The Gate

by Bob Mayer

  In appearance, the jet looked like the experimental American V-22 tilt-rotor Osprey, with the major difference being that instead of propellers on the wings there were two jet engines. This allowed the tilt-jet to fly at airplane speeds, twice the speed of the Osprey. Like the Osprey, it could hover and land like a helicopter when its wings were rotated from the horizontal through the vertical.

  The tilt-jet was being developed by a company controlled by the Black Ocean under a Japanese government military contract. It was highly classified and still supposedly in the “testing” stage, but the Black Ocean had been flying this prototype for the past two years. Its unique features made it most valuable for entering foreign countries where there were no prying customs officials.

  In the rear, Kuzumi had spent an anxious flight, his mind going over all that he had been told by his various sources, trying to make sense of it. The fact that it didn’t make sense convinced him that his decision to come to America to personally take charge was the correct one. The stakes with Genzai Bakudan on the table were simply too great.

  “We will be landing here,” Nakanga said, holding a map in front of the Genoysha. The point he indicated was in the Presidio at the south end of the Golden Gate.

  Kuzumi remembered the place from his days at UC-Berkeley. “That is a military post,” he said.

  “It is now a national park,” Nakanga said. “It will be deserted at night. I have not been able to get in contact with Ronin Nishin to meet us—” He paused as Kuzumi held up a hand and took the map from him.

  “I will make arrangements for our meeting. It is not Nishin who I wish to speak to.”

  Nakanga frowned but didn’t say anything. “Yes, Genoysha.”

  “We must not be discovered,” Kuzumi warned.

  “We are under the airport radar. We will not be detected.” Nakanga paused. “Sir, with all due respect, I believe I should know what is happening in order that I might serve you better. Who are we meeting?”

  Kuzumi looked up from the map. “You will serve me by doing as I order.”

  Chastened, Nakanga left the rear cabin to go back up front.

  *****

  “Hurry,” ordered Okomo, “we must beat the Koreans to the bridge so we can lie in wait.”

  “We will get there before them,” Captain Ohashi calmly said. “It is right ahead. Prepare your men.”

  Okomo yelled out to the Yakuza gathered on deck and two of them began putting on wet suits and scuba tanks.

  Still curled up off the edge of the bridge, Nishin continued to work feverishly to free himself. His hands were bleeding from cuts he had inflicted upon himself from the ice scraper. It was awkward holding the handle with just the edge of the fingers in his right hand and he nicked skin as much as he hit rope.

  He had not seen any more of the woman and the figure in black. They must be in the room below the bridge. The tug was churning through the water, the deck plates vibrating from the thrust kicked out by the powerful engines. He could feel the chill air blowing across his skin, and looking down he could see the dark water of the harbor almost ten feet directly below.

  “There is the south tower!” Ohashi said as he slowed the tug and turned the wheel.

  The tower disappeared into the fog, the roadway 210 feet above not visible. Above that, the tower rose to over 746 feet above the surface of the water. Below the surface, the tower extended down over 100 feet into the mud and then bedrock.

  At water level, the tower was perched upon a concrete and steel pier surrounded by a circular concrete fender. The pier base was over 65 feet thick. The concrete fender around it was 155 feet high, going from the bedrock below to 10 feet above the surface of the water. When the bridge had been constructed in the ‘30s, the fender had been built by first extending a pier from the south shore, over a thousand feet away to the proposed location. Divers were sent down and blasted through 20 feet of mud into the bedrock.

  The wall was built up to its present height, then the water inside was pumped out, allowing the engineers to build the pier base inside the hollow and now dry interior. The tower was then built onto the base. A reinforcing iron frame and rock fill had been placed around the pier base after the tower had been completed and then water had been let back in to allow the entire thing to settle.

  The Yakuza tug was dwarfed by the size of the pier base and fender. Warning lights flickered along the top of the fender, telling ships to keep away. The tug’s engines had to fight the swift current to keep steady, just a few feet away from the pitted concrete wall.

