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  While there were other sub drivers among the Oregon crew, as director of Shore Operations, Eddie wouldn’t let anyone else take the risk. Seng was another veteran of the CIA, although Juan hadn’t known him when they were in the Agency. He’d spent most of his career working the Middle East, while Eddie had been attached to the American embassy in Beijing running several successful spy networks. Budget and policy shifts following 9/11 had seen him transferred to a stateside desk. Still hungry for what he called “the teeth of the trade,” Seng had joined the Corporation and quickly established himself as an indispensable member.

  Cabrillo crawled over batteries and empty crates and slid into the copilot’s seat to Eddie’s right. Eddie’s black hair was lank from going so long without washing, and stubble marred his otherwise sharp features. The emotional and physical strain of the past two weeks had dimmed his normally bright eyes.

  “Hiya, boss.” Seng grinned. Nothing could diminish his easygoing charm. “Welcome aboard.”

  “Thanks,” Juan said, noting that the sub had already descended to thirty feet. “The clock’s ticking, so set a course out of the harbor and punch it. We’ve got eleven minutes.”

  The Discovery’s motors ramped up, and the single prop bit into the water. There was nothing they could do about the noise. They had to get as far from the Asia Star as possible, because water does not compress, making the coming shock wave doubly brutal.

  Cabrillo kept his eyes on the sub’s sonar, and only a minute after they began pulling away from the doomed freighter there was contact. “Mr. Murphy’s rearing his ugly head.”

  “What do you have?” Hanley stood just behind Juan and leaned over his shoulder.

  The computer analyzed the acoustical signal, and Cabrillo read the grim facts. “Sinpo-class patrol boat. Crew of twelve. Armed with a pair of 37mm autocannons and tilt racks for depth charges. Top speed is forty knots, and our contact is already churning twenty and headed straight for us.”

  Eddie turned to Juan. “It’s routine. They’ve been doing this ever since I entered the harbor. Every couple of hours a single patrol boat races along the dock. I think they’re searching for sailors trying to jump ship.”

  “If he maintains his course, he’s going to pass right over us.”

  “Does that class of boats carry sonar?” Max asked.

  Juan checked the computer again. “Doesn’t say.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Eddie’s voice remained calm and professional. “Keep running, or settle onto the bottom and let him pass?”

  Cabrillo checked his watch again. They’d traveled little more than a quarter mile. Too close. “Keep going. If he hears us or detects our wake, he’s going to have to slow and turn back to try to find us again. We only need six minutes.”

  A moment later the four men inside the minisub could hear the thrash of the patrol boat’s props through the water, an angry sound that rose in pitch as the craft drew closer. As it roared overhead the din filled the hull, and the men waited expectantly to hear if it would come back for another pass. The moment stretched as time turned elastic. Max and Hali let out their breaths as the patrol boat continued on. Cabrillo kept his eyes glued to the sonar screen.

  “They’re turning,” he remarked a second later. “Coming back for another look. Hali, check the radio, see if he’s transmitting.” Hali Kasim headed the Oregon’s communications division and could play radios like a concert pianist.

  The communications suite aboard the Oregon was sophisticated enough to scan and record a thousand frequencies per second and had a language program that could translate fast enough for an operator to hold a conversation close enough to real time to fool most listeners. With the Discovery 1000’s limited electronics they would be lucky just to pick up a broadcast, and since none of the men spoke Korean, they wouldn’t know if the patrol craft was asking permission to depth charge or commenting on the weather.

  “I’m not getting anything,” Kasim answered after a few moments.

  The North Korean patrol boat crossed over the minisub again, and the men heard her engines throttle back.

  “They’re pacing us,” Eddie said.

  The powerful sonar picked up a pair of splashes too small to be depth charges. Juan knew immediately what was about to happen. “Brace yourselves!”

