The Scorpion glided beneath thick pack ice, her engines softly churning dead slow under battery power. Alexis stole a glance at the digital map from her post in the command compartment, their position plotted by a clever electronic combination of inertia sensors and dead reckoning. Masked by the ice above, the submarine drew closer to the outskirts of North Korean territorial water.
Vitaly carefully steered along an invisible maritime boundary between North Korea and Russia, aiming for the sliver-like border between the two. Alexis took off one glove and pressed her palm to the interior of the metal hull, shivering as the cold of the sea pushed against the other side. The surface was slick with moisture, bleeding water in thick rivulets of condensation as the interior heaters struggled to keep out the sucking winter chill.
Outside their fragile craft, the pack ice twisted and cracked with high-pitched groans and rumbles. The sound was hideous, like cracking bones. Normally so attuned to the minutia of engines and machinery, her ears now betrayed her. The fearful sounds were inescapable, filling her with anxious anticipation.
Jonah caught her frown and furrowed brow. “The pack ice is breaking up,” he said. “Arctic explorers used to call it the Devil’s Symphony.” He reached over to give her a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. The gesture felt a little strange, like it was something he ought to do but had never tried before. Still, she appreciated it.
“The name fits,” said Alexis with a shudder. “It sounds positively awful.”
Jonah shook his head as he smiled. “It’s music to my ears,” he said. “We could be within thirty feet of a North Korean listening array and they still wouldn’t hear us go by over this goddamn racket. If it’s the Devil’s Symphony, he’s playing our song.”
Alexis nodded, not entirely convinced, and glanced over to Hassan for reassurance. The surgeon leaned against Vitaly’s helm console, arms crossed and lips pursed in deep concentration, as though the slightest display of emotion might somehow endanger the entire ship.
She was familiar with his stoic act, knew it inside and out, despite only having met the surgeon a few short weeks ago. She also knew how thin it was. Despite being a man who unhesitatingly did whatever the situation required, the surgeon clearly worried about everyone and everything constantly. Her in particular.
Hassan could be quite the mother hen. It was kind of cute, really. And yet the surgeon scared her. Not in the way Jonah did with his alpha-male, the-only-way-out-is-through, damn-the-torpedoes braggadocio, but in the other way. She was scared by how she felt with him, how the days spent talking with him felt like minutes, how she felt that she’d known him for years and not weeks. His smooth olive skin, sharp jawline, and kind eyes—all terrifying.
Maybe they were each other’s distraction. After all, she was the only woman on the crew, and he was the only man who wasn’t gay, crazy, or whatever Jonah was. She supposed everybody found their own way to cope with the long voyage from Puget Sound to Fukushima. Jonah took his comfort in silence and solitude, often pacing the quiet corridors of the submarine. Vitaly and Dalmar had their dramatic, on-again, off-again flings, either relationship status manifesting itself with loud arguments in three languages.
All she really knew about Hassan was this: every morning, she returned from brushing her teeth and washing her face in the ship’s single bathroom sink to find the tiny cabin bed they shared already made, clothes carefully folded, and deck swept. With little to do in a medical capacity, Hassan had taken on the role of the ship’s chef. Everyone ate well from the ample stocks, but few were aware the meals were typically designed around Alexis’ favorite foods. Hassan never missed an opportunity to tease out one of her fondly remembered dishes, teach himself the recipe from the small galley library, and make a batch for the whole crew.
Alexis used to play a silly little game early into a new relationship. She’d ask herself what their house would look like, who their friends would be. And if she really liked him—or to prove to herself she didn’t—she’d even imagine what their family might look like some day.
But she couldn’t do it with Hassan, couldn’t bring herself to even try. With him, the only possible future was a vast, dangerous void, colder even than the Sea of Japan in winter. Life on the fringes—their life—was dangerous. She’d brought him back from the dead once already, and she didn’t think she could bear to do it a second time.
Jonah punched the intercom and ordered Marissa to join him at the helm. Dressed in a thick ski jacket and leather boots, their guest stepped into the command compartment moments after.
“Are we there yet?” she asked, glancing around the bridge.
“We’re close,” Jonah said. “I was hoping you could guide my helmsmen over the final stretch.”
Marissa nodded, but Vitaly just sighed with annoyance. His hands were tightly wrapped around the submarine’s control yoke, keeping a steady depth below the pack ice.
