Jonah stood at the bow of the surfaced Scorpion as they entered Nampo Bay under the morning light of a brilliant winter sun, the mouth of the Taedong River to their stern. He’d exchanged his saturated clothing for a survival suit, the orange neoprene ensemble matched by those of his crew. The fits weren’t perfect, Dalmar’s suit was so tight he could scarcely get the zipper halfway up his bare chest; Sun-Hi’s was so large that the arms hung down off her hands like penguin flippers. Alexis and Hassan held the white top sheet from their bed between them, forming the largest improvised white flag they could muster. Only Vitaly was missing from the deck; he piloted the sub from the command compartment beneath the open conning tower hatch.
“There they are.” Alexis pointed to the seemingly endless Japanese invasion fleet in the distance. With the storm now passed, the flotilla seemed even more massive than Jonah could have imagined.
“Keep that flag up nice and high,” Jonah ordered. “We want to be taken into custody, not shot on sight.”
“I will help hold the flag,” said Dalmar, replacing a grateful Alexis.
Jonah turned to Sun-Hi. “You getting anything on the radio?”
“One message,” she said. “It repeats in Japanese and Korean. It says to not fight, that all sides have common enemy. There is some battle still in the east and many DPRK leaders are missing but most troops are standing down.”
“Good,” Jonah said. “Radio Vitaly and tell him to keep course towards the center of the convoy, dead slow. And if I don’t see any of you after this, it’s been real.”
“So profound,” said Alexis, rolling her eyes.
The crew lapsed into silence as the Scorpion plied the still waters of the bay. Jonah raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes, training the lenses on four beached Japanese amphibious transport ships below still-smoldering Nampo. A veritable sea of North Korean civilians had formed winding lines on the sand before their open bows as Japanese sailors and soldiers worked tirelessly to distribute emergency rations, generators, and warm clothes.
As they slipped between the first of the anchored Japanese ships, soldiers and sailors alike gathered on the decks, entire crews pouring into the cold winter morning as they watched the submarine pass. Alexis lowered her side of the white flag as she raised a neoprene-encased hand to shield her face from the sun. “They’re not stopping us,” she marveled, wonder in her voice.
And then the surrounding men moved, lining up in formation, sharply angling their elbows as they snapped the fingers of their right hands to their temples. It happened slowly at first, one man, two, five, the movement growing exponentially until every man stood at attention.
“They’re saluting,” whispered Jonah.
Sun-Hi placed her floppy arm around Jonah’s waist and rested her head against his shoulder. “It is the War that Jonah Stopped,” she said.
“That it is.” Hassan smiled. “That it is indeed.”
“I should rather call it the War of Many Burned Men,” grunted Dalmar.
“I am so doing my princess wave,” grinned Alexis as she raised her hand. “Whad’ya say, Cap?”
Jonah allowed himself a ghost of a smile as he silently nodded back to the saluting men, acknowledging them. “I say we get the hell out of here before they figure out we accidentally gave the North Koreans a nuclear weapon.”