Jonah didn’t need updates from the hydrophone station; the sounds of churning, knife-like blades filled the command compartment, becoming louder every moment. The frozen ice off North Korea’s coastline had made for a claustrophobic, precarious ceiling, but now the Scorpion was dangerously exposed without it. The fleet of ships behind them—how many exactly, Jonah did not know—matched their speed and heading, slowly closing in on their quarry. The fleet would be within striking distance in minutes. And then what? Depth charges, like the ones they’d barely survived off Somalia? Or would their pursuers simply chase the Scorpion until the last of their straining batteries ran dry and their air turned foul?
Shit, Jonah thought. He couldn’t believe he was about to get blown out of the water in front of his ex-girlfriend. Worse, he wouldn’t even know who’d sunk him—just a high-pitched wail of an incoming torpedo before the big pop. The lucky ones among his crew and refugees would die in the pressure wave of the initial blast. The rest would drown as their ear drums burst and lungs filled with choking seawater, the Scorpion collapsing compartment by compartment as she plunged into the depths for the final time.
Dalmar stood watch on deck, waiting for orders as Vitaly maintained his able control of the helm. Alexis worked capably through her fear, her hands shaking ever so slightly as she optimized engine output to compensate for their heavy human payload. Even Marissa was at attention, ready to follow his lead. Jonah forced down a wave of bitter pride, burying the emotion. He just wished Hassan could be by his side; the doctor’s calm presence and steady mind was an asset in every circumstance. Not that the doctor would have any tricks up his sleeve for an entirely one-sided underwater gunfight.
Jonah glanced at the navigation screen. Good—they’d already made it further out to sea than he’d anticipated, the increase in the Scorpion’s top speed a credit to Alexis’ recent engine retrofit. But he knew full well they couldn’t run forever.
“Vitaly—make our depth five hundred feet,” Jonah ordered.
“Five-zero-zero depth, aye,” said Vitaly as he pushed the control yoke downwards. The deck abruptly shifted, leaving Jonah to press his palm on the low ceiling for balance. The hull creaked, adjusting not only to the increasing pressure, but the presence of a colder thermocline water layer. Jonah allowed himself a wry smile—the invisible barrier between water temperatures would refract and partially mask the acoustic signature of their propellers, maybe even give the Scorpion the chance to slip away undetected.
“Follow our backup escape course. Keep it unpredictable; I want to skirt the edge of Russian waters. Let’s see if they’re willing to cause an international incident over us.”
“I think we’ve already caused the international incident,” muttered Alexis, rapidly flipping through a series of engine diagnostic readouts. The battery banks were finicky at best; staying one step ahead of breakdowns was a constant battle.
“How’s our trim? I’m feeling some yaw up here.”
“Very difficult to maintain,” said the helmsmen. “New weight balance, much movement. Maybe everyone sit down, please?”
Jonah turned to Dalmar. “Go aft and get our guests situated. Tell ’em to keep their hands and feet inside the ride at all times.”
The big pirate nodded in acknowledgement and left the command compartment. Jonah tried not to think about how he’d carry out the order. Dalmar was just as likely to wave a gun around as to ask nicely.
“Steady on,” said Jonah, reassuring himself just as much as anyone else within earshot. “They haven’t pinged us, and they haven’t fired on us. They could just be investigating some unusual acoustics. We’ll lose them in the main shipping lanes, turn east and slip into Japanese waters underneath a cargo freighter. They’ll never even know where they lost track of us.”
“Captain!” interrupted Alexis, waving him over to the communications station. “I think we’re getting a message!”
“What? I thought we were too deep for radio.”
“It’s not radio,” said Alexis. “I almost didn’t see it at first—its telemetry on the Extremely Low Frequency band. I’ve never seen ours so much as beep before.”
The message slowly materialized as Jonah watched with increasing concern.
// SURFACE AND SURRENDER //
Shit. The fact that the orders were in English wasn’t a good sign. It was one thing if their pursuers thought they were chasing a DPRK submarine. Sinking one might set off the whole touchy, semi-nuclearized Korean peninsula. But going after the Scorpion was quite another. As an unflagged outlaw vessel on an illegal smuggling mission, she was fair game.
“How did they find us? Did we miss another spy? Or a transmitter?”
“Running an internal electromagnetic scan,” said Alexis, her fingers jumping across her console. “No EMF signals detected—and we’re not broadcasting on any frequency. The fleet must be following us by propeller noise alone.”
“Vitaly?”
“We already rigged for silent running and beneath thermocline. Submarine as quiet as submarine get!”
“Can we—” began Jonah before he was cut off.
“Getting another transmission!” Alexis called out. She swiveled her terminal towards Jonah as telemetry crawled again across the screen, one character at a time.
