Jonah and Hassan emerged from the conning tower unarmed, carefully descending the exterior ladder to the tilting deck. The surrounding fleet was intimidating; it looked as though every Japanese ship within a thousand miles had been on their heels. True to his orders, Alexis had set the engines to belch out thick black smoke through the stack and into the clear winter air, feigning distress. Helicopter drones circled the rising column like buzzards, training their rocket pods on the surfaced submarine.
“What happens now?” asked Hassan, shielding his eyes from the winter sun as he stared across the waters to the massive fleet.
“I have no idea,” said Jonah. “I’ve never had an entire navy after me before.”
The doctor bent down to examine where the training torpedo had struck, brushing his fingers across a punched-in exterior hull plate on the starboard side. Jonah didn’t have to look at the jagged metal fragments still lodged in the side of his ship—he knew it was a kill-shot, a direct hit to the command compartment. A warhead payload would have instantly imploded the hull, slaughtering the crew as the flooded metal husk of the Scorpion fell to the depths. The aborted battle wasn’t like going up against corporate mercenaries, local pirates, or even the underfed soldiers of a backward hermit kingdom. The Japanese navy was the real deal, and Jonah knew they never had a goddamn chance.
A black, rubber-ringed Zodiac boat sped away from the nearest destroyer at high speed, moving to intercept the Scorpion. It was only the first—nearly a dozen emerged from behind the shelter of their mothership, following close behind the first. The six men onboard the lead boat bristled with MP5 machine pistols and a mounted 50-caliber gun. Jonah recognized the distinctive balaclava-clad combat soldiers as the Special Boarding Unit, the British SBS-trained counter-terrorism force created to combat North Korean spy ship incursions.
Jonah pursed his lips as he considered the sheer volume of firepower heading their way. “I didn’t think we rated this much attention so far away from the Horn of Africa,” he said. “The world has gotten too small, my friend.”
“Quite.”
The Special Forces troops beached their inflatable boat on the deck of the Scorpion and sprinted across the deck with guns leveled. Jonah and Hassan were thrown face-first onto the wet hull as zip ties went around their wrists.
“It was nice knowing you, Doc,” shouted Jonah over the din of stomping combat boots, his face shoved into an oily puddle. “It was fun while it lasted. Maybe we can arrange adjoining prison cells if I ask nicely.”
“I thoroughly disagree that it was ever fun,” snapped Hassan, his voice lost to the commotion.
Two of the Special Forces soldiers sat on Jonah’s back, keeping him pinned to the wet hull as a half-dozen inflatable boats disgorged soldiers until the Scorpion’s deck was thick with troops.
Jonah and Hassan were roughly yanked upright and thrown against the base of the conning tower. As they watched, a single soldier opened a metal folding chair and placed it facing them before retreating. A tall Japanese man in his late forties, with thick black hair and a thin beard, sat down in the folding chair, wordlessly staring down Jonah and Hassan with penetrating, intelligent eyes. Their captor had no military uniform, sporting instead, a clean and pressed collared shirt with the knot of his tie barely peeking from behind his expensive cardigan. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a Banana Republic catalog, not the deck of Japan’s Special Forces-laden naval carrier flagship.
Preparing to enter the interior, the boarding party opened the main deck hatch, aiming their machine pistols down the opening as the first of the terrified refugees emerged from within. A small, wailing girl no older than eight crawled onto the deck, followed by her shaking, frantic mother. The little girl screamed as her mother was zip-tied, bodily hauled towards the nearest inflatable boat, and hurled in face-first. The refugees came out of the hatch faster now, each grabbed and violently heaved into boats. None of the boarders could enter—the refugees were emerging in waves now, blinking against the winter sunlight as soldiers shoved them to their hands and knees.
“Hey!” protested Jonah, struggling to his feet to address the well-dressed man on the folding chair. “Let’s figure this thing out without all the rough stuff, okay? There’s kids down there, no need to—”
Their captor leapt to his feet within a heartbeat and put himself nose-to-nose with Jonah, staring him down like a prizefighter at a weigh-in. And then he struck, burying a clenched fist into Jonah’s gut. Jonah wheezed and collapsed, earning himself a too-brief reprieve before his captor aimed three calculated, brutal kicks to the ribs.
