White Water td-106

by Warren Murphy

  "Anybody got a cellular phone?" asked Remo.

  "Sure. What for?"

  "I want to contact my boss. Maybe he has a satellite fix on that sub. If the torpedo was launched from a sub, it can't be too far from here."

  A cell phone was produced, and Remo dialed Harold Smith's contact number from the privacy of the bow.

  In the middle of the third ring, the phone picked up. And an unfamiliar voice said, "We have lost contact, Commodore."

  "Smitty?" asked Remo.

  Chiun, hovering close, hissed, "That is not Emperor Smith."

  "Shh," said Remo.

  A second voice, smooth and almost without accent, said, "Repeat, please."

  "There is no telemetry coming from the Hound."

  "Take the usual precautions."

  "Understood, Commodore," the first voice said, fading slightly. Then it called out, "Transmit selfdestruct signal."

  Remo said, "Self-?"

  His eyes went to the iron thing on the afterdeck. Sandy Heckman was looking it over with her bone white fists on her orange hips.

  Dropping the handset, Remo covered the distance from midships to the afterdeck in two seconds. He took Sandy by her big floppy collar and sent her spinning backward. Her yelp of surprise was lost in the clang of the torpedo after Remo punted it with his naked big toe.

  The torpedo shot off the deck, dragging netting along with it, and slipped over the side.

  It made a healthy splash, and the salt spray was no sooner pattering on deck than the stern gave a convulsive leap.

  A geyser of salt water roared a solid dozen feet over the rail and came down on deck to immerse the spot where Remo had stood. Remo was no longer there. He had faded back, grabbing Sandy Heckman by the waist while on the move.

  They were in the shelter of the pilothouse when the cutter's stern finished bucking and wallowing.

  "What the hell happened?" the helmsman shouted over the after roar.

  "Later, I gotta check the stern," called Remo.

  Remo flashed back to the stern and leaned over.

  He was looking for diesel fuel and oil. There was neither, just sea foam boiling. A few dead whiting popped to the surface, their eyes looking stunned and incredulous.

  Dropping over the side, Remo grabbed on to a coil of nylon line. With this he lowered himself under the waterline, away from the screws.

  From below, the cutter looked a little ragged. One screw was turning with a slight wobble. But there were no ruptures, no serious damage.

  Going back up the ladder, Remo reached the deck.

  Sandy Heckman confronted him. "How did you know it was going to explode?"

  "The cellular picked up some kind of transmission about a self-destruct signal. I figured it meant the torpedo."

  Sandy frowned. "A cellular shouldn't pick up ship-to-ship radio traffic. It's on the UHF band."

  "I know what I heard, but if you want I'll go get the torpedo back and we can try again."

  "No, thanks."

  The Master of Sinanju came bustling up with the cellular, saying, "Smith desires to speak with you."

  Remo took the handset. "Smitty. Is that you?"

  "Of course," Smith snapped. "You called me."

  "I tried to. I got some kind of intercept."

  "I heard it, too. One party calling another 'Commodore.'"

  "We almost went down out here, Smitty. We hauled up some kind of dingbat torpedo and it blew up right after the commodore gave the self-destruct signal. I got the torpedo into the water just in time. Not that there's a lot of gratitude floating around," Remo added dryly.

  Lieutenant Sandy Heckman pretended not to hear him.

  "Listen, Smitty. Can you get a new fix on that sub?"

  "I have its position as of four minutes ago."

  Remo relayed the coordinates to Sandy.

  "We can be there in ten minutes," she said crisply.

  "Get us there."

  Smith broke in. "Remo, if you intercepted a cellular phone call on the high seas, it had to have come from a boat or submarine."

  "My money's on the sub."

  "A submarine cannot broadcast while submerged. Therefore, it should be visible on the surface. If you move quickly, you will catch it while it is most vulnerable."

  "Great. I'm itching for another crack at that pigboat."

  "I want answers first, bodies second."

  "You'll get both," Remo promised, snapping the phone off.

  Facing the Master of Sinanju, Remo said, "We're about to have our showdown."

  "Bodies first, answers second."

