by Bob Mayer
He could feel the ship angling over to starboard. Lake estimated about a ten-degree list, getting worse very quickly. Since he had heard no explosion he had to assume someone was scuttling the ship. He worked faster.
As he sealed the last bag, Lake heard footsteps clattering on the metal stairs outside. A head poked in the door and Lake greeted it with one round from the MP-5 right between the eyes. He could see two men behind, but the door swung shut before he had a chance to shoot again.
Pieces of skull and gray brain matter exploded into Nishin’s face from the Yakuza in front of him who had looked in the room. He flattened against the bulkhead. He had had just a glimpse into the room, but that had been enough. The American gun dealer again! What was he doing here and why was he with the box? The man was wearing a wet suit, which indicated he had gotten on board the ship after it left the harbor, even though they hadn’t seen anyone board. Nishin checked the magazine on the AUG. He was going to finish this meddlesome round-eye once and for all.
Okomo was on the other side of the door and held up a hand as Nishin reached for the door handle. “Leave whoever is in there. The ship will be down soon. We must go! Now! We do not have time for this.” The Oyabun’s voice brooked no dissension. Nishin was tempted to kill the old man then and there, but there were too many of his henchmen about. Now was not the time.
Recovering the box was not essential, Nishin knew.
Making sure no one else would ever recover it was. If the ship went down, that would be sufficient.
Nishin grabbed a fire ax and slid the wood handle through the metal spokes of the hatch’s handle. It jammed against the far side of the hatch, effectively freezing the wheel. The American would die with the ship.
They continued on their way out of the bridge castle. As they ran they could feel the trawler listing farther to the right.
The tug was still nudging the right rear of the trawler, although closer to deck level now that the trawler was lower in the water. Nishin grabbed one of the lines that was tied off on the railing and lowered himself hand over hand to the waiting deck.
Lake heard the feet move away, but he continued to wait another couple of minutes, fearing a trap. He tried the door but it didn’t move. He tried again, straining against the metal wheel. Nothing. Now he knew the meaning of the Japanese words he had heard but not understood and the sound of wood on metal that had followed them.
Lake ran through the options. He turned about. There was no other door and no portholes in the room. Just metal walls, ceiling and floor. Conduits in PVC pipes disappeared through the ceiling. There were two pipes, each three inches in diameter. Even if he ripped them out he would barely be able to get his arm through, never mind his whole body.
Lake looked back at the door. The metal wheel handle had no exposed screws or nuts that would allow him to remove the entire handle. He grabbed hold and tried turning in the opposite direction from open. The handle moved about an inch then froze. He shifted back the other way an inch. Then again.
The trawler’s engines were contributing to its rapid death by pushing water into the openings in the hull. The trawler was still moving forward, albeit slower than before, as it was ten feet lower in the water. Fifty yards to starboard, Nishin was watching the ship go down. He hadn’t gotten the box, but that wasn’t the important thing — it was going down with the ship and no one had it now. The American, well that was a puzzle, one which he would not have to figure out now.
“We must circle and make sure there are no survivors,” Nishin said.
Okomo grunted out some commands to Captain Ohashi and the tugboat began circling.
“I lost sixteen men,” Okomo said. He spit. “The Koreans fought better than I expected.”
Not as well as Nishin had expected, though. There were still a dozen armed Yakuza on board the tug. His wish to get rid of Okomo and his thugs would have to be forgotten. He needed them to make it back to the safety of land to report the mission’s success.
He was concerned about the man he had killed in the radio room, though. The Koreans had managed to send out a message. What had been the message? He hoped Nakanga would know, yet at the same time he dreaded informing him of it. He thought of the piece of paper he had taken off the man at the radio, but he knew he dared not read it in front of Okomo.
A wave crashed over the bow of the trawler. “How deep is the water here?” Nishin asked.
“Eighteen fathoms. Just over a hundred feet,” Captain Ohashi said.
A voice cried out on the forward deck. Nishin looked down at a Yakuza who was pointing to the port. Two figures in life vests were struggling in the heavy swell.
A Yakuza raked them with fire from an AK-47, killing both men. “Pull the bodies on board!” Okomo yelled out. “Take their lifejackets off and throw them back for the sharks to have.” The Yakuza did as they were ordered. “Another circle,” Okomo said. “I want no one alive to tell tales.”
Lake’s arms were like pistons as he rammed the handle back and forth in the one inch of slack. He was leaning now, the deck beneath his feet angled at thirty degrees to starboard. There was no give yet in the wood on the other side, but there were no other options. Perspiration poured down his neck, seeping into the collar of his wet suit, joining the sweat that was already soaking it.
There was a loud crashing sound and the ship paused in its forward momentum. Lake didn’t stop, his arms moving back and forth.
“One of the forward cargo hatches just went,” Captain Ohashi said as the sound reverberated through the fog. “It won’t be long now. The water will get to the engines soon.”