“Vitaly does not need lady help,” protested the helmsmen. “We already too shallow. Submarine useless in shallow. Nowhere to hide, no way to escape.”
“We need to go here,” said Marissa, touching the digital screen at the rendezvous point less than a thousand meters distant. “Steady on. It’s just a little further.”
Vitaly grumbled and swore in Russian. “This is not tour bus,” he said, but still adjusted the rudders as requested. The tiny digital avatar of the submarine slowly approached Marissa’s updated coordinates as the helmsman brought the engines to a drifting halt.
“Prepare the ship to surface,” ordered Jonah.
Alexis caught herself wondering why Jonah hadn’t deployed the periscope and taken a peek before moving the entire submarine above the protection of the ice. Then she realized they wouldn’t be able to this time, not with the frozen pack in the way of the sensitive optics.
For the first time, Alexis realized she completely trusted Jonah and his leadership. Their rag-tag crew wasn’t backed into a corner and forced to defend themselves, and her role on the ship was no longer a matter of chance or convenience. She was his crew, his engineer—and she was goddamn proud of it. No matter how incredibly illegal or insanely dangerous their mission, she was there by choice. Who knew? Maybe she’d even get paid this time.
“Wear your warmest,” advised Hassan, standing up from his place next to the helm. “It’s negative fifteen degrees outside with forty-five knot wind gusts. Frostbite can set into exposed skin in as little as five minutes. We picked up weather broadcasts in Japan on the way over—forecasters are saying this is the worst winter in a century.”
“North Korea was already in rough shape,” said Alexis. “Can’t imagine how bad it’s gotten in a hundred-year winter.”
“NGO’s estimate they already lost over a million tons of grain reserves to seasonal flooding earlier this year. Hundreds of thousands may die before the next harvest.”
“Hate to be pragmatic, but that’s why their families are paying double,” Marissa added.
Alexis and the doctor just frowned.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she protested, dismissing both with a wave of her hand. “I’m just saying.”
Alexis tried not to let the comment distract her as she prepared the Scorpion to surface through the ice, setting all control planes to a neutral position using a series of hydraulic wheels. Vitaly slowly filled their auxiliary ballast tanks with pressurized air, displacing heavy seawater.
“Why don’t you just make the computer do it?” asked Marissa, quizzically watching Alexis as she strained against the manual systems.
“She doesn’t speak to me when I use the automated protocols,” said Alexis, releasing the wheel to catch her breath. “But when I use my hands, she spills her guts—if she’s strained, if she’s bowed, if she’s leaking, if something is about to break down. Everything is connected to everything else, but you can’t feel any of it through a keyboard. And in a situation like this, I need to hear, to feel, her every word.”
“Alexis has point,” Vitaly said as he pressed a single digital button, filling up the last of the auxiliary tanks with air. “But sometimes she make things too difficult also.”
The leading edge of the conning tower crunched against the ice, and the frozen crust cracked and squeaked as the buoyant submarine started to break through. Alexis knew the rudders and twin propellers would take the worst of it; she hoped they hadn’t missed anything important during the recent retrofit. And then they were through. The conning tower emerged from the snowy pack to the wince-inducing cacophony of steel against ice.
“Vitaly, maintain your post,” ordered Jonah. “The rest of us are going topside to see what we’re dealing with.”
“Da, da,” said Vitaly. “Someday Jonah steer ship while Vitaly breathe fresh air.”
Carrying two black, angular assault rifles from the weapons locker, Dalmar ducked as he stepped into the command compartment. He passed one to Jonah, keeping the other for himself. Alexis had to admit the captured military-grade weapons were a big step up from the Depression-era armaments they’d first used to take the Scorpion. And yet Jonah still wore a shiny silver antique on his hip, a weapon more suited for cowboys than a modern-day underwater smuggler.
“We must add a flamethrower to our arsenal,” boomed Dalmar in an authoritative voice. “A group of my enemies once barricaded themselves in a bunker below the ruins of the presidential palace, laughing at our bullets and grenades. But they did not laugh at my flamethrower. I learned that day that nothing burns quite like a man.”
“Duly noted,” said Jonah, only half-listening as he turned his attention to the interior conning tower ladder, ascending the first few rungs. “Have Vitaly put it on the requisition list.”
“Excellent,” said Dalmar in a satisfied tone. “You will not regret the purchase. It will pay for itself with the first use—this I guarantee.”
