“Yeah, I see it.”
Sitting low in the water and shrouded in fog, the silhouette was almost invisible but unmistakable nonetheless: sleek hull, single slanted stack, deck guns…. It looked just like the flash cards from sub school, Myers thought. A Naichi-class destroyer. Bad boy.
Carpen snapped up the grips and stepped back; the periscope slid down. “Sonar, Conn. You get anything on the SJ?”
“Land to the north, faint contact bearing zero-nine-five.”
“Mark her target one, Naichi-class destroyer.” Carpen pointed at Myers. “Good eye, Billy. Where there’s one, there’s more.”
Four miles from the mouth of the inland sea, sonar called out.
“Conn, Sonar, multiple surface contacts. Screw count makes it four — no, five — bad guys. Target one bears zero-nine-zero, range two miles—”
“The Naichi,” Carpen muttered to Myers. “Where’s he going, Chief?”
“Listening…. Doppler’s down. He’s heading away. Shaft rotation for six knots.”
“Back into the channel,” Carpen whispered. “And the others, Chief?”
“Same bearing, range four miles. They’re really pounding the hell out of the main channel, Skipper.”
Far off, Myers could hear the wailing gong of the enemy sonar.
“Twenty seconds to new course,” reported the navigator. “New course zero-eight-four.”
Carpen turned to Myers: “Recommendation, Billy?”
God almighty, he’s asking me? Myers could feel sweat rolling down his back. He forced calm into his voice. “Heck, we’ve got the Naichi heading into the channel. Might as well hitch a ride.”
Carpen nodded. If they got into the destroyer’s baffles, not only would its sonar be useless, but its screw cavitation would cover their own. “Good call.”
“Mark, skipper.”
“Helm, come right to new course zero-eight-four,” Carpen ordered. “All ahead one-third for twelve knots.”
Invisible in the destroyer’s wake, Stonefish was two miles from the channel and three miles from their destination when the depth charge attack started.
“Conn, Sonar! Depth charge in the water, close aboard!”
“All hands brace for shock!”
Stonefish was rocked to port. Men were thrown from their stations into bulkheads, then back again as a second, then a third depth charge exploded. Carpen and Myers gripped the overhead pipes, their legs swinging free. The tower went black. The red battle lamps flickered. Gauge faces shattered and steam pipes burst, hissing wildly in the darkness.
“Planesman, forty degrees down! Helm, come right twenty degrees!”
Depth charges exploding around her, Stonefish spiraled downward. Then, as quickly as it had started, the attack stopped.
“Bottom coming up, Skipper.”
“Level her off.”
“They’re turning around for another run,” Myers said.
“Good for them,” Carpen said. “We won’t be here. Sonar, Conn, where is he?”
“Zero-eight-nine, range eleven hundred. Bearing shift… he’s turning.”
“Speed?”
“Sixteen knots.”
“Helm, steer course zero-eight-nine, all ahead flank.”
Myers did the mental calculation and said, “Skipper, what—”
“At flank speed we make fifteen knots. Add that to the Naichi’s sixteen, and we’re closing her at thirty-one. They’re fast, but their turn radius ain’t for shit. We’ll be under and behind her in three minutes.”
“Will that work?”
“We’ll know soon enough. The question is, has he called for help?”
Carpen’s gambit worked. For whatever reason, the four warships in the channel did not come to the aid of the Naichi. Their luck was short-lived, however. Five minutes after sliding behind the destroyer, a screech echoed through the boat.
“What the…” Carpen muttered. “All stop, zero bubble.”
“All stop, zero bubble.”
The whine ceased.
“What is it?” asked Myers.
“Conn, Engine Room.”
“Go ahead,” replied Carpen.
“That last depth charge must’ve got us in the ass, Skipper. Shaft’s bent. The seal’s okay, so we ain’t gonna drown, and we can limp home, but anything over three knots, and she’ll start screaming again.”
Carpen and Myers studied the chart. Their destination, marked as a red triangle, was three miles away, deep inside the Inland Sea.
“What d’you think, Billy?”
“The current in the channel is four knots at least,” Myers said. “With the time we’ve got left, we’d have to do at least eight knots to get there. And with the shaft the way it is…”
“We’d be ringing the dinner bell,” Carpen finished. “They’d sink us before we got within a mile of it.” He paused, thought for moment. “What’s that saying about discretion being the better part of valor, Billy?”
Myers felt a flood of relief. “So how do we get out?”
“As planned. It just might take us a little longer to get there.”
“And the mission?”
“My boat, my call. If they don’t like it, they can fire me. Conn, Sonar, report.”
“Four surface contacts dead on the bow, bearing zero-eight-five. Bearing shift is changing… turning…. They’re headed deeper into the channel, Skipper.”
“And the Naichi?”
“He’s astern of us and moving away.”
“Conn, aye.” Carpen said, then to Myers: “Time to make like a ghost. Helm: Come right to new course zero-nine-one, speed two knots.”
“Zero-nine-one, two knots, aye, sir.”
Carpen tilted his cap back on his head and grinned. “So what d’you think of the tour so far, Billy?”
Myers shrugged. “Interesting?”
“Nice way of putting it.” Carpen clapped him on the shoulder. “You did good. Before you know it, we’ll be back in the Volcanos drinking beer.”
“Sounds good to me.”
As Stonefish turned east and began limping through the water, neither Myers nor Carpen realized the terrible mistake they’d just made or the price it would exact over half a century later.
1
An hour before he would witness the murder of a complete stranger, Briggs Tanner was floating thirty feet beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean, watching the last rays of sunlight fade from above. He floated like that, unmoving, until he felt a slight burning in his lungs. Time to surface. He glanced at his watch: nearly four minutes. Not bad. Not as good as when he was twenty-two, of course, but not bad for forty. He righted himself, then finned upward, blowing a stream of bubbles as he went.
When he broke the surface, he was pleased to see he’d come up a hundred yards from his entry point. A mile up the shore, he could see the lights of the hotel. To the south, just across the Inland Sea, lay Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four major islands.
He swam to shore, plodded out, and sat down on the still-warm sand, his arms and legs tingling with the exertion. A full night’s sleep — a rarity as of late — would come easy that night, and he was glad for it. He’d never much cared for Kazakhstan, and the past two weeks had cemented the feeling. Left to him, the city of Karaganda would never again be on his itinerary.
He lay back on his elbows and watched the sun’s lower rim hover above the ocean. How long had it been since he’d done this, sat and watched a sunset? Just sat and did nothing? Too long.
He sensed movement behind him and turned to see a Japanese boy of perhaps seven years old kneeling a few feet away. Tanner assumed he was from the fishing village up the beach, a collection of surprisingly primitive huts made of rough planking and thatch. “Quaint” was the word the Fodor’s guide had used.