Red Sun Rogue

CHAPTER 3

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant glinted in January moonlight, gentle waves lapping against the snow-dusted rock jetty below the crippled cooling towers. Dull yellow halogen lamps dotted the facility’s buildings and fences, leaving the abandoned coastal villages surrounding the area all the darker by comparison. Tall transmission lines and cranes pierced the horizon, and thick electrical cables disappeared into the darkness. 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 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 another era.

Dr. Hassan Nassiri stood in a corner of the submarine’s cramped command compartment with arms crossed, trying to swallow his 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. 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, as Jonah liked to call them— Hassan with his intelligence and medical training, Jonah with his capacity for quick thinking, cunning, and combat.

But the voyage from Washington’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 super container 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 bobbing her head to unheard music, eyes closed, and her long legs, blonde hair, and freckles—

Blink.

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

But the one memory he forbade himself was his life as an army surgeon in Morocco, 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 data-stream 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 a prisoner’s affectations or physicality, his intense, almost paranoid attention to detail made manifest in his gaunt, muscled form.

Over the course of the voyage, Jonah had kept his blonde hair close-cropped and his 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 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,” Vitaly said 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?”

“How bad is that?” asked Jonah. “Am I going to grow a third eye here?”

“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. Y’all can go ahead and get as irradiated as much 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 Conqueror under the ruse of a repossession order. Their fates had been linked since finding her stowed away in the super yacht’s engine room the next day. What Alexis had believed would be a short, strange week among well-intentioned outlaws had transformed into a fight for survival. Despite the chaos, the death — or perhaps because of it — Alexis and Hassan had found each other, becoming closer with each passing day. But he couldn’t think about that. Not now.

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. An assault rifle was strapped around his neck, and his belt was loaded with grenades and extra magazines; a small machete and twin pistols were bound 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 remained 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 to 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. 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. Hassan was only certain of two things: Dalmar had shown a strange tenderness toward Hassan’s mother, personally saving her from a burial at sea, and he’d risked his life to hijack a massive container ship and slam it into the artificial island city of Anconia Island, saving both Hassan and Jonah. Now there were factions within Western governments, as well as shadowy supranational financial interests, who 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,” Jonah said, pointing at the bandoliers. “We’re having a meeting, not assaulting the beaches of Normandy.”

The pirate crossed his arms and glowered. “I think maybe not so good idea to trust Marissa,” Vitaly said, piping up from his navigations console. “She is ex-girlfriend, no? Woman scorned?”

Hassan had to admit Vitaly had a point about the shipping heiress. Jonah had never ever properly broken things off, instead, he mysteriously disappearing for years before turning up under fire and in desperate need of help. Remarkably, she’d even guided the Scorpion into an abandoned dry-dock in Puget Sound, coordinating the rehabilitation of the submarine after the beating she’d taken in the Indian Ocean.

“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.” Vitaly shrugged. “So maybe you come back from meeting. Maybe no. Vitaly will see.”

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

“Seriously, lose some of the arsenal,” Jonah said, 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 turned as he adjusted his thick parka, zipping it up against the creeping cold of the damp January. All three were acclimated to brutal heat, not winter’s chill — Hassan’s life in Morocco, Dalmar’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.

Silently, the three men followed a single paved road inland. The first few blocks were stripped bare, all structures claimed by the raging ocean. Now, only large patches of dried mud and scrubby brush alongside the cracked, potholed road remained. The eerie moonlit stillness surrounding them gave the entire scene an otherworldly feel.

Next, they came to 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 torches, 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 the site in 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 or so 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 and long, thick sideburns wearing shiny grey suits. All had tattoos peeking out from beneath 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 car 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 heiress, crossing her arms as she stared from Jonah to Hassan and Dalmar, before looking back to her ex again. Her voice was slightly muffled by the clear plastic face of the blocky hood over her head. “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 sank 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 as 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 never so much as blinked.

“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 serious 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 dealings—legitimate dealings, Jonah. Don’t even give me that look. And, you can thank me later, by the way.”

“Pretty remote location for such a flashy crew,” observed Jonah, apparently satisfied by her answer. But Hassan was more than a little concerned with the flippant threat to their lives. “Anything I should know?”

“They have style,” said Dalmar, his eyes widening as he smiled. “I think style is very important for a gangster.”

“It was probably a test,” admitted Marissa. “They wanted to see if you had the cajones to come to the radioactive exclusion zone.”

Jonah just squinted and nodded, waiting for the boss to turn his attention to them. He didn’t have to wait long— the boss reached in through the open window and flipped the radio off. All fell silent, except for the crunching footsteps as he sauntered up to Jonah.

“American cowboy Jonah Blackwell!” said the gangster, speaking broken English through a gregarious, sinister grin. Up close, the man’s sunken eyes and twin scars across his left cheek made for uncomfortable viewing. Even in the darkness, his nicotine-stained fingertips, and a missing pinky on the left hand were obvious.

“I would seriously consider bowing,” hissed Marissa. Jonah snuck a glance at her before giving the boss an obligatory half-bow, just enough to acknowledge his approach. The doctor suspected the sloppy form would have been interpreted as deeply disrespectful if not coming from an outsider.

“Yeah,” said Jonah as he rose from the shallow bow. “I’m your American cowboy.”

“Marissa say many things about you,” said the gangster, tapping Jonah directly in the center of his chest with an outstretched finger. “Some of what she say… not so good.”

“We’re getting into business, not into bed,” said Jonah, ignoring Marissa’s annoyed sigh. “So, if she told you anything outside of my abilities as a captain, let’s put those aside here and now.”

The boss frowned at his personal translator, a young man in a slim black suit and thick glasses who went back and forth with him for a moment until he tilted back his head and issued a long, guffawing laugh.

“She say you are asshole,” said the boss. “Say we get along very well.”

Jonah smirked in reply.

“And who this kokujin?” asked the gangster, pointing at Dalmar. Behind him, his dozen men had formed a half-circle around Jonah, and the other three, leaning against their cars with their arms crossed, shifted uneasily from foot to foot as they stood.

Dalmar started to speak, but Jonah interrupted him before the Somali could launch into his usual dread-pirate, world-famous-terrorist self-introduction. It’d be best for all involved if the hulking man stayed dead for the time being, at least on paper.

“Oh, he’s our shipboard events coordinator,” said Jonah, pointing at Dalmar. “Shuffleboard, pool parties, bingo, that kind of thing.”

“I make an excellent raspberry daiquiri,” said Dalmar through gritted teeth, only halfway playing along as his eyes shot daggers at Jonah.

The mob boss just nodded and pointed at Hassan.

“Doctor Hassan Nassiri,” the doctor stammered. “Ship’s surgeon.”

Nodding, the mob boss muttered something in Japanese. “He wants to know why you have so many ailments that you require a full-time doctor,” the slim Japanese translator said.

“We get our share of stubbed toes and paper cuts,” Jonah said. “So how about we get down to business? You didn’t bring us all the way out here for introductions and pleasantries.”

The gangster just nodded and gestured to the translator to continue while he leaned against the hood of his car.

“Sorry I couldn’t tell you more before you made the trip, as I didn’t even have all the details myself,” said Marissa. “Apparently they want you as their new cruise line service. Not a lot of foreigners know this, but there’s a long-standing community of Koreans in Japan, some of whom have become quite wealthy. They’re also well represented in gangland, and the yakuza do a fair bit of business with them. When the armistice was signed in 1954, there were many families trapped in North Korea. Even after more than sixty years, family ties remain strong, even stronger now that illegal Chinese cellphones have found their way into the border towns. Families are reconnecting, and there are many who want out at any cost. Japanese Koreans are willing to pay top dollar to make it happen.”

“You’re talking about human smuggling,” Hassan gasped.

“More or less,” said Marissa. “Our friends here need a new route and reliable handlers. I told them I didn’t know any reliable handlers, but you were the next best thing.”

“What happened to the last travel agency?” asked Dalmar.

“Last route was overland, through China. North Korean border guards caught on. They say their men were executed on the spot, the escaping families placed in prison camps. If they’re not already dead, they probably wish they were.”

“Mole in the yakuza?” asked Jonah. “I doubt it,” Marissa said. “More likely, just unlucky. But they’re not willing to risk a Chinese route for the foreseeable future, not until they know for certain.”

“So what are we going to be moving? Girls?”

Behind Jonah’s flippant tone, Hassan could detect the real motives. Jonah wasn’t going to accept some bullshit cover for sex trafficking.

“Fuck you for asking.” Marissa’s eyes flashed with anger. “I’m not going to pretend they do this out of the goodness of their hearts — or that they don’t have interests in the red-light districts, for that matter. But they’re not in the business of turning out North Korean girls — and neither am I, that is for goddamned certain.”

“Good.” Jonah glared right back at her. “But you know I had to ask.”

Marissa reached over and pulled a map out of the breast pocket of her jacket before slapping it into Jonah’s chest. “Rendezvous is past the Siberian seamount of the Sea of Japan, near the North Korean port of Rason. Can you accommodate ten families?”

“It’ll be tight quarters, three to a bunk or more,” said Jonah, sticking the map in his back pocket. “But we can do it. I have to ask — why not a ship? Why the Scorpion?”

“The port is completely frozen over this time of year. Can’t get a ship in without an icebreaker. Need something that can punch up through the ice — you think the Scorpion can handle it?”

“Sure,” Jonah said, but Hassan suspected the American hadn’t necessarily considered the logistics of such an operation.

“They’re offering five thousand dollars a head,” said Marissa. “A hundred and fifty large for less than a week’s work. They think there is enough volume to do the run monthly, switch it up to a hidden cove when the ice melts. If things work out, maybe even twice a month.”

“A hundred and fifty? That will barely cover Hassan’s skin creams,” joked Jonah as he reached over to pinch Hassan’s cheek. The doctor swatted his hand away. “Just look at this lustrous olive tone. Ten thousand a head, minimum.”

“Done,” interjected the boss’s translator, leaving Hassan to wonder if Jonah should have asked for more — but he knew they needed the money. It’d be enough to refuel and re-provision the Scorpion from her long trip across the ocean. If a few runs went well, there might even be enough money left over to start a new life on a distant, non-extradition island nation.

“Great!” said Jonah, rubbing his palms together. “Let’s see the cash.”

Pushing Marissa aside, the boss’s translator laughed as he stepped up to Jonah and shook his head.

“Yeah, so here’s the thing …” began Marissa. “They appreciate my referral, but say you have zero reputation in Japan. They want to pay you upon receipt.”

It was Jonah’s turn to laugh. “Not happening,” he said. “We don’t work on spec.”

“We insist,” said the translator, hissing through clenched teeth. “A show of good faith.”

“Half up front,” interjected Dalmar, resting a hand on the butt of his pistol. “Or no deal.”

In a flash, the glasses-wearing translator whipped around and grabbed Hassan from behind, throwing him into a vicious reverse chokehold, a small, razor-sharp silver knife pressed deep against his carotid artery. The doctor barely had time to yelp as Marissa scurried away behind the Cadillac, her bulky radiation suit relegating her swift escape to an awkward waddle. With a sudden clattering of metal, every yakuza gangster had produced an armory of previously unseen weapons, a dozen pistols held at eye level with total commitment. Hassan had no doubt they would not hesitate to pull triggers, though the knife at his throat remained his more immediate concern. The only unarmed man was the boss himself, who stared steely death at Jonah, Hassan, and the pirate, Dalmar Abdi.

“Remove your hands from your firearms,” ordered the Japanese translator, twisting the knife against Hassan’s neck. “We learned you have sold tattoos cut from the bodies of dead yakuza. Many wanted to skin you on sight… or if a deal could not be reached. Do not test our patience.”

“Jonah!” exclaimed Marissa as she peeked from behind the parked car. “Stop fucking around; make the deal already!”

“I think we can live with those terms,” said Jonah with an apologetic grin, letting his hand slip from the handle of his nickel-plated Colt 1911. “Let’s not complicate this further.”

The boss nodded and cocked his head towards the back seats of the nearest car.

“Good,” said the young translator, releasing Hassan. “We will pay half of your fee up front as your pirate requested. But you had better deliver. The world is too small to steal from yakuza.”

The doctor gulped and rubbed the corner of his neck where the knife had left a bright red divot. The mob boss reached through his open window and removed a black duffel bag, opened the zipper, and threw it at Jonah’s feet. It was loosely loaded with bricks of American cash, several blocks of which spilled out before him. Jonah reached down, packed the money away, and slung the duffel over his shoulder.

Everyone turned as flashing red and yellow lights shone from the approaching highway, the police approaching from the distance. Marissa gingerly emerged from behind the trunk and spoke in low, rapid tones with the yakuza boss and his translator, ending the exchange with a hurried handshake.

“Sirens are generally our cue to leave,” said Jonah, already starting to back away into the darkness of the night, Dalmar and Hassan at this side. “Anything else we should discuss?”

“Yeah,” said Marissa, walking a few steps across the small courtyard to join him as they turned to walk back towards the docks. “My cabin accommodations — because I’m coming with you. Our friends can talk their way past the police so long as they don’t have to explain an American woman. Besides, I have to make sure you don’t fuck up my twenty-five percent any further.”

Jonah scowled. “Fifteen,” he said. “And that’s dependent on you staying out of the way of my crew.”

“Deal. Don’t worry. This’ll be a milk run.”

CHAPTER 4

The Augusta-Westland AW139 soared over the South China Sea, bleeding velocity as it slowed from a 191-knot cruising speed in preparation for landing. Losing altitude, the helicopter tilted, panoramic passenger windows dropping to show the moonlit coastline of Okinawa to starboard. The lights of subtropical Naha City and the sprawling American airbase twinkled below as they began the final turn towards to the harbor and the faint silhouette of a waiting superyacht.

Freya Weyland unzipped her orange neoprene survival suit, securing the loose arms in a knot around her waist. Near as they were to their destination, she had not finished her nightly pushup regimen — the exercise driven more by boredom and compulsion than necessity. At five feet ten inches, and with a MMA fighter’s build, Freya’s muscles were impossible to hide, even under the bulky neoprene. She grimaced as she flexed, one arm straining against gravity, white knuckles grinding into the soft carpet of the helicopter’s deck. The other hand was held behind her back, the toes of both feet digging into the seat of her plush leather chair.

Although the luxurious helicopter was designed for a dozen passengers, it held only two, with access to the cockpit blocked by a thick bulkhead covered with elegant brass and burlwood inlays. Her mute minder sat across from her, nearly immobile as he watched one repetition after another, barely blinking as she switched arms and started the count again.

The minder amused her, as did the confluence of cultures surrounding her. He was a slight Japanese man in an expensive Italian suit watching an American woman from his seat on a British-designed, Russian-manufactured, French-appointed helicopter. The sumptuous interior couldn’t help but confirm her belief that luxury and technology had become tediously generic and indistinct. The economic flattening of the earth turned the rich into an army of clones — driving the same cars, carrying the same handbags, vacationing at the same ritzy hotspots, wearing the same designer clothes — and destroying the same planet.

Her minder wasn’t much for conversation. She’d tried English, Dutch, even German, all to no effect. Freya sighed, drawing herself up from the exhausting one-armed pushups and slumping into the soft seat, not bothering to secure the belt as she rolled and stretched her powerful shoulders.

The helicopter couldn’t land soon enough — comfortable as it was, she was ready to get out and walk, hell, she would have swum if the pilots had let her. She’d spent twenty hours onboard, the flight beginning as she was plucked from a patch of open ocean south of the Solomon Islands — where exactly, she didn’t know. And then it was on to Papua New Guinea, across the equator to the Philippines, and finally towards the southernmost island of Japan. The stops along the way were a quick affair, the engines barely slowing to accommodate a well-coordinated refueling by waiting teams at each remote airstrip.

Her Japanese minder was brave — she’d give him that, at least. Most men were intimidated by her physicality, to say nothing of her commanding height, gauged earlobes, tribal tattooing, and long, platinum-blonde dreadlocks. She was used to the stares, the whispered, “Hey, bro check that out.” Her mere presence somehow posed a threat to masculinity everywhere. Surprisingly, the minder had only averted his eyes when she’d changed out of her oily, salt-encrusted sports bra and into a clean white t-shirt, his eyes meeting hers again the moment she was once again dressed.

But brave or not, she could still easily break him in half if she wanted.

The helicopter slowed to a shuddering crawl as it hovered over the bow of a superyacht, wheels emerging from the undercarriage as they prepared to land on the well-lit pad. Little more than an angular shape on the green moonlit waters, the metallic-grey ship was longer than a football field, constructed of seamless aluminum and hardened steel, interrupted only by black privacy glass. But unlike any other ship she’d ever seen, the entire aft third of the yacht was encased in clear glass, the greenhouse within an immaculately terraced artificial landscape of thick vines, flowering plants, and tropical canopy.

The engine and blades barely changed their pitch as the helicopter touched down on the gently rocking pad. Her minder moved, perhaps for the first time since dangling an articulated winch and high-tensile synthetic rope out of the craft as he plucked her, shipwrecked, from the waters off eastern Australia. A hidden motor whirred, opening the sliding door — the minder, with a single outstretched finger, pointed for her to get out.

Thankful to be moving again, Freya stepped down from the helicopter, the bulky orange survival suit still bunched around her waist. Hidden lights flickered to life beneath her feet, guiding her along the length of the bow and towards an open exterior door. She turned to look back at the aircraft, but the engine had already begun to increase in pitch as it rose once more into the dark winter air.

Pausing to take in the cool breeze, the last thing Freya saw before ducking into the well-lit interior were six American fighter jets on maneuvers over the harbor, the screams of their glowing engines splitting the sky.

Now inside, she could see that the heart of the megayacht was an immense, open chamber that ran nearly the entire length of the craft, with steep bulkheads that met at the ceiling to form a perfect triangular apex sixty feet above, their surface made of glinting, machined aluminum. And yet, it all felt so timeless, the space-age design a modern reinterpretation of ancient Japanese architecture. Freya could scarcely believe the scale of the windowless chamber. The length of it ran from the raked bow all the way to the distant stern, almost as if the entire vessel was a shell for this single room. The interior was like nothing she’d seen before, hundreds of glass-encased artifacts and museum pieces displayed under soft LED lighting.

A small part of her brain tickled as she remembered the two art history classes she’d taken in college before her expulsion, but she couldn’t identify any of them. She gazed intently at each in turn, passing Dutch-marked artillery, late nineteenth-century bayonet-affixed infantry rifles, ships’ bells, brass-encased marine telescopes, the uniforms of Japanese generals and sailors alike. The carefully curated collection surprised her as it eschewed any of the samurai martial instruments antiquarians had come to prize. Even so, there were no photographs or paintings of any variety. All of the artifacts were constructed of indelicate metals and woods, with a sort of blocky tactile sensibility that defied the typical holdings of a museum.

A soft, commanding voice echoed from the far end of the chamber, its speaker lost to the darkness.

“Remove your shoes, please.”

Freya stopped dead, weighing her options. The survival suit didn’t have leg cuffs; the neoprene was designed to wrap all the way around her boots to prevent the outflow of body heat. There was no easy way to remove them without removing the whole suit. But what option did she have? She nodded in reluctant agreement, peeling off the lower half of the neoprene to her ankles, then awkwardly pulling the thick rubber free of one foot, then the other, leaving her dressed in the clean T-shirt, she’d donned in the helicopter, and ratty, rolled-up khaki cargo shorts — all she owned in the world. She dumped her heavy black combat boots next, untying the fraying red laces and abandoning them to a salty puddle on the immaculate bamboo flooring. Barefoot, Freya rose to stand.

A young, robe-clad Japanese woman emerged from the darkness, bending down to feel for the survival suit and boots, fingers sweeping the floor until the edges brushed against the still-damp synthetic fabrics. The attendant stood up, her face briefly towards Freya as she retreated to the shadows once again. Freya tried to meet her gaze, but saw nothing in the young woman’s eyes but a white film— the attendant was blind.

“Please come closer,” said the voice, beckoning her to proceed.

The voice. Freya knew the voice now. How could she not? Although he’d refused to give her his name, she’d spoken to him for months, the soft, reassuring voice on the other end of her carefully-hidden satellite phone, gently pushing her forward at every moment of doubt. But she’d never before met her mysterious benefactor.

Recess lighting slowly glowed to life as she approached the end of the immense chamber, illuminating a single, sitting figure behind a mahogany art-nouveau writing desk. The man was wheelchair-bound and massively overweight, with long, dark hair dropping straight from a thinning part and cascading over his shoulders. His aging skin was puffy and pockmarked; his sickly aspect almost more a doughy mask than a natural face. And like his attendant, he was blind. Thick, pinched eyelids covered sunken, useless sockets.

Startled, Freya realized she recognized his face. The soft voice belonged to Yasua Himura, chemical engineering magnate turned electronics billionaire and infamous recluse. His wildly profitable corporations had long since dominated Japan’s military contracting system, and every drone, military avionic, and guided missile in the nation were stamped with his logo — SABC Electronics and Industry. Ten years ago — at the apex of his power, no less— he’d all but disappeared, withdrawing from friends, family, and business partners alike to live at sea aboard an expanding fleet of ever more-impressive oceangoing yachts.

But rather than fading into lavish obscurity, Yasauo Himura began to write the largest checks of his life. Vast swaths of his impressive profits were diverted wholesale into bleeding-edge alternative energy research, investing heavily in algae fuels, biological hydrogen production, hydrokinetic energy, and fissionable thorium. Freya had once admired his commitment to the future, back when she went by the label activist — not terrorist.

“You admire my collection,” said Himura. It was a statement, not a question.

“I do,” said Freya. “You have so many beautiful pieces.”

“Do you understand their significance?”

“No,” said Freya, shaking her head even though she knew he couldn’t see it. “All I know is that they look old and really expensive.”

“They’re artifacts and weaponry from the Meiji Restoration,” said Himura. “It’s the most important period in Japan’s three-thousand year history. Within four short decades, we emerged from an isolationist kingdom to the most powerful imperial force in the Asian sphere, conquering Korea, and routing the Chinese and Russians alike. Most importantly, our ancestors accomplished this despite treachery from within the restive, backwards elements of our own ranks.”

“Cool,” said Freya. “I didn’t know that — I can’t say I know much about Japan’s history.”

“It was an awakening, unlike the world had ever seen before or since.” Grunting, Himura rolled his wheelchair back from the writing desk, pushing himself around it to approach her. She stood before him, uncomfortable, as though she were being stared down and evaluated — impossible, given his blindness.

“Tell me of your mission.”

“What do you want to know?” Freya shifted her weight from heel to heel in the too-long silence before answering his question. “Haven’t you spoken with your people? Didn’t they fill you in on how it went down?”

“I would much prefer to hear it from you.”

“No prob,” she said with a shrug, clasping her hands behind her back and leaning against the edge of the antique desk as her benefactor listened intently. “I did everything you asked. I caught up with the environmental activists when their ship docked in Brisbane. Half the crew was out with serious food poisoning — just like you said. The captain and first mate were so desperate they were signing up anybody with a pulse. Getting a job in the kitchen was easy. The resume your people gave me checked out, and the fake passport went through their online background check with no problems. I got a few questions, but nothing I couldn’t answer. We were back out to sea a couple of days later, catching up with the Japanese whaling fleet as it transited south through the Bismarck Sea off the island of New Britain.”

Freya paused, collecting her thoughts, reflecting on how she’d ended up on this space-age yacht chatting with Yasua-fucking-Himura himself. After all, she knew she owed him a lot more than a fudged resume and a fake passport. And she knew she’d designed that fucking bomb perfectly, goddamn it. But that was the thing about bombs, they tended towards a mind of their own. The blast didn’t just take out the computer servers holding the design for a next-generation Arctic oil drilling platform, it also killed a night janitor and an overachieving intern who’d taken it upon herself to be the last drone out of the Seattle-based nautical architecture firm that night.

And then somebody in her cell talked. It wasn’t long before Seattle SWAT smashed in the front door of her Delridge Way commune, throwing flash-bang grenades and tear gas as they tore apart the flophouse room by room, arresting everyone inside.

Probably didn’t even matter that she and her friends had been manufacturing highly toxic semtex explosives within. As soon as the yellow police tape came down, some institutional investor would snap up the graffiti-ridden, slummy property and flip it into marble-countertop, aluminum-appliance yuppie bait for the tech set. Fuck ’em all—the whole city of Seattle could burn as far as she cared, her now-incarcerated friends included.

But Freya wasn’t inside when the raid went down. She’d watched from the comfortable rear seats of a black-on-black Chevy SUV parked across the street. The driver— another expressionless Japanese minder — then handed her a new passport issued under an unfamiliar name, a stack of walking-around money and plane tickets to Melbourne. She didn’t know how they knew about the imminent SWAT raid, but somehow they’d known, three burly men expertly snatching her from a bus stop no more than five minutes before the armored police vehicles came roaring up to the curb. She took her chances with the gifted plane tickets. Between SWAT, local SPD foot patrols, ATF, FBI, and the US Marshals, she wouldn’t have lasted a day on the street.

Freya wasn’t sorry to see her friends in jail. After all, they were the ones who fucked up her flawless plans. Hell, they could have easily set off a dozen or more bombs before the cell was rolled up, explosions and assassinations rocking the core of the cadre of imperialist corporate executives and oil-barons, inspiring new recruits, copycat bombers, maybe even shaking the sleepy masses out of their complacency.

It was not to be. Not with the weaklings who made up her group: hippie know-it-alls more comfortable with pedantic discussions of Marx, Foreman, and Abby than true direct activism. They sat around and drank microbrews and smoked pot and argued with strangers on Twitter while she honed her mind and her body. So why not leave them in prison and take the plane ticket to Australia, save some whales under the guidance of a mysterious voice?

Or at least that’s what she first thought. Over the weeks, Himura’s anonymous tele-presence had become so much more to her — an inspiration, guardian angel, even an odd father figure of sorts. In whispered conversations over the satellite telephone, she’d told him secrets about herself she’d never told anyone. “You found the fleet,” Himura prodded. “Please continue.”

“Yeah, we found ’em. Shadowed ’em for a while, but our secondhand rust-bucket couldn’t keep up. They’d rabbit every time we got within five miles.”

“How did you infiltrate the Japanese fleet?”

“Our captain called for volunteers. Wanted us to sneak a couple of activists onboard with jet skis, have us handcuff ourselves to the harpoon ship, force them to turn around to Japan rather than bring a prisoner all the way to the Antarctic Ocean for the entire hunting season. That was the idea anyway. My hand was the first one up, and I was the only one who managed to get on a harpoon ship and handcuff myself to the railing before the whalers could throw me overboard.”

“What of the other volunteers?”

“Didn’t even make it over the bulwarks. It was midnight, no moon, but they still saw us coming on the radar. The crew was waiting for us with hammers and machetes.”

“But you got through.”

“Broke the second mate’s jaw and sliced two fingers off another guy’s hand with a box cutter before they backed off long enough to let me chain myself to the railing. By the time they sawed through the lock, my ride was long gone. Throwing me overboard again would have been murder, not that they didn’t seriously consider it.”

“Was it difficult to access their computer systems?”

“No,” said Freya, remembering the small USB drive that had arrived in an unmarked manila envelope shortly before she’d sailed from Brisbane with the environmentalists. Not difficult at all, she thought.

“Explain.”

“I slept with the sailor assigned to watch my cabin. When we were finished, I told him I wanted to send an email to my family, tell ol’ Mom and Dad I was okay and not to worry.”

Despite her budding devotion to her protector, she’d only told him part of the story. She’d slept with the sailor, that much was true. But the young man had refused her request to access the shipboard computer network outright.

So she did it the hard way instead — snapping his neck, taking the keys for herself, and marching to the nearest terminal. From there, it was only a matter of plugging Himura’s flash drive into the network before returning to the cabin to wait.

“Do you disapprove?” asked Freya, cocking her head to match her benefactor’s blind, considering stare.

“No,” answered Yasuo Himura, a ghost of a smile upon his lips. “I only pause to admire — you are the embodiment of the perfect instrument. Cunning… ruthless… and quite beautiful, from what my men tell me.”

“It all went down just as you said it would,” said Freya, smirking at the compliment. “After a few hours, the harpoon ship where I was held prisoner suddenly heeled to starboard and steered into the factory ship like a spear. One of the mates burst into my cabin and threw a survival suit at me and ran off. He knew neither ship could be saved.”

And they were in such a hurry they didn’t even see the body hidden under her bunk. Not that it mattered; both vessels went beneath the waves with minutes, the smashed harpooner sinking not long after the massive factory mother-ship.

“And your rescue?”

“I figured you were full of shit.” Freya grinned openly. “Thought you’d leave me out there to die after I did your dirty work — no loose ends.”

“And yet you completed your mission.”

“You gave me an opportunity I always dreamed of,” said Freya. “The chance to truly strike a blow. Dying was always a possibility — but failure wasn’t. Not with extinction at stake. Your helicopter came, just as you said.” In her mind, she still heard the frustrated screams of the stricken men thrashing in the sea as her minder hoisted her to safety before abandoning them to their fate.

“I hope you will now take me at my word. My operatives have ensured the American authorities will discover your real identity and presence on the activist crew. As a prisoner of the now-sunken ship, you will be reported missing and presumed dead, along with your former captors.”

“Do you suppose rescue crews will find any of the whalers?”

“Yes, but by then it will be too late,” said Himura. “The virus in the flash drive altered the course of the entire fleet. When they sent their distress signal, they reported their position eighty miles to the west of their actual location. It will take days for the searchers to happen across their bodies. If exposure doesn’t claim them, the sharks will. I believe it is fitting given their crimes against the ocean.”

A silence fell between the two, Freya considering the death of nearly two hundred men, the warmth of sick gladness filling her up from the inside.

“This vessel, do you think it’s beautiful?” asked Himura.

“It’s stunning. A little fancy for me, though.”

“Would you like to meet the captain?”

“Sure,” Freya said, looking around confused, wondering where the bridge would be on a ship like this. “Why the hell not?”

Himura smiled again, a knowing smile as though he could see her confused expression. He made a sweeping gesture with one hand, hidden infrared cameras catching the motion. With an outpouring of harsh light, the bamboo floor began to open along the entire length of the chamber. Shocked, Freya moved next to the writing desk, watching as the main deck split before her. Beneath it was a grotesque, pulsating collection of organic matter like disemboweled organs, all captured within glass vessels and electronic wiring. On the walls, several cleverly concealed screens flickered to life, displaying dreamlike, fractalized images of Freya, Himura, the superyacht, and the American fighter planes above.

“This is Meisekimu.” Himura gestured to the strange, vivisected biology below them. “She’s an organic computer controlling all onboard functions of my ship. She doesn’t simply steer us, she has the ability to intuitively monitor, maintain, and repair nearly every onboard system, replacing all but the most menial service positions.”

Eyes aided by the newfound light, Freya noticed a row of black-suited men at the other end of the long chamber, men not unlike those who’d snatched her from the bus stop in Seattle. She wondered if bodyguards and hired guns were considered ‘menial’ in Himura’s labor calculus.

As Freya watched, the screens slowly turned to the fighter aircraft above, focusing first on, and then within them, displaying a point-of-view cockpit perspective as they dipped and banked over the lights of Naha City.

“What are the screens doing?” said Freya. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“We’re observing a narrow visual window into her calculations, or more appropriately, her thoughts,” answered Himura. “She’s capable of incredible insight and intelligence. You see, Meisekimu is not self-aware — that would be too dangerous — rather she exists in a sort of digital dream-scape, experiencing flutters of consciousness but never truly awaking.”

The blue light from the Meisekimu’s sunken chamber shifted, erupting into iridescent yellows and greens.

“What’s happening?” Freya turned to Himura. “The lights and screens — they’re all changing.”

“She’s very happy,” said Himura. “She’s experiencing flight for the first time. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Wait—experiencing?”

Himura didn’t answer. Instead he rolled his wheelchair back behind his writing desk and held out his hand until Freya took it. The blind electronics magnate grasped hers with a surprisingly strong grip, gently pulling her behind the desk as well. Hidden motors silently whirred, slowly raising the desk and surrounding platform ten feet, twenty feet out of the floor as the triangular ceiling above them opened. Within moments, the rising platform emerged flush into the floor of the glass-enclosed greenhouse above. Fresh organic humidity swirling around them, Freya found herself within a jungle of vines, flowers, plants, and trees.

“Japan is the first,” whispered Himura, “the first among the world, the… how might you say it? Yes, the canary in the coal mine, the harbinger of things to come. We were the first to run out of resources, out of energy, out of living space, out of youth, and first among nations to fall into irreversible decline.”

Freya tilted her head back and looked through the greenhouse ceiling to the starry sky. The fighter planes still circled above, their engines rendered silent by the thick glass.

“In the past decade, I came to realize my investments in alternative fuels were a waste,” Himura continued. “Japan can no longer be saved by a new energy source; the search is all but fruitless. The world has reached a tipping point, one that will inevitably consume us all. The methane of the Russian permafrost has already begun to erupt, and soon their great northern forests will burn. The drought in the American southwest will only worsen, draining the last of their ancient aquifers and turning their bountiful farmlands fallow. Islands in the South Pacific will drown; Africa and Asia will starve. And the Home Islands of Japan will weather typhoon after typhoon as the world around them crumbles into resource-sparked conflict and chaos.”

“We exist at the mercy of our planet,” said Freya, a faraway look in her eyes. “I’ve always known humanity must live in harmony with nature, or not at all.”

Himura nodded. “The fickle mercy of Gaia indeed. We must all embrace a new ideology, an ideology that already burns within you. Destruction. And with it, reinvention and harmony. But blows must first be struck, devastating blows against every false god of profit and power.”

Himura again guided her gaze toward the fighter planes, the unassailable symbols of domination and imperialism.

“We cannot allow anyone to feel safe, not anymore. No industry or military will be immune. We will strike without explanation, with no manifesto or creed. We’ll leave them to deduce the common thread, discover for themselves what they must do to survive — or they will perish in our new world.”

Freya stared at the fighters as they circled above. “Cast them from the heavens, Meisekimu,” whispered the old man. One after another, the indicator lights of the planes flickered and died off as the frozen aircraft spun and dropped from the starlit sky. A geyser of water erupted as the first slammed into the deep harbor, a second and then a third transformed into blossoming fireballs on the beach, the final planes disappearing behind the low forested hills of Okinawa as they fell.

Distant flames glinted in her dark irises, and tears sprang into Freya’s awestruck eyes as she watched with unimaginable joy.

“It’s so beautiful,” she said. “It’s all so beautiful.”

CHAPTER 5

The Scorpion glided beneath thick pack ice, her engines softly churning dead slow under battery power. Alexis stole a glance at the digital map from her post in the command compartment, their position plotted by a clever electronic combination of inertia sensors and dead reckoning. Masked by the ice above, the submarine drew closer to the outskirts of North Korean territorial water.

Vitaly carefully steered along an invisible maritime boundary between North Korea and Russia, aiming for the sliver-like border between the two. Alexis took off one glove and pressed her palm to the interior of the metal hull, shivering as the cold of the sea pushed against the other side. The surface was slick with moisture, bleeding water in thick rivulets of condensation as the interior heaters struggled to keep out the sucking winter chill.

Outside their fragile craft, the pack ice twisted and cracked with high-pitched groans and rumbles. The sound was hideous, like cracking bones. Normally so attuned to the minutia of engines and machinery, her ears now betrayed her. The fearful sounds were inescapable, filling her with anxious anticipation.

Jonah caught her frown and furrowed brow. “The pack ice is breaking up,” he said. “Arctic explorers used to call it the Devil’s Symphony.” He reached over to give her a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. The gesture felt a little strange, like it was something he ought to do but had never tried before. Still, she appreciated it.

“The name fits,” said Alexis with a shudder. “It sounds positively awful.”

Jonah shook his head as he smiled. “It’s music to my ears,” he said. “We could be within thirty feet of a North Korean listening array and they still wouldn’t hear us go by over this goddamn racket. If it’s the Devil’s Symphony, he’s playing our song.”

Alexis nodded, not entirely convinced, and glanced over to Hassan for reassurance. The surgeon leaned against Vitaly’s helm console, arms crossed and lips pursed in deep concentration, as though the slightest display of emotion might somehow endanger the entire ship.

She was familiar with his stoic act, knew it inside and out, despite only having met the surgeon a few short weeks ago. She also knew how thin it was. Despite being a man who unhesitatingly did whatever the situation required, the surgeon clearly worried about everyone and everything constantly. Her in particular.

Hassan could be quite the mother hen. It was kind of cute, really. And yet the surgeon scared her. Not in the way Jonah did with his alpha-male, the-only-way-out-is-through, damn-the-torpedoes braggadocio, but in the other way. She was scared by how she felt with him, how the days spent talking with him felt like minutes, how she felt that she’d known him for years and not weeks. His smooth olive skin, sharp jawline, and kind eyes — all terrifying.

Maybe they were each other’s distraction. After all, she was the only woman on the crew, and he was the only man who wasn’t gay, crazy, or whatever Jonah was. She supposed everybody found their own way to cope with the long voyage from Puget Sound to Fukushima. Jonah took his comfort in silence and solitude, often pacing the quiet corridors of the submarine. Vitaly and Dalmar had their dramatic, on-again, off-again flings, either relationship status manifesting itself with loud arguments in three languages.

All she really knew about Hassan was this: every morning, she returned from brushing her teeth and washing her face in the ship’s single bathroom sink to find the tiny cabin bed they shared already made, clothes carefully folded, and deck swept. With little to do in a medical capacity, Hassan had taken on the role of the ship’s chef. Everyone ate well from the ample stocks, but few were aware the meals were typically designed around Alexis’ favorite foods. Hassan never missed an opportunity to tease out one of her fondly remembered dishes, teach himself the recipe from the small galley library, and make a batch for the whole crew.

Alexis used to play a silly little game early into a new relationship. She’d ask herself what their house would look like, who their friends would be. And if she really liked him — or to prove to herself she didn’t — she’d even imagine what their family might look like some day.

But she couldn’t do it with Hassan, couldn’t bring herself to even try. With him, the only possible future was a vast, dangerous void, colder even than the Sea of Japan in winter. Life on the fringes — their life — was dangerous. She’d brought him back from the dead once already, and she didn’t think she could bear to do it a second time.

Jonah punched the intercom and ordered Marissa to join him at the helm. Dressed in a thick ski jacket and leather boots, their guest stepped into the command compartment moments after.

“Are we there yet?” she asked, glancing around the bridge.

“We’re close,” Jonah said. “I was hoping you could guide my helmsmen over the final stretch.”

Marissa nodded, but Vitaly just sighed with annoyance. His hands were tightly wrapped around the submarine’s control yoke, keeping a steady depth below the pack ice.

“Vitaly does not need lady help,” protested the helmsmen. “We already too shallow. Submarine useless in shallow. Nowhere to hide, no way to escape.”

“We need to go here,” said Marissa, touching the digital screen at the rendezvous point less than a thousand meters distant. “Steady on. It’s just a little further.”

Vitaly grumbled and swore in Russian. “This is not tour bus,” he said, but still adjusted the rudders as requested. The tiny digital avatar of the submarine slowly approached Marissa’s updated coordinates as the helmsman brought the engines to a drifting halt.

“Prepare the ship to surface,” ordered Jonah.

Alexis caught herself wondering why Jonah hadn’t deployed the periscope and taken a peek before moving the entire submarine above the protection of the ice. Then she realized they wouldn’t be able to this time, not with the frozen pack in the way of the sensitive optics.

For the first time, Alexis realized she completely trusted Jonah and his leadership. Their rag-tag crew wasn’t backed into a corner and forced to defend themselves, and her role on the ship was no longer a matter of chance or convenience. She was his crew, his engineer — and she was goddamn proud of it. No matter how incredibly illegal or insanely dangerous their mission, she was there by choice. Who knew? Maybe she’d even get paid this time.

“Wear your warmest,” advised Hassan, standing up from his place next to the helm. “It’s negative fifteen degrees outside with forty-five knot wind gusts. Frostbite can set into exposed skin in as little as five minutes. We picked up weather broadcasts in Japan on the way over — forecasters are saying this is the worst winter in a century.”

“North Korea was already in rough shape,” said Alexis. “Can’t imagine how bad it’s gotten in a hundred-year winter.”

“NGO’s estimate they already lost over a million tons of grain reserves to seasonal flooding earlier this year. Hundreds of thousands may die before the next harvest.”

“Hate to be pragmatic, but that’s why their families are paying double,” Marissa added.

Alexis and the doctor just frowned.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she protested, dismissing both with a wave of her hand. “I’m just saying.”

Alexis tried not to let the comment distract her as she prepared the Scorpion to surface through the ice, setting all control planes to a neutral position using a series of hydraulic wheels. Vitaly slowly filled their auxiliary ballast tanks with pressurized air, displacing heavy seawater.

“Why don’t you just make the computer do it?” asked Marissa, quizzically watching Alexis as she strained against the manual systems.

“She doesn’t speak to me when I use the automated protocols,” said Alexis, releasing the wheel to catch her breath. “But when I use my hands, she spills her guts — if she’s strained, if she’s bowed, if she’s leaking, if something is about to break down. Everything is connected to everything else, but you can’t feel any of it through a keyboard. And in a situation like this, I need to hear, to feel, her every word.”

“Alexis has point,” Vitaly said as he pressed a single digital button, filling up the last of the auxiliary tanks with air. “But sometimes she make things too difficult also.”

The leading edge of the conning tower crunched against the ice, and the frozen crust cracked and squeaked as the buoyant submarine started to break through. Alexis knew the rudders and twin propellers would take the worst of it; she hoped they hadn’t missed anything important during the recent retrofit. And then they were through. The conning tower emerged from the snowy pack to the wince-inducing cacophony of steel against ice.

“Vitaly, maintain your post,” ordered Jonah. “The rest of us are going topside to see what we’re dealing with.”

“Da, da,” said Vitaly. “Someday Jonah steer ship while Vitaly breathe fresh air.”

Carrying two black, angular assault rifles from the weapons locker, Dalmar ducked as he stepped into the command compartment. He passed one to Jonah, keeping the other for himself. Alexis had to admit the captured military-grade weapons were a big step up from the Depression-era armaments they’d first used to take the Scorpion. And yet Jonah still wore a shiny silver antique on his hip, a weapon more suited for cowboys than a modern-day underwater smuggler.

“We must add a flamethrower to our arsenal,” boomed Dalmar in an authoritative voice. “A group of my enemies once barricaded themselves in a bunker below the ruins of the presidential palace, laughing at our bullets and grenades. But they did not laugh at my flamethrower. I learned that day that nothing burns quite like a man.”

“Duly noted,” said Jonah, only half-listening as he turned his attention to the interior conning tower ladder, ascending the first few rungs. “Have Vitaly put it on the requisition list.”

“Excellent,” said Dalmar in a satisfied tone. “You will not regret the purchase. It will pay for itself with the first use — this I guarantee.”

Alexis followed the two men up the conning tower, with Hassan and Marissa close behind. Jonah grunted as he opened the main hatch, ears popping as the slight pressure differential equalized throughout the submarine with whispering hiss. Blowing snow drifted down the ladder, swirling in the wind as Jonah disappeared out of the hatch.

Windswept ice and snow assaulted Alexis’ senses as she, too, emerged into the blizzard. She winced, squinted, and then held up a hand to shield her eyes from the storm. Roaring winds whipped across the cracked, shifting pack ice, already piling snow drifts against the hull. There may as well have been a sign that said Texans Go Home—she didn’t belong out on the pack any more than she belonged on the moon.

Hassan passed binoculars and spotter scopes to everyone, each taking a different watch position on the conning tower, scanning the endless ice sheet. Alexis couldn’t make out the horizon; the only landmark was the conning tower beneath her feet, everything else was lost to the cold, grim whiteness.

“I have never seen snow before,” grunted Dalmar. “It is very unpleasant and I do not like it.” The former pirate dropped the binoculars from his eyes for a moment to sweep a few flakes from his shaved head.

“What do you think, Doc?” Jonah asked. “You see anything?”

“Visibility is very poor,” answered Hassan.

“How about you, Alexis?”

“I can’t see fucking shit out here,” complained the engineer. “It’s whiter than a Wilco concert. So far, North Korea is even more depressing than I imagined.”

“I’ll cancel the seaside crew retreat,” chuckled Jonah. He seemed to appreciate the tone of her answer much more than painfully proper Hassan’s. “Marissa picked a good spot. Most ships won’t make it through this ice, and it’s too thin for tanks or military vehicles. All the same, let’s find these people and get them on board so we can get the hell out of here.”

Alexis slowly scanned her sector of the horizonless expanse, searching for a visual anchor among the endless white. And then she saw the movement of slight human figures in the distance, a huddle of rags and blankets trudging across the ice, their forms almost lost to the wind and snow.

“There!” called Alexis, pointing without dropping the binoculars from her eyes. “I see them!”

The other four swiveled in her direction, seeking out the refugees. “Count off — how many do you see?” demanded Jonah. “Did they all make it?”

“I’m seeing maybe… forty?” said Alexis. It was only a rough guess. She could barely make out one figure from another in the shuffling group as it slowly advanced towards the surfaced submarine.

“Good,” said Jonah, dropping the binoculars to the strap around his neck. “It will be tight, but we can handle forty.”

“Are you sure about that count?” asked Marissa, uncertainty in her voice. “Looks like more than that to me.”

“I do not see forty,” announced Dalmar.

Alarmed, Alexis swiveled her binoculars. The whiteout before her cleared for a moment, allowing her to see that the single group of refugees was actually one of two, the trailing group more than twice as large as the first.

Shit. And they were running. Closer now, she could see they were dressed in rags, some wearing no more than sandals against the cold, thin cotton bed sheets held tight for warmth, rushing towards the uncertain safety of the submarine.

“This is not the deal,” said Dalmar stubbornly, pointing to the approaching mass of humanity. “We must charge extra now.”

Marissa and Alexis just stared at the massive Somali pirate with a strange mixture of fury and empathy as they struggled to find the words.

“Not the time,” interjected Jonah, searching across the ice with his binoculars. “Something is wrong — they shouldn’t be moving this fast.”

“What should we do?” demanded Alexis.

Jonah bent over the conning tower hatch and shouted to Vitaly below. “Prepare for emergency dive!” he ordered.

“Look at them — we can’t leave them out here!” shouted Marissa. “They’ll die!”

“We’re not leaving anybody,” said Jonah. “Dalmar— Marissa — I need you to open the main deck hatch. We can load the Scorpion twice as fast if we don’t use the conning tower. Doc — I need you in the crew compartment. These people look like they’ve been walking for days. We could have dozens of exposure and frostbite cases.”

Hassan mumbled a checklist to himself as he made for the supply closets, rattling off words like heaters, hot water, blankets, first aid. The remaining crew scrambled as the first of the refugees reached the submarine, pounding the outer hull as they pleaded to be let in. Dalmar and Marissa rolled a boarding net over the side, allowing the first and strongest of the masses below to step across the cold, broken ice and grab ahold of the fraying net. They crowded the hull in expanding numbers, the young and able-bodied helping children and the elderly ascend first. Once on the main deck, some stood transfixed before Dalmar and Marissa, scarcely able to tear their eyes from the pirate or the American.

“Why are they just standing there?” demanded Alexis. “They’ve probably never seen foreigners before,” said Jonah softly.

Alexis nodded, not entirely convinced. She had an itchy, uncomfortable feeling all over her body, the same one she got when they first crossed into Somali waters a lifetime ago — this was dangerous territory, and the operation was already taking entirely too long. Confirming her unease, Alexis began to hear a growing rumble in the distance, a slow, building roar almost entirely lost to the blizzard. She turned to Jonah. “Do you hear that sound?” Her voice was scarcely louder than a whisper.

Jonah cocked his head, a newly concerned expression crossing his face. He hadn’t heard it, but she had — and that was enough. “Any radar contact?” he asked, shouting down to Vitaly in the command compartment below.

“Nyet!” answered the Russian. “Weather terrible, cannot see nothing onscreen!”

Alexis looked back toward the horizon just in time to see a low, massive military hovercraft in the distance, still all but hidden by the blowing snow. Double-shit—less than a third of the refugees had made it on board. Just two hundred yards out now, the intruder would be on top of them inside sixty seconds. Dalmar and Marissa hadn’t noticed the craft yet, and were arguing with each other as they struggled to lower a shawl-wearing grandmother down the deck hatch.

“Hey!” shouted Jonah, slamming his palm against the side of the conning tower loud enough to get their attention. Wordlessly, he pointed. Dalmar and Marissa turned to stare, stopping their bickering as they let go of the old woman, dropping her into the waiting arms of family below.

Marissa sprinted up to the base of the conning tower. “What happens to these people if we leave?” said Jonah, calling down from above.

“The unlucky ones die in a concentration camp!” shouted Marissa over the howling blizzard.

“And the lucky ones?”

“They’ll shoot them right here on the ice!”

“Forget the hatch,” said Jonah, yelling to both Marissa and Dalmar. “Just get them all up on our hull!”

The refugees had seen the hovercraft, too. Frightened screams and cries rang out from the crowd as they began to push and shove, crowding around the boarding net, dropping their few possessions as they frantically tried to save themselves. A young boy slipped and fell into the freezing water between the pack ice and the submarine hull, only to be yanked to safety moments later by his older brother.

Dalmar leapt from his post, slid down the side of the submarine, and splashed into the ankle-deep water among the broken ice. He began to grab children and physically hurl them onto the deck from the snowy ice below. Rather than protest, parents surrounded the massive pirate, pressing their children into his hands. Time was all but out. Through the whipping snow, the hovercraft was now close, dangerously close.

“Are they going to shoot everybody?” whispered Alexis, her voice betraying her fear.

Jonah shook his head — but somehow she didn’t quite believe him this time. “If they were going to shoot, they would have already,” he said. But she wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince her, or himself. And then she saw it… the first spark of a plan entering his mind.

“It’s too windy for walkie-talkies,” said Jonah, jumping over the railing to the exterior ladder. “Stay here — relay my instructions to Vitaly!”

“What should I do?” called Alexis after him.

“Tell him — on my signal, full power to the engines!” shouted Jonah. She tried to ask him what the signal was, but he’d already reached the base of the ladder. Jonah pushed himself through the throngs of refugees, joining Marissa as she crammed frail bodies into the deck hatch, one after another. Having thrown the last of the children onto the deck, Dalmar jumped onto the boarding net and dragged himself back aboard.

Alexis looked down the interior of the conning tower, catching sight of the top of Vitaly’s head from above. “We have an incoming NK hovercraft, danger close! Jonah says full power to the engines on his signal!”

“Da, da!” Vitaly yelled back, readying his computer terminal. “I will be ready!”

“He didn’t tell me what the signal is!” Alexis shouted from above.

“Signal is explosion!” called Vitaly. “With Jonah, signal is always explosion!”

Alexis looked back over the deck, wishing she could be as confident about anything as Vitaly was about the nature of the signal. All she could see was the incoming hovercraft — the fucker was massive, seventy-five feet in length and thirty across, ringed by a thick rubber skirt with huge airplane propellers howling at the stern.

“Lock it down!” shouted Jonah, waving his hands into the wind. “Shut all hatches!”

Dalmar glared at Jonah just long enough to defiantly shove a soggy, half-drowned boy through the opening and into a mass of waiting arms below. With a snarl, the pirate slammed the hatch shut as the refugees around him began to scream in fear and distress.

“Everybody get down!” shouted Jonah, waving his arms. “Down, down, down!”

The refugees didn’t understand the language but the gesture was clear. They began to kneel and sit on the deck, Dalmar and Marissa crouching amongst them. Soon, only Jonah was standing amongst the crowd, waiting for the hovercraft to close the final few meters to the submarine.

Even from the conning tower, Alexis could see Marissa mouth to Jonah—You can’t, you don’t know what they’ll do to us. You just can’t.

But Jonah only turned to issue Marissa a single, cold stare until she melted into the mass of refugees. Jonah was left alone, standing arms wide in surrender, an apologetic Aw-shucks-you-caught-me expression on his face, his assault rifle slung harmlessly behind his back. He didn’t look like he was facing down the North Korean military. He looked like he was trying to wriggle out of a ticket in a West Texas speed trap.

The massive hovercraft came alongside the Scorpion, her flat, wide deck bristling with rifles as a dozen soldiers pointed their weapons at Jonah. They leaned against their metal railing, a triple-set of open airplane propellers roaring behind them. The North Korean soldiers on deck were a strange mix of Cold War-era camo snowsuits and AK-47’s, woolen caps, and plain green steel combat helmets, all led by a single young lieutenant. They were healthier than the refugees, fed at least, but still bore the small, bowed statures and lean features of the chronically malnourished. The soldiers wore stoic, angry expressions, barely concealing a kind of childlike wonder, even glee. It was as though they’d unexpectedly cornered a mythic species, a creature they’d known only through decades of propaganda-driven legend.

Still feigning surrender, Jonah gingerly pressed his way through the cowed throng of refugees, slowly opening a small deck compartment to reveal a thick steel mooring cable. He picked up the loop at the end, gesturing that he wanted to throw it across, allow the soldiers to link their crafts together for boarding. The refugees huddled frozen in silent horror, some openly weeping with fear.

The North Korean lieutenant returned the gesture, signaling Jonah to throw the cable and secure their capture. He made the motions of a soft, underhand toss. The soldiers began to lower their weapons, preparing to receive the line.

Before they could react, Jonah suddenly hurled the thick loop towards the nearest propeller, the long steel cable singing through the air as it followed. It hit with a sharp ping and a shower of sparks in the split second before the line caught in the rotor, screeching as the heavy line snapped taut. Alexis threw herself behind the lip of the conning tower as the hovercraft engine exploded, flames and smoke pouring from the engines, the steel line hopelessly tangled in the wreckage.

Alexis stared down the interior of the conning tower just in time to see Vitaly spin up the Scorpion’s engines to howling full power. “Da, signal always explosion!” the Russian cackled as the lurching submarine slammed through the first of the icepack, bow splitting through the frozen, cracking crust. The refugees were thrown to the deck. Dalmar’s arm shot out to grabbed an old man in the moments before he tumbled into the freezing, propeller-churned water in their wake.

Picking up speed, the Scorpion dragged the now-flaming hovercraft stern-first over the surface. North Korean soldiers scrambled, but could not bring their guns to bear. Great blocks of ice smashed into and flipped up and over the submarine’s shuddering foredeck even as Dalmar and Marissa threw open the main deck hatch again and tossed people into a human heap in the crew quarters below. Jonah abandoned the refugees and took up position behind the conning tower. He squinted into the frigid air as his automatic weapon poured an entire magazine of bullets into the black rubber cushion of the hovercraft. Thin, white jets of air hissed outward from pockmarked shots penetrating the craft, turning the rubber skirt into a ragged mess.

Suddenly, the steel line broke with a ringing snap. The whipping ends recoiled over the heads of the refugees causing Dalmar to duck instinctively. Marissa cried out as the line whipped past where the pirate’s head had just been. A cheer went up from the refugees as they watched the burning hovercraft slowly shrink into the distance behind them. Jonah lowered the rifle, slung it over his back, and returned to Dalmar and Marissa’s side, the three together helping the last handful of refugees off the deck and into the hatch.

Behind them, the North Korean soldiers managed to disconnect the stricken, flaming engine, vectoring thrust from the remaining two propellers to begin a long, lazy turn, and once again rejoined the chase. Floating over the ice, the hovercraft began to close the gap once more. Their soldiers weren’t waiting this time. A haphazard hail of bullets streamed across the icepack. Bullets clattered across the Scorpion’s deck as the final refugee disappeared into submarine. Marissa went in next, followed by Dalmar and Jonah, the hatch slamming shut behind him.

“Dive!” screamed Alexis in the conning tower to Vitaly below. “Dive, dive, dive!”

Freezing, ice-laden water rushed over the bow, flooding across the deck like Moses releasing the parted waters of the Red Sea. A massive wave slid over the short foredeck, drenching Alexis as it crashed against the conning tower. She vaulted down the interior ladder, the hatch clanging shut just as a second wave of ice and water curled over the lip of her post.

And then they were free, gliding through the water column of the North Korean shoals, again hidden beneath shifting ice.

Jonah pointed at Alexis. “Report!” he ordered “Did we get everybody?”

“Every man, woman, and child,” she announced with pride through chattering teeth. Freezing droplets of seawater scattered across the metal deck as she shivered uncontrollably.

“Good,” said Jonah, squinting as he eyed the long corridor through the heart of the Scorpion, now thick with shivering refugees. “We should be able to pull off a clean escape from here. North Korean subs are not ice-rated, and their surface ships and airplanes won’t be able to find us beneath the pack.”

“Scorpion not ice-rated,” complained Vitaly as he turned the submarine sharply to the north, plotting an unpredictable route out of hostile waters. “You make us go anyway.”

“I told you the ol’ girl would be fine,” said Jonah, patting Vitaly on the shoulder. “Nice work getting us out of there.”

“Worst captain ever never listen to Vitaly,” muttered the Russian, trying to hide his smile at the compliment. “Vitaly must save day again.”

Glancing in both directions, Alexis pulled Jonah to the side for a quiet word. “This was way too close — even for us,” said Alexis, whispering into his ear. “I didn’t sign on for a shoot out with the North Korean military.”

“Agreed,” said Jonah. “None of us did. The moment we get to Kanazawa, these people are off my boat, and I’m throwing Marissa out on her narrow ass. We got lucky this time. We won’t get lucky twice.”

Alexis pushed through the crowding, coughing refugees and made her way to the crew compartment. They were everywhere — mothers and fathers holding children and entire families piled into the sparse bunks. The strongest tended to the young and old, some of whom could barely stand. The engineer couldn’t believe how small and frail they all were. Some little more than person-shaped twigs.

Hassan was inundated with patients, throngs pressing against him as they pleaded for his attention. He’d hung a stethoscope around his neck as he attended to the first of the injured, but it may as well been a magnet. Dalmar and Marissa controlled the crowds the best they could, helping the elderly into their bunks, trying to stem the flow of the human sea surging within the submarine.

The refugees had already found their way into the galley. The last of the fruit and raw vegetables were passed overhead, the rations steadily deflating as outstretched hands darted into the sacks. Alexis spotted an entire oversized can of dehydrated potatoes move from person to person, the white flakes within disappearing by the fistful.

“Don’t eat those!” shouted Alexis, futilely pointing towards the can. “We have to cook them first! You really shouldn’t — oh.”

