Stealth of the Ninja

by Philip Roy

  The chair made it a lot easier for me to get back outside. Before I did, I took all the money in my pocket—$200 in American bills—and left it on the floor where the equipment had been. It probably wasn’t enough to pay for it, but it was all that I had with me. Then I climbed out the window and shut it, put on my sneakers, picked up the gear, and went out of the yard.

  It was heavy. I carried it down the street a ways until I figured out how to fit the tank into the pack and wear it on my back. Now I could walk more quickly, but as it was still heavy and awkward, I had to stop often to rest. Slowly, with many stops, I made my way back to the dockyard.

  It was an awfully long way, and I was completely exhausted when I got there. Seaweed was sitting on the hull, and I was so glad to see him. I opened the hatch, greeted Hollie, carried everything inside, and took a long drink of water. I was starving but figured we’d better get out to sea before cooking anything. What if Hitoshi woke, discovered the equipment gone, and called the police so that no one could accuse him of helping me? He probably wouldn’t, but I couldn’t take that chance. I figured we’d better get out of here just in case.

  So I coaxed Seaweed in, shut the hatch, climbed back down and engaged the batteries. I let water into the tanks and we sank close to the bottom of the marina, just thirty feet deep. But as I was about to put the sub in gear and steer our way out, I pulled the scuba book out of my pocket, where it had been scrunched up all this time, sticking into my belly. As I unfolded it and took a quick peek at the page where it opened, where it showed all the pieces of equipment needed for a dive, I felt confused. I turned and looked at the pieces on the floor. Were they all here? I stared at the book again. There were eight pieces needed. I stared at the floor. I counted seven. That couldn’t be. I looked at the book again, and the floor. Maybe two of the pieces were already attached. I checked. No, they weren’t. Which was the missing piece? Could I do without it? I sat down, opened the book, and read the page in front of the diagrams. I seemed to be missing the secondary regulator. That’s what Sensei would need to breathe through after I rescued him from the ship. I had to have it. I couldn’t rescue him without it. I dropped my head. I would have to go back and get it.

  It was almost five-thirty as I raced down the streets towards Hitoshi’s house. I was going as fast as I could, feeling all jittery inside. Was Hitoshi an early riser? Would he be getting up soon? Had he already been up and discovered the robbery? Would there be other people up soon, who might see me sneaking in and out? These questions kept running through my head as I rushed back, filled with anxiety.

  How I hated to go back inside the house. Having gotten away with it once, I didn’t feel my chances were as good this time. The sun was coming up soon. People were waking; maybe Hitoshi was, too. I had to get in and out like a shadow.

  I made it back to the house half expecting to see the police there, but everything was as it had been before, except I could feel the morning coming. There were lights on in a few of Hitoshi’s neighbours’ houses, and there was the smell of cooking.

  I went through the gate once again, pushed open the window as gently as possible, and listened. It was silent. Well, maybe I could get away with it after all. I squeezed inside the window backwards again, and slid down to the chair that I had left there. I paused and listened. Nothing. Once again I couldn’t see anything in the room so I had to turn on the light. As soon as light flooded the room I scanned the floor and saw the other regulator. I couldn’t believe I had missed it the first time. The moment I picked it up, I heard a sound in another room. Hitoshi was getting up.

  I dashed to the door and flipped off the light. Then I remembered that the door had been open when I had come in the first time, so I very gently pulled it open. This time it creaked a tiny bit. My heart was pounding. I moved to the corner of the door where, if it opened, I could hide. I heard more sounds from the other room. Hitoshi was up, but he was moving slowly. Maybe he didn’t know anyone was here. Maybe he was just getting up to pee. Part of me wanted to rush out the window and race down the street.

  But I stayed behind the door and waited. It was agonizing. Hitoshi pushed open his bedroom door and walked down the hallway towards the bathroom. I could hear his feet shuffling on the floor, his heavy breathing. He was a large man, and if he were to grab hold of me, I think I’d have a really hard time getting free. But he wouldn’t do that, right? I mean, this was his idea, wasn’t it?

