughnut, but it tossed and pitched like any other buoy. It would likely reflect a radar signal very imperfectly, but that would be an indication of its location, too, since the signal would be weak and inconsistent, not strong and steady like that of a ship. My radar could detect an object from ten miles at best. Would this makeshift buoy do that? I would find out only as we left the area.
The last thing I did before leaving was to draw a circle with a two-hundred-and-fifty-mile radius out from our coordinates on the map. I drew arrows with a pencil to show the present direction of the current. The current would likely change, and one thing was certain: the dinghy and the ship would not be where they were right now. This was a very rough method for finding something at sea, but it was the best I could do.
Though I was not very religious, I said a prayer for Sensei as I cranked up the engine and pulled away. Seaweed sat on the bow for the first while as we ploughed through the waves heading west. Hollie stood in the portal with me, looking back towards the spot where his new friend remained.
“Don’t worry, Hollie. We’re coming back for him.”
He looked at me to see if I was telling the truth. He knew the difference.
“We are. I promise.”
The metal sheet behaved more or less as I thought it would: it gave a decent signal while we were in sight of it, but the farther we sailed away, the weaker it became. As the dinghy spun around in the water, the sheet would present either a flat surface, a paper-thin edge, or something in between, and its signal would reflect that. From five miles the signal was fair, not great. From eight, it wasn’t very good, although it was still occasionally there. As we were leaving our radar reach, there was no sign of it at all. I took a deep breath. We were going to have to rely on hope now. That was all we had.
Chapter Twelve
In the two weeks I spent on the ship, we had drifted mostly in a northeasterly direction, occasionally correcting our course with the makeshift sails, and travelling probably a thousand miles. It seemed hard to believe that any floating object, either ship or plastic cup, could drift so far in that time, but the sea is the largest body on Earth, and it likes to move around. Looking at our coordinates now, I figured the closest land we could reach was the port of Choshi, on the mainland of Japan, not far from the city of Tokyo. Choshi was about two hundred and seventy-five miles away. We could reach it in little more than half a day, at top speed, with any luck.
Well, that turned out to be wishful thinking. It took an agonizing twenty-one hours to reach the coast. The current and wind pushed against us all the way. I didn’t dare sail on the surface for the last twelve miles, which, by the Law of the Sea, was Japan’s territorial zone, where we were much more likely to be spotted on radar, or by another vessel. So we sailed in at periscope depth, while I waited and waited for a suitable ship to follow into the harbour. There were a few vessels coming in and out of the port, but we needed to find one that could hide us beneath it perfectly.
Impatiently, I waited two miles offshore for almost three hours, until I spotted a small tanker turning in towards the port. I submerged to fifty feet, snuck in underneath her, and followed her in. With the pounding of her engines right above our heads, it was so loud it made my teeth rattle. Seaweed sat with a dark frown, and Hollie buried his head in his paws, but at least we were able to enter the harbour undetected.
I had to be extremely careful visiting Japan. Not only would Japanese authorities consider us a threat, being an unknown submarine coming in illegally, they would almost certainly recognize us from news f
ootage from the Southern Ocean. A few months earlier we had helped the Sea Shepherd Society prevent a tanker from refueling Japanese whaling ships. I had also been accused of sabotaging a Japanese tanker in the port of Perth, Australia, which I didn’t do, but they didn’t know that. They would consider me a criminal of the worst kind, lock me up, and throw away the key.
I had never planned to come to such a highly populated part of the country. I would have avoided the mainland of Japan altogether, and maybe just visited the quiet island of Okinawa, a thousand miles south. Now I didn’t have much choice; I had to seek help wherever I could get it, and try not to worry too much about the risk. I just could not get caught.