Within seconds, the potato-flake can dropped to the metal deck, all but empty. A small gang of children attacked the tin, licking their fingers and wiping them across the inside, desperate for every last spec of the starchy dust within.

A big glass jar of candied apple slices went up next — a gourmet variety Hassan had found during their brief stay in Puget Sound. The doctor started to protest, but abandoned the useless fight almost immediately and turned his attention back to the patients at hand.

Alexis threaded through the last of the crowd, finally close enough to reach out and squeeze Hassan’s hand. Looking up, the doctor returned the squeeze, and allowed himself a harried smile in her direction.

“The apples—” stuttered Hassan, barely able to form a thought among the chaos. “I was saving them. For your birthday — well, any special occasion, I mean.”

The engineer tugged on his hand again, taking it in both of hers. “It’s a special occasion for them,” she said. “It’s okay. Really.”

A commotion erupted behind them, suddenly interrupting the moment. Alexis caught the next moment in flashes. Screams, refugees pushing, trampling each other. One of the tallest men faced off against Dalmar, teeth gritted — a glinting knife in his fist. He jabbed toward Dalmar twice as the pirate parried with his bare hands. And then she couldn’t see them. Dalmar and his attacker were on the floor, the pirate slamming his attacker into the metal bulkheads as they struggled for the blade.

A second tall man emerged from the roiling mass, his eyes trained on Dalmar as he moved to attack. Alexis slammed her palm against the intercom, shouting for immediate help. And then she yanked out the lighting circuit breakers, plunging the compartment into utter darkness.

Alexis roughly shoved people out of her way, almost swimming as she made for her workbench — and the night-vision goggles in the top drawer. She’d been fixing a broken eyepiece to return them to working order. Fingers outstretched, she found the drawer, yanking it free. She flicked the on switch and they came alive with a familiar electronic whine, the single working eyepiece flickering to an iridescent green light.

Turning to the crowd, Alexis desperately scanned the crouching, frightened refugees. She couldn’t see Dalmar, but she could hear the dull, wet thumps of the fight on the deck. Someone was getting a hell of a beating. She just hoped it was Dalmar’s two attackers. In the bunk behind the crowd, Hassan held an old woman in his arms, gently pressing an IV into the crook of her inner arm despite the darkness.

And then she saw Jonah. Through the parting refugees, the captain grabbed one of the attackers from behind in a vicious chokehold. A knife tumbled from the attacker’s hands and onto the deck. Using the sound alone, Jonah threw his body to the deck, snatched up the knife and plunged it into his throat with a sickening squish.

She could see the imposters now, kicking herself for not noticing them before. Three more men among the ranks of the refugees, only taller, better muscled, no longer hidden under the disguise of blankets and loose-fitting rags. Hidden and waiting to strike, they intended to take the Scorpion.

The trio made their way through the crowd, each with a knife cocked back in one hand and the other pushing aside bodies, feeling for something other than the gaunt ribs of the refugees as they approached Dalmar from behind. Jonah was lost in the crowd, too far back to assist.

“Dalmar!” pleaded Alexis. The pirate heard her voice pierce the darkness.

“What?” he shouted

“Turn around!”

Dalmar swiveled to face the threat in the darkness.

“Wait!” ordered Alexis, heart in her throat as the three men pushed their way past the last of the refugees between themselves and the pirate.

“For what, woman?” demanded Dalmar.

“Fight!” screamed Alexis, her voice hoarse.

No hesitation and with impossible speed, the pirate lunged. His hand shot out to grab the nearest man by the neck. The would-be attacker didn’t even have time to strike with his cocked knife before Dalmar slammed his meaty fist into his face once, twice, a third time. The man hit the deck, a bloody and unconscious mess.

Before Alexis could issue the next order, a young, soggy boy had found the breakers and flipped them back on. The engineer whipped the goggles off her face, nearly blinded by the sudden illumination.

Oh shit, she thought. One of the infiltrators had found the lights. For all she knew they were still outnumbered, and if the imposters had anything more than a knife, the Scorpion would be overrun in seconds. The boy at the breakers screamed in Korean, his face contorted with rage as he pointed out the two infiltrators.

But then the crowd came alive, the refugees tackling and beating the traitors in their midst, tearing knives and pistols from their clothing, clubbing them mercilessly with hands and feet. Alexis dug back into her drawers and took out four rolls of duct tape, hurling them across the compartment and into the mob. In seconds, the intruders were trussed up in thick grey tape, with three or four persons sitting on each while the other refugees stripped the lone dead man for his clothes and shoes.

There was little time to celebrate the victory as the intercom squawked with Vitaly’s request for the crew to go to the bridge. Alongside Jonah, Alexis pushed through the refugee crowd once again, and then sat at the hydrophone console next to Vitaly’s helm.

“Leaving North Korean maritime territory in three …” began Vitaly, “two… one… we now in international waters.”

Standing in the entrance to the bridge, Marissa nodded, turned, and announced the news. One of the small Korean women screamed a translation for the others. A collective cheer went up from the refugees, celebrating their escape. Alexis watched in total shock as several Chinese phones emerged from pockets and some of the refugees began taking selfies. She couldn’t help but shake her head in disbelief. What a world, when a smartphone was easier to come across than a daily meal.

“I hope they got all that noise out of their fucking system,” barked Jonah to anyone who was listening. “We can only run silent if we all stay goddamn silent.”

Alexis held up a hand as the din of the celebrating refugees slowly faded. The familiar sound of approaching propellers echoed in her hydrophones. Her blood ran cold with fear.

“I hear prop wash!” she announced in a loud whisper, loud enough to make everyone on the bridge freeze.

“A ship? Are we being pursued?” demanded Jonah.

“It’s not a ship.” She looked up, the color gone from her face. “It’s an entire fleet. And they’re right on our tail.”

CHAPTER 6

Jonah didn’t need updates from the hydrophone station; the sounds of churning, knife-like blades filled the command compartment, becoming louder every moment. The frozen ice off North Korea’s coastline had made for a claustrophobic, precarious ceiling, but now the Scorpion was dangerously exposed without it. The fleet of ships behind them — how many exactly, Jonah did not know — matched their speed and heading, slowly closing in on their quarry. The fleet would be within striking distance in minutes. And then what? Depth charges, like the ones they’d barely survived off Somalia? Or would their pursuers simply chase the Scorpion until the last of their straining batteries ran dry and their air turned foul?

Shit, Jonah thought. He couldn’t believe he was about to get blown out of the water in front of his ex-girlfriend. Worse, he wouldn’t even know who’d sunk him — just a high-pitched wail of an incoming torpedo before the big pop. The lucky ones among his crew and refugees would die in the pressure wave of the initial blast. The rest would drown as their ear drums burst and lungs filled with choking seawater, the Scorpion collapsing compartment by compartment as she plunged into the depths for the final time.

Dalmar stood watch on deck, waiting for orders as Vitaly maintained his able control of the helm. Alexis worked capably through her fear, her hands shaking ever so slightly as she optimized engine output to compensate for their heavy human payload. Even Marissa was at attention, ready to follow his lead. Jonah forced down a wave of bitter pride, burying the emotion. He just wished Hassan could be by his side; the doctor’s calm presence and steady mind was an asset in every circumstance. Not that the doctor would have any tricks up his sleeve for an entirely one-sided underwater gunfight.

Jonah glanced at the navigation screen. Good—they’d already made it further out to sea than he’d anticipated, the increase in the Scorpion’s top speed a credit to Alexis’ recent engine retrofit. But he knew full well they couldn’t run forever.

“Vitaly — make our depth five hundred feet,” Jonah ordered.

“Five-zero-zero depth, aye,” said Vitaly as he pushed the control yoke downwards. The deck abruptly shifted, leaving Jonah to press his palm on the low ceiling for balance. The hull creaked, adjusting not only to the increasing pressure, but the presence of a colder thermocline water layer. Jonah allowed himself a wry smile — the invisible barrier between water temperatures would refract and partially mask the acoustic signature of their propellers, maybe even give the Scorpion the chance to slip away undetected.

“Follow our backup escape course. Keep it unpredictable; I want to skirt the edge of Russian waters. Let’s see if they’re willing to cause an international incident over us.”

“I think we’ve already caused the international incident,” muttered Alexis, rapidly flipping through a series of engine diagnostic readouts. The battery banks were finicky at best; staying one step ahead of breakdowns was a constant battle.

“How’s our trim? I’m feeling some yaw up here.”

“Very difficult to maintain,” said the helmsmen. “New weight balance, much movement. Maybe everyone sit down, please?”

Jonah turned to Dalmar. “Go aft and get our guests situated. Tell ’em to keep their hands and feet inside the ride at all times.”

The big pirate nodded in acknowledgement and left the command compartment. Jonah tried not to think about how he’d carry out the order. Dalmar was just as likely to wave a gun around as to ask nicely.

“Steady on,” said Jonah, reassuring himself just as much as anyone else within earshot. “They haven’t pinged us, and they haven’t fired on us. They could just be investigating some unusual acoustics. We’ll lose them in the main shipping lanes, turn east and slip into Japanese waters underneath a cargo freighter. They’ll never even know where they lost track of us.”

“Captain!” interrupted Alexis, waving him over to the communications station. “I think we’re getting a message!”

“What? I thought we were too deep for radio.”

“It’s not radio,” said Alexis. “I almost didn’t see it at first — its telemetry on the Extremely Low Frequency band. I’ve never seen ours so much as beep before.”

The message slowly materialized as Jonah watched with increasing concern.

Shit. The fact that the orders were in English wasn’t a good sign. It was one thing if their pursuers thought they were chasing a DPRK submarine. Sinking one might set off the whole touchy, semi-nuclearized Korean peninsula. But going after the Scorpion was quite another. As an unflagged outlaw vessel on an illegal smuggling mission, she was fair game.

“How did they find us? Did we miss another spy? Or a transmitter?”

“Running an internal electromagnetic scan,” said Alexis, her fingers jumping across her console. “No EMF signals detected — and we’re not broadcasting on any frequency. The fleet must be following us by propeller noise alone.”

“Vitaly?”

“We already rigged for silent running and beneath thermocline. Submarine as quiet as submarine get!”

“Can we—” began Jonah before he was cut off.

“Getting another transmission!” Alexis called out. She swiveled her terminal towards Jonah as telemetry crawled again across the screen, one character at a time.

“They’re calling us out by name,” Jonah muttered. “Vitaly — who the hell are these guys? US Navy? Russians? Chinese?”

“I do not know, Captain. Could also be Korean, Japanese, DPRK. Many navy in Sea of Japan.”

“Are we responding?” asked Alexis, looking up at him with concern.

“You bet your ass we’re responding,” said Jonah, pointing at Marissa. She stood behind the conning tower ladder on the other side of the command compartment wearing a shocked Who, me? expression. “Go aft and find a North Korean passenger who speaks English. Good English.”

Marissa didn’t answer, just turned to sprint back towards the crew compartment.

“Vitaly — make our depth six-zero feet and deploy the radio antenna. I want clear and unencumbered voice transmission capability.”

“Captain!” protested Vitaly. “I must advise against! Twenty meters? It very easy to sink Scorpion at this depth!”

“Angles and dangles ain’t working, Vitaly. Whoever is following us won’t be snookered by the usual tricks— confirm depth six-zero.”

“Aye Captain. I bring Scorpion to suicide depth.” He pulled back on the yoke, the bow of the submarine rising sharply.

Marissa marched back into the command compartment, dragging a short, wide-eyed refugee by the hand. The young North Korean woman in tow was all of four foot ten inches in height, round-faced, and topped with an unfortunate government-sanctioned bowl cut that only further cemented her tragic resemblance to a mushroom.

“You speak English?” asked Jonah.

The small Korean woman nodded, too mesmerized by Jonah to answer out loud. She instead reached up with one tiny hand and pinched at his beard with irrepressible curiosity. He couldn’t help but suspect it was the first one she’d ever seen in person.

Jonah batted her hand away.“What’s your name?”

“I am Sun-Hi,” she said, still staring at his short beard, but keeping her hands to herself this time.

“What’s your job?”

“I read radio news in Myongchon, North Hamgyong province.”

“Good. Can you act? Improvise?”

“I play Koppun in stage version of The Flower Girl!” She lifted both fists in the air like a cheerleader as she gave him a wide, unexpected smile, almost dancing in excitement. Jonah had no idea what the tiny woman was talking about, but knew he’d tapped into the right part of her personality. She’d need every bit of that moxie if his plan had any chance of succeeding.

“We have reached depth six-zero and will soon die,” announced Vitaly from the helm, leveling the submarine out. The swishing of the fleet above was louder than ever. Propeller noises seemed to come from all around, echoing throughout every compartment.

“Noted,” said Jonah without looking up. “Sun-Hi, we’re being hunted. Our only chance to escape is to pretend we’re not illegal smugglers. Get on the radio and tell them that we’re a North Korean naval submarine and demand the fleet break off their pursuit.”

“Include many strange threat,” added Vitaly. “More authentic this way.”

Before Jonah could say another word, Sun-Hi grabbed the radio headset from Alexis and started screaming in rapid-fire Korean, turning beet-red as she waved her fists in the air and stomped the deck for good measure. No doubt she’d understood Jonah’s instructions, as he had to physically separate her from the transmitter to end her theatrical ranting. Seconds ticked by as he and Alexis stared at the communications console, waiting for the response. Sun-Hi stood in the center of the tense command compartment, glancing eagerly from one crewman to another as they all waited in silence.

“You think they bought it?” asked Alexis.

The response came without warning — a high-pitched buzzing sounded from outside the Scorpion’s hull, approaching with incredible speed.

“That’s not a ship — brace for impact!” shouted Jonah.

Alexis ripped off her noise-amplifying hydrophones just as the torpedo hit, slamming into the side of the Scorpion with the tooth-rattling concussion of a sledgehammer on a sewer pipe, shaking the submarine to her keel. The overhead lights winked out as emergency illumination bathed the command compartment in crimson red. Sun-Hi and the refugee passengers screamed in fear, adding to the chaos. Dalmar burst back into the command compartment, a snarl on his face as he braced for another torpedo blow.

“Swing us to starboard — initiate emergency dive— damage report!”

“No hull breach!” shouted Vitaly. “Secondary systems rebooting! Emergency dive, aye!”

“Receiving transmission!” Alexis said. The communications console flickered as the new message crawled across the screen, the computer circuits still resetting after the ringing blow.

“What the hell, Captain?” demanded Alexis. “Do you know these guys?”

“No,” said Jonah, still wincing. “But they sure as shit know me. Vitaly — how the hell are we still alive?”

“Must have been training torpedo, no warhead!” said Vitaly. “It bounce off our hull! I tell you, twenty meters is suicide! We must go deep. Hide.”

Marissa slowly lowered her hands from her ears. “That was a warning shot?”

“Captain, I must have orders!”

Jonah said nothing at first. “Vitaly — Alexis — cut power and level off.”

“What?” demanded Alexis.

“Cease silent running. We’re outgunned, outmaneuvered, and we can’t outrun another torpedo. They won’t give us a second warning.”

Dalmar racked a round into his assault rifle, eyes wide. “We must prepare for a surface battle!”

“Belay that,” ordered Jonah. “We can’t duke it out with a naval fleet. Marissa, take Sun-Hi back to the crew compartment and stow her away with the rest. I need you to keep everybody calm and maintain order while we figure this out. Dalmar, stay up here with me for now.”

“We’re… giving up?” whispered Alexis as an eerie silence fell on the compartment. “Do you have any idea what they’re going to do to us when they board the Scorpion and see what we’re carrying?”

“Broadcast our unconditional surrender in English, all channels,” confirmed Jonah through clenched teeth. “Do it now. We may have a few cards to play yet, but they’re all dependent on getting to the surface in one piece.”

Sun-Hi nodded, shell-shocked as she retreated to the crew compartment on Marissa’s arm, head bowed low, Dalmar watching her retreat. Did the young refugee blame herself? Jonah shook his head in frustration — there wasn’t time to assure her otherwise.

“We approach surface,” said Vitaly, voice low. “If you have plan, now is good time.”

“Good — Vitaly, bring us to a fifteen-degree heel the minute we’re above the waves. Alexis, kick up the diesels as soon as the snorkels are clear, but I need you to run the engines as rich as you can without damaging the cylinders. I want our stacks rolling coal like an Alabama tractor pull.”

“Running rich,” confirmed Alexis as she adjusted the fuel-air mixture, preparing for a diesel engine restart.

“We act like football star Luis Suarez, fake injury?” asked Vitaly.

“Isn’t he the one who bites people?” said Alexis.

“That’s the idea,” said Jonah. “I’m hoping we have some bite left as well.”

“Playing possum,” said Alexis, nodding. “Got it — I’ll make sure we look busted to hell and back.”

“So that we might attack!” insisted Dalmar. “Not without my order. But be prepared for anything,” said Jonah. “We may only get one shot. Maybe none at all. All I can say for now is that I need to buy us time.”

Jonah didn’t mention the second part of his plan. They wouldn’t be playing wounded to plot an escape. He needed the time to cut a deal that didn’t involve the torpedoed wreckage of the Scorpion slamming into the ocean bottom. The one-sided battle had been over before it’d even begun.

The Scorpion rose from the cold ocean, bow wake streaming off her conning tower. Jonah raised the periscope, slowly rotating it 360 degrees to observe the surrounding fleet as Alexis’ diesel engines came online with a familiar throaty hum.

The largest of the fleet was at a standoff distance of less than a mile, an 800 foot, 27,000 ton flat-top naval behemoth. Two helicopters circled overhead, both Sikorsky SH-60’s equipped with anti-submarine listening devices and torpedoes. A formation of about a half-dozen armed helicopter drones dipped from the sky and buzzed the periscope, each equipped with high-tech sensors, guns, and rocket pods. Three smaller amphibious assault ships and a destroyer lurked at the periphery, semi-autonomous, six-barreled Phalanx cannons leveled at the Scorpion, every flat battleship-grey surface painted with a round red sun.

“It’s the Japanese Navy,” announced Jonah to his crew in a low voice. “We’re completely surrounded by what appears to be an entire carrier group.”

“Captain—what is plan?” hissed Vitaly.

“The plan?” said Jonah. “I’m coming out of our conning tower with my hands up. That’s all I have so far.”

“We actually surrender?” said Vitaly with dismay. “What do you say — no cards we play?”

“It’s up to them at this point. We may not have any other option that keeps us alive. I’ll do all the talking. If there’s a handshake deal to be had, I’ll take it — especially if it keeps you all out of prison and our refugees out of a North Korean concentration camp. Beyond that — my standing instructions to all crew and passengers is to surrender unconditionally, comply with any and all Japanese orders and accept their boarding parties without resistance.”

Dalmar slammed his fist into the metal hull, the meaty impact ringing out like a torpedo hit. As the rest of the crew quietly digested the plan, Jonah punched the ship-wide intercom, ordering the doctor to the bridge.

Within moments, Hassan walked into the command compartment. Jonah knew the doctor could read his expressions without a single spoken word. The wild ride was over, and now it was time to pay the toll.

CHAPTER 7

Jonah and Hassan emerged from the conning tower unarmed, carefully descending the exterior ladder to the tilting deck. The surrounding fleet was intimidating; it looked as though every Japanese ship within a thousand miles had been on their heels. True to his orders, Alexis had set the engines to belch out thick black smoke through the stack and into the clear winter air, feigning distress. Helicopter drones circled the rising column like buzzards, training their rocket pods on the surfaced submarine.

“What happens now?” asked Hassan, shielding his eyes from the winter sun as he stared across the waters to the massive fleet.

“I have no idea,” said Jonah. “I’ve never had an entire navy after me before.”

The doctor bent down to examine where the training torpedo had struck, brushing his fingers across a punched-in exterior hull plate on the starboard side. Jonah didn’t have to look at the jagged metal fragments still lodged in the side of his ship — he knew it was a kill-shot, a direct hit to the command compartment. A warhead payload would have instantly imploded the hull, slaughtering the crew as the flooded metal husk of the Scorpion fell to the depths. The aborted battle wasn’t like going up against corporate mercenaries, local pirates, or even the underfed soldiers of a backward hermit kingdom. The Japanese navy was the real deal, and Jonah knew they never had a goddamn chance.

A black, rubber-ringed Zodiac boat sped away from the nearest destroyer at high speed, moving to intercept the Scorpion. It was only the first — nearly a dozen emerged from behind the shelter of their mothership, following close behind the first. The six men onboard the lead boat bristled with MP5 machine pistols and a mounted 50-caliber gun. Jonah recognized the distinctive balaclava-clad combat soldiers as the Special Boarding Unit, the British SBS-trained counter-terrorism force created to combat North Korean spy ship incursions.

Jonah pursed his lips as he considered the sheer volume of firepower heading their way. “I didn’t think we rated this much attention so far away from the Horn of Africa,” he said. “The world has gotten too small, my friend.”

“Quite.”

The Special Forces troops beached their inflatable boat on the deck of the Scorpion and sprinted across the deck with guns leveled. Jonah and Hassan were thrown face-first onto the wet hull as zip ties went around their wrists.

“It was nice knowing you, Doc,” shouted Jonah over the din of stomping combat boots, his face shoved into an oily puddle. “It was fun while it lasted. Maybe we can arrange adjoining prison cells if I ask nicely.”

“I thoroughly disagree that it was ever fun,” snapped Hassan, his voice lost to the commotion.

Two of the Special Forces soldiers sat on Jonah’s back, keeping him pinned to the wet hull as a half-dozen inflatable boats disgorged soldiers until the Scorpion’s deck was thick with troops.

Jonah and Hassan were roughly yanked upright and thrown against the base of the conning tower. As they watched, a single soldier opened a metal folding chair and placed it facing them before retreating. A tall Japanese man in his late forties, with thick black hair and a thin beard, sat down in the folding chair, wordlessly staring down Jonah and Hassan with penetrating, intelligent eyes. Their captor had no military uniform, sporting instead, a clean and pressed collared shirt with the knot of his tie barely peeking from behind his expensive cardigan. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a Banana Republic catalog, not the deck of Japan’s Special Forces-laden naval carrier flagship.

Preparing to enter the interior, the boarding party opened the main deck hatch, aiming their machine pistols down the opening as the first of the terrified refugees emerged from within. A small, wailing girl no older than eight crawled onto the deck, followed by her shaking, frantic mother. The little girl screamed as her mother was zip-tied, bodily hauled towards the nearest inflatable boat, and hurled in face-first. The refugees came out of the hatch faster now, each grabbed and violently heaved into boats. None of the boarders could enter — the refugees were emerging in waves now, blinking against the winter sunlight as soldiers shoved them to their hands and knees.

“Hey!” protested Jonah, struggling to his feet to address the well-dressed man on the folding chair. “Let’s figure this thing out without all the rough stuff, okay? There’s kids down there, no need to—”

Their captor leapt to his feet within a heartbeat and put himself nose-to-nose with Jonah, staring him down like a prizefighter at a weigh-in. And then he struck, burying a clenched fist into Jonah’s gut. Jonah wheezed and collapsed, earning himself a too-brief reprieve before his captor aimed three calculated, brutal kicks to the ribs.

“We’re cooperating!” protested Hassan, his wrists straining against the zip ties. “Leave him alone! You’re terrifying these people!”

Jonah barely managed to shoot a single warning glance toward Hassan, shaking his head to silence the doctor. With gasping coughs, Jonah again pushed himself to a sitting position against the base of the conning tower and closed his eyes, grimacing in pain.

“There’s no cause for violence,” insisted Hassan, ignoring Jonah’s warning. “We’ve surrendered unconditionally. Please conduct yourselves peacefully and allow us to assist with our passengers!”

Pensively nodding, their captor touched a single finger to his chin as though he were seriously considering Hassan’s words. And then he grabbed Jonah by the throat, raining violent open-palmed slaps across his unprotected face. Hassan winced with every blow, trying, but failing, to meet their captor’s wild, unblinking eyes. Breathing heavily as he dropped his raised hand, the man smoothed his cardigan, sat down in his chair, and casually crossed his legs.

“Please stop talking, Doc,” groaned Jonah, his face red with hand-shaped imprints.

“So much for a handshake deal,” mumbled Hassan, barely loud enough for Jonah to hear.

“Don’t rub it in,” whispered Jonah. “Not my fault we drew Happy McSlappy as chief jackass in charge instead of a proper naval admiral.”

“An admiral?” Hassan bitterly laughed. “A little presumptuous, don’t you think?”

Dalmar’s shaved head emerged from the deck hatch, his bulky shoulders barely fitting through the tight squeeze. The surrounding men took an unconscious step back as he raised himself to his full height, flexing as he stood an entire head taller than their largest soldier. Seeing Jonah and Hassan by the conning tower, Dalmar extended his hands forward and allowed the Japanese soldiers to respectfully bind his wrists. With one escort on each arm, the grinning pirate was lead over and gently deposited next to the captain and doctor. Jonah couldn’t help but feel a flash of annoyed resentment at the comparative treatment received by the former warlord.

“An entire fleet sent to capture me!” announced Dalmar. “I am very pleased this day.”

“You’re still going to prison with the rest of us,” retorted Jonah. “So don’t get too pleased just yet.”

“We shall see. I think I am too famous for prison.”

More refugees emerged, and then Vitaly. The squirming Russian was hog-tied and carried in the air by two men who roughly dropped him into a puddle at Jonah’s feet.

“Rodilsya cherez jopu! Pizda s ushami! Worst captain ever!” was all Vitaly could sputter as he twisted against his bound hands and feet, rolling back and forth on the deck.

The flood of North Koreans from below decks trickled off as the boarding party was forced to boost the elderly up the hatch ladder one at a time. Their initial zeal, now tempered by the sheer volume of the task, left the soldiers halfheartedly restraining and loading the stooped, white-haired refugees at a snail’s pace.

The relative peace was broken when two of the boarding party pulled a duct-taped, struggling Marissa from hatch, the soldiers having long since run out of zip ties. Swearing and shouting, Marissa kicked and thrashed until she connected with the nearest soldier’s toes, causing him to briefly loose his grip on her collar as he whelped in pain. Marissa tried to hop away, making it all of three feet before the soldiers grabbed her, kicked her taped legs out from underneath her, and threw her to the deck with the rest of the crew. Shaking their heads and murmuring astonishment at the fury with which she’d fought them, the soldiers returned to the open deck hatch and descended the interior ladder once more. Jonah couldn’t help but smile — the soldiers had no idea who they were messing with. Marissa had been taking on tough-talking bouncers and handsy drunks since she was old enough to see over a bar.

“Looks like they ran out of zip ties,” whispered Jonah.

“Or found them inadequate to the task at hand,” Hassan added dryly.

The well-dressed man chuckled and briefly uncrossed his legs before crossing them again.

“What’s so goddamn funny?” asked Jonah loudly, daring another flurry of blows. The man just smiled without answering.

Marissa blew an unruly strand of frizzy hair out of her eyes as she turned to glare at Jonah, daggers in her eyes. Jonah just mouthed “Milk run,” and shot her a knowing smirk.

“Where’d they find you?” whispered Hassan. “Did you try to hide?”

“Laundry bin,” snapped Marissa.

“The laundry bin?” laughed Jonah. “Probably the first place they looked. Not a great hiding spot.”

“Clearly not, you fucking asshole!”

One of the Special Forces soldiers emerged from the hatch, walked to their well-dressed captor, and whispered into his ear. The search appeared finished — at least for the moment.

“You see Alexis?” whispered Jonah to Hassan, his lips barely moving.

“No,” said Hassan with a quick shake of his head. “She wasn’t with the refugees when they came out.”

Jonah nodded. Wherever Alexis had hidden herself, the boarders hadn’t found her yet. Given her knowledge of every pipe, bolt, and duct of the submarine’s interior, the Japanese might not find her at all. Maybe there was a card left to play yet. Jonah’s mind raced with possibilities.

Their captor rose to his feet as though sensing Jonah’s scheming machinations. He folded up his metal chair and handed it to the nearest soldier before stooping, putting the two men at eye level.

“You caught us,” said Jonah, stating the obvious. “What happens now?”

The man chuckled and drew himself to his feet again. He pointed at the conning tower of the Scorpion and gave a long, mournful whistle as he mimicked a submarine settling to the bottom of the ocean with his hand.

Hassan just looked at Jonah and shook his head. The doctor didn’t need to say a single word to make himself understood. Jonah couldn’t bluff, couldn’t gamble; not with Alexis’ life at stake. Jonah slowly struggled to his feet despite bruised ribs. Their captor shot Jonah a curious look and watched him carefully measured out three paces down the deck from the conning tower, turned sharply to starboard, and measured one more pace. Jonah stomped three times with one boot, waited a moment and stomped three more times before returning to slump against the tower with his crew.

A minute passed in silence, and then another. And then Alexis’ head popped out of the hatch, gingerly eyeing the captured crew before she emerged with hands in the air. Smiling, their captor waved the two intercepting Japanese soldiers away from the young woman — he’d handle her personally. For a moment, Jonah felt certain she’d be allowed to join the rest of crew by her own volition.

He was wrong.

As Alexis passed their captor, the well-dressed man roughly grabbed her from behind, violently kicking out the back of her knees as he shoved her face-first towards the deck. Gasping with surprise, Alexis was barely able to catch her fall with bloodied forearms as she skidded across the metal hull, stopping just short of Hassan’s reach.

“You bastard!” erupted Hassan. Jonah threw himself on top of Hassan, preventing the doctor from leaping to his feet and charging their captor headfirst. The rest of the crew swore and shouted with open fury, hurling invectives and abuse in four languages.

Jonah allowed himself a tiny spark of pride at his crew’s defiance. But as bad as things looked, at least he’d formed an educated guess about their well-dressed captor. No doubt the man was Public Security Intelligence Agency, Japan’s secretive version of the CIA. It probably hadn’t been difficult for a PSIA satellite to track the Scorpion in and out of North Korean waters; they’d been actively spying on the hermit kingdom since the agency’s inception more than sixty years previous. Jonah found himself deeply thankful that they’d been carrying refugees and not narcotics, counterfeit money, or embargoed arms. More than anything, he was thankful that they hadn’t picked up too many stray radioactive particles during their transit through the Fukushima exclusion zone. The Scorpion would have probably been sunk on sight if the Japanese Geiger counters so much as clicked when they surfaced.

“Leave my engineer alone,” demanded Jonah as he willed his crew into silence. “If you need someone to kick around, you go through me. Enough of the bullshit intimidation tactics. Time to tell us what you want.”

Their captor nodded. Turning to Alexis, he pulled a permanent marker out of his front pocket, bit the cap off, and spat it onto the deck. He grabbed the young engineer by the face, thumb and index finger squeezing her cheeks and chin as he scribbled a series of numbers on her forehead in thick black ink. Hassan shifted, face once more twisted in rage as the remaining Japanese soldiers raised their weapons in warning. One aggressive move and the doctor would be gunned down on the spot.

Finished writing, the intelligence officer dropped Alexis to the deck again and hurled his pen into the ocean. The engineer unconsciously reached up to touch the reddening skin around the blocky numerals on her face, but her captor violently grabbed her hands, twisting them away from the still-drying ink. Jonah squinted. He didn’t know the numbers, but recognized the format.

They were coordinates.

The officer snapped his fingers and the soldiers stepped forward, unsheathing knives as they advanced. Hassan recoiled and closed his eyes only to have his forearms roughly grabbed, the nearest blade easily slipping through the thick plastic of the zip ties. The rest of the crew was freed within moments, each rubbing their raw wrists as they looked at the now-retreating soldiers with utter disbelief. Only Marissa was left in her circles of silver duct tape, still facedown on the cold metal deck. One by one, the soldiers climbed back aboard their rubber boats and shoved off. Their violent captor was the last to depart, offering Jonah a mocking salute before turning his back to the Scorpion and boarding his small craft. Within moments, he was motoring back towards the destroyer at high speed without casting so much as a backwards glance over one shoulder.

“What fuck was that?” Vitaly wheezed as he clutched his ribs and watched the withdrawing boats.

“They can’t possibly be letting us go — can they?” asked Hassan.

“You think they chase us more?” said Vitaly.

“We cannot surrender again,” said Dalmar. “It would be very bad for my reputation.”

“Can somebody turn me around?” Marissa’s voice was muffled from underneath a face full of wet, soggy hair. “I can’t see what’s happening behind me.”

“Guys?” said Alexis, staring at the rest as she pointed at her own face. “What did he write on my forehead?”

“It’s a location,” Jonah said as he and Dalmar sat Marissa up. He still wasn’t sure what to make of what had just happened — but he recognized the format of the numbers.

“We can all see that they’re goddamn coordinates,” Marissa grumbled. “Coordinates to where?”

“I think North Korea again?” Vitaly tilted his head, putting his face inches from Alexis.

“What does he want us to do?” said Hassan. “He can’t possibly ask us to return to DPRK waters — not after stealing their citizens and leaving a burning hovercraft on the pack ice.”

“Easy now, Doc. It wasn’t that bad of a cockup, was it?” said Jonah. “We’re still floating, aren’t we?”

“Are you quite serious?” asked the doctor. “If our last sojourn wasn’t a cockup, I have little idea what the word means.”

“We wouldn’t even be in this mess if Jonah hadn’t blown up a goddamn North Korean hovercraft,” complained Marissa.

“Let me remind you that we’re out here on your milk run,” said Jonah.

“Maybe he wants us to avoid those coordinates in the future?” suggested Alexis. “Like when you get pulled over on the highway for speeding or whatever, but they let you off with a warning?” Everyone — even Hassan — groaned.

“I think we go back. We will take these North Koreans by surprise,” said Dalmar. “They would not expect us to return so soon.”

“But why?” repeated the doctor. “What do the Japanese want from us?”

“Maybe pick up cargo? Extract spy?” said Vitaly.

“I’m all for speculation, but could someone please get me out of this fucking tape first?” Alexis began to pull the sticky duct tape off as Marissa tried in vain to blow her soggy hair out of her eyes. She moaned in protest at each painful tug.

“Do not forget the possibility of assassination,” added Dalmar. “Perhaps he asks we kill a man… or many men.”

“Or maybe just some routine observation?” Alexis looked up at Jonah hopefully as she freed Marissa’s ankles. “You know, from a safe distance and all?”

Jonah just sighed, as though recalling a series of especially grim memories. “I think I’ve got this down in broad strokes,” he said. “These guys are not telling us a goddamn thing for a reason. They want us to stick our neck in the noose and see what happens.”

“What will become of the refugees?” Alexis asked. “I hope we didn’t just deliver them to a DPRK concentration camp.”

“Not much chance they’ll be worse off.” Hassan pulled Alexis to her feet and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Japan won’t return them to North Korea; that much is certain. Perhaps the ones with living relatives in the home islands might stay. The rest will undoubtedly go into South Korea’s refugee rehabilitation program.”

“The yakuza are going to be pissed,” Marissa said, frowning. “So much for getting paid, much less ever seeing Tokyo again. It’ll be years before I can stay at the Imperial Hotel.”

“So what we do now?” asked Vitaly.

“Let’s get below decks and scoot the hell out of here before the Japanese Navy changes their minds.” Jonah turned to Vitaly. “Make a course for North Korea. Let’s see what they want from us — no way that whatever’s out there is worse than what we’ve already been through.”

CHAPTER 8

Hassan felt as though he’d barely breathed in the hours since leaving the Japanese fleet behind. With his refugee patients gone, the doctor knew he should occupy himself sterilizing and cataloging his medical instruments, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave Jonah’s side at the nerve center of the submarine. The command compartment was lonely, half-empty. Alexis had made her way back to the engine room, while Marissa and Dalmar tried their best to sort through the picked-over chaos of the crew quarters and galley.

Jonah had assigned Hassan to the communications and hydrophone console, leaving the doctor to occasionally report the whispering acoustic signature of a trailing Japanese submarine. The Scorpion was not difficult to follow; Jonah had given Vitaly the cryptic order of running ‘silent, but not too silent,’ instructions the Russian actually seemed to understand. But the Japanese submarine behind them remained no less than a spear at their back, pushing them ever forward into hostile waters.

Vitaly enlarged a nautical map on his computer screen, roughly plotting out the approximate location of the Scorpion as she approached the rocky coastline of North Korea from far beneath the waves. Their new destination was nearly to the hermit kingdom’s southern border, far from the pack ice of the north.

“We re-enter North Korean waters about now,” whispered Vitaly. “I clear baffles? How you say, check our six?”

Jonah shook his head. “Let’s not piss anyone off,” he said. “If the Japanese are still following us with one of their subs, we have to let them… I don’t want to give anybody the idea that we’re trying to shake a tail.”

“Clear baffles?” asked Hassan.

“We have a blind spot behind our propellers,” said Jonah, jabbing a thumb towards the stern of the submarine. “Passive sonar won’t pick up anything in their acoustic shadow. Clearing the baffles means shaking our ass a little to see if anyone’s still back there.”

Marissa stuck her head in the command compartment. “We inventoried the galley. It’s not looking good. We’re basically down to condiments, and even most of those are completely gone. But for some reason, they left the mayo completely untouched.”

“We’ll just have to tighten our belts for now,” said Jonah. “Let’s assume this assignment is a short one, and then we can slip into the Philippines for a clandestine resupply once we’re done. It’s only a few days’ sail from here. And then we’ll be back at sea again, fat and happy, presumably heading for a destination far, far away from here.”

“If we’re not in prison,” said Marissa.

“Or a torpedoed wreck,” added Vitaly.

“Maybe somewhere warm next time?” suggested Hassan.

“Let’s get a definitive GPS fix before our final approach,” said Jonah, ignoring the dour predictions. Hassan felt an uncomfortable sick feeling in his stomach as he unconsciously adjusted the holstered Beretta pistol in his waistband, trying not to think of all the terrible ways their mission could go wrong.

“Aye Captain. Surfacing for GPS fix,” said Vitaly as he adjusted the depth planes with his computer console. The submarine shifted upwards almost imperceptibly as it rose, climbing a hundred feet through the water column to kiss the surface, a single thin antennae rising above the swells. Vitaly’s maps shifted slightly as the plotted position of the submarine updated automatically. Their location confirmed, the submarine began to descend once more into the quiet depths.

“Prepare for full silent running,” said Jonah. “Dead slow, zero cavitation. Disconnect the internal comms. We’ll pass messages between compartments in person until we’re back out of North Korean waters again. We have about an hour to prepare before things start getting dangerous again. And, I want everybody to take off their shoes. If I haven’t given you a job, stay in your bunk. I’ll need everything but the most critical systems offline. I don’t want the coffee maker to so much as burble. We’re hanging ass to the wind without pack ice to hide beneath.”

“Speaking of which, we’re out of coffee,” said Marissa as she slipped off her shoes and kicked them into a corner.

“This bad omen,” grumbled Vitaly. “Submarine run on diesel and coffee. Mostly coffee.”

Jonah turned to Marissa. “Out of coffee? How?”

“I think they ate the beans,” Marissa said with a shrug.

Hassan chewed down a rueful chuckle as he removed his shoes, tied them together by the laces, and slung them around his neck. Their former refugee passengers might be in for quite the stomach ache, but at least they’d be full— unlike so many of their starving countrymen stuck waiting out the brutal North Korean winter.

“Our Japanese friends still behind us?” asked Jonah as the last of the Scorpion’s gentle vibrations fell to eerie silence. Hassan closed his eyes and listened as intently as he could, but couldn’t hear the single swishing echo of a pursuing submarine. Either they were alone, or their escorts had now matched their stealth. Hassan strongly suspected the former. If the Japanese were willing to ply these dangerous waters, they wouldn’t have needed the Scorpion to begin with.

“Nothing on the hydrophones.” Alexis entered the command compartment with steel-toed boots slung across one shoulder. “It appears we have safe passage — for now.”

A small sigh of overdue relief circled throughout the command compartment. Vitaly reached up from the helm console and gently tugged Alexis by the hem of her tank top, awkwardly pulling her down to his eye level so he could get a better look at her forehead. He squinted as he stared at the ink-stained patch above her eyebrows, checking the coordinates against his own one final time. “You get it this time?” complained Alexis. “I’d really like to wash this gunk off my face, if you don’t mind.”

“You hold still now!” ordered Vitaly, releasing her shirt only to reach up and pinch and hold one of her cheeks like an overbearing aunt. The Russian turned her face one way and then the other to confirm each number in turn.

“I think you’re about done,” snapped Alexis as she swatted his hand away. “You’d better be, because this ink is coming off now.”

“He memorized the numbers the moment they were written down. Vitaly, stop hassling my engineer,” Jonah ordered. Vitaly just chuckled as he dismissed Alexis with a waved hand, quite amused with himself.

“Thanks,” Alexis said. She licked her thumb and scrubbed at the permanent marker, but to no avail.

Hassan stood and took Alexis by the crook of her arm. “May I take you to quarters?”

“Only if the captain OK’s it,” she said. She’d put on a brave face, but Jonah could see how rattled she was. It was clear to him she could use a few minutes of privacy with Hassan to process.

“Go,” said Jonah, nodding. “It will still take the better part of a day to approach the coastline at this speed anyway. Marissa — I need you to jump on Hassan’s station and fill in for the doc. Can you do that for me?”

“I am not part of your crew,” protested Marissa. “And I have no idea how these goddamn systems work.”

Jonah glared at her briefly before responding. “Just put on the headphones and tell me if you hear any sudden sounds. Churning, engine rumblings, clicks, splashes, high-pitched whines, anything out of the ordinary.”

“And if I hear, I don’t know, a big splash or something?”

“Then you put head between knees,” grumbled Vitaly, “and kiss own ass goodbye.”

Marissa widened her eyes in complete dismay as she took the headphones from Hassan and sat down at his console without saying another word.

Alexis followed Hassan forward towards the crew quarters. She waited until they were out of earshot of the command compartment before speaking with him. “You think Jonah and Vitaly will ever get sick of messing with Marissa?”

The doctor just shrugged. He’d barely spoken with Marissa, and found her hostile-yet-intimate bantering with Jonah baffling and exhausting in equal portions. “She seems like a woman who can take care of herself. Besides, how long was her relationship with Jonah? Three years? I would presume she is well aware of the more juvenile aspects of his personality.”

“Three years?” repeated Alexis with a shake of her head. “He’s a decent enough skipper, but I couldn’t imagine spending three minutes dating that man.” Passing the open bunks and their tiny, shared cabin, she turned into the bathroom. It wasn’t much, just a single shower, two sinks, and a shared toilet covered with bright red warning notifications about flushing when below 200 feet in depth. Hassan didn’t know what the consequences of ignoring the signs might be, but given the amount of exclamation points and skull iconography, it couldn’t be good.

Hassan watched as Alexis turned the sink faucet on, carefully measuring out a silent trickle of water. Alexis looked in the mirror and began to scrub away at the black ink, but it’d already set into her forehead.

“I’ll retrieve some isopropyl alcohol from my medical kit,” said Hassan, gently squeezing her shoulders. “It will take but a moment.”

“Wait,” said Alexis, grabbing his hand before he could leave the bathroom. She pulled him back in and wrapped her strong arms around him, running one hand up and down the small of his back as she buried her head in his chest. Hassan became suddenly aware of his own heartbeat as it quickened against her ear.

“I’m here,” said Hassan, gently brushing a finger around the circumference of her soft jawline.

“I thought I could get used to how crazy it is out here,” she said. “I don’t know how long I can do this, Hassan. We’re so alone. We don’t even have a flag. We can’t hide behind even the faintest shadow of law. Any passing ship can legally ram us, shoot us, capture us, sink us. We’re nothing out here; we have nothing to cling to. How long can we possibly last?”

“I don’t know,” said Hassan as he rested his chin on the top of her head. “I simply don’t know. We’re all without a country, every one of us. Perhaps we must sail under our own flag for now. But we’re not alone — and whatever we are, it’s not nothing.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“We have a future, Alexis. I do not know what that future might hold, but I know it exists for both of us. Until we figure it out, I suppose we’re forced to fly under the banner of Jonah Blackwell’s Jolly Roger, flagged to the nation of Hooligan-istan.”

Alexis burst into choked laughter, masking the sound with the clenched fabric of his thin woolen sweater. He wished he’d washed it, wished it was soft and dry and not crusted with still-drying sweat and salt water, wished Alexis could smell fresh air and flowers when she pressed into him instead of oil and disinfectant. Hassan leaned down to peck her on the check but she didn’t let him, gently grabbing the tousled black hair on the back of his head as she kissed his mouth instead. Instinct took over as Hassan pressed her against the wall, almost forgetting the cold, the damp, the dreary fluorescent lighting, the ever-present groan of laboring machinery.

But then the engineer jerked away from him, pushing him off her body. The butt of his holstered pistol clanked awkwardly against a metal sink. Both he and Alexis froze, wincing at the noise.

“Was it something I said…?” began Hassan.

“No, it’s not you.” Alexis cut him off, turning from him to run her hand vertically against the nearest bathroom wall. “The water pipe behind this bulkhead is warm. It should not be this warm.”

“Is it broken?” asked Hassan, more than a little bewildered at the timing.

“No, it’s not broken,” said Alexis with an anxious whisper. She glanced towards the closed shower curtain and pressed a single finger to her lips, mouthing a single word—Intruder. Hassan nodded, drawing his pistol and leveling it at the shower. Maybe they’d missed one of the knife-wielding North Korean spies in the chaos of the escape and subsequent boarding. The doctor steeled himself, determined not to miss should it come to violence. Careful to stay out of his line of fire, Alexis tensed her body and prepared to pull back the thick vinyl curtain. Jonah wouldn’t be happy about breaking the noise discipline with a gunshot, but putting a potential saboteur down would be preferable to allowing them to run amuck.

The engineer counted to three on her fingers before violently ripping the entire curtain off the hooks. Plastic rivets and water droplets flew across bathroom as Hassan closed one eye and aimed down the barrel of his cocked pistol, finger already beginning to depress the trigger.

But then Hassan froze, the barrel dropping as his eyes fell upon a cringing, shivering, and very wet Sun-Hi within the tiny compartment, the tiny woman wearing only a towel as she gingerly waved an apologetic hello from the puddle in the center of the shower. Her soaking, soapy clothes surrounded her; she’d been in the process of washing them as well as herself. Alexis and Hassan just looked at each other in complete disbelief.

“Um… hello?” was all Alexis could muster. It sounded almost more like a question than a greeting.

“What are you doing in here?” whispered Hassan as he slowly lowered and re-holstered the pistol. His hands shook and he could scarcely close his mouth as the latent adrenaline coursed through his veins.

“Your water so hot!” announced Sun-Hi, pointing to the shower nozzle. “And many bubbles.”

“It’s not that hot,” growled Alexis as she grabbed her from the shower and hauled her bodily into the bathroom, yanking the now half-empty shampoo bottle from her hands. “And another thing — those are my bubbles.”

“Bubbles not for everybody?”

Alexis dropped Sun-Hi’s wrist in frustration and turned to the doctor. “Hassan, help me out here. What are we supposed to do with her?”

“Well,” said Hassan, scratching his head. He didn’t know the first thing about dealing with stowaways. “First things first, I suppose… perhaps you ought to find her some clothes?”

“Me?” protested Alexis in a whisper as she poked a finger into Hassan’s chest. “You take care of her. You’re the doctor!”

“But you’re… you’re—” said Hassan, struggling for words.

“I’m what? If you say anything other than ‘chief engineer,’ I swear to God I’ll—”

“Hair so pretty,” said Sun-Hi as she reached up to touch a long strand of Alexis’ brunette locks.

“Yes — quite pretty indeed!” said Hassan as he took the momentary lapse in Alexis’ attention to apologetically back out of the bathroom door. “I’ll — I’ll let Jonah know what happened. About Sun-Hi, I mean. I’ll be right back, of course!”

“Do not even leave me in here with her!” hissed Alexis as she threw her hands up in the air. Hassan just mouthed “I’m so, so sorry” as he slunk out of the compartment, his mind already racing with ways to make the cowardly retreat up to Alexis later.

Jonah barely looked up as Hassan ducked shoeless into the command compartment. The doctor gently tapped on Jonah’s shoulder and leaned over to whisper to him. “We have a stowaway,” he said.

“Is this stowaway about to sink our ship?”

“I doubt it.”

“Then we have bigger problems right now,” said Jonah. “Relieve Marissa at the hydrophone station.”

“Finally,” complained Marissa as she stood up. Hassan took the headphones from her, placed them on his ears, and listened intently as Marissa marched to the far side of the command compartment and leaned against a bulkhead, arms crossed.

Focusing, Hassan realized he could barely hear a slight ticking sound in the distance, but couldn’t tell if it was coming from within the Scorpion or not.

“I hear a sound — do we know the source?” he asked.

“We are being pinged,” whispered Vitaly. “Low frequency active sonar. Maybe 100 kilohertz only.”

“Could be an autonomous coastal array,” said Jonah.

“Most coastal array listen,” said Vitaly. “This is ping. I think maybe patrol sub hunting us.”

“It’s probably just a low-power active sonar buoy.” Jonah ran his hand over his beard. “I’ll bet it feeds to a small room with a very bored North Korean sailor sleeping in his chair. They’ll never even detect us as we slip through.”

Vitaly mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like worst captain ever as he worked to triangulate the source of the signal and collect as much passive sonar data as possible. The Scorpion’s computer system churned through the gigabytes of incoming data, using the refracted sonar signal to slowly assemble a digital facsimile of the underwater terrain around and below the submarine.

“There,” said Jonah, tapping his finger on the base of Vitaly’s display screen. “That trench — do you think you can use it to get us past the sonar array?”

Hassan leaned in to get a closer look. There it was, a long snaking trench just ten meters in width opening in the seafloor beneath them, its image painted on the screen in the shifting green tones of a 3D computer model. The doctor couldn’t help but appreciate Vitaly’s skill as a pilot, using the very information gathered from the penetrating signal to escape its detection.

Vitaly scowled and cocked his head in consideration before answering. “Very tight for Scorpion I think. Maybe unknown currents. Could pose problem.”

“Can we fit?”

“Da,” Vitaly finally said. “But only because number one pilot Vitaly.”

“Good. Begin descent and plot new course to coordinates through the trench.”

“Aye.”

“Is this going to work?” asked Hassan in a whisper as the bow of the Scorpion dipped subtly downwards. “Are you certain they won’t be able to hear us from within the trench?”

“DPRK tech tops out in the early Cold War,” Jonah shrugged. “So yeah. It’ll probably work. If not, we’ll slink back out before they can mobilize any significant naval assets to the area. This strategy wouldn’t exactly work at the big US naval base at Yokosuka, but we should be good for a lonely stretch of North Korean coastline.”

Vitaly gritted his teeth, and as he steered through the narrow underwater canyon, fingers danced across the console controls as though conducting a sixty-piece symphony orchestra. The Scorpion shuddered through a series of little shifts and tilts, Vitaly navigating with surgical precision. It reminded Hassan of tracing the line of an existing incision with a scalpel, but he knew full well the slightest error would steer the submarine into a rock outcropping, slicing through their steel hull. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the shifting 3D model on Vitaly’s console, their fragile ship impossibly close to the jagged walls of the sunken trench.

The low-frequency ping grew louder and louder above them. But it was muffled now, discordant as it bounced off rocks and sand and ten-thousand-year-old shell beds. And then, the Scorpion slipped past, the piercing signal fading in the distance behind them. Hassan breathed for the first time in what felt like hours. He listened intently from his station as the minutes ticked by until the ping disappeared entirely.

“The sound is gone,” said Hassan. “I can’t hear it anymore.”

“It has dropped from my sensors as well,” confirmed Vitaly.

“Give us another five hundred meters distance to be safe, and then bring us out of the trench,” ordered Jonah. “Are we close enough to see our destination?”

“I believe yes, Captain,” said Vitaly as the submarine silently ascended through the waters towards the stormy surface of the North Korean coastal sea.

“Good — bring us to periscope depth,” said Jonah. He pulled the optic from the ceiling by the handles as a small electric motor quietly whirred to bring the upper lens above the whitecaps. Jonah projected the periscope image onto the screens surrounding the command compartment, displaying an intimidating North Korean coastline of sheer rocky cliffs tumbling into the sea below. One massive swell after another slammed into the towering cliffs, disintegrating into foamy white spray.

Vitaly gave a long, low whistle at the savage display.

“Are we headed straight for the coordinates?” asked Jonah.

“Aye, dead ahead.”

“How far out?”

Squinting at his maps, Vitaly measured the distance out. “Less than half mile? Very close, Captain.”

“Well, that’s a problem,” said Jonah, tapping on Vitaly’s nautical charts with one finger. “Because according to this map, the coordinates aren’t coastal — they’re inland.”

Hassan glanced back up at the video monitors. Inland? How was that possible? The rugged coastline wasn’t exactly abundant with safe harbors.

“Coordinates are coordinates,” shrugged Vitaly as he stared up at the screen. “I check them myself. What we do?”

“I just don’t see how we can get over those cliffs,” said Hassan. “We wouldn’t even be able to get an inflatable raft to the rocks below without being dashed to pieces. And if we reached the cliffs, how could we possibly ascend them? We’re smugglers, not mountaineers.”

Jonah squinted, a small smile spreading across his lips. “Full stop. Give me a single ping,” he said. “Low frequency — minimum power.”

Vitaly nodded, inputting the command into his console. The engines slowed and died, complete silence falling within the command compartment. A single resounding ping emanated from the nose of the Scorpion, rippling as it spread into the sea. The reflected sound was sucked up by the submarine’s sophisticated sonar system, painting Vitaly’s screen in vivid green terrain data.

“Ty che, blyad?” exclaimed Vitaly, pointing at his own screen.

“English!” demanded Jonah. “You are literally the only person here that speaks Russian.”

“I say, ‘What the fuck?’”

Hassan could see it now, too. The green polygons of underwater bathymetric terrain data showing the underwater cliffs were interrupted by a perfect hollow archway just wide enough for a submarine. It was too perfectly formed to be a natural sea cave or lava tube. There was no doubt about it. There was an underwater entrance built into the cliffs.

“That’s what I thought,” announced Jonah, now wearing a grim smile. “It’s a hidden submarine base. We’re going in. Vitaly, make for the entrance — dead slow.”

The electric engines of the Scorpion slowly hummed to life, and the submarine pushed forward towards the mysterious entrance as angry waves swirled above. Hassan winced as they approached the final few feet to the passage, half expecting an abrupt impact against the base of the cliffs.

“Give me external cameras and running lights,” ordered Jonah. Several feeds leapt to the command compartment screens, showing the Scorpion from various angles as she maneuvered the short, pitch-black, sixty-foot tunnel into the earth, the submarine’s exterior lights the only illumination against the blasted rock.

“We have open ceiling,” said Vitaly, pointing to the conning tower feed. They’d made it inside the hidden base, the impossible blackness of the submerged tunnel now giving way to a massive chamber, sheer rock walls rising to a concrete dome thirty feet above.

Hassan realized he was starting to get his bearings on the horseshoe-shaped structure, eyes drifting to the length of the tunnel as it disappeared around a gentle curve to exit once more into the ocean. Hassan doubted any pilot could reverse out through the entrance. Even a pilot as skilled as Vitaly. The route was one way only, and he could only hope the other end was clear as well.

The Russian brought the submarine to a gentle stop at the underground mooring below thick concrete pillars, galvanized ventilation ducts, iron pipes, and endless bundles of black electrical wiring above them. Yellow-tinged halogen lights shone from above and below the waterline, stage-like in their blinding effect. A few flickered, dying unattended. Above it all was a single, fading red and blue North Korean flag painted against the uneven concrete of the ceiling, the emblem crumbling and ignored.

“I have bad feeling, Captain,” said Vitaly.

“Worse than usual?”

“Da. Very worse than usual.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that same feeling,” said Jonah. “I was expecting a North Korean welcome wagon of one sort or another. Where the hell is everybody?”

“Maybe it is abandon?” asked Vitaly.

Jonah shook his head. “Somebody is keeping all these lights on. This base might be partially decommissioned, but it is definitely not abandoned.”

Hassan bent over the nearest console and interrogated a suite of environmental sensor subsystems. “No radiological or chemical anomalies detected thus far. Wait… I’m getting something.”

“What’s the word, Doc?”

“Carbon monoxide concentrations are quite high. I’m reading over 6,400 parts per million, an atmospheric concentration of point-oh-six-four percent.”

“Doesn’t sound like much.”

“And yet extremely hazardous to human health. Exposure at these concentrations would lead to headache, dizziness, and nausea in under two minutes. Convulsion and complete respiratory failure in less than twenty. Followed by death, naturally.”

Jonah frowned. “That’s some seriously sour air. Like someone left the car running in the garage with the door closed.”

“It’s an imperfect metaphor — but essentially correct, yes.”

“My uncle die that way,” said Vitaly. “He die as he live — drunk behind steering wheel.”

Jonah glanced at Vitaly and turned back to Hassan. “We’re not talking about just one overlooked lawnmower are we?”

“No,” answered Hassan, scratching his head. “It would have taken an entire fleet of idling trucks to fill up a facility of this size with such a concentration.”

“Could the carbon monoxide have come from an accident? A fire, explosion, gas leak?”

“Certainly. A substantial fire could contaminate even the largest of sealed facilities barring proper lockout and ventilation procedures.”

Jonah sighed and ran his hands over his face in frustration. He was tired — no, exhausted. “It’s clear we’re supposed to be here — the Japanese made sure of that,” he said. “It’s the why that still scares the shit out of me.”

“What should we do?” asked Hassan. “Should we wait for further instructions?”

“I doubt any more instructions are coming. Round up the crew. Let’s not sit here with our dicks in our hands waiting for something to happen. I’ll put together a landing party. Vitaly—”

“Da, da,” said Vitaly quickly. “Vitaly stay with submarine, like always.”

“You don’t mind? You’re always complaining about being left behind.”

“Vitaly stay with Scorpion no problem! You go now. Goodbye.”

“Are you sure?” teased Jonah, poking Vitaly in the ribs just inches from where he’d shot him on their first encounter. “Because I could always use a canary on my landing party.”

Vitaly rolled his eyes and punched the intercom. He ordered the remaining crew to the command compartment, effectively ending further discussion.

“Are you certain we don’t wish to wait?” asked Hassan. “If in doubt, we must practice caution.”

Jonah cut him off. “We’ll only keep the initiative if we keep the initiative. The longer we stay here, the more likely something shitty will happen. I’m not worried about the CO²; we’ll break out the firefighting gear and use the self-contained breathing masks and air tanks. It’ll be enough for thirty minutes or so. We’ll leave the sub, take a poke around, and be back inside half that time.”

