The Gate

CHAPTER 17

“We’ve got a contact!” the sonar man announced. “Heading nine-five degrees. Depth nine-zero feet and climbing.”

Captain Carson hurried over to the sonar, Feliks right behind him. The lines on the screen were an incomprehensible jumble to both men. The Sullivan was in the main shipping channel, about a mile west of the Golden Gate Bridge, moving toward the harbor.

“What is it?” Carson asked.

“Small,” the sonar man said, one hand holding the headphones, the other playing with knobs. “Very small, sir.”

“Where is it?” Feliks asked.

Carson turned and led him to the table behind the wheel. He pointed on the chart. “Nine-five degrees from us is here. Near the bridge and just to the south of the main shipping channel.” Carson turned back to the radar man. “What’s the contact’s heading? Is it moving?”

“It’s moving, sir. Heading …” There was a pause, then, “… heading is six-zero degrees.”

“Heading into the harbor, somewhat north,” Carson interpreted.

“Follow it,” Feliks ordered. Then he remembered something. “What about the other ship? What’s it doing?”

Carson checked with radar. “It’s starting to move in that direction also.”

“One big party,” Feliks muttered.

“Oyabun, we “have picked up an underwater contact moving away from the base of the tower.” Despite the cool air in the cabin, sweat was standing out on Okomo’s forehead as he made his report. “I have ordered Captain Ohashi to follow on the surface.”

The figure Okomo addressed was seated in the shadows in the corner of the room and did not respond. The woman standing nearby stepped into the light. “Could it be the Korean submarine?” Peggy Harmon asked.

“I do not believe so,” Okomo replied. “The contact is very small. More likely it is an American submersible. Or perhaps one from the CPI or Black Ocean.”

“From the Coast Guard cutter?” Harmon asked.

“I do not know.” Okomo was keeping his eyes on the third person in the room, not Harmon.

That person finally spoke, the voice so low, Okomo had to lean forward to hear it. “Could it be the midget submarine?” ‘

Okomo had not considered that possibility and he was momentarily thrown off guard. “I do not know, Oyabun. I do not think it would still be capable of functioning after all these years.”

There was a noise that might have been laughter and the figure held up a metal box in an age-withered hand. “I have been told that with the right frequency this detonator will still work. I have been told Genzai Bakudan will still work. Why not, then, the submarine?”

To that Okomo had no answer.

“Leave us,” Harmon snapped.

With a bow, Okomo scuttled out of the room.

Nakanga was standing on the other side of the cabin, waiting for further orders. The phone at Kuzumi’s elbow buzzed and he picked it up.

“The SDV is moving to the east,” the voice on the other end said succinctly in Japanese. “There are also two surface contacts. I believe one of them is a U.S. Coast Guard cutter. I do not know what the other one is.”

Kuzumi was surprised that the SDV was moving to the east, but he didn’t bother asking why Araki was doing that because there was no way the man on the other side could know why. Araki was simply supposed to recover the bomb back to the stealth ship which was to the west.

“Follow,” Kuzumi ordered the captain of the stealth ship. It was the prototype for a model that he had sold to the Japanese Navy. The government thought the ship had been disassembled. Like many other projects completed under government contract, it went into the Black Ocean arsenal.

Kuzumi turned the phone off. “Tell the pilot to be prepared to lift off.”

The current was fighting the SDV and keeping its speed down to less than five knots. Lake was giving more power to the right screw, pushing them slightly to the north. Nishin had been still for a while, but now he picked up a board that had been lying inside and wrote on it with the marker that was clipped to it. It was the only way people inside could communicate with each other and part of the standard equipment for the SDV. Lake glanced over at the message:

Nishin wiped the question off and handed the board to Lake. Locking the controls, Lake took the marker and wrote the answer.

Nishin took the board and looked at it. It was the best idea Lake could come up with. Actually, what he didn’t bother to write was that he wasn’t sure how exactly he was going to secure the bomb. He had considered taking it out to deep sea and dumping it, but that would only reinvent the problem they had just encountered, leaving it out there for the next person to find.

His major goal right now was to get the bomb away from the bridge and also to get away from the ship that had launched the SDV. Lake knew that the SDV had not come alone. Lake had a very strong feeling that the SDV came from Araki’s stealth ship, which had rescued him just a few days ago, and it would be sitting out to the west. It wasn’t much of a plan, but given the circumstances, it was the best he could come up with under short notice.

He didn’t have an exact idea where he was. He was working on instinct and educated guesswork. The headlight on the SDV lit up the next thirty feet of ocean and the scene never changed: inky water in a cone of light.

Lake knew from the instrument panel that he was at a depth of fifty feet, but that was all. From the speed of the SDV, subtracted by the speed of the current, multiplied by time elapsed, he estimated that they had already covered about a mile from the bridge.

Nishin shoved the board back into its slot, which Lake took as acceptance. Not that Lake thought the other man had any choice. Lake tried to remember what San Francisco Harbor looked like. He knew the Navy had a base at Treasure Island, but that was also close to the Bay Bridge, which wasn’t the smartest place to bring a nuclear weapon.

Then he had it. There was another island almost straight in from the bridge and it was deserted. The perfect place to bring the bomb up and call for help.

“Let’s be real careful now,” Captain Carson called out to his bridge crew. Carson could have told Lake his estimate was wrong. The Sullivan was less than a mile out from the Golden Gate. Carson could hear the Mile Rock foghorn to the south, not too far away. Close enough for him to worry about seeing it suddenly loom out of the fog. There were numerous other shoals and rocks out here, off of the main channel.