  He shuffled along the floor right past the room where I was. He was moving so slowly I almost thought he had stopped outside the door, but he hadn’t. He made his way to the bathroom, and I heard the sounds of him peeing. Should I go now? Or should I wait until he returned to bed? Was he going back to bed, or was he staying up? My heart was beating so fast I wondered if I would have a heart attack.

  Hitoshi flushed the toilet, washed his hands, and left the bathroom. But he didn’t go back to bed. He went into the kitchen. He was staying up.

  I heard the sound of chairs moving in the kitchen, and then the noise of an electric grinder. In a flash I went to the chair, climbed up, and squeezed out the window. But the sound of the grinder ended before I was fully out, and in my rush, the hanging window slipped off my foot and swung back with a bang. No! I jumped to my feet and started to run for it.

  As I came around to the front of the house, I saw that not only was the kitchen light on, but he had turned on the outside house light too, and the only way I could leave the yard was to pass underneath it. As I did, and as I opened the gate, I turned my head and peered down into the kitchen. There, I saw Hitoshi staring up at me with the strangest look on his face. He didn’t look shocked or angry; he just looked sad. He saw me as clearly as could be, and just dropped his eyes with a look of sadness. I didn’t know if he was sad because I had taken his equipment, or sad because he had wanted to help me openly, but couldn’t. I wasn’t about to wait around to find out. I pushed open the gate and ran down the street.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It wasn’t difficult to leave in the early morning. Every available hand must have gone to help areas more badly hit by the tsunami. I waited an hour for a ship to follow out, but when one never came, we just left. We crept along the bottom until we were down to 300 feet, and headed due east. We motored for five hours on battery power, through the blackness, before rising for a peek at the surface and the radar screen. I doubted anyone had seen us or followed us.

  On the surface, I opened the hatch to let fresh air pour into the sub and feed the engine. Seaweed went out to ride on the hull. I cranked up the engine to full speed and climbed the portal with Hollie so we could feel the wind in our faces.

  It took seventeen hours to return to the spot where we had left Sensei, or where I thought we had left him. I couldn’t be absolutely certain it was exactly the same spot, but I knew it was close, or close enough to pick up the dinghy on radar, if it was still around.

  Of course it wasn’t. It would have drifted. But it also might have sunk, pulled down by the ship. If it had, we’d never find it. We’d be searching for days for nothing.

  I shut off the engine and let the sub drift. While it tossed and pitched in choppy waves, I climbed out and threw a buoy into the water to check the current. It appeared to be flowing in the same direction, or nearly the same direction, as when we had left three days earlier. But that was the problem: I couldn’t read the flow of the current exactly, and even a tiny difference from where we sat could mean a difference of several miles after four days of drifting. We would have to make a wide sweeping search.

  Then a new thought occurred to me: what if the ship had sunk just a little deeper, and pulled the dinghy under the surface? I wouldn’t be able to see it then, and it wouldn’t show up on radar. We might sail right over it without even knowing it.

  The hardest thing to do when you are looking for something is to believe that you will find it. If you’re looking for someone lost in the woods you can follow a trail, but the sea leaves no trails, and it’s ve
ry hard not to get discouraged.

  I cranked up the engine once again, turned into the current, and sailed a hundred and fifty miles, which took seven and a half hours. And all of that time I scanned the surface with the binoculars, listening for a beep on the radar, yet never saw or heard anything. I turned 90 degrees to starboard, sailed five miles south, and headed back west for fifty miles. That took a little over three hours because of the current and wind. Once again: nothing. It was extremely tiring paying such close attention to the surface.

  Another five miles south, I headed east once more for fifty miles. Nothing! Not even a beep on the radar. My heart was heavy, and I was starting to worry about our fuel, but I told myself not to become discouraged. Sensei could not afford for me to give up. Find him!