Beneath the tanker, the only way to know where we were was by sonar pictures of the sea floor below and the sound of the engines above. The sea floor kept rising as we approached the coast, but the tanker’s engines didn’t cut out until the last minute, which was pretty strange. Wouldn’t she cut her engines when the tugboats came out to meet her? I listened hard for the sound of tugboats, but it never came. Neither did the tanker cut her engines completely. That was crazy, too. Was she planning to run aground? The sea floor had risen a lot, and we must have been right outside the harbour. It was unnerving not being able to see. What the heck was going on?
I had to know before we ran into something ourselves, so I shut off the batteries, dropped behind the tanker, and rose to take a peek. As I raised the periscope and looked through the lens, I realized there was no harbour. There was only a breakwater, and, to the right of that, the opening of a river. That was where the tanker was headed, on her own power. It would take an awfully skilled pilot to make that turn around the breakwater and enter the river, but that was exactly what the tanker did. And we followed her in. Once inside the sheltered water, I let the tanker sail away from us and searched for a place to moor out of sight.
That, at least, was easy. Inside the marina were many berths for ships, and they were mostly empty. In fact, I saw only two small ships, which looked like coast guard vessels, and they were tied up, lights out, sitting as quiet as moths. It was late afternoon, but with the exception of the ship we had followed in, I didn’t see any more movement on the water. It was a small industrial-looking marina. While it wasn’t old, it looked more or less abandoned. That was strange, too.
Though we had to be careful, we didn’t have the luxury of wasting time. Every hour we took here was an hour less air Sensei had to breathe. I tried not to obsess about that, but it was hard not to.
Still, we had to wait until dark, which was two hours away. I couldn’t go marching across the bridge from the breakwater and through the dockyard in daylight. I would have to sneak across in the dark, like a ninja.
I chose one of the smallest berths that jutted out from the breakwater, tucked the sub into the corner, and waited for two hours. I spent that time cooking rice and beans, fed the crew an extra-large serving, and put out extra food and water for them. I didn’t plan on taking anything with me except some money in my pocket. I wanted to travel as light as possible. If I did get caught, I would tell the authorities exactly where the sub was, and that there was a dog inside, and just hope they would find a home for him. I let Seaweed out. He could survive anywhere.
Once it was dark, I rose until the hatch was barely an inch above the surface. I climbed out and tied up to the rocks. There were no lights on the breakwater. I went back inside, gave Hollie a pat and a fresh piece of rope to chew, and told him to wait for me. I changed my shorts for a pair of pants, put on my jacket, and pulled my hat down to hide that I was not Japanese. Then I climbed out, shut the hatch, and crept across the causeway to the dockyard.
The causeway led to a small open yard, and a few small warehouses. It looked like an industrial fishing dockyard. It wasn’t fancy, and I doubted there were any cameras. There didn’t seem to be any people either, but I couldn’t take the chance, so I stayed in the shadows.
As I looked around beneath the few streetlights here and there, I saw large piles of junk that had been bulldozed into the corners such as you would find at a landfill. Sitting silently in the dark were half a dozen bulldozers. The piles contained tires, wood, broken pieces of metal, plastic, bottles, buoys, rocks, and seaweed. The tsunami had struck here, I realized, though it must not have struck too hard because even the smallest buildings close to the water looked completely intact. I didn’t see broken windows or doors. There wasn’t much damage, it seemed, just a big mess. No doubt the large breakwater was the main reason. It had broken the tsunami’s back before it could destroy the town. But what about coastal towns without a large breakwater?
The industrial zone was wide but not very deep. It came to a sudden end at a small woods. There, I climbed a tree. It had been a long time since I climbed a tree, and I was surprised how easy it was and how much stronger I felt after just two weeks of training with Sensei.
From the treetop I saw a small city of houses and buildings, with few streetlights, and very few neon signs. It was eerily quiet. I had no idea which way to go, so I tried to memorize the shape of the city before climbing down from the tree. I was looking for a dive shop where I could rent scuba gear in the morning, and maybe even hire someone to help me. Asking the coast guard for help would have been a lot better, but that was not an option.
