Deadly Coast (A Tom Dugan Novel)

by R. E. McDermott

  Ward looked shaken. “I’d heard of Unit 731 before, but I never checked out the specifics. These were some seriously bad people. What happened to them?”

  “To most of them, nothing,” said the analyst. “A lot of them, apparently including our friend Dr. Imamura, ended up working for us.”

  “That’s disgusting!”

  Joe shrugged. “Can’t say I disagree. On the other hand, as nasty as these people were, they were the leading experts on chemical and biological warfare. The Cold War was upon us. We had the atomic bomb and the Soviets were looking for a counter. A lot of the logs the Japs used were Soviet citizens kidnapped in cross-border raids from Manchuria, and the Soviets were demanding that all Unit 731 personnel be turned over to them for trial. Everyone was pretty sure they’d just fake executions and put these scientists to work on their own CBW program.”

  “So we just beat the Soviets to the punch and did the same thing, without fake executions,” Ward finished. “Makes me proud to be an American.”

  “Well, at least for us they were working on defensive stuff, not weapons.”

  Ward scoffed. “Yeah, well. If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.”

  “Look, Jesse. As long as other countries have—”

  “I know, I know. You’re right,” Ward said. “I just have a problem with programs that make it hard to tell us from the bad guys.”

  The man nodded and changed the subject. “Any word on Imamura?”

  “Still unconscious in the hospital. He may have had a stroke along with his heart attack. The guy’s ninety-four with a do-not-resuscitate order. I suspect they’re just checking him occasionally to see when to hang a toe tag.” Ward sighed. “I doubt we’ll get anything from him. Any luck connecting him to the sub?”

  “None. What’re we going to do?”

  “What can we do?” Ward asked. “We have a hunch, no clue what was on the sub, and no idea if this guy Mukhtar is going after it. And our naval assets are all at least three days’ steaming time away. I can’t request repositioning on a hunch.”

  “So we …”

  “So we wait and watch,” Ward said. “And hope like hell nothing bad happens.”

  M/T Pacific Endurance

  Arabian Sea

  Dugan stood at the radar next to the captain in the early-morning light and watched the blip that was M/T Marie Floyd, well south of them. After much discussion, they’d decided to stay in the area for a few days, to continue to hunt at the edges of the pirates’ normal range. They’d done well in this area, and as long as the pirate launches were ranging in front of the mother ships, they figured it safer to work the fringes. With luck, they could net enough captives to turn and head straight for the Somali coast and Harardheere. Running at full speed, they had more than enough fire power to discourage pirates from boarding, a much less-hazardous operation than offering themselves as bait.

  The strategy had borne fruit. In the day since the interrogation of the prisoners, Marie Floyd had taken two more launches and Pacific Endurance had taken another, twenty more captives between the three boats. But it seemed a hollow victory when this morning’s call to Alex had brought news of the murder of another of Phoenix Lynx’s crew, and the pirates’ pledge to murder another seaman daily until payment of ransoms resumed. He swallowed his anger and wrestled with the idea of heading to Somalia with the hostages they had now, knowing every day’s delay would cost another life.

  “You got something, Cap?” asked Dugan.

  “Possibly,” said the captain, pointing at the screen. “She’s on a reciprocal course and should pass us to starboard.”

  Dugan followed his finger and saw a faint blip. “Pirate?”

  “Too soon to tell,” the captain said, staring at the screen. “I don’t think so. Too big and too slow. A fishing boat, if I had to guess. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  Twenty minutes later, the captain watched as the target seemed to split, with the smaller target on a direct course toward Pacific Endurance and moving fast.

  “Trouble!” he said. “Looks like a mother ship, and she just launched an attack boat. They’ll be on us in twenty minutes.”

  The captain moved to the console to dial in to the public-address system and order all hands to action stations. Dugan watched as the crew went through the transfer of steering and engine controls, and the captain moved back to Dugan’s side at the radar for one final look before evacuating the bridge.

  “Any chance Marie Floyd can close with us and present them two targets?” Dugan asked.