They had circled the trawler twice now and found no other survivors. The bow of the trawler was now completely underwater. As the ocean cascaded into the forward hatches, the ship dipped farther down until everything was under except the bridge castle, angled over to the right, sinking down a couple of feet a second. “Let’s go home,” Okomo ordered.
Ohashi spun the wheel about and pointed the prow of the ship toward the Golden Gate. Nishin turned and watched, his last sight the top of the bridge of the trawler disappearing and nothing left on the surface. Then the fog swallowed up the tug.
Lake had listened to the engines sputter and stop a couple of minutes ago. At least the list wasn’t getting any worse, staying steady at about thirty-five degrees to starboard. But he could hear hatches blowing out and water tearing through bulkheads under his feet. The ship was dying and he didn’t have very long before he matched its fate.
There was the slightest give in the distance the hatch moved freely, perhaps an extra quarter inch. Lake’s arm muscles were screaming in pain from the exertion of the constant movement. He laid on the floor and jammed his back against the floor as he used his feet to kick the handle, then his arms to pull it back the inch and a half, then he kicked again. He fell into the new rhythm even as he heard water sloshing in the hallway on the other side of the door. The seal on the door wasn’t perfect as water under pressure slowly began to seep in around several spots on the frame as the water filled the corridor outside.
The PVC pipes exploded, sending shards of plastic through the room. Seawater spurted through where they had been. Lake shook the spray out of his eyes and turned his head. The level in the room was going up at an inch every five seconds. Slower than the ship was going down, he estimated, based on how quickly the water had filled up the passageway on the other side of the hatch.
The arc of movement oh the handle was getting slowly larger, now almost two inches. As water crept up around his chest and threatened to cover, his head, Lake had to stand and go back to just using his arms. As his muscles worked, his mind calculated. There were three variables. The wood holding the door shut was the key one. If it didn’t give before water filled the room, nothing else mattered. If it did, then there was the question of inside pressure versus outside water pressure. The ship was probably all underwater now and the pressure outside was greater than that in here. Lake wondered how deep the
ocean was at this point. If they went down over a hundred feet, he could forget everything. There was no way he could make it out of the bridge complex and then make it to the surface from that depth.
The water edged up around his hips and continued sliding up his body. Lake had tied off the trash bags with the document box in them to his weight belt and the box thumped against his back as he continued to work the handle.
As the water reached his neck, Lake’s hands slipped off the handle. He quickly regained his grip and continued. Three inches now.
“Goddamn!” Lake hissed. The thing had to give! He accidentally sucked in a mouthful of seawater and tilted his head up to spit it out. He stood on his toes and took a deep breath, then squatted, completely submerged and gave one great shove. Four inches but that was all.
Lake let go and floated to the air trapped in the upper left corner of the room and took another breath. He felt the ship settle and come to a halt, still angled down and to the right. Lake didn’t know it, but the keel was down at over a hundred feet, but the height of the ship itself and the bridge tower put his depth at just about sixty feet below the ocean’s surface.
Lake dove down to the handle and gave three shoves before he had to swim back to the air pocket. It was about four feet by three feet by fourteen inches deep. Lake visually marked a spot on the wall before he dove back down for another try. When he came back for more air, he noted that the pocket had lost two inches. That gave him about four or five more tries before he was out of air. At least the pressure on both sides of the door would be equal now, which was a slight consolation.
Lake dove down and grasped the handle. He pulled it up, then slammed it down. Up again, then down. He felt something give. Excitedly he spun the handle and was rewarded with the door swinging open. The way out beckoned.
Lake turned and swam up to his air pocket, which-was now less than six inches in depth. He tilted his head back and his mouth was just below the ceiling as he sucked in several lungfuls of air.
Taking one last deep breath, he turned and dove for the door. He shot through and turned left up the outside corridor. The door to the left railway was open and Lake was out in the open, then he slammed to an abrupt halt, his waist jerking him. He twisted and looked. The garbage bag had caught on the railing and he was anchored to the ship. His hand grazed down his side and pulled out his dive knife. Just as he was about to slice through the offending plastic and free himself he halted. He reached down and grabbed the railing with his free hand. Dropping the knife, he pushed on the bag and freed it. Then he finned for the surface. Looking up, Lake could only see dark green. He had no idea how deep he was.
He reached and grabbed the knobs of his life preserver and popped them. The water wings inflated and accelerated his race to the surface.
Lake trailed a steady stream of bubbles out of the corner of his mouth as he’d been taught to do by sadistic instructors so many years ago in the water outside of Coronado, California, just a couple of hundred miles to the south of here.
But he realized he’d never been as deep as this as he ran out of air to blow out. He felt his chest spasm, then he involuntarily opened his mouth and seawater came in, filling his mouth, leaking down his throat into his lungs. Lake spasmed, doubling over, no longer swimming, his body fighting to expel the foreign substance filling his lungs, but no matter how much he retched out, it was just replaced with more water.
Lake felt unconsciousness from lack of oxygen coming and he was looking forward to the relief from the pain in his lungs when he burst to the surface. He retched again, water and vomit pouring out of his mouth and air making its way in as he gasped. Lake’s insides felt like they were being torn apart as he coughed and hacked at the same time trying to suck oxygen in.