  The grenades were knockoffs of the Soviet RGD-5, and while they only contained four ounces of high explosives, the water amplified their explosive power. The two grenades went off nearly simultaneously just yards behind the Discovery. The sub pitched up by the stern, knocking Hali Kasim against a bank of batteries. Eddie fought to bring her nose up as the murky bottom suddenly loomed outside the large acrylic view port. With their ears ringing, no one heard a second pair of grenades hit the water. They blew just above the minisub, slamming her into the mud just as Eddie got her on an even keel. Billows of silt exploded around the Discovery, cutting visibility to zero. Electricity arced and snapped from a loose connection in dazzlingly bright flashes that temporarily blinded the men.

  Eddie quickly powered down the sub to give Max a chance to fix the connection. By the glow of a miniature flashlight clamped between his teeth, the engineer worked to bypass the affected row of batteries, but the damage had been done. The flashes of electricity could be seen from the surface through the sub’s portholes and looked like an eerie blue glow from the depths.

  “They’ve got us now,” Hali said. “They’re transmitting something. Just a short message, but I think the jig is up.”

  “How’s it coming, Max?” Cabrillo inquired with no more concern than if he were asking when coffee would be ready.

  “Just a few more seconds.”

  “Anything from shore yet, Hali?”

  “Negative. The brass must be mulling over the report from the patrol boat.”

  “Got it,” Max announced. “Eddie, turn her back on.”

  Eddie Seng hit a button, and the display screens lit with their muted glimmer.

  “Okay, Eddie, emergency blow. Bring us to the surface.”

  “The patrol boat’s right above us, boss.”

  Cabrillo’s response was a dark smile.

  “There goes our warranty,” Eddie muttered, then blew ballast from the Discovery’s tanks with compressed air. The little sub seemed to launch itself from the bottom. He watched the depth gauge and called out the numbers. When he said there were only five feet of water over the Disco’s top deck, all four men instinctively ducked lower in their seats.

  The steel hull slammed into the underside of the North Korean craft with a deafening screech. The sub was several tons lighter than the patrol boat, but her upward momentum tipped the Koreans until their starboard rail was in the water. One crewman had his legs crushed when he was pitched over the side by a rolling fuel drum. Juan reached across Eddie and punched the command for a crash dive before the upper deck broke the surface.

  High-speed pumps filled the ballast tanks in under fifteen seconds, and the Discovery dropped like a stone.

  “That ought to keep ’em busy for a few minutes.” Max said.

  “We only need a few. Okay everyone, get your earphones on and strap in.”

  The men donned bulky headsets that they jacked into a piece of electronics specially installed for the mission. Built by Sound Answers, the experimental noise-canceling device took in sound waves, evaluated their frequency and amplitude, and played back the exact opposite sound, nullifying 99 percent of the decibels. Such devices, once perfected and miniaturized, would soon make it possible for silent vacuum cleaners and end the anxiety of listening to a dentist’s drill.

  Aboard the Asia Star one of the North Korean spies sent to guard the Syrians had come to. He wasted precious seconds checking on his partner. The lump where he’d been clipped with the pistol was as tight as a drum. The man wouldn’t awaken. The guard knew his duty. He ran from the hold, shouting at the top of his lungs, ignoring the pain it caused in his head. He ran up to the main deck, checking doors along the
corridor behind the bridge until he found the captain’s. He considered knocking, but what he had to report was too important. He burst through the door. General Kim was on the telephone.

  “And then what will you do to my little lotus?” Kim snapped to his feet when the door crashed against the cabin wall. He roared, “What is the meaning of this?”

  “General,” the guard panted. “The Syrians, they attacked us. I did not see them in the hold. I think they might be trying to escape.”

  “Escape? Escape what?” Kim no sooner asked those questions when he realized the answer. He cut the connection to his mistress, pounding on the Reset lever to alert the shore operator. “Come on, you damned thing,” he cursed, then addressed the guard. “They weren’t Syrians; they were American saboteurs. Search the hold for a bomb.”

  Finally a voice sounded in the telephone. Kim knew that even if he died, getting a warning out would make sure the Americans would pay for their treachery. “This is General Kim aboard the Asia Star—”

  At the back corner of the hold, Max’s bomb wound down to zero.