  The captain moved the radar cursor to check the distance to their sister vessel. “Negative,” he said, shaking his head. “The mother ship’s slower, but she’s too close. She’ll be on us an hour before Marie Floyd can get close, even in the best of circumstances.”

  “Well,” said Dugan, “not much we can do about it. I guess we just have to make sure we take care of the launch before momma shows up, and then play it by ear.”

  Dugan pulled out his sat-phone. “I’ll let Marie Floyd know what’s going on before we activate the jammers.”

  CIA headquarters

  Maritime Threat Assessment

  Langley, VA

  Ward leaned back in his chair and stretched before looking at his watch. He’d lost track of time and missed dinner. Again. There’d be hell to pay from Dee Dee when he got home, if she wasn’t already in bed when he got there. He turned off his computer and was locking his file cabinets when the phone rang. He considered not answering until he checked the caller ID.

  “Ward,” he said into the phone.

  “Agent Ward, this is Dorothy Lomax.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Lomax. Thanks for returning my call.”

  “To be clear, Agent Ward, I’m not returning your call. I think you’re a despicable person who has nothing better to do than harass a kind old man, even to the point of death. I could quite happily go to my grave having never spoken to you again.”

  “Ah … OK,” Ward said. “Then suppose you tell me why you did call.”

  “Because despite my pleas, Dr. Imamura insists he must speak to you.”

  “He’s awake?”

  “He regained consciousness two hours ago.”

  “I’ll be right there,” Ward said.

  Dorothy Lomax met Ward at the door to the hospital room and shooed him out into the hall. She glared at him.

  “You’re not to upset him. Is that clear?” she asked in a low voice.

  “How is he?” Ward asked, ignoring her question.

  “He’s dying, Agent Ward,” she said sadly, a gleam of moisture in her eye. “The doctor doesn’t expect him to last the night.” The glare returned. “And why he wants to spend even a second of what little time he has left talking to the likes of you, I have no idea. But I do know I’ll not have you upsetting him.”

  “I’ll try not to upset him,” Ward said, moving around her toward the door.

  “Oh, you’ll do much more than try, Agent Ward,” she said, following him into the room. “I’ll see to it personally.”

  Imamura was a shriveled husk of a man, swallowed by the hospital bed. An IV tube was taped to one arm, and a multicolored display above the bed flashed the news to all who could interpret it that this was a man not long for the world. He turned his head on the pillow as Ward entered.

  “Thank you for coming, Agent Ward,” he said, his voice weak.

  Ward nodded, as Imamura looked at Mrs. Lomax.

  “Mrs. Lomax, you’ve been here constantly. Why don’t you go get a bite to eat while I chat with Agent Ward?”

  “I think I should stay, Doctor.”

  Imamura smiled weakly. “I know you do, my dear. But what I must discuss with Agent Ward involves my work, and you don’t have the necessary security clearance. So as much as I would like to spend all my remaining hours in your company, I must ask you to leave us.”

  Mrs. Lomax opened her mouth to speak, then shut it and nodded. She left the room, closing the door behind
her. Imamura turned back to Ward.

  “A small deceit, Agent Ward. Mrs. Lomax is the last living person I care about and I hope to spare her details of my sordid past. But before I begin, perhaps you would share with me the nature of your interest in a German submarine sunk more than sixty years ago.”

  Ward shrugged. “I was hoping, as the only survivor of that sinking, you could tell me what my interest should be, especially since some very bad people seem intent on salvaging the sub.”

  “That … that’s impossible,” Imamura said. “U-859 sank in over a mile and a half of water. Too deep to salvage.”

  “Perhaps it was impossible,” Ward said. “But what was impossible yesterday is merely difficult and expensive today. The question is, what’s there to salvage worth the cost and risk?”

  “Perhaps you’d better sit, Agent Ward,” Imamura said, his voice quaking. “It’s rather a long story.”

  Ward shifted uncomfortably in the chair, his mind numb from Imamura’s recitation. He struggled to get his mind around the horrific tale he’d just heard. “But that makes no sense,” he said. “Just how did you even think Japan could survive this Operation Mi … Migoname?”

