“Nope!” said Alexis. “I’m going to stay right here— surrounded by the thickest section of hull. Y’all can go ahead and get as irradiated as much as you want up in command.”
The doctor couldn’t think about Alexis Andrews without allowing himself a tiny secret moment as he visualized her slim form and lively eyes. The fact that she was even on the Scorpion was nothing short of a happy miracle. Beautiful Alexis in her cutoff shorts, tank tops, and steel-toed boots, surrounded by engine lubricants and half-disassembled repair projects.
Technically, Jonah and Hassan had inadvertently kidnapped her when they’d stolen the Conqueror under the ruse of a repossession order. Their fates had been linked since finding her stowed away in the super yacht’s engine room the next day. What Alexis had believed would be a short, strange week among well-intentioned outlaws had transformed into a fight for survival. Despite the chaos, the death — or perhaps because of it — Alexis and Hassan had found each other, becoming closer with each passing day. But he couldn’t think about that. Not now.
Stomping rang out from the metal deck of the main corridor, loud enough to make Hassan wince. Somali warlord and former pirate Dalmar Abdi pushed his way through the narrow entrance, rolling in one muscled shoulder after another to squeeze through and into the command compartment. Twin bandoliers crossed his chest like an X, each loaded with large-caliber ammunition. An assault rifle was strapped around his neck, and his belt was loaded with grenades and extra magazines; a small machete and twin pistols were bound to his thighs.
Even after sailing with him for two months, Hassan didn’t quite know what to make of the former pirate king. Dalmar’s past remained shrouded in mystery, even legend. According to some sources, Dalmar was the son of Mohammed Farrah Aidid, Somali warlord and the illegitimate self-declared president at the height of American military involvement in the country. Supposedly, a six-year-old Dalmar Abdi had taken up arms to lead a company of children against an American rescue convoy during the Mogadishu “Black Hawk Down” incident. Another rumor declared that he was the son of a Somali soft drink magnate, educated in Rome before returning as a humanitarian worker. Upon discovering the state of the war-torn country and the vicious campaign against it by Western powers, he rose up and became the most feared buccaneer in the region.
All Dalmar would say about himself was that he was a ‘dread pirate,’ a strange attribution that Hassan strongly suspected came from the 1987 film, The Princess Bride. Hassan was only certain of two things: Dalmar had shown a strange tenderness toward Hassan’s mother, personally saving her from a burial at sea, and he’d risked his life to hijack a massive container ship and slam it into the artificial island city of Anconia Island, saving both Hassan and Jonah. Now there were factions within Western governments, as well as shadowy supranational financial interests, who wouldn’t rest until he’d been caught or killed. Now thought dead, Dalmar’s voyage on the Scorpion bought him the only three things that mattered anymore — distance, time, and anonymity.
“I don’t think you’ll need that much firepower,” Jonah said, pointing at the bandoliers. “We’re having a meeting, not assaulting the beaches of Normandy.”
The pirate crossed his arms and glowered. “I think maybe not so good idea to trust Marissa,” Vitaly said, piping up from his navigations console. “She is ex-girlfriend, no? Woman scorned?”
Hassan had to admit Vitaly had a point about the shipping heiress. Jonah had never ever properly broken things off, instead, he mysteriously disappearing for years before turning up under fire and in desperate need of help. Remarkably, she’d even guided the Scorpion into an abandoned dry-dock in Puget Sound, coordinating the rehabilitation of the submarine after the beating she’d taken in the Indian Ocean.
“See these?” said Jonah, showing Vitaly his bare wrists. “See how I’m not wearing handcuffs right now? We were one phone call away from getting nabbed during the retrofits.”
“Could be part of larger plot,” said Vitaly. “She gains trust and then sends you to excruciating death, maybe by torture. Would be very Russian of her.”
“I like Marissa,” said Dalmar with a massive smile as he let his arms drop. “She told me all about how I am very famous.”
“—terrorist,” added Hassan. “You’re a very famous terrorist.”
“But I have fan pages on the Internet!” insisted Dalmar.
“I still think bad idea.” Vitaly shrugged. “So maybe you come back from meeting. Maybe no. Vitaly will see.”
“I hope we are ambushed,” Dalmar interjected as he inspected his assault rifle. “I have never killed a Japanese before.”
“Seriously, lose some of the arsenal,” Jonah said, returning his attention to the periscope as they edged ever closer to the Fukushima docks. “This is a polite meeting among polite company only. No killing.”
“Very well.” Dalmar frowned as he peeled off his layers of firearms, ammunition, and explosives like an ear of corn husking itself. “I will only bring my most polite weapons.”
The Scorpion slid into the Fukushima docks with a long, low groan and shudder, the metal hull of the vessel scraping along the crushed, sunken cars stolen from the town by the retreating tsunami.
“Sorry, Captain,” said Vitaly with a grimace as he brought the submarine to a wince-inducing, grinding halt. “I think we maybe hit something.”
Hassan, Jonah, and Dalmar watched from the concrete docks as the Scorpion slowly backed out to sea, her conning tower and periscope disappearing in a whirlpool of swirling bubbles. Alexis and Vitaly were more than capable of hiding the submarine on the ocean bottom until the party returned, hopefully finding a soft, muddy patch as far from the stricken nuclear power plant as possible.
Jonah turned as he adjusted his thick parka, zipping it up against the creeping cold of the damp January. All three were acclimated to brutal heat, not winter’s chill — Hassan’s life in Morocco, Dalmar’s home in the scrublands of coastal Somalia, Jonah’s long internment in a Saharan prison.
“They’re saying this could be this region’s worst winter in a century,” said Hassan, his breath collecting into a cloud of frost as he spoke. Jonah just nodded.
Silently, the three men followed a single paved road inland. The first few blocks were stripped bare, all structures claimed by the raging ocean. Now, only large patches of dried mud and scrubby brush alongside the cracked, potholed road remained. The eerie moonlit stillness surrounding them gave the entire scene an otherworldly feel.
Next, they came to the true destruction — buildings torn from their foundations, scattered debris swept and bulldozed into tall towers, stacks of rusting, flattened passenger cars. In typical Japanese efficiency, the wreckage had been carefully transported to designated zones; the roads made clear for traffic that would never again return. And then there were the titans, the massive fishing and pleasure boats too large and difficult to tow back to the beach, some partially disassembled by acetylene torches, others simply left to moor in the mud.
Hassan, his captain, and the pirate journeyed up the winding road connecting the docks to the highway. Only nature had withstood the tidal forces — while the landscape between themselves and the sea had been scraped clean, the stark forest on the other side of a low guardrail still rose tall and ancient.
Jonah led, following the bent and rusted street signs to Futaba Park, a small, snowy city tract more than a mile from the docks. Approaching the site in the dark, Hassan could see their hosts had already arrived in a half dozen low-slung American Lincolns and Cadillacs of various vintage. The semicircle of headlights illuminated a set of stairs in the center of the overgrown park, the pavement surrounded by thick tufts of dead brown grass.