by Bob Finley
As soon as he could get to them, he greeted his fellow ex-hostages with lots of back-slapping and good-natured affection. Then he carefully handed the suitcase over to Kim Matsumoto, who disappeared inside for calibration tests. Marc reluctantly accepted the offer of a celebration breakfast in the wardroom, knowing that to refuse would be ungracious. He made sure first, though, that his chopper pilots were extended the same courtesies by the enlisted mess. There, he knew, they’d be treated as actual heroes for having saved his bacon the day before.
Twenty-five minutes later, Kim appeared in the wardroom door. Marc immediately broke off the festivities and all heads turned toward Kim. He'd earned the respect of every person on board when, after debriefing, the word inevitably got around that he'd been responsible for inventing a gadget that kept the terrorists from blowing up the world.
Marc didn't need to ask. He just looked at Kim, who nodded.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this has been a pleasure and I’ve enjoyed it even though I don’t deserve it...but we've got some business to take care of. I believe you folks out here have a way of saying it that describes it best...it's time to ‘kick the tires and light the fires’!
There was a roar of approval and a scraping of chairs away from the table, as the room came alive with people hurrying to duty stations or to key spectator locations if they could finagle it. Marc and Kim followed the crowd, shuffling along the passageways and eventually stepping out onto the midships hanger bay door that had been lowered so that it projected out beyond the towering starboard side of the ship. The smell of windblown salt air mixed with the jet fuel permeating the cavernous hanger. Marc knew that his own aircraft had been moved to make room for three navy helicopters that were spooling up for launch topside. They’d fly cover for the coming operation. He also noticed that the Washington had slowed while he’d been at breakfast so that she was just barely making headway. A junior officer informed him that they had taken up a position about a half-mile from where they thought the VIKING would surface. They wanted to be sure, he said, that the submarine didn’t come up directly beneath them.
"‘Tenshun on deck!" someone stridently announced behind them. The j.g. beside Marc snapped to rigid attention. Marc turned as Captain Carruthers stepped over the threshold and onto the deck.
"Carry on," he directed to the men around them, casually returning the salutes. Smiling, he offered Marc a strong handshake. "So, you ready to do it?" he said.
"Yes, sir."
"Not necessary. Remember, you're a civilian." He smiled.
"Yes, sir. But my daddy taught me better," he replied, grinning.
"Mm. At least you didn't say he taught you to respect your elders."
"That, too." Justin guessed the other man to be ten to fifteen years older than himself.
"We’d better get on with this before I have you thrown overboard. I’ve ordered the helm to lie to. You did say you’d need us to be dead in the water?"
"Yes, sir, sir." They both laughed and moved nearer to the starboard edge of the deck. A few seconds later there was a hail behind them and Marc saw the whole bunch of former hostages spilling out the hatch after them. He noticed a woman in flaming red hair just behind them. She seemed to be talking rapidly to an unkempt young man in faded jungle greens who shouldered a broadcast-quality video camera as if it were a part of him. The two of them were hustling to catch up.
"Here comes trouble," the Captain growled partly to himself, partly to Marc.
"Who are they?" Justin asked, turning away.
"CNN reporter and a pick-up cameraman. They were the crash landing I mentioned yesterday."
Marc tried to read the officer’s face. "What do they want?" he asked.
Jerry Carruthers snorted and turned his head to look at his companion.
"You," he answered.
"I’m busy," Marc objected.
"You can try that one. It didn’t work for me."
It took him ten minutes to shake them and then only by promising an in-depth interview after the VIKING was raised and Jambou captured. Carruthers was grinning evilly when Marc finally got back to work.
Kim set the titanium suitcase down on the deck. He held his thumb on a print-recognition module for the three seconds it took for authorization and then flipped open the multiple closures, finally lifting the cover and laying it open. He pulled a telescoping antenna to full extension at each end of the case and lifted out what looked like a miniature fishing rod. Then he lifted a spherical, four-inch buoy from the case and attached it by swivel to the line on the rod. Next, he pulled a telescopic antenna out from opposite sides of the weighted sphere and, stepping to the edge of the ship, cast the buoy over the side. When it landed lightly on the water a couple of stories below, Kim paid out some slack and set the brake on the line reel. Finally, he lifted what appeared to be a palm-sized two-way radio from the case, jacked it into a cable he pulled from a pocket in the case, and turned to hand it to his boss.