“We’re cooperating!” protested Hassan, his wrists straining against the zip ties. “Leave him alone! You’re terrifying these people!”
Jonah barely managed to shoot a single warning glance toward Hassan, shaking his head to silence the doctor. With gasping coughs, Jonah again pushed himself to a sitting position against the base of the conning tower and closed his eyes, grimacing in pain.
“There’s no cause for violence,” insisted Hassan, ignoring Jonah’s warning. “We’ve surrendered unconditionally. Please conduct yourselves peacefully and allow us to assist with our passengers!”
Pensively nodding, their captor touched a single finger to his chin as though he were seriously considering Hassan’s words. And then he grabbed Jonah by the throat, raining violent open-palmed slaps across his unprotected face. Hassan winced with every blow, trying, but failing, to meet their captor’s wild, unblinking eyes. Breathing heavily as he dropped his raised hand, the man smoothed his cardigan, sat down in his chair, and casually crossed his legs.
“Please stop talking, Doc,” groaned Jonah, his face red with hand-shaped imprints.
“So much for a handshake deal,” mumbled Hassan, barely loud enough for Jonah to hear.
“Don’t rub it in,” whispered Jonah. “Not my fault we drew Happy McSlappy as chief jackass in charge instead of a proper naval admiral.”
“An admiral?” Hassan bitterly laughed. “A little presumptuous, don’t you think?”
Dalmar’s shaved head emerged from the deck hatch, his bulky shoulders barely fitting through the tight squeeze. The surrounding men took an unconscious step back as he raised himself to his full height, flexing as he stood an entire head taller than their largest soldier. Seeing Jonah and Hassan by the conning tower, Dalmar extended his hands forward and allowed the Japanese soldiers to respectfully bind his wrists. With one escort on each arm, the grinning pirate was lead over and gently deposited next to the captain and doctor. Jonah couldn’t help but feel a flash of annoyed resentment at the comparative treatment received by the former warlord.
“An entire fleet sent to capture me!” announced Dalmar. “I am very pleased this day.”
“You’re still going to prison with the rest of us,” retorted Jonah. “So don’t get too pleased just yet.”
“We shall see. I think I am too famous for prison.”
More refugees emerged, and then Vitaly. The squirming Russian was hog-tied and carried in the air by two men who roughly dropped him into a puddle at Jonah’s feet.
“Rodilsya cherez jopu! Pizda s ushami! Worst captain ever!” was all Vitaly could sputter as he twisted against his bound hands and feet, rolling back and forth on the deck.
The flood of North Koreans from below decks trickled off as the boarding party was forced to boost the elderly up the hatch ladder one at a time. Their initial zeal, now tempered by the sheer volume of the task, left the soldiers halfheartedly restraining and loading the stooped, white-haired refugees at a snail’s pace.
The relative peace was broken when two of the boarding party pulled a duct-taped, struggling Marissa from hatch, the soldiers having long since run out of zip ties. Swearing and shouting, Marissa kicked and thrashed until she connected with the nearest soldier’s toes, causing him to briefly loose his grip on her collar as he whelped in pain. Marissa tried to hop away, making it all of three feet before the soldiers grabbed her, kicked her taped legs out from underneath her, and threw her to the deck with the rest of the crew. Shaking their heads and murmuring astonishment at the fury with which she’d fought them, the soldiers returned to the open deck hatch and descended the interior ladder once more. Jonah couldn’t help but smile—the soldiers had no idea who they were messing with. Marissa had been taking on tough-talking bouncers and handsy drunks since she was old enough to see over a bar.
“Looks like they ran out of zip ties,” whispered Jonah.
“Or found them inadequate to the task at hand,” Hassan added dryly.
The well-dressed man chuckled and briefly uncrossed his legs before crossing them again.
“What’s so goddamn funny?” asked Jonah loudly, daring another flurry of blows. The man just smiled without answering.
Marissa blew an unruly strand of frizzy hair out of her eyes as she turned to glare at Jonah, daggers in her eyes. Jonah just mouthed “Milk run,” and shot her a knowing smirk.
“Where’d they find you?” whispered Hassan. “Did you try to hide?”
“Laundry bin,” snapped Marissa.