// SUBMARINE SCORPION //
// SURFACE AND SURRENDER //
// COMPLY OR BE DESTROYED //
“They’re calling us out by name,” Jonah muttered. “Vitaly—who the hell are these guys? US Navy? Russians? Chinese?”
“I do not know, Captain. Could also be Korean, Japanese, DPRK. Many navy in Sea of Japan.”
“Are we responding?” asked Alexis, looking up at him with concern.
“You bet your ass we’re responding,” said Jonah, pointing at Marissa. She stood behind the conning tower ladder on the other side of the command compartment wearing a shocked Who, me? expression. “Go aft and find a North Korean passenger who speaks English. Good English.”
Marissa didn’t answer, just turned to sprint back towards the crew compartment.
“Vitaly—make our depth six-zero feet and deploy the radio antenna. I want clear and unencumbered voice transmission capability.”
“Captain!” protested Vitaly. “I must advise against! Twenty meters? It very easy to sink Scorpion at this depth!”
“Angles and dangles ain’t working, Vitaly. Whoever is following us won’t be snookered by the usual tricks— confirm depth six-zero.”
“Aye Captain. I bring Scorpion to suicide depth.” He pulled back on the yoke, the bow of the submarine rising sharply.
Marissa marched back into the command compartment, dragging a short, wide-eyed refugee by the hand. The young North Korean woman in tow was all of four foot ten inches in height, round-faced, and topped with an unfortunate government-sanctioned bowl cut that only further cemented her tragic resemblance to a mushroom.
“You speak English?” asked Jonah.
The small Korean woman nodded, too mesmerized by Jonah to answer out loud. She instead reached up with one tiny hand and pinched at his beard with irrepressible curiosity. He couldn’t help but suspect it was the first one she’d ever seen in person.
Jonah batted her hand away.“What’s your name?”
“I am Sun-Hi,” she said, still staring at his short beard, but keeping her hands to herself this time.
“What’s your job?”
“I read radio news in Myongchon, North Hamgyong province.”
“Good. Can you act? Improvise?”
“I play Koppun in stage version of The Flower Girl!” She lifted both fists in the air like a cheerleader as she gave him a wide, unexpected smile, almost dancing in excitement. Jonah had no idea what the tiny woman was talking about, but knew he’d tapped into the right part of her personality. She’d need every bit of that moxie if his plan had any chance of succeeding.
“We have reached depth six-zero and will soon die,” announced Vitaly from the helm, leveling the submarine out. The swishing of the fleet above was louder than ever. Propeller noises seemed to come from all around, echoing throughout every compartment.
“Noted,” said Jonah without looking up. “Sun-Hi, we’re being hunted. Our only chance to escape is to pretend we’re not illegal smugglers. Get on the radio and tell them that we’re a North Korean naval submarine and demand the fleet break off their pursuit.”
“Include many strange threat,” added Vitaly. “More authentic this way.”
Before Jonah could say another word, Sun-Hi grabbed the radio headset from Alexis and started screaming in rapid-fire Korean, turning beet-red as she waved her fists in the air and stomped the deck for good measure. No doubt she’d understood Jonah’s instructions, as he had to physically separate her from the transmitter to end her theatrical ranting. Seconds ticked by as he and Alexis stared at the communications console, waiting for the response. Sun-Hi stood in the center of the tense command compartment, glancing eagerly from one crewman to another as they all waited in silence.
“You think they bought it?” asked Alexis.
The response came without warning—a high-pitched buzzing sounded from outside the Scorpion’s hull, approaching with incredible speed.
“That’s not a ship—brace for impact!” shouted Jonah.
Alexis ripped off her noise-amplifying hydrophones just as the torpedo hit, slamming into the side of the Scorpion with the tooth-rattling concussion of a sledgehammer on a sewer pipe, shaking the submarine to her keel. The overhead lights winked out as emergency illumination bathed the command compartment in crimson red. Sun-Hi and the refugee passengers screamed in fear, adding to the chaos. Dalmar burst back into the command compartment, a snarl on his face as he braced for another torpedo blow.
“Swing us to starboard—initiate emergency dive— damage report!”
“No hull breach!” shouted Vitaly. “Secondary systems rebooting! Emergency dive, aye!”
“Receiving transmission!” Alexis said. The communications console flickered as the new message crawled across the screen, the computer circuits still resetting after the ringing blow.
// N I C E T R Y J O N A H B L A C K W E L L //
“What the hell, Captain?” demanded Alexis. “Do you know these guys?”
“No,” said Jonah, still wincing. “But they sure as shit know me. Vitaly—how the hell are we still alive?”