Justin reached for it, hesitated, and drew his hand back. "You do it," he said quietly.
Kim gave him a startled look. "Why me?" he asked.
Marc smiled. "Without that gadget you made out of spare parts, and without your friend Yoko, we’d all be dead by now. Lots of people would. So...have some fun."
Kim searched his boss's eyes and saw that he was sincere. And he, too, smiled. "Okay. Thanks."
Justin stepped back and winked surreptitiously at the Captain. The rest of the freed hostages moved closer.
"Get him, Kim."
"Yeah, hurt him."
"Make him beg, Kim!"
Marc saw the cameraman squeeze in and light up the camera, panning the eager faces of the hostages, then the case on the deck, and coming up to zoom in close on the diminutive hero with the wind-tousled hair.
Kim grinned at his fellow adventurers and turned to face in the direction of the VIKING. He stood quietly for a full five seconds, savoring the moment. Then he slowly raised the microphone to his lips.
Chapter 106
"Ahoy the VIKING!"
Jambou jumped violently, his heart pounding in his chest. He’d been asleep. Or he thought he’d been asleep. In the pitch blackness he wasn’t sure anymore what was real and what wasn’t. Nor was he sure whether he’d only imagined the voice. He rubbed his face with one hand and clung to the blanket with the other. Unable to conquer his fear of the dark, he had long since used up the batteries in the three flashlights he’d found by keeping one of them constantly burning all the time. He had no idea what day it was or whether it was day or night. Not that it mattered. Down here, it was always night. He shivered and pulled the blanket closer around his neck to preserve whatever body heat he might still have. He could feel the soft carpet under his body and vaguely remembered some time or other lying down on the carpet of the control sphere. His lungs were laboring in the stale air. He wondered how much air there was left in the sub...how long it would be before he died either of hypothermia or asphyxiation. He shivered again and laid his head back down on the carpet. He’d heard that hallucination was common in the early stages of hypothermia. He closed his eyes.
Without a wristwatch of his own, it had been easy for Yoko to manipulate him. By powering down all illumination in the ship except a digital clock on the pilot’s console, she caused him to use up the flashlights he’d found. By shutting down the HVAC, the ship quickly cooled down until the inside temperature hovered at 36 degrees. And by shutting down the oxygen generators and fouling the scrubbers, she rendered him unconscious. Then it was easy to change the date/time clock, temporarily raise the oxygen level enough to revive him, and gradually convince him that days had passed before knocking him out again.
"Ahoy the VIKING! Do you hear me?"
Jambou gasped and jerked himself to one elbow. He didn't dare breathe for fear he wouldn’t hear it again. He’d come to hate the sound of his own voice because it had become the loneliest, most pitiful sound he’d ever heard.
"You don’t need to
do anything but answer. I’ll be able to hear you."
It was real! This wasn’t his imagination. There was really somebody there!
"Yes! Yes! I'm here! Who is that?"
Topside, Kim turned slowly toward Marc Justin and smiled.
"This is Kim Matsumoto."
‘Matsumoto! That little...!’
"Where are you?" Jambou croaked, the cold and stress affecting his voice.
"I’M ON A U. S. NAVY WARSHIP, A COUPLE OF MILES ABOVE YOU."
There was a pause. A ‘couple of miles’. He shivered involuntarily.
"DARK DOWN THERE, HUH?" Kim asked conversationally, his speech slow and low-key, as if he had all the time in the world. "BET IT’S PRETTY QUIET, TOO. MAYBE A LITTLE GROAN NOW AND THEN FROM THE SHIP, FROM ALL THAT PRESSURE TRYING TO GET IN. BEEN MEANING TO RECHARGE THOSE FLASHLIGHTS, BUT I JUST DIDN’T EVER SEEM TO HAVE THE TIME. YOU KNOW HOW IT IS."
Jambou felt the old, familiar fury rise up but he knew better than to take the bait. He couldn’t afford to, not in his position. What’s more, he knew instinctively that there would be a lot more humiliation for him to swallow in order for him to get out of this mess. If he got out of this mess.
"How long have I been down here? Why haven’t you tried to salvage this ship?"
"YOU DIDN'T EXACTLY MAKE IT EASY, DID YOU? WE THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD. WHICH RAISES A QUESTION...WAS THERE ANYBODY ACTUALLY IN THAT MINISUB THAT SANK?"
