Susie Jamison relaxed in the chaise longue on the promenade deck of the Princess Royal, one of the new limited-sized luxury cruise ships on its maiden voyage heading around the world. She was Dutch-registered and crewed by a majority of Filipinos and Italians. She carried only 1200 passengers, and every cabin was in the luxury class. The staterooms were fifty percent larger than anything else on the water, and with amenities found only in the highest-priced spas and five-star hotels.
The Princess Royal had sailed only the day before out of San Diego, and was working her way up the coast. Then she would stop in Seattle for a two-day port call. From there she would ply the inland passage to Alaska, making stops at Ketchikan, Sitka, Skagway, and Juneau along the way. When she was in port at Seward, there would be three days of excursions through Anchorage to see even more of Alaska. The Princess Royal was in no rush in making her way around the world.
Susie Jamison and her husband Allegro were on their first world cruise, and she was determined to make the best of it. Susie had married her husband when he was stationed in Korea well after the Korean War, and had come to the States with him and watched him get in on the floor of the computer-chip world and quickly surge to the top of the industry. His company had expanded again and again. Just before the big financial shakedown of the computer industry in late 2000, he had sold out for over twelve billion dollars.
Allegro, known to the world as Chip Al, was celebrated for having had the insight to know which way the market and the chip industry would be going. Not so, Al would tell anyone who would listen. His wife had wanted him to quit working and do some traveling. She’d said they had too much money already. She’d wanted to go back to Korea and look up some of her family whom she hadn’t seen in thirty years. She’d wanted him to sell, so he’d sold.
Now he had money in a hundred different industries. He had become such a widespread player in the international market that he lost less than three percent during the bust of 2001, when some firms skidded by sixty percent.
Susie was a small woman, slender, with light brown skin and definite Korean features. Her three children looked more like their blond father, but they had the slightly tipped Oriental eyes, giving them an exotic look that fascinated photographers. The two girls were both models, and her son had taken to the chip industry, and now had a large chip firm of his own that he had spun off from one of his father’s firms.
That morning Susie had been the first to go to the spa, where she was in the middle of a facial to be followed by a full body mud bath. She luxuriated in the attention and the consideration the staff gave to each of the passengers.
Al sat in the salon, pumping gold Sacajawea dollars into the slot machine. The big ship sailed along at sixteen knots, not in a rush to get anywhere. Al looked out the broad window, and saw a school of more than a hundred small Pacific dolphins skipping through the water, the whole pack moving close to the big ship, then angling away, satisfying their curiosity and giving the passengers a seldom-seen sight.
Al tired of the machine. Slots were fun only if you could win, and these were set so tight they squealed when they paid out ten dollars. He went to the fantail, bought a bucket of golf balls, and set up on the driving turf. It was real grass, and would have to be resodded every six weeks. He set up the first ball. The balls were real. He took out a power driver with the slightly larger head, and slammed a dozen straight down the ship’s wake. On a good solid course that was a little dry, the drives would carry at least 260 feet. Not bad for a guy in his early sixties.
He switched to a five iron, and drove four straight and true, then pretended he had to slice around a tree in the edge of the course to get to the pin behind a short dogleg. The slices were tougher to control. At last he gave up and sent the last ball in the bucket straight and true. One of his small goals was to play golf in every nation in the world.
Ten miles behind the luxury liner and two miles seaward, a Panamanian freighter picked up speed and slashed through the water at twenty-four knots. On board, her skipper looked at the radar report of the location of the luxury liner and smiled. He wore the uniform of a captain in the North Korean Navy, and he watched his crack Navy crew at work in the ship’s combat control center. The ship had not changed from its camouflage as a freighter. Before long the main antennas would be lifted from their bent-down positions. The radars would be raised and the fake wooden sides of the “freighter” would be pushed overboard to reveal the North Korean Navy Frigate Najin 531. It had fired all nine of the Scud missiles it had mounted on board. Now it had only its six SSM-1 missiles left in the tubes and ready to fire. But they were defensive hardware for homing on enemy ships with a range up to twenty-five miles.
It had two one-hundred-millimeter guns with a range of eight miles, and four fifty-seven-millimeter guns that would reach out two and a half miles. Scattered around the deck were sixteen quad- .50-caliber machine guns for close-in work.
Captain Kim Seng Ho was thirty-seven years old, young to be a full captain, and eager to get his stars. He had volunteered for this raid, even though he knew it could well be a suicide mission. He’d decided that he never would surrender. He would fight until every man on board was killed and he would go down with his ship. His name would live in Korean history for centuries, showing honor and bravery and the ability to slap a powerful enemy in the face and then fight to the death.
“How far now from the big ship?” he asked his radar man from his position on the bridge.
“Eight miles and closing. We should be within range a little under an hour.”
“Sound general quarters. Prepare for the attack. Have the boarding party ready with ropes and grappling hooks to go up the side of the liner if we need to.”
Captain Kim watched ahead as they came up on the luxury liner. His major mission was accomplished. He had started the attack on the hated America. His orders after that were a bit unclear. In essence they said he was to “return to home port at the first opportunity when all pursuit has ended.” His senior admiral had bowed deeply when he gave the orders. Both knew that there would be no return. His craft would be discovered and it would be blown out of the water by American missiles. So he was on his own. If he captured the American cruise ship, and put all his men on board, the United States would not be able to attack her. He would have three thousand hostages. Perhaps he could sail the cruise ship all the way to North Korea. Perhaps. It was the only chance he saw. The camouflage of his ship as a merchantman had worked well. That phase was over. He was surprised he had not been discovered before now.
“Sir, we are within range of our guns,” the radar man said.
“Continue on course. We want to come within five hundred meters of her. Then we will fire.”
He would use the 57mm guns. He decided eight rounds into the cabin areas would be sufficient to bring the big ship to a standstill. He didn’t want to harm her sailing ability.
“Stand by on the 57mm weapons,” Captain Kim said in the public speaker system. “You will have the honor of firing two rounds each into the cabin areas. Space your shots along the entire length of the big ship. Fire on my command.”
The captain watched as the big white ship came into view, and then soon they were closing on her. He felt his heart racing, his eyes widening as he watched the luxury liner Royal Princess continue to steam along at a leisurely sixteen knots.
“Range one thousand meters, Captain,” the radar officer said.
“Stand by.”