  As Nishin continued to work on the rope, he wondered how the Yakuza knew the tower was where the Koreans would head. He also wondered who had put the bug in him. It indeed could have been done by the Black Ocean to keep track of him. Certainly they had the opportunity during his training to do such a thing. But he was also afraid it might have been done by someone else.

  Regardless, he could wait no longer. The massive tower was just off the port side of the tug now. Everyone on the bridge was focused on that side as the two men were done putting their scuba tanks on. The first of the two slid over the side and into the water, holding a powerful light in one hand and a six-foot-long hooked piece of metal in the other. Nishin saw the purpose of the piece of metal as the man hooked into a crevice in the concrete ship fender to hold himself in place against the strong current.

  The first diver had disappeared under the swirling water and the second one hooked into place. Suddenly Nishin understood where they were going and why they were going there and that kicked in an extra jolt of strength to his sawing.

  The last strand of rope parted under the plastic point of the scraper. Nishin swiftly stood, grabbing the chain and sliding it through so that he was free.

  “Hai!” One of the Yakuza on the bridge spotted him and came running. Nishin slammed the ice scraper into the man’s chest, pulled it back out, turned, and dove from the bridge to the water below, gulping in a deep breath as he went down.

  He hit the surface and went under. Nishin finned hard, feeling the hull of the tugboat with his free hand, the scraper in the other. He could feel the current tearing at him and he knew he had only one chance to survive. He followed the curve of the hull, feeling barnacles attached to the metal tear at his free hand as he remained oriented.

  The keel of the boat slipped by. He put both feet against the side and pushed off toward the hulking presence of the tower fender. He smashed his head into concrete, then scrambled his free hand along the pitted surface, tearing fingernails, searching for a hold.

  His fingers slipped into a vertical crack and he was no longer moving, ten feet below the surface of the water. There were lights being played along the water above him and he imagined the Yakuza there had their weapons trained all around the boat, waiting for him to surface. He twisted and looked about, tucking the scraper into his waist. He could see the underwater glow of light from one of the lamps to his left and slightly down. Nishin’s lungs were burning as he pulled himself down and in that direction.

  Nishin spotted the top diver, just ten feet below him. He was uncertain whether he could make it but he had no choice. Hands pouring blood from cuts and scrapes he pulled himself down with every ounce of energy left in his body. The diver was unaware of his presence as Nishin closed the gap.

  Nishin pulled out the scraper from his belt, turned head down in the water and pistoned the last part of the distance with his legs. He looped his left arm around the man’s neck as he jammed the point into his back repeatedly.

  An explosion of bubbles from the man’s mouthpiece and blood from the wounds filled the water. The man couldn’t let go of the metal hook or he’d be swept away, but by not letting go he couldn’t defend himself against Nishin. By not solving that Catch-22 in time the diver died. Nishin dropped the ice scraper and grabbed the hook with that hand. Then he ripped the regulator out of the slack mouth and took a deep breath, tasting the man’s blood on the mouthpiece and not caring. He gasped in several m
outhfuls of air.

  Nishin pulled the tanks off the man’s back. He also took the man’s mask, putting it on and then clearing it with air from the regulator as he’d been taught. The light was dangling by a safety cord from the limp wrist and Nishin appropriated that. Then he took off the man’s weight belt and, with difficulty, strapped it around his own waist. He also took the man’s dive knife. Before he tucked the knife under the weight belt, Nishin slammed it into the man’s chest twice, once in each lung. He then pulled the dead diver to his chest to make sure all the air was out of them. When he let go, the body floated away at neutral buoyancy.

  Looking below, Nishin could see the first diver was a faint glow about twenty to thirty feet away in the murky and pitch-black water, unaware of the struggle that had just occurred above him. Using the hook, Nishin began to follow him down.