"Does it matter?" Jambou asked coldly.
"IT MATTERS TO ME," Kim replied just as coldly.
Jambou saw no advantage to lying, so he said, "No. It was remote controlled by a macro program in the onboard computer. Now, I've given you information...you give me some."
"SUCH AS?"
"When is somebody coming to get me out of here?"
On the deck of the Washington, Marcus Justin had an idea. He stepped quickly over to Kim Matsumoto and put his mouth to Kim’s ear. Kim listened, then nodded. He went back to the microphone.
"THAT DEPENDS ON YOU," Kim told him.
"What do you mean?" Jambou asked, trying not to hope.
"TELL ME WHAT I WANT TO KNOW AND I’LL SEE WHAT I CAN DO. YOU BROUGHT THIS ON YOURSELF, SO IF YOU JERK ME AROUND, YOU’LL GET NO HELP FROM ME."
"What do you want to know?"
"FIRST, WHERE’S MY BOSS? I WANT TO TALK TO HIM."
In the dark, Jambou gripped the back of the chair he was standing behind. He knew if he told the truth he’d be signing his own death warrant.
"I don’t know where he is," he lied. "I took the submarine and barely managed to escape New Victoria before the volcano erupted. If it hadn't been for that computer you have on board, I wouldn't have made it. It was the computer that piloted the submarine out of the volcano. Then something went wrong and all the controls stopped working. The submarine sank to the bottom and trapped me. The air is almost gone and I'm freezing. You have to get me out of here. You have to!" He hadn’t meant to go on that way, and hadn’t meant to sound desperate. But he did think he’d sounded pretty convincing.
On the flight deck, Kim's jaw hardened and his eyes became slits.
"I DON'T BELIEVE YOU. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MARC? WHERE IS HE?"
"Sentimental idiot!" Jambou thought to himself. "Worried about his trivial little job! I probably did him a favor."
"I told you I don’t know. I never saw him again after that attack on me in the computer room."
There was a silence. It grew to a half-minute. Then almost a minute.
"Hey! Are you there?" he called. He could feel the blackness closing back in on him in the silence. Still, nothing. What if the connection had broken? What if...
"YEAH. I'M HERE. WE’RE NOT FINISHED."
Jambou let out a sigh that Yoko made sure was heard topside. "What else is there?"
"ARE YOU KIDDING?"
"No, what are you talking about?"
"WHAT ARE YOU, STUPID OR STUBBORN?"
"What do you mean?"
"WHERE ARE THE BOMBS?"
Now Jambou let the silence grow. Tell them and die? Or tell them nothing and let them all die as well? Or...if there was actually a chance he could live through this, then tell them and live? Or lie to them, fool them, and still live?
"WELL?"
"Can you salvage this submarine and get me up alive?"
There was a pause.
"YES, I CAN. BUT ONLY IF YOU TELL ME THE TRUTH."
"I did tell you the truth. You mean, about Captain Justin? I did tell you."
"YOU HAVEN’T TOLD ME ABOUT THE BOMBS."
"If I do, will you get me out of this alive?"
"I’LL THINK ABOUT IT."
"Not good enough! You must give me your word."
"YOU MURDERING LOW-LIFE! YOU'VE KILLED THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE UP HERE, AND I THINK YOU’VE KILLED MARC JUSTIN AS WELL. NOW, I’M UP HERE IN THE SUNSHINE AND YOU’RE DOWN THERE ON THE BOTTOM OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN! AND YOU’RE GONNA DIE DOWN THERE IF YOU DON’T TELL ME THE TRUTH! IF YOU’VE DONE SOMETHING WITH MY BOSS, THEN WHAT HAPPENS NOW IS UP TO ME. I’M THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN SAVE YOUR MISERABLE LIFE. SO YOU’D BETTER BE THINKING ABOUT MAKING ME HAPPY, YOU GOT THAT?!"
Jambou stood stock still for thirty seconds in the cold dark, sucking hard to get enough oxygen in his lungs to keep going. The outburst had sounded real enough. And it was very possible that the little chink might actually be in line to take over the company, so he could be the one calling the shots. It was also possible that the fishbait’s company had the only technology that could get to him before he...
