Dangerous Grounds

by Don Keith

  Just the thought of what the man might do to save his empire made the hair on the back of Tom Kincaid’s neck stand up.

  Ellen Ward was climbing up the muddy, steep trail, only a mile from the castle when she heard the helicopter roar overhead, almost close enough to smell its exhaust.

  They had had a good morning. Roger Sindhlan had taken her gaggle of students on another hike into the mountains to explore the natural habitat of Paphopedelium denarii Ellenanum, his newly discovered specie of orchid. She marveled at how Roger handled the students. He was a natural teacher. They were in awe of his knowledge and field experience. More than a couple of the girls clearly had crushes on him already.

  Ellen felt a pang of jealousy when she compared their lithe young figures with her own. Then she chided herself for even thinking in those terms. She couldn’t be jealous. Not of Roger. It wasn’t right.

  Only moments after the low helicopter shattered the quiet of the mountain jungle, the thunder of gunfire boomed and echoed down to where they rested. The entire top of the mountain above her seemed to explode in machine gun fire and the rumble of small cannon and other explosions.

  Roger Sindhlan seemed as shocked as she was. He stood there, in the middle of a small clearing, wide-eyed.

  “Roger!” she called out. “What’s going on?”

  He seemed to snap into action then. Sindhlan grabbed her and pushed her off the trail. He waved the long line of students to hide in the brush.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered, his low voice edged with fear. “It sounds like someone is…I don’t know…attacking the castle.”

  “What?” Ellen cried out.

  “Shhh,” he cautioned, fingers to his lips. “There are tribes, warlords, and drug dealers up in these mountains. Dangerous men. Sui Kia Shun can take care of himself, but if they found us…well…” he lowered his voice even more. “Just think what a bunch of American students would be worth for ransom.”

  Ellen edged closer to him, unconsciously seeking protection.

  “Come on,” Roger said as he rose and led them away from the well-worn trail. “I know a place where we can hide until everything dies down. We’ll be safe there. It’s not far but the going’s a bit rough.”

  He started off through the thick undergrowth, skirting around the hip of the almost-vertical mountain. They stayed well below the castle and out of sight to anyone up above who might be looking their way.

  The going was rugged now that they were off what had passed for a trail. Thick vines clawed at Ellen’s legs. Branches slapped her. The heat and humidity pulled the air right out of her lungs. It seemed as if would be impossible for her to go on, but the thought of her students and the danger they faced drove her.

  Just when she thought her spongy legs could carry her no farther, Roger motioned for her and her pupils to follow him up the face of a steep slope. She took a deep breath, swiped the sweat from her forehead, and grasped at the undergrowth to help pull herself up the mountain.

  Bushwhacking around the mountainside had been tough going. Climbing was absolute torture. Still she trudged on. The gunfire had stopped now but every once in a while, through the canopy of jungle, she could see black smoke billowing into the hot sky, first above them, then gradually below where they climbed.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours of ascent, Roger stopped them on a flat ledge, well above the castle and several miles away from it. Now the dark smoke could be clearly seen, but they dared not move to the edge to look down there and try to figure out what had happened.

  “We’ll be safe here,” Sindhlan said. “We can’t be seen from down there as long as we stay back beneath the cliff. When things have died down and it’s safe, we can drop down to the roadway and walk out. That shouldn’t take us more than a day or so.”

  Ellen Ward sat down, eased back against a rock and took a short swig of water from her canteen. Better make it last, she thought.

  Only then did she allow herself to think about the predicament they were in. Out here in the jungle with a group of kids and only enough food and water for a single day’s hike. Their host maybe dead in some kind of attack, their home base likely destroyed in that assault. Those same attackers maybe aware of their existence by now, looking for them already for kidnapping, robbery, who knows what? Or they would spot them when they gave up this cover and tried to move.

  Okay. What would Jon Ward do in a situation like this? Her husband was absolutely the coolest in a crisis of anyone she had ever known. But Jon Ward was back in Virginia Beach, probably playing a round of golf with some of his submarine buddies right about now. He wasn’t here.