  "Smitty wants it the other way around," Remo said.

  "I am certain you will be able to explain your errors to Emperor Smith without bringing dishonor on the House you have shamed by your abysmal failure," Chiun said thinly.

  "You're pretty pissed for a guy who only lost a boatload of fish."

  "My soul yearns for good fish."

  "Hope tin fish will satisfy you."

  The Master of Sinanju looked puzzled. "I have never tasted tin fish. Is it like steelhead trout?"

  Chapter 17

  Finding the submarine proved the easy part.

  The USCG cutter Cayuga hammered along on a dead heading for the coordinates Harold Smith had provided, and abruptly there it was, wallowing in the trough of a wave like a wet black cigar.

  "Thar she blows!" said Remo.

  They stood in the bow beside the sixteen-inch gun, which was coated with a rime of frozen salt spray.

  Lieutenant Sandy Heckman, the floppy collar of her orange Mustang survival suit pulled up to her ears, trained her binoculars on the sub and said, "I never saw a flag like that before."

  Chiun's eyes thinned, and he said, "It is a French vessel."

  "That's not the French flag."

  "It is the flag of Clovis and the Frankish kings, although the hues are wrong," Chiun insisted. "It should be gold against blue."

  Calling back over her shoulder, Sandy said, "Sparks, see if we can raise these submariners."

  In the radio shack the radioman got busy.

  "Why are radiomen always called 'Sparks'?" Remo asked.

  "Beats remembering names," Sandy said distantly.

  Sparks raised the sub-but not in the way intended.

  A hatch popped and up from the sub's innards came seamen wearing insignialess white uniforms. Their faces were white, too. Remo saw clearly the fleur-de-lis squatting on greasepainted faces like flat blue crabs.

  They applied pry bars to a deck hatch, and up came a big steel deck gun on a revolving mount.

  "I don't like the looks of this," Sandy muttered.

  They got the gun turned in the Cayuga's direction, and Sandy shouted, "Helmsman! Evasive action! Looks they mean business with that deck gun."

  Slapping her binoculars to her eyes again, she muttered, "What the hell is their problem? We're in international waters." Then she grabbed the bow rail to keep from being flung into the water.

  The cutter heeled and all but reversed course. It began charting a slashing S course on the surface of the Atlantic. Wild spray spattered the superstructure, freezing almost instantly.

  A dull shot boomed. They heard the whistle of the shell as it jumped from the smoking muzzle. It whistled over the radar mast and smacked into a cresting swell about thirty yards aft of the quarterdeck, vanishing completely with a gulping sound.

  "Sloppy shot," said Remo.

  "It was a warning shot," Sandy called back over the climbing roar of the engine. "Sparks, did you raise them?"

  "No answers to our hails."

  Under the busy guidance of the three ghost-faced seamen, the deck gun continued to track them.

  The gun coughed again. A smoking shell dropped out of the breech to roll off the deck into the sea with a sizzling sound like a hot poker being doused.

  This time the shot struck ahead of their bow. The cutter ran into the cold uprush of seawater. It washed over the bow, dousing Sandy in bitterly cold brine.<
br />
  Remo and Chiun had retreated to a safe remove ahead of the sloshing downpour.

  Sopping wet and turning blue, Sandy Heckman sputtered, "That's it! We're returning fire."

  "I got a better idea," said Remo, stepping out of his shoes again. "Let me handle this."

  "How?"

  "By knocking out that gun."

  "With what?"

  "Surprise tactics."

  And Remo back-flipped into the water.

  SANDY HECKMAN WAS watching this time. She saw Remo standing there, still in the black neoprene wet suit, then suddenly he'd vanished. She heard the splash this time. It wasn't much of a splash. Porpoises sliding back into the water make a smooth entrance almost as devoid of sound.

  She leaned over the bow rail. The water was already regathering at the point where Remo cut the surface. There was no sign of him.

  Sandy turned to the Master of Sinanju. "He'll be killed."

  "He will succeed. For he has been trained by the best."

  "The best what?"

  "There is no what when one speaks of the best. The best is the best."

  "And who or what is the best?"

  "I am," said Chiun.

