Jin tapped buttons on his screen and called up the overhead chart.
“Ah,” he said. “That patrol craft belongs to Yang Lei. He’s a good man. A year ahead of me at the academy. I’m sure he’ll find a way.”
Jake sensed that for the first time in his life, sidestepping the dealing of death had created his success. He walked to the foldout captain’s chair and planted himself on its seat.
“This is our ultimate victory,” he said. “Vector in that patrol craft, Jin, and make it happen.”
Chan stood beside Gao as a sailor pushed a drill through the portal glass of the watertight door. The sailor wiggled and wrestled the bit backwards, and air whistled through the hole.
“That’s it, Gao,” he said. “That’s all we need. Leave me with these two armed men and take the rest of the crew topside. Assemble them into life rafts, assure each man is dressed for the weather, and arm the officers and senior enlisted with side arms.”
As Gao and the drill worker departed, Chan unlatched the door and pulled. It resisted him.
He stepped back and looked to the larger of the two armed sailors who remained.
“You,” he said. “You look strong. See what you can do. If you can even crack it open, we can hold that crack with the crowbar.”
The larger, strong-looking sailor stood and grabbed the latch. He braced his shoes against the deck and waited for Chan and the other sailor to poise the crowbar’s tip at the door’s lip.
“Go!” Chan said.
The sailor grunted and strained, and the door popped from its seal. Chan jabbed the bar toward the opening, but the door slammed shut.
“You had it!” he said. “Try again. It will only get easier as the pressure continues to equalize.”
The man yanked again, and when air whistled between the door and its seating, Chan rammed the bar downward. Air pressure forced the door shut again, but the second sailor stabilized the bar and held open the gap.
Chan placed his palm on the crowbar and leaned his chest into it to counter the torque. He ran his free hand over the arced sliver of light into the engineering spaces, feeling the rush of air.
His chest heaved, and he noticed that the sailor at the latch also labored to breathe.
“There’s a point at which the door opens enough,” he said, “where so much air begins to pass by that the pressure differential no longer matters. I believe we can open the door enough now to reach that point. Pull with all your might, and I will risk my fingertips in the crack this time to help you.”
Chan ran his fingers on either side of the crowbar, using friction against metal to assist the man at the latch. The sailor tugged, Chan walked his fingertips over the edge of machined metal, and the door swung.
“Pull!” he said.
With a grunt, he fell backward, and the door pivoted open on its hinges. Air bowled over him, and he rolled to his side. He reached to the deck where he had rested his pistol, grabbed the weapon, and looked up. The entrance to the engineering spaces remained empty as the wind subsided.
He stood, pointed the barrel ahead, and stooped through the doorway.
“Follow me,” he said.
The engineering spaces revealed carnage. A corpse bled from its back and another from its neck and stomach. One bled from its wrists, and he stopped to inspect it.
It opened lifeless eyes.
“Lu?” Chan asked.
“I’m sorry,” Lu said. “I was pressured. They had my family.”
“Curse you, Lu,” Chan said. “You’re the last one I expected to turn against me.”
The two sailors stood beside Chan, but he redirected them to seek other saboteurs, survivors, and the sources of inrushing water. He glanced through the deck girders and saw that the water had risen a meter up the side of the ship.
“Forgive me,” Lu said.
“I cannot forgive you,” Chan said. “You’ve done me no wrong. Our ascent to the surface was perfectly timed. A ship will carry us away. It is the dead you’ve killed from whom you must beg forgiveness. You will join them soon.”
Chan knelt and examined the sliced wrists.
“Can we agree that it’s best that I let you die by these self-inflicted wounds?”
Lu nodded.
“I didn’t want to drown again,” he said.
“I could end it with a bullet to your head.”
“No,” Lu said. “I will pass soon enough.”
Chan’s sailors returned, each dripping seawater from their coveralls. They reported that nobody else breathed within the engineering spaces. They had shut the valves allowing water into the ship, and they had opened the ones allowing pumps to suck water from the bilges.
“Then I’ve failed,” Lu said. “My family.”
“If your intent was to see this ship destroyed, you have no worries. I will soon burn it and abandon it, as is my mission. Does this please you?”
Lu nodded, life waning from his eyes. Chan knew that death was claiming the traitor.
“Pull the Korean body bags from their storage areas and place them on the decks,” he said. “Then set an oil fire in the lagging and exit through the nearest hatch. I will close the watertight door behind me.”
Chan walked forward and met Gao in an empty control room.
“The crew is topside,” Gao said. “We have bridge-to-bridge radio contact with the fishing vessel, and they are visible on the horizon!”
“Excellent! Now help me finish the mission.”
Chan flipped switches on the ship’s control station and set the drain pump to sucking water from the after bilges so that his inferno would stay afloat.
“Drag the body bags about the ship,” he said. “Start in berthing. I will start in the torpedo room.”
Chan walked forward and tugged a bag from a pile of three corpses. It hit the deck with a thud, and he scooted it across deck plates to make room for the other two.
He tugged at the next two bags and left them in a haphazard pattern, trusting that fire would melt the bags, the bodies, and the clothes. With the heat of the confined burn, he suspected that even the bones might become powder.
Ten corpses later, he met Gao in the control room.
“I laid out thirteen corpses,” he said.
“Fifteen for me,” Gao said.
“That’s enough.”
The ship’s buoyancy assured, Chan stepped to a control station and secured the pumps.
“Head topside, Gao. I will set the blaze in the forward spaces and then follow you.”
Alone on his hijacked Romeo submarine, Chan entered the scullery and dipped a rag into cooking oil. Recalling the story of the USS Miami and its disastrous arson attack, he marveled at the ease of his task. He returned to his stateroom, grabbed a cigarette lighter, and passed the flame under the rag until it caught.
He dropped the rag to his bunk, waited, and watched his bed burning. Confident the flames gained life in the insulating lagging that encircled the ship, he coughed out smoke and retreated.
As he climbed out of his captured prize, he inhaled cool, fresh sea air and reflected that he had fallen short of his mission by one ghost-like aircraft carrier. But that carrier had proven invulnerable, and he alone had escaped it.
Uncertain if an approaching vessel, claiming to be friendly, would carry him to safety, he considered his mission a success — no matter what cruel twist fate could strike him with next.
CHAPTER 35
Yang Lei held a polished rail as his thighs absorbed the patrol craft’s flank speed bouncing. A glance at his console showed an infrared camera’s perspective of dual billowing plumes over the horizon.
As his craft neared the smoke’s source, he discerned two separate columns. Expecting to see a submarine conning tower between the dark clouds, he grunted as the largeness of the fishing vessel struck him with its eclipsing of his hunted Romeo.