The Gate

by Bob Mayer

  Nishin slowly opened his hand. The knife had cut through skin and tendons to the bone. Blood flowed freely. Lake grabbed a rag and wrapped it around Nishin’s hand to stop the bleeding.

  “Jesus,” Lake muttered as he worked. “I don’t know why he was so damn trigger-happy.”

  Nishin was holding the knife that had cut him in his undamaged hand and looking at it with a strange expression on his face.

  “What’s wrong?” Lake asked.

  “I recognize this steel,” Nishin said. “This blade.”

  “What—” Lake began, but Nishin leaned forward and before Lake could stop him, he had the tip of the blade inside the collar of Araki’s wet suit.

  “Now hold on,” Lake said.

  Nishin ignored him, slicing neatly through the rubber down to Araki’s navel. The material peeled back to reveal an intricate tattoo on Araki’s chest. Of a sun rising over a black ocean.

  “He is not CPI,” Nishin said, throwing the knife to the floor with a clang. “He is Black Ocean.”

  “But...” Lake began, then shut up as he collected his thoughts.

  “I do not know him,” Nishin said, answering one of the questions that flittered across Lake’s brain.

  “He was the one who was tracking you,” Lake said.

  “Of course,” Nishin said. His voice was quiet, introspective as if he was talking to himself. “The Society could have put a bug in me while I was unconscious when they worked on me after my last mission.”

  “Why?” Lake asked, looking down at the man who up until a minute ago he had believed worked for the Japanese government.

  “I do not know,” Nishin said. “I was ordered to back off and not pursue this matter any further. He must not have expected me to be here.”

  “What a shitpile,” was Lake’s less than elegant summation of their situation. But it was all he could think of.

  “As you were saying,” Nishin said, “what do we do now?”

  Lake looked at Araki, then at the hatch. “Let’s see what kind of ride we have.”

  Nishin nodded. “But first...,” he said as he reversed the knife and slammed it into Araki’s chest. The body twitched once, then was still.

  Lake stared at him. “Why did you do that?”

  “He was going to kill both of us. There is no point to keeping an enemy alive.”

  *****

  Ohashi picked his way through the fog very slowly. They could hear the blasts from the south tower foghorn slowly grow stronger. Visibility was less than twenty feet. The Yakuza on the forward deck held their weapons at the ready.

  “Anything on radar?” Okomo asked.

  “We have the same one contact to the west.” Ohashi replied. “The ship that passed through earlier.”

  “What is it doing?”

  “It’s circling, as if it was waiting.”

  Okomo gripped the bottom edge of the open window that faced forward. Where was everyone? Where were the North Koreans? The Black Ocean? The Americans? The CPI? One of those four must be to the west, but where were the other three?

  Okomo had ordered Ohashi forward to pick up the two divers a few minutes ago. He waited until they could just make out the base of the southern tower. Ohashi’s hands moved smoothly over the controls, holding their position.

  “They are not here,” Ohashi said, a most unnecessary comment, Okomo thought angrily. He checked his watch. The two men would be out of air in five minutes. They should have surfaced and waited, holding on to the fender, ten minutes ago.

  “We wait,” Okomo ordered.

  The second hand on Okomo’s watch swept around. Then again. After four more minutes, he had to accept what the empty concrete fender told him. “I will be back,” he informed Ohashi as he turned.

  The captain’s voice halted him. “That contact to the west is coming back. It will be passing under the bridge in twenty minutes. They might have picked us up coming across.”

  Okomo nodded to indicate he understood, then headed below.

  *****

  “How could we have missed it?” Feliks demanded.

  “It was in the radar shadow of the Golden Gate and the north shore,” Captain Carson explained.

  “Is it the trawler?”

  Carson looked over his radar operator’s shoulder. “It’s small. I don’t think it’s the trawler.”

  “What about underwater?” Feliks asked. “The North Koreans were moving a submarine in this direction.”

  “Sonar?” Captain Carson called out.

  “Negative contact, sir,” the operator reported.

  “How long until we sight the radar contact?” Feliks asked.

  Carson stared at him for a few seconds, then answered. “Visibility is down to maybe twenty-five feet. If we see a ship, we’ll ram it.”

  “Then what do you suggest?” Feliks snarled. “I have to find out who that is under the bridge.”

  “I suggest we track the ship and stay close by,” Carson replied calmly. “Sooner or later the fog will burn off. Then we can see what it is.”

  “Great,” Feliks muttered. “Just great.”

  *****

  If he could have whistled, Lake would have, but the mouthpiece from the scuba gear prevented that. The swimmer-delivery vehicle, or SDV, that Araki had ridden down was top-of-the-line equipment. About twelve feet long with double propellers, it was only three feet high, which meant it had very shallow draft. It was of the “wet” type, which meant that the place for the crew was not watertight. Lake looked in: there was room for two men side by side on their stomachs in the crew compartment. The double screws meant that the engine was probably very powerful, driven by banks of batteries in a watertight compartment in the rear. The SDV was held to the midget by a steel cable running from its front to an eyebolt on the midget’s deck, just forward of where the bomb sled was attached.

  Lake looked up as Nishin swam out of the hatch of the midget sub. Lake pointed at the SDV and Nishin came over. Lake pointed at the cable, then back at the bomb sled. He could see Nishin’s face through his mask; it squinched up in confusion for a second, then cleared as the other man understood what Lake wanted to do. Nishin nodded. Lake pointed at his chest, then into the SDV. Then he pointed at Nishin, then the cable. Nishin gave a thumbs-up, international diver talk to indicate he understood.

  Lake slid into the driver’s place. Looking around, the controls were not much different than the SDVs he had been trained on in the SEALs. There was even a place for Lake to hook his regulator in to breathe air off tanks on the SDV and conserve his own back tanks.

  Lake powered up the SDV. The twin screws churned behind him as he got the feel of the controls. They were quite simple. Two levers, each of which determined power to a screw. That handled speed and turning. Then a shorter lever above those two that controlled a single horizontal stabilizer that was behind both propellers. That controlled attitude, which determined whether the sub went up, down, or remained at constant depth.

  Lake looked out the Plexiglas window to his front. Nishin was holding onto the anchor cable, waiting. Lake signaled for him to release the cable, which he did. The current immediately grabbed hold of the suddenly free SDV and Lake manipulated the controls. It took him a few seconds to get the feel and in that time they were swept fifteen feet away from the midget and the sled.

  Lake eased them back in, Nishin dangling at the end of the cable like a hooked fish. He maneuvered until Nishin was hanging right over the sled. He held in place while Nishin hooked the cable onto the front of the bomb sled. Then Nishin released the two cables that had anchored the sled to the midget.

  Nishin swam up and entered the SDV, taking his place next to Lake. Pushing the center lever up slightly, Lake then increased power to both screws. For several moments nothing happened. Lake pushed the levers forward until they couldn’t go any further. Water churned in the rear but still nothing. Then slowly, with a cloud of mud, the sled began moving. For the first time in fifty-two years, Genzai Bakudan was on
the move again.

  CHAPTER 17

  SAN FRANCISCO HARBOR

  THURSDAY, 9 OCTOBER 1997

  12:48 A M. LOCAL

  “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:

  WHERE?

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

  ISLAND. SECURE BOMB.

  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 wit
h 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 taken 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.”