The Wrecking Crew

by Taylor Zajonc

  CHAPTER 2

  Radioactive Exclusion Zone,

  Fukushima,

  Japan Present Day

  Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant glinted in January moonlight, gentle waves lapping against the snowdusted rock jetty below the crippled cooling towers. Tall transmission lines and cranes pierced the horizon, thick electrical cables disappeared into the darkness. Only the compound was lit, with dull yellow halogen lamps irregularly dotting the buildings and fences, leaving the abandoned coastal villages surrounding the area only darker by comparison. Behind the three main buildings, endless rows of white temporary storage tanks lapped up leaking irradiated groundwater as it seeped from the crumbling stacks.

  The submarine Scorpion drifted towards the power plant at dead-slow, her matte-black hull submerged, a single narrow periscope slicing through the dark ocean. The underwater craft mirrored the aesthetic of Fukushima—both stark and utilitarian, both relics of an era since passed.

  Dr. Hassan Nassiri stood in a corner of the Scorpion’s cramped command compartment with arms crossed, trying to swallow down butterflies as the tactical lighting bathed him in thick crimson. It still surprised him that a group of just five could run the entire 250-foot diesel/electric submarine, capable as they were in their individual specialties. He supposed they were lucky the vessel’s previous crew of mercenaries had automated and computerized the bulk of the antiquated systems.

  Before him, his captain—his friend, though it still felt a strange notion—clasped the periscope handles with both hands as he deftly navigated the submarine into the shallow foreign harbor.

  Yes, his friend … he’d discovered Jonah Blackwell—salvage diver, criminal, man without a country—in a secret Saharan prison. Caught on an illegal underwater mission in Moroccan waters, Jonah had been rendered by the secret police and forced to carve out a tense, often violent life among gangsters and terrorists. But this desert anvil had also forged the only man willing to accompany Hassan into the heart of Somali pirate territory, a man audacious enough to rescue the doctor’s captured mother and recruit a crew of hardy survivors and outlaws. Jonah and the doctor created the core of an unexpectedly effective team, their very own wrecking crew, Hassan with his intelligence and medical training, Jonah with his dual capacity for cunning and combat.

  But the voyage from Washington State’s Puget Sound had been long, long enough for the ghosts that haunted the corridors of their stolen vessel to make themselves known. Whenever he closed his eyes, he felt as though some unseen force spun a wheel until it clicked to a stop upon a terrible or profound recent memory.

  Blink.

  A proud island metropolis perched upon the foundation of massive oil platforms, its tall skyscrapers toppling into the sea under the impact of a hijacked supercontainer ship.

  Blink.

  His body wedged within the twisted metal of the Scorpion as the last of his air drained from his lungs, his narcotic mind reeling with panic.

  Blink.

  Seeing Alexis for the first time, the young Texan sitting on the floor of a superyacht engine room and bobbing her head to unheard music, eyes closed and her blonde hair and her freckles and her long, tan legs ...

  Blink.

  His mother, wrapped in white cloth as their pirate allies solemnly ferried away her pale, electrocuted body for an honored burial in distant lands.

  But the one remembrance he forbade himself was his life as an army surgeon in Morocco, the life in which he’d been building a lucrative part-time practice on the side, the life he’d abandoned to find his biologist mother after her plane disappeared over the Arabian Sea. Absent without leave from his military service, he’d been instrumental in multiple savage clashes, hijackings, and the obliteration of an entire island nation; too many lines crossed to ever return home.

  Hassan shook his head and ran his fingers through the tousled black hair that framed his dark eyes. He returned his attention to the datasteam steadily marching across his communications console. The butterflies again—but such was life amongst the barbarians. Always some measure of danger, however great or small.

  Jonah looked up from his periscope and grimaced, scanning the red-illuminated command compartment with piercing eyes. Hassan wondered if the American would ever lose his prisoner’s affectations or physicality, his intense, almost paranoid attention to detail, and his gaunt, muscled form.

  Over the course of the voyage, Jonah had kept his blonde hair close-cropped and beard tightly trimmed. Seeing the scarred-up knuckles and the residual hardening around the American’s eye socket and jaw, the doctor had to wonder if the beard covered up further scarring.