  After two more fifty-mile passes, we had covered a few hundred square miles, and we hadn’t found a single thing. Guessing now that the buoy and ship had drifted north of the current, not south, I sailed north twenty-five miles, and began to sweep that area. But it had been two days since I had slept, and I couldn’t possibly stay awake anymore. I was so tired, a signal could come and I might not even hear it. So I tossed out the sea anchor, shut the hatch, set my alarm for six hours, and collapsed on my bunk.

  It felt like the alarm went off only minutes later, but six hours had passed. I climbed out of bed, put the kettle on, fed the crew, and opened the hatch. It was raining now, and the wind had picked up. The sky was dark and gloomy, and I sensed the current had shifted while I was asleep. I now had a hopeless feeling in my gut. How did you find something out here, where there was only sea and sky, and both were dark, and both were infinitely big?

  It seemed to me the current was flowing a little more northerly now, so I tried to account for that as I sailed east once again, turned around, and sailed back five miles north. The sky grew darker, the wind stronger, and the rain fell harder. It wasn’t possible to see anything with the binoculars. All we had now was radar and sonar, both of which worked poorly in rough weather. It felt so hopeless.

  After two more passes, we were tossing and pitching in high waves, the rain was beating down into the open hatch, and my stomach was growing seasick. It was one thing to sit back and ride through bad weather; it was another to squint through binoculars or stare at electric screens. You might not feel sick on a ride on a roller coaster, but you surely would if you tried to read a book on one. I needed a break.

  So I dove to a hundred feet, shut everything off, and lay on my bunk for just a short nap. I never set the alarm because I assumed I’d wake on my own.

  Well, I didn’t. Exhaustion had caught up to me; it was nine hours later when I woke. I climbed out of bed almost delirious, struggling to remember what I was even doing out here. Then I saw the scuba gear and remembered. If the sea was hiding Sensei and had no intention of releasing him, then maybe he was lost forever. Maybe it was hopeless. Maybe Ziegfried had been right all along.

  The sea was cruel. I loved it so much, yet I knew it was cruel. It didn’t care if you were a good person or a bad person. It didn’t care if you were brave or a coward. It didn’t care if you were rich or poor, young or old. It didn’t care at all. It had just invaded Japan and killed thousands of people, smashing their homes and sweeping them away. And now, perhaps it had decided to take Sensei away, and no matter what I did, it would make no difference. If that’s how it was, I would have to accept it—as much as I hated to.

  In the end … I did. I let go. That was what Ziegfried had ordered me to do. Oddly, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I didn’t know if it was my mood, or fatigue, or the knowledge that thousands had died in the tsunami, and many more might die from radiation poisoning; a seed of acceptance settled inside my gut and began to take root. For an hour or so I just puttered around the sub, tidying up, playing with the crew, drinking tea, and wondering if I should try to return Hitoshi’s gear. No, I didn’t think so. I was sorry I had taken it, but it would be crazy to risk going to prison for that.

  After a few hours of resting up, fiddling with my things, and packing the scuba gear away in the cold compartment, I set a course for Okinawa, and tried to get excited about meeting Ziegfried there in less than a week. It would be so wonderful to see him. Would I tell him that I had tried to find Sensei? Perhaps not.

  But as we ploughed through the waves heading southwest, I couldn’t stop thinking about Sensei. I wondered if he had drowned when seawater found its way into the holds of the ship and pulled her farther down. Had he run out of air first? What a strange and wonderful old man he had been. Perhaps this was the way he would have wanted to go. I didn’t know. I didn’t like the feeling in my gut, but it had settled there.

  I was seasick, too, which didn’t happen often, and I was feeling lonely. It was hard not to feel angry at the sea that I loved so much, and hard not to feel like a failure. I had failed to rescue someone when I had been his only hope. I had promised Hollie that we’d find Sensei. I couldn’t help feeling he was looking at me now as though I had let him down. But I couldn’t turn the ocean inside out by myself! I was just one person; the sea was infinite.

