Rebecca Cantrell
The Steel Shark
Dedication
For my husband, my son,
and the underwater heroes
Prologue
They boarded the plane as women, but they left it as men. In full naval uniform, they trooped single file down the stairs onto the frozen runway. The business jet’s door closed, and the plane taxied toward a turnaround to take off again. Within two hours, the plane would be sinking to the bottom of the Sea of Japan, and they would be presumed dead.
Or actually be dead.
Laila led the newly minted men to their destiny. To do this, she had to become her brother, and she concentrated on aping his bowlegged, rolling gait. The words of a royal cousin echoed in her ears: Always the hips are foremost, as if the cock is pulling him onward like a dog on a leash. Toes pointed out at ten degrees, and a roll of those eager hips when he lands each foot. Your brother doesn’t so much walk as he fucks the air.
She swaggered to a battered staff car parked in front of an empty bus. Cold wind snapped at a blue and red North Korean flag mounted by the car’s right front tire. Next to the open door, a driver stood at attention. He was a small man, no taller than the disguised women, his dress uniform too long. He touched his old-fashioned peaked cap and started to bow, then caught himself as if unsure about the protocol.
“We are honored to welcome you to our country, General Dakkar.” A North Korean accent wove through his Chinese words.
“The honor rests with me,” Laila answered. Theoretically, her brother had learned Mandarin in his private schools, although in reality only she’d taken the time to study the language.
Satisfied with her answer, the driver opened the door for her and her companion while the others filed aboard the bus. When the driver drove onto a gravel road, his dim headlights illuminated only a meter ahead. Beyond lay darkness like she’d never seen.
Old leather creaked as she shifted, and her cold gun dug into her ribs. Icy clouds of breath condensed in front of her recently applied mustache. Nahal surreptitiously squeezed Laila’s hand with fingers cold as ice splinters. They could do this, the pressure against her hand said.
They had been on this road together for months, after all, ever since Nahal had hacked into Laila’s brother’s laptop. They had discovered evidence of a wide-ranging conspiracy that ended with an email detailing a top-secret submarine transaction. That submarine might give them freedom to escape the strictures of their lives and perhaps even to prevent future injustices.
More research had revealed their government had ordered a stealth submarine from China at twice the usual price to guarantee absolute confidentiality. In trade for badly needed Western currency, a North Korean intermediary had agreed to perform the handover to further obscure the vessel’s provenance and keep Chinese hands clean. So far, as the wider world was concerned, the new submarine didn’t exist.
That was why she and Nahal were jolting through a deserted forest in the middle of a cold winter night.
They were going to steal that submarine.
Like something out of a film. Only a princess who had watched a thousand movies and a hacker who had hacked a thousand computers could ever have pulled it off. It had taken months of careful planning, audacious hacking, and a great deal of money, but they had come this far, and they couldn’t turn back.
She stared into the cones of light, wishing she could see farther. Beyond the frost-rimed window, snow churned against a backdrop of black pines. Not a single soul to be seen.
The driver’s nervous eyes met hers in the rearview mirror. She adjusted her military hat to shadow the top of her face, splayed her legs as her brother would have done, and scowled, an expression that must have been familiar to the driver because he looked away.
Several minutes later, the car rolled to a stop in a gravel parking lot. The darkness on the horizon became absolute, and she realized it must be the sea. If she reached that horizon, she would be free.
Cold night air scraped her cheeks when the driver opened the door. The smells of engine oil, steel, and fish permeated the piney darkness. Goose bumps rose on the nape of her neck. Her newly bare skin felt vulnerable without hair to cover it.
She and Nahal left the car and accepted another salute from the pair of armed men. Being a man wasn’t so hard. Salutes and respect.
“Show me the vessel.” The Chinese words came out rough and deep, as she’d practiced, and men scurried to follow her order. This was how her brother lived every day — men obeyed him without question.
A man barked out a word she didn’t recognize, and the submarine’s lights came on. She stifled a smile as she gazed upon her prize resting by the dock. The long hull was black and sinister. Gray camouflaged masts and stubby fins adorned the rounded sail fastened to the top deck. She identified communication masts, a periscope, a radar antenna, and the air induction mast. All accounted for.
Soon, she’d be standing inside that sail as captain and watching her friends go inside the submarine itself. She sank deeper into the role of her brother, pushing her hips forward against the air as she acknowledged a flurry of salutes from sailors of lesser rank on her way to her counterpart, the Chinese commander. No one else merited her brother’s time.
Unlike the North Korean soldiers, the Chinese leader’s uniform was stark white, and his men wore white shirts with blue-striped collars and white caps with a red star in front. Ready for the handoff, they stood in even rows on the dock next to the submarine.
“Good evening, Commander Wang,” she said in Mandarin, matching her words with a salute.
A sour expression crossed the face of the young man next to the commander. He must be the now-unnecessary interpreter. Inside, she pitied him, but her brother wouldn’t have, so she ignored him, enjoying having the unfamiliar power to ignore a man.
The commander returned the salute. “You speak my language well, Prince Dakkar.”
“You do me a great honor,” she said, aware her brother wouldn’t be so humble, but suspecting the commander would respond to respect better than contempt.
He gestured to the submarine.
She walked across the dock and stepped onto the dark hull. She’d rehearsed this moment so many times it felt like a scene from a movie.
Behind her, her crew filed onto the dock. Each carried a duffel bag with the possessions she’d brought from home. Even with padded uniforms and shoes with lifts, the women looked small and slight. But their Chinese counterparts weren’t much bigger. After all, submarines were said to employ small men to crew them.
Nahal stood farther back on the dock, holding a clipboard, talking to her Chinese colleague, and signing forms. So far, everything was going according to plan.
Laila climbed atop the sail and looked across the nearly deserted dock. The North Korean sailors kept a respectful distance, as they’d been ordered to do in Nahal’s spoofed email. The Chinese sailors faced away from her in silent rows. She turned her gaze to the black water.
“The view is sublime when one is at sea,” said Commander Wang. “Such a creature as this was not meant to be tethered in a dock.”
“It is a beautiful vessel,” she answered, remembering the Chinese didn’t refer to ships as female, as the English did. “Sleek as a seal.”
The commander smiled. Even though this wasn’t his submarine and he’d only been tasked with delivering it, his pride shone through.
She climbed down into the warm control room, relieved to recognize the dials and screens. “Your simulation software was precise.”