“There’s something else,” added Hassan, hearing footsteps from down the main submarine corridor. “I hate to bring this up given other pressing matters — ahem — but we must discuss our stowaway.”

Before Jonah could respond, Dalmar and Marissa made their way into the command compartment followed by Alexis. The engineer pulled in wet-haired Sun-Hi by the hand, the young North Korean’s tiny frame now dressed in comically large work coveralls.

“Hello!” announced Sun-Hi. She broke away from Alexis and grabbed Jonah around his middle in a big hug, the top of her head not even reaching the bottom of his chest.

“Another stowaway?” demanded Jonah, holding his hands up in confusion. “Why does this keep happening to us? Forget it. We’ll discuss internal security procedures later. She looks familiar. Didn’t she do us a solid with the radio transmission leaving North Korean waters?”

“I am Sun-Hi, silly!” said the young woman, still hugging him, her small face buried in his stomach.

“She played Koppun in Flower Girl,” added Hassan dryly.

Sun-Hi didn’t break her grip on Jonah until she noticed the map on Vitaly’s screen. And then she bolted over, seizing the monitor with both hands and shaking it as though she could force it to refresh from a frozen error on the screen. Unaware of the Scorpion’s new mission, she clearly expected to have been discovered, once far away from North Korea.

“We go now, please?” she said, pointing at the screen. “Why we here? No good, no good! We must leave! If army find us, they shoot us!”

“She does have a point,” Marissa said.

“Yes, Captain,” mimicked Vitaly. “Can we go now, please?”

Jonah considered her for a minute until Hassan spoke. “What do you want me to do about her?”

“We could confine her to quarters,” suggested Marissa.

“Look at her — she can’t hurt anybody!” said Alexis.

“I have killed the most men with my smallest knife,” interjected Dalmar.

“That cannot be true,” protested Marissa, glaring at the pirate. “You are so making that up.”

Sun-Hi just stared between the members of the crew as they considered her fate.

“I won’t turn down local knowledge while we have it,” Jonah finally said. “Besides — out of all of us, she seems the most motivated to not return to North Korea. Sun-Hi, how did you hide from the Japanese?”

“I hide in laundry!”

“See?” demanded Marissa. “See? I told you the laundry wasn’t a shitty hiding spot!”

“For her maybe — she’s all of half your size,” retorted Jonah. “I could hide her in a pair of Dalmar’s tube socks.”

There was a general murmuring of agreement among the crew as Marissa glowered at Jonah with renewed fury.

“Hassan, Alexis, Dalmar, Sun-Hi, you’re with me,” ordered Jonah. “Full SCBA respirators and tanks from the firefighting gear. Keep an eye on each other’s gauges and mask seals as well as your own. We go by rule of thirds— we’ve got thirty-minute tanks, I want us turned around and headed back for the Scorpion within ten.”

“Arms?” asked Dalmar.

“Nothing visible — and no rifles. Anything you can carry on your person is fine by me.”

“Like this?” asked Dalmar as he lifted his shirt to reveal several high-caliber pistols holstered against his ridiculously chiseled abdominal muscles.

“Yeah, that works,” said Jonah as he pulled, press-checked, and replaced his nickel-and-pearl .45 at the back of his jeans.

“What do you want me to do?” asked Marissa.

Dalmar reached over the frizzy-haired shipping heiress and pulled an oversized black assault rifle from a hidden wall compartment. He shoved it into her hands, waiting until she gripped the weapon before releasing it to her.

“Do not allow us to be boarded,” the pirate warned.

“Um… OK.” Marissa gulped and looked at the gun in her hands.

Dalmar leaned over her, eyes wide and teeth shining white as he whispered into her ear. “And if you cannot hold them back,” he rasped. “Do not be captured alive.”

“Knock it off, Dalmar—” Jonah chided as he pulled a clear plastic full-face mask and bottle from the command compartment’s cache of emergency firefighting supplies.

The rest of the landing party began to don their own masks as well, and Alexis showed a reluctant Sun-Hi how to adjust and tighten the straps around the back of her head.

“You going to be OK?” asked Jonah, his voice muffled through his fogging mask.

Marissa looked down at the rifle, then at Dalmar, and back to Jonah again. “No!” she exclaimed. “No, I’m not going to be OK!”

“Don’t worry about anything,” insisted Jonah as he ascended the conning tower ladder to the lockout chamber above. “We’re just taking a peek around — back inside twenty minutes tops.”

CHAPTER 9

The lockout chamber unlatched with a heavy clunk, seals hissing as the thick watertight door swung open and the toxic atmosphere of the underground North Korean submarine base swirled invisible around them. Jonah stepped from the conning tower interior and onto the deck of the Scorpion. Behind him, Hassan, Alexis, Dalmar and Sun-Hi emerged from the tight compartment. He took a deep breath through his respirator facemask and was rewarded with a lungful of dry, odorless air. Good — his SCBA unit was in working order; the gauge on the tank read fully in the green. It’d give him thirty minutes of air if he was careful, maybe forty if he kept his breathing slow and pulse even.

Jonah scanned the chamber from end to end before staring up at the concrete ceiling above him through the curved clear plastic of his facemask. He paused, taking in the crumbling, hand-painted DPRK flag that loomed overhead. It looked like it hadn’t been tended to in years. Strange for a country where symbols were generally regarded as more important than people.

“I see we are still without any greeting party.” Hassan gazed over the empty, pillared gangway and darkness beyond. Freed from tide and swell, the Scorpion floated, bow rake gently scraping against the concrete moorage. The design and dimensions of the long, horseshoe-shaped submarine waterway resembled a steep-walled irrigation channel, albeit one sequestered deep beneath the surface. One way in. One way out. And no way to turn the submarine around. Jonah tried to imagine how much rock and earth was between them and the surface. Two hundred, maybe three hundred feet? The facility was certainly deep enough to protect the submarine base from the capitalist missiles and rockets the hermit kingdom had spent generations preparing for — but how deep exactly, he had no idea.

“Anybody else getting that itchy feeling?” asked Alexis, her voice muffled by her SCBA respirator as she glanced around the chamber for any signs of life.

“Only in my trigger finger.” Jonah could practically hear Dalmar’s toothy smile from the other side of his facemask.

“What is itchy mean?” asked Sun-Hi as she tugged against the back of Jonah’s shirt, her hand uncomfortably close to the butt of his nickel-plated pistol.

Jonah didn’t have time to answer her. He and Dalmar edged down the side of the unanchored submarine’s curved deck, the two men steadying themselves before they leapt onto the concrete landing. They worked together to lift the nearest wooden gangplank and slide it over the edge of the moorage, pushing the plank until the far end rested securely against the hull of the Scorpion. Jonah gave the platform a good couple of stomps before waving anyone over. Single-file, the rest of the landing party gingerly made their way across the heavy board and onto the concrete.

“I think I saw lights,” said Jonah, pointing into the darkness. “Let’s go.”

They passed through the line of thick columns running parallel to the submarine channel, the walkway behind the pillars funneling them into a long tunnel-like corridor leading away from the moorage. Dying fluorescent lights flickered from their ceiling mounts, but their illumination was inadequate to the sheer scale of the hall. Some of the walls looked a half-century old with their fading painted slogans and peeling propaganda posters. The party made their way through the thirty-foot wide tunnel. Two lines of recessed railroad tracks interrupted the smooth concrete floor, no doubt used to load heavy weapons and supplies into waiting submarines.

“Where are people?” asked Sun-Hi.

No one answered.

Jonah and his crew turned on their assortment of flashlights and headlamps, illuminating the long corridor. Even after a hundred meters distance, the brightest light was swallowed by the all-encompassing darkness. The sound of Jonah’s own breath hissed uncomfortably in his ears, forcing him to remember the deadly atmosphere around them. One breath, two breaths, he’d be okay; maybe some nausea and a bad headache for a few hours. Drop his mask or let the tank bleed dry, and he’d have minutes before the spins took him. And then it’d be just a matter of time before unconsciousness set in and his heart stopped.

“I’ve got something over here,” said Hassan as he pointed down the corridor, his light fixed to a recessed steel doorway in the distance. A single, sneaker-clad foot stuck out from the threshold, toes-down.

Jonah, Dalmar, and Alexis unholstered their pistols, but Hassan instead removed a pair of latex gloves from his satchel, stretching them out with a snap as he pulled them over his hands. Jonah rounded the corner with gun drawn, his flashlight spilling across the facedown, motionless body. The man was young, certainly younger than Jonah, and he looked like he could have walked out of a metro center in any cosmopolitan city in the world with his snug black leather jacket, Levis, and fashionable sneakers, complete with a shaggy haircut. Only his truncated stature and delicate features identified him as North Korean. But, long since grown to adulthood, the dead man retained all the hallmark signs of chronic childhood starvation.

The room around the man was small and boxy, only fifteen by fifteen, and was swept clean except for one large crate of blocky, plastic-wrapped paper a few feet from the corpse.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” breathed Alexis.

“Flip him over,” ordered Jonah. Hassan and Dalmar grasped the frail body by the shoulder and rolled it to one side. The man’s face — opened-eyed — was flushed and lifelike, his skin still pink and lips red. Only the dribble of dried foam gathered around the corners of his mouth indicated that something had gone very, very wrong.

“He not alive?” asked Sun-Hi.

“No,” said the doctor. “He’s not alive.”

“Why he so pink then?” said Sun-Hi. “He still look alive. Maybe you give him medicine?”

“It’s the carbon monoxide post-mortem colorant effect. It’s not dissimilar to the way commercial meats are dyed prior to sale. I assure you — he’s quite dead.”

“Oh,” said Sun-Hi. She may not have understood every word, but she’d gotten the gist of it — the man wasn’t getting up. Ruddy and lifelike as his body might be, it was only an illusion.

Dalmar stood, walked to the large crate and flicked open a knife, using the naked blade to slice through the thick plastic wrapping. He reached inside and withdrew several taped stacks of American hundred dollar bills. Jonah stared, unmoving. If the rest of the money was the same denomination, the plastic-packaged crate could have easily held a hundred million dollars or more.

“Counterfeit?” suggested Alexis. “You figure this is what McSlappy wanted us to find? He wasn’t exactly forthcoming with the details.”

“Whatever we’re looking for, I think we’ll know it when we find it,” said Jonah.

“Well, I hope we find it fast,” said Alexis, tapping on her already diminishing tank gauge. “We stick around too long and we’ll end up just like our friend.”

Dalmar pulled big fistfuls of the counterfeit money out of the packaging, allowing nearly a million dollars of fluttering, loose bills onto the concrete floor next to the body.

“Aren’t we in deep enough shit already?” barked Jonah as he stood. “Leave it alone. We don’t have time for souvenirs. Dalmar, cover the hallway while the rest of us explore. I don’t want anybody sneaking up on us.”

Dalmar glared through his mask as he drew a second pistol, exiting into the main corridor to stand watch, a weapon in each hand.

“Let’s split up; we can cover more ground that way,” suggested Hassan.

Alexis kicked the doctor in the shin and waved an angry finger in his face.

“What on earth was that for?” Hassan winced.

“You don’t watch a lot of scary movies, do you?”

“It’s not a good thing to say,” agreed Dalmar from the other side of the door, patting the doctor on the back as he passed. “Bad luck.”

“I am itchy now, too,” Sun-Hi said with a shiver. “I see many scary movie.”

“Stow it. We’re low on time, and it’s a good idea to split up,” Jonah ordered. “Radios on, but stay within earshot of Dalmar; and yell if there’s trouble.”

The group began to spread out in different directions down the dark corridor, each selecting different doors under the watchful eye of the dual-gun-wielding pirate. Only Sun-Hi stuck close to Jonah.

Jonah’s radio crackled within moments. “I found the printing press!” announced Alexis from her room across the hall, her voice high and tinny in his earpiece. “And more bodies. Five of them. And they all look the same as the one we found earlier. Believe me, I’m never going to look at a crawfish broil the same way again.”

“Narcolab,” announced Hassan from his own unseen room. “Three bodies as well. Given the preponderance of evidence at hand, I believe they were packaging methamphetamines and counterfeit pharmaceuticals for foreign distribution.”

Jonah acknowledged them over the radio as he purposefully strode the dimly lit corridor, Sun-Hi still in tow. He’d never in his life been happier wearing a humid, uncomfortable facemask. It was quickly becoming clear to him that the entire facility served solely as a contraband trans-shipment site, the corrupt narco-state underbelly of a failed socialist dream. He jiggled the handle of the steel door he’d selected and then checked the diminishing gauge on his SCBA air tank. Shit. He had maybe five minutes before reaching the self-imposed safety margin and the door was locked from the inside. There wasn’t enough time — not nearly enough — they’d barely explored a fraction of the underground facility and were still no closer to understanding why they’d been sent to investigate, much less why the submarine base was filled with dead men.

Jonah held his breath as he broke the seal of his mask, slipping his sleeve in to rub away some of the condensation that had been collecting on the clear plastic. At least a facility with bad atmosphere wasn’t as dangerous as cave diving, where you were either breathing or drowning. Even if his tank ran dry, he could probably still drop it and make a run for the Scorpion before the poison set in. What did the old timers used to say about gear malfunctioning during a dive? Oh yeah—don’t stress about it; you have the rest of your life to fix it.

He slipped the mask back on, then raised his leg and cocked back a kick. His foot slammed into the locked door, hinges rattling. He aimed a second kick, using just enough force to crack the low-grade concrete and allow the rusting steel door to swing open with an eerie creak. Sun-Hi winced at the sudden noise, casting a worried look over her shoulder towards the sneaker-wearing dead man, lest the sound wake him. Light from the corridor fell on rows of long tables, each layered with digital cameras, computers, and drafting paper surrounding boxes of partially-disassembled military technology. The sheer scope of the collection was immense. Gear ranging from body armor to missile avionics, even shredded chunks of stealthy composite skin from an American helicopter, was stacked in rows of boxes. Jonah walked up to the box on the nearest table and reached inside to pick up a flame-licked, partially disassembled pair of four-optic panoramic, night-vision goggles.

Alexis came in from the corridor, peeking through the broken steel door for a moment before joining Jonah at Sun-Hi’s side. “What’d you find?” she asked, eyes poring over the military gear.

“It’s mostly American,” said Jonah, sweeping his hand over the collection. “A smattering of EU and Russian tech, too.”

“I’ve read about insurgents paying for pharmaceuticals in arms and captured gear,” said Alexis. “Never figured I’d actually see it with my own eyes.”

“Looks like the North Koreans are in the business of reverse engineering and selling specs. Not that they have a hope in hell of manufacturing much of it for themselves.”

The engineer shivered from behind her thick mask. “This place gives me the creeps. It isn’t like any naval base I’ve ever been on. And I’m not even talking about all the dead guys.”

“I don’t think this has been a naval base for decades,” said Jonah. “It’s an Office 39 facility — an outfit that spits out counterfeit currency and drugs, launders money, and deals arms. North Korea is desperately poor and economically blockaded to the gills. Ever wonder how Kim Jongun’s wife gets a two thousand dollar Dior handbag while her husband drinks Hennessy and shoots hoops with Dennis Rodman? This facility pays for it all. His Fendi yacht to boot.”

“So much for the sanctions.” Alexis scanned the room. “We’re walking through their slush fund and retirement plan, all in one.”

Sun-Hi pointed up at the ceiling. “So many wires!” she said, pointing to the thick black bundles as they traced their way across the low concrete ceiling towards a small back room.

“That looks like coax cable,” said Alexis. “Every camera feed in the facility probably leads through here.” She and Jonah followed the cables with their flashlights as they approached the doorway to a small office. They slipped through the unlocked wooden door to find another body, this time, an older North Korean man in an olive-drab coat and oversized military visor cap. He was slumped face-down over his internal surveillance computer workstation, as though sleeping. The entire wall behind the dead man was taken up by ceiling-high servers and a massive regional map, which marked the location of the Office 39 base, as well as nearby barracks, airstrips, military depots, and fixed artillery.

“He’s a general.” Jonah reached out to lightly brush the three silver stars on the man’s collar with his fingertips. “Maybe head honcho of this facility?”

“Look!” said Sun-Hi, pointing to the corpse’s bare legs behind the metal desk. The dead man was missing his pants. Alexis just silently nodded towards the nearest vent where the general had unsuccessfully attempted to plug the duct with his uniform trousers. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway — the entire facility was saturated with carbon monoxide.

“Remind me to die with my pants on,” grunted Jonah. He grabbed the general by the back of the collar and pulled his rolling chair out from behind the desk, and then tipped the body onto the concrete floor. He took the chair for himself, saddling up to the computer workstation.

Alexis tapped her watch. “Captain — we’re overdue.”

“The Scorpion isn’t leaving without us. The Japanese are expecting us back soon, and we’ll need to give them something concrete. After all, what’s the one rule of attending a fancy Texan barbeque?”

“Never arrive empty-handed,” grinned Alexis, flipping on the small office light. Jonah booted up the system and was rewarded with a scrolling startup screen in Korean characters. The dedicated surveillance system churned through an automatic internal diagnostic, beginning with a yellow-blinking status map of the immense facility.

It was bigger than Jonah had anticipated — the section with the submarine slipway was only one floor of the hive-like complex; beneath them, level after level of storage, research, and production facilities reached hundreds of feet further into the bedrock below. Internal security camera feeds began to flip by with increasing speed, images of counterfeit pharma, narcotics, crates of fake Japanese cigarettes, and a veritable underground warehouse of small arms and military explosives — and dozens upon dozens of dead men awkwardly juxtaposed against aging propaganda posters of smiling children and bountiful harvests.

“Did you see that?” asked Alexis as an image of a collapsed tunnel-like entrance flashed into view for an instant, the wide subterranean roadway completely sealed by fallen rock. Jonah paused the feed, spotting a cluster of ventilation pipes sheered by the force of the ceiling as it fell.

“These bases are designed to seal off and function autonomously in wartime,” said Jonah, pointing to the facility layout. “Something detonated the explosives at the entrance, but they also wrecked the exhaust pipes and eventually filled the entire facility with carbon monoxide from the diesel generators here, on the lowest level.”

“Why wouldn’t they divert the exhaust? Or simply turn off the generators?” asked Alexis in complete confusion.

“That I can’t answer,” said Jonah. “Something is deeply fucked down here. Sun-Hi — can you use a computer?”

“Yes! I love computer! Minecraft, Zoo Tycoon!”

Jonah was taken aback for a moment. He’d heard about the North Korean digital black market, Chinese laptops, and cell phones, USB drives full of soap operas and foreign music. Apparently the electronic distribution network went a lot deeper than he’d expected. He gave Sun-Hi the chair. “Grab everything — every recorded video feed, every document, every photo, activity log, anything that could tell us what happened here. The Japanese can piece it together later for themselves, but I want to give them as much to work with as possible.”

Sun-Hi brought up a blinking prompt and began to plug in a few simple commands. A magnetic tape backup system began to whirr in the servers behind them, collecting terabytes of information.

“Have you done something like this before?” asked Alexis, surprised.

“Yes. Many time. Very dangerous.”

“Where? What did you do?”

“Radio station had internet. I break through firewall and download collected works Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clark-son! Girl power, so forbidden!”

A muffled thump sounded from above them. Thin layers of dust trickled from the ceiling, shimmering in their flashlights as it clung to the poisoned air.

“The fuck was that?” asked Alexis moments before two more thumps rumbled through the facility. More dust rained down, thicker this time.

Jonah considered the concrete ceiling for a moment before walking several steps over to the map on the wall. He mentally estimated the distance between the underground base and the massive, bore-fixed artillery. No question — they were definitely close enough. “I think we’re getting shelled,” he said finally. No doubt the North Koreans knew they’d lost control of the facility. Seeing Sun-Hi’s unauthorized activity in their defense network could have been all the excuse they’d need to bury the base and its secrets forever.

“Shelled?!”

“Sun-Hi… I don’t suppose you tripped any alarms when you got into the system?”

“Um, maybe?” she said, apologetically wincing as she minimized a flashing red warning sign with dancing Korean characters.

There wasn’t any point in making an issue over the mistake — it was already too late. The thumps were coming in faster succession now. A framed portrait of Kim Jong-un tumbled from the wall, glass shattering as it hit the concrete floor.

“Is this going to become an issue for us?” said Alexis as she pointed upwards towards the sound of the impacts.

“Probably bunker buster artillery,” said Jonah. “Armored casing, delayed fuse. The North Koreans love ’em.”

Alexis crossed her arms. “You are not making me feel safer.”

“I ask them nicely to stop,” announced Sun-Hi. Before Jonah could stop her, she pulled up a chat window and sent a message through North Korea’s secure military communications network.

Jonah pulled her away from the terminal, the chair squeaking across the concrete. “No more speaking with the guys shooting at us,” he ordered.

“Again, are we in trouble here?” Alexis watched another long, shimmering line of dust fall from the ceiling.

“Could be worse,” said Jonah dismissively. “We’ve got to be two, three hundred feet below the surface here. It’d probably take them ten years minimum of continuous bombardment to put a shell into this room.”

“They say no,” said Sun-Hi, looking up from the computer terminal. “They not stop.”

WHAM!

The blast was closer this time, knocking chairs over as high-tech foreign military equipment slid off the tables and onto the floor. Cracks spread across the ceiling like a spider-web as the concrete rumbled and shifted above them.

“You still pretty sure about that ten years boss?” shouted Alexis, waving angrily at Jonah as she spoke.

“Yeah — we gotta go now,” said Jonah. He ripped the magnetic tape out of the server as Alexis swept memory cards and diskettes off the desk and into her hands. The copy wasn’t finished, but their Japanese masters would have to make do with what they’d already grabbed. “They clearly don’t build bunkers like they used to.”

“Or bombs.” Alexis said, grabbing one last stack of diskettes.

The facility lights flickered as Jonah, Alexis, and Sun-Hi broke into a run, sprinting out of the engineering laboratory towards the main corridor. The North Korean shells were coming faster now, a steady barrage of impacts and muffled explosions.

Jonah was first out the door, slamming into Hassan, knocking them both to the ground. Jonah’s mask went flying off his face, rubber fasteners snapping as his nearly-empty air tank bounced end over end across the concrete floor before coming to a rest below a mural of the Pentagon burning under an onslaught of North Korean missiles. Holding his breath, he started to scramble towards the mask on hands and knees.

“You’ll live without it!” wheezed Hassan. He dragged Jonah to his feet by an elbow, and gave him a push. “Run!”

The four sprinted down the corridor, racing towards the submarine. The first big wave of dizziness hit Jonah almost immediately, dropping him to his knees as he passed the pillars. Dalmar stood in front of the fallen gangplank, waving them in.

The underground submarine tunnel was in bad shape, with clusters of basketball-sized boulders raining from the ceiling with the concussion of every thundering shell impact. The falling rocks slammed into the concrete and the waterway, pounding the hull of the Scorpion with one grinding gong after another. Fortunately, Vitaly had the submarine’s engines already running at full tilt, black smoke pouring out of the stack.

Hassan leapt first, hurling himself over the edge and onto the deck of the Scorpion. Landing, he whipped around as Dalmar assisted Alexis with her running start, giving her a mid-air push across the watery gap and onto the submarine. Sun-Hi skidded to a stop at the edge of the concrete, teetering on the edge before Dalmar picked her up and bodily threw her into Hassan and Alexis’ arms like a shot put. There wasn’t time to use the diver lockout compartment — Hassan and Alexis yanked open the deck hatch, spilling harsh light into the underground chamber.

The breath caught in Jonah’s lungs, leaving him to gasp as he stumbled to his hands and knees once more, dragging himself towards the concrete slipway, his vision swimming as his empty stomach contracted violently. Dalmar strode over towards Jonah purposefully before grasping him underneath the armpit and leg. The pirate then swung Jonah over his shoulders with a fireman’s carry.

“Talk to me, Dalmar, what is the fucking plan here?” croaked Jonah from his mid-air suspension.

“Do you trust me, brother?”

Jonah didn’t have time to answer, but strongly suspected his response would have been a resounding I’ll need a minute to think about it first. The corridor behind them began to collapse, a violent whoosh of dust bellowing out of the hallway as the ceiling came down like an avalanche. Jonah knew it’d be moments before the submarine tunnel came down as well. Dalmar grunted as he kneeled to a sprinter’s start position, ignoring the boulders raining from the ceiling like a meteor storm. He was up again with a snap, sprinting towards the edge with Jonah on his shoulders, stopping just short of the edge as he flung Jonah across the gap.

Tumbling through the air, Jonah smacked against the side of the Scorpion as he fell just short of the deck. Hassan and Alexis threw themselves over the side, barely grabbing onto a wrist and ankle as Sun-Hi shrieked in the background. The three awkwardly dragged Jonah back onto the deck as Dalmar easily made the leap, landing with a thud almost as loud as an impacting boulder. The pirate pitched Jonah down the deck hatch with one arm as the others climbed into the submarine after him. The rest of the crew now inside, Dalmar squeezed through the hatch and slammed it closed behind him.

Flat on the deck, Jonah gulped fresh air as Hassan gently slapped the side of his face. Boulders rained down onto the submarine in a cascade of heavy blows that echoed throughout the narrow hull.

“What the fuck is happening out there?” screamed Marissa as she loomed over Jonah, assault rifle clenched in her white knuckles, and her index finger twitching on the trigger. Dalmar glared at her as he yanked the weapon from her grasp, clicked the safety back on, and rested it against the nearest wall.

Jonah sucked in another breath, his vision clearing as he pulled himself up to his feet and walked the last few lengths to the command compartment, not bothering to answer Marissa. He clapped a hand on Vitaly’s shoulder. “Can you navigate us out of this tunnel at flank speed?”

Vitaly didn’t answer as he re-directed power from the throbbing engines to the propellers. The transmission squealed as it struggled to redirect torque, blades biting into the frothing waters. The submarine leapt forward, bow planes painfully scraping along the concrete slipway as Vitaly fought to vector the powerful engine thrust.

“We may lose paint, captain!”

“Easy! Easy!” shouted Jonah. “Get her to starboard before you wreck the stabilizer!”

“Vitaly know! Egg do not teach hen!”

The Scorpion began to round the blind corner, more curving tunnel ahead as she gained speed, her massive bow wake washing over the concrete bulwarks on either side of the channel. The internal collapse of the facility was increasing exponentially, entire pillars splitting under the unending concussions of exploding shells as the tunnel ceiling crumbled above them.

“How are we going to explain this to the Japanese?” shouted Hassan, wincing as a massive rock tumbled from the cave’s ceiling and slammed against the conning tower before rolling off the deck and into the water.

“I don’t know just yet,” retorted Jonah. “We may have to figure that out on the way back. But they wouldn’t have sent us here if flattening the entire facility was an unacceptable risk.”

“You like backward King Midas!” exclaimed Vitaly from his station, fingers flying across the console as he struggled to keep the speeding submarine under control. “Everything you touch turn to shit!”

The last stretch of the curved horseshoe-shaped tunnel straightened over the last two hundred meters, revealing a set of massive steel hanger doors on the Scorpion’s grainy interior monitors. Everyone gasped. They were sealed in. Any escape to the ocean cut off.

“Captain! We must reverse engines!” shouted Vitaly.

“Full speed! We’ll punch through!”

“We crush bow, sink us!”

“If the ceiling comes down, we’re dead anyway!”

Alexis leapt to her feet, shoving Jonah aside as she grabbed the periscope, flicking through the lenses. Her feed was on the monitor, giving Jonah a close-up look. He unconsciously gulped — the steel was thicker than he expected, more than likely built to take a direct hit from a heavy navy battleship shell. They didn’t have a chance in hell of piercing the armor with the fragile hull of the Scorpion.

“Got it!” called Alexis. She leapt away from the periscope, almost knocking Jonah over again as she slammed herself down in front of the communications console. Jonah stole a look back up at the monitors — it was too late to reverse thrust. The chamber behind them had begun to completely collapse, with entire pillars exploding into concrete fragments and dust.

The space between the doors suddenly split, sunlight streaming through the gap as the steel barrier began to slowly open. Alexis whooped in excitement, but Vitaly just gritted his teeth, all the while inputting the final adjustments to their heading in the seconds before impact.

And then the bow of the Scorpion was free, leaping out of the underground submarine base, rake splitting the first of the stormy whitecaps. The still-opening hanger doors scraped against the hull, groaning and grinding as they birthed the submarine into the open sea.

Alexis slumped back off the communications chair and onto the deck. She lay on her back and stared up against the claustrophobic metal ceiling above with index finger on each temple. “That really shouldn’t have worked,” she mumbled.

“What did you do?” asked Hassan, leaning down over her.

“I figured the door control was a standard Siemens control unit,” she said, draping an arm over her eyes in relief. “They’re used for everything from airplane hangars to security gates. But everybody forgets to reset the remote control password from the default.”

“What’s the default?” asked Jonah, not sure if he really wanted to hear the answer.

“Zero-zero-zero… zero.”

“You just typed in a bunch of zeros and hoped for the best?” demanded Hassan, horrified.

“If it worked, it worked,” Jonah mumbled, resting a hand against a bulkhead to steady himself. “But let’s not do that again. We’re seriously going to run out of luck one of these days.”

Hassan kneaded Alexis’ shoulders. “Not too soon, one hopes.”

“Vitaly, bring us to four hundred fifty feet below, silent running.”

“Aye, Captain — I have detected signal again, da?”

“Our friend, the autonomous sonobuoy,” said Jonah, nodding. “Can we get down in the trench again, or are we still too banged up?”

“Is no problem, Captain—” Vitaly said as he began to plot the course below the now-familiar low-frequency sonar signal. Then he stopped dead, the color draining from his face. “The signal! It moves!”

“It’s not a sonobuoy?”

“No — is North Korea attack submarine! Dead ahead, seven hundred meter!”

“Alexis, engine room!” bellowed Jonah. He didn’t have to say it twice. She leapt to her feet and sprinted towards the stern. Hassan took her place at the communications console and yanked the hydrophone set roughly around his ears.

“It’s hard to hear anything over the blasts,” Hassan called out. “Wait — I just heard a distinct mechanical sound like a… like a big clunk!”

“Those would be torpedo doors opening,” spat Jonah through a clenched jaw. “But, they won’t have time to get a proper fix on us, not with all the artillery screwing up their sonar. They’re shooting from the hip. Vitaly, full power to the engines! Charge them!”

Vitaly increased power to the electric engines, the sound of their own churning propellers filling the Scorpion’s command compartment. Hassan again pressed the hydrophones against his ears, straining to listen for any external sounds amidst the din. “I hear buzzing props! Torpedo in the water!”

“Steady on!”

And then the high-pitched whine of the torpedo was all around them, the Scorpion jolted as the underwater missile slammed into the side of the conning tower, bounced off, and clanged down the entire length of the hurtling submarine. There was a brief pause before a muffled explosion well astern as it detonated, the retort of the sudden blast dissipating to the sound of the Scorpion’s propellers.

“Four hundred meters to North Korean attack submarine,” Vitaly said. “Torpedo warhead too close to prime, it bounce off! Please tell me you did not learn trick from Hunt for Red October!”

“What?” protested Jonah. “It’s a film classic!”

“My god — you didn’t even read the book, did you?” demanded Hassan.

“Vitaly — best guess on classification of incoming submarine,” Jonah shouted, ignoring the doctor.

“I think Romeo class? Like twin sister of Scorpion! Standard for North Korea.”

“We’re going to race her topside — full engine power, depth planes to full bubble ascent! Emergency blow!”

Vitaly grinned as he yanked back on the submarine’s yolk until the column smacked against its metal restrictor, and the Scorpion’s ballast tanks filled with a hissing woosh. The submarine lurched upwards, groaning as she thrust through the water column toward the distant surface.

“NK sub is matching ascent angle!” Vitaly shouted. “Moving to intercept! Two hundred meters!”

The twin submarines climbed toward each other in the water like jousting whales, rib joints resetting as the pressure of the ocean gave way. Jonah reached up to hold onto the ceiling, standing on his toes as the deck angled up beneath him.

“More power!” shouted Jonah, punching the intercom to Alexis in the engine room. “Anything you got — I need it over the next ten seconds!”

Alexis must have found some last remaining joule or watt hiding somewhere in the battery bank, because the Scorpion surged forward, engines screaming. Hassan nearly lost his grip on the console, splaying his feet to keep from tumbling out of his seat and down along the steep deck.

“Thirty meters!” Vitaly sputtered, as the Scorpion breeched the surface like a great, blue whale. And then she fell back to earth, her belly slamming against her sister submarine below with the sound and fury of Thor’s hammer and anvil. Everyone was thrown to the deck as metal screamed against metal, lights flickered, and hydraulic fluid rained down from above. Several electrical panels short-circuited, bursting into flames.

“Emergency flood procedures! Damage report! Vitaly, where’d we hit them?” shouted Jonah, almost shaking the helmsmen out of his seat.

“Above conning tower, Captain!” said Vitaly. “We sheer off their snorkel, periscope, radar, everything! They blind and deaf now. No hull leak detected — all major systems or backups functioning.”

“Then get us the fuck out of here. Emergency descent.” Vitaly obeyed, the engines once more roaring to full power as the Scorpion plunged into the sea.

“How did you know we could out-climb them?” exclaimed Hassan. “Vitaly said we were evenly matched!”

“They’re fielding a full crew,” answered Jonah. “And a full complement of torpedoes and other ordnance to boot. We may not have much, but we had the weight advantage and every chance of beating them to the surface with Alexis on the engines and Vitaly at the helm.”

“Deaf and blind,” repeated Hassan, breathless as he shook his head.

“But they still have a set of lungs,” added Jonah. “They’ll be howling for every NK anti-sub asset within five hundred miles. Vitaly, plot an evasive course; drop us beneath a thermal layer. Return to silent running. Let ’em think they got us, too.”

“Aye,” Vitaly said, fingers shaking as he input the new instructions.

“Captain, I must say this is an excellent opportunity to play dead,” said Hassan. “We can find a place to hide on the ocean floor, drop to minimal power. I don’t know how long we can hold out with no food and thinning air, but maybe it would be enough time for both the North Koreans and Japanese to stop looking for us. This isn’t our battle, Jonah.”

Jonah nodded. “We’ve got to play this out, Doc. We can’t risk a gamble, not until we know what’s at stake. Orders stand. Set course for the Japanese fleet. Let’s see what they make of this mess.”

CHAPTER 10

Freya Weyland leaned against the rusting stern railing, her hands curled around the hard steel, scarred knuckles white and fingertips as cold as the metal they rested upon. She leaned over and nestled her chin into her folded arms, eyes closed as the winter winds of the East China Sea swept across her face. The freezing air felt good, her skin prickling with goose pimples underneath a thin, fashionable sweatshirt, the chill numbing her fingers, stealing the breath from her lungs. A crescent moon hung low in the winter sky, casting dim illumination over the 170-foot research vessel as it quietly pushed through gentle swells.

The young man next to her spoke passionately, winding through a ponderous, well-rehearsed epiphany that probably impressed the coeds of his university’s science department. His conclusions were clearly meant to be edgy, at least for a mainline academic; the rebellious hypothesis punctuated by the neglected cigar in his hand as it slowly burnt to ash in the darkness. Something about the benefits of selective near-extinction — how collapsed fishing stocks would lead to real legislative change faster than any conservation activism. Better the fish died now; perhaps enough would survive to repopulate the region while the Japanese fleets languished in scrapyards for lack of catch.

He was handsome, at least compared to the balance of the R/V George D. Stillson’s male population. Tall, skinny— well, too skinny if she was honest with herself—trendy haircut with the long, slick top and shaved sides, half-lidded eyes, and a sly smile. And he could talk, really talk. He didn’t just stand around waiting for her to say something so he could pretend to agree. Maybe even a guy her mom might have called a breath of fresh air, the type who introduced himself as ‘Benny’ and not ‘Dr. Whoever the Third, PhD of Ivy-This or Ivy-That’.

She liked listening to him talk. She liked how he filled the silence with such ease, how she could simply lean on the railing staring ahead, and he wouldn’t get bored and walk away. She almost felt at peace when he spoke. Maybe this was what it was like to be a woman who didn’t know the right ratio of diesel to urea fertilizer, or the correct detonator needed to blow it sky high, or the sound made by breaking vertebra if one twisted a neck just so.

Freya raised up and turned towards the young man, smiling as she caught his eye. He stopped speaking for a moment, thrown from his pedantic verbal wanderings, and tilted an ear to better listen to her over the ship’s laboring diesel engines.

But she didn’t speak. She instead took the small cigar from his fingers, puffed it twice, and handed it back. She pursed her lips to blow a thick, clinging cloud of smoke and warm vapor into the night sky. Benny smiled, shifting in his thick, red ski jacket as he watched her with sparkling eyes.

“You’re hot blooded, aren’t you?” he said, trying to needle her into a response. “The type of girl who never gets cold, like maybe you grew up in Fargo, or an igloo?”

Freya allowed herself an amused laugh as she glanced down at her thin, inadequate sweatshirt. But still she said nothing.

In fact, the less she said the better — she’d made her way aboard the Stillson with a stolen passport, barely checked. But the exhaustive cover story she’d tediously memorized hardly mattered; nobody wanted to talk about academic papers or obscure oceanographic flora. Sure, small teams of Japanese and American graduate students wrestled over deck space and ship time as they netted fish, dissected specimens, gathered core samples, and deployed scientific instrumentation over the course of the working day. But the nights were the real attraction, bacchanalian parties in the recreation room winding down well into the early morning hours as the students stole away to explore one other in the darkened semi-privacy of their shared shipboard cabins.

The air of political tension made the expedition all the more exciting. Spy games weren’t unheard of, and the waters off Amami Oshima had earned a reputation as the kidnapping grounds of North Korean intelligence agencies. A disguised spy vessel was spotted and chased by four Japanese Coast Guard ships just a few years previous, sparking off a six-hour gunfight that ended when the North Koreans scuttled their own trawler.

The fifteen unlucky spies left clinging to the wreckage were deemed a security risk and abandoned to the unforgiving sea. Japan returned two years later to raise the trawler from the deep, finding her equipped with guns, rockets, a high-powered engine, and a hidden speedboat launch. Some of the Japanese grad students had visited the salvaged spy ship at the Coast Guard Museum of Yokohama, flashing the ubiquitous V-sign with their fingers as their photos were taken in front of the bullet-riddled hull.

Freya decided that if Benny ever stopped talking and tried to kiss her, she might just let him. It’s what her cover identity Cindi Phelps would do, wasn’t it? Cindi Phelps with an ‘i’ at the end of her first name. Cindi Phelps the marine biologist in training who once wanted to become a dolphin trainer. Cindi the grad student who was determined to make her way to sea like a real scientist — at least until Yasua Himura decided her passport was worth more than her life. The real Cindi had been chosen deliberately, her digital fingerprint exactingly traced through social media, cell phone records, and online correspondence, until she was firmly established as the candidate best suited for replacement. As an added bonus, the real Cindi somewhat resembled Freya, albeit six inches shorter, and with a distinctive toothy smile that Freya could not reproduce no matter how hard she tried.

Benny took two last careful puffs off the short cigar before carefully grinding out the red ember on the stern railing. She watched as he placed the cooling stub into a plastic bag with several others. It was all she could do to stop herself from scoffing at him, how he so carefully disposed of a single cigar butt after flying halfway across the world in a hydrocarbon-spewing jumbo airliner. Why not just toss it into the sea? What would it matter?

“You should come to Thailand with me,” said Benny, clearing his throat as he inched towards her, the length of railing between them abruptly shrinking. “Have you ever been?”

Freya shook her head, the tiniest smile appearing on her lips for a moment. She realized with surprise that it wasn’t Cindi’s — it was hers.

“It’s beautiful,” he said with a faraway sigh. “White beaches, water so clear it just disappears. Five-hundred-year-old Buddhist temple ruins everywhere. We can wake up in the morning and do yoga on the sand. Eat seafood caught right in the shoals. Dive the reefs as the sun peaks. Spend nights dancing in the clubs. I’ve already booked a beach hut — there’s nothing like falling asleep to the sounds of the surf.”

She could tell he almost ended the pitch with just the two of us, but the words died in his mouth before he spoke, almost as if uttering them into the cold would have robbed them of all meaning.

“I’ll think about it,” said Freya, speaking for the first time. Would Cindi have said yes?

“It’s not just me. A bunch of us are going,” added Benny quickly. “I mean, why travel all the way out here and not tack on a little fun at the end? You got somebody you need to go running home to?”

“I said I’ll think about it,” said Freya, giving him the barest twitch at the corners of her mouth as she retreated from the railing. Pleased with the response, Benny smiled so wide that his face looked as though it’d split in two.

Freya stepped through a hatch and into the interior of the Stillson, taking in the familiar stained, off-white steel interior and ’70s-era wood paneling, eyes adjusting to the too-bright fluorescents flickering above. Her cabin was just a few doors down, not much more than two bunks, and a tiny, shared bathroom. She unzipped the sweatshirt and took off her tank top, stripping down to a pair of tight athletic leggings and a sports bra. It was impossible to get enough protein on the ship, but her rigorous exercise routine still held great benefit, the discipline keeping her darker urges in check.

Her slight Japanese roommate was perpetually— desperately — seasick, spending more time guzzling Gatorade and Dramamine in the research ship’s tiny infirmary than sleeping in her own bunk. The privacy of the de facto solo room was a welcome bonus, her unanticipated isolation circumventing the need for any unnecessary skulking throughout the crowded ship.

Freya was only halfway through her thirty-minute pushup routine when she noticed the blinking light in her half-open duffel bag. The satellite phone had been easy to bring aboard. It hadn’t even required an explanation. Cindi was a rich girl, and rich girls got rich-girl toys. She felt a flutter of anxiety, consciously forcing herself to slow her heartbeat before she pulled the phone from the duffle, pressed it to her ear, and accepted the call.

“Are you there?” spoke Himura with his soft, commanding voice. His intonation was like a warm blanket around her shoulders, filling her with purpose and resolve.

Freya pressed the star button on the keypad, listening to the faint tone as it disappeared across the airwaves.

“Can you speak?”

Freya used the star button twice and waited in silence for his next words. Though she was alone in her cabin, she didn’t want to take the chance of a sudden interruption.

“Take control of the bridge. Once inside, you must be prepared to hold the location for a minimum of ten minutes. Return this call when it’s done.” Freya started to finger the star button in acknowledgement, but it was too late — Himura had already disconnected.

Ten minutes. A lot could happen in that time — not near enough time to lure and lock the bridge crew out. She’d need to fight.

Freya slipped off her lightweight athletic shoes, exchanging them for the heavy leather work boots buried in the bottom of her duffle. They weren’t as broken-in as she would have preferred, but the high ankles, thick rubber lugs, and steel toe inserts offered other advantages. She tucked her feet into both and laced them up, tying the final knots high like a combat boot.

No sense in giving a potential adversary more to grab onto than absolutely necessary — she’d keep the sports bra and yoga pants only, there wouldn’t be enough time to get cold. Freya secured her thick blonde dreadlocks with a rubber band and then ransacked her roommate’s luggage with the other. The young Japanese woman was exceptionally well prepared for the expedition. She’d brought at least three times as much stuff as she’d ever conceivably use. Freya tore open the clear toiletries bag first, locating a pair of delicate grooming scissors she used to cut through a handful of her longest dreadlocks. She removed the oversized first aid kit next, binding her knuckles and wrists with thick white athletic tape. Last was the lotion — she would have preferred Vaseline or even coconut oil, but her roommate’s thick, long-lasting skin cream would work almost as well. Connecting the satellite phone to a wireless earpiece, Freya secured the bulky handset in the rear of her waistband.

Focus. Breathe in, breathe out. Focus. Count to ten.

Freya scowled as she walked past the passenger lounge. Inside, a dozen graduate students exchanged a bottle of cheap rice wine, laughing as they watched an old American horror movie. A ghostly hand emerged from a mirror, reaching towards an unsuspecting woman as she slipped out of her clothes — the students shrieked and pointed, giggling as they clutched each other on the sagging couches.

Benny was in the center of the smallest couch, flanked by four of his friends from the same department. They stopped talking when they spotted her, smacking and hissing at each other until even the slowest among them stopped to stare openly in her direction. He’d no doubt told them about Thailand, how he was on the verge of bagging the ice queen, the cold bitch — she knew all the names they called her.

I’d let her kick my ass any day of the week, whispered one. Benny halfheartedly tried to shush him while still soaking in every moment of the self-congratulatory frat-boy camaraderie.

Freya eyed the knives from across the recreation room, barely visible behind the counter as they clung to the magnetic strip in the galley. She wanted to take one, but there were too many eyes watching her. It wasn’t just Benny and his boys, it was the girls now, too, their gazes dripping over her tight black yoga pants and sports bra, the sheen of lotion over her defined abdominals and muscled arms. Like she was some kind of freak for turning her body into what it was designed for. What did Himura call her? Yes — his perfect instrument, a form with unmistakable function.

She walked to the teakettle on a nearby table, suspiciously glancing over her shoulder. The grad students were distracted by the movie again, the horror heroine having changed into highly impractical lingerie as she investigated a haunted mansion by candlelight.

Grabbing a knife was still too obvious, leaving Freya to quietly fill the top of the now-boiling kettle with leftover olive oil from dinner. She waited until it was scalding before carefully filling a thick mug and pouring the rest down the drain just before it started to smoke.

Focus. Breathe in, breathe out. Count to ten.

Freya left with cup in hand, breathing slowly in and out as she ascended the main stairs towards the bridge. The pushups had driven fresh, hot blood to her arms and hands. She shook out her shoulders and ankles to keep her muscles warm and fluid.

The bridge ran nearly the width of the thirty-four foot beam, large windows reaching from waist-level consoles and chart tables to the low ceiling above. With the sole exception of a single flat-screen, the bulk of the instruments dated to the mid-’70s. Freya felt she was stepping back in time. The short, barrel-chested American captain stood before the helm, hand resting gently on the simple steering lever, throttle set to a leisurely eight-knot cruising speed. He touched the lever out of habit alone. Freya knew the autopilot took the bulk of the helmsman’s duties, the computer gently adjusting the Stillson’s seaborne course as she plied the rolling swells.

Two officers flanked the captain. Freya noted with satisfaction that the larger of the two was the coverall-clad chief engineer, a tall, lanky man with thinning hair and crumpled earplugs slung around his neck, his permanently oil-stained fingers tapping absentmindedly on the nearby chart table. Good — dealing with him on the bridge would significantly lessen the chances that the remaining crew could contest her control of the ship from the engine compartment. The only other man on deck was the ship’s Japanese first officer, a quiet, jowly man who only rarely lifted his heavy eyes from other people’s shoes.

The view from the large windows was impressive, made all the more so by the dim interior lighting. A crescent moon rippled like silver over the rolling ocean as the research vessel rose and fell through the waves, cresting each one in turn with a sudden gush of white spray over the distant bow.

“Whud’ya need?” grunted the captain, barely nodding in her direction as he kept his eyes towards the distant moonlit horizon.

Freya just closed her eyes. Focus. She visualized the moments to come in her mind — the first blow, the second, the look in their eyes when they realized something had gone very wrong. Her hand trembled for a moment, the scalding oil rippling as beads of sweat collected between her fingertips and the surface of the searing ceramic mug. Breathe in, breathe out. Focus.

“Seriously?” said the captain, scratching his white beard in irritation at her lack of response. He swiveled to address her face-on. If Freya had been a normal passenger, she would have felt a flood of anxious energy wash over her as he prepared to dress her down. But she wasn’t a normal passenger.

Three seconds. Focus.

“This area is not for students. I’m going to need to talk to Harold about this—” began the captain.

He never finished.

Freya hurled the entire mug of olive oil into his face, soaking him with the near-boiling liquid. A scream erupted from his lips in a pitch too high for a man as his fingernails already dug into the red, sloughing skin around his eyes. Freya turned, took aim, and flung the empty mug directly into the tall engineer’s face, hearing his nose crack as the cup bounced off his face and hit the ceiling before shattering to pieces on the linoleum floor.

Yes — this approach was better. A knife was obvious, recognizable, reactionary. The oil gained her a minimum two-second advantage, maybe even double that. Even so, she would have preferred a blade, something to brandish, a last-ditch backup if nothing else. The Japanese first officer rushed her with unexpected speed, grabbing at her arm. His grip slid right off her slick skin, giving Freya the split-second opportunity to bury her fist into the side of his jaw. He dropped hard, sliding across the floor before slamming headfirst into a map cabinet. The captain was screaming louder now, shaking uncontrollably as he held his blistering, ruined face. She turned just in time to see the engineer drag himself off the floor which gave her time to plant one, two, three steel-toed kicks to the side of his head. Freya cocked a fourth kick with her boot, silently daring him to move.

Without warning, pain erupted across her back like she’d been smacked with a baseball bat, her shoulder blade and right arm instantly numb from the tooth-rattling impact. She whipped around to see the Japanese first officer—he didn’t stay down, goddamn it—brandishing an oversize Maglite like a club. His mistake.

“You should have crushed my skull when you had the chance,” she said as she grabbed him by the throat, lifting him off his feet as he struggled in her grip, flailing ineffectually with his flashlight. She hurled him against the wall. Off-balance, his already-broken jaw dangerously exposed, she jammed one vicious elbow after another into his face. The heavy light tumbled from his grasp and rolled across the rocking bridge deck as he slumped to the floor for the final time, bleeding and unconscious.

Freya cracked her neck and massaged the back of her injured shoulder, trying to will feeling back into her still-tingling right arm. The blow to the scapula had hurt, goddamn it, more than she cared to admit. Her mistake: underestimating the short, lethargic first mate.

Focus. Breathe in. breathe out. Release the pain.

The door behind her creaked opened. Freya twisted around, hands already up, fists balled and ready to strike. The captain had slipped into shock behind her, silence falling over the bridge deck once more.

“Cindi…?” sputtered Benny, his voice barely above a whisper as he stared at her in abject horror. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window; face blood-flecked and snarled, teeth gritted, glistening skin rippling as she breathed hard and fast. Freya took a running start towards Benny before he could utter another word. She leapt forward and slammed him in the chest with both booted feet. Benny flew backwards, losing an unlaced shoe as he tumbled through the air, his thick red ski jacket a blur in an uncontrolled free fall. He was halfway down the stairs before he landed, outstretched wrist catching the edge of a step as he snapped down like a cracked whip, collarbone taking the brunt of the impact. Screams erupted from the lounge below as Freya closed her eyes and latched the door with quivering, adrenaline-fueled fingers.

Steadying herself, Freya activated the earpiece and dialed Himura’s number. The phone clicked and beeped, slowly making the connection as she locked and barricaded the remaining doors. She inadvertently jumped a little as the bridge’s still-charging hand radios erupted with static and frantic voices begging for help, begging for information. The doorknob to the interior door abruptly moved. Fortunately, the lock held as the rattling increased and the voices took on a desperate, violent pitch.

The call went through. She didn’t need to hear his voice to feel him on the other end. His calm, gentle presence pulling the jittery energy from her body, centering her, focusing her, and preparing her for what was to come.

“Is it done?” His soothing voice was barely audible over the distant connection.

“Yeah,” she confirmed between heaving gasps. “I have control of the bridge.”

“How long can you maintain your position?”

“A few minutes at least,” she answered. “Probably the full ten, maybe longer. Depends on how much of a fight they’re willing to put up. So far, it’s been manageable. One of them landed a decent hit, but nothing feels broken.”

The grad students and crew had already begun to organize themselves, and the pounding against the thin interior door grew louder with each passing second. Others climbed the cold exterior stairs and gathered on the exposed bridge platform, cupping their hands to look through the glass windows, their eyes darting between Freya and the three unconscious bodies on the floor around her. The braver among them began to smack against the glass like she was a zoo animal, shouting at her, trying to get her attention.

Focus. Breathe in. Breathe out. Count to ten. Hold the bridge.

The carnage around her — slick, still-hot olive oil on the linoleum floor, bloody handprints on the wall, three barely-breathing men lying at the feet of her steel-toed boots — was distracting.

Freya closed her eyes, centering herself. After all, she knew the East China Sea was always intertwined with death. North Korean ghost ships had drifted through these waters for decades, their crews driven to madness and suicide as their disabled vessels drifted aimlessly atop endless ocean. So too had the divine winds of kamikaze swept these waves, first as the twin typhoons faced by Mongolian invaders, and, seven centuries later, as 4,000 young men plunging headlong from the sky towards Allied warships. Now it was the specter of unrestrained industry — the horsemen of the apocalypse opening their seals to pour forth plastics, poisons, hydrocarbons, fertilizer, and radiation into the sea.

“Set course to north-by-northwest,” ordered Himura. “Full possible speed. You will see a radar contact. Steer towards that contact.”

Freya nodded, knowing full well Himura couldn’t see her acknowledgement. “What am I intercepting?”

“A North Korean patrol vessel,” he answered. “They believe they are hunting a Japanese spy ship. They will board the George Stillson and summarily execute her crew and passengers before scuttling the ship. I trust you can make your escape, perhaps in one of the small outboard crafts?”

She froze. “How?” was all she could manage as she opened the navigation software, preparing to enter the new course. “How could you possibly have arranged this?”

“Meisekimu has become exceedingly proficient at utilizing their military codes — and she’s enjoyed learning to imitate the voices of their naval commanders as well.”

Freya swallowed hard, closing her eyes as she prepared to ask the real question. The only question that mattered. “But why?”

“It’s a pretext for an inevitability,” said Himura impatiently. “Have you set the new course?”

“No,” said Freya, louder this time as she shook her head. “That’s not what I meant — why? Why any of this? These people — they’re like us, they’re on our side.”

“Then give them their martyrdom, as you are willing to take yours, and I, mine.”

“But I know what I signed up for — and I know they don’t want to be fucking martyrs.”

“Please set the course.”

Freya swallowed again. The pounding on the windows and doors was loud now, impossibly loud. She wanted to scream at them, tell them to shut the fuck up, let her think. Didn’t they know what was at stake? Himura’s orders were simple, so terribly simple — enter the new course, lock out the computers, disable the steering mechanisms, and escape. There’d be plenty of opportunity to slip away before the shooting started, leaving behind baffled passengers and crew who’d be glad to rid themselves of her, unaware of their fate. But try as she might, she couldn’t do it. Her finger froze as it hovered over the keyboard.

“Please do this, Freya,” pleaded Himura. The tone was new, even softer than his gentle persuasion — he was all but begging her. “Do it, or I will put a second, bloodier plan into motion. A plan that will take many more lives. I do not wish to take so much unnecessary life — but I will if I must.”

Crack! A fire extinguisher smashed against the glass windows, the sharp impact echoing throughout the darkened bridge. The grad students and remaining crew were furious now, mob-like, some having armed themselves with broomsticks and chair legs, which they beat across the windows like hail. Two of the crewmen wielded a massive extinguisher tank from the engine room, drawing it back like a battering ram as they prepared to slam it against the window once more. Others had begun to beat against the opposite side of the bridge with hammers and wrenches, cracks already beginning to spread throughout the thick, typhoon-proof glass.

Freya punched the new numbers into the computer, preparing to confirm Himura’s course. She could see the North Korean ship now, just a tiny green blip lurking at the far reaches of the radar screen. Her finger hovered over the enter key, preparing to punch it, end the standoff. But… she didn’t. She couldn’t.

The red fire extinguisher slammed against the window a fourth, a fifth time, the clear pane already a ruin of chipped and breaking glass. They were all pounding on the windows now, smashing and scratching with table legs, knives, hammers, wrenches, and their bare hands, all made anonymous in their violence. Freya’s half-numbed knuckles throbbed underneath the bloodstained athletic tape, muscles clenching and unclenching as she prepared to defend herself against the seething mob.

Focus. Breathe in. Breathe out. Count to ten. Get ready to fight.

Whack! The extinguisher burst through the window, its momentum tearing it from their hands as it bounced end over end and rolled across the tilting deck. Like falling stars the scattershot of diamond-shaped glass fragments danced across the linoleum floor. Freya rushed the broken window, hurling heavy books and operations manuals at her attackers. But they were ready for her, five of them falling over themselves as they spilled over the sill and into the bridge interior. She launched herself into their midst, punching and kicking and scratching — but there were too many. Two of them caught her wrists, shoving her backwards as another swung at her ribs with a broomstick, landing a stinging blow. Yelping in pain, Freya kicked with her steel-toed boots and rolled away, leaping back up with fists cocked, back against the wall.

More shattering glass cascaded across the floor from the other side of the bridge. Two students leapt through the window with knives and wrenches in hand. Distracted for an instant, she was once again enveloped by the mob-like mass of attackers, then thrown facedown onto the floor. Four wriggling bodies pounced on her, pinning her to the floor. Before she could move, someone threw a blanket over her face from behind, yanking back so hard she thought her neck would snap. A table leg connected just above her left ear an instant later, the blinding concussion nearly knocking her senseless. All she could do was groan and struggle to free her wrists, seeking something — anything — to grab, someone to hurt. But, there was only the slick, oil-soaked floor.

Then, motion. She was jerked to her feet. The thick, scratchy blanket pinned her throbbing head. She couldn’t breathe. Her elbows bent upwards behind her back by an impossible number of grasping hands. The screaming in her ears was muffled now, far away, like it was happening to someone else in the far reaches of a long hallway. Burning, flashing lights swam across her black vision as she violently convulsed, vomiting into the smothering blanket over her eyes and mouth. She coughed, gasping, sucking the acidic mess out of the fibers and into her lungs.

And then pain — sharp, digging pain pulled her from the stupor as her bare stomach was dragged across the broken glass rim of the windowsill. Freezing wind ripped the last of the warmth from her sweat-soaked skin as she was held headfirst over the rusting railing of the bridge deck.

Focus… breathe… but I can’t.

Somehow she sensed the emptiness below.

The pressure from her wrists and elbows released abruptly as she pitched violently forward. She felt only the briefest, sickening sensation of weightlessness, blanket falling from her face as she plunged headlong into the dark, frigid ocean.

CHAPTER 11

The Scorpion slipped through the open waters of the Sea of Japan, the rocky North Korean coastline now more than a hundred miles behind her. Jonah stood the night watch alone, giving his crew a few more hours of hard-won sleep as the submarine slowly made way towards the waiting Japanese fleet. His throbbing carbon monoxide headache had begun to settle, replaced by equally painful, cramping hunger pangs.