  For the longest time I just stood still, with my hand on the periscope shaft, while the sub rode roughly over the choppy waves. I was caught in that unspeakable feeling of wondering what was the meaning of life. What was the meaning of life? At that moment I couldn’t say. And then, as if someone simply reached over and tapped me gently on the shoulder to answer my question, I heard a small beep come from the sonar screen.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I cut the engine and circled around. Sonar indicated an object twenty feet below us, something small. It could have been garbage, or a sunken container, or even a log. But as I stared at the screen, I saw another object beneath the first one, a much bigger object, sitting at 155 feet. It was over 250 feet long. It had to be the ship. We had found her!

  I was over the moon, and yet also gripped by nervousness for the reality of what I was now going to have to do. It made me shiver. She had sunk another twenty feet, and while that didn’t seem like much to me, the dive manual said that it was. If you could dive to 130 feet without too much trouble, surely you could dive to 155 feet if you were careful? I mean, how much harder could it be?

  I went over a plan in my mind. First I would have to free dive to the dinghy with a rope and tie the sub to it. I didn’t like mooring to a sunken ship. What if she suddenly plunged to the bottom? A single rope would snap first; I was certain of that. All the same I chose my thinnest one—strong enough to moor, but not strong enough to pull us under. Then I slipped out of my clothes, took a deep breath, and went over the side.

  The sea was dark. I couldn’t even see the bright orange dinghy until my head was under water. Then I was spooked because it looked like a whale trying to reach the surface but being held under by a monster. Had the ship pulled the dinghy under gradually, or all of a sudden? I had no idea. All I knew was that if the holds suddenly let water in, or plastic out, she would fall. And if I were tied up in the rope, so would I.

  I swam to the dinghy and tied on the rope. Then I swam back, climbed into the sub, pulled all the gear out of the cold room and spread it out on the floor. I sat down with Hollie and Seaweed, opened the manual, and studied how to get started, while my crew pawed and pecked at the hoses that looked like snakes.

  Rule number one for beginners: Never dive alone! Great.

  Rule number two: breathe continuously. If you breathe air under pressure, and then hold your breath while you come back up, the air inside of you will expand and burst your lungs. You have to let your breath out on the way up. Okay.

  The only problem with that was that I had trained myself to hold my breath under water, and that’s what kept me alive. Now, I had to go against that natural urge and breathe.

  Not only was it important always to breathe, but the slower you breathed, the longer you could stay under water. The manual stressed this over and over. Do everything slowly and calmly. Never get upset
. Never over-exert yourself. Never panic. Okay.

  Rule number three: swim like a fish. Fish are streamlined and move through the water with great efficiency. Try to be like that. You’ll save air if you do. Okay.

  Rule number four: maintain neutral buoyancy as much as possible. You can do that by letting air in and out of the buoyancy compensator—the BC, as they called it—which was part of the backpack, and functioned just like ballast tanks on a sub. You could also drop weights from your belt. But if you did that, and went flying up to the surface in a hurry, you had to remember to keep breathing out, or your lungs would explode. Okay? Okay.

  Rule number five: keep an eye on your air, depth, and time gauges. Know where you are at all times, and how much time (air) you have left. Okay.

  Rule number six: ascend slowly—no faster than 30 feet a minute, and make a decompression stop at twenty feet below the surface for at least three minutes. In other words, come back up a lot more slowly than you go down, and stop before you get to the top, otherwise you’ll get really sick. Okay.

  Rule number seven: equalize often. That means clear your ears, either by swallowing or closing your nose and mouth and popping your ears. You have to do this or air can get trapped inside your ear tubes, expand and burst your ear drums, just as you can burst your lungs if you don’t breathe out on your way back up. Forgetting to do any of these things can lead to death, and probably will.

  Okay. Got it.