It wasn’t that late but there was no one in the streets. Nobody. After ten streets or so, I still hadn’t seen a single person. Where was everyone? There were lights in the houses, so I knew there were people here. But why wasn’t anyone out in the streets? Neither did I see any cars. Finally, after almost two hours, I spotted a little old woman hurrying down a street. Even though it was warm out, she was heavily dressed, wearing a kerchief over her head, and a mask over her face. I knew it was a woman by the way she scurried along. As she was moving pretty fast for an old woman, I had to run to catch up. When she crossed a street, and stood waiting for a red light to turn green, even though there were no cars coming, I caught up to her.
I startled her. I didn’t mean to. She said something urgently in Japanese, then covered her mask with a gloved hand. I had no idea what she was trying to tell me. Then she did it again, more urgently, as if I were doing something terribly wrong. I questioned her with my eyes. She shook her head angrily. Then she reached into her coat pocket, pulled out another face mask, and handed it to me. She kept saying one word over and over: “Fukushima! Fukushima!” But I had no idea what that was. She insisted so strongly that I take the mask, that I did. Then she bowed slightly and rushed away, around a corner and into a small apartment building. I wanted to follow and ask if she knew where a dive shop was, but figured I’d have a better chance asking somebody else. I put the mask in my pocket and kept going.
Most of the houses and buildings were small and very plain—just flat boxes with square windows and flat roofs. But some were curved, with tall rectangular windows and curled roofs with red clay tiles. Some even had dragon heads on the corners of their roofs, which were very cool. Most had lights on inside, but were dimly lit, as if they were trying to save energy. All of the houses had slat blinds in the windows, and, like the streets, were neat and tidy, except where piles of rubbish from the tsunami had been swept into corners and had not yet been picked up.
I searched and searched but could not find a dive shop. Neither could I find an open restaurant, or even a pizzeria! I might as well have been looking on the moon. What the heck was going on? The tsunami had struck days ago; surely there was nothing to fear now?
Finally I walked in front of a TV shop, and though it was closed, there were screens on in the windows. All of the TVs were showing the news, and the news was the same: pictures of buildings by the ocean that looked like large factories or chemical plants. I saw signs for radioactivity. Most of the writing was in Japanese, but there were a few words occasionally in English at the bottom of the screens. I saw the word “Fukushima” over and over. That was the word the old woman had said. The news showed workers standing around i
n special suits, like space suits, watching the buildings, but not going inside. “Fukushima. Fukushima …” the TVs repeated.
As I continued staring at the screens I started to wonder if something more than the tsunami had happened. The screens switched to a city on the shore, where they showed buildings being flattened by the sea, with cars, trucks, and even ships being washed right into the streets. The tsunami had struck some cities very hard. Even though it had happened a couple of days earlier, they were still showing the footage constantly. I stood mesmerized by the destruction. Hundreds of cars and vans were being swept around like empty tin cans in a sewer drain. Large industrial fishing boats were lying on their sides or heaved right on top of buildings. It was unbelievable to see.
People were clinging to the roofs of their houses that were being swept away, and bodies were shown strewn across beaches. I couldn’t believe it. All of this had happened very close to here, although Choshi had been spared.
But the news kept repeating the words, “Fukushima … Fukushima …” And then … “Nuclear Meltdown.” I froze. As bad as a tsunami was, I had the feeling a nuclear catastrophe might be much worse. Now I knew why the old woman had been wearing the mask. I felt my skin crawl as if there were tiny spiders all over it.
Chapter Thirteen
I reached into my pocket and put the mask on my face. I pulled the collar of my jacket tighter around my neck. Now I knew why the people here were staying in their houses. They were trying not to breathe in radioactive air. I couldn’t help breathing it in. Two minutes ago, the air seemed normal to me. Now I was afraid it would kill me. Would it kill me? Everything I had ever read about radiation was bad.