  The bomb blast tore through the missile where it had been hidden and an instant later caused a secondary explosion of the warhead. Overpressure built inside the hold until the four-ton hatches blew into the night sky as though a volcano had erupted. The Star’s old hull plates split at their welds like peels from an orange as the tons of rocket fuel stored in her forward hold detonated.

  The ship disintegrated.

  A seven-hundred-foot wedge of the concrete dock shattered, and chunks of it were thrown miles inland. The two massive loading cranes along the wharf toppled into the water, and every window along the harbor was blown to pieces. Then the shock wave spread. Warehouses were blown flat for a quarter mile, and those farther away were stripped of their siding so only their skeletal steel frames remained upright. The concussion stripped the first six feet of water from the bay and piled it into a wave that slammed the destroyer lying at anchor, breaking her keel and capsizing her so fast that none of her harbor watch had time to react.

  Night turned to day as the fireball climbed to eleven hundred feet, and sheets of rocket fuel fell like burning rain, setting fires all around the navy yard, while bits of the Asia Star’s hull scythed through the base like shrapnel, leveling buildings and wrecking vehicles.

  The concussion plucked the floundering patrol boat from the sea and sent it tumbling across the surface of the bay, rolling it like a log down a mountainside. With each revolution more of her upperworks tore free. First it was her fore gun mounts, then the pair of .50 calibers at her stern, and finally her small cabin came apart, leaving just her hull to barrel roll atop the waves.

  The noise dampener did its job, but still the concussion wave rang through the Discovery 1000 as though she was a bell. The whole hull shook as the shock wave passed over and the plucky little sub lurched forward, then ebbed violently, straining the safety straps and scattering loose equipment from storage bins. Eardrums were brutally assaulted by the blast, and had it not been for the counterfrequencies channeled into the headsets, the four men would have been permanently deafened.

  As it was, Cabrillo had to shout at the top of his lungs to inquire about his men. Eddie and Hali were unscathed, but Max had taken a bump on the head from a falling battery. The skin hadn’t broken, and he hadn’t been knocked out. He’d suffer a headache for a while, and it would take days for the knot already forming to subside.

  “All right, Eddie, take us home.”

  The minisub slipped out of the harbor undetected and was two miles from the coast before they picked up helicopters thundering toward Wonsan. The choppers were flying too high and too fast to be ASW (antisubmarine warfare) birds. They were most likely rescue helos ferrying medical supplies and personnel to the devastated base.

  Like all other coastal nations on earth, North Korea was afforded twelve miles of ocean as sovereign territory. Just to play it safe, Juan Cabrillo had scheduled the rendezvous for twenty miles out, a long slog in the reeking confines of the Discovery that took nearly three hours longer than planned. The Discovery had to stay deep as dawn approached in case the North Koreans did send out aerial reconnaissance.

  At last they came to the spot of ocean, and Eddie eased the craft up from eighty feet where she’d remained hidden. The underside of the Oregon’s hull was coated with red antifouling paint and loomed over the small sub. Juan noted with pride that the hull was clear of barnacles and looked as new as the day he’d taken possession of her. In order to take advantage of the tremendous power generated by her revolutionary engines, the Oregon utilized an MDV design as perfected by high-speed European express ferries. Her monohull, deep V arrangement allowed her to knife through the seas at unheard-of speeds. To maintain stability she sported several retractable T-foils and fins, undersea wings that kept her planing smoothly at up to forty knots. Beyond that speed the wings produced too much drag. They were drawn back to the hull, and the crew had to strap themselves in like offshore hydroplane racers.

  Eddie grabbed a device the size and shape of a garage door remote, pointed it up at the Oregon, and pressed the single button.

  Splitting at the keel, a pair of eighty-foot-long doors hinged downward. Bright light from inside the ship filtered through the water and bathed the underside of the ship in a green glow. Eddie nudged the thrusters and adjusted the ballast, centering the Discovery in the opening. He held station just below the hull as two men in scuba gear jumped from inside the ship and attached lift cables to hardpoints fore and aft. The minisub and its larger sister, a Nomad 1000 also kept aboard the Oregon, could surface directly into the moon pool, but the maneuver was risky and used only in emergencies.