Alexis followed the two men up the conning tower, with Hassan and Marissa close behind. Jonah grunted as he opened the main hatch, ears popping as the slight pressure differential equalized throughout the submarine with whispering hiss. Blowing snow drifted down the ladder, swirling in the wind as Jonah disappeared out of the hatch.
Windswept ice and snow assaulted Alexis’ senses as she, too, emerged into the blizzard. She winced, squinted, and then held up a hand to shield her eyes from the storm. Roaring winds whipped across the cracked, shifting pack ice, already piling snow drifts against the hull. There may as well have been a sign that said Texans Go Home—she didn’t belong out on the pack any more than she belonged on the moon.
Hassan passed binoculars and spotter scopes to everyone, each taking a different watch position on the conning tower, scanning the endless ice sheet. Alexis couldn’t make out the horizon; the only landmark was the conning tower beneath her feet, everything else was lost to the cold, grim whiteness.
“I have never seen snow before,” grunted Dalmar. “It is very unpleasant and I do not like it.” The former pirate dropped the binoculars from his eyes for a moment to sweep a few flakes from his shaved head.
“What do you think, Doc?” Jonah asked. “You see anything?”
“Visibility is very poor,” answered Hassan.
“How about you, Alexis?”
“I can’t see fucking shit out here,” complained the engineer. “It’s whiter than a Wilco concert. So far, North Korea is even more depressing than I imagined.”
“I’ll cancel the seaside crew retreat,” chuckled Jonah. He seemed to appreciate the tone of her answer much more than painfully proper Hassan’s. “Marissa picked a good spot. Most ships won’t make it through this ice, and it’s too thin for tanks or military vehicles. All the same, let’s find these people and get them on board so we can get the hell out of here.”
Alexis slowly scanned her sector of the horizonless expanse, searching for a visual anchor among the endless white. And then she saw the movement of slight human figures in the distance, a huddle of rags and blankets trudging across the ice, their forms almost lost to the wind and snow.
“There!” called Alexis, pointing without dropping the binoculars from her eyes. “I see them!”
The other four swiveled in her direction, seeking out the refugees. “Count off—how many do you see?” demanded Jonah. “Did they all make it?”
“I’m seeing maybe . . . forty?” said Alexis. It was only a rough guess. She could barely make out one figure from another in the shuffling group as it slowly advanced towards the surfaced submarine.
“Good,” said Jonah, dropping the binoculars to the strap around his neck. “It will be tight, but we can handle forty.”
“Are you sure about that count?” asked Marissa, uncertainty in her voice. “Looks like more than that to me.”
“I do not see forty,” announced Dalmar.
Alarmed, Alexis swiveled her binoculars. The whiteout before her cleared for a moment, allowing her to see that the single group of refugees was actually one of two, the trailing group more than twice as large as the first.
Shit. And they were running. Closer now, she could see they were dressed in rags, some wearing no more than sandals against the cold, thin cotton bed sheets held tight for warmth, rushing towards the uncertain safety of the submarine.
“This is not the deal,” said Dalmar stubbornly, pointing to the approaching mass of humanity. “We must charge extra now.”
Marissa and Alexis just stared at the massive Somali pirate with a strange mixture of fury and empathy as they struggled to find the words.
“Not the time,” interjected Jonah, searching across the ice with his binoculars. “Something is wrong—they shouldn’t be moving this fast.”
“What should we do?” demanded Alexis.
Jonah bent over the conning tower hatch and shouted to Vitaly below. “Prepare for emergency dive!” he ordered.
“Look at them—we can’t leave them out here!” shouted Marissa. “They’ll die!”
“We’re not leaving anybody,” said Jonah. “Dalmar— Marissa—I need you to open the main deck hatch. We can load the Scorpion twice as fast if we don’t use the conning tower. Doc—I need you in the crew compartment. These people look like they’ve been walking for days. We could have dozens of exposure and frostbite cases.”
Hassan mumbled a checklist to himself as he made for the supply closets, rattling off words like heaters, hot water, blankets, first aid. The remaining crew scrambled as the first of the refugees reached the submarine, pounding the outer hull as they pleaded to be let in. Dalmar and Marissa rolled a boarding net over the side, allowing the first and strongest of the masses below to step across the cold, broken ice and grab ahold of the fraying net. They crowded the hull in expanding numbers, the young and able-bodied helping children and the elderly ascend first. Once on the main deck, some stood transfixed before Dalmar and Marissa, scarcely able to tear their eyes from the pirate or the American.