  “Minogame,” Imamura corrected. “The Minogame is a creature from Japanese folklore—a giant thousand-year-old turtle representing both longevity and protection. By withdrawing into the protection of his shell, Minogame lived one thousand years. That’s how we intended to survive.”

  Ward looked puzzled, and Imamura continued.

  “The virus was to be introduced in the European theater, as far from Japan as possible. The Germans were to deploy it in front-line weapons against both Allied and Soviet troops, but the incubation period was relatively long, up to a week before victims became symptomatic.”

  Imamura stopped and closed his eyes. Ward was afraid he’d lost consciousness, but the little man opened his eyes, took a labored breath, and continued. “However, we knew from our own experiments most were contagious within twenty-four hours of exposure. That would allow time for wounded men to rotate to the rear to aid stations, and visiting VIPs—who, of course, were always accorded priority air travel—to visit the field hospitals and carry the virus back to London, Washington, and Moscow. The long incubation period ensured the virus would be well established before the epidemic was even identified as such.”

  “But this … this engineered hantavirus. You claim it had a mortality rate of over seventy percent?”

  “Seventy percent in an indigenous Chinese population that enjoyed some resistance to the original virus,” corrected Imamura. “We projected a higher mortality rate in other populations, but we had no test data.”

  Ward wrestled with his disgust. “So back to my question. How could you hope to survive?”

  “We anticipated we’d have time,” Imamura said. “It would take several weeks or perhaps a month for the epidemic to become obvious. The first response would be denial, and the knee-jerk reaction would be to suppress the news to avoid panic. That, of course, is the exact opposite of what is needed to contain an epidemic. When we saw signs the epidemic was taking hold, we already had plans in place to begin a massive withdrawal of troops to the Japanese home islands, leaving twenty percent of our manpower in place facing the Allies. Those troops left in place would have firm orders to die where they stood, opposing an Allied breakthrough. They did not have to win, only sell their lives dearly to buy time for the virus to do its work.”

  “But when the Allies figured out they were the victims of biological warfare, they’d strike back hard, with massive air raids if nothing else,” Ward said.

  Imamura nodded. “We assumed as much, but who would they strike? Remember, all indications would point to the Germans, whose cities were already being pounded. At the time we initiated Operation Minogame, the Americans had limited ability to reach the Japanese home islands with land-based bombers. We hoped that, in their fury, the Allies would spend more of their resources striking the easiest targets, as the epidemic sapped their ability to strike at all.”

  “Which brings me to another part of this story I find a bit hard to swallow,” Ward said. “I can’t believe the Germans would go along with this.”

  “The Germans were duped, and I was part of that deception. They were shown a nerve toxin of Japanese origin to be used strategically in artillery shells. We—that is, the Japanese—were supposedly to use the toxin at the same time, with the stated purpose of demonstrating a united front to the Allies to prove that the Axis powers were willing to go to any lengths to stop them. The theory was, presented with the prospect of massive and unacceptable losses, the Allies would become amenable to a negotiated peace that would leave both Germany and Japan unoccupied.”

  Imamura drew a long, ragged breath. Ward reached for a glass of water on the bedside table, and held it while Imamura sucked from the bent straw. He moved his mouth from the straw and water dribbled on his hospital gown.

  “Thank you,” he said, as Ward put the glass back on the table.

  “I led a three-man team,” Imamura said. “Our mission was to load the virus into the artillery shells, but approximately ten percent of the cylinders held nerve gas, should the Germans want to perform tests. Also, some of the artillery shells had to perform as advertised to ensure the Germans kept using them, at least for a time. Of course, a virus isn’t a weapon one delivers with pinpoint accuracy. It was inevitable that the Germans would be infected as well.”

  “That means you …”

  Imamura nodded. “I was sure to be infected, and if by some miracle I wasn’t, I’m sure the enraged Germans would’ve killed me. I was to die for the emperor.”

  “Look, this is still nuts,” Ward said. “How could Japan expect to survive?”