  The frogman swam in front of the view port and gave Eddie and Juan a wave, then slashed his hand across his neck. Eddie killed the motors. A second later the sub lurched, then began to rise smoothly into the flooded moon pool. As it cleared the surface, Seng opened valves so the ballast tanks could drain.

  Juan spotted Julia Huxley, the Oregon’s medical officer, standing at the edge of the pool with a pair of orderlies. He shot her a thumbs-up, and her concerned frown turned into a smile. She’d joined the Corporation after a career in the navy, finishing with a four-year stint as the chief medical officer at San Diego Naval Base. Under her lab coat, the five-foot-three-inch Julia was curvaceous without running to fat. He rarely saw her dark hair out of a ponytail, and the only makeup she used was to highlight her soft, dark eyes.

  The overhead crane lowered the sub onto a cradle, and a workman clambered on top to crank open the outer hatch. When it finally released, the crew inside heard him gasp. “Whoa.”

  “Try being sealed inside for two weeks,” Eddie called, pulling himself from his seat. He’d already unzipped the front of his jumpsuit in preparation for his first shower in fifteen days. His chest and stomach were so lean that individual muscle fibers were visible. Eddie was built like famed martial artist Bruce Lee, and like Lee was a master in several Eastern fighting techniques.

  Juan allowed his men to precede him out, but as soon as he’d taken his first deep breaths he called to a sailor nearby, “Get these doors closed, and contact Eric in the control room. Have him set a course due east, say twenty knots. As long as the threat board remains green, there’s no need to draw attention to ourselves by opening her up.” Eric Stone was a control room operator, the ship’s best, and the only man Juan wanted at the helm during critical operations.

  “Aye, sir.”

  When the doors were closed, pumps came online to drain the moon pool, and workers laid decking grilles over the hole. Technicians were already assessing the damage caused when the Discovery rammed the patrol boat, while others were bringing gallon jugs of bleach to sanitize the interior.

  Julia approached Juan when he came down the ladder from the top of the minisub. “We heard the explosion out here, so I don’t need to ask how it went.”

  “You don’t sound too happy about it.” Juan st
ripped off his Colonel Hourani uniform coat.

  “Just bored, Mr. Chairman. Other than a few strained muscles, I haven’t had much to do in months.”

  Juan smiled. “I thought that was a good thing for a doctor.”

  “For a doctor, yes; for an employee, it’s dullsville.”

  “Come on, Julia, you know us. Give it a few days or a week, and we’ll get into some sort of trouble.”

  Cabrillo would soon regret those words. In just ninety-six hours, Dr. Julia Huxley was going to be literally up to her elbows in work.

  4

  “COME,” Cabrillo called at the sharp knock on his cabin’s door.

  The Oregon was safely beyond the range of all but North Korea’s best fighter jets and, according to intercepted communications, it seemed unlikely any would be scrambled before the vessel was outside their range, too. He had allowed himself an hour-long soak in the copper Jacuzzi tub in the adjoining bathroom and was just finishing getting dressed. Not one to stand on formalities aboard ship, he wore cotton trousers and an open-neck shirt.

  Unlike his Colonel Hourani disguise, and despite his Hispanic name and background, Juan Cabrillo’s eyes were blue, and his spiky hair was white-blond from a youth spent in the sun and surf. His features, too, looked more Anglo than Latin, with an aristocratic nose and a mouth forever poised at a smile from some joke only he knew. But there was a hard edge to Cabrillo, one formed over years of facing danger. While he masked it well, people meeting him for the first time could still detect an intangible quality that commanded immediate respect.

  Linda Ross, the Corporation’s newly promoted vice president of Operations, stepped through the door, a clipboard held against her chest. Linda was another navy veteran, having spent time as an intelligence officer aboard an Aegis cruiser followed by a stint at the Pentagon. Trim and athletic, Linda possessed a soft-spoken demeanor and a razor-sharp mind. When Richard Truitt, the Corporation’s former VP, unexpectedly resigned after the Sacred Stone affair, Cabrillo and Hanley knew that Linda was the only one who could fill Dick’s shoes.