  “Vitaly—check the readings,” Jonah commanded, pointing at the Russian helmsman as he returned his eyes to the periscope. “How bad is our radiation exposure?”

  “About twenty mili-sievert per minute,” said Vitaly, glancing at a Geiger counter nestled approximately atop his testicles, his answer only somewhat discernible through a thick accent. “We in radioactive containment chamber drainage outflow for sure now. Maybe equivalent of one chest x-ray every two-three minutes. I am detecting Iodine-131, Caesium-134 and … da, Caesium-137. Like Chernobyl, nyet?”

  “Am I going to grow a third eye here?” asked Jonah.

  “For Russian, is no problem,” answered Vitaly. “For you, I think maybe not so good news.”

  “Doc?”

  “He’s right,” said Hassan, trying to dig through the cobwebs of his mind to a short rotation in radiology during his medical residency. “In two hours, we’ll be exposed to more radiation than we would in a typical year. I advise we not linger any longer than absolutely necessary.”

  “Agreed,” said Jonah, looking up from his periscope and patting the doctor on the shoulder as he turned to face the main corridor that ran the entire length of the submarine. Yes, friend … perhaps it wasn’t so strange a notion after all.

  Jonah pressed the intercom that lead to the engine room. “Alexis!” he shouted, loud enough to get the engineer’s attention over the constant thrumming of the recently overhauled diesel-electric engines.

  A static-filled response came back, not clear enough to make the words out.

  “How are my engines?” asked Jonah, again speaking into the intercom.

  “—good!” said a young female voice from the engine compartment, background noise echoing through the transmission. “We’re five-by-five back here.”

  “You want to come up here for a few, take a look at the harbor through the periscope?” asked Jonah.

  “Nope!” said Alexis. “I’m going to stay right here—surrounded by the thickest section of hull. You all can go ahead and get as irradiated as you want up in command.”

  The doctor couldn’t think about Alexis Andrews without allowing himself a tiny secret moment as he visualized her slim form and lively eyes. The fact that she was even on the Scorpion was nothing short of a happy miracle. Beautiful Alexis in her cutoff shorts, tank-tops and steel-toed boots, surrounded by engine lubricants and half-disassembled repair projects.

  Technically, Jonah and Hassan had inadvertently kidnapped her when they’d stolen the superyacht Conqueror under the ruse of a repossession order. Their fates had been linked since finding her stowed away the subsequent day. But what should have been a short, strange week among well-intentioned outlaws had transformed into a fight for survival.

  Stomping rang out from the metal deck of the main corridor, loud enough to make Hassan wince. Somali warlord and former pirate Dalmar Abdi pushed his way through the narrow entrance, rolling in one muscled shoulder after another to squeeze through and into the command compartment. Twin bandoliers crossed his chest like an X, each loaded with large-caliber ammunition. He held an assault rifle on a strap around his neck and a belt loaded with grenades and extra magazines, a small machete and twin pistols strapped to his thighs.

  Even after sailing with him for two months, Hassan didn’t quite know what to make of the former pirate king. Dalmar’s past r
emained shrouded in mystery, even legend. According to some sources, Dalmar was the son of Mohammed Farrah Aidid, Somali warlord and the illegitimate self-declared president at the height of American military involvement in the country. Supposedly, a six-year-old Dalmar Abdi had taken up arms and lead a company of children against an American rescue convoy during the Mogadishu “Black Hawk Down” incident. Another rumor declared that he was the son of a Somali soft drink magnate, educated in Rome before returning as a humanitarian worker. But upon discovering the state of the war-torn country and the vicious campaign against it by Western powers, he rose up and became the most feared buccaneer in the region.

  All Dalmar would say about himself was that he was a ‘dread pirate,’ a strange attribution that Hassan strongly suspected came from the 1987 film The Princess Bride. The one certain fact was that Dalmar and his men hijacked a massive container ship and slammed it into the artificial island city of Anconia Island, and now interests within Western governments wouldn’t rest until he’d been caught or killed. Now thought dead, Dalmar’s voyage on the Scorpion bought him the only three things that mattered anymore—distance, time, and anonymity.