  It was just another time, she thought, when she needed his strength, his calm, and he wasn’t here to offer it.

  She shivered involuntarily. And welcomed Roger Sindhlan’s comforting arm around her shoulders as he slid down next to her and pulled her close.

  The rusty old freighter rocked gently in the easy swell of the turquoise sea. The scorching hot sun beat down unmercifully, reflecting shimmering waves off the dun-colored mountains that seemed to spike up out of the ocean to the east.

  Captain Wang leaned against the rail, careful to stay in the shade as he watched the moonscape coast of Yemen slowly slide by. Another day’s steaming up the Red Sea and this journey would finally end. Then a day’s truck ride from Jiddah to Mecca and he and his partner could fly home in glory.

  Just then, that partner, Lieutenant Tak-Ji, slipped out through an open hatch behind Wang. The quick fog of cool air lasted barely a second before he shut the hatch behind him.

  “Truly a desolate rock pile, don’t you agree Captain Wang?” the younger man asked, speaking Korean.

  “Speak Arabic, you imbecile!” Wang hissed. “And I am Masu Al-Maturis. Do you want to give us away when we are almost there?”

  Wang glanced around quickly to make sure none of the crew was anywhere close. No one was. They were all below decks, seeking shade or air conditioning.

  “I am sorry…uh…Masu,” the lieutenant replied sheepishly, this time in near-perfect Arabic. “I won’t forget again. I just checked our cargo and spoke by cell phone to the truckers in Jiddah. Everything is still normal. The trucks will be waiting on the pier. They are very anxious to have our construction equipment arrive in Mecca. It seems that they are behind schedule on a new Marriott Hotel project. It appears they suspect nothing.”

  Wang nodded and went on gazing out at the rugged mountains in the distance. The barest hint of a smile flitted across his face. Their “heavy equipment” would certainly solve Mecca’s construction problems.

  It would effectively level most of the holy city and then burn and contaminate what it didn’t vaporize.

  When Wang didn’t respond to his report, Lieutenant Tak-Ji, also known as Bentu Shubaji, stepped back into the blessed air-conditioned comfort of the ship. He left his boss on the deck of the ship, contemplating whatever it was that always seemed to bring that same slight, peculiar smile to his face.

  The phone at Jon Ward’s desk jangled again. Ward dreaded answering it. Mick Donohue’s call had just torn his world apart. Somewhere out there, Jim’s sub was missing. He had run all the possibilities through his head already. Communication trouble. Equipment malfunction. Mix up in report times. Any kind of foul-up, mechanical, electronic, nuclear, human that could account for a nuclear submarine simply disappearing from the face of the earth.

  His son might already be a victim of the same relentless sea that had claimed so many submariners in the past. Or trapped on the bottom, waiting for certain death, like those poor sailors on the Gepard.

  Jon Ward didn’t know how he would face the next few days. And even worse, how would he ever tell Ellen? How could he call his wife, somewhere down there in the Thai jungle, and find the words to tell her that their boy was gone.

  Ward swallowed hard. It felt like his heart had just been ripped from his chest.

  The phone rang again, demanding attention. He finally grabbed it
and summoned the strength to say, “Ward here.”

  “Jon?”

  The voice was familiar but it took him a moment of place it. Sure, the voice of his old friend, Tom Kincaid. But there was something in the way he had said his name, something in the gaping pause before he spoke again that told Ward this was no social call.

  “Yes. Hi, Tom.”

  “Jon, I’m afraid I have bad news. Are you sitting down?”

  “Tom,” Ward said quickly. “I don’t know how you found out, but I already know about Jim and…”

  But why would Tom Kincaid have anything to do with a missing sub? He was working with JDIA. He was off chasing drug lords.

  “Jim? What happened to Jim?”

  Tom knew his boy well. They had all played golf together that summer when Kincaid had been in D.C. on business. They were both video game addicts. Madden football mostly and they were forever emailing “cheats” back and forth to each other.

