As he got closer Nishin decided on a course of action. He slid his hook down and then over the diver’s when it was paused. That locked the man in place. He looked up and Nishin smashed the butt of his knife into the other man’s mask, shattering the glass. The man flailed about, blinded. Nishin slipped the knife under his arms and slashed his throat. Blood squirted out into the light of the lamp.
The man let go of his hook and tried to kick for the surface, but Nishin reached out and grabbed hold of his weight belt, keeping him in place. Blinded and dying, the man offered little resistance. When there was no more movement, Nishin insured that the diver’s hook was jammed in place in a crack in the concrete, then he slipped the other end under the diver’s weight belt, holding him in place. Then he continued his journey down.
Occasionally he could see steel bars sticking out of the concrete or loops of metal where the workers sixty years ago had made an underwater scaffold. His entire world consisted of the slightly curving concrete wall in front of him and the inky blackness all around. Nishin could hear his breathing and he forced himself to slow the rate down. He had no idea how deep he was and he tried to remember what he had been taught in the fast and furious dive classes he’d been given as part of his training. He’d never had to use the training before, but he did remember that there was a definite limit to how deep he could go and how quickly he could resurface. He had to assume that since the two Yakuza had planned on going down here with the same equipment, that it was safe for him so far.
He spotted something and froze, then relaxed. The bottom, a brown, dirty spread of streaked mud pressing up against the concrete fender. Nishin went down the last few feet and stood, his feet sinking into the ooze. From the way his bubbles were blowing away, the current was not quite as swift here, but it was still strong.
Nishin looked left, then right. Which way? He chose to the right. Using the hook to keep himself from being washed away, he made his way around the base of the fender, his feet kicking up swirls of mud that were quickly swept away.
He made forty feet when he saw something ahead. With each step, the shape materialized out of the dark — a short blunt metal cigar-shape, half covered in mud. A conning tower was in the center bearing the rising sun of Imperial Japan. The sub was canted over on its right side, pressed up against the tender at a sixty-degree angle.
Nishin’s feet clanged on metal as he clambered up the steel slope of the forward deck. He could see the cable for the submarine’s anchor stretched into the mud. Another cable came off an eyebolt on the deck and was looped around an exposed steel rod from the tender.
Nishin reached the conning tower, but his gaze was drawn to the rear of the sub where two steel cables led back into the darkness. He adjusted the light and in the glow he saw a rectangular metal object at the end of the two cables. The mud was pressed up against the bottom half, but the top half was kept free of debris by the strong current. There was no mistaking the Japanese script written on the steeclass="underline" genzai bakudan.
CHAPTER 15
“Negative radar contact,” the young rating called out from his chair on the left side of the bridge.
Captain Carson, the Coast Guard officer in charge of the U.S.S. Sullivan, looked over at the man who had identified himself as Agent Feliks. Upon boarding, the man had flashed both a badge and a set of documents indicating he was a very-high-ranking federal officer and that Carson was to obey his every order. “Course, sir?”
Carson, being a cautious man, had called his higher headquarters to check on the papers and received verification. Apparently this Feliks fellow was high up in the dark world of government intelligence. Carson had had DBA, CIA, and FBI operatives on board the Sullivan at various times, so he didn’t find this so odd. The Coast Guard was the branch of the government assigned with policing the nation’s waterways and coastlines, so whenever any other government agency needed to operate in that area, they called on the Coast Guard.
It had taken Sullivan twenty minutes to gather a crew together and get the ship ready. They had pulled out of the Coast Guard station five minutes ago and would cross under the Golden Gate in another couple of minutes.
“There’s a North Korean trawler out there,” Feliks said. “We need to track it down and my men will board.”
Carson looked down at the dozen men dressed in black, wearing body armor and carrying machine guns that crowded his forward deck. His own crew was at battle stations, the forward five-inch gun manned and ready, along with four .50-caliber machine guns located about the ship. “My radar man reports negative contact,” Carson said.
“It’s out there,” Feliks insisted. “We had positive satellite contact up until the fog rolled in an hour ago.” He put the tip of a finger on the chart on the table in the center of the bridge. “Right here.”
“It’s not there now,” Carson said. “We’d pick it up.”
“Then it’s hiding.”
Carson looked across at his executive officer, then back at Feliks. “You can’t hide from radar on the surface of the ocean, sir.”
“Could it have turned and gone out of range?” Feliks asked.
“If it was here,” Carson touched the chart, “an hour ago, then it would still be in range of our radar even if it turned around and headed west at flank speed.”
“Then it’s around here somewhere. What if they’re hugging the shore?” Feliks asked.
“They might be able to hide in shore clutter, but…” Captain Carson didn’t complete the sentence. He had long ago learned to let these visitors on his ship make their own decisions and take responsibility. The minute he gave an opinion, responsibility started to shift.
“It’s out there,” Feliks said with certainty.
“Yes, sir,” Carson replied.
“Then let’s get out there and find it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Two hundred yards behind the Sullivan Lake could just barely see the stern running lights of the Coast Guard ship through the fog. He could hear foghorns all around, blasting out their warning at different notes and pulses so they could be identified.
He flipped open the navigational book for the West Coast that was in a small drawer next to the controls and flipped through it. He found what he was looking for: there was a foghorn on the south tower and north tower of the Golden Gate. He read the code for the south tower: two short blasts, one long, three short. Repeated every thirty seconds.
Lake cocked his head and listened. Finally he heard it, almost due south. He was near the bridge, and even as he realized that, he could hear the echo of traffic on pavement above his head. He couldn’t see the bridge, but from the noise he knew he was directly below it. And that meant the Sullivan was heading out to sea.
“You don’t know shit, Feliks,” Lake said for the second time this evening. He spun the wheel of his boat hard left and turned south.
Adjusting for the strong seaward current, he headed toward the foghorn on the south tower. Within a minute he spotted the warning lights on the tower fender. Lake circled around the massive concrete fender. There were no ships.
There was a metal ladder leading up to the top of the fender for servicing the lights and foghorn. Lake eased up to the ladder, then quickly jumped up on the prow of the boat and tied it off. The current immediately swung the boat around and pressed it up against the concrete, ruining the paint job as the swell slammed it back and forth. That was the least of Lake’s worries right now. He grabbed the scuba gear and began rigging. He was glad that the dive locker also contained a head lamp that strapped on above the face mask. Last, but not least important, Lake took the Hush Puppy out of its holster. He inserted a muzzle and chamber plug into the gun, waterproofing it.