Carson checked his electronic eyes one more time. The sonar contact was another half mile to the west of the Coast Guard ship. Checking radar, he could see that the surface contact was between his ship and the underwater vessel, a quarter mile to the west of the Sullivan. They were all fumbling around in the dark, to what end he wasn’t sure.

He went back to stand behind his radar man. Feliks joined him. “Any idea where we’re headed?” Carson asked.

“No,” Feliks said.

“Would you mind telling me what we’re following?” Carson asked.

“Yes, I mind very much,” Feliks said. “It’s classified.”

“Can you give me an idea—” Carson began, but the scream of one of the forward lookouts cut him off.

“Ship off the port bow!”

Carson saw it, less then thirty feet away, a black shape. He had a moment to wonder why radar had not picked it up, then he was screaming orders.

“Full reverse! Hard left rudder!” Even as he spoke he knew it was hopeless. Ships didn’t have brakes and they didn’t stop quickly. Mass in motion in the water tended to keep moving in the same direction for a while. The thirty feet disappeared in four seconds. In that time Carson registered that the other ship was of a type he had never seen before. Shaped like an inverted V with sloping black decks.

There were no running lights lit, a violation of sea law, Carson thought as the bow of the Sullivan hit the sloped left-front side of the other ship.

The weight of the cutter and its specially constructed bow, designed for cutting through small ice fields, combined with the slope of the side of the other ship, led the Sullivan up onto the side of the other ship, then something gave. The sound of tearing metal and the clang of the Sullivan’s collision alarm filled the night air, echoing into the fog.

Carson ran to the right side of his bridge and looked down. The severed rear half of the other ship was listing in the water, going down quickly. He ran over to the left side. There was nothing there. The front half must have been pushed under the keel of the Sullivan. The grinding sounds continued as the Sullivan slid over the remains of the stealth ship. Then there was only the collision alarm.

“Prepare for rescue operations!” Carson cried out. He leaned over the voice tube to the engine room. “Continue reverse until we come to a stop.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Feliks demanded.

Carson ignored him. “Damage control, all sections report in.” He listened as the various parts of the ship called back. It appeared that the other ship had take the brunt of the damage. The Sullivan’s bow was slightly crumpled but they weren’t taking on any water.

Feliks waited until he could be heard. “We have to continue after the underwater contact.”

“We can’t leave the scene of an accident.” Carson was indignant. “There might be survivors in the water. That’s the international law of the sea.”

“I don’t give a goddamn about the international law of the sea,” Feliks hissed, leaning in close. The bridge was shuddering from the power of the engines in full reverse, still trying to stop the ship. He gripped Carson’s arm. “There may be a Japanese nuclear weapon on board this contact we’re tracking. A nuclear weapon that had been delivered to destroy San Francisco. That ship we just ran over was from the Japanese government trying to recover that bomb. I really don’t have too much sympathy if there are any survivors. We would have had to fight them for the bomb anyway.”

“I can’t leave men in the water,” Carson said obstinately.

“I’m ordering you to continue pursuit.”

Carson shook his head. “I have a higher law that I must obey as a seaman.”

“I’ll have your ass,” Feliks growled. “You very well may,” Carson said, “but after I check for survivors.”

“What is that?” Okomo demanded as the sound of metal tearing echoed through the fog.

“It sounds like a ship hitting something,” Captain Ohashi said.

“I thought you said there was only one radar contact,” Okomo said.

Another sound, a jarring clanging soon filled the air. “That is a ship’s collision warning alarm,” Ohashi said. “There must have been a collision.”

“The underwater contact?” Okomo demanded.

“Heading slightly north of east,” Ohashi replied.

“Any idea where it’s heading?”

Ohashi looked at his chart. “If they continue on their same course, they will hit here.” His finger tapped an island.

“Take us there!” Okomo ordered.

Feliks watched the surface contact move east. The crew of the Sullivan had not picked up any survivors from the stealth ship, but Captain Carson, to Feliks’s extreme displeasure, was keeping them circling in the same spot, still looking.

Feliks checked the chart. There were so many directions the ship could go in once it made it into the harbor, he was going to lose them soon. He walked out to the bridge wing where Carson was looking down at the water.

“We have to …” Feliks paused as his eyes were caught by something. He tapped Carson on the shoulder. “Can you launch your helicopter?”

Carson nodded. “It’s all set. The crew is on board in case we need them.”

“You stay here and search,” Feliks said. “I’m taking the chopper.”

Kuzumi threw the phone down in disgust. There had been no reply from the stealth ship for the past five minutes. Piling that on top of Araki’s course change to head east, and things were not looking good. He had a sudden foreboding about what was going on. Perhaps Araki was no longer driving the SDV.

Araki had been his ace in the hole to keep a personal eye on this whole operation. Kuzumi had long ago found that it was very profitable on high-risk operations to put a deeper-cover operative on an operation that a regular operative was sent on. It was redundancy in the system, an engineering term.

Kuzumi pulled a small computer out of the sideboard next to him and turned it on. He tapped into the keys, pulling up the code for the bug in Nishin. The image came on the screen very faintly to the north. Kuzumi overlaid a map of San Francisco on top of the dot. Nishin was in San Francisco Harbor, to the east of the Golden Gate. Kuzumi followed the dot to the right. He turned to Nakanga. “Tell the pilot to take off.”

“Where are we going?” Nakanga asked.

Kuzumi held up the map. “Alcatraz.”