Loud guttural sounds from the mouth of the shape.
Gama could not blink, his eyes frozen looking at the overhead. The hand on his cheek withdrew, and the ship swirled around again, until he saw just the carpeting and the wood in front of him, both beginning to fade in and out.
He felt his tongue fall out of his mouth, the fibers of the carpet irritating it. A copper taste seeped in, the red of his own blood flowing over the carpet and into his mouth. Still unable to blink, he lay like that until it seemed as if he were lying in ice water, the cold coming for him and finding him.
On the outside of his vision a border of darkness grew, forming a tunnel. The tunnel seemed to chase away the colors of the wood and carpet until they were spots of two tones of gray shrinking further to a small dot, the dot not so much winking out as swallowed by the black of the tunnel walls.
There was only dark, and there had only ever been dark, and he felt an acceptance of that. Yes, that was the word, acceptance. It was proper. It was… all.
* * *
As Chu advanced down the corridor, he looked for the flesh of faces, the black extensions of rifle barrels, the orange of Japanese uniforms. In the second door on the left side he saw all three — a rifle barrel pointed low, a pale face with dark eyes looking in panic up at him, an orange Uniform proclaiming his position. Chu’s reflexes took over, all the drills, all the simulations, paying off.
Four rounds clicked off, puncturing this face, changing it to a red and gray pulp.
A sudden motion from the right. Chu saw another figure, another wide-eyed face, another rifle barrel.
Three rounds in the man’s face, and the rifle barrel flew away from the body.
Chu spun around, checking behind him. His men had emerged from the hatch, moving slowly. Lo Sun was kicking open the doors on the right side close to the dead bodies. Chu turned back, continuing on, his eyes wide, his weapon up. There were doors on either side of the passageway. He slammed each open, weapon raised. Nothing in the first two on the left, a fleeting impression of berthing quarters revealed behind each door. The two doors on the right also revealed empty rooms, wider and more open rooms — recreational areas or dining facilities.
At the corridor’s end Chu reached a door near a ship’s ladder, a narrow, steep metal staircase, one flight leading up and aft, the other leading down and aft. He checked both ladders, then kicked in the door. Inside was a stainless steel and chrome bathroom, with three stalls, two showers, and three sinks. The open area was empty. Chu ran to the right, looking into the stalls, all the doors latched open, the room apparently empty. A door at the wall between sinks captured his attention. He opened it but found only the raw foam-insulated steel of the hull.
Several doors on the near and far walls revealed only storage space. Chu turned and left, emerging back into the carpeted corridor.
“U, below to the computer level. Take Yong. Zhang, secure the computer room. Xhiu, take the radio space. Lo, captain’s stateroom. Chen, take the first officer’s cabin. I’ll go first and secure the control room. Upperlevel officers, join me there when your spaces are secure. Report by radio in one minute. Mark!”
Chu grabbed the shining chrome rail to the ladder, spun himself around, and launched himself upward, three steps at a time, the platoon right behind him.
Chu ejected his clip even though it had a half dozen rounds left in it He wasn’t sure of the exact number of bullets remaining in the clip, and he didn’t care. He would enter the occupied upper level with a full clip.
The half-spent clip clattered to the deck far below, the new one clicking into place as he climbed the final steps of the ladder, emerging on the aft end of the wood-paneled passageway leading forward from the captain’s and first officer’s staterooms. He turned the corner and sprinted the five meters past the radio room and the computer room to the opening at the end of the passageway, where a heavy plastic curtain was pulled aside and fastened with a restraining strap. He knew the room layout by heart, having read and reread Mai Sheng’s intelligence manual so many times he could reproduce it by hand.
The worst problem in hijacking a submarine was taking over the control room itself. Coming in firing could cripple vital equipment, leaving them with scrap metal instead of a warship. Yet coming in without shooting was suicidal. The only reasonable solution was to use surprise as an ally, assassinating the control room crew members before they could react.