  *****

  “He was swept away by the current,” Captain Ohashi said.

  Okomo cursed. The body of the Yakuza Nishin had killed was still lying on the floor of the bridge, a pool of blood underneath him. There had been no sign of the Black Ocean man surfacing. Yakuza lined the rails, weapons at the ready.

  Ohashi pointed out to the west. “He will die many miles out to sea. No swimmer can fight this current.”

  Okomo spit. “All right. Pull us away. Let us leave this open for the next ship, whoever that might be, to park.”

  The tugboat slowly slid away into the fog, crossing the Gate directly under the unseen span of the bridge until it was just offshore, where the northern tower was built on the edge of the land. Hiding in the shadow of that tower, they would remain unseen by radar, yet be close enough to get back to the southern tower when necessary.

  *****

  Nishin soon found the rhythm of sliding the hook down a couple of feet and pulling himself after it, then repeating the maneuver. He found it so well that soon he was only a few feet above the first diver who appeared as nothing more than a dark figure in the cone of light put out by Nishin’s light.

  As he got closer Nishin decided on a course of action. He slid his hook down and then over the diver’s when it was paused. That locked the man in place. He looked up and Nishin smashed the butt of his knife into the other man’s mask, shattering the glass. The man flailed about, blinded. Nishin slipped the knife under his arms and slashed his throat. Blood squirted out into the light of the lamp.

  The man let go of his hook and tried to kick for the surface, but Nishin reached out and grabbed hold of his weight belt, keeping him in place. Blinded and dying, the man offered little resistance. When there was no more movement, Nishin insured that the diver’s hook was jammed in place in a crack in the concrete, then he slipped the other end under the diver’s weight belt, holding him in place. Then he continued his journey down.

  Occasionally he could see steel bars sticking out of the concrete or loops of metal where the workers sixty years ago had made an underwater scaffold. His entire world consisted of the slightly curving concrete wall in front of him and the inky blackness all around. Nishin could hear his breathing and he forced himself to slow the rate down. He had no idea how deep he was and he tried to remember what he had been taught in the fast and furious dive classes he’d been given as part of his training. He’d never had to use the training before, but he did remember that there was a definite limit to how deep he could go and how quickly he could resurface. He had to assume that since the two Yakuza had planned on going down here with the same equipment, that it was safe for him so far.

  He spotted something and froze, then relaxed. The bottom, a brown, dirty spread of streaked mud pressing up against the concrete fender. Nishin went down the last few feet and stood, his feet sinking into the ooze. From the way his bubbles were blowing away, the current was not quite as swift here, but it was still strong.

  Nishin looked left, then right. Which way? He chose to the right. Using the hook to keep himself from being washed away, he made his way around the base of the fender, his feet kicking up swirls of mud that were quickly swept away.

  He made forty feet when he saw something ahead. With each step, the shape materialized out of the dark—a short blunt metal cigar-shape, half covered in mud. A conning tower was in the center bearing the rising sun of Imperial Japan. The sub was canted over on its right side, pressed up against the tender at a sixty-degree angle.

  Nishin’s feet clanged on metal as he clambered up the steel slope of the forward deck. He could see the cable for the submarine’s anchor stretched into the mud. Another cable came off an eyebolt on the deck and was looped around an exposed steel rod from the tender.

  Nishin reached the conning tower, but his gaze was drawn to the rear of the sub where two steel cables led back into the darkness. He adjusted the light and in the glow he saw a rectangular metal object at the end of the two cables. The mud was pressed up against the bottom half, but the top half was kept free of debris by the strong current. There was no mistaking the Japanese script written on the steel: GENZAI BAKUDAN.

  CHAPTER 15

  SAN FRANCISCO HARBOR

  THURSDAY, 9 OCTOBER 1997

  12:09 A.M. LOCAL

  “Negative radar contact,” the young rating called out from his chair on the left side of the bridge.