"Alright," he said. In three or four minutes he had outlined where the bombs could be found in all the countries he had put them. "Now, you have what you want. I don't think I have much time left. It's hard to breathe already. So, how long will it take you to get down here and get me out of here?"
"AS LONG AS IT TAKES TO NOTIFY THESE COUNTRIES AND FOR THEM TO FIND THE BOMBS."
"What?! That's not what you said you’d do! I don’t have that much time! I can’t wait that long! You have to do something NOW!"
The radio was silent for a few moments.
"WHEN WE FIND THE BOMBS, WE’LL FIND YOU."
It was Jambou's turn. He hated to give up anything, anything, voluntarily. To lose ground was to lose a battle. To lose battles was to lose the war. But here, in the dark, in the cold, in the silence, was not the time nor the place to die. Not if he could help it.
"Matsumoto!"
"NOT NOW. I’M GIVING YOUR DIRECTIONS TO A RADIO OPERATOR."
"I may have been mistaken about the directions. I may need to try again to get it right."
On the deck of the George Washington, no one moved. The only sounds were the waves lapping distantly against the armored hull at the waterline. Thousands of people aboard the giant aircraft carrier and millions more around the world riveted to the live CNN exclusive broadcast held their collective breaths.
"JAMBOU, ARE YOU JERKING ME AROUND AGAIN?!"
"No, this is the truth. Really."
And as he told it, even though it had yet to be proved, there was a cheer heard around the world, repeated over and over on newscasts for days on end.
Kim turned to the assembled mass and held up one hand. His newly found power brought an electrified silence as surely if a switch had been thrown. He raised the microphone.
"ALRIGHT, JAMBOU. I'M GOING TO SET ASIDE YOUR LIES ABOUT WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO CAPTAIN JUSTIN IN THE INTEREST OF THE GREATER GOOD. BUT THIS ISN’T OVER."
"How soon can you have someone here to get me?"
"WHEN THE LAST BOMB IS FOUND. AND, FOR YOUR SAKE, YOU'D BETTER HAVE BEEN TELLING THE TRUTH."
"I am, I swear I am. Please...hurry!"
With the state of worldwide communications, and the urgent compulsion under which each threatened country found itself, the last nuclear device was located in less than two hours.
Jambou had reclaimed the pilot's chair, wrapping the blanket tightly around himself. Now that he’d finally revealed the actual locations of the bombs
, he felt confident that a rescue effort would at least be launched. Once involved, the world’s conscience wouldn’t let Justin's flunky willingly execute him. They’d want him alive, if for no other reason than to parade him through their streets and courts so the ignorant masses would be fooled into thinking their corrupt politicians had actually accomplished something worthwhile, something on which they might be reelected. He smiled in the darkness.
It could have been worse. He got revenge on the diamond mongers who had cheated his family of their destiny. He’d gained worldwide notoriety. If he couldn’t have fame, he'd settle for infamy. He’d at least succeeded in getting rid of one problem. Justin. The one who’d been at the root of all the ways that his plans had gone wrong and had finally cost him his dream. But he was in the belly of at least one big fish by now. He smiled again, a smile as cold as the metal he touched. Then his smile faded as another thought forced itself into his mind.
"Like me," he thought ironically, looking around as if he could actually see the submarine in the darkness.
"JAMBOU."
"Yes! Where have you been? I’ve been calling you!"
"I’VE BEEN BUSY. BUT I’M BACK. TO KEEP MY WORD. ARE YOU READY?"
"Ready for what?" Jambou asked, confused. They couldn’t possibly have gotten a rescue operation under way that quickly.
"ARE YOU READY TO COME UP?"
"Of course I’m ready! When will someone be here?"
"THEY WON’T. YOU’LL BE HERE."
"What? What are you talking about?!"
"YOKO."
"Yes, Kim-san. It's good to hear from you."
The computer's voice, so long absent, startled Jambou.
"YOKO. POWERUP, PLEASE. ADVISE WHEN READY."
The ship was suddenly alive with sounds he couldn’t identify. Hums and chirps and beeps and...
"Power sequence running, Kim-san. Sufficient power available for 20% limited maneuvering."
"VERY WELL. BRING UP CONSOLE NAVIGATION LIGHTS."
The pilot's console in front of him flared to life. Red lights filled the panels and then, one by one the systems were cleared. The profusion of lights, subdued though they were, seemed blindingly bright to him after so long in total darkness.