  “Huh?” Ward stuttered. “You don’t know? His boat is missing, Tom. It hasn’t reported in for over forty-eight hours. They’re scrambling every old tub that will float to look for her.”

  “Oh, shit,” Kincaid’s voice was impossibly flat, as if all the air had just gone out of him. “Jesus. Jon, I don’t know how to tell you this.” He paused again, as if it was too much merely to form the next words he had to say. “Jon, we just did a drug raid on Sui Kia Shun’s castle. You remember. That drug lord up in the mountains between Thailand and China. We got several tons of powder, but we haven’t found the old bastard yet. Here’s the deal. Ellen’s stuff was in one of the bedrooms at Sui’s place. No sign of her or her students. They must have been out doing fieldwork when we went in there. Jon, Ellen’s missing somewhere out there in the mountains.”

  Jon Ward held a death grip on the edge of his desk. The room was spinning. Spinning so violently it threatened to fling him right out into black, empty space.

  30

  The night was totally black. The low overcast sucked up any available light. The darkness even seemed to absorb the sounds and smells of the invisible jungle surrounding them. The hulking mangroves embracing the dark, muddy channel were ghostly shadows against the inky sky. The only sound was the gentle ripple of the muddy water against the black hull as the massive submarine silently slid by.

  Sabul u Nurizam allowed himself the slightest of smiles as he watched Commander Bob Devlin working hard, guiding the big ship down the winding channel toward the waiting sea. The American strained, sweated, peered furiously at the feeble glow of a lantern on the stern of a small lighter leading the way. Two more lighters hovered alongside, between the sub and the stream’s banks, straining to nudge the behemoth through the turns as the tight channel snaked its way to the open sea.

  Nurizam scratched the chin beneath his heavy beard. The American submarine captain had utterly surrendered. He was unwilling to see anymore of his crew murdered. He hardly expected the man to be so weak and stupid but Allah promised that it would be so, thus the plan was working perfectly. The captain obviously believed he and his crew would be allowed to live once they had served their purpose. It was a useful weakness to exploit. The commander would do anything he was told as long as he thought he was saving the lives of the rest of his crew. And the crew would follow him like so many sheep. Follow their flawed leader until it was far too late to change what Allah had set in motion through his servant, Nurizam.

  The salty ocean scent greeted them, brought their way on a slight breeze, promising open water around the next bend. A few more minutes and they would feel the long swells pushing down from the South China Sea. The ocean floor fell off rapidly near this part of Palawan Island. Shortly, they would take this whale-like war machine and dive it beneath the surface.

  Then the plan was unstoppable. Success was assured. The haughty Americans, with all their satellites and spy planes and evil technology were impotent to find them.

  Nurizam turned to face his lieutenant, Manju Shehab, who seemed to be standing there for no other purpose than to hear what his leader was about to tell him. Now was the time to give the final instructions.

  Nurizam had no worries about speaking in front of the submarine’s captain. There was no way the fool understood Tagalog. And even if he did, he was powerless to do anything about what was being said.

  “You understand your orders, Manju?”

  It was more a statement than a question. The short, muscular terrorist nodded vigorously, eagerly.

  “I expect success on this mission,” Nurizam continued. The terrorist’s face seemed to go stone hard then. “Manju, it is time for you to atone for your sin with the heroin. Do you understand? When you finish this mission and the whole infidel world is quaking at our feet, Allah will greet you in Paradise and your transgressions will be forgotten.”

  “I understand,” Shehab said.

  “You will keep this vessel hidden from the Americans from now on. They will use everything in their power to find and stop you.” Nurizam patted the cold, black steel of the submarine’s bridge. “You will use their own technology to defeat them. Run as close as you can to the target before you launch your weapons. When Tokyo disappears in a cloud of fire, we will announce our victory.” Nurizam paused for a moment, then went on. “After the blast, after you have struck this mighty blow, you will run down the Chinese coast toward the Formosa Straits and then you will go back toward home.”