  Sandy trained her binoculars on the submarine. They were jockeying the deck gun around again, looking very determined. Or as determined as a trio of clown-faced sailors could look.

  "We can't wait for them to get lucky." She raised her foghorn voice again. "I need a gun crew here."

  Coast Guardsmen came running up to man the sixteen-inch gun.

  JUST UNDER THE OCEAN surface, Remo arrowed toward the sub dolphin style, feet flippering like a frog long enough to create momentum. The rest of the way he simply glided. That way there was no wake or surface disturbance to betray his line of attack.

  The sub was a big target. He reached it, slipped under the hull using his hands to guide him. This got him to the other side of the rolling U-boat, unseen and unsuspected.

  The gun crew had just lobbed its third shell at the zigzagging cutter when Remo's wet head came out of the water. He lifted his hands and took hold of the hull. It felt slimy to the touch, but he got up onto deck with a smooth pulling motion.

  Pausing to let water drain from his suit, Remo raised his body temperature to take care of residual wetness and crept toward the preoccupied gun crew.

  He took them out the easy way.

  Two were hunkered over the swiveling mount mechanism, and Remo just grabbed them by the backs of their heads, bringing them together before they registered they were in trouble.

  Their heads split open with a dull, pulpy crack, and the two seaman dropped from Remo's grasp, their exposed brains mingling like two flavors of pudding.

  That left the gunner. He had his hand on some kind of pull-cord trigger and was getting ready to yank it again.

  Slipping up, Remo tapped him on the shoulder.

  Startled, he turned.

  "It's not nice to shoot at the good guys," Remo said.

  The man's blue-rimmed mouth dropped open in his white face. It looked like a toothy red cavern, and he started making inarticulate fish sounds of surprise.

  "Can you say myxobolus cerebralsis?" Remo asked.

  "Buh-buh-buh."

  "I didn't think so," said Remo, who shook the man by the head so fast his brain discombobulated into cold gray scrambled eggs. The seaman stepped back, eyes rolling in opposite directions, while staggering and stumbling about the deck as his nonfunctioning brain gave his body unrecognizable neural signals.

  When he walked off the deck and into the brine, Remo figured he got what he deserved.

  Stepping away from the gun so he could be seen, Remo lifted both arms, crossed them and waved broadly.

  The cutter was bearing in on them, and Remo started to wave it in.

  A second later he was ducking. The bow deck gun shed a shower of icicles, and out of a sudden cloud of gunpowder came a smoking shell.

  On either side M-16s began spraying bullets in stereo.

  Remo hit the water ahead of the storm.

  The din of striking rounds penetrated the cold ocean water. There was a dull boom. The sub shuddered and rolled, and when Remo lifted his head out of the water, he saw the cutter had scored a direct hit. The amidships hull was perforated at the waterline. The sail had taken a direct hit and was a smoking tangle of ruptured steel. Waterline bullet holes were drinking seawater and giving back air, making the sea bubble and bloop drunkenly.

  A seaman poked his head up from the deck hatch. Remo put two fingers in his mouth and whistled to get his attention.

  The seaman blinked, looking around in confusion. Remo whistled again and he crept as close to the water as he dared.

  With a kick Remo came up out of the water like a dolphin standing on its tail. He grabbed the sailor's blouse with one hand. When gravity pulled Remo back down, the seaman came with him.

  Underwater, he fought Remo with a flurry of kicking arms and legs. Remo ignored him. The cold quickly made his struggles feeble.

  Resurfacing, Remo started back toward the cutter with the captured seaman in tow, his head held above the water.

  The man sputtered something Remo didn't catch.

  "Parlez-vous French?" asked Remo.

  If the man's response was in French, it was impossible to say. It sounded like sputtering to Remo.

  A dull boom sounded behind them.

  Looking back, Remo saw the sub start to list and said, "Great. I had them where I wanted them and now they're going down."

  The sub's decks were awash with frantic seamen. Someone got a collapsible aluminum lifeboat out of a hatch and was putting it into the water when another sailor came out and shot him in the back without a word of warning.