“The laundry bin?” laughed Jonah. “Probably the first place they looked. Not a great hiding spot.”
“Clearly not, you fucking asshole!”
One of the Special Forces soldiers emerged from the hatch, walked to their well-dressed captor, and whispered into his ear. The search appeared finished—at least for the moment.
“You see Alexis?” whispered Jonah to Hassan, his lips barely moving.
“No,” said Hassan with a quick shake of his head. “She wasn’t with the refugees when they came out.”
Jonah nodded. Wherever Alexis had hidden herself, the boarders hadn’t found her yet. Given her knowledge of every pipe, bolt, and duct of the submarine’s interior, the Japanese might not find her at all. Maybe there was a card left to play yet. Jonah’s mind raced with possibilities.
Their captor rose to his feet as though sensing Jonah’s scheming machinations. He folded up his metal chair and handed it to the nearest soldier before stooping, putting the two men at eye level.
“You caught us,” said Jonah, stating the obvious. “What happens now?”
The man chuckled and drew himself to his feet again. He pointed at the conning tower of the Scorpion and gave a long, mournful whistle as he mimicked a submarine settling to the bottom of the ocean with his hand.
Hassan just looked at Jonah and shook his head. The doctor didn’t need to say a single word to make himself understood. Jonah couldn’t bluff, couldn’t gamble; not with Alexis’ life at stake. Jonah slowly struggled to his feet despite bruised ribs. Their captor shot Jonah a curious look and watched him carefully measured out three paces down the deck from the conning tower, turned sharply to starboard, and measured one more pace. Jonah stomped three times with one boot, waited a moment and stomped three more times before returning to slump against the tower with his crew.
A minute passed in silence, and then another. And then Alexis’ head popped out of the hatch, gingerly eyeing the captured crew before she emerged with hands in the air. Smiling, their captor waved the two intercepting Japanese soldiers away from the young woman—he’d handle her personally. For a moment, Jonah felt certain she’d be allowed to join the rest of crew by her own volition.
He was wrong.
As Alexis passed their captor, the well-dressed man roughly grabbed her from behind, violently kicking out the back of her knees as he shoved her face-first towards the deck. Gasping with surprise, Alexis was barely able to catch her fall with bloodied forearms as she skidded across the metal hull, stopping just short of Hassan’s reach.
“You bastard!” erupted Hassan. Jonah threw himself on top of Hassan, preventing the doctor from leaping to his feet and charging their captor headfirst. The rest of the crew swore and shouted with open fury, hurling invectives and abuse in four languages.
Jonah allowed himself a tiny spark of pride at his crew’s defiance. But as bad as things looked, at least he’d formed an educated guess about their well-dressed captor. No doubt the man was Public Security Intelligence Agency, Japan’s secretive version of the CIA. It probably hadn’t been difficult for a PSIA satellite to track the Scorpion in and out of North Korean waters; they’d been actively spying on the hermit kingdom since the agency’s inception more than sixty years previous. Jonah found himself deeply thankful that they’d been carrying refugees and not narcotics, counterfeit money, or embargoed arms. More than anything, he was thankful that they hadn’t picked up too many stray radioactive particles during their transit through the Fukushima exclusion zone. The Scorpion would have probably been sunk on sight if the Japanese Geiger counters so much as clicked when they surfaced.
“Leave my engineer alone,” demanded Jonah as he willed his crew into silence. “If you need someone to kick around, you go through me. Enough of the bullshit intimidation tactics. Time to tell us what you want.”
Their captor nodded. Turning to Alexis, he pulled a permanent marker out of his front pocket, bit the cap off, and spat it onto the deck. He grabbed the young engineer by the face, thumb and index finger squeezing her cheeks and chin as he scribbled a series of numbers on her forehead in thick black ink. Hassan shifted, face once more twisted in rage as the remaining Japanese soldiers raised their weapons in warning. One aggressive move and the doctor would be gunned down on the spot.
Finished writing, the intelligence officer dropped Alexis to the deck again and hurled his pen into the ocean. The engineer unconsciously reached up to touch the reddening skin around the blocky numerals on her face, but her captor violently grabbed her hands, twisting them away from the still-drying ink. Jonah squinted. He didn’t know the numbers, but recognized the format.
They were coordinates.