  There was only the near-silence again. Both men knew that the last instructions were futile. There would be no escape. The submarine would have to be inside the kill radius of the warheads to make sure the ancient torpedoes hit their target. There would be no return trip. At least not in this life.

  “It is time,” Nurizam finally said. “May Allah protect you and bring you success.”

  He grabbed the knotted rope and threw his leg over to begin the long climb down the outside of Corpus Christi’s sail.

  “And you, too, mullah,” Shehab muttered as the terrorist leader disappeared from view in the blackness, headed for the waiting lighter.

  Commander Don Chapman leaned back and stretched his arms high over his head. It seemed to ease some of the achy tiredness. It also helped the tension he felt knotting at the base of his skull.

  Julia was always so damn good at easing those pains, but it would be another three months before he got home for another one of her neck rubs. That was his only regret in choosing submarines. Having to leave her, and for so damn long each time.

  He stopped imagining her long fingers kneading his shoulder muscles, and slipped the reading glasses back on. Reluctantly, he grabbed another report out of the pile on the desk in front of him. That was the trouble with these mid-deployment maintenance availabilities. All these damn admins could catch up with a skipper, and there was no way to avoid them.

  It was possible to live with maintenance teams climbing all over the boat, with all the dirt and noise they brought aboard with them. After all, except for a quick pit stop to pick up those SEALs, Topeka had been at sea continuously for over three months. In a machine as complex as a Los Angeles-class submarine, there was always something that needed fixed, tweaked, or adjusted. The two-week port stop in Yokosuka was meant as a time to get as much fixing, tweaking, and adjusting done as was humanly possible. That way, when Topeka headed back out she would theoretically be fit and fiddle again.

  That and restocked with food. The narrow passageway outside Chapman’s tiny stateroom was clogged with sailors, boxes, and number ten cans. The crew was busy finishing up a stores load. The cramped confines inside the boat meant they had to do it the old fashioned way: form a human chain and hand-over-hand every morsel of food from the big flatbed truck on the pier, across the brow, through the hatch, into the bowels of the boat, and then to the dry stores rooms. Of course, the supplies they needed for three months was more than the storerooms would hold. In a tradition as old as submarining, the last load of cans would sit on the decks. The crew would walk on them until they a
te their way down to the deck.

  Just as he was back into his reading, the black telephone, built into a recess in Chapman’s desk, chattered for his attention. This was the system that allowed people in various parts of the boat to talk with each other. On a state-of-the-art warship, it was a bit of an anachronism, another throwback to the old boats. First installed on ships shortly after the turn of the last century, the system used sound for its power.

  Chapman snatched up the phone and answered, “Captain.”

  At the same instant, Sam Witte, Topeka’s slightly paunchy executive officer, burst into Chapman’s stateroom from the head that separated the two senior officers’ staterooms. The XO’s face was flushed with excitement. His breath was coming in short gasps. He held the red-painted “Top Secret” message board.

  The voice in Chapman’s ear had already started speaking.

  “Skipper, this is Lieutenant Lucerno. I just wanted to give you a status report. We found the problem with the weapons control console. We got it narrowed down to a card in the interlocks status circuit. It’ll…”

  Witte was waving violently trying to get Chapman’s attention. The skipper held up one hand then interrupted Lucerno’s report.

  “Hold on a second, Weps. Looks like the XO has something hot.”

  Witte handed the message board to Chapman. The words tumbled out of his mouth in an excited rush.

  “Corpus is missing! Emergency sortie! We gotta be underway in three hours!”

  Chapman held up his hand again and said, “Easy, XO. I don’t want you to have a heart attack on me. Now, take a deep breath and start from the beginning.”

  Witte gathered himself, swallowed hard, and started over.

  “Corpus Christi is missing. She has missed several message cycles now. She was doing FONOPS down around the Spratlys and hasn’t reported in after she was supposed to be done. That was day before yesterday.”