  “I don’t think you’ll need that much firepower,” said Jonah, pointing at the bandoliers. “We’re having a meeting. We’re not assaulting the beaches of Normandy.”

  The pirate simply crossed his arms and glowered by way of response.

  Jonah clearly trusted the shipping heiress who’d set up the meet. Marissa was Jonah’s longtime associate and exgirlfriend, separated from him only when he mysteriously disappeared all those years ago. She’d still found herself willing to assist in a pinch after he resurfaced, even helped retrofit the Scorpion at an abandoned dry-dock in Puget Sound, and rehabilitate the submarine after the beating she’d taken in the Indian Ocean.

  “I think maybe not so good idea to trust Marissa,” said Vitaly, piping up from his navigations console. Jonah and Hassan had inherited Vitaly Kuznetsov with the Scorpion. Vitaly had been part of the crew sent to ambush and kill the pair, only to find himself at the wrong end of a pistol when the tables turned. Wounded by Jonah, the doctor saved Vitaly’s life and earned his loyalty. “She is ex-girlfriend, no? Woman scorned?”

  “See these?” said Jonah, showing Vitaly his bare wrists. “See how I’m not wearing handcuffs right now? We were one phone call away from getting nabbed during the retrofits.”

  “Could be part of larger plot,” said Vitaly. “She gains trust, and then sends you to excruciating death, maybe by torture. Would be very Russian of her.”

  “I like Marissa,” said Dalmar with a massive smile as he let his arms drop. “She told me all about how I am very famous.”

  “—terrorist,” added Hassan. “You’re a very famous terrorist.”

  “But I have fan pages on the internet!” insisted Dalmar.

  “I still think bad idea,” said Vitaly. “So maybe you come back from meeting. Maybe no. Vitaly will see.”

  “I hope we are ambushed,” interjected Dalmar as he inspected his assault rifle. “I have never killed a Japanese before.”

  “Seriously, lose some of the arsenal,” said Jonah, returning his attention to the periscope as they edged ever-closer to the Fukushima docks. “This is a polite meeting among polite company only. No killing.”

  “Very well.” Dalmar frowned as he peeled off his layers of firearms, ammunition and explosives like an ear of corn husking itself. “I will only bring my most polite weapons.”

  The Scorpion slid into the Fukushima docks with a long, low groan and shudder, the metal hull of the vessel scraping along the crushed, sunken cars stolen from the town by the retreating tsunami.

  “Sorry Captain,” said Vitaly with a grimace as he brought the submarine to a wince-inducing, grinding halt. “I think we maybe hit something.”

  Hassan, Jonah, and Dalmar watched from the concrete docks as the Scorpion slowly backed out to sea, her conning tower and periscope disappearing in a whirlpool of swirling bubbles. Alexis and Vitaly were more than capable of hiding the submarine on the ocean bottom until the party returned, hopefully finding a soft, muddy patch as far from the stricken nuclear power plant as possible.

  Jonah nodded as he adjusted his thick parka, zipping it up against the creeping cold of the damp January. All three had long since acclimated to brutal heat, not a winter chill—Hassan’s life in Morocco, pirate Dalmar Abdi’s home in the scrublands of coastal Somalia, Jonah’s long internment in a Saharan prison.

  “They’re saying this could be this region’s worst winter in a century,” said Hassan, his breath collecting into a cloud of frost as he spoke. Jonah just nodded.

  In silence, the three men followed a single paved road inland. The eerie, moonlit stillness surrounding them was otherworldly, reclaimed by the raging ocean. The first few blocks were stripped bare of any structure, large patches of dried mud and patchy brush bordered by cracked, potholed roads.

  Next came the true destruction, buildings torn from their foundations, scattered debris swept and bulldozed into tall towers, stacks of rusting, flattened passenger cars. In typical Japanese efficiency, the wreckage had been carefully transported to designated zones; the roads made clear for traffic that would never again return. And then there were the titans, the massive fishing and pleasure boats too large and difficult to tow back to the beach, some partially disassembled by acetylene torch, others simply left to moor in the mud.

  Hassan, his captain, and the pirate journeyed up the winding road connecting the docks to the highway. Only nature had withstood the tidal forces—while the landscape between themselves and the sea had been scraped clean, the stark forest on the other side of a low guardrail still rose tall and ancient.