He had faced failure and death fully a half dozen times today, but the next meeting with potential failure — and death — he feared. That he had beat the odds so far made this even harder. The submarine was almost in his grasp, and here he was, about to lose it all if just one officer in the control room leveled an automatic rifle at him.
His death would not doom just him, it would doom the mission. Not just the attack on this submarine, but the sea battle he had planned in the East China Sea. If this mission had a glaring flaw, it was that too much expertise was concentrated in Chu’s own skull. Dammit, he cursed. One bullet, and Red China would never become the People’s Republic of China. His brainchild would be stillborn.
The pessimism rising in him fueled an anger far beyond the moment. That fury ignited him as he roared into the control room with another evil shriek.
* * *
When Captain Gama had thrown off his harness and dashed out the door, he had shifted control of the ship to Lieutenant Teshio Jintsu.
Jintsu had trembled as he had strapped himself into the command-console seat, the leather of it still warm from Gama’s body. His hands shaking, he had selected the command compartment middle-level video monitor.
He had watched while the commandos had burst out of the aft pantry and gunned down all four senior officers.
He heard the screaming of the first commando, a tall black-faced vision from a nightmare, the coughing sounds of gunfire, the horrifying liquid thumps of the officers hitting the deck, the forward-looking camera showing the skulls of two officers rupture, spilling blood and brains to the deck. The commandos worked their way forward to the ladder, and Jintsu quickly brought up the camera monitoring the upper-level passageway.
The lead commando ran down the corridor toward control — toward him. With only seconds left, seconds before death, a choked whimper escaped from his lips.
Tears of fear and frustration streaked down his cheeks, Jintsu horribly embarrassed that he was disintegrating during the worst crisis of his life. He tried to think, to regain control of himself, but his thoughts spiraled uselessly in panic. Feeling detaching from himself, he watched as he slowly unbuckled the five-point harness and stood from the couch. He hurried around to the far corner of the room, the last seconds of his life counting off.
Teshio Jintsu looked around one last time, then shut his eyes, clamped them shut, and put his hands over his face.
* * *
He had a vague impression of a dimly lit space, humming with electronic displays, air blowing coldly into the room, a cocoon-like cockpit in front of him, the tops of the consoles a half-meter higher than his eye level. Two consoles were located farther aft, mostly obscured by the first. There was a console on his immediate left. Far over his right shoulder, two steps led up to the elevated platform to the first console, and behind it in the corner was an odd arrangement that must be the periscope station.
Chu’s war cry died in his throat as he found himself in an empty room. In his all-encompassing first glance, his head swiveling from left to right looking for the Japanese, he could see the console on the left, and its seat was empty. What he could see of the aft consoles was likewise empty. He stepped up to the elevated platform, ensuring the first console was deserted. The periscope station was empty. He looked down on the aft consoles to confirm his initial impression — they were deserted.
His AK-80 still at the ready, he slowly crept back down from the elevated deck to the main level. He was walking around the tall equipment console of the first station when he heard something, a muffled wet sniffle.
He spun to his left. Ahead of him was the starboard bulkhead. As he walked toward it, he saw a cramped, unused space between the outboard console of the single forward-facing cockpit and the curve of the bulkhead’s equipment panels. Stuffed into the space was a man— no, just a kid — in orange coveralls. His knees were crammed up under his chin, his body curled into a ball, tears streaking his cheeks from shut lids, both hands held up, palms outward imploringly, both hands trembling uncontrollably.
Chu’s pistol came down slowly until the barrel was aimed precisely between the youth’s eyes. He tensed his finger on the trigger.
“Mother of God,” Chu said finally, holstering the pistol.
He reached down and pulled the shaking kid to his feet by the front of his coveralls. He towed him out of the control room to the upper-level passageway. He dumped him back on the deck, the young officer still shaking, his eyes still shut, his hands shielding his face.