After several minutes of agony, he could breathe somewhat normally and he lay on his back and looked up. The fog was dissipating and the ocean around him was empty. There was a three-foot swell and an occasional wave lapped over his face.
Lake knew the currents around here were not favorable.
He was caught in the great surge of water coming out of the Golden Gate and pushing out to sea. He lay on his back and began finning to the east, even though he knew it was futile; the outward current was much stronger and quicker than his leg strokes.
Lake reached across his chest with his left hand and pushed a button on the side of the homing device that Araki had given him. Now he was going to find out how trustworthy his expedient partner was.
CHAPTER 9
SAN FRANCISCO
WEDNESDAY, 8 OCTOBER 1997
2:00 A.M. LOCAL
“I want the rest of the payment credited to the same account before close of business today,” Okomo said. The wounded were being carried off the tug to dark cars parked on the otherwise deserted pier. They were being whisked away to doctors who owed the Yakuza a favor.
“You will be paid,” Nishin said, deliberately omitting the title of respect he had so grudgingly been forced to use the last several hours. He no longer needed the old man and would be glad to be done with all of this.
“That includes the payments for the dead,” Okomo growled.
“Yes, yes, I will include the blood money.”
“Some of those wounded may die of their wounds,” Okomo added.
Nishin again felt he was in the fish market dickering with some old hag. “Sensei Nakanga will contact you in two weeks. Let him know if there are more dead. But do not count bodies that are still breathing, old man, or you will face the wrath of the Black Ocean.”
“Ah, the puppy growls,” Okomo said with a short laugh.
“But you do not have very long teeth,” he added. “Remember, you are not out of reach of my arm yet.”
Nishin turned his back on the Oyabun and walked off the tug. He headed for the first phone booth he could find. Stopping at it, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the piece of paper. There were two messages on it, from the dates, obviously copied from messages in the box.
Nishin ran his eyes down the first one.
DTG: 1 AUGUST nHS/lDDD HOURS TOKYO
FROM: IMPERIAL NAVY STAFF/COMSUBGP
TO: COPI/1 SM/EYES ONLY
TEXT: PROCEED TO HUNGNAM-, KOREA-i AT FLANK SPEED TO TAKE ON CARGO-FURTHER ORDERS WILL FOLLOW.
Then he read the second one and his heart felt an icy hand surround it. He now understood why the North Koreans had been so willing to die.
With shaking fingers he dialed the phone number he had memorized and was gratified to hear Nakanga’s voice answer after the second ring.
“Yes?”
” “It is Nishin.” He knew that the Society’s phones were secure. The chances of this pay phone being tapped were not significant enough to be considered a threat.
“Yes?”
“The target has been destroyed.”
“With the papers?” Nakanga asked.
“Yes.”
“Any problems?”
“There was a radio transmission just prior to the target being destroyed.”
There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end. “We will check on that.”
Nishin related the frequencies and radio data that he had memorized. “I also have the content of the message,” Nishin said.
“Go ahead.”
Nishin read both messages. When he was done, there was a long silence, then finally Nakanga spoke. “I will have to speak to the Genoysha about this. Remain there. Await further orders.”
“There is something further.”
“Yes?”
Nishin told Nakanga about the American arms dealer and how he had been on board the ship.
“Was he there to collect his payment?”
“He was in the room with the box of documents,” Nishin said. “I do not believe he would have been there simply to collect a few thousand dollars.”
“Then he was not simply an arms dealer?” Nakanga asked.
“I do not believe so.”
“You ar
e sure he died with the ship?”
“Yes. There were no survivors.”
“You must try to find out who this American worked for. How much he knew and how much he told those he worked for.” The phone went dead and Nishin slowly put the receiver down.
The man who Nishin was concerned about in death was actually very much alive at the moment. Lake’s legs had settled into a smooth rhythm that he knew from experience was propelling him at three knots through the water. The only problem was that he estimated the current he was swimming against was about six to eight knots which meant he was going farther out into the Pacific at three to five knots an hour.
The option of turning and swimming with the current, while it would certainly go with the flow, was unacceptable because no matter how fast he swam, Lake didn’t think he’d be able to make it to Hawaii; alive at least.
If Araki had chartered a boat, which Lake assumed he had done, the CPI agent would be heading out here and the less distance he had to go, the quicker he’d pick Lake up. That is if Araki was looking for him.
There was always the possibility that he’d get picked up by a passing ship, Lake consoled himself with as he swam. He was in the shipping lane for San Francisco Harbor. There was a chance something would pass by, in which case he could use the flare strapped to his left calf.
Lake became aware of a strange hissing noise that he’d never heard before. He twisted about, treading water, but in the darkness could see nothing. But he felt that something was different in the waves around him. He focused on his hearing because it was the sense that had alerted him. There was still the faint hissing noise, but now there was also the sound of waves splashing against something solid. As another swell lifted him, Lake looked about.