“Why are they just standing there?” demanded Alexis. “They’ve probably never seen foreigners before,” said Jonah softly.
Alexis nodded, not entirely convinced. She had an itchy, uncomfortable feeling all over her body, the same one she got when they first crossed into Somali waters a lifetime ago—this was dangerous territory, and the operation was already taking entirely too long. Confirming her unease, Alexis began to hear a growing rumble in the distance, a slow, building roar almost entirely lost to the blizzard. She turned to Jonah. “Do you hear that sound?” Her voice was scarcely louder than a whisper.
Jonah cocked his head, a newly concerned expression crossing his face. He hadn’t heard it, but she had—and that was enough. “Any radar contact?” he asked, shouting down to Vitaly in the command compartment below.
“Nyet!” answered the Russian. “Weather terrible, cannot see nothing onscreen!”
Alexis looked back toward the horizon just in time to see a low, massive military hovercraft in the distance, still all but hidden by the blowing snow. Double-shit—less than a third of the refugees had made it on board. Just two hundred yards out now, the intruder would be on top of them inside sixty seconds. Dalmar and Marissa hadn’t noticed the craft yet, and were arguing with each other as they struggled to lower a shawl-wearing grandmother down the deck hatch.
“Hey!” shouted Jonah, slamming his palm against the side of the conning tower loud enough to get their attention. Wordlessly, he pointed. Dalmar and Marissa turned to stare, stopping their bickering as they let go of the old woman, dropping her into the waiting arms of family below.
Marissa sprinted up to the base of the conning tower. “What happens to these people if we leave?” said Jonah, calling down from above.
“The unlucky ones die in a concentration camp!” shouted Marissa over the howling blizzard.
“And the lucky ones?”
“They’ll shoot them right here on the ice!”
“Forget the hatch,” said Jonah, yelling to both Marissa and Dalmar. “Just get them all up on our hull!”
The refugees had seen the hovercraft, too. Frightened screams and cries rang out from the crowd as they began to push and shove, crowding around the boarding net, dropping their few possessions as they frantically tried to save themselves. A young boy slipped and fell into the freezing water between the pack ice and the submarine hull, only to be yanked to safety moments later by his older brother.
Dalmar leapt from his post, slid down the side of the submarine, and splashed into the ankle-deep water among the broken ice. He began to grab children and physically hurl them onto the deck from the snowy ice below. Rather than protest, parents surrounded the massive pirate, pressing their children into his hands. Time was all but out. Through the whipping snow, the hovercraft was now close, dangerously close.
“Are they going to shoot everybody?” whispered Alexis, her voice betraying her fear.
Jonah shook his head—but somehow she didn’t quite believe him this time. “If they were going to shoot, they would have already,” he said. But she wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince her, or himself. And then she saw it . . . the first spark of a plan entering his mind.
“It’s too windy for walkie-talkies,” said Jonah, jumping over the railing to the exterior ladder. “Stay here—relay my instructions to Vitaly!”
“What should I do?” called Alexis after him.
“Tell him—on my signal, full power to the engines!” shouted Jonah. She tried to ask him what the signal was, but he’d already reached the base of the ladder. Jonah pushed himself through the throngs of refugees, joining Marissa as she crammed frail bodies into the deck hatch, one after another. Having thrown the last of the children onto the deck, Dalmar jumped onto the boarding net and dragged himself back aboard.
Alexis looked down the interior of the conning tower, catching sight of the top of Vitaly’s head from above. “We have an incoming NK hovercraft, danger close! Jonah says full power to the engines on his signal!”
“Da, da!” Vitaly yelled back, readying his computer terminal. “I will be ready!”
“He didn’t tell me what the signal is!” Alexis shouted from above.
“Signal is explosion!” called Vitaly. “With Jonah, signal is always explosion!”
Alexis looked back over the deck, wishing she could be as confident about anything as Vitaly was about the nature of the signal. All she could see was the incoming hovercraft—the fucker was massive, seventy-five feet in length and thirty across, ringed by a thick rubber skirt with huge airplane propellers howling at the stern.
“Lock it down!” shouted Jonah, waving his hands into the wind. “Shut all hatches!”
Dalmar glared at Jonah just long enough to defiantly shove a soggy, half-drowned boy through the opening and into a mass of waiting arms below. With a snarl, the pirate slammed the hatch shut as the refugees around him began to scream in fear and distress.