Chu pulled out the AK-80 and put the silencer to the man’s forehead.
There was no equipment here that could be damaged.
Chu could put an entire clip into the officer and not hurt the ship a bit. The Rising Sun was now his. The men of his platoon had gathered at the forward end of the compartment, and Lo Sun gave him the sign that all was secure. This kid was the last obstacle between Chu and command of this submarine.
There was no way he could let the officer live. The risk was too great. There was simply too much damage to the mission he could do. And there was no time to deal with a hostage. Chu’s op order briefing manual had specifically prohibited any commander from sparing a single Japanese officer.
Chu knew it was time to kill the officer. He squeezed his finger on the trigger, but stopped when the boy started to whimper.
The more Chu looked at him, the more he reminded him of Lo Yun, brother of his first officer, the way Lo Yun had looked ten years ago when he had been Chu’s Yak-36A backseat weapons officer. Lo Yun had been twenty-three years old when he died, about the same age as this youth.
The whimpering continued. Chu’s barrel remained on his forehead. His men looked at him wide-eyed.
Time to kill him. Now. One bullet and the mission continues. It would be quick. Painless. Over in a second. Just one more mess to clean up and the ship was his.
“Oh, fuck,” Chu said, hating himself for what he was about to do. He put the silenced pistol barrel in the boy’s right eye. He squeezed the trigger slowly.
The bang of the pistol was loud, despite the silencer.
The youth’s head exploded, leaving brains against the bulkhead behind him and blood on the carpeting, a raw, meaty, liquid mess where an innocent face had been.
“Lieutenant Wong, clean this up.” Chu holstered the pistol and walked to the door of his stateroom.
There, in privacy. Admiral Chu Hua-Feng, current commanding officer of the MSDF submarine Artic Storm and admiral-in-command of a fleet of the most advanced submarines in history, bent over and vomited.
Five minutes later he sank to the deck, his eyes shut, his fingers pressed to his eye sockets, muttering two words to himself, repeating them over and over — “Good God… good God…”
* * *
Chu went to the control console. He had to loosen the five-point harness for his larger frame. The leather of the seat was comfortable, the arrangement of the consoles well designed. He spent a few moments scanning the panels. All of them displayed Japanese script, even the camera view out the top of the fin, showing the silvery undersides of the waves approaching the ship.
The periscope was down, the instrument’s mast lowered sometime during their invasion of the ship. Chu had not yet grasped how to raise the device, nor did he intend to.
But that was the essence of the problem of the moment — and the problems seemed endless — getting the ship to do what Chu wanted it to do. This vessel had very few knobs, control yokes, function keys, or dedicated instrument dials, just a cluster of computer workstations.
All were characterized by an arrangement of high-definition flat-panel and holographic displays. This was not a ship that he could treat like the Korean vessel, finding a tersely written procedure in a dogeared manual, then push some buttons, open an automatic-valve joystick, dial in a depth rate, push a control yoke to change control-surface positions.
No, this ship was completely commanded by the computer system. On the plus side, Chu had managed to raid the ship and take it over without a single bullet entering a computer cabinet. And without the slightest scratch to his crew. On the negative side, the ship continued steaming under the control of the advanced computer system, and the intelligence briefing manuals’ details were sketchy about the system. It was either very simple to operate or hopelessly difficult. Continuing adding up the negatives, the ship was at mast-broach depth, shallow enough that a ten-meter-long pole — be it periscope or radio antenna or electronic emission-detection antenna — would poke out of the sea five meters. Which meant the top of the sail was only five or ten meters beneath the surface. Which meant an approaching ship could smash into them and cripple them, maybe even sink them.
So far this ship was blind and deaf. It was an unfamiliar dog without a leash.
Chu knew he had to get the ship deep and steam west, away from the Japanese fleet, now possibly alerted to the fact that their submarines were in the hands of rogue forces. He had to hurry.