  “Like Minogame, Agent Ward, inside a tight shell. The twenty percent of our forces still facing the Allies were to be only the first line of defense. There were to be three more concentric circles, with every ship or boat that floated and aircraft that flew prepared to hold the Allies at bay. They were to fight with what they had, with no more contact with Japan, and the home islands were to be isolated. As the epidemic took hold, it would, soon enough, spread from America to the troops facing Japan, attacking them from the rear, so to speak. On the US mainland, there’d be fewer Americans to build weapons, and no one to man the ships to bring the weapons to the front. In six months America would be fighting for its life, struggling to maintain any sort of civilization, as seventy to eighty percent of the world population perished. Japan would be the least of their worries.”

  “And then what?” asked Ward. “Japan’s not self-sufficient, then or now.”

  “The people were already inured to hardship because of the war, a bit more was bearable. Rationing would be even more strictly enforced, and as military resistance against us collapsed, we’d plans to devote all the resources of the war effort into survival. We’d subsistence-farm every square meter of land, including rooftop gardens in the cities, and send out fishing fleets with navy escorts to ensure they came in contact with no one. We’d hoard every bit of fuel left over from the war effort to supply the fishing fleet and their escorts. Survival would be hard, but Japan would survive as a cohesive nation, and as such, the most powerful force on earth. When we did eventually emerge, we’d have the power to take what we needed, for there would be no one left to oppose us.”

  Ward bit back his anger. He was both repulsed and fascinated by what he was hearing. “And how’d you plan to ‘emerge’? Did you have a vaccine?”

  Imamura shook his head. “There was no vaccine—not that we didn’t try to develop one. The virus defeated our every attempt. But every virus mutates with each generation as it spreads through a population, and the more successful it is—and by that I mean, the more virulent and deadly it is—the faster it seems to mutate to something weaker and more benign. A case in point is the bubonic plague, the Black Death of the Middle Ages. The virus still exists today, but it’s much less a threat than the form
that wiped out a significant percentage of the world’s population.” Imamura drew another ragged breath. “Japanese are patient people. We planned to send out survey teams periodically, in contact by radio, to check on the mutation of the virus. They, of course, would never return to Japan, but set up monitoring enclaves. We were prepared to wait five, or even twenty-five, years for the virus to mutate into a less virulent form. Of course, we hoped it wouldn’t take so long.”

  “Yeah, I’d have hated for you to be inconvenienced,” Ward said, unable to contain himself any longer.

  “I understand your anger, Agent Ward. And whether you believe me or not, you can’t hate me more than I’ve hated myself for many years.”

  Ward nodded, calmer now. “I’d be much angrier if I didn’t doubt the whole story. Something like you’re describing would have required cooperation and coordination with a lot of people, and I’ve never even heard a hint of anything like it. I’m supposed to believe that you’re the only one who knew?”

  “The secret was closely guarded. Dr. Ishii’s concept was—”

  Ward interrupted. “That’s Dr. Shiro Ishii, the head of Unit 731?”

  “Correct,” Imamura said. “Ishii was a powerful man with the emperor’s ear. Less than fifty people knew of Operation Minogame, and as soon as surrender was announced, they all died or disappeared under mysterious circumstances, days before MacArthur ever set foot on Japanese soil. I was interned in a British POW camp in Oman and presumed dead, so no one was looking for me in the chaos of postwar Japan. The British knew nothing of my background and seemed indifferent. To them, I was just another Jap. When I was repatriated in 1946, my wife was terrified and told me of the deaths of all my former colleagues. The very next morning, we bundled up our few belongings and went to the American occupation authorities. I confessed I was a former member of Unit 731 and offered my services. By blind luck, I was interrogated by an OSS officer who recognized my potential usefulness. I didn’t tell him of Operation Minogame, nor have I spoken to anyone about it until today, for the very reason you just confirmed. I knew no one would believe me. I’m telling you now because of what you’ve told me of this salvage operation.” Imamura looked at Ward. “You cannot let that happen!”