They all handled the two-and-a-half days without food differently. Jonah kept his silent watch, well used to the sensations of deprivation. Dalmar and Vitaly hunkered down in their quarters, conserving energy as they rested listlessly under the sheets. Alexis busied herself with engine repairs and preventative maintenance, while Marissa took over Jonah’s cabin, snapping at anyone who made the mistake of checking in on her. Perhaps Hassan handled himself best of all, retreating to the galley to produce a steady array of thin broths and juices from discarded onions, orange peels, and the coffee dust collected in the furthest reaches of the cupboards.

Light footsteps echoed down the darkened main corridor as Sun-Hi approached. She’d worked diligently to tailor her oversized, secondhand coveralls, taking in fabric from every quarter until the outfit almost fit her. The clothes she’d worn escaping North Korea were ultimately deemed unsalvageable after disintegrating under mild detergent as she attempted to launder them in a sink.

Sun-Hi held a steaming mug of over-steeped black tea in front of her, offering it to Jonah. He didn’t recognize the Chinese brand name on the dangling tag, and strongly suspected she’d carried it with her as she fled across the ice.

She stuck the mug out again and bowed slightly, proffering it to Jonah as though she hadn’t been clear enough the first time. He took it gratefully and sipped, feeling the slight caffeine boost zip along his body as welcome warmth reached his contracted stomach.

“Thanks,” said Jonah, handing the mug back to her. But, cup in hand, Sun-Hi didn’t leave. Instead, she just stood there staring at him until he felt uncomfortable. “Why don’t you take a walk around, see if anybody else wants a sip? I bet you can get a couple of cups out of that bag at minimum.”

“No. It’s for captain only!”

“On the Scorpion, if you can eat, drink, or breathe it, it’s for everybody. We don’t stand much for captain-only privileges. I’m serious. I hope you’ll consider sharing it with the crew. That being said, I’ll turn a blind eye if you want to keep it for yourself. My guess is you’ve been hungry for a lot longer than the rest of us.”

A little flash of disappointment crossed Sun-Hi’s face as she lowered the cup. Jonah frowned. She wanted something from him, something he couldn’t yet put his finger on.

“Why didn’t you leave with the rest of them?” he asked, interrupting the brief silence with a question that had weighed on his mind since her discovery. He took the mug again and allowed himself a second sip, much to her immediate pleasure.

“All my people to go to one place,” she said, eyes wide. “Maybe Osaka or Tokyo, maybe Seoul. But this ship — what you say? Scorpion? She go everywhere.”

“You don’t regret your decision? Not even after what happened to us?”

“No.” “So, you didn’t stay because you were scared of the Japanese? You stayed because you wanted to leave with us?”

“Yes!”

He handed the cup back to her. “Even though you didn’t know a thing about me or my crew?”

“No-no!” She was shaking her head now, her bowl-cut flopping one way and the other. “I know many thing about you.”

“Like what?” asked Jonah, perplexed.

“Number one thing, you very tall,” said Sun-Hi, cocking her head as she looked up at him. She offered the mug back to Jonah, who declined it more firmly this time.

“Sure, but that’s not a very good reason.”

“There are other reason.”

“Such as?” “When army come, everybody always run. Always, always. Men leave mother, even leave baby. But you stay. You fight. You brave. I brave, too. We are same, so I come with you. And I stay with you.”

Jonah couldn’t help but chuckle in baffled wonder. Even on a good day it felt like the ragtag crew of the Scorpion had joined forces as the punch line of some great cosmic joke. Other times it was more like a purgatorial prison sentence among strangers. “I’ll think about it,” Jonah grunted. “But you’ll need a job.”

“I cook! I do laundry! I clean bathroom!” began Sun-Hi before Jonah raised his hand to cut her off.

“We’ve got the doc for cooking,” said Jonah. “And we do our own laundry and cleaning around here.” It was true, mostly. Dalmar didn’t do much of anything domestic besides obsessively maintain the weapons of the forward armory. So far, nobody had been brave enough to bring up Hassan’s shipboard chore wheel assignments with the pirate.

“But bathroom not so clean?” said Sun-Hi, confused.

“Never mind that,” said Jonah, abruptly recalling that it was probably his turn to clean the head. “You want a job? Let’s get you a real job. An important job.”

“Important?” breathed Sun-Hi in hushed anticipation. Jonah paused for a moment before saying anything more. She seemed earnest enough. He didn’t exactly know what a spy or secret agent might act like, but she didn’t seem the type. Besides, there was no good way to get rid of her without locking her in a cabin or throwing her off the side. “Why not? I know you’re good with computers and radios. That’s great — I’m in need of a crewman on the communications and hydrophone console.”

“I know all about radio!” “That’s a good start, but there’s still a lot to learn. I’ll have Alexis train you on how the communication systems work aboard the Scorpion. You shouldn’t have any problems figuring it out. My guess is that most of the principal concepts are pretty similar to your old job as an announcer. The hydrophones will be more difficult. Takes a skilled ear and a lot of knowledge. I’m going to have Vitaly give you access to our computer’s sound library. You’ll need to play the sounds over and over again, eventually memorize and identify each one. I can’t stress enough how important this is. You’ll need to study very hard.”

“When I play Koppun in Flower Girl, I know every line! By heart!”

Jonah let himself smile. “You ready for your first assignment?”

“Yes!”

“Good. We’re headed back towards the Japanese fleet. I want them to hear us coming clearly from a long, long distance out so they don’t think we’re sneaking up on ’em. I figure the best way we can do that is play some loud music over the PA system.”

“I know much music,” said Sun-Hi before pausing and glancing around conspiratorially. “I know much forbidden music.”

“Prove it. Pick something that’ll piss ’em off.”

Jonah didn’t have to say another word before Sun-Hi dove into the crew’s music library. The captain stole one last sip of the tea before leaving her to the search. Within moments, the upbeat synth and guitar strains of The Vapor’s Turning Japanese blared over the internal public address system of the submarine. He grinned — she’d picked well. The song was the exact right amount of fuck you he was going for.

Sun-Hi turned to him and grinned. “I think you good captain,” she said. “I do not think you get us all killed like Vitaly say.”

It figured the Russian would say that — shoot someone in the chest a couple of times and they never let you live it down. “You do well on this and I’ll teach you to drive the boat so I can finally throw Vitaly overboard.”

“Really?”

“No. And don’t tell him I said that.”

Jonah let the crew sleep for one final hour, only summoning them to the command compartment as the Scorpion made its final approach to the Japanese fleet. Alexis frowned as she leaned over Sun-Hi’s shoulder, examining the communications console with weary, experienced eyes.

“No telemetry. Radio isn’t so much as ticking over. Is our antenna working?”

Vitaly shrugged his shoulders in puzzled resignation. “Diagnostics say no problem. Low-frequency OK, too.”

“We should be in visual range at this point,” said Jonah.

“Vitaly — bring us up to periscope depth. Our new friends could be observing a radio blackout, given how pissed off the North Koreans are right now. Probably don’t want to be implicated by proxy.”

Vitaly grunted his aye as the submarine gently tilted, raising a long optic stalk above the waves. Jonah swiveled the periscope, his view simulcast to several video monitors around the command compartment.

A gasp went up around the compartment as the first image flashed upon the screen. An amphibious assault ship burned stem to stern in a massive pillar of flames. A thick column of acrid smoke rose from the gutted hulk into the sky above. Jonah panned the periscope slowly to starboard, halting the movement as the viewer fell upon the helicopter carrier. The flat-topped naval vessel listed hard, half her red-painted belly, propellers, and rudders stuck above water. The port edge of her tilting, empty flight deck dipped into the cold ocean with each tossing wave. Every helicopter had snapped from its lashings and slid into the sea, leaving behind thick black rubber skid marks and long, gouged scratches.

“What the fuck?” muttered Jonah, trying, but failing to keep his shock in check.

“My god — I haven’t seen anything like this since—” began Hassan.

“Since the Battle of Anconia Island,” said Dalmar, finishing his sentence. “Where we won the day at great cost.”

“Where are all the lifeboats? All the sailors?” said Alexis. “There should be an ocean of survivors around us.”

“Maybe they rescued already?” said Sun-Hi hopefully. “Or they’re all dead,” growled Dalmar. Jonah shot the pirate a look to silence him — Sun-Hi’s fellow refugees could still be aboard the stricken carrier.

Jonah stared at the remains of the destroyed fleet before him. The scene bore an uncanny resemblance to pictures he’d seen of the Battle of Bubiyan, when twenty-one fleeing Iraqi vessels were destroyed in a last-ditch attempt to reach Iran and save themselves. It was a classic Gulf War turkey shoot, lightly armed surface vessels against high-speed British attack helicopters — the fleeing Iraqi sailors never had a chance.

“We should get the fuck out of here,” said Alexis. “Like, yesterday.”

“Belay that,” said Jonah, narrowing his eyes in concentration. “Surface and make for the fleet at half speed. Vitaly, give me a full radar sweep as soon as you’re able — I need to know if there’s anybody else in the neighborhood.”

“Is there a hole in your screen door?” Alexis pointed to the burning ships on the monitors. “Half the Japanese Navy just got shot to shit! We should fucking go, right goddamn now!”

“She is correct,” Dalmar boomed. “We are too late for this battle.”

“My orders aren’t up for debate,” snapped Jonah as he pointed to the monitor. “Vitaly — how close are we?”

“Five minute out,” said Vitaly. “We come alongside carrier soon unless we change course. Radar sweep complete — no other surface ship within sixty mile. Does not mean we are alone. Could always be airplane, hiding submarine …”

“A few planes and a sub couldn’t have done this much damage,” said Marissa. “Whoever hit them must be long gone by now. Christ, what a goddamn mess.”

“Do you think …?” began Sun-Hi, her voice warbling as she attempted to control her worry.

Marissa didn’t let her finish. “I’m sure all of your friends were transferred to Japan as soon as we left. Right, Jonah?”

“No way they were still on that ship,” agreed Jonah with a grimace. “They’re all safe and sound. I’m sure of it.” Marissa was right about the damage — it looked as though World War III had started and they’d missed their invite.

“Could the attackers be coming back?” asked Alexis.

Marissa interjected her theory, almost before Alexis could even finish speaking. “It has to be the Chinese. There’s no other explanation — who else could mount an attack of this scale?”

“Mother Russia maybe responsible,” added Vitaly. “We cause international incident when we try to escape, no?”

Jonah shook his head, unconvinced. “I don’t buy it. No way an entire fleet gets taken out over a hundred-meter territorial dispute. Surface the Scorpion. I’m popping my head topside to take a look.”

“Perhaps we have underestimated North Korea,” said Dalmar. “I think they are not as weak as they appear.” But Jonah let the theory fall to silence.

“Talk to me, Jonah — why aren’t we running?” asked Hassan as the submarine rose the last few meters to crest the waves. Jonah ignored the doctor as well, fixated on the screen as calculations churned through his racing mind. He reached over to the storage cabinet and silently retrieved a hand radio and a pair of powerful binoculars, slinging both around his neck as he grabbed onto the lower rungs of the command compartment ladder.

The crew stared at him as he began to ascend the conning tower.

“Thanks for filling us in on your plan as per usual,” Marissa shouted at Jonah’s heels as he climbed upwards. He couldn’t fault her. She wasn’t angry, not really. She was just hungry and exhausted and scared like the rest of them, including him.

Jonah glanced back to the command compartment just long enough to see Hassan place a comforting hand on Marissa’s shoulder, telling her the argument wasn’t worth it. Removing his hand, the doctor yanked a wool cap over his tousled black hair and scrambled up the ladder after Jonah.

The conning tower hatch popped with a hiss, stale interior air mixing with the winter cold. Jonah shivered, bracing his feet against the rungs as he muscled the half-open hatch with his shoulder, fighting frozen hydraulic mechanisms. The conning tower exterior was already covered with a growing sheen of thin ice, the ocean spray freezing against the subzero steel of the Scorpion’s hull. The biting air felt good, though, snapping him out of his hungry lethargy.

Hassan emerged next to Jonah, clutching his arms around his chest in the sudden chill. Jonah ignored him, drawing the binoculars to his eyes as he scanned the sea. There it was, dead ahead — the closest of the orange life rafts, dozens more now visible as they drifted in clusters around the burning assault ship and sinking carrier. Alexis’ ocean of stranded sailors had finally materialized before them.

“It goes against my every instinct as a doctor to say this, but we’re in no position to take on survivors,” said Hassan with a shiver. “We have no food — our medical supplies are all but gone — and you and I both know this crew is hanging on by a thread.”

Jonah lowered the binoculars from his eyes. “Those aren’t survivors,” he intoned, his voice low and gravelly as he handed the binoculars to the doctor.

He’d seen death before, even inflicted it himself. But not like this — the closest life raft was half sunk, orange rubber shredded. There were a handful of lifeless bodies onboard, maybe six or eight, less than a quarter of the raft’s capacity. Piled on top of each other, the corpses moved in an eerie, serpentine facsimile of life, animated by the choppy waves. It was impossible to tell where the remains of one sailor ended and another began. They’d been all but torn apart by a merciless onslaught of high-caliber bullets, arms and legs separated from sockets, heads and torsos burst and leaking. A school of a thousand flitting silverfish danced in seeping blood and viscera, feeding, as the gruesome wash flowed from the raft and into the cold ocean.

“This is a massacre, a war crime,” Hassan hissed as the inflatable raft gently knocked against the hull of the Scorpion, the bloody tableau left to swirl in their slow wake. “Who would machine-gun unarmed men as they fled to the sea?”

Jonah chewed down the lump in his throat, taking the binoculars back to slowly scan one life raft after another. He confirmed they’d seen but a fraction of the butchery. Every other raft in sight bore the same shredded, bloody, half-flooded hallmarks of a deliberate, systemic execution.

“There could still be survivors inside,” said Jonah, pointing to the looming carrier. “So long as she’s floating, there’s a chance. No turning back now.”

“We have a satellite phone,” said Hassan. “Can’t we call someone with the resources to actually make a difference?”

“You’re welcome to try and navigate the Japanese Navy telephone directory at two bucks a minute. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll have a menu option for this — you know, press five if you’ve just witnessed the largest naval atrocity in Japanese history.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Jonah,” snapped Hassan. “What difference can we possibly make?”

Jonah pointed across the waters towards the tilting Japanese helicopter carrier. “We can save that ship.”

The interior of the command compartment was dead silent. The crew watched as Jonah stooped over Vitaly’s console and initiated a marine architecture subroutine. He glanced between the images on the periscope monitor and the computer program. Within moments he had sketched out a rough pixilated outline of the disabled carrier, digitally reproducing the sixty-degree angle, and estimating interior flooding. Finished, he flipped the monitor feed onto the command compartment viewers, showing everyone the ad hoc 3D model of the Japanese flagship.

“She’s at a sixty-degree list, and on fire in multiple compartments,” said Jonah. “Power is likely off-line, as are network systems and all primary and auxiliary pumping stations. She’s bad off, but I think we can right her.”

Exclamations of disbelief erupted from every corner of the command compartment. “Give him a moment to explain!” said Hassan, trying in vain to silence the crew.

“I may not be an expert, but that carrier looks properly fucked,” interrupted Alexis, pointing at the screen.

“No — he might be onto something,” said Marissa as she furrowed her brow. “What’s the salvage value? I bet we could get a hundred million dollars if we keep her from sinking. Double that if we can somehow tow her to a Japanese port. But even if we don’t get paid, it still might get us off the Japanese government’s shit list.”

“What is shit list?” asked Sun-Hi, cocking her head.

“Ask Jonah,” said Marissa. “He’s on all of ’em. Especially mine.”

“Nobody ever try this with military ship,” warned Vitaly. “Survivors may view boarding party as pirates.”

“This isn’t a cash grab,” said Jonah. “If there are survivors, they’re hunkered down; they’re not going to start shooting at someone willing to help. The way I see it, we don’t have to save the whole ship. If we can get control of the central systems and get a single generator back online, we can re-start the pumps, roll her back upright. Maybe even get some of the fires under control. It’d give the Japanese time to mobilize their own salvage teams. In the meantime, keeping that ship afloat may be the only chance any survivors have.”

Alexis sputtered. “But the scale! She has to be a hundred times the size of the Scorpion!”

“You’re going to have to trust me, Alexis. This… is what I do.”

“What you used to do,” pointed out Marissa. “Back when you were working for my dad. And that was a long time ago, Jonah.”

Vitaly slowed the Scorpion to a shuddering halt as she approached the tilting deck of the Japanese carrier. Ash fell from the sky like snow, drifting from the billowing columns of smoke and fire enveloping the burning assault ship to their stern. Jonah and his crew slowly took in the destruction through the periscope feed. The submarine jolted as it first knocked against the side of the steep flight deck, the tilting control tower above looming over them like a cliff. Marissa took the periscope from Jonah, aiming the optic down the vast length of the carrier.

“What are we doing?” whispered Hassan, too quiet for anyone to hear but Jonah.

“The right thing — I hope,” whispered Jonah. But he didn’t know who he was trying to convince, the doctor or himself. He cleared his throat, stepping up to address the crew. “Alexis and Vitaly — you’re with me. Hassan will take command of the Scorpion. We’re boarding the carrier in ten minutes.”

Jonah wanted the doctor by his side — hell, he needed him. But he knew Hassan wouldn’t be able to pass a stricken sailor without stopping to try and save a life. There wouldn’t be time on this mission. His crew would be up against fire and steel and the ocean itself. A place with no room for mercy if they were to have any hope of succeeding.

CHAPTER 12

Vitaly was last to arrive in the forward armory. The Russian helmsmen had insisted on fussing over the Scorpion’s trim and ballast to his own exacting specifications before reluctantly relinquishing the post to Dalmar. Not that Dalmar could do much more than punch the button that opened the main hatch — the pirate’s experience at the helm was nonexistent, due equally to his impatient temperament and generalized disinterest. Vitaly might be able to talk Dalmar through the simple stuff on the radio in case of emergency, but that would be about the limit of what they could expect. As much as Jonah would have preferred to leave Vitaly at the helm, there wasn’t any other choice— he’d need his best crew member on hand to have any shot in hell at saving the carrier.

“Touch nothing!” yelled Vitaly down the main corridor. He waved his arms to punctuate his demand as he entered the forward armory. Both Dalmar and Hassan shouted back in unison, pointing out that they’d heard him clearly the first six times.

“Gear up,” said Jonah as he shoved a slim inflatable life vest into Vitaly’s arms. “Make sure your loadout includes survival suits, flotation, helmets, climbing gear, harnesses, and any computer tech you’ll need on the inside.”

“We use scuba gear?” asked Vitaly.

“Pony bottles only,” said Jonah. “Keep it on your person, not in your mouth. If you get stuck underwater you’re probably fucking dead anyway.”

“How about first aid?” suggested Alexis, pointing to a red-crossed sling pack hanging from a hook on the nearest bulkhead.

Jonah shook his head. “We can’t get bogged down with wounded — not even for an initial triage. We’d never make it to the bridge or engineering in time to accomplish anything.”

Alexis scowled as she pulled her neoprene survival suit over her boots, wiggling the thick orange waist up and over her hips. “I’m just going to point out that anybody who knows a good goddamn about operating the Scorpion is heading out the hatch with you.”

“Noted.”

Sun-Hi and Marissa approached from the corridor, the pair holding one marine radio for each of the salvage team.

“You’d better not disappear on me again,” said Marissa, shoving one of the radios into Jonah’s hands. “No turning up in three years on the other side of the goddamn world.”

“Or else what? You’ll get engaged to an accountant without doing me the courtesy of breaking it off first?”

“Or I’ll kick your fucking ass, that’s what,” retorted Marissa. “And he’s not an accountant; he’s an equity trader at the largest hedge fund in Seattle, you dick.”

“Sounds an awful lot like an accountant to me,” said Jonah as he grabbed a length of rope from the wall and slung it over one shoulder.

“Some of us work jobs that require more than a sledgehammer and two brain cells to knock together,” shouted Marissa, starting to lose control of her temper as she jabbed an outstretched finger towards Jonah. Sun-Hi stepped between them before Marissa could launch any further verbal onslaught, handing Alexis and Vitaly the two remaining radios.

“The radio maybe not work inside Japan ship,” she said hesitatingly. “Very much interference.”

“Makes sense,” whispered Alexis with a shiver. “I figured we’d be on our own the moment we stepped onto that carrier.”

Jonah wasn’t prepared for the heat. The tilting helicopter carrier belched a fresh slick of flaming aviation fuel with every swell, swirling against the hull of the Scorpion like a halo of fire. He swam towards the sinking ship, trying to ignore the taste of diesel in his mouth, the burning chemicals against his skin. The control tower was on the high side of the flight deck, looming over them at an impossible angle, as though it could snap off and tumble into the sea at any moment.

Nor was he prepared for the bodies. Seeing them from the deck of the Scorpion as they drifted by was one thing, but the seas were thick with dead men, forcing Jonah and Vitaly to push aside blown-apart arms and legs as they slowly made for the carrier. Alexis stopped following him for a moment, treading water in place as she vomited bile from her empty stomach.

A wave picked them up and carried them forward, swirling more eye-watering diesel in Jonah’s mouth and nose. His hands and feet were already numb from the frigid cold, but his face cracked and pulsed with dry, blinding heat from the fuel fires just a dozen feet away. And then he caught the chain railing, bracing his feet to pull himself halfway out of the sea, helping Alexis and Vitaly onto the slick flight deck. They slumped, catching their breath as they leaned against the nearest towering dome-headed Phalanx gun.

The white, pill-shaped gun dome was peppered with small-arms fire, the bright white plastic torn away to reveal sophisticated semi-autonomous radar technology within. The entire robotic emplacement faced the wrong direction. Black, six-barreled cannons smelled of cordite and carbon, and the odor of old gunfire penetrated Jonah’s nostrils even over the burning oilfield below.

Alexis gasped for air as she stole a look back towards the Scorpion and then up to the distant bridge tower above. “We can’t get up that incline,” she shouted over crackling fire and slapping waves, filthy seawater dripping from her lips as she spoke. “Has to be a fifty, sixty degree angle.”

“This way,” said Jonah, pointing towards a massive platform elevator a short distance across the deck from their tenuous position. Used to transport helicopters and equipment up from the hanger deck below, the half-descended elevator had now become the only entrance to the black maw of the carrier’s destroyed interior.

“No way,” said Vitaly, shaking his head furiously. “Is— is suicide!”

Part of Jonah agreed with the bleak assessment. Waves swirled and slapped against the tilted, open elevator shaft like sea cave. They’d need to swim under the lip of the flight deck in order to make their way into the dark interior.

“Use your pony bottle,” he instructed. “There’s too much oil and debris in the water to see, so feel your way along the side edge and then come straight up once you’re inside.”

“Easier said than—” began Alexis, but Jonah was already underwater, swimming into the mortally wounded ship. Impenetrable darkness swirled around him as he guided himself by touch alone, fingers brushing against freezing metal railings and the interior bulkheads of the partially submerged hanger deck.

He surfaced within hell itself. The cavernous hanger deck was illuminated by plumes of burning aviation fuel and the flickering red tones of the failing emergency lighting. It had become a River Styx of churning waves, bodies, and floating equipment. Unconnected aviation battery packs snapped and sparked, electrical arcs leaping into the oil-soaked waters. Waterlogged, destroyed helicopters and missile dollies were crushed together against the low side of the hanger, roiling in the dark, nightmarish flood.

Jonah brushed aside the thick strap to his uninflated life vest and flicked on an anglehead flashlight. The powerful light illuminated a too-small patch of churning seawater as Alexis and Vitaly surfaced behind him.

Alexis wiped the filthy water off her face, coughing as she sucked in a lungful of smoky air. “Christ,” she exclaimed, her eyes taking in the destruction as she secured her pony bottle.

“This way,” shouted Jonah over the din of waves, shrieking metal, and crackling electricity. He pointed towards a wide bulkhead hatch forty feet above the waters, no doubt the stairwell entrance to the bridge tower. Jonah began to climb hanging cargo webbing, using the thick nylon straps to pull himself out of the water and towards the dark, tilting stairwell above. He reached down, pulling Vitaly and Alexis up and through the threshold of the massive entrance.

The trio paused for a moment, sitting on a wall as they caught their breath and prepared for the next ascent. The climb up the flight control tower wouldn’t be easy — nearly five stories of sideways metal stairs separated them from the command deck above. The darkness inside was infinite and all encompassing, penetrated only by their powerful flashlights. If the carrier heeled over and turned turtle, it’d be over in seconds — a gush of foamy waters as the seas flooded in, trapping them as the carrier plummeted into the abyss below.

Jonah led Alexis and Vitaly upwards, climbing the railings of the angled stairwell as they slowly made their way towards the command deck. “We’ll try to see if we can get the emergency generators running,” he heaved, his breath exhausted from his lungs. The smell of oil and aviation fuel was everywhere, in every pore. “We’ll pump water from the flooded holds into the dry ones, see if we can get this carrier stabilized. She’ll ride low, but it could give her just enough time for more help to arrive.”

“Is good plan for once,” said Vitaly. “No more ‘Vitaly, crash submarine into this or into that.’ No crash this time.”

“I thought we’d see survivors by now,” said Alexis as she pulled herself up over the railing and onto the next flight of the cramped, dark stairwell. A swell caught the carrier from far below, swinging the tower like a metronome. The trio froze, clutching the handrails with white knuckles as rumbles echoed up from deep within the vessel.

“This is not good sound,” observed Vitaly.

“We’re running out of time. We have to move faster,” said Jonah. The trio scrambled up the two final flights, reaching the open door to the tower command deck. Shattered glass and torn-apart, uniformed bodies lay scattered. The windowed compartment had been viciously strafed, gutted before the crew even had time to take cover. Decapitated of command officers, the carrier would have been helpless as the protracted, systemic onslaught continued.

“Everybody dead.” Vitaly whispered before radioing an update to the Scorpion. There was no way to tell if the transmission made it through, they heard only crackling interference in response.

“Everybody’s dead again,” added Alexis, gulping down another dry heave. “This is seriously fucked up.”

Jonah silently fished a laser pointer out the blood-flecked breast pocket of the crumpled second officer. Bracing a foot against a computer terminal, he pushed the pointer deep into a deep bullet gouge in the nearest steel bulkhead. A faint green line shone through the blown-out angled windows and thick black smoke, the single pinprick of light coming to rest against the white radar dome of a burning, drooped-barrel Phalanx gun. The cannon still pointed across the length of the flooded flight deck. Jonah and Vitaly stared at each other in confusion.

“Their own guns — could they—?” began Alexis.

“Not possible,” insisted Vitaly.

“First things first, we have to find where the carrier is taking on water,” ordered Jonah. “I need to know how we can save this ship before we can think about who — or what — did this.”

Vitaly nodded in grim acknowledgement as he pulled a tablet computer from his waterproof backpack and plugged it into the only powered computer terminal. Although the screen was blasted apart, the CPU had survived the volley of fire from below. The tablet churned through gigabytes of data, pulling files directly from any accessible hard drive as Vitaly scrolled through radar data, daily logs, and maintenance reports before reaching the central damage-control server. A semi-transparent computerized construct of the listing carrier leapt onto the glassy screen, the 3D model showing live readings and statistics on the flooded compartments and active fires. The interior was a mess of flashing red warning notifications — waterlogged and gutted, nearly every internal system destroyed beyond repair.

The Russian pointed to the upper terminus of the underwater compartments on the rotating diagram. “These watertight doors will not last long,” he said. “Not designed for this pressure.”

Alexis looked around her. “What happens when the doors go?”

Vitaly shrugged. “We definitely sink. Maybe roll over first?”

“Can you access any of the emergency generators? Get them pumping water, balance out the ship?” Jonah asked.

Vitaly and Alexis together scrolled through the available subroutines — the vast majority were locked out by internal security, or connected to nonresponsive systems. Vitaly shook his head. “Not through usual protocols.”

“What are we supposed to do? Check them one at a time until we find one that works?” said Alexis. “That could take hours.”

Jonah was quiet for a moment. “We’ll need to go straight to an operational generator and start it by hand. Vitaly, can you use the internal cameras to increase our chances?”

Vitaly pulled open one window after another, initializing direct camera feeds throughout the sinking carrier. Most were filled with static, the feeds severed, others smoke-filled and invisible. Jonah caught a glimpse of the ship’s enclosed gym. Exercise equipment sheered from anchor bolts and piled like broken toys against the lowergmost bulkhead as the overhead fire suppression system hissed inert gasses over the bodies of asphyxiated sailors.

“I think I can narrow down,” muttered Vitaly, inputting a rapid-fire string of commands into the touchscreen pad. The screen froze for a moment, processing the instructions as the first two generators popped up on the display. Located in different compartments, the first was encased in ice from a destroyed refrigeration system, and her twin was flooded up to the control panels as more seawater spewed through the rubber seals of the nearest sealed hatch.

“So… not these,” said Alexis.

“Keep looking,” ordered Jonah. Vitaly scrolled through more feeds, finding only more ruined generators and more static.

“This is end of live feeds,” said Vitaly, closing out the last window. “The rest disconnected. I check recorded footage — maybe find working generator this way?”

“Quickly. Any remaining battery backup power this computer has won’t last long.”

Vitaly handed the tablet to Alexis and slid down the slick deck towards a row of consoles to reroute power into the failing grid.

“You good to go — try again,” he said, flipping her a thumbs-up.

Alexis brought up the first pre-recorded security camera feed, displaying a full-frame image of the bridge tower command deck as seen from the interior. It was already a scene of total destruction. Phalanx deck guns raking their own tower with arcing salvos of searing cannon fire, others robotically eliminating flight crews as they fled across the deck. Helicopter drones circled the carrier like birds of prey, emptying their rocket pods into the hull and strafing the decks with machine guns. One detonation after another erupted from beneath the mammoth vessel’s waterline as the survivors rushed the inflatable lifeboats.

“They weren’t attacked by planes or ship,” said Alexis. “My god — their own systems turned on them.”

Jonah opened his mouth to speak, but Vitaly called out from the terminal bank, unable to see the recorded feed from his position.

“I found a working generator! Restarting now — who is best of best?”

“No!” shouted Alexis and Jonah simultaneously. Alexis flung the tablet aside as she and Jonah threw themselves down the steep, rocking deck to stop him. Lights around the bridge flickered as the Phalanx deck guns twitched and swiveled on their mounts far below. But it was too late to stop the power-up. Rushing sounds rumbled up from deep within the carrier as one watertight door after another began to open autonomously, filling the already sinking ship with new torrents of seawater. The waves coming over the deck were larger now, one after another, a single swell enveloping two of the Phalanx guns just as their cannon barrels turned towards the command deck once more.

“I only start generator!” protested Vitaly.

“Hold onto something!” shouted Jonah. “We’re going down. Get ready to swim!”

More rumbles rocked the stricken carrier like a ten-point earthquake, shaking her to the keel. Alexis held on tight to the nearest console as the entire ship began to go down, white frothing geysers of escaping air erupting from the deck below, the bridge tower tilting dangerously as the ship threatened to turn over.

Charging waves crossed the sinking carrier from both sides engulfing the last of the flight deck. Only the tower was above the waves now, the building-sized steel structure plunging unstoppably downwards.

Jonah flicked on his radio, shouting instructions to his crew, unsure if they’d even hear him over the cacophony of the sinking command deck around him. He realized too late that he should have used the time to hold his breath instead.

And then they were under, seawater exploded in through the broken flight tower windows as if a dam had burst. The trio took cover as the heaving compartment flooded, the white waters swirling with bodies and debris. Jonah grabbed at Alexis, holding her fast by the arm against the roaring flood as he clutched to the edge of the navigations console with one hand. The sucking current threatened to pull them deeper into the wreck. His muscles strained to hold on for just a few moments long, and he forced air into his ears as the pressure around them built, the influx of water slowly equalizing. But the carrier was sinking faster now, building up speed as the last of the tower slipped beneath the surface. Jonah boosted Alexis towards the shattered observation windows with both hands. She swam through, kicking herself free of the sinking carrier. She yanked downward on her life vest straps, the pressurized-air canisters erupting with a hiss as they filled the inflatable bladders, rocketing her toward the surface.

The rushing waters had pinned Vitaly against the terminals, violently yanking the tablet computer from his grasp. Jonah grabbed the young Russian by the collar, pulled him against the current, and dragged him out the observation windows. The ocean’s surface was distant now, fifty feet or more above, the winter sun barely piercing the oil-slicked waves above. Both men pulled the releases for their air canisters and their life vests roared as they filled with buoyant air.

Jonah and Vitaly broke the surface beside the Scorpion. Alexis had already started to pull herself aboard, while Marissa hurled a life preserver to the shivering men. Not all was lost, however. Dozens of other survivors had escaped from the shelter of the lowest decks in the last moments, the uniformed men clinging to each other within an ever-growing sea of floating rafts and debris. Hearing a distant thumping, Jonah turned to the sky to see a helicopter circling high above.

“Looks like the first rescue chopper made it!” shouted Jonah through chattering teeth.

Marissa just shot him a scared look in return. “Hurry up — we have to get out of here now.”

“Why?” said Jonah as he slumped onto the deck. Vitaly fell beside him. “Let’s try to hail the copter. Coordinate a plan to help the survivors.”

“They won’t respond,” insisted Marissa. She pointed skyward. “They’re filming us for a live television news feed in Japan. They just broadcast the carrier going down — and they’re blaming it on the Scorpion.”

CHAPTER 13

The submarine drifted awash in the cold waves, her conning tower, periscope, and antenna masts camouflaged among burning diesel fuel and floating wreckage. Jonah and his crew huddled in the command compartment. Alexis and Vitaly shivered as they toweled and stripped down from their wet, stained coveralls and equipment. Ocean swells lurched the Scorpion intermittently with sickening motion, tossing the crew back and forth within the cramped, windowless compartment. Still, their eyes were glued to the satellite television feed on the bulkhead-mounted monitors.

A map of the East China Sea flashed onto the screen along with intermittent images of the burning amphibious ship vanishing beneath the waves. The Scorpion surfaced amidst the videotaped chaos, her purposeful, angular bow callously pushing through clusters of shredded rafts and oil-slicked bodies. Jonah didn’t speak a word of Japanese, but the implication was clear — their trial by media had already rendered a verdict.

Someone had worked very, very hard to plant the story. The submarine Scorpion and her mercenary crew had been on a secret rendezvous within a North Korean military installation, returning to the open sea to attack a Japanese fleet in cold blood. He had to admit it was a pretty great story. His mind raced. How long had they been a patsy? All he knew was that their unknown enemy had tipped their hand with the news story. Such detailed information about an unfolding disaster never travelled this fast, not even in the information age. Someone had set it all up well in advance.

“Well this is goddamn fantastic,” said Alexis, first to break the silence. The television screen was displaying images of the Scorpion’s crew now, beginning with security footage of Jonah and Hassan. Both men were bound with hands tied behind them like criminals. Jonah on his knees as blood dripped from his mouth. The doctor’s barely conscious body pushed upright against the corner of the penthouse elevator.

Jonah couldn’t help but wince at his own image. So the rumors were true: a salvage team had reached the sunken remains of Anconia Island, even managed to rescue a few key hard drives from the deep.

Next was a composite of Dalmar Abdi’s face. The computer-rendered image of the grinning Somali almost resembling fan art. Dalmar grunted and tapped his foot, preemptively skipping his usual dread-pirate, famous-terrorist routine.

Alexis was shown in more security footage, only her grainy image was paired with her decidedly dated senior picture. The result was all Patty Hearst — a young, All-American girl turned to the dark side. The images only lasted seconds before cutting to an announcer droning on in rapid-fire Japanese.

“They say Alexis brainwashed,” piped in Sun-Hi. “Maybe hostage?”

Alexis snorted. “Of course they say that. Because there’s no way I made up my own goddamn mind.”

“We know you make own terrible decisions,” interjected Vitaly, giving her a reassuringly condescending pat on the head. Alexis gently slapped his hand away and shot him a half-annoyed smirk.

“You speak Japanese?” said Jonah to Sun-Hi, running a small towel through the last seawater in his dry hair. He’d need to get a shower soon — the dried salt and oil on his skin had already begun to itch.

“A little,” said Sun-Hi. “In school. For when Democratic Republic People’s Army conquer Tokyo!”

Marissa’s photo suddenly flashed onto the screen, a classic, full-on mug shot complete with height lines and tilted arrest placard.

“Whoops! Looks like they weren’t quite done,” chuckled Jonah.

“Oh hell,” mumbled Marissa. “My dad’s going to straight-up murder me when he sees this on TV.”

Jonah cocked his head as he squinted at the mug shot. “I don’t think I remember this one,” he said. “And I thought I’d seen ’em all.”

“It’s… recent-ish,” said Marissa. “From not long after you disappeared. You could say I backslid a little.”

“Yeah? Before or after you met Mr. Accountant?”

“He’s not an — oh, forget it.” Marissa squeezed the bridge her nose, the first sign of an early-onset tension headache. “I went out on the town with Stevie and his crew once they hit landside after the Hurricane Irene oilfield cleanup.”

“Voodoo Stevie or Zipperface Stevie?”

“This cannot be a real story,” said Alexis. Hassan nodded his baffled agreement.

“Zipperface. We ended up at Dollie’s and he tried to follow one of the dancers into the bathroom — her idea, by the way. Turns out her so-called boyfriend was one of the bouncers. Things got a little out of hand from there and I had to throw down for my boys. We would have made it out home free if we hadn’t run behind the bar to grab more drinks first. Gave the cops time to set up a perimeter.”

“Incoming fleet on radar,” said Vitaly, tapping on the flickering green display. “We will hear them on hydrophone soon.”

Alexis nodded towards the satellite television feed. “The news story is just repeating at this point. We should dive now and get the hell out of here.”

“Agreed,” said Marissa. “I know some local ports in Indonesia where we can lay low, maybe even do some business.”

Jonah scratched his short beard and glanced at the navigational console as the crew waited for him to speak. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he began.

“Let me guess,” said Hassan, shaking his head in frustration. “Fleeing is exactly what the Japanese would expect, and we’re going to do something much more hazardous instead.”

“I’m all for running when the time comes — but the doc is goddamn right,” said Jonah. Marissa and Alexis both groaned, rolling their eyes in hunger and frustration. “Running is what they’d expect. They’ve no doubt already encircled the area with submarines, helicopters, and satellites. They’re closing in on us as we speak, and, they’ll find us if we run for it. But the last thing they’d anticipate is for us to stay right where we are.”

“Because it’s fucking insane,” said Alexis. “Every floating asset the Japanese have is going to converge on this location within hours.”

“But captain has point,” said Vitaly. “Much noise when ships arrive, easy to hide. Much safer than — what you say? Run gauntlet?”

“We couldn’t save the carrier — not with her systems turning on us — but we may be able to show it wasn’t us,” said Jonah. “Running will only make us look guilty. I want to stay, dive the carrier, and try to salvage the central hard drives. They won’t last long in these waters, and there’s no way the Japanese can mobilize a dive team in time.”

“If running away looks guilty, staying at the scene of the crime looks straight up suicidal,” mumbled Alexis. “I can’t even imagine what they’re going to do if they find us down here.”

“It’s settled,” boomed Dalmar, folding his arms. “We cannot win when we cannot fight. And we cannot fight when we do not know our enemy.”

“What’s the depth of the ocean bottom?” said Jonah.

“Maybe five hundred fifty feet?”

“Can we risk a ping?”

“Why not?” said Vitaly. “In for penny, in for pound.” He punched the button, a single acoustic ping erupting from the Scorpion’s bow to echo over the underwater landscape below. The computer churned through the returning data, slowly drawing a green three-dimensional digital wireframe of the upright carrier on the ocean floor deep beneath them.

“There,” said Jonah, resting his fingertip on the top of the sunken carrier’s flight deck. “I want you to land the submarine right there.”

Jonah secured the last zipper of his thick neoprene diving suit. He twisted the hot water supply valve back and forth with his fingers, satisfied that it turned easily. Unlike a wetsuit, which used a diver’s own body heat to warm a thin layer of water, the hot-water suit would continually inject a steady supply of electrically-heated water through a web of tubing — a necessity when breathing a heat-robbing mixture of oxygen and helium at depth. The system wasn’t perfect as there were always cold spots in the suit, but, that was diving.

“Are you certain swimming into the carrier is the best option?” said Hassan, leaning against the hatchway as he tapped a foot in nervous anxiety. “I’ll have you know I nearly died at just half this depth.”

“Well, you didn’t know what you were doing,” said Jonah dismissively as he pulled on one oversize Wellington boot after another over the neoprene suit feet. “I do. Plus, this isn’t scuba diving — it’s saturation diving. Sat divers don’t swim, they walk. Once under pressure, my soft tissues and bloodstream will take on dissolved oxygen and helium to the point of saturation. I’ll breathe an exotic gas mixture, mostly helium.”

“Because helium is inert?”

“Yep. It doesn’t make you high like nitrogen, or kill you like higher concentrations of oxygen — but it does make you cold as a motherfucker, believe me. I’ll be physically attached to the Scorpion by umbilical for my heat and air needs. The helmet has a built-in camera and microphone setup, too, so we’ll be in touch every step of the way. No sweat.”

“I am familiar with the principles of hyperbaric medicine,” sniffed Hassan. “As well as the myriad of associated medical risks.”

“Sure,” said Jonah as he hefted the bulky fifteen-minute emergency air tank over his shoulders and secured it with a snap. Marissa stuck her head through the hatchway, watching him as he assembled the gear. “High pressure nervous syndrome, aseptic bone necrosis, decompression sickness… and that’s just the obvious stuff. I’ve known guys who got crushed, froze to death, explosively decompressed. Hell, I once heard about a guy who got his intestines sucked right out his O-ring when his tender flushed the toilet at the wrong time.”

“I’d never consider doing that to you,” laughed Marissa as she made an obscene flushing gesture with her hand.

“Quite the ghastly image, that,” said the doctor.

“No shit. The Scorpion is capable of supporting a saturation diver on a limited basis, but this won’t exactly be a textbook operation. We’re essentially using a converted escape trunk, not a proper diving bell, and there’s no hyper-baric lifeboat if things go tits up.”

“I’ll make sure we have plenty of fresh water and a change of clothes upon your return,” said Hassan. “I’m not certain what else I can do to be useful.”

“Thanks,” said Jonah as Marissa passed him a tool belt. He secured it around his waist beside a clanking rack of carabineers and nylon webbing. “And don’t forget the reading material. I’ll be decompressing at roughly six vertical feet per hour, so I’m looking at upwards of four days in the lockout chamber.”

“Four days?” sputtered Hassan.

“Maybe throw a couple of Cosmos onto the stack? I’ve read all the Better Homes and Gardens at least three, four times through. It’s worse than a dentist’s office down here.”

“He’s always liked the quizzes,” added Marissa.

Jonah caught himself taking great satisfaction at Hassan’s baffled frustration. “Just be careful. Can you at least agree to that?” the doctor finally said.

“I promise to not get killed or whatever,” said Jonah, rolling his eyes. “But only if you go worry somewhere else. Marissa and I have some pre-dive checklists to get through.”

“Very well. Goodbye, then.”

“Later, Doc,” said Marissa. She pulled a thirty-pound Kirby Morgan diving helmet off the shelf as the doctor ducked his head underneath the low hatch and left the armory without another word.

“Is he always so uptight about everything?” asked Marissa, tilting her head toward the now-empty hatchway.

“He grows on you. I wasn’t exactly the doc’s biggest fan when we met, but he’s a good man. Better than me, at least the way I figure things.”

“Never thought I’d go back to being your dive tender,” said Marissa with a faint smile. She considered the helmet in her hands, not quite ready to pass it to Jonah.

“You were good at it. I think we spent the better half of our relationship on opposite sides of a bariatric tank glass.”

“It was the job. It was the life we had — until it wasn’t.”

Jonah sighed. “I don’t want to be an asshole here, but you can’t possibly think we’d still be together if I hadn’t disappeared on you. Don’t get me wrong — when things were good, they were the best. But we also put each other through a metric ton of shit. You and I were a delayed fuse. We were always going to blow up in the end.”

Marissa turned away for a moment before shooting him an angry look. “Maybe, maybe not. You never gave us chance to find out like a normal couple. Not to belabor a point, but you were dead as far as I knew.”

“Yeah,” said Jonah, a faraway sadness in his eyes. “Maybe we’re both sorry about that.”

“Come back this time,” she said as she placed the helmet over his head, ending any further exchange. She kissed her fingertips and pressed them against the thick glass. “Don’t hoover the air — and don’t fuck around when you’re in that carrier. She’s already a widow maker.”

The temperature of the lockout chamber dipped sharply as freezing helium displaced the sea-level mix of nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Jonah kept one eye on the gauges, watching carefully as the interior atmospheric pressure slowly increased to the sound of dry hissing air. Beginning at an ambient sea level pressure of fourteen pounds per square inch, the blowdown wouldn’t be complete until it reached over 200—the takeoff weight of a 747 pressing in on him from every direction. He slowly breathed in and out, swallowing to equalize the pressure in his ears. Pain built up deep inside his sinuses before releasing with a wet pop. The process would take only minutes. After all, pressurization was easy — it was depressurization that would kill you.

Jonah cleared his throat, hearing the high-pitched Daffy Duck sound of his own voice in his ears. It didn’t bother him, though. Helium made even the deepest-voiced divers sound like a founding munchkin of the Lollipop Guild. He sealed the suit and began the hot water flow, bracing himself against the sudden influx of weight as it filled. The sound of air rushing through the umbilical and into his helmet soothed him with its familiarity. Most of the previous generation of divers were “deaf on the left” from too many hours with the old-style air feeds, before manufacturers started protecting hearing with new designs.

Jonah turned to the tiny window and flipped a thumbs-up. With atmospheric pressure now equalized to 550 feet in depth, Marissa began to flood the lockout chamber. Hidden vents spilled forth brackish, frothy water into the closet-sized compartment, the cold liquid flooding into his rubber boots. The chamber was soon filled to the ceiling, gently releasing the weight of the tank, tool belt, helmet, and suit from Jonah’s waist and shoulders. He adjusted the hot water flow, the prickling warmth slowly spreading across his skin.

The wheel to the exterior hatch turned easily, the door swinging open to the permanent night of the abyss. No subsea light could reach these depths. Jonah stepped out of the lockout chamber and onto the Scorpion’s exterior hull. Vitaly had precisely landed the submarine on the submerged helicopter carrier, planting her long, slender length across the now-empty flight deck. The submarine’s running lights illuminated a small patch of the underlying surface and the very base of the control tower, impossible blackness surrounding them, stretching in every direction. Suspended particulates hung in the waters like snow, swirling and dancing in the glare of his helmet’s built-in light.

Jonah took a breath and leapt from the side of the Scorpion, slowly falling as the thick umbilical uncoiled behind him. His Wellington boots hit the deck, silently absorbing the impact of his near-weightless form.

“Can you see what I’m seeing?” asked Jonah, almost unable to recognize the squeak of his own helium-altered voice.

It took a moment for the communications descrambler to deepen and translate the transmission. Marissa answered. “We see what you see. Your onboard camera is working. All gas levels are good. I’m seeing green across the board.”

Jonah didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. They’d be able to watch from the Scorpion’s command compartment as he approached the carrier’s flight control tower. He tried to remind himself how easy he had it, how much better things were than the old days. Less than a hundred years previous, divers went into the cold black encased in brass, rubber, and canvas, their burning lights barely able to penetrate the dark and only able to communicate with the surface by a crude systems of strings and bells. Half of them worked while narced or bent out of their minds, soaking wool their only protection against the cold. Others were so badly crippled that they begged for the deep, their fleeting moments underwater the only possible relief to the painful air bubbles permanently lodged in their joints and spine.

And yet their underwater labors built empires — men who lived like lions, drank like fish, and too often, died like drowned rats. If Jonah’s umbilical was cut he could tap his emergency tank and make a quick escape back to the Scorpion. But the old guard didn’t have such protection. A severed surface line meant instant death by ‘the squeeze’, their entire bodies crushed into unrecognizable human gristle within instants, leaving others the grim duty of scraping pulverized remains out of their helmets and air hoses.

The interior of the carrier’s flight control tower was a mess. The flooded main corridor was thick with floating paper, leaking oil, and debris. Air bubbles slowly trickled up from deep within the wreck, spilling across the ceiling like mirrored quicksilver. There were fewer bodies than he’d expected, most had made it to the boats or gone overboard. Those who remained were congregated in destroyed compartments, their sunken, pale corpses riddled with bullets, their joints frozen in rigor mortis, every ounce of buoyant air squeezed from their ruined lungs. The first of the scavengers had already found them, crabs and silver-fish inexorably attracted to the scent of waterborne death. Translucent crustaceans crawled across the bodies, hiding from Jonah’s light as their claws sought soft tissues.

Jonah shuddered. He’d recovered hundreds of bodies in the warm waters of Thailand after the Indian Ocean tsunami. Most in worse shape than these, and children among them. But it never got any easier. No, the bad memories just became more crowded, one piling onto the other until they threatened to overwhelm the part of his mind where he kept things he couldn’t un-see.

The now-familiar interior stairs of the bridge tower were a simple climb. He carefully unrolled the last long lengths of umbilical cord as he ascended straight up the railings, leaping upwards from flight to flight. The umbilical tugged at his suit just a few steps short of the command deck. He’d reached the end of the line. Jonah considered the tether for a moment before disconnecting it, cutting off his warm water, camera feed, and submarine-supplied air with a single twist.

There was no sense in telling Marissa first — she’d just waste precious time trying to talk him out of the reckless maneuver. The tank on his back would give him fifteen minutes; maybe less if he pushed himself too hard. The worst part of the disconnection was losing the warm water supply; heat had already begun to drain from his suit as though he’d eased himself into a frozen lake.

Jonah ascended the last steps to the bridge as he began to shiver. The influx of floodwaters had thrown the uniformed bodies of the dead carrier captain and his murdered bridge staff against one wall where they now lay in a twisted pile. He aimed a flashlight at the ceiling, the harsh illumination playing across mirror-like air pockets and oil until it fell upon a thick bundle of Ethernet cord. Tracing the bundle across the ceiling and into a bulkhead, Jonah located a service hatch, pulling it open to reveal a long bank of computer servers and hard drives. If he was lucky, it’d have everything he was looking for — navigational charts, radar imagery, maybe even uncorrupted security camera footage showing the carrier’s self-destruction. Jonah unclipped a folded mesh grab bag from his webbing and shook it open. He began to pull the large removable hard drives from the server bank and stack them in the bag, one after another.

His brain felt sluggish, limbs slow and unresponsive, his shivering now uncontrollable. He could ignore the numbness in his extremities, but his core temperature had dropped at least a couple degrees. No doubt early stage hypothermia. But nothing he couldn’t withstand for the duration of his emergency reserves. Jonah checked the tank — down by half. He should have turned around by now. He made a half-formed mental note not to flood the suit with scalding water once the umbilical was reattached. The risk of burning himself was unlikely due to updated manufacturing and safety specifications, but warming up too quickly could send a jet of freezing blood into his heart, shocking it into stopping.

There it was — the last clunky hard drive. Jonah stood and swiveled towards the door, retracing his steps down the stairs until his light fell over the floating end of the severed dive umbilical. He paused as he reconnected it, closing his eyes as warm water washed over him once more.

“—nah Blackwell!” came the intercom transmission through the helmet’s tinny speaker. “Jonah — answer me goddamn it!”

“I’m still here,” confirmed Jonah, barely hearing his own impossibly high-pitched voice over the hissing air valve.

There was a pause on the other end. “What the fuck was that?” she finally demanded. “You were completely off-line for almost ten minutes!”

“Umbilical must have gotten a kink,” said Jonah as he continued to descend the tower stairs, the hard drives in his mesh bag awkwardly knocking against the metal hand railings with each step.

“Bullshit. You think I’m a complete idiot?”

Jonah was just about to make up another excuse before Marissa cut in again.

“Don’t even bother making something up to get me off your back,” she said. “You may not give a shit about your own life, but there are other people down here that do. Tell me this: did you even stop to think about anybody else before you disconnected? The fact that I spend the last ten fucking minutes thinking you were dead, trying to imagine what I’d have to say to your crew?”

“Doesn’t matter — I got what I came for. Coming back now.” Jonah let silence fall between them. If she wanted more information, she could get it from his point-of-view camera feed.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Jonah stopped for a moment to coil his umbilical before continuing to retrace his steps down the corridor. He stopped dead at a double-wide hatchway, recognizing it as one of the ship’s galleys. The thick metal doors hung slightly ajar, just wide enough for Jonah to catch a fleeting glimpse of several emaciated bodies within. He clapped a gloved hand over his camera lens, stopping the video transmission.

“What happened?” demanded Marissa from the other end of the intercom. “I’m still getting camera telemetry, but the view is obstructed.”

“Is Sun-Hi with you?”

“She’s watching the monitors with the rest of us — but I have you on my headset, it’s just you and me talking.”

“Give her something to do in another compartment. Tell me when she’s gone.”

The transmission went silent, muted from the other end. A few moments passed before Marissa’s voice crackled back over the helmet speaker. “She’s gone. What’s going on?”

Jonah silently pushed the oversize hatch doors open, his helmet light illuminating the drowned bodies of nearly a hundred North Korean refugees within the cafeteria. Some still wore their thin cotton rags and sandals, the ghostly fabric of their ill-fitting clothes dancing in the eddy created by his movement. Others still in heavy Japanese work coveralls. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to envision their last, terrified moments, the fruitless sacrifices they’d made as they fled across the frigid North Korean icepack.

Marissa paused for the longest time before speaking. “What should I do about Sun-Hi?” she asked.

“I’ll tell her when I’m back,” was all Jonah could mumble. But despite saying it out loud, he didn’t know if he could.

Hassan watched Jonah’s return to the Scorpion over Marissa’s shoulder. There wasn’t enough room by the lockout chamber console; he was forced to hang onto the conning tower ladder like a lineman as they together watched the external camera feed on a too-small screen. Jonah clambered up onto the submarine’s submerged deck, waddling in his ungainly neoprene suit and heavy helmet, dragging two unfurled mesh grab bags behind him, umbilical coiled over one shoulder.

“I think I see the hard drives,” said Marissa. “What’s he got in the second bag?”

Hassan squinted at the feed. Jonah was closer now, half-walking, half-hopping his way down towards the open lockout chamber. He made it seem so simple, so effortless, almost more comfortable in the cold depths than his own skin. As he approached the camera, Hassan started to make out details of the several dozen compressed plastic packages in the other mesh bag.

“They look like… prepackaged meals,” said the doctor. “Perhaps military rations?”

“MRE’s,” confirmed Marissa with a smile. “Normally, I’d rather eat wet cement, but right now they’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Does that mean you’ll give Jonah a pass on disconnecting his umbilical?”

“Hell no. He’s still getting an ass-whuppin’ for that.”

Jonah situated himself inside the chamber, pulling the last of the long tether in after him. He secured the exterior lockout hatch and gave Marissa a thumbs-up through the tiny glass portal. She returned it and began the chamber drainage cycle, water rushing back into sucking vents beneath Jonah’s Wellington boots.

“I’m just replacing water with air; he’s still pressurized to depth,” explained Marissa. “He’ll be stuck in that chamber for a while, even if we surface, it will have to stay sealed. We’ll push it a little, but he’s still looking at about four days’ decompression.”

Hassan blanched a little, trying to imagine the claustrophobia he’d experience if trapped in the closet-sized space for so many endless hours.

Jonah popped the helmet off its ringed collar, shaking out wet hair and cracking his knuckles. His face and neck were covered with long red marks from where the seams of the dive suit had pressed and chafed. He held up the mesh bag of hard drives first, straining against their newfound weight out of water.

“Ready,” Marissa confirmed through the intercom. “Pass them through.”

Jonah nodded, opening a microwave oven-sized pass-through hatch designed to exchange food and tools between the differing pressure environments. He stacked the clunky hard drives in the small box and closed the door from his side, securing it tightly. Marissa depressurized the box to a single atmosphere, and opened the door to retrieve them.

“We got the drives!” Marissa shouted down the conning tower ladder. Dalmar appeared below, taking the hard drives as they were passed from Marissa and Hassan to the pirate like a bucket brigade. Satisfied that they were stacked on a chart table below, Marissa turned her attention back to Jonah’s intercom. “You need anything off the bat?”

“Nothing urgently,” said Jonah as he unzipped the last of the neoprene suit. There was always a strange pause after he spoke as the voice descrambler raced to catch up, the resulting disconnect between his lips and voice resembling a badly dubbed movie. Jonah stepped out of the suit and carefully secured the remaining valves. “A towel and a bedroll would be great once the chamber dries out a little.”

“I can help with that,” said Marissa, activating an interior fan.

Jonah dropped to his knees as he went through the prepackaged military rations. “Cheese tortellini!” he exclaimed. “Fuckin’ A. This stuff is legendary.” Setting it aside, he rifled through the rest, stacking them up on the floor in a haphazard pyramid three-dozen high. “I’ll pass the rest through the hatch. They’re calorie-dense, so rations are one per person per day. Oh, and watch out for the buffalo chicken. Either save it for last, or give it to somebody on your shit list.”

“But you’re the only one on my shit list,” joked Marissa through the intercom.

“What’s wrong with the buffalo chicken?” whispered Hassan. “Also… is it made of buffalo or chicken?”

“Chicken, at least theoretically. And it’ll give you the Mount Vesuvius of shits,” said Marissa, removing her finger from the transmit button. “The egg omelet, too. Don’t even bother with Tabasco sauce with that one; it will roast your sphincter from the inside out without even doing you the courtesy of improving the taste.”

Hassan just nodded uncomfortably as Jonah loaded the pass-through hatch with the rescued meals.

“Did you bring the magazines?” asked Marissa.

“Yes, of course,” said Hassan, reaching into a satchel around his shoulder to pull out a large stack of glossy titles, presenting them to her.

“Don’t show them to me — see which ones he wants.”

Hassan selected a gardening magazine and pressed the cover against the portal glass.

“Already read it,” said Jonah, punching the intercom.

“Next.”

The doctor picked a weapons and ammunition title next, presenting it for consideration.

“Christ, no,” exclaimed Jonah, angrily pressing the intercom button once more. “I think I’ve seen about enough of the real thing to last a goddamn lifetime.”

Hassan didn’t answer. Instead, he held up a dog-eared detective novel and several decade-old women’s magazines in quick succession, all left behind by the submarine’s previous occupants.