Forward, in the computer room, Chu had stationed his computer expert. Lieutenant Zhang Peng. Right now Zhang would be speed-reading the manuals embedded in the computer software, paging through displays, researching the control system. It might take him weeks to understand how to give the simplest order to the computer, or even to become acquainted with how to take manual control of the ship with the computer out of the loop.
Chu ran his hands through his close-cropped hair, staring helplessly at the computer display of the fin camera.
He opened his mouth to call out to Zhang, but instead checked his watch. It had been only three minutes since the last time he had demanded an update, and Zhang’s reply had been the same one he’d given before that— status unchanged.
“Right one effective degree rudder, change course to one eight five, aye, sir,” the Second Captain’s odd-sounding female voice responded in Chu’s headset. Chu had ordered Zhang to shift the system to English, the language all crew members understood.
Chu had retrieved the cordless headset off the deck near the console. It was a strange mechanism, with one earphone, a boom microphone, and a device that pointed at his right eye as if trying to read where he was looking.
A display in the lower center of Chu’s console changed from a readout of tank levels to show computer animation of the submarine ahead. The depiction was strangely real, with waves that caused shimmering patterns on the sub’s upper deck. The aft X-tail of the animation blinked, flashing red appearing on the control surfaces. The view suddenly rotated so that the observer looked down on the ship as it began to turn right slowly, from a superimposed line labeled 180, another line five degrees clockwise labeled 185. The numerals 185 blinked for a second as the Second Captain’s voice again spoke in his earphone: “The ship is steady on course one eight five, sir. All control surfaces now at zero effective rudder.”
Chu wondered what his script read at this point.
Shrugging, he said, “Very good.”
“Seems to work. Admiral,” from Zhang.
Inside, Chu smiled. The plan was working. It was time to drive the ship deep, then steer westward to the East China Sea and get out of the sea-trials area. The Japanese surface fleet would be coming soon, looking for their missing submarines. Once he’d made some miles east, he would need to communicate with his satellite— to tell the PLA Admiralty the good news — and with the other unit commanders. Then he’d instruct the seaplanes to drop their explosives and cargo of wreckage into the sea. They were loaded with oil tanks, pieces of fabric, scraps of plastic piping, some electrical cables, about a ton of
floating detritus each, all designed to buy time, to create the impression to the Japanese navy hierarchy that their subs had all sunk.
More important than that was to learn the ship, how to drive it, how to fight it, and how to make the Second Captain completely functional.
He was bone tired, and there were hours and hours of work to do. But then, so much had gone right They had done it, they had actually done it.
Chu felt like a proud father watching a son walk his first steps. His plan, his brainchild, was working.
STORM WARNING
Chapter 3
Wednesday October 27
DYNACORP NEW CONSTRUCTION (NEWCON) FACILITY
PEARL HARBOR NAVAL SHIPYARD
PEARL HARBOR, HAWAII
Vice Admiral Michael Pacino lifted his eyes upward, past the flank of the submarine to the structure of the ship’s tail towering over his head. The top of the rudder rose over seven stories high relative to the floating drydock’s deck. The ship was huge and graceful from this angle, the clean lines of her hull and the sharp edges of her tail section making her seem to lunge forward to the sea, even suspended motionlessly on the dock’s blocks.
The new ship was beautiful, much of her Pacino’s own design. Yet somehow today that thought held no magic for the admiral.
Pacino stood over six feet tall, thin and gaunt in his lightweight khakis and black shipyard boots. His white hardhat was painted with the crossed anchors and eagle of a Navy officer, three stars of his rank posted above, the legend below reading commander unified submarine command. He wore the three silver stars of flag rank on his collars, with a gold dolphin submariner’s pin above his left pocket. He wore a white gold Annapolis ring on his left ring finger, a scratched and worn Rolex diving watch on his wrist. The skin of his arms and face looked tanned, but actually had been damaged from a frostbite injury during an Arctic mission that had gone wrong.
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