  Jonah led, following the bent and rusted street signs to Futaba Park, a small, snowy city tract more than a mile from the docks. Approaching from the dark, Hassan could see their hosts had already arrived in a half dozen low-slung American Lincolns and Cadillacs of various vintage. The semicircle of headlights illuminated a set of stairs in the center of the overgrown park, the pavement surrounded by thick tufts of dead brown grass.

  Yakuza, thought Hassan. He recognized the dress of the dozen collected Japanese gangsters as they sat on the hoods of their cars and smoked, the tiny cherry red of their cigarettes bright in the deepening darkness. As the trio approached, the doctor could see the mix of ages and ranks, a few older men with close-cropped greying hair and expensive dark woolen coats and slacks, young men with bouffants, long, thick sideburns and shiny grey suits. All had tattoos peeking from their folded white collars and the cuffs of their tailored shirts.

  Clearing his throat, Jonah waved at the assembled men to get their attention. None so much as looked up. Hassan realized they had all craned their ears towards a loud car radio, over which played a tinny, rapid-fire news broadcast.

  “Why are they ignoring us?” whispered Jonah. “I don’t want to sit here getting my balls irradiated any longer than absolutely necessary.”

  Hassan always found the American male’s fascination with his testes quite tiring. Still, he had to admit a preoccupation with his own given the cold temperature and the frighteningly high levels of background radiation. His concern was only increased when the passenger door of the nearest opened, and a figure in a bulky white radiation suit awkwardly emerged from within the vehicle before turning to face the trio.

  “Marissa?” demanded Hassan in complete disbelief. He thought they’d left the young woman behind in the Puget Sound after repairs to the Scorpion were complete—and yet here she was, standing before them.

  “They’re not ignoring you—they’re listening to a news broadcast,” answered the shipping heir, crossing her arms as she stared from Jonah to Hassan and Dalmar, before back to her ex again. Her voice was slightly muffled by the clear plastic face of the blocky hood. “It’s about the Japanese whaling fleet in the Antarctic Ocean. The steering mechanisms of one of their harpoon ships failed, it struck the factory ship and sa
nk them both. No survivors have been located as of yet, the search is ongoing. Also, sorry for the surprise—it’s not like I can just Skype you guys ahead of time.”

  Without warning, the mob boss slammed his fist onto the hood of his late model Cadillac sedan and began shouting in rapid-fire Japanese punctuated by what Hassan assumed were expletives. The short man’s muscles had long turned to fat, but he still stood an uncontested master of the gangsters surrounding him. Hassan cleared his throat quietly and tried not to remind himself he was the only one that jumped at the sudden sound—Jonah, Dalmar and the tattooed yakuza didn’t so much as blink.

  “Don’t get me wrong—I’m happy to see you and everything,” said Jonah, narrowing his eyes. “But should I be concerned about your friend’s mood right now?”

  “He blames the environmentalists for the loss of the whaling ships,” answered Marissa. “Says it has to be sabotage. Been talking about it all night. Calls the activists rich, spoiled children of Western countries. He says Japan used to be strong. He’s asking where the Japanese youth are, and why they’re not fighting for their traditional way of life. Oh great … now he’s saying he’d like to have all of the environmentalists killed.”

  “Is he quite serious?” asked Hassan, folding his arms as he dropped the question with the drollest tone he could muster.

  “Yes and no.” Marissa shook her head. “Livid is kind of his default mood. Tomorrow it’ll be something else ruining Japan or someone else that needs killing.”

  “Help me out here,” Jonah said. “What are you doing with these guys? Didn’t we leave you behind before we sailed for Japan?”

  “Unlike you,” said Marissa, sounding out the words as though speaking with a particularly dim child. “I can fly commercial. I’ve been in Tokyo for almost a week. Turns out our friends here did a little asking around about you. Some of their associates lost a lot of money when Anconia Island went under, and they were seriously considering shooting you on sight if I didn’t show face and make a personal introduction. They gave me the heads-up out of respect for our past business dealing—legitimate dealings, Jonah, don’t even give me that look. You can thank me later, by the way.”