“Must have been training torpedo, no warhead!” said Vitaly. “It bounce off our hull! I tell you, twenty meters is suicide! We must go deep. Hide.”
Marissa slowly lowered her hands from her ears. “That was a warning shot?”
“Captain, I must have orders!”
Jonah said nothing at first. “Vitaly—Alexis—cut power and level off.”
“What?” demanded Alexis.
“Cease silent running. We’re outgunned, outmaneuvered, and we can’t outrun another torpedo. They won’t give us a second warning.”
Dalmar racked a round into his assault rifle, eyes wide. “We must prepare for a surface battle!”
“Belay that,” ordered Jonah. “We can’t duke it out with a naval fleet. Marissa, take Sun-Hi back to the crew compartment and stow her away with the rest. I need you to keep everybody calm and maintain order while we figure this out. Dalmar, stay up here with me for now.”
“We’re . . . giving up?” whispered Alexis as an eerie silence fell on the compartment. “Do you have any idea what they’re going to do to us when they board the Scorpion and see what we’re carrying?”
“Broadcast our unconditional surrender in English, all channels,” confirmed Jonah through clenched teeth. “Do it now. We may have a few cards to play yet, but they’re all dependent on getting to the surface in one piece.”
Sun-Hi nodded, shell-shocked as she retreated to the crew compartment on Marissa’s arm, head bowed low, Dalmar watching her retreat. Did the young refugee blame herself? Jonah shook his head in frustration—there wasn’t time to assure her otherwise.
“We approach surface,” said Vitaly, voice low. “If you have plan, now is good time.”
“Good—Vitaly, bring us to a fifteen-degree heel the minute we’re above the waves. Alexis, kick up the diesels as soon as the snorkels are clear, but I need you to run the engines as rich as you can without damaging the cylinders. I want our stacks rolling coal like an Alabama tractor pull.”
“Running rich,” confirmed Alexis as she adjusted the fuel-air mixture, preparing for a diesel engine restart.
“We act like football star Luis Suarez, fake injury?” asked Vitaly.
“Isn’t he the one who bites people?” said Alexis.
“That’s the idea,” said Jonah. “I’m hoping we have some bite left as well.”
“Playing possum,” said Alexis, nodding. “Got it—I’ll make sure we look busted to hell and back.”
“So that we might attack!” insisted Dalmar. “Not without my order. But be prepared for anything,” said Jonah. “We may only get one shot. Maybe none at all. All I can say for now is that I need to buy us time.”
Jonah didn’t mention the second part of his plan. They wouldn’t be playing wounded to plot an escape. He needed the time to cut a deal that didn’t involve the torpedoed wreckage of the Scorpion slamming into the ocean bottom. The one-sided battle had been over before it’d even begun.
The Scorpion rose from the cold ocean, bow wake streaming off her conning tower. Jonah raised the periscope, slowly rotating it 360 degrees to observe the surrounding fleet as Alexis’ diesel engines came online with a familiar throaty hum.
The largest of the fleet was at a standoff distance of less than a mile, an 800 foot, 27,000 ton flat-top naval behemoth. Two helicopters circled overhead, both Sikorsky SH-60’s equipped with anti-submarine listening devices and torpedoes. A formation of about a half-dozen armed helicopter drones dipped from the sky and buzzed the periscope, each equipped with high-tech sensors, guns, and rocket pods. Three smaller amphibious assault ships and a destroyer lurked at the periphery, semi-autonomous, six-barreled Phalanx cannons leveled at the Scorpion, every flat battleship-grey surface painted with a round red sun.
“It’s the Japanese Navy,” announced Jonah to his crew in a low voice. “We’re completely surrounded by what appears to be an entire carrier group.”
“Captain—what is plan?” hissed Vitaly.
“The plan?” said Jonah. “I’m coming out of our conning tower with my hands up. That’s all I have so far.”
“We actually surrender?” said Vitaly with dismay. “What do you say—no cards we play?”
“It’s up to them at this point. We may not have any other option that keeps us alive. I’ll do all the talking. If there’s a handshake deal to be had, I’ll take it—especially if it keeps you all out of prison and our refugees out of a North Korean concentration camp. Beyond that—my standing instructions to all crew and passengers is to surrender unconditionally, comply with any and all Japanese orders and accept their boarding parties without resistance.”
Dalmar slammed his fist into the metal hull, the meaty impact ringing out like a torpedo hit. As the rest of the crew quietly digested the plan, Jonah punched the ship-wide intercom, ordering the doctor to the bridge.
Within moments, Hassan walked into the command compartment. Jonah knew the doctor could read his expressions without a single spoken word. The wild ride was over, and now it was time to pay the toll.