“Now you’re talking,” said Jonah with a smile. “Yes, yes, and yes.”

Marissa ran the pass-through hatch cycle again, exchanging the MRE’s for the magazines and novel. But despite his smile and jokes, Jonah still looked like he’d aged ten years in the space of a few hours.

Jonah punched the intercom on his end one last time as he slumped against the wall, ignoring the packaged meal he’d left for himself. Hassan could only imagine how Sun-Hi weighed on his mind. “I’m just going to sit here for a while,” he said. “Maybe try to sleep. Let me know if anything happens.”

“And Sun-Hi?”

“Keep her busy for now. I’ll tell her soon.”

Hassan descended the ladder to the command compartment slowly. He’d never seen Jonah quite so weary, the kind of bone-tired rooted more in soul than body. Best to leave him alone. After all, Jonah was never the sort to seek solace in others.

Vitaly was alone in the command compartment, the salvaged hard drives already partially disassembled into a snaking mess of cables and wet circuit boards. “How’s it coming?” asked Hassan.

“Broken data, my favorite,” said Vitaly without looking up from his computer console, his sarcastic tone a clear indication of his irritable disposition.

“Any success thus far?” pressed Hassan.

“No. But still easier than NK data. For them I had to run emulator to mimic very old system. New OS would not even read tapes.” He unplugged the first of the Japanese hard drives and booted up a second, their computer systems lapping up the massive repositories of data. The methodology made sense to Hassan — copy first, analyze later.

Distant noises from far above echoed throughout the Scorpion’s pressure hull, a strange mixture of churning swishes and pings as it passed. “What’s happening?” asked Hassan, a note of concern entering his voice.

“Many ship arrive,” said Vitaly, gesturing upwards with a small screwdriver without turning his head to look. “Coordinate rescue, I think. They will not find us here.”

Hassan considered the information for a moment. He wanted to press Vitaly for more, ask him why he wasn’t concerned, but finally decided against it. “Do you know what Jonah wants you to find in all that data?” he asked.

“No,” said Vitaly with a long sigh. “I am on — how do you say? Hunt of fish?”

“A fishing expedition?”

“Da, da, expedition of… ” Vitaly trailed off, glaring at a flashing cluster of red on the hard drive data map. “Chyort voz’mi, security footage ruined!” The Russian pounded a fist on the keyboard hard enough to make Hassan wince.

“Can it be recovered?”

“This not television. I am not Abby Sciuto of NCIS. No, I cannot magic recover data. Too many question— maybe you go away now?”

“Yes, of course,” stammered Hassan, backing up. “Can I get you anything, do anything else to assist?”

“Maybe get me MRE?” ordered Vitaly. “Any but enchilada of beef. I would rather eat shoe.”

Hassan sorted through the stacks of prepackaged meals in the galley. He was surprised with how well they’d held up in their immersion. Most were evenly crushed, but with their packaging, bilingual labels, ingredients, and preparation instructions were otherwise still intact. Setting aside the ones he’d been warned about, Hassan quietly unwrapped Vitaly’s meal — a macaroni and chili dish— and prepared it according to the written instructions. The small compartment was soon filled with powerful aromas, tempting Hassan to eat it himself and prepare another for the Vitaly instead. But he patiently scooped the mix out of the heated bag and onto a plate, walking it back to the command compartment. He resolved to silently leave it with the Russian and sneak away, bothering the helmsmen no further.

Vitaly was leaning over his computer console, intently tracing two long, intersecting lines southward from the North Korean coastline to their present location. Hassan gave him the plate, and Vitaly dug into the meal without even looking up from the screen.

“I find a… how you say? Da, I find common factor,” said Vitaly, mouth full of food.

“What is it?”

“Same object in radar data of both NK base and Japan carrier. Both cases small and discounted as threat by computer. Both detect less than ten minute before attack begin. Object size of bird only, maybe two bird, move very slow. But it fly too straight for bird. I trace both routes.” Vitaly tapped his screen, showing the two intersecting lines on the digital map. “The line cross here, at small island in north Philippines.”

“They have a common origin,” breathed Hassan as he leapt up to his feet. “Both attacks were launched from the same location.”

“But nobody believe us,” said Vitaly, a look of concern crossing his face. “The Japanese would sink us before we can show them. Even make phone call too dangerous.”

“You’re right,” said Hassan. “They won’t believe us. Not unless we come up with some kind of hard evidence. I’ll alert Jonah. Prepare to lay a course for the island — full silent running. Let’s find out who set us up.”

CHAPTER 14

Alexis sat on the command compartment chart table, legs swinging freely over the side as she absentmindedly contemplated the last of her cracker. It crumbled between her fingertips, stale and all but tasteless in the slowly souring air of the Scorpion. Sun-Hi was at the communications console, lost to the world as she concentrated on her oversize headphones. She’d probably played every file in the computer’s sound library ten, twelve times already. Yet she kept at the task with inexhaustible focus, barely even looking up when given her daily pre-packaged rations.

Vitaly stood watch at the helm station. He’d taken off his boots and propped his bare feet up over his computer monitor, letting the autopilot take the bulk of the navigational duties. Dalmar leaned against the nearest bulkhead, towering over Vitaly as the pair flirtatiously debated how long they could last without food before resorting to cannibalism. The Scorpion was all but silent, electric engines barely humming as the propellers gently fought a slight tropical current. Their island destination was close now, but Jonah’s internment in the decompression chamber had not yet come to an end.

“I’d eat you first! Chop-chop-chop!” announced Dalmar, reaching down to pinch Vitaly’s ribs just below his armpit. The Russian practically squealed in laughter.

“Nyet—I eat you!” retorted Vitaly as he slapped at Dalmar’s rear. Alexis stifled a snort as she watched the debate quickly devolve into a flurry of poking and poorly translated insults. It amazed her what a little sugar to the bloodstream, and a few regular meals, could do for crew morale.

Her chuckle turned to a sigh and then a yawn. It was nearly five in the morning and she’d already been up for two hours. She supposed it didn’t matter, not really. Day was no different than night within the belly of the Scorpion. The artificial light and lack of a regular watch rotation made it all but impossible to keep a schedule, which left her free to lose time in maintenance projects and her own drifting thoughts.

Dalmar retreated toward the stern, his booming laugh echoing down the narrow corridor. But that was Dalmar and Vitaly — drifting together and momentarily igniting like a crescendo of fireworks, only to drift apart once more. It wasn’t just the difference between cultures; it was something more fundamental than that. They were two wanderers content to share their worldly spheres — but only for a moment. It was as though they somehow knew larger forces would ultimately tear them apart, leaving them with nothing more than fading, happy memories of each other.

Maybe it would be the same for her and Hassan. Thrown together, only to be driven apart. In her weaker moments, she felt she didn’t really know the stranger in her bed. They shared so little — different cultures, different lives, their few moments together shaped by the fear and violence surrounding them.

Sometimes her only guiding light was his tiny kindnesses, like the nights when she turned over to find him awake and watching her, his arm tucked under her warm cheek. The way he furrowed his brow and shook his head when she criticized herself, as though her doubt was not just misplaced but antithetical to how he understood the universe. The way he couldn’t pass her in the corridor without extending his soft hand to brush against her hips or waist, no matter how much engine oil and leaking fuel covered her.

There were difficulties. She’d often try to talk about her friends back in Texas, the television shows she’d once liked, favorite foods, her college roommates, her family. But these conversations would always fall into one useless tangent or another as she tried to explain the impossible — things like tailgating, barbeques, field parties, drive-through burger joints, or the differences between hooking up and going out and engaged to be engaged.

He’d try the same, but his culture was equally baffling. There were so many words like tahnziz and tabergig; the idea of navigating a romantic life surrounded by a thousand watching, judging eyes in a world where dating barely existed and marriage was one in the same with pregnancy. She wasn’t even sure if they’d ever gotten around to the fourth-date practicalities like childhood pets, favorite bands, meeting her parents, or if he’d ever thought about starting a family.

Maybe his kindness was enough. Once she stripped away every anxiety and miscommunication, she couldn’t imagine waking up without being held in his arms. Maybe the rest never mattered to begin with.

Jonah descended the last rungs of the conning tower ladder and dropped to the deck of the command compartment. He looked like some kind of crazy shut-in — he’d spent nearly four days in the same stained sweatshirt and pants, barefoot, his beard now a clumpy, matted mass, eyes sunken and bloodshot. He looked withered somehow, older. Marissa followed him down the ladder, scrunching her face and pinching her nose with visible discomfort and annoyance.

Alexis recoiled in horror when the smell hit her. “Oh god… you stink, Captain. Like, bad.”

“The smell is the least of my problems,” grunted Jonah. “I’ve been stuck inside that goddamn lockout chamber sleeping upright and crapping in a goddamn bucket for four goddamn days. Everything hurts, and I ran out of reading material two days ago.”

“Dalmar has a few magazines stashed away,” grinned Alexis. “But rumor has it they cater to somewhat specific tastes.”

“He will not lend,” said Vitaly. “I have asked many time.”

“I thought everything on ship is for everybody?” said Sun-Hi, confused. “But magazine only for Dalmar?”

“These magazines are,” added Alexis quickly. Sun-Hi started to ask another question, but Alexis quickly headed off any further awkward conversation. “How did decompression go?”

“We pushed the safety margins a bit,” said Marissa. “It was a rough ride up there. I need everybody to keep an eye on Jonah — symptoms like joint pain, rashes, anything that could indicate the bends. We can always put him back in the chamber for another round or two if necessary.”

“I’m never going back in that chamber.” Jonah leaned over Sun-Hi’s console. “I’d rather get buried in concrete under Giants Stadium.”

Sun-Hi cocked her head, amazed. “There is stadium for giants?”

“Uhhh… ” Jonah didn’t know how to respond. “Can you order the crew to the command compartment for me? We’ve got a lot to discuss.”

Sun-Hi nodded curtly, as though imitating a movie portrayal of a particularly diligent officer. She put the order through the intercom system, and it wasn’t long before Hassan and Dalmar made their way up the corridor to join the rest.

“What’s the latest?” Jonah playfully smacked the doctor on the shoulder as he passed. Alexis could tell Hassan found the gesture deeply uncomfortable, a fact that Jonah probably knew as well.

“We took a few pictures before sunset,” said Hassan. He pointed to Vitaly, who began to pull open the saved image files. “We tried again after dark, but night vision was all but useless. The island is too overgrown with jungle to make anything out.”

Vitaly slowly scrolled through the photos from when the Scorpion had circled the perimeter of the island at periscope depth. Few revealed anything more than crashing breakers, black sand beaches, and sea cliffs. The only evidence of human habitation was in the final photo — a dim image of a hundred-year-old lava flow emerging from a cauldron-topped volcanic peak through a scattershot of crumbling buildings before disappearing into the sea.

“Any landing sites for an armed scouting party?” asked Jonah.

“Is not good situation.” Vitaly flipped open a digital nautical chart. “Entire island is ringed by shoal and reef. There is only way in. Eastern approach to shallow harbor.”

“There used to be a colonial plantation and township here,” said Hassan. “It was apparently abandoned in the late 1800s after the most recent major eruption. The volcano remains active to this day.”

“That’s not ominous or anything,” said Marissa. “Secret underground volcano base maybe?”

“Wholly impractical,” sniffed Hassan.

“We can’t even consider running the breakers at any other compass point,” said Alexis. “We’d just run aground and get beat to pieces by the waves, even at high tide.”

“And if we try to swim in or take a raft, it’ll be like going through a washing machine.” Jonah scratched his chin. “Only with more razor-sharp coral. The Japanese used to love these islands back in World War II. They’d sit back in gun bunkers and cut Marines to ribbons by the hundreds as they tried to land.”

“There are also many shark,” deadpanned Vitaly.

“Our enemy picked this location well,” said Dalmar. “Any ideas?” said Jonah. “There’s got to be an answer other than turning around and giving up.”

“We make our enemy come to us,” said Dalmar. “We burn the jungle to the ground, drive them to the sea.”

Alexis thought about the idea for a second. “If an entire volcano couldn’t burn the island down, I doubt we could do it. Besides… what about all the jungle animals? It would be super sad if they all lost their homes, right?”

“One way in, one way out,” said Jonah. “So, unless anybody brought a jetpack, we’re stuck going through the front door.”

Dalmar crossed his thick arms, a frown on his face. He was clearly disappointed in Alexis’ criticism of his idea. “A flamethrower is more practical than a jetpack.”

“We can’t even approach the harbor submerged,” said Alexis. “All the nautical charts show it’s too shallow. They’re going to see us coming from a mile away.”

“So it’s settled — we’re going right in through the front door,” said Jonah.

“Because the last thing they’ll expect is a full frontal assault at high noon?” protested Hassan angrily. “I say nothing is settled — certainly not this front door business.”

“Let’s go through this all again,” said Marissa, flipping back through the charts and photos. “There has to be something we missed — another way past the breakers. We’ll check everything if we have to: nautical maps, surveillance photos, satellite imagery, tidal data—”

“Give me some credit, Doc,” said Jonah as he scrutinized the data on another screen. “The harbor is deep enough for a low-tide approach, barely. And the timing is good; it will start coming back in just fifteen minutes before dawn. We’ll go old school — run the submarine awash, put the armed team on the deck and slide the bow of the Scorpion right up onto the sand. I don’t trust the dock; we’d probably knock the whole thing down if we approached at speed. Dalmar, Hassan, Alexis, and myself will hit the beach.”

Alexis gulped as she heard her name mentioned. “And if we get in over our heads?” she said. “You know, with bullets and stuff?”

Jonah sighed, pausing before he spoke, staring at every member of the crew in the eyes, lingering on each one. “Retreat,” he finally said. “Vitaly will pilot the Scorpion back out to sea, run submerged towards Indonesia, and find a quiet place to scuttle her. We’ll split up and scatter. Each of us will have to find our own way from there. But know this — if we run, we’ll have to continue running… forever. They’ll never stop hunting us.”

“What if we can’t make it back to the submarine in time?”

“Then you’re out of luck,” said Jonah. “If this goes to hell, anyone who can’t get back before the Scorpion makes it off the beach is on their own.”

“But things always go wrong,” mumbled Vitaly.

“I know it’s not much of a backup plan,” said Jonah. “But it’s the only one I got.”

“I’m coming,” said Marissa, her voice firm. “I’m joining your landing party.”

“Not this time,” said Jonah. “I’ve seen you with a rifle and you’re goddamn useless.” Marissa started to protest, but he stopped her with a single look — Jonah wasn’t angry, wasn’t teasing, wasn’t punishing her. There was something sad in his eyes, like they might not see each other ever again. Alexis figured both knew better than most what that felt like.

“I have compulsory military training,” said Sun-Hi. “I will storm beach with you.”

Jonah just shook his head. Alexis didn’t need to be a mind-reader to know exactly what he was thinking. One of the refugees has to survive, or everything — all of this — we’ve done is for nothing. She felt a sick feeling deep in her stomach, realizing Jonah still hadn’t had a chance to tell Sun-Hi the terrible fate of her friends and fellow refugees. It would have to wait, at least for now.

“You really think we’ll catch them by surprise?” asked Hassan.

“Yes,” said Jonah. “Vitaly found this site by data-mining North Korean and Japanese radar telemetry. Nobody else had access to both datasets, and, whoever deployed those weapons, designed them as all but invisible. They have no reason to think anybody would find them.”

“I only have one question,” said Dalmar, glaring at Jonah. “Do you have time for a shower? I find your odor most disagreeable.”

“We’ll make time,” said Marissa, pointing down the access corridor before Jonah could respond on his own behalf.

“I will gather arms for the landing party,” announced Dalmar. “They will be my least polite weapons.”

“Should we grab body armor, too?” asked Alexis.

“Not unless you want to sink like a goddamn rock,” said Jonah as Marissa shuffled him away. “No armor.”

“I put Scorpion in position for suicide run… again,” grumbled Vitaly.

“Come,” said Hassan to Alexis. “We must prepare.”

Jonah just grinned and squirmed as Marissa shoved him out of command compartment, herding him towards the stern of the submarine. Alexis could only stare ahead into space, a thousand terrible visions of what might await them on the island racing through her mind.

The conning tower of the Scorpion rose through foamy waters and into the predawn light. Vitaly steered for the mile-distant shoreline, the open harbor flanked by white-topped breakers and coral shoals. Jonah emerged from the deck hatch first. He pulled himself over the lip and onto the deck, rifle slung around his back as he walked towards the bow.

Hassan went up the ladder next, pausing to reach down and help Alexis up and out of the submarine. She blinked, eyes adjusting to the rush of wind, her skin and clothes already wet from the leaping ocean spray on either side.

Jonah stood alone at the bow, completely exposed, binoculars in hand as he surveyed the looming black shoreline. Above them, Dalmar rose from conning tower hatch, briefly reaching into the tower to retrieve a massive sniper rifle measuring nearly as long as he was tall. He flipped open the bipod stabilizing legs and rested it at the edge of the tower, covering the party from his nest above. Hassan and Alexis retreated towards the stern, taking up positions behind the thick metal hull of the conning tower. She flopped down to her belly on the soaking deck, warm tropical waters wicking into the heavy fabrics of her dark blue coveralls.

The doctor shot her a tight-lipped glance, thick with concern. He held his black assault rifle reluctantly, nothing like the ease with which he carried a medical kit.

Alexis was equally uncomfortable. The short-barreled M-4 variant in her hands was no 10–22 pinker or pump-action skeet shooter, and outside of some target shooting from the back deck of the Scorpion, she’d barely trained with the assault rifle.

She tried to remind herself that she was already a killer, albeit a reluctant one. She shuddered. She’d never forget the Scorpion’s previous engineer, the man with the gaunt face and glinting knife, the look of hatred on his face when he lunged at her. But even worse was his wide-eyed surprise when she stitched five shots across his chest with Hassan’s 9mm.

On her worst moments, she hated Hassan for letting her take his pistol and walk into the engine room alone. Selfish—by saving a life, he’d forced her to take one.

Not a day went by when she didn’t remind herself that she wore a dead man’s boots. Sometimes she’d suddenly realize she was kneeling over the same spot of grimy deck where her attacker coughed out his bloody last breath. She would always force herself to stop what she was doing, repeat a mantra—It’s just a room, a room like any other— before she could continue working. Alexis didn’t know how killers were supposed to feel, but couldn’t imagine they were ever as scared as she was in that moment.

Hassan adjusted his grip on the rifle, awkwardly aiming the barrel towards the beach. Drawing himself up on his elbows, he tried to position himself in front of her, instinctively blocking as much of her body as possible without interfering with her line of fire. She supposed she appreciated the gesture. Not, however, that it would mean a goddamn thing if it came down to a fight. Their unknown adversary had taken out an entire Japanese naval fleet. What chance could four amateurs with stolen rifles possibly have? Maybe their only saving grace would come from how utterly insignificant they were — a mosquito too small to swat.

“Promise me you’ll retreat below deck if we receive fire — no matter what happens to me,” said the doctor, looking to her with imploring eyes. The Scorpion sliced through rolling waves, sending a fresh spray of warm tropical water across the already slick deck.

“Texans don’t get shot in the back,” she snapped. She slicked back her wet hair and yanked the rifle’s charging handle, pulling a round into the receiver. She tapped the forward assist for good measure, snapping the bolt closed. Dalmar kept excellent care of the armory. The weapon slid and clicked with military precision. Her thumb hovered over the safety, ready to flick it into firing position. She stared down the red reticle of her low-magnification sight, searching for a target along the distant jungle tree line, ignoring Hassan’s concerned missives.

I’m already a killer, she reminded herself again. But it still didn’t make her feel brave — only sad and scared.

“I think I should like to visit Texas someday,” said Hassan. “I hear the Alamo is quite striking.” The doctor mimicked her actions, charging a round into the receiver and flipping down the bulky safety lever of his modernized AK-47.

“You’d like it,” she whispered. “We’ll go camping with my dad. It’ll be fun.”

The beach approached at incredible speed, Vitaly pushing the Scorpion to maximum power until the last possible moment. Thick, black diesel smoke belched out of the stack. She tried not to think about the strain on her engines—not now, goddamn it—as she scanned the black beach. Massive breakers crashed against the shoals at either side of the open harbor, the dark sand now lit golden by a rising sun.

“We must sing ‘Ride of the Valkyries’!” shouted Dalmar from the conning tower. He started to belt out a rising baritone duh-duh duh-DUH-duh, duh-duh duh-DUH-duh over the sound of churning engines and roaring waves. Vitaly blew the ballast, raising the Scorpion’s bow as she began to skim over the last of the waters.

Alexis glanced up at Dalmar. He’d braced himself against the conning tower, massive sniper rifle swaying against the tilting yaw of the charging sub. It felt comforting somehow, as though she were under the wings of some great and deadly bird.

Jonah stood on the bow, his unslung assault rifle cradled in his arms, eyes to the beach. “What is he doing?” hissed Hassan.

Alexis swallowed hard. Jonah was presenting himself as an obvious target. Too obvious. He was trying to lure any hidden gunmen into taking an early potshot, one that would give the rest of the crew time to retreat before it was too late. Goddamn you, Jonah. She was just over his swaggering, shoot-from-the-hip bullshit and disinterested shrugging when he had to go and once more reveal his true self. Sometimes she felt as though she was Jonah’s personal archaeologist, digging away at his endless layers of alpha-male bluster and half-assed approach to leadership. She always expected to find nothing beneath it, but kept hitting the same noble bedrock every time, and it totally pissed her off. It was almost as if he wanted his crew to think little of him, insisting his every sacrifice be made in silence, unrecognized.

But she saw right through him. Goddamn you, Jonah. Why did he always have to become a decent man at the worst possible time?

The Scorpion began to shudder like the propellers had just thrown half their blades — Vitaly had reversed the engines. They were too close to stop now, just meters from the beach. To her right was a mammoth concrete dock, eroded and collapsing. A long set of railroad tracks paralleled the dock, dipping beneath the waves. Black sand drifted over the tracks, their steel all but lost to rust.

Jonah knelt, bracing himself. Alexis heard a soft, rushing crunch of metal against sand as the Scorpion’s armored bow slid up through the surf and onto the beach. She pressed her shoulder against the base of the conning tower to steady herself against the protracted, grinding impact. Jonah was over the side before she could even stand, throwing himself into the crashing surf with a splash, both hands clutching his rifle above his head. Hassan went over next, landing in waist-deep waters.

It was a longer drop than she expected, just long enough to lose her balance mid-air and hit the water butt-first, the shallow surf washing over the top of her head as she struggled to keep the rifle dry. And then she was up again, dripping wet, rifle in hand, Hassan dragging her up and out of the surf as they ran along the length of the Scorpion’s hull towards the beach.

The submarine’s engines throbbed behind her, its propellers whipping a white froth as the bow slowly withdrew, leaving behind a deep, flooded gouge in the black sand.

Alexis and Hassan flopped down beside Jonah, joining him behind the cover of a thick driftwood trunk at the top of the debris-ridden, high-tide mark. The sand beneath them was still cold from the long tropical night. She peeked over the top of the felled tree, seeing clearly for the first time the imposing volcano at the center of the island. It had once loosed a thick basaltic flow from the caldron above, following the valley through the abandoned colonial town, burying the long line of crumbling buildings to their roofs. Only a single, lonely bell tower and steeple poked out from the buried township, the bells within, long since rusted to nothing, and the cross atop the church tilted and broken. A single trickling stream ran down the center of the buried street, while the remaining city slowly lost a long war of attrition with the encroaching jungle.

Dalmar descended the exterior conning tower ladder, running the length of the Scorpion’s bow before sliding off the deck and dropping into the shallows, the submarine now released from the grip of the sandy shore. Jonah stood up and swung a leg over the driftwood trunk, followed by Alexis and Hassan. Dalmar strode behind them, his massive rifle carried almost casually over one shoulder. The foursome slowly walked toward the abandoned township.

“I see tire tracks, but they are days old at least.” Dalmar knelt down to examine the loose sands beneath his feet. Several massive, tractor-tire-sized lines ran parallel along the length of the beach and across the volcanic flow, disappearing at the upper edge of the buried town. He’d almost missed them. They were drifted over, made indistinct by winds and rain, almost completely blended with the natural topography of the island.

“Agreed,” said Jonah, slinging his rifle behind his back. “And, if someone was waiting for us, I’d have to assume they would have started shooting by now.”

The Scorpion had made it past the breakers, moving evasively as the last of her conning tower disappeared beneath the waves once more. Alexis pointed toward the long steel lines she’d spotted earlier. “The concrete dock is a lot newer than the town. So are the railroad tracks.”

“Maybe dating from the second World War?” suggested Hassan. “I understand this region saw heavy combat.”

“It’s possible,” said Jonah. “Let’s follow the newer trail. Spread out — and keep your head on a swivel. It doesn’t look like anybody’s still here, but I don’t want to take any chances.”

The tire tracks turned abruptly at the end of the town, just a few hundred meters above the beach, and disappeared into the jungle.

“Somebody recently clear-cut a path,” said Jonah, pointing to the felled trees and sawed-off stumps. A massive green jungle canopy rose above them, plunging the off-road trail into darkness. Alexis let the smell of recently sawn wood drift into her nose as she walked the path. Soon the leafy tunnel opened again to a badly deteriorated concrete airstrip surrounded by low buildings and bunkers, the structures all but reclaimed by the surrounding forest.

“Look!” Alexis pointed. A section of the crumbling airstrip had been carefully graded, smoothed, and topped with a fresh layer of asphalt that still smelled of oil. Three empty steel shipping containers lay between the narrow strip and a blackened, ashy burn pile.

“I see no movement,” said Dalmar. He stared down the powerful optic of his sniper rifle as he slowly panned the barrel from one hollowed-out auxiliary building to the next. “I believe we are alone.”

“You couldn’t land on this,” said Jonah, tapping his foot on the new airstrip. It was too narrow, too short, totally devoid of painted lines or indicator lights.

“No,” said Hassan. “But one could take off, provided you knew the exact runway length required. A single mistake and the aircraft would be lost — not many pilots would be willing to take such a risk.”

“Maybe there wasn’t a pilot — they could have used an unmanned drone,” Alexis suggested.

Dalmar just grunted his acknowledgement.

“Looks like they’ve picked up stakes and moved on.”

“And they didn’t leave much behind,” added Jonah. He scratched at his beard for a moment before wiping a palm across his forehead, the heat of the day beginning to build as the sun rose higher in the early morning sky. “Radio Vitaly. Tell him to moor the Scorpion at the concrete dock. I want everybody ashore. We’ll go over this island with a fine-tooth comb. I just hope whoever launched the attacks was sloppy enough to leave some evidence we can use.”

“What do you want us to do in the meantime?” asked Hassan.

“Split up; wander around. Maybe we’ll get lucky and stumble across something.”

CHAPTER 15

Alexis didn’t want to sift through the ash of the burn pile. She left that dirty job to the others. Instead, she slowly walked the far perimeter of the airstrip and surrounding buildings. The recent occupants of the island had cut back the jungle in order to access and widen out the landing strip, but the surrounding area remained thick and overgrown.

She trod carefully, lifting each foot in an exaggerated fashion as she stepped over the leafy underbrush, the thick vines and roots bending beneath her heavy boots, all the while imagining what lay below. What had the jungle devoured since people last lived here? And what kind of vermin or snakes or other creepy crawly things had made themselves at home since humans had abandoned the island? The thick vegetation shrouded the imprint of each footfall, erasing the trail behind her. Footprints, roads, buildings, an entire town — the island had swallowed them all. People, she concluded, did not belong here.

She pushed that thought from her mind and concentrated on the airstrip. In the distance, she could see a set of enclosed concrete hangers at the abandoned end of the airstrip, far from the newly poured asphalt.

Her foot hit something heavy and unyielding. She kicked away at the vegetation and brushed the dirt back with her hand, uncovering another section of railroad track. A little stomping soon revealed its parallel twin. She held up a thumb, imagining their lengths in either direction. No doubt the lines followed a slight natural decline through the jungle before ending at the harbor. The other end disappeared toward the largest of the hangers.

Alexis walked toward the structure, careful to stay between the intermittent sections of rusting, corroded tracks. She could see the hanger more clearly now, half encased in thick vines, some of which were so large they’d sprouted entire trees. The root systems were relentless, finding every crack and seam as they spread over the decades, breaking apart the concrete and collapsing half of the roof.

She stopped again, noticing a tall piling almost invisible within the surrounding jungle. It was the bottommost section of a flagpole, the pole itself rusted and snapped, rising no more than three feet above its concrete foundation, the flag long since gone. Alexis abandoned the tracks momentarily, pushing into the eerie, all-consuming thick of the jungle. Her ears pulsed with the calls of the birds and insects surrounding her. She was glad Dalmar hadn’t burned down the jungle; it was dense with life and moisture.

A small, carved monument sat just a dozen feet from the broken flagpole. It was large and flat, like a tombstone, almost taller than her shoulder, its base buried deep in the earth. She removed a small knife from her pocket, cutting away the green vines and damp leaves to reveal the inscribed face below. A few more slices with the knife and the last of the overgrowth fell away, revealing the two long columns of careful Germanic script.

Alexis frowned at the long list of names. Germans in the Philippines? It didn’t make any sense. She half-remembered a history lesson about the colonial era and German colonies in the Far East, but the heading “U-3531” didn’t seem like an overly colonial designation. Maybe a mining company, or some other kind of industrial… thing? But what about the titles? They seemed almost military. Not that she recognized any beyond “Doctor,” or the ones sort of like lieutenant. Didn’t Marissa speak a bit of German? Maybe she could shed some light on the monument.

She glanced around at the thick trees surrounding her, and was suddenly aware of the sunken, rich earth beneath her feet. With an abrupt prickling sensation, Alexis realized she could be standing atop a mass grave, and with a shudder, she scrambled back to the overgrown railroad tracks.

By the time she reached the rusting, corroded doors to the massive hanger at the end of the airstrip, Jonah was a tiny figure in the distance. Three more Scorpion crew emerged from the newly-carved jungle pathway — Vitaly, Sun-Hi, and Marissa — and they, too, began combing through the first of the empty auxiliary buildings.

The steel hanger door was paper-thin and brittle, easily snapping away as she kicked at it, creating a gap just large enough to duck through and into the darkness. She held her breath as she stepped into the cool, humid interior, swatting away at the cobwebs that covered her face and hands. A few rays of light shone from the collapsed end, shimmering in the darkness as they played across dangling vines and broken concrete. Before her loomed a massive shape, its silhouette angular and menacing.

Alexis clicked her flashlight. It flickered for a moment and died. She slapped it a few times, shaking it until the battery re-established an electrical connection to the high-output bulb. Raising the light again, she shone it towards the shape in the darkness, illuminating a long, curved submarine bow before her. She let her light play along the length of the rusting sub, across six forward torpedo tubes, fuel tanks, and flood vents, across the conning tower and antennas. Despite the rust and corrosion, she could still make out the insignia ‘U-3531’ painted across the tower. Her profile was unmistakable, a product of a single era.

Alexis picked up the radio on her belt and held it to her mouth. “Uh, guys?” she said, transmitting across the length of the abandoned airstrip. “You should come take a look at what I found.”

Jonah reached out to touch the hull of the U-3531, a look of wonder in his eyes as a smile spread across his face. He ran his hand down the length of the bow, fingertips playing across the rough, rusted surface. “Incredible,” he whispered, his gaze locked on the submarine.

Hassan had never seen Jonah quite so taken with anything, much less a seventy-year-old hulk laid up on concrete blocks. Getting it inside the hanger would have been a massive, logistical operation with powerful winches slowly hauling the German sub out of the ocean and onto a wheeled cradle.

The U-3531 still stood tall, despite the partially collapsed ceiling of the concrete hanger. The top lip of the conning tower loomed some forty feet above the landing party, the wheeled trucks beneath her keel long since frozen with rust.

“You know anything about her?” asked Hassan, nodding toward the submarine. “She can’t possibly be from the second World War — could she?”

“She could, and she is,” answered Jonah. “Alexis is right; she’s definitely World War II vintage. She’s a Type 21, the submarine that could have won the war for the Germans. She had triple the batteries, a streamlined, quiet hull, and more torpedoes than any of her contemporaries. But only a handful ever made it into the service, and by then, it was too late to turn the tide. The war at sea was over the minute the Allies cracked German and Japanese codes. They mercilessly tracked down and sank every sub they could find using next-gen radar, sonar buoys, and airdropped torpedoes. Not even the Type 21’s had a chance at that point.”

“She looks so much like the Scorpion,” Alexis observed.

“She is the Scorpion. They’re more or less sisters. You need any spare parts? You could probably grab them right off the U-3531 if you really needed to.”

“I wouldn’t put a single bolt from that rust bucket anywhere near my ship.”

Jonah chuckled. “She isn’t a rust bucket. She is— was — a wolf.”

Hassan reached out and laid his palm against the vessel as if feeling for a heartbeat. “I don’t understand — the Scorpion cannot possibly date to the World War II.”

“Maybe more like mother and daughter,” Jonah said, correcting himself. “The Type 21 was one of the most influential designs of the twentieth century. She inspired a slew of improvements to British and American submarines; France even re-commissioned and operated a captured one for two decades. But nobody went further with the captured technology than the Soviets. The Type 21 design became the foundation of their entire fleet. They started with ‘Project 633,’ a one-for-one knockoff. It became obsolete at the advent of the nuclear navy, so they farmed out decommissioned subs and designs to every client state on their Rolodex. China built almost one hundred; others went to Bulgaria, Syria, Egypt, and Algeria, just to name a few. North Korea still operates at least seventy, the backbone of their fleet.”

“So basically the AK-47 of submarines,” said Alexis.

“And that’s how you knew we could out-climb the DPRK submarine and hit the surface before them,” Hassan said.

“Pretty much,” said Jonah, winking at his engineer. “We were in a drag race between identically spec’d-out cars — it all came down to who had less curb weight, and the better mechanic.”

Alexis grinned ear to ear at the compliment.

“Her long-lost sister,” Hassan said, now also marveling at the U-3531. “I imagine this is a significant find — and quite the prize to a maritime museum.”

“I’d just like to point out she’s in the wrong ocean,” Alexis said.

“Not necessarily.” Jonah sat down on the concrete foundation and crossed his legs, leaning against the U-3531’s hull. “The logistical links between Germany and Japan were almost instantly severed when the war began. A few blockade-runners ran the gauntlet at first, but it was impractical over the long run. The two countries were initially content to keep to their own hemispheres. But by the end of the war, the separation had become an incredible problem.”

“I remember this from my studies,” said Hassan. “Germany had technology, but not nearly enough raw materials.”

“That’s right,” said Jonah. “And Japan was resource-rich, but much of their weaponry was a decade behind Germany’s, and no match for the Allies. So they devised a tech-for-resources trade. Materials like quinine, opium, rubber, and tungsten went west to Europe. So did stolen gold. In return, Japan received the cream of German technology — guns, optics, engines, you name it.”

“And the only way they could transport these cargos was underwater,” Alexis realized. “But weren’t all the German submarines accounted for by at the end of the war?”

“Not entirely,” said Jonah. “The Germans and Allies kept meticulous wartime records. However, putting it all together after the fact was a bit of a crapshoot. They tried to compare Allied attack reports to when the Germans lost track of their submarines, and ended up with a reasonably accurate facsimile of what had happened to each. Still, there were errors. One Type 9 was supposedly lost off of Africa before she was discovered in 1991 by divers in New Jersey. And then there were a few that slipped through the Allied net and ended up in places like Argentina.”

“You have a soft spot for these men, don’t you?” Alexis said. “I feel like I’ve just seen you meet your favorite movie star.”

“I have to admit I do.” Jonah shrugged. “The Kriesgmarine — the German Navy — was the least-political arm of the Nazi military machine. And yet they suffered the worst casualty rate out of any service in the entire war. For the most part, they were brave men in a bad situation, not diehard Nazis.”

“Then when you’re done with your love fest here, you should take a look at the other thing I found. A marker engraved with what I’m guessing is the crew’s names.” Alexis cocked her head toward the sub. “Something tells me her crew didn’t make it to the Philippines alive.”

“Something tells me you’re right,” Jonah said.

Hassan considered the information for a few moments, staring up once more at the painted insignia on the conning tower. “Our German half-sister indeed,” he marveled. “Do we know which Soviet client state once operated the Scorpion? Or perhaps Russia herself?”

“No,” said Alexis, shaking her head. “I’ve been over every inch her, and I haven’t found a single clue yet. My guess is Bettencourt thoroughly covered his tracks after the acquisition. After all, somebody fucked up big time letting it fall into his hands.”

“I was a salvage diver,” chuckled Jonah. “My entire career was dependent on people fucking up.”

It took Jonah almost an hour to climb up the exterior of the concrete hanger, selecting each handhold on the crumbling structure with care. He grasped vines, and jammed the toes of his booted feet into spreading cracks and eroded divots until he found himself standing at the edge of the collapsed section, staring down into the darkness from above. Entire trees had sprouted from the roof, claiming it once more for the jungle, their roots dripping into the darkness within. Jonah picked the oldest, largest tree and began to slowly descend its thick limbs, lost to the darkness until his outstretched toes brushed against the upper edge of the U-3531’s tall conning tower.

He dropped down onto the tower, landing with a thump. Steadying himself, Jonah carefully tapped his foot around the rusted platform. It seemed solid enough, the underlying integrity of the metal unaffected by the corrosion. He took a powerful flashlight from his pocket, shining it down the exterior hull towards the bow. The light revealed the submarine’s many scars, the rippling of steel from depth charges, the pucker-like craters from airdropped retro bombs. The aging U-boat had been through hell. Jonah couldn’t believe she’d made it halfway around the world in one piece.

Jonah tried turning the wheel to the conning tower hatch. It was permanently frozen shut; the wheel didn’t so much as rattle when he kicked at it. The exterior conning tower ladder was in similarly bad shape, the rungs threatening to give way at the slightest touch. Jonah hedged his bets, trying to place his feet as close to the hull welds as possible, keeping his weight where the metal was still the strongest. He wished he’d taken the time to grab rope and a proper climbing harness from the Scorpion, but it was too late now — he’d already begun his descent.

Crack—the rung clutched in his hand gave way. Jonah twisted as he fell, arms windmilling as he tried to regain his balance mid-air. He landed hard on the rotten wooden deck, the wind knocked out of him as he slid towards the edge, barely able to catch himself before tumbling over. Breathing hard, he tried to collect himself — the ten-foot drop had hurt, but nothing seemed broken.

Jonah snorted and giggled, his lonely laughs echoing throughout the empty concrete bunker. Fading waves of adrenaline surged though his veins as he clenched his left fist to keep it from trembling. His stupid, unnecessary risk had just put him a heartbeat from falling three stories onto hard concrete. Jonah stifled another snicker at the absurdity of it all. All of the close calls on the Scorpion, all of the insane risks he’d taken with his life, every time he’d nearly fucking died… and now, here he was, dicking around on a museum piece and nearly killing himself the process. And for what? The aft deck hatch was just as useless as the one in the conning tower. Rusted shut, just as he’d expected.

Jonah sighed, dropping to his ass as he slid his elbows over his bent knees. His mind went back to the old-timer wisdom he’d heard on his first expedition, advice that had kept him alive for years.

“The human mind sucks at crisis,” the boss had said, a quiet, weather-beaten survivor from the dangerous early days of saturation diving. “It fixates. Fails to notice patterns or obvious solutions. Fails to consider alternative options or adequately calculate risk. Always fall back on your training, your muscle memory, your checklists, and procedures. But even those won’t always keep you alive. After all, you can only train for the foreseen. Did you just have a close call? Got rattled? About to take a big chance? Smoke a cigarette first.”

Jonah had said he didn’t smoke.

“You goddamn useless needle-dick turd-chaser,” the old-timer had sworn. “It’s a fucking pretend cigarette. Gives you time to sort your shit out, unfuck whatever’s fucked, and plot a course of action that might — I repeat, might — save your sorry ass. I get paid for this rotation whether you’re in a dive suit or a black bag in the goddamn freezer. We don’t end early for funerals, not at an eighty-kper-day charter rate.”

Jonah finished his imaginary cigarette with a sheepish smile before shining his flashlight down the length of the stern once more. He could see for the first time that the collapsed concrete ceiling had torn away a small section of the outer hull as it fell. One of the primary welds had failed as well, giving the spreading tree roots all the opportunity they’d needed to force the metal pressure hull apart and creating a hole just large enough for one person to fit through.

His way in. Barely. Jonah held his breath as he squeezed through the narrow gap. The hole was a mess of rusting, razor-sharp steel and spider webs. Grunting, Jonah lowered himself into the dark interior.

Once again, he freed the flashlight from his pocket and aimed it into the darkness, revealing the crumbling remains of the battery compartment. He closed his eyes, imagining bearded, filthy sailors shuffling their way through the submarine, shoulder-to-shoulder in the dim and stifling air.

Six years of war lie behind you, he thought, remembering Admiral Doenitz’s surrender order to his surviving warriors. You have fought like lions.

But the sixty-strong crew of the U-3531 never made it back to Germany. He’d followed Alexis to the gravestone and paid silent tribute to the long list of sailors. Their journey had ended either at sea, or in a mass grave on a desolate island, both far from home. Jonah knew he could all too easily share their fate. He slowly scanned the deck with his flashlight, catching a glimpse of a captain’s crumpled visor-cap abandoned in a corner, the faint glint of the silver Eagle-borne swastika faded to the decades.

The end of the submarine was clearer than that of her captain. Her interior was all but picked clean; an entire bank of batteries missing, gauges pulled from their housings, rectangular samples of the pressure hull carefully drilled out and removed for analysis. She’d been stripped bare of her secrets.

Yet evidence of her final moments remained. Slivers of shattered glass glinted from beneath the grated deck like scattered diamonds. Jonah’s sweeping flashlight fell across a scattering of crater-like bullet divots in the walls. Dozens of 9mm rounds had torn through nearly every thin wall, stopped only by the thick interior bulkheads. The clusters were tight, methodical, fired by an expert hand. The U-3531 had seen a fierce battle within her hull, a battle perhaps similar to when he, Hassan, and Alexis hijacked the Scorpion.

Jonah moved forward to the command compartment. It was all but stripped bare. Every dial and gauge had been removed, and the periscope disassembled, all radio and code machines, maps, and logbooks were gone.

Shit. So much for finding a record of what had happened. The captain’s cabin was stripped with similar precision, every drawer empty. But the next cabin over was strangely untouched. It took Jonah a few moments of investigation to realize he was looking at a convertible medical compartment with an examination table that doubled as a bed. A single photograph still clung to a gap in the wall, long since faded blank. It crumbled as he reached to touch it, disappearing to dust as if it had never existed.

He pulled open drawers, but found only fossilized pills, disintegrating clothing, and corroded medical instruments. The lowest drawer was wedged. Jonah forced it open. Paydirt—a journal lay at the bottom, filled with page after page of tight Germanic script. Jonah brushed the dust off the leather jacket and stuck it in the back waistband of his jeans for safekeeping.

CHAPTER 16

Hassan grunted, pulling himself up hand over hand as he ascended the last stretch of the rocky coastal bluff. Alexis was in front of him, her long legs and cutoff shorts waggling tantalizingly in front of him. The doctor blinked, averting his gaze — the volcanic rocks were slippery, and it was a long bumpy fall to the black sand beach far below. Best to keep any distractions to a minimum, no matter how welcome they might be.

Alexis reached the top and opened up her arms wide, spinning herself around as she soaked in the light of the high, warm sun. “What did I tell you? Best view on the island! Could you imagine some famous actress or billionaire having a wedding up here? It’d be perfect!”

Hassan had to agree. He could see across the entire breadth of the beach, the half-buried township, even the Scorpion as she gently rocked against the length of the partially collapsed concrete dock. The steep bluff was topped with a smooth flat section, free of prickly vegetation and overgrown jungle, almost as though it had been created just for them to enjoy.

The doctor slung a backpack off his shoulder and unzipped it, retrieving a thick blanket from within. He spread the blanket out, smoothing it with his hands before fishing a few sharp rocks and brambles from underneath. Alexis recklessly flopped down onto it, pulled her boots off, and rolled on her back. She looked at him and patted the section of blanket beside her. He lowered himself next to her, slipping an arm underneath the back of her neck. She snuggled against him, using his upper bicep like a pillow.

“That climb was unexpectedly strenuous,” he grunted. “I don’t get nearly enough exercise aboard the Scorpion.”

“None of us do. Well, maybe Jonah. Every time I knock on his cabin door, he’s always doing some crazy pushups and sit-ups. Dalmar, too.”

“A prison habit,” surmised Hassan. “At least for Jonah.”

“I guess. All I know is that I get worn out just watching him go at it.” A long pause fell between them, lingering until Hassan began to feel uncomfortable.

“I can always tell when something is on your mind,” he finally said. “You keep looking at me like you want to say something.”

“You don’t want to hear it. You’ll get upset.”

“Then you must tell me. I’ll only worry if you don’t.”

Alexis sat up. She wouldn’t look at him. “Why are we together? I don’t think we have a single thing in common.”

Hassan blanched, a dull ache flooding through him as if he’d had the air knocked out of him. He thought he’d been prepared for any question — but not this. His mind raced for potential answers. How could he not have seen this coming? Was the depth of their relationship simply a projection of his own greedy imagination? Was she really breaking things off so suddenly?

Alexis spared him from having to answer. “I mean, look at Dalmar and Vitaly,” she finally said. “They’re together— but not really, you know? I feel like either one of them could suddenly— ” She paused for a moment, searching for a word other than die. “Leave, or whatever. And then the other one would just move on. They really seem to like each other, but they also seems so… I don’t know.”

“Removed? Distant?” suggested Hassan. “Noncommittal?”

“I’m probably just reading too much into it.”

“I suppose we don’t have much to do on the Scorpion besides study each other. It’s natural you would have questions. I find them both quite baffling myself.”

Alexis flipped over to her elbows, frowning as she drew a finger up and down the thin lapel of Hassan’s white linen shirt, her bare feet kicking absentmindedly in the air. “Are we like that, too?” she said. “Thrown together by circumstance? Are you with me because it’s pragmatic, because you don’t have any other options?”

“Pragmatic?” Hassan tried to laugh, but it didn’t come out the way he’d intended. The slight prickle of tears stung his eyes as he fought to keep his emotions in check, struggled to find the words. “We’re outlaws, living on the fringes of the world. We’ve seen so much loss, so much violence. And yet my first thought when I wake up, and my last before I sleep, is that I could easily lose the most incredible woman I’ve ever met. Out of everything we’ve done, following Jonah into one disaster after another and yet, somehow surviving… out of all that, loving you has been the most reckless thing I’ve ever done.”

Alexis ran her fingers through his hair, behind his neck. She pressed her lips against his forehead and each eye in turn, blinding him with kisses. Then she wrapped herself around him like they’d never kissed before and never would again.

“We could stay here, just like Robinson Crusoe,” she whispered. “There’s fresh water, endless fish, eggs, coconuts, edible plants. We could build a thatch hut on the beach; watch the sunrise every morning, and the sunset every night. Let Jonah sail off and fight his ghosts without us— this place can be ours.”

“Robinson Crusoe?” said Hassan, enchanted despite his confusion. “Is that the one where they ride ostriches and fight pirates in tiger pits?”

“You’re thinking of the Swiss Family Robinson,” said Alexis, bopping him on the nose. “Everybody gets them confused.”

It was late in the afternoon before Jonah climbed his way out of the abandoned submarine. Standing atop the concrete hanger gave him another chance to survey the overgrown airstrip, burn pile, and unmarked shipping containers. The rest of the crew had dispersed, likely making their way back to the beach, or onto the moored Scorpion. As his stomach rumbled, he realized he’d barely eaten anything since emerging from the lockout chamber nearly twenty-four hours ago.

Jonah grabbed a long, thick root and rappelled down the side of the crumbling bunker, his boots landing with a soft thud on the ground below. Turning the corner, he found Sun-Hi sitting cross-legged on the grass before the rusting metal hanger doors, waiting for him. She was carefully re-assembling the rifle he’d left leaning against the wall, an oil-soaked rag tucked into her breast pocket as she clicked the stock into position, closed the action, and re-inserted the magazine. Satisfied with her work, she stood at attention and with outstretched arms and tucked chin, formally presented the weapon.

Jonah forced himself to chew down a smile. Mimicking her formality, he flipped the rifle and examined the sights as though conducting a military inspection. Jonah gave the charging handle a quick tug to check the action. It had slid easily before, but now it was like silk. He nodded his approval.

“I found interesting thing,” she said, pointing down the overgrown airfield towards the buildings at the far end. “You go this way with me?”

“Sure,” said Jonah, pausing to sling the rifle behind his back. They walked together, Sun-Hi half-skipping to keep up until Jonah slowed his lanky pace. Before long she slipped her hand into his, leaving them to make their way in silence with hands clasped.

“It is here,” she said, pointing to a stone monument hidden amidst the overgrown vegetation. She pulled away the worst of it, revealing faded Japanese characters inlaid in bronze.

“What does it say?” said Jonah.

“It says… Japanese Research Center for… earth shake?”

“Seismology?”

“Yes — and volcano also.” “That’s it?”

“No. It says it is a gift to the people of the Philippines.”

Jonah laughed ruefully. “Not a bad cover story. There was some seriously clandestine stuff going down out here.”

Sun-Hi nodded as she looked around. “Many secrets,” she agreed.

They walked together through the jungle towards the beach. She didn’t try to hold his hand again, content to simply walk at Jonah’s side. Some of the crew had retreated to the shoreline. Marissa sat barefoot beside a small but growing pile of coconuts and oysters, holding in her shirt more than a dozen seabird eggs plucked from the rocky bluffs. Dalmar and Vitaly fished in the warm shallows with nets and spears. But, the Russian focused more on distracting the pirate with splashes until the entire effort devolved into playful wrestling. Vitaly laughed uncontrollably as the bigger man flipped him onto his shoulder and threw him splayed into the surf.

Sun-Hi and Jonah began to gather driftwood, piling it in a small depression in the black sand. They stacked up the sticks, filling in the lower gaps with dry coconut strands. He lit the kindling at the base as the last of the sunset faded, and soon the starlit beach was illuminated by a warm, crackling fire.

“This place — it is so beautiful,” breathed Sun-Hi. “I wish my family could see also.”

“There’s a lot to see in the world,” said Jonah, dreading any conversation that led toward the subject of Sun-Hi’s family and the other refugees.

“All trees here have bark!”

Jonah pondered the statement for a moment before saying, “I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at.”

“In my home, the trees do not have bark. You know, for tea.”

“People take all the tree bark? And they make tea?”

“Yes.”

He remembered how the refugees had been dressed, how desperate they were to reach the submarine, how skinny and malnourished they were, and how they stripped the Scorpion of anything edible within minutes. He’d always heard of the terrible conditions in North Korea, but using tree bark for tea? He pursed his lips in silence, thankful for the warmth of the fire. “Life in North Korea… it was difficult for you?”

“Yes. But my family lucky. My parents work at factory.”

“What did they make?”

“Nothing. They just go to factory and wait. It was very cold.”

“They worked at a factory… but they didn’t make anything?” he said, confused again.

Sun-Hi cocked her head at him as though she were explaining a basic concept to a particularly daft student. “No electricity. They sit for ten hour and then go home. Sometimes sing patriotic songs, but only for inspector.”

“How long was the factory out of power?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “Maybe seven years? It was very cold, because no heat.”

Jonah shook his head, baffled. “And they were the lucky ones? Who were the unlucky ones?”

“The ones without family go to city park outside station and wait for train. Boy, girl without parent, old man, old woman. They all go.”

“They got on the train? Went to another city?”

“No!” laughed Sun-Hi, poking him in amusement. He’d clearly said something incredibly stupid, unheard of even. “They do not get on train! Need special pass for train, nobody has special pass except for very important.”

“Then why did they go to the station?”

“Because that is where unlucky go,” she said with a tiny shrug. “Maybe because if good news come, it come by train. If family come, they come by train. Maybe they just go to see other people. Every morning the police come to get body, pick up dead from cold, dead from hunger. Sometime they try to chase everybody away, but unlucky always come back to train station.”

“But not you. Why?”

“Yes! Because we have family in Japan. They send money sometimes. And when money no longer help, they help pay for us to leave. My family is in Japan now I think. I miss them, but I think maybe they have big TV now, so it is okay.”

A hard knot grew in the back of Jonah’s throat. He swallowed, but it didn’t go away. “When you were on the ice… you had your family with you?”

“My mother, my father, and younger sister,” she said. “My brothers are in army. They did not know we leave. Do you think they angry I hide, go with you?”

“No,” said Jonah. He put an arm around Sun-Hi, holding her close. “I don’t think they’re angry with you. I think they are very proud of you.”

She smiled at him, a smile of pure happiness. Angry tears welled in Jonah’s eyes, knowing that if he didn’t tell her now, he never would. He didn’t think he’d be able to bring himself to broach the subject on his own.

“Sun-Hi, the refugees… everyone you came on board with—” his voice broke, but he forced himself to continue—“they were still on the Japanese carrier when she went down. They were stuck below decks. They never had a chance.”

She pulled back and stared up at him, disbelieving, waiting for him to flinch, break out into a grin, anything to make it not true. Jonah held her gaze, heartbroken and motionless. She slapped him, almost experimentally at first, her small hand barely glancing off the side of his chin. And then she slapped him again, harder, her reddening palm connecting squarely with his cheek. Her fists closed, she began to pound against his chest with increasing fury as she screamed out in Korean. Marissa, Dalmar, and Vitaly halted at the waterline, visible only by their dark, moonlit silhouettes, their eyes glinting in the firelight.

Sun-Hi fell into his arms, straining as she kicked against the black sand, still ineffectually swinging her arms at him. Her choking, stilted cries lapsed into deep, soaking sobs as she finally collapsed against his chest. He held her, rocking back and forth, the pain of her blows absorbed into the same deep well where he kept so many of his own memories. He couldn’t say how long she cried, but the ghostlike silhouettes of his crew had long since disappeared into the darkness. She slept in his arms as the last red embers of the fire faded to charcoal, her warm body pressed into his own as she roiled in a deep, haunted sleep under the starlight.

She looked the same as the moment he’d met her. A soft, round face topped by a ragged haircut, too-thin limbs clad in oversize work coveralls. But some deep, secret part of himself knew that the Sun-Hi who’d slipped her hand into his and ran her fingers through his beard with irrepressible curiosity was gone forever.

He wanted to cry as well, rage against the unfairness, the terrible absurdity, the tragedy of it all. His life was pain — joints aching as he woke, muscles stiff with tension as he slept, heart clenched in his chest, emotions made hard, the last of his happiness buried alongside the faces of the men he’d killed, of friends he’d lost. And if he let himself cry, even for a moment, he didn’t know if he could ever stop again.

CHAPTER 17

Jonah woke to first light, the fire long since smoldered to ash. He sat up abruptly, aware that Sun-Hi’s impression in the black sand beside him was cold and empty. Pushing himself to his feet, he stretched, joints popping and cracking as if he were an old man. The beach had made for an adequate bed, but he still felt sharp, radiating pain from so many hours on its firm surface. He’d had too many years of decompression chambers and prison fights, the accumulated damage to his body only compounded by the stresses of command.

He walked the length of the partially collapsed concrete dock to find the Scorpion all but empty. Vitaly had strung up a hammock across the length of the command compartment, sleeping soundly. Jonah rapped on the periscope stalk with his knuckles, waking him.

“Cap’n!” stuttered the Russian, awkwardly trying to throw a leg over the side of the hammock and balance himself before getting out.

“No need to get up,” said Jonah. “Thanks for sticking around to keep an eye on our ride. Where is everybody?”

“Island,” Vitaly croaked, jabbing a thumb in the general direction of the abandoned airstrip.

“Anybody check in with you lately?”

“No. But Alexis come in last night and take two tank.”

“Two tanks?” Jonah scratched his beard, confused. “Tanks of what?”

“I think one nitrogen and one petrol?” said Vitaly. “She say she make birthday present.”

Jonah emerged from the jungle, walking alone towards the scattering of abandoned buildings on the far side the airstrip. Dalmar emerged from the largest structure and waved him over.

“Sun-Hi woke us,” Dalmar smiled broadly as he clapped a meaty hand on Jonah’s back. “She explored these buildings and discovered something of great importance.”

“Care to fill me in?” asked Jonah.

Dalmar waggled a single finger in his face. “It is always better to show.”

Jonah followed Dalmar into the largest of the darkened buildings, their feet crunching on broken glass and concrete fragments. A single interior metal door clung to its frame, bent and almost falling off its hinges. Dalmar pried it open, grinning at Jonah’s grimace when the rusting steel dragged loudly across the concrete. On the other side of the door was a narrow, cylindrical well with a steep spiral staircase leading into the depth below.

“She found a bunker?” asked Jonah.

“Yes — but it is so much more.”

Dalmar took the lead as they together walked down the stairwell. The last rays of sunlight disappeared as Dalmar ignited his flare, illuminating the narrow chamber in harsh, iridescent reds.

“This is unexpected,” said Jonah. “How deep does it go?

“Alexis says at least two hundred feet.” “Why didn’t anybody wake me?”

Dalmar stopped briefly to face Jonah. “Sun-Hi insisted you rest. Hassan agreed, and Dalmar always follows doctor’s orders.”

“Right.” Jonah eyed him suspiciously, but didn’t protest. After all, conspiracy among the crew typically ended in worse results than a few extra hours of uninterrupted sleep.

The spiral staircase stretched deep within the ancient layers of volcanic bedrock. There was no door at the base, just an opening into an underground tunnel. Jonah reached up and touched the walls — the stairwell had intersected a natural volcanic lava tube deep within the island. The tunnel walls were rough, barely hewn from the original rock, the floor of the cave made level by a thick layer of smoothed concrete.

“This way.” Dalmar pointed to a side passage. The natural lava tubes had formed an entire network of intersecting tunnels, massive in scale. Jonah followed him in, the tube opening up into a large bubble-like chamber illuminated by a half-dozen scattered lamps. Hassan sat cross-legged in the center of the room, sketching notes onto the dusty floor with a piece of charcoal. Surrounding him were endless rows of aluminum tanks and cisterns, snaking pipes and other industrial equipment. Jonah tried and failed to imagine the sheer amount of manpower that it would have taken to assemble the subterranean laboratory.