“Everybody get down!” shouted Jonah, waving his arms. “Down, down, down!”
The refugees didn’t understand the language but the gesture was clear. They began to kneel and sit on the deck, Dalmar and Marissa crouching amongst them. Soon, only Jonah was standing amongst the crowd, waiting for the hovercraft to close the final few meters to the submarine.
Even from the conning tower, Alexis could see Marissa mouth to Jonah—You can’t, you don’t know what they’ll do to us. You just can’t.
But Jonah only turned to issue Marissa a single, cold stare until she melted into the mass of refugees. Jonah was left alone, standing arms wide in surrender, an apologetic Aw-shucks-you-caught-me expression on his face, his assault rifle slung harmlessly behind his back. He didn’t look like he was facing down the North Korean military. He looked like he was trying to wriggle out of a ticket in a West Texas speed trap.
The massive hovercraft came alongside the Scorpion, her flat, wide deck bristling with rifles as a dozen soldiers pointed their weapons at Jonah. They leaned against their metal railing, a triple-set of open airplane propellers roaring behind them. The North Korean soldiers on deck were a strange mix of Cold War-era camo snowsuits and AK-47’s, woolen caps, and plain green steel combat helmets, all led by a single young lieutenant. They were healthier than the refugees, fed at least, but still bore the small, bowed statures and lean features of the chronically malnourished. The soldiers wore stoic, angry expressions, barely concealing a kind of childlike wonder, even glee. It was as though they’d unexpectedly cornered a mythic species, a creature they’d known only through decades of propaganda-driven legend.
Still feigning surrender, Jonah gingerly pressed his way through the cowed throng of refugees, slowly opening a small deck compartment to reveal a thick steel mooring cable. He picked up the loop at the end, gesturing that he wanted to throw it across, allow the soldiers to link their crafts together for boarding. The refugees huddled frozen in silent horror, some openly weeping with fear.
The North Korean lieutenant returned the gesture, signaling Jonah to throw the cable and secure their capture. He made the motions of a soft, underhand toss. The soldiers began to lower their weapons, preparing to receive the line.
Before they could react, Jonah suddenly hurled the thick loop towards the nearest propeller, the long steel cable singing through the air as it followed. It hit with a sharp ping and a shower of sparks in the split second before the line caught in the rotor, screeching as the heavy line snapped taut. Alexis threw herself behind the lip of the conning tower as the hovercraft engine exploded, flames and smoke pouring from the engines, the steel line hopelessly tangled in the wreckage.
Alexis stared down the interior of the conning tower just in time to see Vitaly spin up the Scorpion’s engines to howling full power. “Da, signal always explosion!” the Russian cackled as the lurching submarine slammed through the first of the icepack, bow splitting through the frozen, cracking crust. The refugees were thrown to the deck. Dalmar’s arm shot out to grabbed an old man in the moments before he tumbled into the freezing, propeller-churned water in their wake.
Picking up speed, the Scorpion dragged the now-flaming hovercraft stern-first over the surface. North Korean soldiers scrambled, but could not bring their guns to bear. Great blocks of ice smashed into and flipped up and over the submarine’s shuddering foredeck even as Dalmar and Marissa threw open the main deck hatch again and tossed people into a human heap in the crew quarters below. Jonah abandoned the refugees and took up position behind the conning tower. He squinted into the frigid air as his automatic weapon poured an entire magazine of bullets into the black rubber cushion of the hovercraft. Thin, white jets of air hissed outward from pockmarked shots penetrating the craft, turning the rubber skirt into a ragged mess.
Suddenly, the steel line broke with a ringing snap. The whipping ends recoiled over the heads of the refugees causing Dalmar to duck instinctively. Marissa cried out as the line whipped past where the pirate’s head had just been. A cheer went up from the refugees as they watched the burning hovercraft slowly shrink into the distance behind them. Jonah lowered the rifle, slung it over his back, and returned to Dalmar and Marissa’s side, the three together helping the last handful of refugees off the deck and into the hatch.
Behind them, the North Korean soldiers managed to disconnect the stricken, flaming engine, vectoring thrust from the remaining two propellers to begin a long, lazy turn, and once again rejoined the chase. Floating over the ice, the hovercraft began to close the gap once more. Their soldiers weren’t waiting this time. A haphazard hail of bullets streamed across the icepack. Bullets clattered across the Scorpion’s deck as the final refugee disappeared into submarine. Marissa went in next, followed by Dalmar and Jonah, the hatch slamming shut behind him.
