“Yeah,” said Alexis. “But we’re going to have squat in reserve when it’s time to turn tail and run for the sea.”
“How you even get on board?” said Vitaly. “You shot to pieces first time!”
Dalmar pointed to the shrinking image on the monitor, thick finger held over the glass-encased greenhouse on the yacht’s stern. “It was a mistake to go through the front,” he said. “No cover, no element of surprise. We must ram them from behind, go through the trees.”
“Why solution always crash?” complained Vitaly. “Crash submarine into door, crash truck into ocean, crash big ship into big island, crash car into Scorpion, now crash Scorpion into glass ship! You no better captain than Jonah.”
“So we’re doing this?” asked Alexis. “We’re going after him?”
“It appears so,” said Hassan. “Seal all fore compartments and prepare for impact.”
“Already on it,” said Alexis as she remotely activated the hatches using a series of jerry-rigged switches, their clanging slams echoing throughout the forward section of the submarine’s narrow central corridor.
“This is mutiny!” Vitaly looked up at Dalmar, his eyes gleaming. “Mutiny very exciting.”
Dalmar purposefully strode out of the command compartment and towards the rear of the ship, seemingly unaffected by his bullet wounds. Alexis, Hassan, and Sun-Hi struggled to keep up as he ducked into the armory. Still naked to the waist, the former pirate yanked a heavy bulletproof vest off a hook and wrapped it around his almost comically muscled chest.
“You can’t go back out there like that!” protested Hassan in frustration. “Look at you! You’ll — you’ll freeze!”
“I will bring my own heat,” said Dalmar. He hefted Florence from the deck once more, wrapping the heavy canvas straps over his powerful shoulders.
Alexis steeled herself as she grabbed armor as well, pulling a shotgun and a bandolier of shells out of the case. She tried to hand Sun-Hi a small pistol, but the diminutive woman shook her head.
“I train with this,” she said, removing an AK-47 off the wall and slinging the strap around her shoulder. The weapon dwarfed her, practically as long as she was tall.
“What’s your plan?” asked Hassan as he too picked out an assault rifle, body armor, and a combat medical kit.
“Ram Himura’s ship and board her,” said Dalmar, teeth bright as he grinned. “And then I burn all the men.”
Sun-Hi began to squirm in her boots. “I think Sun-Hi might have a better plan,” suggested Alexis.
“We destroy the transmitter!” said Sun-Hi, her voice pitched with excitement as she held out a small electromagnetic detector for Dalmar’s inspection. Even within the submerged Scorpion the needle was almost buried in the red. “It is his only true weapon — and this will show us where to find it, destroy it!”
“It’s settled,” said Hassan. “We destroy the transmitter.”
Dalmar glowered at all three of them. “Um, ” began Alexis, “and then you can burn all the men.”
“This is a very good plan,” announced Dalmar, covering Sun-Hi’s shoulder with his huge hand and giving it a squeeze.
CHAPTER 26
The first light of dawn crept over the horizon, transforming the clinging smoke into a brilliant, frigid sunrise. A haphazard collection of overcrowded fishing boats and skiffs had gathered in the central channel of the Taedong, all nestled around a half-filled river barge. The flotilla was barely under power, thick with huddled people, and held together with cargo nets as the ships fled downstream.
Jonah closed his eyes as the yacht’s bow struck, the hull barely shuddering as the futuristic ship sliced through the ramshackle fleet. Dozens were hurled into the yacht’s ice-laden wake, helplessly tangled in the ropes and wreckage that rocked in the churning waves. Men and women thrashed in the water as they tried to pull themselves atop floating debris. Jonah forced himself to watch as his skin went cold and a rock-like lump grew in his throat.
Himura had shed his grossly overweight form and robes, leaving them piled on the floor like a moth emerging from the chrysalis. He stretched before pulling a simple pair of slacks and an expensive shirt over his well-muscled body, carefully adjusting his collar as his men looked on with disinterest. The conflict map stretched further with every passing moment as North Korean tanks, foot soldiers, fighter planes, helicopters, and bombers clashed in nearly every far-flung corner of the tiny country.
“I thought I’d die in my own clothes,” he said with a sort of half-smile. “It won’t be long now — just a few more hours until we reach Pyongyang.”
“You’re making a mistake,” said Jonah, his eyes glued to the monitors and the wreckage in their wake.
“What mistake?” “Treating people like numbers on a ledger sheet, assuming they can be reduced to behavioral algorithms. The fate of men and women can’t be written by a grotesque computational abomination, or a bureaucrat with an inflated sense of his own historical importance.”
“Tell me, Jonah,” said Himura, his voice soft as he spread his arms in acceptance of the proclamation, “if people are not numbers, what are they?”
Jonah pointed to the screen, eyes narrowing. “They’re variables.”
The Scorpion’s periscope rose from the yacht’s wake like a scythe as Himura stared in paralyzed surprise. The submarine’s angular bow split the surface a heartbeat later as it charged from the waters, angry stacks bellowing thick diesel smoke and propellers whipping icy river into violent froth. The submarine slammed into the glass greenhouse, throwing Himura to his knees as the superyacht pitched and shook. Beside him, Meisekimu began to flash in deep, crimson reds. She was scared.
Alexis sprinted across the heaving deck of the Scorpion. The submarine’s tilting bow was deep into the yacht’s greenhouse like a lance in a charging elephant. Hot, moist air flowed from the shattered glass, sticky against her face. Dalmar plunged into the mist first, leaping through the newly created hole and onto the jungle terraces below. He landed softly atop the thick ferns and wet soil, instantly invisible within the thick canopy.
She held her breath and leapt, sailing through the air beside Hassan as the two tumbled into wet vegetation. Sun-Hi threw a backpack over the side and slid after it a moment later, both landing on soft soil. The Scorpion’s bow began to retract, hull sliding backwards with an ear-piercing shriek of glass against steel.
Dalmar charged forward between massive trees. Black-suited security personnel poured from the interior of the yacht, weapons already shouldered. Aiming from the hip, Dalmar released a long coil of thick fluid, the stream erupting with roiling fire. The black-suited men recoiled from the explosive heat, but it was too late. The searing liquid broke across their ranks like a wave of flame. Dalmar’s booming laughter was audible even over the screams of burning men as they rolled in the dirt, trying to extinguish the sticky blaze. The jungle had become a raging inferno in mere seconds, the crackling heat sucking moisture and oxygen from the misty air as the licking flames crawled up the thick canopy.
Alexis sucked in a big breath, coughing against the choking, acrid smoke, her eyes burning in the haze. Sun-Hi pointed at the yacht’s tall bridge looming over the greenhouse, her electromagnetic detector chiming as she aimed it at a grouping of antenna and satellite dishes high in the superstructure.