  The sailor and his boat slipped into the water to sink from sight. Only a thin blot of blood showed he had ever existed.

  The rifleman lined up on Remo, and Remo pulled his prisoner under water with him.

  Rifle bullets started striking the surface immediately above them.

  They hit true, but veered crazily once they slipped underwater. One angled toward Remo. He released his prisoner and, sweeping out with his bare palm, created a wall of deflecting water. The bullet met the wall. The wall won. The bullet lost the last of its punch. Spent, it sank like a lead sinker, which for all practical purposes, was what it was.

  Kicking, Remo reached down for his prisoner, who was sinking, too.

  A lucky bullet got the man in one leg. He curled up, grabbing for the wound. Dark blood threaded out as he convulsed. Air vomited from his open mouth through pain-tight teeth.

  A second bullet hit him in the chest.

  Grabbing him by the hair, Remo pulled him to the surface and got his face in both hands, holding it close to Remo's own.

  "Look, your own guys just shot you. Give it up. Who's operating that sub?"

  "Ga to hell, bloody Yank!" the man spit in a thick, heavily accented English.

  The effort seemed to sap the last of his life force. He jerked, turned blue and his eyes rolled up in his head. His final breath was cold and foul. It smelled of some of hard liquor Remo didn't recognize.

  Remo let him sink.

  Striking back for the cutter, Remo caught a thrown line and pulled himself aboard.

  Dripping wet, he stormed up to the bow. "What's the idea?" he demanded of Sandy Heckman.

  "We were defending ourselves," she said tartly.

  "I knocked out the gun crew before you got off your first shot."

  "I didn't see you."

  Remo turned on the Master of Sinanju, "Chiun, why the hell didn't you stop her?"

  "Because."

  "That's it? Because!"

  "Yes. Because." And Chiun showed Remo his disdainful back.

  They watched the sub sink. The stern went down, throwing the bow high above the water. It was as if the sub were straining to keep its head out of the water like a living thing.

  Then, with agonizing slowness, the forepart of the submarin
e slipped beneath the waves.

  But not before they could read a name on the bow:

  Fier D'Etre des Grenouilles

  "What's it say?" asked Remo.

  "You are not blind," sniffed Chiun. "Merely myopic."

  "I can see the words, but I don't recognize the language."

  "It is French."

  "No wonder I can't read it. French isn't a language. It's mumbling with grammar. What's it say?"

  "Fier D'Etre des Grenouilles."

  "That much I can make out. What's it mean in English?"

  "'Proud to be frogs.'"

  "That's the name of the submarine? Proud to be Frogs?"

  "That is what the vessel is called."

  Remo looked at Sandy Heckman. "What kind of submarine is named Proud to be Frogs?"

  Sandy Heckman shrugged and said, "A French one?"

  They watched the ocean settle down. Air bubbles, some as big as truck tires, popped the troubled surface. Nothing else. There were no survivors.

  "Why didn't anyone get out?" Sandy asked of no one in particular.

  "They didn't want to. They wanted to go down with the ship," said Remo.

  "That's crazy. We're the U.S. Coast Guard. We would have taken them alive. Everybody knows that."

  "Obviously they did not wish to be taken alive," intoned the Master of Sinanju.

  That cold thought hung over the water as they watched the last blooping bubbles break the surface. Finally a rainbow slick of oil began to appear, marking the spot where the Fier D'Etre des Grenouilles had gone down.

  Chapter 18

  Remo got Harold Smith on the first ring.

  "Sighted sub. Sank same," he said.

  "What information did you extract?" asked Smith.

  "We're pretty sure it was French. Either that or someone has a weird sense of humor."

  "What do you mean, Remo?"

  "When the sub went down, we caught a glimpse of the name. Fier D'Etre des Grenouilles."

  Chiun cut in. "That is not how it is pronounced."

  "You say it, then."

  "Fier D'Etre des Grenouilles. "

  Smith's voice was full of doubt. "That cannot be correct."

  "What's it mean to you?" asked Remo.

  "'Proud to be Frogs.'"

  "That's what Chiun says, too."

  "No French vessel would possess such a name."

  "This one did."

  "You have prisoners?"