“Jonah!” exclaimed the doctor, yanking his head up from his scribblings. “I’ve learned a great deal about the island since we last spoke.”

“Let’s hear it,” said Jonah, squatting down beside him. “Is this some kind of abandoned World War II facility?”

“No — well, yes and no,” answered the doctor cryptically. “I knew what this facility was from the moment I laid eyes on this room. There’s a whole underground complex— some sections collapsed and inaccessible, of course— making this room just one of dozens. See these machines and equipment?”

“Yeah,” said Jonah, glancing around at the unfamiliar technology. “I don’t know what any of this stuff is.”

“Very few people would,” said Hassan. “It’s biological research equipment. Active material tanks, fermentation cisterns, spray dryers, filling machines. Everything you’d need to refine and weaponize anthrax, cholera, even plague.”

Jonah hesitated suddenly, wondering if he should stop breathing.

“Oh, it’s perfectly inert now,” said Hassan dismissively. “Has been for decades. I’d recommend a tetanus booster to the crew, but only given the degree of rust that has accumulated.”

“So this is from the second World War… but it isn’t’?”

“Precisely!” said Hassan, almost leaping to his feet in excitement. “The Imperial military experimented extensively with pathogens, testing and deploying them against tens of thousands of prisoners and noncombatants. They developed the most advanced biological weapons of the war, bar none.”

Jonah paused, unable to quite articulate his next question in a way Hassan would answer. “But you just said this was a post-war facility.”

“The war ended,” Hassan said, “but the research didn’t. Imagine — Japan falls, coming under the military umbrella of the United States and her allies. But not all of the surrendered were resigned to the idea of Japan as a wholly disarmed client state. They were determined to find a way to protect themselves without a military.”

“So they turned to unconventional weapons.”

“Yes — and the effort could have been easily funded by powerful Japanese nationalists for decades, perhaps even to this day. Just look at these aluminum cisterns — the designs are clearly from the late ’60s, perhaps even early ’70s, decades after the war ended.”

Jonah looked closely at the tanks, but had no basis for verifying Hassan’s observations. “But if it was such an important program, why was the facility abandoned?”

“Japan’s post-war economic miracle?” Hassan said, venturing a guess. “I’m thinking rapid economic expansion and rebuilding throughout the 1950s set the stage for her ‘Golden Sixties’, and high-technology and automotive economy. Perhaps this facility became politically obsolete. Why continue to develop weapons of mass destruction if one could wield staggering economic power instead? I imagine any non-military innovations made by this laboratory were ultimately folded into Japan’s corporate research programs on the mainland. However, recent events would suggest a remnant of this clandestine organization continues to this day.”

Hassan joined Dalmar and Jonah as they walked out of the germ research laboratory. The lava tubes were a labyrinth; Jonah could barely keep his sense of direction.

“She’s this way,” said Hassan, leading the trio. He pointed toward a chamber at the end of a snaking, partially collapsed tunnel. Inside, Alexis worked intently over a dimly-lit metal workbench, while Marissa sat on a stool reading through the German doctor’s logbook. Jonah was glad to know where the logbook had ended up. All he’d known was that he woke up on the beach without it. Marissa must have noticed it and taken it out of his pants while he slept.

Alexis didn’t so much as look up from her work, just waved an acknowledgement as she heard the men come in. Sun-Hi briefly stuck her head out from behind a long bank of moldering reel-to-reel magnetic tape computers before returning to further disassemble the antique units.“Find anything interesting in the logbook?” asked Jonah.

“A little,” said Marissa. “My German sucks these days, but I can still read a bit. My guess is that you found a doctor’s campaign journal. Has entries on all the various complaints and illnesses faced by the crew. He seemed to have had a lot of down time. When nothing else was happening, he wrote a lot about his captain. I think they must have been friends. Beyond that, it’s mostly worrying about his wife and daughter back home.”

Another captain, another doctor, another time. “Any insights?”

“A lot of venereal disease,” said Marissa. “I mean, like a lot. And then it ends abruptly in May—”

“When the sub was presumably captured by the Japanese,” added Hassan.

“Can you blame them?” asked Jonah. “No way they’d let all that vital technology and war material surrender into Allied hands.”

“What did his last entry say? Any reference to possible hijackers?” said Hassan.

“No — but he was fixated on a finding the source of a mysterious illness that was affecting a couple of crewmen in the aft torpedo room.”

“What were the symptoms?”

“Nausea, diarrhea, headache, fatigue, bleeding gums, that kind of thing.”

“Gross,” said Alexis without looking up. The doctor squinted at the information, but didn’t say anything.

“How about you, Alexis?” asked Jonah. “Any amazing discoveries?”

“Yeah — there’s some great stuff down here,” said Alexis, still intent on her work as she finished tightening one last hose clamp. “Tons of old tech, pretty much all of which is obsolete. Weapons, engines, even a bunch of silk parachutes. But this is my favorite.” She stood and turned to proudly display the business end of a massive flamethrower, complete with handles and triggers, attached by a hose to a two-tanked backpack sitting on the metal workbench.

“Could it be…?” breathed Dalmar, daring to hope.

“Yep — it’s an operating, no-shit military flamethrower prototype,” confirmed Alexis with a sly smile. “The tanks were crap, so I swapped them out with spares from the Scorpion. Beyond that, most of the critical components were in surprisingly good shape, just need a little oil and a whole lotta love.”

She tried to pick up the tanks, but they were too heavy to even budge. Motioning everyone to step away, Alexis instead pointed the nozzle towards a rocky wall on the far end of the workshop, nearly thirty feet away. She clicked a button on the butane nozzle lighter, frowning when it didn’t ignite. Alexis shook the assembly a little, slapped it with her palm a couple of times, and tried again. The lighter sparked and a tiny jet of butane fuel flashed bright in the dark room.

And then she pulled the trigger. A prodigious grout of thick fluid spurted from the end of the flamethrower, instantly igniting as it hit the hissing butane. The liquid stream exploded, erupting outwards in a roiling, uncontrollable fire, all but blinding everyone with sudden, searing heat. Jonah felt like he’d briefly stepped onto the surface of the sun.

Sun-Hi clapped her hands in amazement as the last gush of flames petered out to a dribble of still-burning fuel. Jonah felt for a moment that the bright, cheery Sun-Hi he’d first met was still within her — but she wouldn’t so much as look at him, instead returning to continue disassembling the ancient computers.

“Alexis — do be careful!” Hassan stared with his mouth open, horrified at the sheer magnitude of the weapon’s output.

“Um, yeah,” said Alexis a little gingerly. The size of the explosion had taken her by surprise as well. “I’m still experimenting with the mixture. It could probably use a little more fine-tuning.”

“This is… this is for me?” whispered Dalmar, almost at a loss for words as he stepped gingerly towards the flamethrower, transfixed.

“Of course it is, you big galoot,” Alexis said, setting the nozzle back down on the table. “I don’t know anybody else who could even lift this goddamn thing — it weighs a metric shit-ton.”

Dalmar brushed past her to pick up the prototype flamethrower, easily hefting the thick canvas straps over his shoulders as he put the tanks to his back. He turned the weapon from one side to the other, admiring the original craftsmanship, as well as Alexis’ careful maintenance and innovations.

“I shall call her Florence,” growled Dalmar, arching his eyebrows at Alexis. “The most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

“Okay… you’re welcome?” said Alexis. “Just watch where you point that thing.”

Jonah laughed out loud, patting her on the back before glancing over towards Hassan. But the doctor simply stared into the darkness, distracted. “Remind me — what were the symptoms in the physician’s journal?”

“Uh, let me look,” said Marissa as she picked the logbook back up again. It took a moment to find the correct page. “Looks like headaches, bleeding gums, barfing, and the shits. That mean anything to you?”

“It may well have been radiation exposure,” whispered Hassan. “The Germans were moving refined uranium eastward as their war effort collapsed. Allied forces believed they’d captured it all — perhaps they were wrong. This clandestine organization, whatever it is, may have made off with a great deal.”

“How much?”

“Certainly enough to make a bomb.” “Well that’s just fucking awesome,” Alexis sank down in a chair.

Jonah looked around the room. “The submarine and laboratory have been picked clean; anything of value is long gone. Let’s get a Geiger counter down here just in case, but my guess is that it won’t pick up so much as a stray rad. Whoever used this island — whoever still uses it — almost certainly has access to a nuclear weapon. Refining uranium is the tough part, any third-year physics grad student could build a bomb with the right components. And the Germans handed them those components on a silver platter.”

“I find these on every machine,” announced Sun-Hi, emerging from behind the partially dissembled computer bank with a handful of metal tags.

Jonah squinted at the identical tags, turning them over in his hands. He couldn’t read the Japanese script. “What do they say?”

“SABC Electronics and Industry.”

“That’s one of the largest defense contractors in Japan,” Marissa said. “Still headquartered in Tokyo.”

Jonah nodded, considering the information.

“This is the best lead we’ve had yet — shall we follow it?” Hassan asked.

“I mean, we have to, right?” said Marissa. “They’ve got to be the ones with an answer.”

“If I require an answer, I will often find someone to ask—” began Dalmar.

“Wait for it,” interrupted Alexis.

“—at gunpoint,” Dalmar said, finishing his thought. “It is the best way to get truthful information.”

“Agreed,” said Jonah. “Enough fucking around. I’m going to take a page out of Dalmar’s book. We’re going to track down their CEO, kidnap him, stick a gun in his face, and get some answers.”

CHAPTER 18

Itching liquid snaked through Freya’s inner thigh, maddeningly hot. The pain rippling throughout her body was distant, indistinct, experienced only through the fog of a distant memory or a forgotten dream. Her mind swam in a twilight haze between conscious and unconscious — her racing thoughts indistinguishable, eyes soft and unfocused, limbs paralyzed. She moaned and shifted, and felt the thin cotton of a hospital gown against her skin, along with the slick plastic of a mattress pad. She wanted to drift away, fade to white. It would be so easy to just let go.

Focus. Breathe in. Breathe out. Think.

She tried to move, but her fingertips were dull and numb, and the tubes and wires running across her body were impossibly heavy. Her mind swam again, threatening to release her back into unconsciousness. She tried to call out, but her lips were frozen, immobile. So, she struggled to open her eyes and focus on the single blinding light above.

Focus. You were medicated again. It’s wearing off. Breathe. Think.

She tried to inhale deep and slow, but the air caught in her throat. Her stomach suddenly wrenched into a jolting contraction. She strained against the thick nylon straps crisscrossing her body, and twisted her wrists bound in their plastic restraints that were painfully chafing against heavy zip ties. A too-thin rush of vomit bubbled up and out of her throat. She groaned and coughed, flooding her oxygen mask with the foul-smelling bile. But it was too late to spit it out. The acidic liquid was sucked back into her burning mouth and nose as she struggled to breathe, choking.

Garbled voices erupted into a rapid-fire exchange around her. Freya’s mask was roughly yanked from her face and slid down around her neck as latex-covered fingers probed her mouth. A hand pressed her face firmly to one side as a second jammed a plastic tube between her teeth, its whistling nozzle sucking the vomit from between her tongue and cheek. The tube disappeared only to be replaced moments later with a metal irrigation straw, washing the bile from her mouth as she coughed and retched once more.

Freya’s eyes fluttered open. Freezing wind whipped across her thin gown and bare feet. She heard deafening helicopter blades and the roar of an engine straining against a buffeting storm. Lighting crashed, illuminating the endless ocean below the aircraft. Two fatigue-clad medics loomed over her, each bucking and pitching in their folding jump seats.

You’re in a military medical transport. Think.

But she couldn’t yet think through the fog of medication. She could only focus on single words, each slamming into her mind like a freight train of consequence.

Transportation. Extradition. Incarceration.

Freya moaned again, tugging against her plastic zip cuffs. She felt the abdominal stitches where the doctors had sliced into her and inserted tubes, pumping warm saline solution into her lower abdomen, irrigating her organs from within. She dully realized that the treatment must have lasted days, leaving her to drift in and out of dreamless sleep as her pain-wracked body slowly warmed from near-fatal hypothermia. Her memories of the Japanese military doctors and the shipboard surgical suite were incomplete, jumbles of images: boiling oil flung into the captain’s face, kicking the handsome grad student — what was his name? Oh, yes, Benny — down the stairs, watching the mob of students and crew attack, feeling their hands on her, then the momentary weightlessness before her plunge off the side of the research ship and into the cold ocean. All a useless blur.

Focus. She was awake now. Aware. The edge slowly returning to her shattered mind. She pulled her wrists against the zip cuffs again, feeling the resistance of the plastic. The ties were tight, well secured, thick. But they wouldn’t be enough to hold her.

The helicopter jolted against sudden crosswinds. They dropped sickeningly, heeling over as a gust of rain and wind whipped through the open doors, soaking her through the thin cotton gown. The pilots turned to glance at each other, their anxious tension clear as the helicopter picked up speed once more, flying against the roaring wind. Within moments Freya could see lights of Tokyo beneath her, silhouetted skyscrapers rising tall over the endless canals and aqueducts of the coastal megatropolis.

The helicopter was over the mouth of Tokyo Harbor, the distinctive lights of the shoreline almost invisible through the heavy storm. The tone of the rotors shifted as the pilots slowed the aircraft over massive Yokosuka Naval Base. Japanese warships and marine transports crowded around their American counterparts, men swarming over the vessels like ants as they loaded vehicles, arms, and ammunition under the illumination of harsh white floodlights. The two combat medics were staring now, too, their masked faces trained on the staggering scale of the logistical operation. A few ships slowly pushed away from the dock to make room for others. More moved the short distance to join a growing convoy.

As the truth dawned on her, rage flowed through her blood, hot like the anesthetic they’d injected into her femoral vein.

Himura had lied.

His deliberate, purposeful strikes had nothing to do with environmental revolution. Her cause betrayed, her emotions manipulated, all for this.

Himura wanted a war.

She lifted her head as lightning struck one of the tallest buildings, illuminating the city center like a flashbulb. As the helicopter banked, Freya caught the faintest glimpse of an angular shape far below, a matte-black shadow moving upriver from the harbor, like some mythological monster.

The booming thunder hit again, closer this time. Freya involuntarily yanked her wrist against the restraints, her rain-slicked skin imperceptibly slipping against the plastic ties. A second echoing thunderclap shook the helicopter a heartbeat later. She screamed, twisting her entire body against the plastic restraints, bicep muscles bulging, abdominal stitches giving way as the tie suddenly snapped. Her newly-freed hand snaked towards her other wrist, fingers frantically clawing against the remaining zip cuff.

A medic grabbed her forearm, twisting it as he shoved a knee into the center of her chest. She wriggled, slipping one of her legs out from underneath the nylon straps. Freya reared back, sweeping her newly-freed foot around the front of his face before bringing her legs down again, pinning his neck between her thighs.

The second medic lurched toward her with a syringe as she threw a flailing hand between them. The needle plunged through her palm and out the other side as the plunger depressed, spurting bitter anesthetic across her face.

Freya blinked against the burning fluid as the copilot swiveled in his seat, his pistol already out of its holster. She loosened her grip on the medic between her legs just long enough to slam her heel into the side of the copilot’s face, hurling him forward into the controls.

The helicopter pitched again as a wind shear dropped it like a stone. The lights of Tokyo dizzying as they spun outside the open doors. Grimacing, Freya used her teeth to yank the empty syringe out of her hand and spit it out of the open door.

The medics sized her up — both loudly plotting their next move, her element of surprise long since expended. She was still stuck on the gurney with only one hand free, the other bound by an unyielding plastic zip cuff.

And then they charged, both slamming their shoulders into the side of the gurney. It snapped free from its aluminum mounts with the force of their impact. Only the thick nylon straps across her chest and stomach prevented her from tumbling through the open helicopter door. Her free hand swept back, trying to find something sharp, something heavy, anything she could turn into a weapon in a losing fight. There wasn’t time to focus or breathe. Stinging rain drenched her, and wind violently whipped her across the face.

With her free hand, she traced the oxygen tubing away from her loosened mask down the arm of her gurney. Her fingers brushed against the smooth aluminum of the high-pressure oxygen tank. She grasped it by the metal nozzle and yanked it from its mount. The medics were shouting now. Then, she felt the jerk of a sudden release as the first of the nylon straps was cut free.

They were going to throw her out of the helicopter.

Not this time.

Freya hurled the oxygen tank out of the open side door. The roaring wind caught the heavy canister as it tumbled through the empty air, yanking against its own tubing a second later, and swinging like a pendulum up towards the tail rotor. It hit the blades with a concussive blast, erupting into shrapnel-filled vapor. The helicopter shrieked, sparks bursting from the tail as the blades tore themselves apart in howling mechanical destruction. The entire aircraft slid sideways, tilting dangerously as the cockpit control panel blossomed into a flashing maelstrom of red system failure lights, the audible stall warning barely audible over the roar of the engine.

Freya jerked her head toward the medics — one had fallen partly out of the door, his partner desperately clinging to his legs as the aircraft tumbled toward the ground. They were lower than the skyscrapers now, surrounded by wet glass and glistening steel, too low to maneuver.

The pilots nosed down the aircraft toward a flat-roofed building complex far below, trying to regain control. The spinning helicopter’s free fall was nearing an end, about to crash when the pilots flared hard, the engines spinning up for one final roar as they slowed to a shuddering wobble in the seconds before impact.

And then they hit. Hard. The nose smashed through a glass skylight on a flat-topped roof, landing gear crumpling, rotor blades splintering into pieces. Freya somersaulted forward, plastic zip cuff and nylon straps giving way as she slammed into the back of the cockpit seats. With the wind knocked from her lungs, and an unconscious medic pinning her against the seats, she tried to breathe but couldn’t. Everything went black, until moments later, her eyes fluttered open once more. Her heart caught in her throat as the creaking helicopter settled in the skylight, fragile struts straining, their metallic groans lost to the cascading rain. Snap. The machine lurched forward again, grinding metal against metal as the nose slipped through the skylight. Freya felt one more heart-stopping moment of weightlessness as the aircraft plummetinged two stories before slamming into the center of a brightly lit interior courtyard.

With a groan, Freya pushed the weight of the unconscious medic off her back and struggled to her hands and knees. She gingerly scooted to the open helicopter door and extended her toes toward the white-tiled floor below. She ignored the crunch of broken glass beneath her feet. Still struggling to catch her breath, and still dazed, she stepped out of the wreckage and looked around through the haze of medication and adrenaline.

A dozen startled shoppers stared back at her, frozen in place. Finally, her eyes began to adjust to the glassy storefronts, mannequins, bright lights, and cartoonish posters. The mall was mostly empty, but a crowd of shoppers and workers had instinctively formed a ring around both levels of the courtyard. Several silently raised their phones, recording her.

Freya looked down at herself, taking in her bloody, rain-soaked hospital gown, her skin slick with high-octane aviation fuel. She cleared her throat, feeling the distinct sensation that she should say something. But she didn’t. Instead, she just stepped into the midst of the crowd.

They parted easily, their phones silently swiveling to follow her. Freya quickened her pace, her careful steps accelerating to a quick gait, and finally, she broke out into an open, desperate run. Then, the shouting started. The crowd escaped their paralysis as their echoes followed her down the endless corridors of the shopping mall.

Focus. Breathe in—

But she couldn’t focus, couldn’t breathe. And she couldn’t escape. Not on foot. Her pulse pounded in her ears as she spotted the exit to an underground parking garage. She turned abruptly, slipping against the smooth tile as she sprinted towards the heavy double doors. Freya burst through them, their metal handles slamming against the bare cinderblock walls with a bang that shot across the concrete structure.

The garage was all but empty, with only a few cars parked near the exit doors. Water trickled in a thin stream down the corner of the main ramp, and she could hear the rain and thunder from the distant entrance several floors above. A single car, a compact hybrid, slowly descended the ramp, lights on, wipers struggling against the rivulets of rain streaming from the roof.

The driver didn’t notice her. He did a careful three-point-turn as he selected a parking space and began to back in. Frey tiptoed across the bare concrete, her feet barely brushing against the cold floor, wet hospital gown gently swaying as she cracked her knuckles and rolled her shoulders. She waited.

He stepped from the car, mumbling to himself and coughing as he straightened his sweater vest, using a single finger to tap the nose of his double-bridged glasses. Then he turned toward Freya, keys jangling in his hand.

He saw her bare feet first. Then, eyes wide, he took in her soaked, half-dressed form. “Keys,” said Freya, pointing to his hand. She gestured for him to give the keys to her.

The middle-aged driver looked down at his keys, and then back to her again. His hesitation was all she needed. She gently plucked them from his hand and pushed him aside with a muscled shoulder as she took the last two steps to his car.

Regaining his sense, he swore in protest as he reached out to grab her by the elbow. Freya whipped around and buried her fist in his face, the skin of her knuckles splitting with the sheer force of impact. His head snapped back as he fell, landing flat. Her lungs heaved, hot like fire, rage flowing through her veins, jaw clenched, the vision of Himura’s face in her mind. The things she’d done for him — the people she’d hurt, the pain she’d inflicted on herself — it all flashed through her memory like wildfire.

“The world has reached a tipping point, one that will inevitably consume us all,” he’d said. She could still hear the sound of his soft voice in her ears. But now, she would make sure Himura would be the first one consumed. She’d take something of his, something that would hurt, something he couldn’t replace.

Freya slid into the car, slamming the door shut behind her. She looked at the dashboard, confused — there was no steering wheel, no pedals beneath her feet.

Wrong side.

Cursing, Freya climbed out of the passenger’s seat and walked around the front bumper, her hand now clutching the back of her immodest hospital gown shut. The crowd had begun to spill into the garage, staring at her, and the unconscious driver on the ground from safe distance.

She slid into the driver’s seat and locked the door. It was a small car and the seat and steering wheel adjustments were wrong, set for a significantly smaller person than herself. There’d be time to fix it later. She activated the handheld GPS suction-cupped to the windshield. It chirped merrily as it powered up, displaying lines of indecipherable Japanese characters. Freya poked at the ‘back’ button until an icon resembling a cogged gear slid into view. She scrolled through the setup options and selected the English option.

Knuckles tapped against the window, startling her. Freya looked up to see three white-shirted security guards surrounding the car. She ignored them as the tapping became louder and louder. The men on the other side of the glass starting to shout. There were sirens now, too, barely audible in the distance.

“What is your destination?” requested the GPS unit in a friendly female voice.

The security officers started pounding their fists on the windows, their faces now twisted in anger; they were furious with her refusal to acknowledge them.

“SACB headquarters, Tokyo,” said Freya, almost unable to hear her own hoarse voice over the shouting, muffled security guards.

A route flashed up on the tiny screen as Freya slipped the car into drive. She hit the gas and brake simultaneously, the car lurching six inches before squealing to a stop. The security guards stepped back, immediately scattering as she hit the accelerator a second time. She pulled away, tires chirping as she slammed into the ramp, flying up towards the entrance and around the corner. She jerked the wheel towards the exit, crashing through the parking arm and flying past the payment booth, both front wheels leaving the payment as she blasted out of the garage and onto the stormy Tokyo streets.

So Himura wanted a war? She’d give him a fucking war.

CHAPTER 19

Lighting danced across angry skies, silhouetting the skyscrapers towering over the Scorpion. The submarine crept up through a Tokyo aqueduct like a primordial creature on the hunt, prowling between roads and apartment buildings, passing shuttered shops and moored sailboats, the churn of her diesel engines masked by pounding rain and the echoing retort of distant thunder. Roiling floodwaters strained against earthen banks and concrete bulwarks, swelled by the heavy storm. The surrounding buildings were lifeless and streetlights dark — entire districts had lost electricity in the storm, shrouding the long, angular Scorpion in rain-drenched, impenetrable darkness.

Jonah stood at the conning tower platform, the seams of his thick yellow slicker barely holding against the torrential downpour. Alexis was at his side, hair wet, rain streaming down her face, seemingly oblivious to the deluge as she silently watched the passing city. Vitaly stooped over a ruggedized, waterproof laptop networked into the Scorpion’s central systems, using his elevated perch to warily navigate the submarine through the shallow, winding canal. The trio winced as the steel hull gently brushed against sunken debris with a sharp scraping clearly audible over the pouring rain.

“That one wasn’t so bad — maybe a bicycle?” said Alexis. “Definitely smaller than a refrigerator.”

Vitaly just grumbled in response as a low bridge loomed ahead. A quiet hiss of air sounded from the ballast tanks as he adjusted the trim. The Scorpion wallowed a few inches deeper into the flood tide, her sinking almost imperceptible. Jonah reached, letting his fingertips brush against the rusting steel beams of the overpass. The support members trembled as a single car passed over them, unaware of the submarine lurking below. The Scorpion’s retracted periscope and snorkel slipped inches below the beams, but not the antenna — the long metal whip hit the bridge and began to bend, straining until it snapped at the base and hung limply, dragging in the canal waters.

“I suppose you’ll be asking me to fix that?” said Alexis, crossing her arms in irritation.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Jonah. “I’ll just take the replacement cost out of Vitaly’s wages.”

“Wages?” Vitaly said. “Ha! I laugh. You give Vitaly only two bullets, never money.”

Jonah paused as the Scorpion cleared the overpass, the stormy afternoon sky opening up above, heavy sheets of sleet drenching them once more.

“Alexis — make a note to double Vitaly’s salary at the soonest opportunity,” said Jonah. “Maybe a larger caliber this time? The first couple didn’t seem to take.”

Alexis ignored their banter. “I feel like I’m on a parade float,” she said, her eyes drifting once more to the darkened buildings and empty roads on either side of the canal. “It doesn’t even feel like we’re still on the water. What do we do if somebody sees us?”

She was right; the Scorpion was completely exposed. There wasn’t nearly enough room to turn around, and even the high floodwaters were far too shallow to fully submerge any portion of the submarine. They should have taken Dalmar’s suggestion and hijacked a car at the edge of the city. They’d be in real trouble if they couldn’t slip the Scorpion unseen along the entire three mile stretch of aqueduct to reach the open river harbor on the other side.

“If someone sees us, just give ’em the princess wave.” Jonah imitated the motion for effect, as though addressing onlookers to a royal procession. “I’ve heard it’s all in the wrist.”

Jonah tried to keep his optimism in check — they’d made it this far inland without attracting attention, but Dalmar was right; it was a stupid plan. Yes, they’d easily slipped past the gathering Japanese fleet outside Tokyo, all but invisible beneath the massive scale of the mobilization. The whole place was in chaos. The Japanese would soon set sail for North Korean waters, demanding a response to the destruction of their carrier group and daring the hermit kingdom to confront them. Hell, they probably could have snuck a three-ring circus past the disorganized, troop-laden convoy if they’d wanted. The Scorpion’s single, inconspicuous periscope was a cakewalk by comparison. But Jonah knew his options would be vanishingly limited if they were discovered and cornered.

“You hear that?” said Alexis, pointing towards a faint light in the distant sky. “I think it’s a helicopter.”

“Gutsy, flying in these conditions.” He could hear it now, too, a faint whop-whop-whop all but lost to the rain and thunder, blinking blue running lights barely visible. Lightning flashed again, the blinding electrical arc connecting with a tall antenna atop a darkened skyscraper. Jonah shielded his eyes as the helicopter disappeared from view, made invisible by the sudden percussion of light and sound. He supposed it didn’t matter — there was virtually no way even an experienced pilot could have spotted the Scorpion through the heavy winter storm.

The canal opened up, allowing the submarine to slide out of the walled river and into an open, shallow harbor. The concrete-ringed waterway was within an inner-city industrial district, not much more than a dirty portage of five docks surrounded by rusting warehouses and dozens of empty fishing vessels, a few of which had been hoisted from the waters and wheeled into run-down shipyards. All of the boats rocked and jostled against the outflowing storm surge from the rain-soaked city around them.

Vitaly re-set the submarine’s trim, slowly lowering the open deck beneath the surface until just the last eight feet of conning tower rose above the waters, gently splitting the waves as they crept forward towards a crumbling seawall.

“You know where we are?” asked Alexis, glancing around at the inlet.

“Yeah,” said Jonah. He swiveled Vitaly’s laptop towards himself, tilting the screen at Alexis so she could see. “We came in through this unpronounceable canal.” He traced his finger along the screen. “Now we’re in this unpronounceable portage. I just hope Marissa gave us the right coordinates.”

Another long, low rumble shuddered from underneath the submarine, louder than any previous.

“Now that was definitely a car,” said Alexis. “You better not screw up my prop shaft with debris.”

“It was maybe small car.” Vitaly smacked the side of his laptop, irritated that the depth sounder hadn’t warned him of the obstruction. “Only hatchback or coupe. No problem, da? We hit bus or big truck, then maybe you complain to Vitaly.”

A sound of shuffling plastic drifted up from the open hatch at Jonah’s feet as Marissa emerged onto the rain-drenched conning tower platform, her hair wrapped in a grocery bag secured by several fraying rubber bands. She reached back into the hatch and pulled up a bulky black duffel bag after her, throwing the strap around her shoulder.

“You look like old babushka,” observed Vitaly. “Why you have bag head?”

Marissa adjusted the strap. “Do you have any idea what this humidity is doing to my hair?” she demanded, pointing to her improvised plastic hat.

“Do you know where we’re going or not?” asked Jonah.

“That’s where the yakuza want to meet,” said Marissa, pointing to a slumping warehouse on the other end of the inlet. “I’ve been there a half dozen times on past deals.”

“Good place for trap, da?” noted Vitaly.

“No argument there,” said Jonah. “Do you think you can moor her against the closest pier?”

“Is no problem. Vitaly put Scorpion through eye of needle if captain says.”

The submarine was near the warehouse now, close enough to make out details in the rusting corrugated tin roof and the decaying concrete of the seawalls. Errant waves splashed over the bulwarks, but the flood tide itself remained at bay. Vitaly adjusted their speed and headed for the final approach, saddling the bulky submarine against the long, sagging pier. The bow vibrated slightly as the Scorpion came to a rest. One of the creaking dock posts shifted abruptly against the sudden weight, snapping without warning. A ten-foot section of the dock abruptly collapsed, one post snapping after another like slow-motion falling dominos until a full forty feet of dock had disappeared into the waters. Everyone on the conning tower winced as Jonah silently willed the destruction to stop. It felt like an eternity before the last section of weakened pier withstood total collapse. Less than a third of the original length was still intact.

“Goddamn it, Vitaly!” whispered Jonah, as though yelling would somehow trigger the remaining pier. “I said to moor us, not knock down the entire fucking dock!”

“It very weak!” shouted Vitaly, waving his arms in anger. “If Russian pier, no problem! Russian pier very strong! How Vitaly know Japanese pier are shit?”

“Your piers have to be strong,” snarled Jonah. “Because every single one of your pilots is a goddamn drunk. When will you figure out that we are not in Russia?”

Marissa rubbed her temples with the palms of both hands, teeth clenched in frustration. “Both of you. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.”

The entrance to the sagging warehouse began to open, effectively ending the argument. Two well-dressed men struggled against the sliding doors, forcing tracked wheels over decades of accumulated corrosion. A half dozen low-slung American sedans were inside, forming a semicircle of illuminated headlights. Several cigarette cherries hovered within, appearing and disappearing into the darkness with each drag.

“Should I do my princess wave?” Alexis asked. Nobody laughed.

Two of the yakuza gangsters emerged from the warehouse with a warped wooden gangplank slung between them. They dragged it partway up the aging pier, careful to stay well clear of the collapsed section. Jonah watched as they approached, their expensive suits soaked through to the skin, tattoos slick with rain. The men propped one end of the gangplank up against the pier, letting the other end fall and slap against the deck of the Scorpion. Then they turned and shuffled back to the warehouse without so much as a glance in Jonah’s direction.

“You think they’re pissed?” asked Alexis. “About the refugees and everything? I’d be pissed if I were them.”

“No,” whispered Jonah. “I doubt they’ll show it, but I’d guess they’re just as scared as us. There are big things happening, and even criminals care about the future of their country. Marissa — are you certain we can’t bring Dalmar? I wouldn’t mind a little backup in there.”

“They specifically told me not to bring the ‘big black one with all the guns.’ His etiquette was… well, let’s just say he doesn’t have any as far as they’re concerned.”

“How about Hassan? They seemed to get along with him well enough last time.”

She shook her head. “Just you and me. It’s their call. I can’t have you break terms before we even start talking— you have no idea what I had to promise to even get us this meeting.”

Jonah swung a leg over the side of the conning tower, his foot finding the top rung of the exterior ladder. He began to slowly descend, Marissa following from above. “You never told me how you originally hooked up with these guys.”

“You sure you still want to know?”

“Call me curious.”

“Well, the short version is that Dad’s ships sometimes mobilized for deep-sea operations out of Japanese ports. I made sure they arrived with a few extra crates of Sudafed, Vicks inhalers, Maxiflu, Dayquil, stuff like that. I had some friends who were always after over-the-counter cold and flu meds to re-sell on the black market.”

“Illegal? Or just tax evasion?”

“Illegal. Their government banned codeine and pseudoephedrine decades ago. But everybody still gets colds in Japan and they like the good stuff. I had more volume than my friends could handle, so they passed me up the chain to some gangland players. It was mutually beneficial arrangement for a while, and I even managed to bank some trust, most of which you’ve flushed away at this point. So thanks for that.”

Jonah paused at the foot of the gangplank before crossing to the pier, brow furrowed. He turned back to Marissa. “That doesn’t track. You went straight from smurfing contraband flu medicine — basically the jaywalking of drug dealing — to human trafficking? I think the short version of your story glosses over a step or two.”

Marissa defensively crossed her arms and cleared her throat. “There may have been a couple of… interim arrangements.”

Jonah couldn’t help but chuckle as he stepped onto the pier. “I won’t ask for details; I just have one last question. Does your bean-counter fiancé know he’s marrying Lady Scarface?”

“He’s not a — forget it,” Marissa huffed and ignored him for the rest of the short walk to the warehouse. Steeling himself, Jonah stepped into the darkness, his eyes meeting the short, bulky form of the yakuza boss standing silhouetted in the headlights before them. The boss stared unflinchingly towards Jonah and Marissa as they approached. The heavily tattooed gangsters on either side stood at the ready, the pistols in their tailored suits bulging and obvious. Jonah shook the rain off his collar as Marissa slipped the plastic bag from her head and stuffed it in a pocket, freeing her frizzy hair.

“Should I bow again?” asked Jonah.

“We’re a little past bowing at this point,” whispered Marissa. “But I hope you’re ready to kiss some serious ass.”

The boss spread his arms as he watched Jonah adjust his coat once more. “American fuckup Jonah Blackwell,” he said in broken English, barking the words through bared teeth. The details of his face revealed themselves once more, his deep, sunken eyes, his twin scars. Jonah glanced down, catching a glimpse of the now-familiar, nicotine-stained fingertips and missing pinky finger.

Not waiting for a response, the boss leaned over and spoke to his young translator, a man Jonah recognized from the Fukushima city park. The translator nodded and spoke. “He says we should have gone with our initial plan to skin you.”

“Probably would have saved us both some serious headache,” said Jonah. He helped lift the black duffel bag off Marissa’s shoulder, opened the flap, and slid it across the concrete towards the yakuza.

The gangster boss scowled, aiming one brief, disgusted glance at the bag’s contents before snapping a response in Japanese. “Why have you brought this?” asked the translator.

“Well,” began Jonah with a drawl. “A wise, merciful, forgiving, and all around tremendous guy — one of my favorite people in the world, really—”

“You’re rambling,” whispered Marissa, shooting him her get-on-with-it-already look.

“As I was saying,” continued Jonah. “This all-around fabulous person once told me that the world is too small to steal from the yakuza. As you can see, we came back sans cargo, due to a confluence of tragic and unforeseeable events outside our control. However, we did bring back your money. It’s all there, down to the last dime. So, I’d just like to take a moment and respectfully emphasize the fact that we are not stealing anything from you.”

The translator eyeballed his boss for a moment before stepping forward and responding unprompted. “We had a source aboard our navy’s missing helicopter carrier,” said the young man. “She reported you made an impressive attempt to slip away before—” There was an almost imperceptible pause in his speech. “Your guile was noteworthy. It may even have been convincing had they not previously established the identity of your submarine via satellite. We… regret… that we didn’t learn of our navy’s intentions in the area in time to call off your operation.”

A twinge of shared sadness flashed across Jonah’s face. “Did your friend make it?”

The translator lowered his head — Jonah could tell he didn’t know. The boss folded his arms without speaking.

“Perhaps yours is a strange question,” said the translator. “Given that you and your crew are believed responsible for the destruction of her ship.”

“If there was anything we could have done differently—” began Marissa. The yakuza boss lifted a single hand, cutting her off before she could utter another word. Jonah saw something in the man beneath the scars, beneath the tattoos — grief. The boss leaned over to the translator once more, giving the younger man a long, detailed message to relay.

“We find it unlikely that you are responsible for any attack against Japanese forces, or the loss of the men, women, and children under your purview. It appears you were caught up in events larger than yourself.”

“Totally,” said Jonah with a sigh of premature relief. He turned to Marissa. “Wasn’t I just saying that to you earlier today? Events larger than ourselves. Completely out of our hands.”

“Events much larger, yes,” continued the translator, “because he says you, Jonah Blackwell, are so small and insignificant. And puny.”

“And super annoying, too,” added Marissa. Jonah shot her a wounded look.

“Your lack of culpability aside, we have not yet reached a decision on what to do with you,” said the translator. “After all, our government would be highly appreciative if we turned you over to their custody.”

Jonah adopted his best intense stare, knowing full well that this would be the one and only chance he’d get to make his case. “But you’re not going to do that. You’re going to let us go.”

“Are we?”

“You are. And here’s why — because my crew found evidence that may well lead us to the men responsible for the vicious, unprovoked attacks against your country. I don’t know what this shadow organization has planned next, but my guess is it can’t be good for any of us. Know this — I fully intend to find these men, stop them, and, you know, bring them to justice or whatever.”

“And he sticks the landing,” whispered Marissa, rolling her eyes.

“Give us a chance to find out what happened,” pressed Jonah. “That’s all I’m asking for. And maybe a car. A fast one. I’ll bring it back in a couple hours. I totally promise.”

The translator cocked his head, skeptical.

Jonah stepped forward, arms open. The gangsters shifted uncomfortably, eyeing him with open mistrust. “Look — if we wanted to make a run for it, we’d be halfway around the world with your cash in tow,” said Jonah. “I wouldn’t be standing here asking to borrow a fucking Buick if it wasn’t important. Give me a chance to do what I do best — track down some assholes, wreck their shit, and fuck their day up.”

“So tell me, what will you do?” asked the translator.

“I’m going to kidnap a Fortune 500 CEO and beat some goddamn answers out of him. And then I’m going to leverage him as a hostage.”

Baffled, the translator relayed the message. A murmur went around the dozen collected gangsters, slowly metastasizing into stifled chuckles, and finally, genuine laughter.

“I think I’m losing the audience,” whispered Jonah.

“Don’t be so sure,” said Marissa, eyebrows raised. “A little bravado goes a long way in their circles.”

The short, muscled boss stepped forward and gregariously slapped Jonah on the shoulder before shouting one last order to his men.

“Are we good?” asked Jonah, turning to Marissa with concern in his eyes. “I kind of feel like I’m not being taken seriously. I told you we should have brought Dalmar.”

“He likes your plan,” said the translator. “He says it is the plan of a yakuza. He’ll have one of his men lend you a vehicle. He says to bring it back with a full tank of gasoline and no scratches. He’s joking — but I’d still do it if I were you.”

The yakuza boss pointed at one of his underlings, holding his finger outstretched until the subordinate gangster reluctantly threw Jonah the keys to his late-model American sedan. The assembled criminals began to retreat to the respective cars, starting them one by a one with a chorus of throaty eight-cylinder roars.

“Great!” Jonah said, turning to Marissa and rubbing his palms together. “Let’s go get the crew and hit the road. The sooner we reach SABC headquarters the better.” Marissa looked at him with far-away eyes. “You don’t understand—” she looked at the yakuza boss. Then she turned back, grasped Jonah’s hand, and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m not going back with you. They need collateral.”

“What the hell do you mean, collateral?”

“I’m going with them.” She pulled her hand away and started toward the line of cars. “So tell the crew goodbye for me.”

He grabbed her arm. “Goddamn it, Marissa, nobody asked you to promise this! You could have warned me. Don’t go with them.”

“You don’t have to worry about me. I’ve known these guys for a long time.” She pried his fingers from her arm. “Find the answers. I believe in you, Jonah. Go figure this thing out.”

CHAPTER 20

Freya floored the accelerator of the stolen hybrid, hurtling through the darkened intersections of glassy, rain-slicked central Tokyo. She gripped the wheel with both hands, pulse pounding in her ears, muscles twitching in primeval fight-or-flight overdrive as she easily overtook the few other cars on the road. Her wipers struggled against the deluge, turning her windshield into a kaleidoscope of headlights, darkness, and strobe-like lightning. Her wet skin scratched uncomfortably against the bare fabric seats, the soaked fabric of her hospital gown plastered against her chest and legs.

The GPS screen on the windshield continued to chirp merrily, guiding her through the downtown maze of streets. Passing seemingly endless rows of towering skyscrapers, it finally instructed her to turn. Almost there. She wrenched the wheel a moment later, sending the hybrid into a long, tooth-rattling slide over glistening asphalt, computerized traction systems struggling to keep the vehicle under control. The SABC headquarters ahead took up an entire city block, neon logo shining brightly from a tall perch nearly thirty stories up, tiered glass-and-steel façade extended to the street level like a futuristic ziggurat.

The hybrid howled pitifully as she pressed her bare foot on the plastic accelerator, pushing a few last watts out of the underpowered engine as she bore down on the building. The few lingering pedestrians on the sidewalk scattered at the last possible moment, throwing themselves out of the way as her two front tires hit the curb square on. The car launched cockeyed into the air. The airbags went off simultaneously, a hot blast between her forearms ripping her white-knuckled fingers from the steering wheel a microsecond before burying her face into a suffocating pillow of white. The hybrid slammed into the ground a second later, its blown-out rims digging a deep gouge in the pavement as the car slid into the revolving-door entrance. The hood hit first, shattered architectural glass pouring through the ruined windshield as the twisted metal hulk shrieked to a halt halfway inside the building. Sparkling glass and bent brass fixtures lay scattered, the crash site surrounded by shocked umbrella-toting onlookers in dark business suits.

Freya tried the driver’s side door, but it was wedged high against a metal beam, the window blocked as well. She slid over the center console, bracing herself against the seat as she planted her powerful legs against the passenger door and pushed. It wrenched open with a long, sad creak, and she stepped out onto the pavement strewn with broken glass. The car was suspended on two shredded wheels; the mechanical clicking of the cooling gasoline engine barely audible over the patter of rain on concrete.

The lobby was a classic example of corporate modernist architecture — towering windows and marble pillars, devoid of art or color. A long picket line of glass security turnstiles neatly divided the room in half, separating Freya from the twin escalators and elevator bank on the other side. Her dramatic entrance had achieved its intended effect — the half-dozen, grey-shirted security guards stood paralyzed, mouths hanging open as they watched her claw her way out of the ruined hybrid. She paused for a moment, bending down to pick up a long aluminum pipe from the debris-covered marble tile. Freya passed the pipe from hand to hand, gaining a sense of its weight and balance. Satisfied, she pointed to the largest of the guards, daring him to approach. Her vision narrowed, pulse once more joyously pounding in her ears.

Focus. Breathe in. Breathe out. Get ready to fight.

She didn’t need to see the man rushing her from behind. Her instincts guided her from the first sound of approaching footsteps. Turning to face him mid-swing, the aluminum pipe vibrated in her hands as it connected squarely with her attacker’s jaw, and rung with a sickening, wet crack. The other guards charged from all sides, the fight devolving into an indistinguishable flurry of metal and blood as the pipe landed on flesh again and again.

Focus.

Breathe in hatred.

Breathe out fire.

She no longer needed the mantra to direct her fury; her body moved in flawless synchronicity, the blood-flecked pipe an extension of herself. Freya screamed, her voice unintelligible as she crushed a guard’s eye socket with bare knuckles before burying the rounded-off end of the pipe into the forehead of a second, watching as their bodies crumpled before her wrath. Only one guard remained, frozen between advancing and retreating, wobbling feet failing him as he fumbled with his radio, unable to find the transmit button through his paralyzing terror. She smashed the end of her pipe into his chest like a home run derby all-star, sending him flying backwards and through the glass turnstile. He fell as though in slow motion, twisting in a cascade of falling diamonds.

Freya stepped over the destroyed turnstile, hem of her hospital gown swaying as she moved. She bent over the collapsed man, grasped the security pass around his neck with her fingers. She gave it an experimental tug, but the magnetic card wouldn’t part from its lanyard. The guard had buttoned it the grey epaulettes of his uniform.

It didn’t matter. She just needed the pass. The badly-injured man could come along for the ride without slowing her down. Freya dragged him by his lanyard, his limp body gliding across the cool, polished tiles towards an open elevator at the end of the long bank. She glanced at the buttons, using a bloodied hand to request the penthouse. A small yellow indicator light patiently blinked until she waved the guard’s magnetic card below it, satisfying the automated security procedure. The elevator doors closed as she released the lanyard, letting the guard slump into the corner of the elevator, breathing, but unconscious.

Focus. Hatred. Fire. Lies.

The maddening, twinkling pop music was barely audible over the ragged breath in her lungs, the pounding heartbeat in her ears.

The doors opened with a gentle chime, revealing the partially-darkened penthouse, a tastefully designed expanse of frosted glass and empty conference rooms. The corporate hierarchy was made clear by the long, narrow hallway leading to a single office at the far end of the expansive floor, the surrounding décor all gently leading the eye towards its ornate doors. Well-designed buildings always had a way of telling you who was in charge.

Freya stepped from the elevator without casting a backwards glance towards the injured security guard. A general alarm began to sound from the public address system, strobe lights accompanied by a soothing, authoritative voice she couldn’t understand. The few staff that had braved the storm to come to work began to emerge from their glassy offices, casting worried glances towards Freya as they flowed around her like a human river.

She walked towards the main office with a slow deliberateness, leaving a bloody path on the carpet from the cuts on the soles of her bare feet. Silently rotating on perfectly oiled hinges, the heavy, ornate metal doors swung open revealing a massive corner office surrounded on two sides by floor-to-ceiling glass and antique art.

An older man glanced up from behind his desk as she entered, shock and confusion written on his face. She could only imagine how she looked — probably a full six inches taller than him, heavily muscled compared to his slight build. Her pale skin was still wet, her long blond dreadlocks dripped, and her stained hospital gown was soaked and smeared with blood. Crimson rivers from her split knuckles turned to smears on her wrists and forearms. She clutched the aluminum pipe in one hand before setting it behind her shoulders like a yoke, and waited for him to make the first move.

The man was older than her grandfather, but stood upright with unmistakable authority, his intelligent eyes sharp and penetrating. He shot a look from her to his desk phone, hand reaching out to pick up the receiver. Freya closed the gap between them before he could dial a single number, bringing the pipe down on the keypad with all her strength. It exploded into shattered plastic and circuit board as he jerked back in surprise. She leapt across the desk, grabbing his collar with both hands and hauling him bodily off his office chair. Her eyes darted across his desk, passing clear Lucite awards and mahogany plaques, commemorative paperweights, photos, family souvenirs. She reached towards the nearest of his framed photographs, knocking aside images of his family, vacations, and corporate retreats.

And then she found it — a photo of Yasua Himura, blind eyes unseeing yet smiling, as he posed next to the grandfatherly man she held by the lapels. A satisfied smile crept across her face and she dropped the aluminum pipe on the carpeted floor. The man began to struggle as she cocked back a fist, preparing to beat him unconscious with her bare hands.

A short, sharp whistle rang out from behind her. Freya whipped around, sweeping the old man into a choking headlock, teeth gritted as her muscles strained against his struggling. She saw the pistol first, the glint of nickel-plated steel held with unwavering intent. Instantaneously reacting on mere reflex alone, she hefted the CEO in front of her as a human shield. The CEO’s head lolled — she’d inadvertently put too much pressure on his carotid artery, knocking him out. Still, she held onto him.

Freya eyed the man behind the pistol. He was tall, over six feet, dressed in a yellow rain slicker and heavy boots. He’d pulled his hood back, revealing a gaunt, bearded face with a fading tan, close-cropped blond hair, and piercing, animalistic eyes that seemed to cut right through her. She grasped the CEO by the back of his belted suit pants and braced her bare feet against the soft carpet. And then she hurled him across the room.

The intruder barely had a chance to get a protective shoulder between himself and the unconscious CEO before he was hit with nearly a hundred and fifty pounds of flopping deadweight, knocking him to the floor. He grunted, tried to wrestle the body off of him, and point his pistol towards her once more.

She wouldn’t give him a chance. Freya flung herself headlong toward the intruder, slamming him to the ground and burying a fist between his eyes before he could bring up a forearm to block the blow. Swearing, the lanky intruder twisted his weapon toward her, trying to bring the pistol muzzle under control. Her hand met his wrist the instant before he pulled the trigger. A deafening pop-poppop erupted between them. A singed, blond dreadlock fell to the carpet, severed by the near miss as microscopic gunpowder particles burned the skin of her exposed neck. The smell of cordite drifted from the hot metal barrel.

Infuriated and now straddling the man, Freya pinned the intruder’s shoulders to the ground. He punched her repeatedly with his free hand as she struggled with his weapon, his fists landing hard against her ribs and exposed stomach. Sweat and rainwater dripped from her forehead, obscuring her vision as she twisted her thumb inside the pistol’s trigger guard. She yanked back, the next deafening blast annihilating a ceiling tile and sending a rain of debris down on them as she bent his hyperextended wrist away from her. The pistol went off again, twice, three times. Bullets shattered two tall panes of the floor-to-ceiling windows. The heavy glass fell in broken sheets, and howling wind filled the plush office with torrents of half-frozen rain.

Freya cocked her hand back and slammed a single bloody fist into the intruder’s face, sending him reeling as he slid out from underneath her. Wobbling to his feet, he barely had time to raise his pistol before she tackled him, slamming him into the wet carpet once more. They were pressed against each other now, writhing with punches and kicks, neither able to land a fight-ending blow.

Sirens and gunshots drifted up from street level. She used the momentary distraction to shove the muzzle of the pistol against the side of his head and clumsily jam her thumb against the trigger. His eyes went wide as the gun clicked. Empty. Visibly shaken, the intruder allowed the pistol to fly from his hand as she violently kicked at it with a bare foot, sending the shiny weapon tumbling out of the window and into thirty stories of nothingness below.

She had her hands around his throat now, squeezing against his windpipe. Pinned helplessly underneath her, the bulging-eyed man gritted his teeth, desperation in his eyes as she watched him die. Freya willed him to give up, succumb to the inevitable.

Focus on the eyes. Breathe in pain. Breathe out death.

Movement — his knee slid up and underneath her ribcage. The intruder braced himself and used his legs to flip her entire body off of his, and send her flying through the air before landing hard on wet carpet and broken glass. Freya was on her hands and knees like a cat, but not quite fast enough. Already up, the intruder spun around and kicked her hard in the side of the face with his shinbone. She careened backwards, tumbling out of the broken window and into the void. Barely conscious, she flailed and reached toward the sill, almost catching the edge but slipping again with the stomach-churning lurch of free fall. But then she caught fast. Something stopped her. She swung back like a pendulum before slamming her legs against the glass exterior of the skyscraper.

Freya slowly came to her senses, barely aware of the strong hand holding her wrist. She hung limply, swaying from side to side in the wind and freezing rain. The intruder had half his body and one arm hanging out of the broken window, his eyes wild and bloodshot as he collected himself, nose broken and bleeding, swelling bruises already developing around his trachea. Another few seconds straddling him and she would have crushed his windpipe for good.

The intruder watched as she rocked back and forth in the wind, blood flowing from her palms and through his gripping white-knuckled fingers. She tried to grasp at the window ledge, but her sliced-up hands couldn’t grip the tooth-like shards of broken glass.

Swearing, the intruder shoved his foot against the base of the window and began to pull, using all his strength to slowly winch her back into the plush office. With one last strained grunt, he yanked her body up and over the edge, leaving her to flop onto the wet carpet beside him, both laying on their backs as they struggled to catch gasping breaths.

He spoke first, finding his words through ragged coughs. “Is it just me, or would it be totally weird to keep fighting at this point?”

Freya tried to answer but couldn’t. Air caught in her burning lungs as she attempted to slow her pounding heart. Every part of her body hurt.

“I could be done,” she finally said.

He held his side and winced. She’d clearly broken one or more of his ribs.

“Good. Because I’m not sure how much more of this I have in me. Holy fuck, you’re strong. Like, Ivan Drago from Rocky III strong.”

“Drago was in Rocky IV,” corrected Freya. “Mr. T was in Rocky III. I’m, like, eighty percent sure.” The pair lay in awkward silence for a few more moments, listening to sirens and the intermittent retort of gunfire far below.

The intruder took a moment to consider her response before speaking again. “I don’t want to jump to conclusions here, but were you trying to kidnap the chief executive officer of SABC Industries?”

“Yeah,” said Freya. She glanced around the office before looking back to the intruder. The CEO was nowhere in sight. “But it looks like you let him get away. What’s it to you?”

He ignored her question. “What exactly were you going to do once you had him? Given the whole bare-assed, escaped-mental patient look you got going on, I’m going to hazard a guess that your plan didn’t include a ‘part two’.”

“I would have figured something out,” grunted Freya as she turned to look at him, simultaneously drawn to and made uncomfortable by his penetrating eyes. More gunfire sounded from the ground floor.

“That’s the sound of my people keeping the cops at bay,” said the intruder, pointing his finger down towards the sounds. “They’re waiting for me, but I’m not sure how long they’ll be able to hold out. I don’t know exactly what your deal is, but let’s get out of here before any more reinforcements arrive. We can figure out whether or not we’re on the same side later. I have a feeling you don’t want to wait for the cavalry any more than I do.”

Freya eyed him suspiciously. “You got a getaway car?”

“My name is Jonah Blackwell,” he said, his grin shockingly white below his two blackening eyes and broken nose. He seemed to have trouble breathing, each breath faster and shallower than the one before. “And, no, I don’t have a getaway car. I have a motherfucking getaway submarine.”

CHAPTER 21

Jonah’s chest rose and fell to the near-silent vibration of the Scorpion’s engines, his swollen eyes too heavy to open. He shifted in his bunk as a fresh wave of pain washed over his body. Every inch of him hurt. It hurt to clear his throat, wiggle an eyebrow, tongue the roof of his mouth. Jonah tried to raise his palm to his face, but stopped as a jabbing spasm radiated across his ribcage. His fingers crawled up towards his bare chest, crossing over his undone belt. He could feel the bandages over his ribs as he moved his hand to his pectorals, fingertips caressing a strip of wet plastic taped to his chest. The plastic went taut when he breathed in, tight against his skin, but gently fluttered as he exhaled. A fresh drip of warm liquid ran down the length of his abdomen. He opened his eyes slowly, fuzzy and useless as they drifted to a hanging IV bag before closing again.

He counted backwards from five, willing himself to open his eyes against the pain. It was easier this time, the harsh fluorescent lights muted, the surrounding room coming into focus. He’d been left in Hassan and Alexis’ cabin, alone in their tiny bed. He noticed with a pang of embarrassment that his broken nose had bled profusely across their sheets, staining them badly.

The homey cabin smelled like them, albeit with the taint of antiseptic and rubbing alcohol. Jonah let his gaze pan across the small space, taking in details he’d never bothered to notice before. There was an old Polaroid camera on a small shelf beside several selfie-style photos of them together. They’d taken no more than a single picture at a time, carefully conserving the scant film as they traveled across the Pacific Ocean. The doctor had painted things for her as well — colorful Moroccan designs on shells next to a lovingly rendered portrait, every detail of her smiling face reproduced with careful brushstrokes. The flowers he’d picked for her on the mysterious island had begun to wither, she’d removed them from water and hung them upside down to dry and preserve.

Jonah’s pearl-handled pistol awkwardly completed the ensemble as it lay next to a wooden bowl of ripening wild fruits. Maybe Dalmar retrieved it after it had gone flying out of the skyscraper window. He didn’t reach for it, but simply knowing it was there was a comfort of sorts, an understanding that some minor order could be returned to a chaotic universe.

The cabin door creaked open as Hassan let himself in without knocking. The doctor looked no worse for wear himself. His face was covered with a number of small adhesive bandages and still-blossoming purple bruises. He carried a tablet computer in one hand, and his well-worn medical kit in the other.

“I’m happy to see you awake,” Hassan said with a smile. He spoke slowly, careful not to presume that all of Jonah’s faculties had returned. “You’ve been out for nearly three hours.”

“And I’m happy you managed to drag my broken-down ass back to the Scorpion.” Jonah could barely get the words out through his half-crushed windpipe. “We’re still floating, so I’ll take that as a good sign. What’s the latest?”

“We’ll soon exit Tokyo harbor,” said Hassan. “Between the commotion created by the storm and the gathering fleet, Vitaly believes we will not be detected as we slip out to sea.”

“So what happened to me? One minute I couldn’t quite catch my breath — and the next I was out cold.”

“Broken rib and punctured lung,” said Hassan. “Your chest cavity was filling up with leaking air with every inhalation — you were essentially suffocating from the inside out. I managed to release the pressure before your lung collapsed. I took the further liberty of administering a general anesthetic to keep you under while I added a plastic dressing to your upper thorax that would prevent the cavity from re-filling. The dressing should suffice for now; at least until the wound begins to naturally heal. You’ll need a thorough course of antibiotics as soon as you’re able to eat. I’ll prescribe some painkillers as well. The punctured lung was far from the only injury you sustained.”

Jonah’s eyes closed momentarily and then opened, refocusing on the doctor. “Bottom line is that you poked a new hole in me. Is that about right?”

“Indeed. And as I did not have the medically correct implement on hand, I’d rather not go into how the procedure was performed.”

Jonah wrinkled his nose, trying not to imagine. If Hassan didn’t want to tell him, he was probably better off not knowing. “Any other updates?” His voice was no more than a rough croak, and his chest hurt with every spoken syllable.

“There’s a woman with us. She calls herself Freya, not that we could verify that — or anything about her, for that matter.”

“Freya.” Jonah awkwardly rolled the name around his mouth, his words lost to the gentle hum of the submarine’s electric engines. “Fre-ya. Freeeeeeeeya.”

