They were getting close now. One more day and they’d make their move. The plan was simple: shut down the electric engines, dive deep, and drift with the abyssal currents for as long as their thinning air held out. The fleet would be far away by the time the Scorpion surfaced, leaving them free to find a quiet atoll in the South Pacific and lay low for as long as it took the coming war to end.
Jonah lowered his head and gently touched the control yoke. The Scorpion was a good, reliable ship, even beaten to hell. But she was also a target on their backs — he’d have to scuttle her in deep waters and scatter the crew for any of them to have a chance.
I’m sorry, old girl. It’s the only way.
Several hours later, Jonah woke to a pandemonium of stomping feet and disorganized shouting, the bright interior lights of the command compartment blinding as he tried to open his eyes. He staggered to his feet, awkwardly kicking the bedroll underneath an unused console. Half the crew had already gathered with Sun-Hi at the center of the maelstrom, headphones on her ears as she furiously scanned the radio spectrum. He stared at the signal strength — the needle barely retreated from full red as she wrenched the dial back and forth, a hundred shouting voices transmitting simultaneously over the airwaves.
“Who ordered us to surface?” demanded Jonah, glaring at Vitaly.
Vitaly tapped the depth gauge at his console, verifying its accuracy. “We have not surfaced, Captain!” he shouted. “We at same depth, 400 feet!”
“But that’s impossible,” said Jonah as he stared at the radio. “We’re too deep. We shouldn’t even get a whisper of signal strength down here.”
“Impossible, yes,” said Vitaly. “But depth not wrong! Check yourself!”
“I hear voices on every channel,” said Sun-Hi, dropping one of her earphones as she swiveled in her chair to face Jonah. “All coded North Korean military communications — I cannot make sense of them!” She turned the dial again as ear-popping electronic noise erupted from the interior speakers until Jonah ordered her to switch it off.
Silence fell as Jonah glanced up at the rounded ceiling of the hull above him, trying to imagine how any transmission could penetrate the four hundred feet of water between themselves and the surface.
“You hear that?” said Alexis, looking at the ceiling as well.
“Yeah,” said Jonah. “I hear it, too.” The familiar acoustic signals of the fleet above had begun to change, once-familiar engine notes increasing pitch as they scattered. The convoy was falling apart.
Jonah checked his watch—0340 hours, still well under the cover of darkness. “Let’s find out what we’re dealing with,” he said. “Prepare to surface. We’ll make a run for it if we find a shooting war up there.”
Vitaly pulled back on the control yoke, the Scorpion shuddering as it climbed through the water column, steel structural members groaning as they expanded. Jonah watched the depth gauge creep up fast, too fast.
“Easy there!” said Jonah. “They’re going to hit us with everything they got if we breach the surface like a goddamn whale!”
“Da, I know this!” protested Vitaly between gritted teeth as he adjusted their rapid ascent. “You do your job— Vitaly do this!”
Jonah raised the periscope just as the submarine leveled out, the lens slicing through the water like a shark’s fin. The view was in night vision, a grainy, green-tinted periscope feed duplicated on the command compartment’s one working monitor. His slow pan revealed a fleet in disarray, uncoordinated as they each turned in separate directions, a few desperately flashing signal lights at each other in a last-ditch effort to send a message of distress.
The gargantuan, building-sized wall of a ship’s hull suddenly slid before them, blocking their view. “Hard to starboard!” Jonah shouted. The crew collectively held their breath as the turning submarine rocked in a fleeing tanker’s massive bow wave, the passing colossus missing by mere feet as it rumbled by.
“What’s happening?” shouted Alexis. “Are they shooting at each other?” Now lost to the frothy wake of the tanker’s stern, Jonah swiveled the periscope hard to the left. A single sharp bow rose before the low horizon, a metallic-grey superyacht easily parting the storm-wracked seas as she approached the scattered convoy like a stalking hyena. She was larger than a football field, a long, seamless aluminum hull blemished only by sections of blocked-out floor-to-ceiling privacy glass.
“It’s Himura,” Freya whispered. “He’s here.”
“The fleet — we have to warn them!” said Hassan.
“It’s too late,” she said. The Japanese ships had already began to power down, their onboard lights flickering and dying. Last to lose her engines and steering, the largest of the patrol boats smashed hard against the double-hull of the tanker ship, metal screeching against metal as the patroller nearly rolled under the larger vessel.
“He’s leaving his pawns in play,” said Jonah. “All stations, check systems. What’s our status?”
“Communications offline,” said Sun-Hi. “Too much interference!”
“Engines are five-by-five,” said Alexis. “They’re here when you need ’em.”
“Navigation and helm operational,” said Vitaly. “No worse than before.”
Jonah stared at the passing superyacht on the monitor as he addressed his crew. “How are we still running? Himura just took out an entire invasion fleet without firing a goddamn shot.”
“The lobotomization of our computer servers,” said Alexis. “It must have worked!”
“You’re saying we’re too dumb to kill?” asked Jonah. “It’s practically our ship motto,” she confirmed with a grim smile.
Yasua Himura’s superyacht slid past the Scorpion. The entire rear third of the stunning vessel was encased in clear glass; forming an immaculately terraced greenhouse complete with thick vines, trees, flowering plants and tropical canopy. Sun-Hi’s communications console squawked, overwhelmed by the sheer power of the yacht’s electromagnetic transmissions.
As he panned the periscope, Jonah spotted a shape behind the futuristic ship; a blurry haze on the horizon almost lost to the faint green tones of the night vision display. Jonah flipped the monitor to real-color and zoomed into the darkness. Sun-Hi gasped with horror — the orange haze was a burning coastal city, with massive curling flames the size of houses leaping up into the night. Artillery shells silently detonated in the distance, lighting up the night with sudden popping flashes. Growing clouds of black smoke hung over the city, forming an eerie nocturnal sunset as the expansive fires reflected against them.
“It is the city of Nampo,” said Sun-Hi, barely above a whisper. She deftly activated her communications console without permission. “Nampo is burning.”
“Has Japan attacked?” asked Jonah, ignoring the fact she’d defied his orders. “Did the air war start while we were in transit?”
Dalmar shook his head. “Look at the trails. Those are not bombs. It is artillery—land-based artillery.”
“But we’re nowhere near the border,” said Hassan. “You’re suggesting North Korea has begun attacking itself?”
“I have picked out un-coded transmissions!” said Sun-Hi, gingerly holding the dial to the reconnected communications console between index finger and thumb, as though the slightest wobble or lapse in concentration might lose the signal forever. “The 25th Infantry Brigade has attacked Nampo! The 78th Infantry Regiment is defending! They fight each other!”