The officer snapped his fingers and the soldiers stepped forward, unsheathing knives as they advanced. Hassan recoiled and closed his eyes only to have his forearms roughly grabbed, the nearest blade easily slipping through the thick plastic of the zip ties. The rest of the crew was freed within moments, each rubbing their raw wrists as they looked at the now-retreating soldiers with utter disbelief. Only Marissa was left in her circles of silver duct tape, still facedown on the cold metal deck. One by one, the soldiers climbed back aboard their rubber boats and shoved off. Their violent captor was the last to depart, offering Jonah a mocking salute before turning his back to the Scorpion and boarding his small craft. Within moments, he was motoring back towards the destroyer at high speed without casting so much as a backwards glance over one shoulder.
“What fuck was that?” Vitaly wheezed as he clutched his ribs and watched the withdrawing boats.
“They can’t possibly be letting us go—can they?” asked Hassan.
“You think they chase us more?” said Vitaly.
“We cannot surrender again,” said Dalmar. “It would be very bad for my reputation.”
“Can somebody turn me around?” Marissa’s voice was muffled from underneath a face full of wet, soggy hair. “I can’t see what’s happening behind me.”
“Guys?” said Alexis, staring at the rest as she pointed at her own face. “What did he write on my forehead?”
“It’s a location,” Jonah said as he and Dalmar sat Marissa up. He still wasn’t sure what to make of what had just happened—but he recognized the format of the numbers.
“We can all see that they’re goddamn coordinates,” Marissa grumbled. “Coordinates to where?”
“I think North Korea again?” Vitaly tilted his head, putting his face inches from Alexis.
“What does he want us to do?” said Hassan. “He can’t possibly ask us to return to DPRK waters—not after stealing their citizens and leaving a burning hovercraft on the pack ice.”
“Easy now, Doc. It wasn’t that bad of a cockup, was it?” said Jonah. “We’re still floating, aren’t we?”
“Are you quite serious?” asked the doctor. “If our last sojourn wasn’t a cockup, I have little idea what the word means.”
“We wouldn’t even be in this mess if Jonah hadn’t blown up a goddamn North Korean hovercraft,” complained Marissa.
“Let me remind you that we’re out here on your milk run,” said Jonah.
“Maybe he wants us to avoid those coordinates in the future?” suggested Alexis. “Like when you get pulled over on the highway for speeding or whatever, but they let you off with a warning?” Everyone—even Hassan—groaned.
“I think we go back. We will take these North Koreans by surprise,” said Dalmar. “They would not expect us to return so soon.”
“But why?” repeated the doctor. “What do the Japanese want from us?”
“Maybe pick up cargo? Extract spy?” said Vitaly.
“I’m all for speculation, but could someone please get me out of this fucking tape first?” Alexis began to pull the sticky duct tape off as Marissa tried in vain to blow her soggy hair out of her eyes. She moaned in protest at each painful tug.
“Do not forget the possibility of assassination,” added Dalmar. “Perhaps he asks we kill a man . . . or many men.”
“Or maybe just some routine observation?” Alexis looked up at Jonah hopefully as she freed Marissa’s ankles. “You know, from a safe distance and all?”
Jonah just sighed, as though recalling a series of especially grim memories. “I think I’ve got this down in broad strokes,” he said. “These guys are not telling us a goddamn thing for a reason. They want us to stick our neck in the noose and see what happens.”
“What will become of the refugees?” Alexis asked. “I hope we didn’t just deliver them to a DPRK concentration camp.”
“Not much chance they’ll be worse off.” Hassan pulled Alexis to her feet and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Japan won’t return them to North Korea; that much is certain. Perhaps the ones with living relatives in the home islands might stay. The rest will undoubtedly go into South Korea’s refugee rehabilitation program.”
“The yakuza are going to be pissed,” Marissa said, frowning. “So much for getting paid, much less ever seeing Tokyo again. It’ll be years before I can stay at the Imperial Hotel.”
“So what we do now?” asked Vitaly.
“Let’s get below decks and scoot the hell out of here before the Japanese Navy changes their minds.” Jonah turned to Vitaly. “Make a course for North Korea. Let’s see what they want from us—no way that whatever’s out there is worse than what we’ve already been through.”