“Dive!” screamed Alexis in the conning tower to Vitaly below. “Dive, dive, dive!”
Freezing, ice-laden water rushed over the bow, flooding across the deck like Moses releasing the parted waters of the Red Sea. A massive wave slid over the short foredeck, drenching Alexis as it crashed against the conning tower. She vaulted down the interior ladder, the hatch clanging shut just as a second wave of ice and water curled over the lip of her post.
And then they were free, gliding through the water column of the North Korean shoals, again hidden beneath shifting ice.
Jonah pointed at Alexis. “Report!” he ordered “Did we get everybody?”
“Every man, woman, and child,” she announced with pride through chattering teeth. Freezing droplets of seawater scattered across the metal deck as she shivered uncontrollably.
“Good,” said Jonah, squinting as he eyed the long corridor through the heart of the Scorpion, now thick with shivering refugees. “We should be able to pull off a clean escape from here. North Korean subs are not ice-rated, and their surface ships and airplanes won’t be able to find us beneath the pack.”
“Scorpion not ice-rated,” complained Vitaly as he turned the submarine sharply to the north, plotting an unpredictable route out of hostile waters. “You make us go anyway.”
“I told you the ol’ girl would be fine,” said Jonah, patting Vitaly on the shoulder. “Nice work getting us out of there.”
“Worst captain ever never listen to Vitaly,” muttered the Russian, trying to hide his smile at the compliment. “Vitaly must save day again.”
Glancing in both directions, Alexis pulled Jonah to the side for a quiet word. “This was way too close—even for us,” said Alexis, whispering into his ear. “I didn’t sign on for a shoot out with the North Korean military.”
“Agreed,” said Jonah. “None of us did. The moment we get to Kanazawa, these people are off my boat, and I’m throwing Marissa out on her narrow ass. We got lucky this time. We won’t get lucky twice.”
Alexis pushed through the crowding, coughing refugees and made her way to the crew compartment. They were everywhere—mothers and fathers holding children and entire families piled into the sparse bunks. The strongest tended to the young and old, some of whom could barely stand. The engineer couldn’t believe how small and frail they all were. Some little more than person-shaped twigs.
Hassan was inundated with patients, throngs pressing against him as they pleaded for his attention. He’d hung a stethoscope around his neck as he attended to the first of the injured, but it may as well been a magnet. Dalmar and Marissa controlled the crowds the best they could, helping the elderly into their bunks, trying to stem the flow of the human sea surging within the submarine.
The refugees had already found their way into the galley. The last of the fruit and raw vegetables were passed overhead, the rations steadily deflating as outstretched hands darted into the sacks. Alexis spotted an entire oversized can of dehydrated potatoes move from person to person, the white flakes within disappearing by the fistful.
“Don’t eat those!” shouted Alexis, futilely pointing towards the can. “We have to cook them first! You really shouldn’t—oh.”
Within seconds, the potato-flake can dropped to the metal deck, all but empty. A small gang of children attacked the tin, licking their fingers and wiping them across the inside, desperate for every last spec of the starchy dust within.
A big glass jar of candied apple slices went up next—a gourmet variety Hassan had found during their brief stay in Puget Sound. The doctor started to protest, but abandoned the useless fight almost immediately and turned his attention back to the patients at hand.
Alexis threaded through the last of the crowd, finally close enough to reach out and squeeze Hassan’s hand. Looking up, the doctor returned the squeeze, and allowed himself a harried smile in her direction.
“The apples—” stuttered Hassan, barely able to form a thought among the chaos. “I was saving them. For your birthday—well, any special occasion, I mean.”
The engineer tugged on his hand again, taking it in both of hers. “It’s a special occasion for them,” she said. “It’s okay. Really.”
A commotion erupted behind them, suddenly interrupting the moment. Alexis caught the next moment in flashes. Screams, refugees pushing, trampling each other. One of the tallest men faced off against Dalmar, teeth gritted—a glinting knife in his fist. He jabbed toward Dalmar twice as the pirate parried with his bare hands. And then she couldn’t see them. Dalmar and his attacker were on the floor, the pirate slamming his attacker into the metal bulkheads as they struggled for the blade.
A second tall man emerged from the roiling mass, his eyes trained on Dalmar as he moved to attack. Alexis slammed her palm against the intercom, shouting for immediate help. And then she yanked out the lighting circuit breakers, plunging the compartment into utter darkness.