“I must admit, she strikes a rather unconventional figure.”

“Where is she now?”

“She’s been confined to your quarters.”

“Good. Locked from the outside, I assume.”

“Of course. And Dalmar has been stationed on the other side of the door. I didn’t want to take any chances after seeing what she’d done to you — and with bare hands alone — a fact that Dalmar found quite amusing.”

Jonah ignored the last part of the update. “I don’t suppose we managed to get the SABC CEO aboard? You know, the whole point of coming to Tokyo?”

“Unfortunately, no. Freya carried you out of the penthouse alone. It’s the only reason we allowed her aboard the Scorpion.”

“I remember sirens — did the escape back to the sub go okay? And were you able to return the sedan to the yakuza? I hope you didn’t just abandon it on some corner where it’d get towed or stolen or whatever.”

The doctor shot him a pained look and pulled the tablet computer out from behind his back. “I’m not sure if I can adequately explain what happened. The Scorpion recorded some footage of the chase — perhaps you’d best see for yourself.”

A soundless video flashed into view, a fish-eyed perspective shot from one of the conning tower cameras. The Scorpion plunged headlong through a narrow canal with roadway on either side. The borrowed yakuza sedan slid into view on the left, pursued by black SUVs, as more police cars paralleled on the other side, firing at their quarry through open windows. The powerful sedan hesitated for a moment before surging forward over the curb, wheel yanked hard over as it smashed through a metal railing. Soaring through the air over the canal, the car did a hard belly flop onto the deck of the Scorpion, sliding to a stop with wheels hanging over either side of the hull.

Jonah’s eyes went wide as he watched Alexis stagger from the driver’s seat and to the deck hatch. Dalmar and Freya followed, dragging Jonah’s unconscious body with them. Hassan barely escaped a tidal wave of white foam as the submarine began to dive, the surge hurling the badly damaged sedan across the deck and off the side moments after the hatch closed.

“You don’t see that every day,” Jonah marveled as the tablet went dark once more. He caught a glimpse of himself in the blank, reflective glass — his eyes were both black and puffy, his splinted, tape-covered nose bloody and nearly twice its usual size.

“Quite. I believe it may be some time before any of the crew is comfortable allowing Alexis to drive again.” The doctor reached down and disconnected the long IV line, securing the hollow needle embedded in the back of Jonah’s hand with a strip of medical tape. He silently prepared a shot, lifted Jonah’s arm and pressed the syringe directly into Jonah’s injured ribs. “I gave you something to counteract the pain,” he said. “You’ll feel fairly well for the next few hours.”

“And then?”

“You’ll feel terrible. I recommend as much bed rest as is possible under the present circumstances. I took the liberty of re-aligning your nasal septum while you were unconscious as well — it was quite badly broken.”

“Thanks,” said Jonah. He unconsciously reached up with one hand to touch the tape over the bridge of his nose; it still felt loose, swollen. It’d take time to heal, time he wasn’t sure he had. “Did Freya say anything to the crew?”

“Barely a word. She stated in no uncertain terms she’d only speak with you, and that she was quite happy to wait until you were awake, however long that might be.”

“Gotcha,” said Jonah. “But she’s not my first priority right now. I’m going to need to check in with the rest of the crew first. It’s too bad our mutual kidnapping plans failed. It was a decent enough idea.”

“Given the amount of attention our presence attracted, the man was no doubt quite valuable.”

“It’s not a total loss. I’m willing to guess she has pieces of the puzzle that we don’t. Maybe we can put our heads together and come up with a clearer picture what we’re up against.”

“I’m not certain I would be quite so forgiving — the woman beat you to within an inch of your life.”

“It’s not forgiveness,” said Jonah as he gently touched his still-swelling black eyes. “It’s pragmatism. We’re pawns in this game — not players — and by the looks of things, she was just as played as we were.”

The doctor shrugged. “I could only speculate.”

Jonah drew himself up to a sitting position with a grunt. He allowed himself a few moments of dizziness, eyes closed once more, before grasping at the narrow doorframe and dragging himself to his feet. With the doctor at his side, he staggered over the cabin threshold and into the narrow corridor that connected the length of the submarine.

“Steady on!” said Hassan, throwing a supportive hand underneath Jonah’s armpit, holding him up as he swayed from side to side.

“I’m good; I’m good,” grunted Jonah as he used the corridor wall to steady himself. “Got any stronger pain meds? Like maybe something meant for horses?”

“Yes — but not if you want to stay on your feet.”

Jonah frowned and muttered his annoyance. He looked into the command compartment and picked out the empty chair at the communications console. With one final burst of energy, he limped towards it and flopped down, letting out a long, slow wheeze of relief as he leaned his head back to rest.

Vitaly barely looked up from his computer. “Your solution always crash,” complained the Russian, waving his hands in the air with open frustration. “Crash submarine into door, crash truck into ocean, crash big ship into big island, now crash car into Scorpion.”

“I can’t take credit for that,” said Jonah as he leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs over the low desk. “Alexis was driving. I wasn’t even conscious.”

“You bad influence. Still your fault.”

“I’m going to go forward, get some antibiotics,” said Hassan, excusing himself with an amused smile.

Jonah heard the heavy thump of steel-toed boots as Alexis approached from the engine compartment. “Nice driving, Tex,” said Jonah over his shoulder. “I always wanted to die in my sleep.”

“You’d better not be making fun of me,” said Alexis, crossing her arms. “I should have listened to my mom and gone to law school. Lawyers don’t shoot at people, or get chased around the whole goddamn ocean by the Japanese navy. Lawyers don’t crash stolen cars onto submarines on purpose to flee the cops.”

“It was borrowed, not stolen.”

“Law school maybe not better,” said Vitaly. “Too many lawyer in America. Drive down salary. But smuggling is growth market.”

“See?” said Jonah. “You’re in a growth market. Even Vitaly says so.”

Vitaly didn’t laugh. He instead swiveled from his console and grabbed submarine’s control yoke with one hand, using the other to furiously type a systems diagnostic command into his keyboard.

“What’s wrong?”

“I feel resistance,” he said. “Unusual vibration, drag on yoke.”

“Did we pick up some debris in the harbor?” asked Alexis. “Maybe some floating rope or a commercial fishing net?”

“I do not know,” said Vitaly. He reset the system, nodding pensively as he experimentally tugged at the control yoke again. The Scorpion responded easily to his touch. “I think maybe fixed?”

Then the submarine began to abruptly tilt, a little shift at first, but was quickly followed by a sharp lurch. “We’re yawing,” said Alexis. “I can feel it, too. We need to re-trim.”

“Trim is within usual parameter,” said Vitaly. The yoke began to buck and jerk in his hands. “This should not happen. Something wrong.”

The yoke suddenly ripped itself out of Vitaly’s grasp, moving on its own as it slammed into the metal guard welded to the deck. The submarine teetered into a lazy, descending corkscrew, nosing down sharply. Jonah tumbled out of his chair and onto the deck as the other two struggled to hold onto anything they could grab.

“I have lost control!” said Vitaly, straining against the yoke with both hands, ass on the deck, feet splayed. Jonah crawled up beside him and shoved his shoulder into the metal stalk, trying to force the yoke upright. The command compartment running lights flickered and died, leaving them in darkness until the emergency lighting erupted in red. Alarm klaxons began to blare, only adding to the chaos.

Alexis stared at the rebooted navigation console in horror. “The conning tower hatch release has been triggered!” she shouted. “The computer is trying to open it!”

Jonah’s mind reeled. “Flood the ballast tanks!” he ordered, his shoulder still underneath the yoke. “Take us deeper!”

“Are you insane?” screamed Alexis. “Deeper?”

“Do it now!” said Jonah. “The only thing keeping those hatches closed is water pressure. We need as much as possible to work against the hydraulics — we get too close to the surface and we’re fucking dead!”

Swearing in disbelief, Alexis entered the commands. The submarine’s nose lurched downwards once more, sending Jonah’s stomach into his throat as the Scorpion spun ever deeper into the harbor, hull moaning like a wounded animal.

“Passing four hundred feet! Four hundred fifty!” shouted Vitaly.

Alexis grabbed her monitor in fury, shaking it violently. “I’m locked out — I can’t override the hatch command!”

Jonah looked up the conning tower shaft to see the hatch. It flexed, hydraulics straining against the increasing exterior pressure. A single jet of aerosolized water hissed from the rim, condensing into a steady trickle of foamy seawater. The stream flowed down the interior ladder, dripping salty water onto Jonah’s forehead from above.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM. One after another, the internal bulkhead doors began to slam shut on their own, metal hinges squealing as they sealed themselves automatically.

“Internal communications are offline!” Alexis typed ineffectually at the console keypad before smashing at it with balled fists. “We can’t talk with any other compartment.”

“What the fuck is happening to my sub?” demanded Jonah.

A massive whooshing sound erupted from all around, shaking every inch of the Scorpion. “Tanks have blown! We’re going up again!” shouted Vitaly.

PIIING-PIIING-PIIING-PIIING-PIIIING—a non-stop gong of sonar pulses reverberated and echoed throughout the sealed compartments, drowning out the blaring klaxons and howling system failure alarms. Jonah cupped his hands to protect his hearing. His eardrums felt like they were about to implode. The navigation computer picked up the ricocheting acoustic signals, painting a vivid green 3D wireframe model of the rock-strewn harbor seafloor and gathering naval fleet above. The sub suddenly jolted from its corkscrew, turning to lock laser-like on a massive, bulbous fuel ship. The Scorpion’s diesel engines roared to life, supplementing the power of her electric drive. Jonah’s ears popped as the thirsty diesels inhaled cabin air, belching exhaust through an emergency shunt into the submarine’s interior. Coal-black smoke poured from every ventilation duct, filling the compartment with choking, sulfuric gas.

“I’ve lost all control!” shouted Vitaly, trying in vain to shove the control yoke over and somehow alter their course as they raced towards the surface.

Jonah heard the sound of protesting metal as the bulkhead door behind him began to open. Through sheer force of will and muscle, Freya wrenched the heavy steel against frozen hydraulics. She wedged herself halfway through before Jonah and Alexis scrambled to her aid, holding it open so she could slip through.

“Help me!” Vitaly shouted from beneath his own console. Freya sprinted across the room and slammed her shoulders into the control yoke beside him, trying to somehow push the submarine off its suicidal course. Her added strength forced a wobble into the rudder, slowing the submarine to a violent shake.

“I’ve seen this before!” she shouted, one eye locked on the looming fleet above, muscles straining against the yoke. “Your computer network is fucked — disconnect it now!”

“We cannot do this — the server run everything!” protested Vitaly. “Let me re-set system!”

“It won’t work! Disconnect before it’s too late!” shouted Freya.

Jonah ripped a hand-held radio out of the nearest desk, depressing the talk button. “Any crew near the engine compartment, disconnect the central server!” he shouted. Only hissing static answered him. He shot a worried glance at the communications console — the Scorpion’s radio transmitter had autonomously matched his frequency, drowning it out in white noise. He began to cough, barely able to see through the thick, choking diesel exhaust pouring from the vents, clutching the plastic valve Hassan had dug into his chest. “Alexis, you’re with me — engine room, now!”

The yoke jerked free, throwing Vitaly to the deck as Freya gritted her teeth and braced her feet, still trying to change the direction of the hurtling Scorpion. The wobble evened out as the submarine picked up speed once more, surging towards impact. Jonah and Alexis pried open the bulkhead door to the crew quarters, forcing themselves through before it could slam shut behind them.

“How long do we have?” said Alexis, breathless in the thick smoke.

“Two minutes before impact — tops,” said Jonah, gasping. He crawled forward in the dark, airless corridor, running face-first into Dalmar’s sprawled body. Sun-Hi wore an oxygen hood as she stood over the unconscious pirate, fruitlessly trying to drag his body away from the engine room and to safety.

Jonah ignored them both as he and Alexis pried open the bulkhead hatch to the engine compartment and forced their way in. Alexis led, feeling her way past the battery banks and the deafening engines.

“It’s down here!” she shouted, her voice all but lost to the roar. She slammed her palm against the metal deck grating to indicate the location of the server. Jonah wrapped his fingers around the metal and together they lifted, pulling the section of grating off, and leaning it against the battery bank. Both dropped into the crawlspace below, landing hard atop the thick electrical wires surrounding the hot, humming computer. Jonah tried to pull the wiring free, bare hands straining against the unyielding cables. Alexis unscrewed the thickest electrical cord and shoved it hard against the CPU. Jonah smelled ozone and burnt air as the arcing line connected, sending a spider web of electricity across the server as the dim lights around them flickered and died. The engines seized a second later, the churning din replaced with total silence as the Scorpion drifted unpowered beneath the waves. Jonah’s still-ringing ears picked up the faint grinding of the rudder and stabilizers shifting, no doubt altering their course away from the tanker.

Sun-Hi’s masked face appeared above them through the sooty clouds as she dropped two oxygen hoods to Jonah and Alexis. They both slipped them on. “What now?” said Alexis, voice muffled by thick plastic.

“We search every inch of the Scorpion, inside and out,” said Jonah. “We find what did this.”

Jonah swam alongside the matte-black hull of the submerged Scorpion, suspended in darkness. He let his powerful flashlight play against her sides, feeling the awkward position of the heavy crowbar in his weight belt. Vitaly had settled the Scorpion on a patch of muddy bottom just fifty feet from the surface of the storm-wracked harbor, uncomfortably close to the traffic above. There were dozens of churning ships above; the nearest silhouetted in the stormy moonlight, all weighed down with arms and men. It was a haphazard collection — destroyers and their escorts, minesweepers, patrol ships, fuel tanker, and troop-laden civilian pleasure-cruisers.

He inhaled against his scuba regulator, listening to the Darth Vader-like sound of hissing clean air. The crew was still stuck searching the submarine interior, which began with a very thorough examination of anything Freya had touched. He doubted she was responsible. After all, she would have died with the rest of them, but he wasn’t in the mood to take chances. His crew had shut down nearly every system with the sole exception of air filtration as they slowly brought the carbon monoxide down to a safe level.

Hassan had all but thrown a fit when he learned of Jonah’s plans to inspect the submarine’s exterior, giving him a laundry list of potential dangers relating to his broken ribs and punctured lung. But it’d likely take him weeks to completely heal, weeks they simply didn’t have. Jonah made a mental note to start training someone else as a diver, at least for the easy jobs like this.

He shone his flashlight across the last of the starboard hull, carefully looking for any unexplained objects or unexpected damage. It was all taking longer than he’d hoped. Large swaths of the sub were a mess of missing paint, deep scratches, and warped metal; the weeks since her recent retrofit had been absolutely brutal. He tried the receiver in his built-in radio, but heard nothing but warbling, artificial static in return. Whatever had taken over their computers was still jamming the signal.

Jonah did a lazy barrel roll as he contemplated the situation. The Scorpion had been significantly upgraded since falling into mercenary hands: computers, consoles, and general system automation reducing the necessary number of crew. By his calculations, she might have once sailed with forty men or more. But the new systems meant it could be manned by a handful, including some with no prior experience aboard any vessel much less a submarine.

He gave the massive propellers a wide berth as he passed, reminding himself that they still might churn to life on their own, sucking him into the blades. His light was powerful enough for a detailed inspection even at a distance, and he soon eliminated the stern and moved onto the port hull.

And then he saw it. A multi-segmented metallic device measuring nearly six feet in length clamped to the side of the submarine. The damned thing looked like a lamprey. It was almost more insectoid than mechanical, glinting as it slowly swayed in the current. Jonah swam close to it, feeling the heat rising from its reflective skin. He ran a cautious hand along the length of its exoskeleton; recoiling as the metal shivered to his sudden touch. Jonah slipped the edge of his crowbar between the device and the hull, preparing to pry it off when it suddenly disengaged on its own, wriggling away into the brackish waters. He was barely able to reach out and grab it by the tail, holding it fast before it could escape into the darkness and disappear forever.

Jonah dropped the flashlight, watching the bulb slowly rotate to the ocean floor as he was physically dragged away from the Scorpion. He cocked back the crowbar like a spear before jamming the end into the largest seam in the metallic exoskeleton. The thrashing device twisted in his grasp as he slowly drove the metal crowbar deeper and deeper into its soft carapace.

The device twisted, reared back and shuddered one last time before going limp in his hand. Jonah looked around, realizing with surprise that he’d been dragged nearly a hundred feet from the now-distant Scorpion. Fortunately, the abandoned dive light penetrated the dark waters like a fog-shrouded lighthouse. Just visible enough to lead him back to the stern of the submarine. Swimming down to retrieve the lost light, Jonah was able to take a closer look at the device. His flashlight glinted off its articulated shell, the sharp, tooth-like spikes from where it’d bitten into the side of his submarine. He supposed the real secrets probably lay inside its electronic guts — Vitaly could take a closer look once he was back inside. At least it wasn’t trying to wriggle free anymore. The crowbar seemed to have disabled it for good.

Jonah glanced down at his dive watch. He cocked his head to the side, confused. All the numbers were wrong, the tiny computer advising a decompression schedule three times faster than he’d anticipated — deadly if he followed its instructions. Cornered and wounded, the mysterious device had made one last effort to kill him.

Stepping down the last few rungs of the conning tower ladder, Jonah lowered himself into the command compartment, the lamprey-like metal device slung limply around his shoulders. He still wore his heavy wetsuit, but he’d left the bulk of his diving gear back at the lockout chamber. Alexis and Hassan were alone; both leaning against the command compartment as they spoke with one another in low tones.

“I see you survived,” said Hassan, arms crossed. “I’d like to check your ribs and dressings at the soonest possible opportunity.”

“Was that thing attached to the Scorpion?” asked Alexis, pointing at the foreign device. He’d yanked the crowbar out of it in the lockout chamber, the open wound still dripped with goopy white fluid.

“Yep — this was our culprit,” said Jonah. He unslung the device from his shoulders and dropped it on the chart table for the rest of the crew take a closer look. Without asking, Jonah reached into Alexis’ tool belt and withdrew a ball-peen hammer. He removed his dive watch, set it on the table next to the device, and struck it sharply three times. It shattered into a mess of broken glass and plastic.

“What the hell are you doing?” said Hassan, yanking the hammer from his grasp and handing it back to Alexis before Jonah could do any further damage. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Whatever this thing is, it got into my dive watch and rewrote the decompression tables,” said Jonah, pointing to the device. “Started giving instructions that would have fizzed me up like a Pepsi in a paint shaker. I think I killed it, but I’d recommend keeping it away from anything electronic nonetheless.”

Alexis held a small EM meter over the device, ignoring his explicit instructions. “I’m still reading electronic activity,” she reported. “It’s not disabled — not entirely, anyway.”

“I’m going to take a look inside,” said Jonah. He motioned Alexis to help him hold the device down as he wrapped his bare hands around a shell-like section of the metallic exoskeleton.

Jonah looked over his shoulder as he grunted with exertion. Freya had let herself out of his cabin again. She stood quietly, silhouetted in the bulkhead doorframe as she peered over their shoulders from a distance.

He adjusted his grip and pulled again, slowly bending the metal carapace open to reveal a grotesque, writhing mass of pulsating organs and electronic wiring. The living tissue quivered one last time before sagging.

“My god,” said Hassan. “It… it was alive.”

“Well, that was unexpected.” Jonah scratched his forehead in stunned amazement.

“And super gnarly,” added Alexis, wrinkling her nose. “I can’t believe how ugly it is.”

“You think that’s ugly?” asked Freya from the other side of the command compartment. “You should see its mother.”

CHAPTER 22

Jonah shot a finger across the command compartment, leveling it at Freya. “Start talking,” he ordered. “Start talking right goddamn now.”

Smirking, Freya slumped against the bulkhead, letting her slightly amused stare carefully drift from Hassan to Alexis before finally bringing it to rest on Jonah. She took her time before answering, expression changing as she considered Jonah with a chilling mixture of fury and boredom. The protracted silence lingered, filled only with the smell of the decaying organism and the churning propellers of the still-gathering Japanese fleet above.

“I want to hear your speech first,” said Freya, her voice quiet and hard.

“What speech?”

“The one where you list your demands. Your threats. Your quid-pro-quo. Maybe you’ll try to sweet-talk me into submission, make me promises until one takes. This is a transactional relationship, isn’t it? I got you out of the building. You got me out of the city. Now you need something. Maybe I need something, too. So let’s hear the speech.”

Alexis sat back in her chair, kicking her booted feet up onto Sun-Hi’s dead communications console. “We lose track of who owes who pretty quickly down here in the blue,” she said, arms crossed.

“What, like I’m supposed to believe you’re all friends?” said Freya, letting the final word drip off her tongue like poison.

“Believe whatever the fuck you want,” said Alexis, dropping her feet from the console once more. Her boots landed hard on the deck, their impact ringing throughout the compartment as she leaned forward. “And if it were up to me, you’d get your goddamn speech — I’d tell you to start talkin’ or start swimmin’.”

Freya bared her red-flecked teeth at Alexis, her gums still bleeding from the fight.

“That’s enough,” interrupted Jonah, ending the exchange before it could escalate. “I’ll bite. What do you want?”

Freya pretended to need a moment before answering. “To recognize the primacy of ecology and forever humble the human species,” she said. “To dismantle the suicidal trajectory of resource exploitation and industry — to end social and cultural stratification and destroy all forms of domestication and subordination. I’d like to begin by razing the fossil fuel industry to the ground and hanging every one of their C-level executives, but I’d be willing to start by shooting their bought-and-paid-for lawyers and politicians instead. I’m not picky.”

Jonah shuffled from foot to foot in irritation. He wanted to walk over, grab her by the shirt, physically rip out the information he required of her.

“You seek to bring about an end to modern civilization through environmentalist anarchism,” said Hassan in a clipped, aristocratic tone. “How blindingly trite.”

“I believe in a lasting peace between humanity and the world.”

“Through the perpetration of violence.”

“I subvert violence,” snapped Freya, turning to stare down the doctor.

“Nobody here asked for a goddamn manifesto,” said Jonah. “And in case I wasn’t clear enough the first time… what do you specifically want from me?”

Freya smiled, again showing the blood still running between her teeth. “I want your submarine. And your crew.” Alexis involuntarily snorted with laughter, the sharp sound punctuating the hum of the ventilation system. Ignoring her, Freya tiptoed into the center of the command compartment and gently brushed her hand against the periscope as though measuring a new set of drapes.

“That’s an interesting request,” said Jonah, playing along for the moment. “Does this scenario involve simply stepping aside and pledging my undying allegiance, or should I expect to walk a gangplank of some variety?”

“You should take off that wetsuit,” said Freya dismissively. “I can’t take anything you say seriously. You look like a giant, misshapen condom.”

“Be cautious what you request,” said Hassan. “The captain has developed an unfortunate habit of strutting about in the nude.”

“I’ve got no problem losing the wetsuit,” said Jonah with an ugly laugh. “I’ll just need a minute to change into something you’ll find familiar — maybe a backless hospital gown with my ass hanging two cheeks to the wind?”

Freya’s eyes flashed with anger. “I’ll fight you for it,” she said. “You win, I’ll tell you everything you want to know and more. But if I win, I take your sub and your crew.”

“The crew’s not mine to give—” began Jonah.

Alexis cut in before he could continue. “That’s not how we do things onboard the Scorpion,” she said. “And you’re a couple sandwiches short of a picnic if you think we’re turning the ol’ girl over to the likes of you.”

“So how did he become your captain?” asked Freya, spitting the words at Alexis and Hassan as she gestured angrily towards Jonah. “Was he a dutiful first officer, putting in his time for a meritorious promotion? Did you vote on the best qualified among you? Or did he take it by force?”

“Technically speaking, Jonah did murder the last captain,” mused Alexis. “So I guess you have a point there.”

“As Jonah’s physician, I forcefully discourage him from fighting anyone in his present condition,” said Hassan. “Besides, the idea of using physical force to establish a new command hierarchy is patently absurd.”

“No shit,” said Alexis. “She already kicked his ass up one way and down the other. I just don’t want to see him lose another fight. It’s happened so often it’s gotten embarrassing.”

“Don’t remind me,” groaned Jonah, wincing as he sat down. He looked at Freya for the longest time before speaking again. “I’m going to take the doc’s advice. Let’s call the rematch indefinitely postponed. Bottom line, nobody on my sub is going to twist your arm into giving up whatever’s knocking around in that blonde bat-shit locker you call a brain. Let’s keep this simple — if you feel like doing us a solid, stick around and tell me something I don’t already know. Otherwise, get the fuck out of my command compartment and find someplace on this sub where I don’t have to look at you. I’ve had it with your games.”

Freya’s face went cold as she looked to each of the three one final time. “You should have told him to fight me,” she whispered. “You won’t have a chance without my help. You’re just a bunch of tourists and amateurs with no idea what you stumbled into.”

“So tell us,” implored Alexis. “Tell us what we’re up against.”

“Why bother? I’ve known outfits like yours before, men like your captain. You’re all just followers, swarming around a clueless man who will eventually get you caught or killed. I’ve seen it happen too many times to count.”

Jonah drew himself to his feet, staggering for a moment before catching his balance. “I’ve heard what you have to say,” he said. “There are not many people who live a more precarious existence than this crew, and I’m not going to pretend we’re all best friends. That being said, there’s a damned good reason we sail together, sink or swim.”

“Also, I don’t reckon we’re looking for another captain,” added Alexis. “At least not until this one gets used up.”

Hassan stood up next to his captain, placing a supportive hand on Jonah’s back. “I helped this man escape from prison,” said the doctor. “And rightly expected his betrayal at the first opportunity. But instead, I found a man who would come to sacrifice more for me — and this crew — than any of us could have asked.”

“He’s half right,” said Jonah. “I totally planned on skipping out at the first opportunity. Still might, if I ever get around to it.”

“These guys kidnapped me,” said Alexis, shooting a sly smile at Hassan. “But they seemed nice enough, so I decided to tag along for a spell. And then it became something more. I’d normally make a joke about Stockholm syndrome, but everybody’s heard ’em already.”

Freya smirked again. “That’s adorable,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “I have to admit, I expected a completely different speech. Something with more implied torture, and less kumbaya around the ol’ campfire. You got cute stories about the big black one, the little Korean one, and the Russian, too?”

“Depends on how cute you find our doc pulling bullets out of both men.” Jonah snapped. Freya started to speak, but Jonah cut her off before she could say a word. “And just so we’re clear, in Vitaly’s case, those bullets were put there by me. Oh, and the adorable stories don’t end there. Sun-Hi’s a stowaway and somebody recently murdered just about everyone she’s ever loved or cared about. You seem to know the folks responsible, but you’re determined to keep that information to yourself. You’re welcome to explain your theory of transactional relationships to her, because I ran out of anything but platitudes a long time ago. You want to know if I’m going to threaten you? Cajole you? Bargain with you? I’m stitched together with expired painkillers, waterlogged MREs, and violent notions, and my crew has been through hell. So if there is one goddamn thing you can tell me about this rogue operation—”’

“It’s not an operation. Not anymore.”

A murmur of upset and uncertainty circled the three crewmembers. Jonah let the silence fall hard. Something in Freya had changed; a far-away look shone in her eyes as she stared into empty space. A sliver of the mask had finally fallen. “What did you say?”

“It’s not an operation. It’s a man. One man.”

“The guy we tried to grab—”

“No, he was a nobody. I just needed a convenient hostage. You want Yasua Himura, founder of SABC Electronics. He’s a recluse, hasn’t set foot on land for over a decade.”

“And how do you know he’s the one responsible?”

Freya gritted her teeth. “I did things for him.”

“Like what?”

“I hurt people.”

“Why?”

“Because I thought I was doing the right thing. He’d been watching me — got me out of some bad trouble in Seattle. I thought we were on the same side. I thought he wanted what I wanted. I was wrong.”

Jonah nodded, wary. He lowered himself to a squatting position, almost sitting on his wetsuit-encased heels as he leaned against the command compartment bulkhead, chin resting on folded arms atop his knees. “I’m going to go out on a limb and assume this big trouble in Jet City wasn’t a few too many unpaid parking tickets.”

“I bombed a naval architecture firm. Killed someone who shouldn’t have even been there. Himura’s men found me just before the FBI did. Got me out of the country, put me to work.”

“So, it wasn’t a free ride.”

“Yeah. At first I thought the whole thing was my idea. He brought me into his inner sanctum, told me his secrets. That worm you pried off the side of your ship is nothing. His technological genius is generations past anything you could imagine. I’ve seen it down a whole squadron of fighter planes in seconds. It’s massive — hundreds of times bigger than that thing on the chart table. He calls it Meisekimu. Like it’s a woman or something. You got close— scared him — that’s why he went after you in Tokyo Harbor. He never had any real intentions of helping me with what I wanted. Himura intended to start a war the entire time, and he used me to further his plan. I still don’t know why any of this is happening. I don’t know a fucking thing about Japan or North Korea or whatever. All I know is that he said I was his perfect instrument—perfectly fucking gullible more like it.”

Jonah nodded. “He’s pissed off both sides, and now the entire region is one poorly-timed popcorn fart away from blowing up, just like he wants.”

Freya cocked her head as she stared at Jonah and Jonah alone. “I could help you kill him,” she whispered. “The one man behind all the destruction that’s been laid at your feet.”

Jonah scowled as he glanced between Freya and his crew.

“I could help you,” she implored.

“Then tell me how.”

“I know what ship he’s on.”

“Useless. Even if I had a place to start looking — which I don’t — he’s probably already gone dark, and I can’t track his transponder. All those games — is that really the best you had?”

“You have to kill him. You have to,” Freya was almost begging now, her knuckles white as she half-grabbed at the air in impotent anger.

Jonah said nothing for a few moments as he waited for her to lapse into silence. “Give me a few minutes to speak with my crew in private,” he said. “I’ll see if I can come up with something.”

Freya looked around at the three one final time. None spoke. She turned without saying another word, casting a look at Jonah over her shoulder as she walked down the corridor back to the cabins. Jonah watched her go, waiting until the last hatch shut before he returned his attention to Hassan and Alexis.

“So, how about we get the fuck out of here while we still can?” he said.

“Oh, thank God,” said Alexis, breathing a sigh of relief. “I thought for a second you were actually considering going after this Himura guy.”

“No way,” said Jonah. “It’s not that I’m totally above a little revenge. But the way I see it, the Scorpion is beat to shit and so are we. Yasua Himura deserves a bullet as much as anyone I’ve ever known, but I don’t see how Freya can think we’re in any position to deliver it.”

“Agreed,” said Hassan. “But there must be another option besides simply turning tail — can’t we remain in Tokyo, tell the Japanese government what we’ve learned? The carnage of the helicopter carrier is a drop in the ocean when compared to the war we’ll soon witness if Japan and North Korea go at it. And by fate or happenstance, we, and we alone, have the only proof that it’s all based on a lie — we have both the identity of the perpetrator and the means by which he strikes. He has betrayed and killed his own countrymen, slaughtered sailors and civilians alike. We have a moral responsibility to tell the truth and exonerate ourselves in the process.”

Jonah shook his head. “Do you really want to roll the dice with a bunch of bureaucrats and politicians? This conspiracy dates back decades, and we still have no idea how deep it all goes. I’d be up for dropping a few dimes, but not until we are far, far away from here. My crew is my first responsibility, moral or otherwise.”

“You and I both know it will be too late by then.”

“There’s no way staying in Tokyo works out for us,” said Alexis. “Even if the government listens instead of sinking us on sight, we’re all still looking at indefinite prison sentences. No thanks.”

“Been there, done that, got the T-shirt,” said Jonah. “Not looking for a second stay anytime soon.”

“What about Marissa? Should we be worried that she’s in yakuza hands?”

“She’s always had a well-honed instinct for self-preservation,” said Jonah. “I doubt she would have placed herself in any true danger. We’re just going to have to trust that she can take care of herself. In the meantime, let’s get the fuck out of here while we still can.”

Hassan cleared his throat and tilted his head towards the corridor. Jonah and Alexis turned to see Sun-Hi standing in the open hatchway, her face aghast. He didn’t know how much she’d heard, but it’d been enough. Jonah could hardly bring himself to look at her. He could already see it in her eyes, the suffering that her country would soon face.

“Sun-Hi—” started Jonah, but it was already too late. She turned and fled back down the corridor before he could shout another word after her.

“I feel like shit,” said Alexis. “She shouldn’t have learned about the decision this way. We should have sat her down, talked to her one-on-one. She’ll never trust us now.”

“Wouldn’t have changed a goddamn thing,” said Jonah, his voice low. “We can’t realistically do anything about the coming war, and Himura’s not our goddamn problem. We’re leaving and that’s final. The only discussion I want to hear at this point is where we should lay low.”

“Perhaps Buenos Aires?” suggested Hassan.

“Good enough for fleeing Nazis, good enough for me,” said Jonah. “You pick that out of a hat or something?”

“I checked a map — it’s nearly opposite to Tokyo on the globe. It’s the furthest we can possibly flee by ocean.”

“Still might not be far enough,” mused Jonah. “But we’ll give it a go. Specifics can come later. My immediate concern is getting the fuck out of Tokyo Harbor. In fact, I have an idea on that—”

“But we’re not going to like it,” said Alexis as she crossed her arms again. “We all know how this part goes.”

Jonah just grinned. “The way I see it, we just had an escape route handed to us on a silver platter. Trying to sneak past the fleet and into open waters would take the Scorpion’s computers running at full tilt plus every dirty trick we can muster up — and even then it’d be a straight coin toss as to whether we could pull off a getaway or not.”

“But everything is broken,” said Hassan. “How can we possibly slip past the fleet?”

“That’s the thing. We don’t,” said Jonah. “We follow the fleet out to sea, stay underneath them. I took a look at a few of their hulls during my dive. They’re a hodgepodge of military and commercial ships — our propellers will be inaudible beneath all that engine noise. Their minesweepers and helicopters will be running a perimeter while underway, but they won’t be looking for a submarine that’s been within their midst since before they even left port. Our batteries won’t make it the whole way, but we can raise the snorkel and charge them each night in the stern wake of the larger ships. It’s risky, but I think we can do it. We’ll make our escape once the convoy hits North Korean waters.”

“And if shooting starts?” asked Hassan.

“More ambient noise for us to hide in. It’d only make it that much easier to slip away.”

“It’s like we’ve just witnessed the full Jonah circle,” said Alexis, her eyes wide with amazement. “So insanely stupid it actually becomes smart again.”

“You figure our electric engines have the range to keep up with the fleet?”

Alexis scratched her head. “Hard to say for certain— we relied pretty heavily on the computer system to manage the battery banks. But we had a full charge before things went to shit, so they should last a few hundred miles at cruising speed, minimum. We’ll have to pop the snorkel up regularly for a crash re-charge to eighty percent. I suppose the heavy storms should give us decent enough cover. I’d have to ask Vitaly what he thinks and go over the numbers together, but I’d guess he’d be willing to give it a shot.”

“Good,” said Jonah. “Keep your ears open and let me know if you hear the fleet on the move. We’ll leave the harbor when they do. In the meantime, I’m going to go change into some proper clothes. Someone once told me I look like a misshapen condom in this wetsuit. Speaking of which, we’ll have to figure out what to do with Freya. But I’m willing to leave that particular albatross alone for the moment.”

Jonah didn’t know how long he’d been sitting alone in the forward section, eyes glassy as he stared at the smoke-stained bulkhead before him. It could have been hours; his broken ribs had a way of accelerating time, his brain throttling all perception of the world around him as it dealt with his aching body. He’d deliberately taken his last painkiller more than ten hours ago, swallowing the pill dry before carefully slipping the half-full bottle back into Hassan’s dwindling medical kit.

The bulkhead hatch behind him opened as Sun-Hi let herself in. She wordlessly sat beside him and neatly divided the remaining portion of her partially eaten MRE, parsing out a broken cracker, a few bites of a BBQ sandwich, and a handful of chocolate M&M’s. Jonah took them without argument and the two ate in silence.

“Why are you here?” she said, looking up at him from behind her thick dark bangs.

“I’m letting Freya brood in my cabin uninterrupted. Just needed a place to sit by myself and think for a while.”

“Think about what?”

Jonah stared at the floor, not sure how to answer her.

“How we ended up in this goddamn mess,” he said finally. “It’s all so absurd. One minute we’re taking on a few refugees for some quick cash, the next we’re blamed for a war that’s about to spark off. Worst of all, it’s not even our fault. We’re just a pawn in a scheme that dates back generations. We’re the revolver in Gavrilo Princip’s hand. We’re the stray dog on the boarder of Greece and Bulgaria. We’re Jenkin’s goddamn ear. And now all we can do is flee with our tail between our legs.”

“You say Jenkins… ear?”

“Uh, I guess it’s kinda hard to explain that one.”

“It’s okay. I think you will change your mind. You will not be Jenkin’s Ear. This will be the War that Jonah Stopped.”

Jonah laughed, long and bitter. “It’s not up for discussion. I talked about it with the crew, and none of us have a notion of stopping anything, much less a no-shit shooting war.”

“You will stop it because you are good captain, good man.”

He stared at her for what seemed like ages before saying anything. “I killed two human beings in this very room,” said Jonah, voice barely above a whisper. “The fight was getting down to loose bullets and bare knuckles. I couldn’t beat them fairly, so I burned them alive with a white phosphorous grenade. Closed the hatch door so they couldn’t escape, held it tight while I listened to them die. Ever seen what white phosphorus does to the human body?”

Sun-Hi shook her head.

“I don’t care what terrible things you’ve seen in your life. You’ve never witnessed anything like the shit that went down in this very room. I didn’t think twice about it at first. Didn’t even give them a proper burial, just blasted what was left of their bodies out of the garbage chute. So I don’t know where you get this ‘good man’ horseshit from. Maybe you still don’t know a goddamn thing about me — other than the fact that I’m tall.”

Sun-Hi silently leaned over and placed a hand against the side of his face before running it down his neck, across his chest, over his broken ribs. She closed her eyes as she felt every scar, every pain-wracked bruise and broken bone, the accumulated damage of a short, brutal lifetime. But he couldn’t let it matter, couldn’t let it change his mind — her touch was only a fresh layer of pain atop the old.

Hassan hunched over the command compartment’s chart table and scowled at the splayed mechanical carcass before him. He repositioned his carefully arranged surgical tools and smoothed the plastic beneath them for a third time. The doctor sighed; fussing over organization and sterilization only served to put off the inevitable. This thing, whatever it was, resembled nothing he’d ever seen before, and the task of dissecting it was exhilarating and troubling in equal portions.

The doctor closed his eyes, silently retreating to a calm deep within his mind, an oasis where fear and emotion evaporated before his twinned pillars of medical rationality. The first pillar was patience and understanding the needs thereof. The second was that he was a surgeon, and his performance was measured by the blade of a scalpel.

Hassan snapped on a pair of clean latex gloves and slid a surgical mask over his mouth and nose. He doubted any disease could be transmitted from a thing so strange, but his training and convention demanded the familiar ritual. The protective glasses in his kit had broken at the bridge, the plastic snapped too cleanly to glue, so instead he’d borrowed a pair of mechanic’s goggles from the engine compartment. They worked, barely. The low quality plastic lenses were badly scratched, and condensation had already begun to form in the corners.

But the old goggles were still in better shape than the organism. Its viscera was a mess of now-withered organs rapidly decomposing in the stagnant air of the command compartment. The doctor sighed a second time. He could see the collection of parts, but not yet their purpose. Jonah’s hands had done rough work, his prying fingers had left behind a jagged mess of bent metal and torn flesh, offensive to the surgeon’s eye.

Hassan twisted a small carbide tip into a handheld electric drill for use as a cutting tool. With precision, he drew it along the exoskeleton, grinding away at the seams until the metal casing parted to reveal the dead flesh within. It was all quite gruesome, a thick, stinking pile of flaccid organs and stretched membrane atop metallic components, medical tubing, and electronics. The doctor fixated on a moist, disk-like depression barely larger than a pencil eraser, almost indistinguishable amongst the viscera. He realized with a start that he was looking at a tympanum, a sort of evolutionary precursor to an eardrum most commonly found in amphibians.

This thing could hear.

He shivered, steadying himself as he adjusted his grip on the scalpel. Moving away from that alarming discovery, Hassan began to cut away at the thin layers of muscular tissue around the organs. The device clearly used them to articulate its exoskeleton, and they were integrated into a serpentine matrix of intricate hydraulics at each intersection between segments. The musculature parted easily, retracting to reveal the web-like peritoneum membrane that encased and protected the larger organs.

Now deep within the carapace, Hassan pulled back a flap of tissue to reveal a pair of vestigial lungs. They were collapsed, inelastic, bearing little resemblance to the velvety texture he’d anticipated. The nearby heart was no larger than a golf ball, and was connected to a carbon-fiber gas bottle and inflatable bladder by a system that strongly resembled a scaled-down version of Jonah’s dive re-breather. The hybridized design circumvented the biological lungs entirely, leaving them to wither.

Drat — he’d accidentally sliced an artery. A tiny jet of white liquid spurted from the unintentional cut, splattering across the table.

“Of course! Hyberbranched polymer-protected porphyrins,” he whispered in awe.

“You say what?” said Vitaly. The Russian emerged from beneath his dead computer console just long enough to cast a disgusted glance at the partially dissected device.

Hassan cleared his throat. “It utilizes an artificial blood replacement. The cells are oxygenated with an iron-rich porphyrin bonded to a polymer shell. Really quite fascinating. Early clinical research has suggested a myriad of potential medical applications.”

Vitaly crossed his arms. “And Jonah say Vitaly use bad English. I cannot understand nothing you say.”

“It’s… plastic blood.”

“Why you play with dead thing? Jonah already say we leave Japan, never come back.”

Hassan pondered the question for a moment. “I suppose I was simply curious.”

Vitaly just ducked his head under the navigations console once more, muttering to himself in irritation.

Hassan returned his attention to the dissection. With a few more cuts, he had carefully removed the device’s delicate stomach and digestive tract. The organs had been similarly hybridized with medical tubing and unfamiliar mechanical components. Beneath them were long bundles of convoluted neural tissue knotted into familiar, human-like ridges. He shivered again. Accounting for nearly a third of the total interior, the volume of brain cells would nearly match those of a ten-year-old child. Only these bundles were discrete, encased in an infinitely delicate weave of silk-like threads that connected the tissue to an array of computer processors and communications antenna. The potential of such a device was astounding, limitless in potential—

“So this plastic blood,” said Vitaly as he absentmindedly swung a small wrench in his hand. He’d been pulling the wiring out of his console, almost as though conducting his own dissection. “Why it use this? Why not regular blood?”

Hassan thought about the question for a moment before answering. “Well, I suppose the primary function of blood is to ferry oxygen to tissues. Mammalian blood uses iron as the oxygen-transporting metalloproteinase within the hemoglobin of red cells, as do all vertebrates, whereas crustaceans and the like use a copper-rich haemocyanin—”

“Maybe you skip to interesting part now?”

“Yes, of course. Blood also supplies cells with nutrients, removes waste, passes hormones, regulates temperatures, assists the immune system, coagulates around broken vessels, and even engages in certain hydraulic functions.” The words spilled from his mouth as though he’d been asked to recite for his medical examination board.

“What is this hydraulic function?”

“I imagine the best human example is the male erection. But that’s rather beside the point. What is most key is that all of these functions could be supplemented — even replaced — with an enhanced artificially derived liquid compound. Imagine an Olympic runner who is never short of breath, a mountaineer on the Himalayas who need not carry oxygen bottles. The applications for trauma victims alone could be revolutionary. Artificial blood may prove superior to our own in virtually every way… at least in theory.”

Vitaly nodded, but Hassan was unsure how much the Russian really understood. Besides, he was probably distracting the man. Vitaly had been in the process of rigging a ramshackle collection of gauges to his former workstation, a sort of analogue reproduction of his now-disabled computer console. “I have last question. Why you cut here and not in cabin?”

Hassan winced, phrasing his response almost as a question. “Because it all smells quite badly?”

“I know this,” said Vitaly, now waving the wrench aggressively. “And I have much important work. Smell is very distracting.”

Hassan heard the sound of shuffling feet interrupting him before he could respond. Alexis and Dalmar entered the command compartment, the pirate looking decidedly worse for wear with Alexis propping him up. The engineer carefully helped him into a chair before casting a sideways glance towards the partially dissected organism.

“That is so nasty,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Every time I see that thing, it’s somehow worse.”

“Because of smell?” suggested Vitaly.

“No, it’s not just the smell. It’s everything about it. That thing defies all I know and love about machines. And now its guts are all over the compartment — disgusting.”

“It is a dead metal snake,” agreed Dalmar. “No true warrior would use such a weapon.”

Hassan shook his head. He could see past the rot, past the stomach-churning amalgamation of flesh and technology to the underlying elegance, the beauty of the design.

“It’s more than just a mechanical snake,” said the doctor. “It’s perhaps the most sophisticated and revolutionary technology of our generation.”

“So, you’re saying Jonah just killed the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen by jamming a crowbar up its ass?” teased Alexis.

“In so many words, I suppose,” said the doctor, trying not to scowl. “Some days I feel my entire function aboard this ship is to clean up after that man. He’s a walking tsunami of unmitigated chaos.”

“You also cook things for me,” said Alexis, gently kissing him on the cheek. “So you have at least two functions.”

“Lest I forget,” said Hassan. “And how are things coming in the engine compartment?”

“Crappy,” she said. “But it could be worse. I’ve pulled out every single wire connected to a computer. The problem isn’t the engine — she runs — it’s everything else, the thousand ways any single cog can break down without warning. Normally, I’d just have the onboard software tell me when a subsystem is operating outside usual parameters. Now I’m stuck monitoring everything visually.”

“And yet she smile,” said Vitaly. Hassan looked closer. The Russian was right — Alexis was smiling.

“I suppose there’s a certain poetry to it,” she admitted. “Maintaining the engines by how they sound, how they smell. I figure the Scorpion is more than just a sub. She’s our home. She’s always whispered to us. Now we have to learn to listen.”

“You speak nonsense,” said Vitaly. “Computer invented for reason. Very annoying that metal worm thing with plastic blood crash all my system.”

“So, you make any progress on your little science project?” asked Alexis, wrinkling her nose as she pointed to the mechanical organism.

“I’ve actually learned a great deal,” said the doctor. “As we suspected, it’s a hybridized organic and mechanical device capable of interfacing with, learning from, and manipulating an impressive variety of computerized systems. Once a connection is made, its ability to subvert electronic programming is all but unlimited.”

“Same device that destroyed the Japanese fleet? Killed all those people in the underground North Korean contraband base?”

“I believe a similar organic payload was launched by air from the island to reach North Korea. The Japanese fleet was undoubtedly attacked under nearly identical circumstances. But as you can see from Jonah’s electronic dive watch, simple proximity to a wireless interface is all the device requires to infiltrate and rewrite existing software.”

“And it’s designed to kill.”

“Indeed. An ‘asymmetric weapon’ as Jonah might say. And perhaps as destabilizing to the regional balance of power as the newly-invented atom bomb of 1945.”

Alexis lowered her head, absentmindedly scratching at her chin as she thought out loud. “This is all going to blow up, isn’t it? It’s bigger than the ambitions of a single man. Yasua Himura built a powder keg, and now, he’s going to light it.”

“An outbreak of war does appear all but inevitable.”

“That’s what I figure, too,” said Alexis. “I just hope we won’t be anywhere near the area when it all goes off.”

CHAPTER 23

Jonah stepped into his cabin. The entire knob had been all but wrenched off the thin, wooden door. Freya sat up in his bed, smoothing the sheets before pulling her long, blond dreadlocks back over her shoulders with one hand. She held the blanket up to her neck with the other, covering her entire body. Only her bare arms were exposed. She stared him down without saying a word, tilting her head slightly as though considering a meal.

“Don’t bother getting up,” Jonah said, pointing to his filthy shirt and pants. He’d been helping Alexis with the messy job of checking the propeller shaft, a task that required pulling apart half of the engine compartment. “Just here for a change of clothes.”

Freya slouched back down in the bunk without responding, as though already losing interest in the nonexistent conversation.

“You never told me how it happened,” said Jonah without looking up from the drawer. “When you learned Himura had been lying to you.”

“What’s it to you?”

Jonah shrugged. “Call me curious.”

“He told me to hurt people who didn’t deserve it.”

“Who?”

“A group of graduate students onboard a research vessel. Marine biologists from Japan and the US. He wanted me to take over the bridge and steer to intercept a North Korean spy ship, and escape before I was taken hostage with the rest. It was all a setup. But I couldn’t go through with it.”

“Well, good for you for taking a stand.”

“No,” said Freya. Fire leapt into her eyes, a fury he’d only seen before when she was sinking one bloody fist after another into his ribs. “Not good for me. Not good for anybody. Himura said if I didn’t finish my mission he’d be forced to take many more lives, to do something much more terrible. I have no idea what he’s going to do — but I think we both know what he’s capable of.”

Jonah’s clean shirt dropped to the floor as he slammed a single fist into the bulkhead. The smacking impact rang out through the tiny cabin. He leaned forward, pressing his forehead hard against the cold metal surface, clenching his eyes shut.

Freya didn’t so much as flinch at the sound of Jonah’s hand against the wall. “Whatever he was going to do — he already did it, didn’t he?” She stared at him with her full attention.

“Yeah. Sunk an entire Japanese carrier group. Using their own guns. It was the most inhuman thing I’ve ever seen. Most of the sailors were barely out of their teens, and they never had a chance. Civilians, too. Sun-Hi’s people.” Jonah gritted his teeth with every word, the faces of the dead sailors flashing behind his closed eyes. “It was a massacre. Hell of a backup plan.”

A lull fell between the two for a few moments before Freya spoke again. He could feel an almost imperceptible shift in the room’s energy as she sat up a little higher in his bed. It was as though she’d revealed too much of herself and was determined to take back any whisper of lingering vulnerability. She was sitting up fully now, letting the blanket fall just below her collarbone, revealing the bare skin beneath, the hem still lightly clutched in her fingers. She’d been sleeping in the nude. “Can I tell you something?” she asked.

“Depends.”

Freya slowly lowered the blanket a millimeter at a time, revealing the soft crease between her breasts. His skin went cold, unconsciously knowing that the action wasn’t for his benefit, but for hers. She reached out, gently brushing against the back of his hand with her fingertips, beckoning him closer.

“I thought maybe you’d want to know about the last man I slept with,” she said, her voice low, inviting.

Jonah leaned over her, gently placing a thumb on her cheek, his fingers on her chin, physically willing himself to not look down. She closed her eyes and parted her lips ever so slightly.

“Why do I get the sense that things ended badly?” Freya let the blanket drop entirely as she stood. She wrapped both arms around the back of Jonah’s neck, nipping at the lobe of his ear before whispering into it.

“I snapped his spine with my bare hands.”

Hassan looked up to the sound of Jonah slamming his cabin door. “She tell you anything else of value?” he called out.

“Not particularly.” He looked down, suddenly realizing that he hadn’t retrieved a change of clothes from the cabin. Muttering, Jonah ducked his head and tried to hurriedly limp past the doctor in the narrow corridor. But Hassan held up a hand, stopping him from escaping. “What do you want, Doc?” demanded Jonah, irritated at the halt. “I don’t have time for twenty questions.”

“Are you quite alright?” asked Hassan. “You look exceedingly flushed — I’d like to look at your ribs again, take your temperature for good measure. You may be having an inflammatory reaction to the antibiotics, or perhaps you’ve attempted to wean yourself off the painkillers too soon.”

“I’m fine,” Jonah said with a grimacing, slightly embarrassed smile. “Really. I don’t need medication. I just need a very cold shower. And a good psychiatrist while we’re at it.”

“Pardon?”

“Never mind; forget I said anything.” Jonah awkwardly shuffled past the confused doctor before stopping dead and staring up at the hull above. Something had changed, a nearly imperceptible shift in the ambient noises swirling around the sunken Scorpion. “You hear that?”

The doctor looked up, cocking his head. “Yeah. What is it?”

“The fleet’s leaving. It’s time to go.”

CHAPTER 24

Adjusting his grip on the Scorpion’s controls, Jonah exhaled and watched his breath crystallize within the damp chill of the command compartment. The yoke felt loose now, almost drunkenly unresponsive. Each nudge to the course was accompanied by an anxious delay before the rudders shifted, the stalk rattling in his hands like it was about to snap. He sighed and stretched before glancing at the glowing green dials of his analogue dive watch, the only timepiece to survive its encounter with the biomechanical parasite. The hour he’d waited had finally expired. It was time, again, to check the haphazard collection of gauges and instruments atop Vitaly’s dead navigations console.

He stood and stuck a penlight in his mouth as he went from gauge to gauge, tapping each one with an extended index finger to verify the needles hadn’t frozen. The onboard energy discipline they’d resorted to was extreme— every light bulb extinguished, heat off, ventilation systems disabled. The resulting stillness made the dark interior feel smaller somehow, the Scorpion’s cold walls dripping with condensation as they closed in. Jonah could smell the mold already developing in every hidden seam and recess of the ship; a flowering black rot infecting the already stagnant air.

Vitaly slept on the deck in a shared bedroll. The freezing temperatures had brought the two men closer with each passing day, the Russian curled at Jonah’s feet, and each change in shift swifter than the last as they conserved the lingering body heat within the blankets and single pillow. The rest of the crew sheltered with a small heater in the bunks alongside five air-scrubbing calcium hydroxide canisters salvaged from less critical compartments.

Vitaly had completed the most recent battery recharge just three hours earlier, a hazardous maneuver that required the careful piloting of the Scorpion as she raised her exhaust snorkel and intake pipes just above the darkened, stormy surface of the Yellow Sea. The Russian selected a new site within the Japanese convoy every time, running the diesel engines hot and hard for as long as he dared before slipping back beneath the waves. Each twenty-four hour cycle required two recharging periods, one early in the night, and a second just before first light. In the meantime, their days were spent in permanent midnight, stretching each battery to the last trickle, every interminable hour moving them incrementally closer to the tantalizing promise of escape.

Jonah glanced down at a crinkled regional map with Vitaly’s penciled notations upon it. The helmsman had traced a vague extrapolation of the convoy’s route based on compass headings and approximate speed. But dead-reckoning precise coordinates was wholly impossible as each passing hour without GPS or a stellar fix, introduced new uncertainty to his equations, slowly turning them into an exercise in futility.

The convoy had skirted Kagoshima Province, at least as best as Jonah could tell, threading between the southernmost islands of Japan before turning sharply to the northwest. By now they were well past the East China Sea, passing Jeju Island and the western coast of South Korea. Jonah found himself wondering if the convoy was an invasion fleet — it’d make sense, given how fast the region was falling apart.

Vitaly stirred at Jonah’s boots. “Time for Vitaly shift?” he asked sleepily, the darkness answering him with silence. The ships above had become almost comforting in their familiarity. The swish-swish of patrollers was distinct from the churning troopships and rumbling tankers. The Scorpion was a fox at the feet of elephants, concealed and protected so long as the lumbering herd overlooked the sharp-toothed intruder beneath them.

“Your shift isn’t for another two hours,” Jonah lied. “Go back to sleep.”

Vitaly mumbled something and turned over, the last of his frosty breath clinging to the cavern-like damp as he pulled the blanket over his face.

They were getting close now. One more day and they’d make their move. The plan was simple: shut down the electric engines, dive deep, and drift with the abyssal currents for as long as their thinning air held out. The fleet would be far away by the time the Scorpion surfaced, leaving them free to find a quiet atoll in the South Pacific and lay low for as long as it took the coming war to end.

Jonah lowered his head and gently touched the control yoke. The Scorpion was a good, reliable ship, even beaten to hell. But she was also a target on their backs — he’d have to scuttle her in deep waters and scatter the crew for any of them to have a chance.

I’m sorry, old girl. It’s the only way.

Several hours later, Jonah woke to a pandemonium of stomping feet and disorganized shouting, the bright interior lights of the command compartment blinding as he tried to open his eyes. He staggered to his feet, awkwardly kicking the bedroll underneath an unused console. Half the crew had already gathered with Sun-Hi at the center of the maelstrom, headphones on her ears as she furiously scanned the radio spectrum. He stared at the signal strength — the needle barely retreated from full red as she wrenched the dial back and forth, a hundred shouting voices transmitting simultaneously over the airwaves.

“Who ordered us to surface?” demanded Jonah, glaring at Vitaly.

Vitaly tapped the depth gauge at his console, verifying its accuracy. “We have not surfaced, Captain!” he shouted. “We at same depth, 400 feet!”

“But that’s impossible,” said Jonah as he stared at the radio. “We’re too deep. We shouldn’t even get a whisper of signal strength down here.”

“Impossible, yes,” said Vitaly. “But depth not wrong! Check yourself!”

“I hear voices on every channel,” said Sun-Hi, dropping one of her earphones as she swiveled in her chair to face Jonah. “All coded North Korean military communications — I cannot make sense of them!” She turned the dial again as ear-popping electronic noise erupted from the interior speakers until Jonah ordered her to switch it off.

Silence fell as Jonah glanced up at the rounded ceiling of the hull above him, trying to imagine how any transmission could penetrate the four hundred feet of water between themselves and the surface.

“You hear that?” said Alexis, looking at the ceiling as well.

“Yeah,” said Jonah. “I hear it, too.” The familiar acoustic signals of the fleet above had begun to change, once-familiar engine notes increasing pitch as they scattered. The convoy was falling apart.

Jonah checked his watch—0340 hours, still well under the cover of darkness. “Let’s find out what we’re dealing with,” he said. “Prepare to surface. We’ll make a run for it if we find a shooting war up there.”

Vitaly pulled back on the control yoke, the Scorpion shuddering as it climbed through the water column, steel structural members groaning as they expanded. Jonah watched the depth gauge creep up fast, too fast.

“Easy there!” said Jonah. “They’re going to hit us with everything they got if we breach the surface like a goddamn whale!”

“Da, I know this!” protested Vitaly between gritted teeth as he adjusted their rapid ascent. “You do your job— Vitaly do this!”

Jonah raised the periscope just as the submarine leveled out, the lens slicing through the water like a shark’s fin. The view was in night vision, a grainy, green-tinted periscope feed duplicated on the command compartment’s one working monitor. His slow pan revealed a fleet in disarray, uncoordinated as they each turned in separate directions, a few desperately flashing signal lights at each other in a last-ditch effort to send a message of distress.

