Drone Command

TWELVE

The forty-three-foot-long blue and white marine salvage boat bobbed heavily in the choppy waters. Rising Sun pennants flapped on wires that ran the length of the ship high into the rigging, and an enormous Rising Sun flag flew on top of the heavy winch on the fantail. They all flapped in the crisp breeze like a flock of red and white gulls hovering over the ship. Patriotic banners proclaimed SENKAKU ISLANDS BELONG TO JAPAN! in kanji ideographs and hiragana phonetic script and English.

A half-dozen crewmen were near the winch and dive gear, guiding a submerged diver to the exact location of the Chinese stele so they could haul it up. The men all wore Rising Sun headbands, mostly college students and activists from the mainland. Locals crewed the boat.

A small aluminum skiff with an outboard motor ran circles around the dive boat, also flying colors. The driver in the rear wore a Rising Sun headband as did his passenger, who stood uneasily toward the bow, shooting video. Patriotic music blared from a portable digital player at their feet.

A boat horn blasted in the distance. The men on the dive boat looked up. Someone shouted and pointed.

A red and white fishing trawler split the blue water against its high prow. Rusted and weather-beaten, the ancient sea hag had two dozen old car tires serving as fenders. Black smoke belched out of a short stack. Fishing trawlers were common out here. But this one was plowing straight at them.

One of the Japanese crew shouted and waved to the video boat to check it out. The driver gunned the big outboard motor and raced toward the approaching rust bucket. The little skiff bounced heavily in the waves, tossing the amateur cameraman to the deck. He righted himself on the bench and straddled it, clutching it tightly between his thighs for balance. He put his eye to the camera’s rubber cup to keep the trawler in sight. He hit the record button, then the zoom.

The camera swept over the trawler’s decks and rigging that were crowded with fishermen in slickers and coveralls. Each held some sort of crude weapon — aluminum bats, wooden clubs, hunks of lumber. The cameraman caught the faded white letters on the bow. A Chinese boat for sure.

The cameraman shouted to the driver to get back to the dive boat. The little aluminum skiff spun on a dime. The driver banked a steep turn in the water, nearly spilling both of them out in his panic. They got within shouting distance of the salvage boat, yelling out dire warnings.

The Japanese crew erupted in their own panicked shouts as they scrambled over the decks, looking for weapons or shelter. A lookout called out the quickening distance as the rusted Chinese trawler barreled closer. The men on the winch engaged the motor, raising up the diver as quickly as possible without inducing the bends. The captain couldn’t start the engines. The spinning props would have fouled the dive lines or, worse, shredded the diver. He shouted orders at the inexperienced volunteers to hurry.

The Chinese trawler reversed its engines hard and cut the wheel sharply. The ancient hulk deftly swept sideways, running parallel to the dive boat just yards away.

The Japanese captain blasted his horn in vain, hoping the Chinese boat would push away at the last second. He wished he had an automatic rifle instead of the .38 Smith & Wesson revolver he kept beneath his bunk. He ran for it anyway.

The trawler’s engines cut completely but the ship’s momentum carried it forward. The two steel hulls thundered on impact, throwing one of the Japanese crew overboard and tumbling others to the deck, shouting in terror.

The Chinese fishermen leaped aboard the dive boat, laughing and cursing. They were large men with hard, flat-iron faces and feral eyes. They swung their bats and clubs with a practiced efficiency, cracking ribs, knees, and skulls as they swarmed the decks and flooded into the cabin and below deck. The few Japanese who offered resistance or even dared take a swing were mauled by the larger men, some taller by a foot — Mongols.

The Japanese volunteers fell to the deck when struck, balling up, trying to protect themselves from the heavy boots and clenched fists smashing their faces and kicking their guts. The crew who tried to hide were hauled out into the open and bitch slapped until they bled, and the few who made it below deck were beaten even more savagely. A gunshot cracked inside the captain’s quarters. The few coherent Japanese flinched at the sound but the Chinese were unfazed.

Within ten minutes, the entire crew was subdued, reduced to a heap of quivering bloody worms writhing on the deck. Radios and other electronic equipment were smashed to pieces. Two Chinese went below the waterline, disabled the engine, cut the fuel lines, smashed the controls.

All of the Rising Sun headbands were ripped from their owners and tossed over the side with a laugh, along with the patriotic banners, as other Chinese crewmen leaped from their trawler and secured the Japanese dive boat with ropes. The rest of the marauding Chinese scrambled back aboard their vessel and the trawler towed the dive boat five kilometers away, dragging the hapless diver behind it a hundred and twenty meters below the surface like a baited hook.

The small skiff trailed on the water behind them, keeping its distance. The driver fished out the first crewman who had been tossed off the dive boat when the ships collided. The two of them barely managed to haul up the furious captain, who was cursing the Chinese despite his broken jaw after he had been thrown overboard like a bag of garbage.

Through it all, the excited cameraman never wavered. He caught everything on his Sony digicam, filling up the flash drive, eager to upload the savage imagery on the Internet as soon as he got to shore.