Alexis roughly shoved people out of her way, almost swimming as she made for her workbench—and the night-vision goggles in the top drawer. She’d been fixing a broken eyepiece to return them to working order. Fingers outstretched, she found the drawer, yanking it free. She flicked the on switch and they came alive with a familiar electronic whine, the single working eyepiece flickering to an iridescent green light.
Turning to the crowd, Alexis desperately scanned the crouching, frightened refugees. She couldn’t see Dalmar, but she could hear the dull, wet thumps of the fight on the deck. Someone was getting a hell of a beating. She just hoped it was Dalmar’s two attackers. In the bunk behind the crowd, Hassan held an old woman in his arms, gently pressing an IV into the crook of her inner arm despite the darkness.
And then she saw Jonah. Through the parting refugees, the captain grabbed one of the attackers from behind in a vicious chokehold. A knife tumbled from the attacker’s hands and onto the deck. Using the sound alone, Jonah threw his body to the deck, snatched up the knife and plunged it into his throat with a sickening squish.
She could see the imposters now, kicking herself for not noticing them before. Three more men among the ranks of the refugees, only taller, better muscled, no longer hidden under the disguise of blankets and loose-fitting rags. Hidden and waiting to strike, they intended to take the Scorpion.
The trio made their way through the crowd, each with a knife cocked back in one hand and the other pushing aside bodies, feeling for something other than the gaunt ribs of the refugees as they approached Dalmar from behind. Jonah was lost in the crowd, too far back to assist.
“Dalmar!” pleaded Alexis. The pirate heard her voice pierce the darkness.
“What?” he shouted
“Turn around!”
Dalmar swiveled to face the threat in the darkness.
“Wait!” ordered Alexis, heart in her throat as the three men pushed their way past the last of the refugees between themselves and the pirate.
“For what, woman?” demanded Dalmar.
“Fight!” screamed Alexis, her voice hoarse.
No hesitation and with impossible speed, the pirate lunged. His hand shot out to grab the nearest man by the neck. The would-be attacker didn’t even have time to strike with his cocked knife before Dalmar slammed his meaty fist into his face once, twice, a third time. The man hit the deck, a bloody and unconscious mess.
Before Alexis could issue the next order, a young, soggy boy had found the breakers and flipped them back on. The engineer whipped the goggles off her face, nearly blinded by the sudden illumination.
Oh shit, she thought. One of the infiltrators had found the lights. For all she knew they were still outnumbered, and if the imposters had anything more than a knife, the Scorpion would be overrun in seconds. The boy at the breakers screamed in Korean, his face contorted with rage as he pointed out the two infiltrators.
But then the crowd came alive, the refugees tackling and beating the traitors in their midst, tearing knives and pistols from their clothing, clubbing them mercilessly with hands and feet. Alexis dug back into her drawers and took out four rolls of duct tape, hurling them across the compartment and into the mob. In seconds, the intruders were trussed up in thick grey tape, with three or four persons sitting on each while the other refugees stripped the lone dead man for his clothes and shoes.
There was little time to celebrate the victory as the intercom squawked with Vitaly’s request for the crew to go to the bridge. Alongside Jonah, Alexis pushed through the refugee crowd once again, and then sat at the hydrophone console next to Vitaly’s helm.
“Leaving North Korean maritime territory in three …” began Vitaly, “two . . . one . . . we now in international waters.”
Standing in the entrance to the bridge, Marissa nodded, turned, and announced the news. One of the small Korean women screamed a translation for the others. A collective cheer went up from the refugees, celebrating their escape. Alexis watched in total shock as several Chinese phones emerged from pockets and some of the refugees began taking selfies. She couldn’t help but shake her head in disbelief. What a world, when a smartphone was easier to come across than a daily meal.
“I hope they got all that noise out of their fucking system,” barked Jonah to anyone who was listening. “We can only run silent if we all stay goddamn silent.”
Alexis held up a hand as the din of the celebrating refugees slowly faded. The familiar sound of approaching propellers echoed in her hydrophones. Her blood ran cold with fear.
“I hear prop wash!” she announced in a loud whisper, loud enough to make everyone on the bridge freeze.
“A ship? Are we being pursued?” demanded Jonah.
“It’s not a ship.” She looked up, the color gone from her face. “It’s an entire fleet. And they’re right on our tail.”