The gargantuan, building-sized wall of a ship’s hull suddenly slid before them, blocking their view. “Hard to starboard!” Jonah shouted. The crew collectively held their breath as the turning submarine rocked in a fleeing tanker’s massive bow wave, the passing colossus missing by mere feet as it rumbled by.

“What’s happening?” shouted Alexis. “Are they shooting at each other?” Now lost to the frothy wake of the tanker’s stern, Jonah swiveled the periscope hard to the left. A single sharp bow rose before the low horizon, a metallic-grey superyacht easily parting the storm-wracked seas as she approached the scattered convoy like a stalking hyena. She was larger than a football field, a long, seamless aluminum hull blemished only by sections of blocked-out floor-to-ceiling privacy glass.

“It’s Himura,” Freya whispered. “He’s here.”

“The fleet — we have to warn them!” said Hassan.

“It’s too late,” she said. The Japanese ships had already began to power down, their onboard lights flickering and dying. Last to lose her engines and steering, the largest of the patrol boats smashed hard against the double-hull of the tanker ship, metal screeching against metal as the patroller nearly rolled under the larger vessel.

“He’s leaving his pawns in play,” said Jonah. “All stations, check systems. What’s our status?”

“Communications offline,” said Sun-Hi. “Too much interference!”

“Engines are five-by-five,” said Alexis. “They’re here when you need ’em.”

“Navigation and helm operational,” said Vitaly. “No worse than before.”

Jonah stared at the passing superyacht on the monitor as he addressed his crew. “How are we still running? Himura just took out an entire invasion fleet without firing a goddamn shot.”

“The lobotomization of our computer servers,” said Alexis. “It must have worked!”

“You’re saying we’re too dumb to kill?” asked Jonah. “It’s practically our ship motto,” she confirmed with a grim smile.

Yasua Himura’s superyacht slid past the Scorpion. The entire rear third of the stunning vessel was encased in clear glass; forming an immaculately terraced greenhouse complete with thick vines, trees, flowering plants and tropical canopy. Sun-Hi’s communications console squawked, overwhelmed by the sheer power of the yacht’s electromagnetic transmissions.

As he panned the periscope, Jonah spotted a shape behind the futuristic ship; a blurry haze on the horizon almost lost to the faint green tones of the night vision display. Jonah flipped the monitor to real-color and zoomed into the darkness. Sun-Hi gasped with horror — the orange haze was a burning coastal city, with massive curling flames the size of houses leaping up into the night. Artillery shells silently detonated in the distance, lighting up the night with sudden popping flashes. Growing clouds of black smoke hung over the city, forming an eerie nocturnal sunset as the expansive fires reflected against them.

“It is the city of Nampo,” said Sun-Hi, barely above a whisper. She deftly activated her communications console without permission. “Nampo is burning.”

“Has Japan attacked?” asked Jonah, ignoring the fact she’d defied his orders. “Did the air war start while we were in transit?”

Dalmar shook his head. “Look at the trails. Those are not bombs. It is artillery—land-based artillery.”

“But we’re nowhere near the border,” said Hassan. “You’re suggesting North Korea has begun attacking itself?”

“I have picked out un-coded transmissions!” said Sun-Hi, gingerly holding the dial to the reconnected communications console between index finger and thumb, as though the slightest wobble or lapse in concentration might lose the signal forever. “The 25^th Infantry Brigade has attacked Nampo! The 78^th Infantry Regiment is defending! They fight each other!”

“Himura’s deployed Meisekimu,” said Freya. “He’s in the North Korean defense network, sending fake messages and orders. He’s tearing the country apart from the inside out.”

Hassan blanched. “It’s sickly brilliant,” he said. “Why fight when you can trick your enemy into destroying themselves?”

“It’s a tactic of cowards and liars,” growled Dalmar. “So… maybe we leave now?” said Vitaly. “We have seen all we have come to see?”

“Vitaly’s got a point,” said Alexis. “Half of coming to a party is knowing when to leave, especially when you ain’t invited.”

“We’ll never get a better opportunity to slip away,” added Hassan. “The Japanese fleet is in total disarray.”

Sun-Hi couldn’t tear her eyes away from the monitor, tears silently sliding down her face as she watched the burning city. Nobody else spoke for the longest time.

“So what are we doing, Cap?” asked Alexis as she looked up at Jonah. “You got that look about ’cha.”

“Anybody beside me itching to kill this motherfucker?” said Jonah as he watched the shrinking superyacht in the distance.

“I always have that itch,” grunted Dalmar. “I have scratched it many times and with many men.”

“I’m not big on the whole murder thing,” said Alexis with a glance towards Sun-Hi. “But I’m not big on sitting on our thumbs while whole cities get hammered to shit, either. You really think we got a shot at taking him down?”

“Get me aboard,” said Freya. “And I’ll get you Himura.”

“Sun-Hi — you got a guess where that ship is headed?” “Nampo is on the Taedong River,” answered Sun-Hi, pointing towards the monitor. “Leads to Pyongyang, our capital.”

“Given what we know about Himura’s technology, it’s all over if he reaches Pyongyang,” said Hassan. “It’s the center of their entire leadership and command structure. And they’ve got nukes.”

“I’m done playing defense. Let’s go fuck that guy up,” said Jonah, slapping a hand down on a darkened console. “We’ve gotten our asses kicked up one way and down the other. Statistically speaking, we’re due for a win. What do you say?”

“I do not believe that is how statistics work,” protested Hassan. “But I say we go.”

“This will be a good day. I shall bring many weapons,” said Dalmar with a sinister grin.

“Good,” said Jonah. “Vitaly — steer as close as you can. Dalmar and Freya, you’re with me. The rest of the crew will beat a fast retreat back to sea the moment we’re aboard. Find a quiet spot to stand by and wait for instructions. If you don’t hear from me in twenty minutes, move the hell on. We barely escaped our last encounter and the Scorpion is falling apart. So don’t be heroes.”

“We return as victors or we will not return at all,” said Dalmar. “This is as it should be.”

“That’s right,” said Jonah as he looked to each one of his crew in turn, satisfied that they understood. “If we fuck up or get captured, there will be no half-assed rescue attempts of any kind—and that’s final. Hassan, you’re in command until I’m back. Let’s do this thing.”

“Engine to full!” announced Alexis, increasing the throttle as the throaty diesels roared to full pitch.

“In position in three minutes!” shouted Vitaly from his console. Jonah checked the periscope monitor — the distant superyacht grew closer with each passing second as the Scorpion begun to chase her down. “We only have one chance, so get ready now!”

Jonah nodded, allowing himself a shadow of a proud smile. “Dalmar, Freya — let’s gear up.” He clutched his ribs as the trio ducked underneath one low hatch after another, Dalmar and Freya following at his heels as they made their way to the stern armory. His chest wound had begun to heal, and Hassan had exchanged the flutter valve for ten careful stitches to his pectoral. But it still hurt like hell, the pain fading as adrenaline coursed through his veins, even as the familiar sensation of fear crept up through the recesses of his exhausted mind. Arriving in the weapons locker, Jonah first threw heavy armor around his chest, velcroing it up tight against his broken ribs. Good, it’d hold them in place, maybe even stop a bullet to boot.

“You won’t be able to swim in that,” said Freya as she quizzically eyed Jonah’s armor.

Jonah yanked a short-barreled KRISS Vector .45-caliber submachine gun out of the armory locker and slung the strap around his shoulders. The futuristic-looking weapon was designed for a fast reload, reduced recoil, and a heavy, short-range knockdown load, a decent enough choice for a harebrained boarding scheme. He hadn’t trained with it as much as he would have liked — hell, he’d barely shot the thing before. But it’d do.

“I can’t swim with a busted rib, either,” he said as he slammed a heavy magazine into the receiver. “So thanks for that.”

Dalmar hefted his twin-tanked flamethrower from its cradle and onto his back, squeezing one massive shoulder after another into the heavy canvas straps. His smile widened, brilliant white teeth almost iridescent in the armory’s harsh lighting.

“Leave Florence,” Jonah ordered. “I’m not boarding a hostile ship with a walking napalm bomb.”

Dalmar stared at Jonah in shocked disbelief, disappointment etched deep on his face before it faded into an outright furrowed brow and angry frown.

“Alexis taught me a word for what you are,” he hissed, slamming the flamethrower back into its cradle. “This word is micromanager.” Still glaring at his captain, Dalmar lifted a massive Belgian-designed machine gun from the weapons locker instead, brandishing it before his critical eye. The fully automatic weapon drooped under the weight of the heavy belt-fed ammunition box slung just under the open bolt, holding no less than 200 high-powered rifle cartridges.

“You’re welcome to take up any of my managerial shortcomings with the Human Resources department,” said Jonah. “Did you name this one, too?”

“She is not worthy of a name,” snapped Dalmar as he wrapped two long, bullet-laden belts around his body, crossing his shoulders and chest like bandoliers. “Not like my beautiful Florence.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nothing burns like a man.”

“So you’ve said. I assure you, I have not forgotten.”

Freya looked to the two men, uncomfortably shifting from foot to foot as though she didn’t know what to do.

“Grab something already,” ordered Jonah as he gestured to the veritable cornucopia of light arms.

“I don’t really know guns and stuff,” Freya admitted. Dalmar placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “The best weapon is the weapon best wielded,” he whispered. Freya looked to Jonah for a moment before finally reaching past the weapons and pulling a large, red-handled fire axe off the bulkhead. Dalmar grinned again, patting her muscled arm with one of his massive hands. “She has made an excellent choice. I believe she will kill many men today.”

“I’m just glad she’s on our side,” said Jonah, and patted his ribs.

Vitaly looked up from his console as Jonah, Dalmar, and Freya stormed into the command compartment. Jonah gripped the ladder with one hand, preparing to climb up the conning tower to the topmost hatch. He steeled himself, breathing deep, slowing his heart rate in preparation. And then he felt a tiny squeeze as Sun-Hi grasped his hand in hers. He looked down to see her staring up at him, eyes wide. “I knew that you are good man,” she whispered.

“Good men get killed doing stupid shit like this,” said Jonah, returning the squeeze. “But maybe a pirate, an anarchist, and their outlaw captain have a chance. Hassan, you have command.”

The doctor nodded in acknowledgement, a strange saddened resolve in his eyes as though this were the last time he might see Jonah. No other words were exchanged between them.

“Approaching position!” Vitaly announced as he suspiciously glanced at Freya and her massive fire axe. Jonah felt the familiar shift beneath his feet as the Scorpion rose through the waters, splitting the waves as she surfaced beside Himura’s sleek superyacht.

Jonah began to climb the ladder. “Come back in one piece!” shouted Alexis from her station, her voice fading below him. “Or at least one big piece and maybe some smaller pieces you won’t miss if Hassan can’t reattach them.”

The hatch popped open with a hiss, freezing night air snatching Jonah’s breath from his lungs. The darkness was all consuming, illuminated only by the haze of the burning city in the distance. The Scorpion kept pace with its quarry at a frightening velocity, paralleling the railing of the yacht’s starboard forequarter. A slight flurry of snow danced around Jonah as Dalmar and Freya emerged from the hatch beside him, a single flake landing on the side of his cheek. He gently pressed a fingertip against it, but it was hot and gritty, smearing to the touch. The flake wasn’t snow — it was ash.

They were in the wide, flat mouth of the Taedong River now, the speeding vessels slicing through translucent sheets of drifting river ice, swollen, snow-laden banks passing on either side. The smoky haze of the night was illuminated by massive flames, the arcing salvos of artillery fire in the distance.

“Ten seconds!” said Jonah, slinging his submachine gun around his back as he prepared to leap. Neck and neck, the two vessels jockeyed for position like Kentucky thoroughbreds, the Scorpion’s angular bow slipping ahead by a nose before sideswiping the unblemished walls of the superyacht. A groaning, ear-shredding scrape reverberated between the speeding ships, jostling Jonah from his precarious foothold on the lip of the conning tower. Freya hurled her fire axe onto the yacht’s empty helicopter pad with a hammer-throw before leaping across the gap, feet barely touching the yacht’s railing as she deftly landed on the open pad. Dalmar and Jonah jumped after her simultaneously, the pirate landing hard on the deck, while Jonah awkwardly tumbled into a painful heap behind him.

The massive yacht reacted like a thing alive, engines roaring as it twisted away from the Scorpion with erratic precision, throwing Jonah to his knees. Dalmar grabbed Jonah by the loop of his bulletproof vest, dragging him to his feet as hidden illumination flickered to life beneath their feet. The length of the bow erupted with bright security lights like a performance stage — they’d already lost the element of surprise.

“We must advance!” shouted Dalmar. “There is no cover!”

No sooner had he spoken than a trio of recessed panels slid open along the bridge tower. Long, cruel barrels emerged from within, erupting with tracer fire. Jonah threw himself behind a heavy anchor winch as bullets split apart the night air, pouring withering automatic fire into the winch and the Scorpion’s exposed conning tower. The submarine’s heavy steel hull could hold against the barrage — but not for long. A massive geyser of water burst upwards from behind the Scorpion’s tailfins as her engines reversed full, propellers biting into the water as the ballast tanks filled, plunging her beneath the yacht’s wake.

Jonah, Dalmar, and Freya were on their own.

Helplessly pinned down, Jonah blind-fired over the top of the winch, his barely-aimed bullets scattering ineffectually across the yacht’s bridge tower. The turrets simultaneously returned fire with quick, staccato bursts. There was no hesitation, no adrenaline-fueled spurts — the turrets were autonomous, activated without the uncertainty of a human hand.

Jonah dared a quarter-second glance around the edge of the winch, pulling his head back as six rounds zinged by. The turrets were each connected to an insectoid-like stalk of multispectral cameras, laser rangefinders, and motion trackers. Exactingly precise, every arcing bullet would be analyzed in real time, adjusted for the sway of the ship, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure. The artificial mind behind the barrel would never get tired, never stop tracking him. It would learn with each shot, becoming only more accurate the longer they were pinned down.

“We should have brought smoke!” shouted Jonah. But even his wishful thinking fell short of a solution; the heat-sensing cameras on the turrets would be able to see right through even the thickest cloud.

Dalmar grimly smiled. “Do you trust me, brother?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper.

Jonah went to grab the pirate’s arm, his fingers slipping before they caught purchase. “Don’t you fucking do it, Dalmar!” he screamed.

But it was too late — Dalmar leapt to his feet with impossible speed, heavy machine gun at his waist as he took aim at the first of the turrets. He pulled the trigger, his opening salvo bursting apart the guns’ insectoid eye stalk. Jonah and Freya sprinted across the helicopter pad towards the bridge tower. She’d hoisted the heavy fire axe high above her head, hurling it one-handed like a tomahawk toward the second turret, the axe blade smashing into the turret’s control unit.

Dalmar had only made it a quarter of the way before the final turret opened up, a long arc of bullets tracing their way across the open deck. He twisted to the left, but not fast enough. Dalmar crumpled as bullets ripped through his thigh and abdomen, throwing him over the railing like an oversized rag doll before he disappeared into the freezing waters below.

“Dalmar — no!” screamed Jonah, his heart in his throat as he charged. The turret swiveled back towards him just as he and Freya slid into a covered entryway beneath the muzzle, tumbling across the deck and into an open bulkhead door a heartbeat before the weapon could fire.

Jonah cursed himself for his stupidity. His eyes hadn’t even adjusted to the interior darkness before he felt the cold steel of a pistol barrel pressed against the back of his neck. Doors didn’t open on their own, not for men like him — Himura had allowed them in. There were three men behind Freya as well, wrestling her powerful arms behind her as a fourth yanked a canvas bag over her face and held it tight. Jonah knelt to the floor in impotent silence as she was violently subdued with fists and feet and left facedown and tied, her lungs wheezing through the scratchy fabric.

The lights of the yacht’s interior began to brighten, revealing an immense open chamber running nearly the length of the ship. Steep, glinting aluminum walls rose a stunning sixty feet to meet at the awe-inspiring ceiling apex, forming a perfect triangle. Five black-suited security personnel were behind him, guns raised as rough, unseen hands yanked away his submachine gun and patted him down for other weapons.

Jonah felt chills as he looked down at the chamber’s expansive floor. The bamboo paneling had been retracted, revealing a grotesque, pulsating assemblage of wire-connected organs within glass vessels. The organic mass was surrounded by massive screens across nearly every wall, displaying blossoming, fractalized images of a thousand intercepted camera feeds across North Korea, forming a dreamy montage of chaos and war. A soft, commanding voice echoed from the far end of the chamber, its speaker lost to the darkness.

“Remove your shoes, please.”

Jonah snorted until he almost gagged and spat a foul mixture of blood and snot on the immaculate bamboo. The men behind him shoved him to the ground as a knife blade flashed, slicing through his laces. He stole a backwards glance as his boots were ripped from his feet. Jonah’s eyes went wide with surprise as he took in their wrinkled, deeply lined faces, their close-cropped white hair. There wasn’t a man among them younger than seventy-five.

He was yanked to his feet once again and marched forward alone, leaving Freya tied and immobile on the floor. The interior was immaculate, hundreds of glass-encased historical artifacts under soft LED lighting. Jonah wallowed in his own overwhelming sense of regret and dread; walking beneath the ornate ceiling and above the pulsating organism felt like traversing between hells of Dante’s Inferno.

The geriatric security personnel silently prodded Jonah forward toward a figure beside a mahogany art-nouveau writing desk, his hand atop an empty wheelchair. Massively overweight, the figure’s long, dark hair dripped from his balding scalp before falling over his shoulders, his sickly face defined by the thick, pinched lids covering his bright eyes. The security personnel retreated a few steps as Yasua Himura stepped forward into the light.

“Mr. Blackwell,” said Himura, tilting his head as he addressed Jonah. “I’ve so wanted to—”

“Can I have a chair?” interrupted Jonah.

“You want a… chair?”

“Yeah, a chair. Or a stool. I’ve got a couple of broken ribs and I’d really like to take a load off. You mind?”

Himura nodded, refusing to show irritation for having been cut off. He gestured towards his own unoccupied wheelchair, and Jonah started to step forward until the security guards lurched to intercept him, warily putting themselves in front of Himura before Jonah could reach striking distance. Himura calmed them with a wave before gently pushing the wheelchair across the smooth floor. It rolled easily, bumping against Jonah’s leg.

Jonah gratefully took it, flopping down in the seat and sighing as he yanked the straps of his bulletproof vest free, loosening the pressure against his chest. He snuck a glance over one shoulder — the other security personnel had already carried Freya away, disappearing into the recesses of the ship.

“I’m good,” said Jonah, waving Himura on. “You can keep talking or whatever now.”

Himura cocked an ear towards Jonah, reluctant to speak lest he be interrupted again.

“I’ve watched you quite closely over our short, shared history,” he finally said. “You speak with such unvarnished braggadocio, call yourself an outlaw, a smuggler — and yet your actions betray such little regard for self-interest. North Korea exports many things… illicit weapons, counterfeit currency, narcotics. But you, Jonah Blackwell, sailed into the most dangerous waters on the planet to transport what the world wants least: starving North Korean refugees.”

“It wasn’t a mission of mercy or anything,” said Jonah. “More like a mission of moolah.” He forced himself not to think of the drowned Koreans, their wide-eyed, unseeing faces staring accusingly at him within the freezing waters of the sunken carrier.

“If this were true, you would have abandoned them on the ice the moment you spotted incoming DPRK military forces,” said Himura. “Instead you chose to stay and risk your life for men and women with whom you shared nothing — not nation, not race, not even language. And even now, after presented with an opportunity to escape, you instead take a suicidal risk in boarding my ship. Why?”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“I believe it’s because you thought stopping me was the right thing to do.”

Jonah said nothing as he glared at Himura.

“And your inherent contradiction is combined with a seemingly inexhaustible ability to simultaneously survive the impossible and resurface in the most secret and unexpected of places. I’d hoped I’d get a chance to meet you, see for myself how a single man could embody such vast incongruity. I gleaned much from your submarine’s computer system, but there was always a missing element, an unanswered question — what does Jonah Blackwell want?”

“Yeah, I’m a mystery wrapped in an enigma inside a crispy tortilla shell,” said Jonah. He grasped at the curved handles of the wheelchair, rotating them back and forth as he absentmindedly tested their smooth, exactingly machined motion. “Also, we may need to break out Webster’s if you plan to keep using words like incongruity.”

“Tell me how you first located my island — no, tell me first how you crossed paths with Freya Weyland!”

Jonah sighed and shook his head. “Don’t take this personally, but I’m not in much of a talking mood. A good friend of mine just got shot to pieces on your helicopter pad. I was hoping to work through the anger stage of the grieving process by gutting you with a salad fork and mounting your bloated corpse on my conning tower as a warning to other like-minded assholes, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. So if you’re going to gloat about it, let’s go ahead and get this over with.”

Himura frowned, for a moment he was a little boy denied the chance to play with a favorite toy. “After all we’ve been through together? You’ll tell me… nothing?”

“Sure, I’ll throw you a bone. Your thesis on me is bullshit. Every single thing you’ve said can be traced back to poor impulse control and a stunted ability to think through real-world consequences. Case fucking closed.”

Himura laughed as he circled the wheelchair, the hem of his robe swaying over the bamboo floor. “And yet this is another contradiction — impulsive, reckless Jonah Blackwell is somehow the first man to methodically uncover a conspiracy seven decades in the making.”

Jonah ignored the barb. “So what are you going to do with Freya? She looked like she was having a pretty bad time when she got hauled away.”

Himura widened his hands in acceptance of the changed subject as the security personnel behind Jonah shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not a cruel man, Jonah. I’m disappointed in her betrayal, but not vindictive. I suppose I must thank you for our unexpected reunion — my perfect instrument has returned to me.”

“I don’t think she digs being called that anymore. How did you end up recruiting her, anyway? She doesn’t seem like the type that plays well with others.”

Himura thought about the question for a moment before answering. “Do you know the parable of the magician’s knife?”

Jonah shook his head. “No, but I got one about the man from Nantucket.”

“A stage magician prepares a simple magic trick. He takes a sharp kitchen knife and mounts it upright, the tip of the blade pointed towards the sky. He asks a beautiful woman from the audience to come to the stage, touch the knife, feel the sharpness of its edge, closely examine the plain table it rests upon. The magician then takes a paper bag and carefully sets it over the upright knife, concealing it. He dances and chants, whispering incantations. And then he tells the beautiful woman to crush the paper with her palm.”

“Let me guess — she slaps it down and the knife is gone?”

Himura laughed again, stringy hair brushing against his shoulders as his soft voice echoed throughout the chamber. “No, no,” he said. “You misunderstand the parable. The blade goes through her hand to the hilt. She screams, bleeding. You see, the magic was not in sleight of hand or a hidden compartment. She’d felt the knife, the blade, checked the table for tricks. The real magic was in the words the magician used to convince her to hurt herself. It’s always a matter of finding the right words to create an illusion within the mind — and Freya proved quite easy to motivate. She came to my attention as a creature of incredible talent, yet unmolded. Meisekimu catalogued her life, every phone call, every text message, every email, every photo she’d taken of herself, every website she’d ever visited, every book she’d ever bought, every post she’d ever placed on social media. We fed her own words back to her, bent to our cause — and thus she became mine.”

“So the wheelchair is a lie,” said Jonah. “And I’d be willing to guess that you’re not blind either, are you?”

Himura smiled — and for the first time, Jonah felt he’d caught a glimpse of glinting eyes beneath the man’s pockmarked, mask-like face. “Everyone perceives what they wish,” he said. “It’s only a simple matter of finding the right words to form the illusion.” He leaned over his small mahogany writing desk and whispered into an unseen microphone. Jonah’s own synthesized voice echoed throughout the chamber, every syllable meticulously extrapolated from his spoken words since arriving on the superyacht. He could hear the fear in the transmission, his duplicated voice barely audible over the sharp retort of automatic gunshots in the background.

“Come in Scorpion! I’m under fire — Dalmar and Freya are dead — I won’t make it — retreat, retreat, retreat!”

And then Himura dug his fingers deep into a fold below his fleshy jawline and began to peel it away.

CHAPTER 25

Himura’s doughy, pockmarked face distorted as he grasped the fleshy fold beneath his neck. His sunken eye sockets stretched, the thin patch of long, stringy hair shifting on his scalp. And then the mask came free, sliding off his face as the man beneath stared at Jonah with penetrating, intelligent eyes. He was in his late forties with thick black hair and a thin beard, instantly recognizable as the intelligence officer who’d tormented Jonah and his crew on the deck of the Scorpion what seemed like a lifetime ago. Bits of latex clung to the man’s nose and ears; he absent-mindedly picked at them as his posture changed, drawing himself up to his full height.

“I think any new relationship must be built from a foundation of honesty,” said not-Himura as he gently folded the mask and placed it atop the ornate writing desk. “I will assume you recognize me?”

“I never forget an asshole,” said Jonah, arms crossed. “And I should have known this whole goddamn circus would come down to Scooby Doo masks. Do I still call you Himura?”

The man shrugged. “I’ve worn his face for so long I think I’ve earned the right. The first Himura died nearly a decade ago, a sudden and devastating loss of one of my nation’s most brilliant minds. What he lacked in heirs, he made up for with his vast fortune and a network of fanatical devotees. It was an unprecedented opportunity to reconstitute the greatest secret Japan has ever kept, perhaps even save my country. So I took his place, bided my time, and prepared for this day.”

“You did me a favor with that transmission to my crew, by the way,” Jonah said. “I don’t want them coming after me any more than you do.” He held one wheel of the chair in place and pushed the other, spinning in a slow, lazy circle, bare feet sliding across the cool bamboo floor. Jonah took in the incredible museum-like chamber within the superyacht, careful to steer well clear of the glass floor panels and the pulsating creature beneath them. “Hell, I would have made the call myself if you’d just asked nicely.”

“I eliminated a variable from the equation,” dismissed Himura. “But I am pleased that you approve — you may not believe this, but I do not wish any more death than absolutely necessary.”

Jonah gritted his teeth, eyes flashing with anger as he thought back to the carnage of the sunken fleet, the young sailors and refugees torn apart, burned, drowned. He shifted in the wheelchair as he took in the words, contemplating the ugly intersection between necessary and death.

Two of the massive interior screens displayed a live feed from the frozen banks of the passing Taedong River, endless farmlands blanketed in white, the wintery scene dotted by aging tractors, crumbling grain silos, and dark, snow-besieged houses. Others were angry maps of fighter planes, tank brigades, and troop movements — an entire third of the country was in chaos, with more cities enveloped by violence every passing minute. Jonah leaned back in the wheelchair and pushed hard, popping the front two wheels in the air and slamming them down again as the aging security guards looked on with extreme annoyance.

“The idea for Meisekimu came from the Americans,” said Himura as he quietly clasped his hands behind his back, watching the sea of information pour from the displays. “In the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, Coalition intelligence personnel established the most comprehensive understanding of the Iraqi command structure in history. It was a monumental task, an operation unprecedented in scope. Military databases grew to hold names, rank, tribal, and familial affiliations of nearly every Iraqi officer of consequence. The US preceded the invasion with a barrage of individualized phone calls, emails, and text messages to these men, their wives, their parents and children, all encouraging surrender without fighting, the return of any captured coalition personnel, the abandonment of their weapons of mass destruction. Although, perhaps, the final order is confusing in hindsight. When war came, only the few fighters with no possible future in the new Iraq stood their ground, while the rest simply melted into the population. I wondered if, instead of using this intelligence apparatus to cajole, to beg… what if these men were told? What if they received orders, individualized instructions from seemingly trusted sources, indistinguishable from the authentic? The only missing piece was processing power, a computational technology capable of not just compromising digital systems, but manipulating the men who relied upon them. That final piece fell into place when Himura’s gestational experiment in organic computation became mine. Born from decades of forbidden research dating to our wartime human experimentation in occupied China, Meisekimu uses her networked supercomputers to store and process raw data, but she herself brings the uniquely human genius of pattern extrapolation, intuition, and improvisation. She’s a mimic, seeking the vulnerabilities of any target, whether that target is a machine or a man. She can be a father, a commander, a trusted friend, seemingly real in every way but physical form. And then she speaks to them what they believe they already know — whispers of conspiracy, revolution, assassination, civil war. Meisekimu has written the greatest fiction in human history, a story where every North Korean fighting man thinks himself the hero, yet enslaves his will to my purpose. Beautiful, is it not?”

“I think you need to get out of your fancy-schmancy houseboat more often.”

Himura thought for the longest time before saying anything more. “I wouldn’t expect a man without a country to understand,” he finally said. “You cannot see what I see.”

“Strange turn of phrase for a guy who pretends to be blind.”

“What would you do as steward of a dying people?” whispered Himura. “Able to peer into a nation’s future, but unable to affect its unfolding history? Japan is a single generation from collapse. She will be the first to run out of food, out of fossil fuels, out of living space. Our young men won’t fight; our young women won’t bear children. Can you blame them? Their spirts are broken and they know they near the end — a million of them refuse to even leave their rooms, afraid of the world. They sooth themselves with children’s games and animated television programs, rotting our race from within, destroying our future. We cannot survive the coming ravages of climate change, resource scarcity, or political upheaval in this weakened state. And what is the response from our leaders? They’ve allowed every nation to copy our manufacturing, steal our technology, undercut our wages, bet against our currency, mock our culture, besiege our waters, leaving us with shrinking international influence and endless economic stagnation. Our birth rate has collapsed, and in just fifteen years our numbers will have shrunk by a third or more. We’ve been under the umbrella of greater nations for so long that we can no longer even hold it ourselves. We’re a withering people atop a doomed island chain. Our only hope is conflict. We must live as conquerors once more, or we must die as warriors.”

“We found the U-3531 on your island in the Philippines,” said Jonah, probing. “I’m assuming there’s a nuke in the mix as well.”

“A clever deduction, Jonah Blackwell. Our war of that era was already lost by the time we reconstituted the fruits of Germany’s nuclear program. But now I will use the weapon to win a far more important conflict.”

Jonah closed his eyes — he’d been so stupid. “You’re on a suicide mission,” he said with dawning realization. “You have the bomb on this ship. That’s the reason for the grandpa squad. They’ve chosen to die.”

“The Taedong runs through the heart of the Pyongyang,” confirmed Himura. “And the weapon has been placed deep within this very hull, inaccessible even to myself. Meisekimu will detonate it in the heart of the city, wiping out the North Korean leadership and erasing any evidence of our involvement in the process. Roused from its long sleep, the Japanese military will sweep in and annex the country. Their war will be hard-fought, but blameless, the ugly truth behind the conflict expunged forever. Himura will have disappeared without a trace, leaving only unanswered questions in his wake. And when the ash settles, my nation will be a conqueror once more, with access to land, coal, rare earth minerals—”

“And forced laborers,” interrupted Jonah. “You’ll be slavers, jail guards with your boot on the neck of an entire nation.”

“They’re already a nation of prisoners,” snapped Himura. “Prisoners to despotism, to hunger. If nothing else, their Japanese masters will feed them. I’m not a monster. Far fewer men and women will die in the heat of my bomb than would be claimed by their government-sanctioned winter starvation, to say nothing of the winters to come. This will save lives, Jonah — some part of you must know this.”

Jonah stood from the wheelchair and pushed it aside, the security personnel behind him shifting, hands over their weapons. “And children,” corrected Jonah. “The full phrase goes ‘men, women, and children’.”

Himura accepted the criticism in silence, his face impassive.

“You know what? I’m done being your confessor,” said Jonah. “Stick me in a closet with Freya or shoot me on the spot. I’m out of fucks to give, and I’m goddamn sick of listening to you rationalize your own twisted ambitions and demented death wish.”

Himura gestured to his aging security personnel. “I’m glad we had a chance to speak. I can’t discuss the mission with my men, not like I can with you. Like me, they believe so strongly that they have agreed to die. Like me, they’ll never live to see the new Japan they bring about. Like me, their sins are too many; the world we will create must live in our minds alone. But it is nice to be able to speak of these things. Thank you for listening to the last words of a true patriot, Jonah Blackwell.”

Jonah turned to watch the monitors, silent to their horror. Himura drew the volume up, closing his eyes as he took in the symphony of video transmissions, the sound of artillery bursting and automatic weapons fire, tanks rumbling across the landscape, jets streaking through the skies as their bombs fell on cities. An entire nation was tearing itself apart before his eyes.

Alexis strained as she clutched a rung of the Scorpion’s interior conning tower ladder with both hands, her shoulder and head buried in Dalmar’s dripping armpit. She groaned under the crushing bulk of his immobile body as she tried to lower him one inch at a time. Hassan had braced himself beneath the former pirate’s other arm as Sun-Hi struggled with a single heavy leg. Blood ran freely down Dalmar’s bare left foot, collecting in a puddle on the deck below.

“Easy — easy!” said Alexis, barely recognizing her own wheezing voice. “Christ this fucker is heavy!”

And then her steel-toed boot slipped. Alexis yelped as she fell the last few feet to the deck, rolling out of the way as Dalmar slammed into the ground beside her like a collapsing mountain, Sun-Hi still tangled up in his massive legs.

Hassan jumped down beside them; hands already holding a pair of scissors as he began to cut away at Dalmar’s clothes.

“Should we get him on top of the chart table?” asked Alexis, breathless.

“Perhaps if he were a man-sized man,” said Hassan without looking up. “Or if we had a deck crane of some variety.”

Vitaly stole a glance from his disorganized console as he lowered the submarine to periscope depth, deftly skimming the sliver of water between the river’s surface and rocky bed below. “On regular ship chart table is used for chart,” he called out. But Alexis could hear the anxiety in his voice — she’d never heard him so scared.

Dalmar’s head and eyes lolled as Hassan cut away the last of his bloody clothes, revealing a gunshot wound to his torso and two to his left leg. He felt underneath the massive man, probing the exit wounds with a gloved hand. “The bullets all went straight through,” he said, ripping open a packet of white clotting agent and shaking it over the wounds. The substance acted almost instantly, turning the flowing crimson into a grainy, muted red. Hassan smeared disinfectant over the tiny holes and began to bandage them tightly, staunching the last of the leaking blood.

“He will be okay?” asked Vitaly, his voice warbling as Hassan prepared a thick syringe of mustard-yellow liquid.

“We will find out in the next ten seconds,” said Hassan. “Alexis — Sun-Hi — hold him down.”

“Hold Dalmar Abdi down,” repeated Alexis with incredulity. “You have to be shitting me.”

“He is very big man,” confirmed Sun-Hi in a worried tone. Hassan took a deep breath as he sat on the former pirate’s chest. He steadied himself for a moment before leaning forward and burying the syringe into Dalmar’s right pectoral, thumb depressing the plunger. Alexis and Sun-Hi each grabbed onto one of the pirate’s massive arms, using all their weight to hold him down.

Dalmar’s body jolted once, twice as Alexis and Sun-Hi held on for dear life. For a moment Alexis thought she’d actually be able to keep his arm on the deck. And then Dalmar leapt up, sending her and Sun-Hi tumbling in either direction as he drew himself to his feet, rising like a phoenix from the scraps of his bloody, shredded clothing. Hassan yelped as the pirate grabbed him by the collar, hoisting him in the air with a single hand.

“Hassan the Butcher!” announced Dalmar, his eyes wide. “It is most excellent to see you.”

Alexis snuck a glance towards the periscope monitor. Himura’s yacht was barely visible in the distance, expanding the gap with each passing second. “It’s-nice-to-see-youtoo,” squeaked Hassan, still trapped in his grip.

“Why do we not pursue Himura?” demanded Dalmar, setting the doctor down without so much as glancing as his own half-naked, bandaged body.

“Jonah said no rescue attempts — we’re getting out of here.”

Dalmar cocked his head with a strange mixture of fury and pleasure. “In the words of my famous cousin—Look at me. I am the captain now. Can we catch them?”

“Yeah,” said Alexis. “But we’re going to have squat in reserve when it’s time to turn tail and run for the sea.”

“How you even get on board?” said Vitaly. “You shot to pieces first time!”

Dalmar pointed to the shrinking image on the monitor, thick finger held over the glass-encased greenhouse on the yacht’s stern. “It was a mistake to go through the front,” he said. “No cover, no element of surprise. We must ram them from behind, go through the trees.”

“Why solution always crash?” complained Vitaly. “Crash submarine into door, crash truck into ocean, crash big ship into big island, crash car into Scorpion, now crash Scorpion into glass ship! You no better captain than Jonah.”

“So we’re doing this?” asked Alexis. “We’re going after him?”

“It appears so,” said Hassan. “Seal all fore compartments and prepare for impact.”

“Already on it,” said Alexis as she remotely activated the hatches using a series of jerry-rigged switches, their clanging slams echoing throughout the forward section of the submarine’s narrow central corridor.

“This is mutiny!” Vitaly looked up at Dalmar, his eyes gleaming. “Mutiny very exciting.”

Dalmar purposefully strode out of the command compartment and towards the rear of the ship, seemingly unaffected by his bullet wounds. Alexis, Hassan, and Sun-Hi struggled to keep up as he ducked into the armory. Still naked to the waist, the former pirate yanked a heavy bulletproof vest off a hook and wrapped it around his almost comically muscled chest.

“You can’t go back out there like that!” protested Hassan in frustration. “Look at you! You’ll — you’ll freeze!”

“I will bring my own heat,” said Dalmar. He hefted Florence from the deck once more, wrapping the heavy canvas straps over his powerful shoulders.

Alexis steeled herself as she grabbed armor as well, pulling a shotgun and a bandolier of shells out of the case. She tried to hand Sun-Hi a small pistol, but the diminutive woman shook her head.

“I train with this,” she said, removing an AK-47 off the wall and slinging the strap around her shoulder. The weapon dwarfed her, practically as long as she was tall.

“What’s your plan?” asked Hassan as he too picked out an assault rifle, body armor, and a combat medical kit.

“Ram Himura’s ship and board her,” said Dalmar, teeth bright as he grinned. “And then I burn all the men.”

Sun-Hi began to squirm in her boots. “I think Sun-Hi might have a better plan,” suggested Alexis.

“We destroy the transmitter!” said Sun-Hi, her voice pitched with excitement as she held out a small electromagnetic detector for Dalmar’s inspection. Even within the submerged Scorpion the needle was almost buried in the red. “It is his only true weapon — and this will show us where to find it, destroy it!”

“It’s settled,” said Hassan. “We destroy the transmitter.”

Dalmar glowered at all three of them. “Um, ” began Alexis, “and then you can burn all the men.”

“This is a very good plan,” announced Dalmar, covering Sun-Hi’s shoulder with his huge hand and giving it a squeeze.

CHAPTER 26

The first light of dawn crept over the horizon, transforming the clinging smoke into a brilliant, frigid sunrise. A haphazard collection of overcrowded fishing boats and skiffs had gathered in the central channel of the Taedong, all nestled around a half-filled river barge. The flotilla was barely under power, thick with huddled people, and held together with cargo nets as the ships fled downstream.

Jonah closed his eyes as the yacht’s bow struck, the hull barely shuddering as the futuristic ship sliced through the ramshackle fleet. Dozens were hurled into the yacht’s ice-laden wake, helplessly tangled in the ropes and wreckage that rocked in the churning waves. Men and women thrashed in the water as they tried to pull themselves atop floating debris. Jonah forced himself to watch as his skin went cold and a rock-like lump grew in his throat.

Himura had shed his grossly overweight form and robes, leaving them piled on the floor like a moth emerging from the chrysalis. He stretched before pulling a simple pair of slacks and an expensive shirt over his well-muscled body, carefully adjusting his collar as his men looked on with disinterest. The conflict map stretched further with every passing moment as North Korean tanks, foot soldiers, fighter planes, helicopters, and bombers clashed in nearly every far-flung corner of the tiny country.

“I thought I’d die in my own clothes,” he said with a sort of half-smile. “It won’t be long now — just a few more hours until we reach Pyongyang.”

“You’re making a mistake,” said Jonah, his eyes glued to the monitors and the wreckage in their wake.

“What mistake?” “Treating people like numbers on a ledger sheet, assuming they can be reduced to behavioral algorithms. The fate of men and women can’t be written by a grotesque computational abomination, or a bureaucrat with an inflated sense of his own historical importance.”

“Tell me, Jonah,” said Himura, his voice soft as he spread his arms in acceptance of the proclamation, “if people are not numbers, what are they?”

Jonah pointed to the screen, eyes narrowing. “They’re variables.”

The Scorpion’s periscope rose from the yacht’s wake like a scythe as Himura stared in paralyzed surprise. The submarine’s angular bow split the surface a heartbeat later as it charged from the waters, angry stacks bellowing thick diesel smoke and propellers whipping icy river into violent froth. The submarine slammed into the glass greenhouse, throwing Himura to his knees as the superyacht pitched and shook. Beside him, Meisekimu began to flash in deep, crimson reds. She was scared.

Alexis sprinted across the heaving deck of the Scorpion. The submarine’s tilting bow was deep into the yacht’s greenhouse like a lance in a charging elephant. Hot, moist air flowed from the shattered glass, sticky against her face. Dalmar plunged into the mist first, leaping through the newly created hole and onto the jungle terraces below. He landed softly atop the thick ferns and wet soil, instantly invisible within the thick canopy.

She held her breath and leapt, sailing through the air beside Hassan as the two tumbled into wet vegetation. Sun-Hi threw a backpack over the side and slid after it a moment later, both landing on soft soil. The Scorpion’s bow began to retract, hull sliding backwards with an ear-piercing shriek of glass against steel.

Dalmar charged forward between massive trees. Black-suited security personnel poured from the interior of the yacht, weapons already shouldered. Aiming from the hip, Dalmar released a long coil of thick fluid, the stream erupting with roiling fire. The black-suited men recoiled from the explosive heat, but it was too late. The searing liquid broke across their ranks like a wave of flame. Dalmar’s booming laughter was audible even over the screams of burning men as they rolled in the dirt, trying to extinguish the sticky blaze. The jungle had become a raging inferno in mere seconds, the crackling heat sucking moisture and oxygen from the misty air as the licking flames crawled up the thick canopy.

Alexis sucked in a big breath, coughing against the choking, acrid smoke, her eyes burning in the haze. Sun-Hi pointed at the yacht’s tall bridge looming over the greenhouse, her electromagnetic detector chiming as she aimed it at a grouping of antenna and satellite dishes high in the superstructure.

Hassan, Alexis, and Sun-Hi stepped over still-smoldering bodies and into the impenetrable artificial jungle. Dalmar emerged from a cloud of smoke as the party advanced on a single open bulkhead hatch. More screaming rang out as Dalmar discharged another burst of flame into the darkened interior.

Alexis charged in first, her shotgun trained on the gantry stairs as they moved upwards towards the transmitter, careful to not brush against the flaming walls. Coughing, Hassan kicked open the door to the first level, revealing a softly-appointed lounge with two dead security guards on the floor. They’d been beaten to death with bare hands, the perpetrator already vanished.

“Think Freya got lose?” suggested Alexis. “Jonah could be with her — we should look for them.”

“Stay with the plan,” said Hassan. “The transmitter must come first.”

Sun-Hi pointed upwards. “This way!” she shouted. The four charged up the stairs to the next level of the tower. Dalmar ripped open the door to reveal to a massive, sprawling room filled with humming computer servers and autonomous communications consoles. The compartment practically crackled with electromagnetic energy, buzzing audibly as thick power lines fed massive transmitters.

“More are coming!” shouted Dalmar. He aimed his flamethrower out of the door and fired one last trickling burst, laying a patch of low flames across the stairs. Hassan slammed the door shut, bracing it with his shoulders as gunshots rang out, blasting holes through the thin metal.

“Whatever you must do, please do it now!” shouted Hassan. But Sun-Hi stood unmoving before the endless communications consoles, frozen with indecision. There were too many independent systems disable them all— and the door between them and the security forces wouldn’t last long.

Himura leaned over the mahogany writing desk, his face illuminated by a hidden computer monitor within. “Your crew has been cornered in the transmitter room,” he said, face drawn into a scowl as he waved for the surrounding security personnel to go. The final man drew a pistol and kicked Jonah’s legs out from underneath him, driving him to his knees.

“They’re pinned down,” continued Himura, turning away from Jonah. “With nowhere to run. My men will end this soon. This is not how I wished to spend my final moments. I wanted peace, contemplation, not this senseless chaos and destruction.” Himura knelt down towards Meisekimu, his fingertips brushing against her glass enclosure. The organism’s crimson colors began to subside, slowly replaced by neutral blues as she was comforted.

And then Himura looked up.

Jonah was on his feet, forearm wrapped around the aging guard’s neck, a stolen pistol in his hand. It was too late for the old guard. He couldn’t so much as gurgle through his crushed windpipe as the remaining blood and oxygen in his brain dwindled to nothing. Jonah waited until the man’s eyes rolled up and his head lolled before releasing him into an unconscious heap on the floor. Himura and Jonah began to circle each other in a slow, uneasy dance as Jonah leveled the pistol.

“Are you going to murder me now, Jonah?” Himura’s voice was amused, even sad, like a master teacher whose final lesson was left unlearned.

Jonah aimed at his feet and fired three times, the bullets ricocheting off Meisekimu’s thick glass enclosure.

“You can’t kill her,” Himura said. “You could spend a hundred years trying to smash your way into her glass womb and still fail.”

Jonah looked up and shook his head. “Ruh roh.” Himura’s brows knitted together momentarily in confusion. He took a step forward. “I ask you again — are you going to murder me? Would that somehow assuage your childish fantasy that you have any control over these final moments?”

“Speaking of childish illusions of control,” Jonah said. He jutted his chin over Himura’s shoulder, “You made a mistake thinking Freya could be harnessed to your purposes. Or that she wouldn’t immediately escape your men.”

Himura swiveled to see Freya. The tall, blood-splattered blonde was a mess of torn clothing and bruises as she stared at him with hate-filled eyes. The blade of her blood-red fire axe rattled, digging a deep furrow into the bamboo flooring as she dragged it behind her the last few steps. Jonah turned away just as she lifted it.

Alexis ducked beneath an empty metal desk as more gunshots rang out through the transmitter room. She tilted the shotgun towards the rapidly disintegrating door and fired wildly, her shots blasting through the thin metal and ricocheting down the narrow gantry stairs. “I’m out!” she shouted. “Sun-Hi — what the hell is taking so long?”

Sun-Hi desperately scanned the room, trying to find any way of disabling the endless rows of unmanned communications equipment. “I don’t know!” she shouted. “I understand none of these systems!”

Dalmar pushed Alexis out of the way, taking her position. He aimed a small pistol at the doorway, carefully rationing out his shots as he barely kept the swarming security guards at bay. More gunshots echoed from up the stairwell, faster this time and accompanied by shouts of surprise and the sound of fists landing on soft flesh. Alexis nervously glanced around the transmitter room — but none of the latest barrage had been aimed in their direction.

A voice called out. “Don’t shoot!” shouted Jonah from the other side of the door. “I’m coming in!”

Alexis and Hassan peeked over the top of the metal desk as Jonah wrestled open the blown-apart door. He limped into the transmission room with a pistol in each hand, his face and chest covered by a thick spray of blood from ambushing the aging security personnel in the stairwell below.

“We have to stop the transmitter!” said Sun-Hi, gesturing to the long banks of equipment around her.

“You mind?” said Jonah, handing the two pistols to Dalmar. He gently took Sun-Hi’s AK-47, unslung the strap, and shouldered the rifle. Everyone stood back and plugged their ears as he fired, tracing a continuous burst across the consoles, computer systems, and electrical relays until the magazine was empty. Sparks, smoke, and electrical arcs erupted across the entire compartment as the consoles went dark.

Sun-Hi checked the electromagnetic reader as she coughed, waving away the cordite smoke drifting from the rifle’s hot barrel. “It read zero!” she said. “Transmission gone! How did you know?”

“Easy,” said Alexis. “He just aimed for the most expensive-looking stuff and got lucky, per usual.”

“Can’t argue with the results,” said Jonah, setting the empty rifle down.

Dalmar clapped a meaty hand on Jonah’s back. “It is good to see you, brother.”

“You too,” said Jonah. “Everybody OK in here?”

“We’re all fine,” said Hassan. “We’re just happy you’re alive.”

“That’s great and everything,” said Jonah. “But why the fuck are you back? You’re all supposed to be halfway to Buenos Aires by now.”

“There was a bit of a… mutiny,” admitted Hassan.

“You’re welcome,” added Dalmar.

“If it makes any difference, rescuing you was only a secondary objective,” said Alexis.

“I’ll deal with you lot later,” said Jonah as he jabbed the pirate in the center of the chest with an outstretched finger. “Right now we have a bigger problem — the transmitters were only half of the battle. The entire ship is automated and there’s no way to stop it, even if we somehow killed every man aboard.”

“I think Dalmar might have already done that,” interrupted Alexis.

“I have not,” the pirate stated. “Some are merely wounded.”

“You didn’t let me finish,” said Jonah. “Remember the radioactive traces we found on the U-3531? Turns out our suspicions were right. The uranium ended up in a bomb— and its on board this ship. It’s programmed to go off autonomously once we reach the heart of Pyongyang. Himura says he couldn’t stop it even if he wanted to.”

“Then we wreck his computer,” said Alexis. “The transmitters were easy enough, right?”

“It won’t work. I took a couple pistol potshots at his biological computer thingy, but it’s too armored. Nothing short of a howitzer would even make a dent.”

Sun-Hi tugged on Jonah’s arm. “I have idea,” she said. “But as you say, you will not like it.”

“Can’t be any worse than letting a nuclear weapon go off,” Jonah said.

Sun-Hi unslung her backpack, revealing a powerful handheld radio within. “I can plug into the transmitter, call in a DPRK artillery strike on this ship.”

“A fucking artillery strike? On ourselves?” said Alexis. “You’re right — I do not like this idea.”

“How are they going to know which ship to hit?” asked Jonah.

Dalmar just pointed out of the small compartment portal towards the flaming, broken greenhouse in the stern. A massive pillar of black smoke rose from the still-burning jungle within. The Scorpion trailed them from a distance, her conning tower barely above the icy surface of the river.

“Got it,” said Jonah as he scratched his head. “Tell them to aim for the burning one.”

“But they might hit the Scorpion too!” said Hassan.

“Well, the Scorpion is quite a bit smaller,” said Alexis. “So, you know, they’ll probably miss it. But we’ll have to warn Vitaly all the same, tell him to give us some extra space.”

“Do it,” ordered Jonah, already retreating as Sun-Hi plugged in the radio and began to shout orders in rapid-fire Korean. “And then get off this ship as fast as humanly possible.”

“Where are you going?” demanded Alexis. “You can’t leave again, we just found you!”

“I’m getting Freya,” said Jonah. “And then I’m leaving, too. And for fucks sake, don’t wait for me this time.”

Jonah limped back into the ornate chamber, stepping once more onto the bamboo floor as the first artillery shell hit. He shielded his face with his hand as a massive section of the glinting aluminum wall burst inwards with an ear-shattering explosion. Geysers of icy water erupted around the sleek superyacht as she hurtled through a burgeoning hailstorm of artillery fire. A second shell pierced the thin hull, detonating deep in the deck, blowing apart a glass-enclosed collection of rifles and telescopes in a cloudy shower of smoke and debris. Below him, the grotesque Meisekimu pulsated beneath a layer of still-hot debris as she flashed disorganized purples, unable to connect with her transmitters.

There she was. Freya knelt over the organic computer as though oblivious to the barrage. She whispered to Meisekimu, comforting her. Himura’s ruined body lay silently crumpled face-down just a few feet away. Freya’s axe was still buried in his lower spine, a pool of sticky blood growing around his prone form. There were scuff marks and smeared red splattering across the floor — he’d fought hard and lost badly in a clash Jonah hadn’t even bothered to watch.

“Come on!” shouted Jonah, his voice muted in his own partially-deafened ears.

Freya didn’t budge. “I can’t leave,” she whispered as she stroked the glowing glass, eyes fixed on the shuddering organism encased beneath it. “She’s everything I’ve ever wanted. A flawless weapon. Himura was right about one thing; she can change the equation, tip the ecological balance.”

“She’s a death machine, programmed to blow sky high with a nuclear blast as soon as we hit Pyongyang.”

Another shell landed high in the superstructure before she could answer, shaking the yacht as the lights around them flickered and winked out. Jonah grabbed Freya and yanked her to her feet, but she twisted away, easily throwing off his hand.

“Come on, she’s not worth dying over!” he shouted.

“You don’t understand,”

Freya murmured. “Freya — we’re running out of time!”

She looked at him and shook her head, refusing to leave. The salvos were landing closer now, one after another slamming into the stricken ship from stem to stern. Whatever time they had left to escape had already expired.

“Freya—!” screamed Jonah, but it was too late. The nearest bulkhead burst apart at the waterline with two near-simultaneous explosions as a great wall of icy water poured in, sweeping across the ornate chamber. Jonah was ripped away from Freya by the leading edge of the wave and dragged under freezing water, his head slamming into a glass case. His mind reeled with the impact, his body trapped in a green abyss of swirling, airless motion. Spinning uncontrollably, he clawed at the water, trying to drag himself to the surface.

Finally, his face burst free of the swirling flood, open mouth taking in one fast, gasping breath before a pair of powerful hands grabbed him by the leg, climbing up his body. Himura’s twisted face suddenly rose from the froth, inches from his own. Instinct took over and Jonah slammed his fist into the Himura’s face, once, twice, three times as the dying man threatened to pull them both under. The arcing shells were coming faster now, hitting the stricken superyacht with one deafening explosion after another.

“I… knew… your… father,” Himura hissed through clenched, blood-flecked teeth. Stunned, Jonah grabbed at him, trying to hold onto Himura, but they were swept under and torn away from each other by a tsunami of floating debris, dragging Jonah ever deeper into the rapidly filling chamber.

He broke the surface one last time to find himself alone. Himura and Freya vanished into the flood. Jonah sucked in a deep breath before diving into the raging waters, his broken ribs screaming in his chest. The explosions were so close and fast he could barely separate one from the other as he forced himself deeper into the darkness, clawing against the violent currents. Twenty feet, thirty feet, Jonah pushed against the violent floodwaters until his ears pounded and his lungs burned like acid. The ship’s interior was already a tomb, a chaotic maelstrom of electric discharge and zero visibility, with Meisekimu’s crimson light throbbing within the eye of the storm like a dying heart.

And then his grasping fingers caught a jagged edge, a lattice of shattered metal and carbon fiber from where an artillery shell had blown a wide fissure in the hull. Jonah held himself fast against the incredible influx of floodwaters as his joints popped and muscles flexed. He fought the subzero deluge with every cell of his being, slowly forcing his body out of the gap. Emerging on the other side, Jonah was suddenly ripped away by the river, violently sweeping alongside the exterior hull as the superyacht slid past, its sharp propellers slicing through the waters just inches from his tumbling form.

He broke the surface between sheets of ice, spitting water and coughing as he threw one shivering arm over the cold, white blocks bobbing in the choppy wake. The wounded superyacht listed in the river before him, a collapsing mass of billowing flames and ruined metal. One artillery shell after another smashed into her fragile, exposed hull as her bow and helicopter pad slipped beneath the waters for the final time. A great wave washed over her, pouring through the shattered panes of her ruined greenhouse. She groaned, hull flexing as she filled, her massive propellers suspended briefly in the air as her bridge and antennae tower went under. And then she was gone, swallowed by the Taedong, leaving only a floating patch of still-burning debris and a growing fuel slick.

Jonah treaded the freezing waters, grateful for each breath of clear air. And he watched the surface, waiting, silently begging for Freya to emerge. He treaded water until the last of his strength left him, but she never came.

CHAPTER 27

Jonah stood at the bow of the surfaced Scorpion as they entered Nampo Bay under the morning light of a brilliant winter sun, the mouth of the Taedong River to their stern. He’d exchanged his saturated clothing for a survival suit, the orange neoprene ensemble matched by those of his crew. The fits weren’t perfect, Dalmar’s suit was so tight he could scarcely get the zipper halfway up his bare chest; Sun-Hi’s was so large that the arms hung down off her hands like penguin flippers. Alexis and Hassan held the white top sheet from their bed between them, forming the largest improvised white flag they could muster. Only Vitaly was missing from the deck; he piloted the sub from the command compartment beneath the open conning tower hatch.

“There they are.” Alexis pointed to the seemingly endless Japanese invasion fleet in the distance. With the storm now passed, the flotilla seemed even more massive than Jonah could have imagined.

“Keep that flag up nice and high,” Jonah ordered. “We want to be taken into custody, not shot on sight.”

“I will help hold the flag,” said Dalmar, replacing a grateful Alexis.

Jonah turned to Sun-Hi. “You getting anything on the radio?”

“One message,” she said. “It repeats in Japanese and Korean. It says to not fight, that all sides have common enemy. There is some battle still in the east and many DPRK leaders are missing but most troops are standing down.”

“Good,” Jonah said. “Radio Vitaly and tell him to keep course towards the center of the convoy, dead slow. And if I don’t see any of you after this, it’s been real.”

“So profound,” said Alexis, rolling her eyes.

The crew lapsed into silence as the Scorpion plied the still waters of the bay. Jonah raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes, training the lenses on four beached Japanese amphibious transport ships below still-smoldering Nampo. A veritable sea of North Korean civilians had formed winding lines on the sand before their open bows as Japanese sailors and soldiers worked tirelessly to distribute emergency rations, generators, and warm clothes.

As they slipped between the first of the anchored Japanese ships, soldiers and sailors alike gathered on the decks, entire crews pouring into the cold winter morning as they watched the submarine pass. Alexis lowered her side of the white flag as she raised a neoprene-encased hand to shield her face from the sun. “They’re not stopping us,” she marveled, wonder in her voice.

And then the surrounding men moved, lining up in formation, sharply angling their elbows as they snapped the fingers of their right hands to their temples. It happened slowly at first, one man, two, five, the movement growing exponentially until every man stood at attention.

“They’re saluting,” whispered Jonah.

Sun-Hi placed her floppy arm around Jonah’s waist and rested her head against his shoulder. “It is the War that Jonah Stopped,” she said.

“That it is.” Hassan smiled. “That it is indeed.”

“I should rather call it the War of Many Burned Men,” grunted Dalmar.

“I am so doing my princess wave,” grinned Alexis as she raised her hand. “Whad’ya say, Cap?”

Jonah allowed himself a ghost of a smile as he silently nodded back to the saluting men, acknowledging them. “I say we get the hell out of here before they figure out we accidentally gave the North Koreans a nuclear weapon.”