  Captain Carson, the Coast Guard officer in charge of the U.S.S. Sullivan, looked over at the man who had identified himself as Agent Feliks. Upon boarding, the man had flashed both a badge and a set of documents indicating he was a very high-ranking federal officer and that Carson was to obey his every order. “Course, sir?”

  Carson, being a cautious man, had called his higher headquarters to check on the papers and received verification. Apparently this Feliks fellow was high up in the dark world of government intelligence. Carson had had DEA, CIA, and FBI operatives on board the Sullivan at various times, so he didn’t find this so odd. The Coast Guard was the branch of the government assigned with policing the nation’s waterways and coastlines, so whenever any other government agency needed to operate in that area, they called on the Coast Guard.

  It had taken Sullivan twenty minutes to gather a crew together and get the ship ready. They had pulled out of the Coast Guard station five minutes ago and would cross under the Golden Gate in another couple of minutes.

  “There’s a North Korean trawler out there,” Feliks said. “We need to track it down and my men will board.”

  Carson looked down at the dozen men dressed in black, wearing body armor and carrying machine guns that crowded his forward deck. His own crew was at battle stations, the forward five-inch gun manned and ready, along with four .50-caliber machine guns located about the ship. “My radar man reports negative contact,” Carson said.

  “It’s out there,” Feliks insisted. “We had positive satellite contact up until the fog rolled in an hour ago.” He put the tip of a finger on the chart on the table in the center of the bridge. “Right here.”

  “It’s not there now,” Carson said. “We’d pick it up.”

  “Then it’s hiding.”

  Carson looked across at his executive officer, then back at Feliks. “You can’t hide from radar on the surface of the ocean, sir.”

  “Could it have turned and gone out of range?” Feliks asked.

  “If it was here,” Carson touched the chart, “an hour ago, then it would still be in range of our radar even if it turned around and headed west at flank speed.”

  “Then it’s around here somewhere. What if they’re hugging the shore?” Feliks asked.

  “They might be able to hide in shore clutter, but...” Captain Carson didn’t complete the sentence. He had long ago learned to let these visitors on his ship make their own decisions and take responsibility. The minute he gave an opinion, responsibility started to shift.

  “It’s out there,” Feliks said with certainty.

  “Yes, sir,” Carson replied.

  “Then let’s get out there and find it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  *****
>
  Two hundred yards behind the Sullivan, Lake could just barely see the stern running lights of the Coast Guard ship through the fog. He could hear foghorns all around, blasting out their warning at different notes and pulses so they could be identified.

  He flipped open the navigational book for the West Coast that was in a small drawer next to the controls and flipped through it. He found what he was looking for: there was a foghorn on the south tower and north tower of the Golden Gate. He read the code for the south tower: two short blasts, one long, three short. Repeated every thirty seconds.

  Lake cocked his head and listened. Finally he heard it, almost due south. He was near the bridge, and even as he realized that, he could hear the echo of traffic on pavement above his head. He couldn’t see the bridge, but from the noise he knew he was directly below it. And that meant the Sullivan was heading out to sea.

  “You don’t know shit, Feliks,” Lake said for the second time this evening. He spun the wheel of his boat hard left and turned south.

  Adjusting for the strong seaward current, he headed toward the foghorn on the south tower. Within a minute he spotted the warning lights on the tower fender. Lake circled around the massive concrete fender. There were no ships.

  There was a metal ladder leading up to the top of the fender for servicing the lights and foghorn. Lake eased up to the ladder, then quickly jumped up on the prow of the boat and tied it off. The current immediately swung the boat around and pressed it up against the concrete, ruining the paint job as the swell slammed it back and forth. That was the least of Lake’s worries right now. He grabbed the scuba gear and began rigging. He was glad that the dive locker also contained a head lamp that strapped on above the face mask. Last, but not least important, Lake took the Hush Puppy out of its holster. He inserted a muzzle and chamber plug into the gun, waterproofing it.