Sea of Terror (17 page)

Yano said he remembered nothing either, or very little. "It was like being scooped up by a giant hand," Yano told him. "Then ... I don't know. I was in the water, and the raft was unfolding nearby."

They'd been paddling hard for several minutes, now, getting well clear of the sinking ship. Inui was still coming to grips with the fact that he was alive. That he was seemed like nothing less than a miracle . .. and Inui did not believe in the supernatural.

He believed in himself. In his brothers. In the cause. In the organization.

Sekigun no Ko. It was what they called the KKD, a kind of inner-circle, private joke. Child of the Red Army. In Inui's case, it was almost literally true.

The Nihon Sekigun, the Japanese Red Army, had been born in the 1970s, a time of radical, activism, of leftist revolution, of triumph after triumph over the crumbling shell of Western imperialism. In 1972, in a show of solidarity with fellow revolutionaries of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, three Sekigun members had carried out the Lod Airport Massacre in Israel, killing twenty-five and injuring seventy-one. Most of the victims had been Puerto Rican Christians on a pilgrimage to Israel.

One of those gunmen had been Tsuyoshi Okudaira, Ichiro Inui's father. Okudaira had killed himself with a hand grenade in the Lod Airport baggage claim area rather than allow himself to be captured.

Nihon Sekigun had expected that victory and others to rally the Japanese people behind them. Their goal was nothing less than the overthrow of the decadent Japanese government and the creation of world revolution.

And yet the revolution had never materialized. In fact, most of the people at home had refused even to believe that the Lod terrorists were Japanese at all, and when, finally, they'd accepted the truth, most Japanese had begun turning against any type of militant activism. By the 1980s, with popular support almost nonexistent, the JRA could no longer operate in Japan but was entirely dependent upon the PFLP for training, money, and weapons. In 2001, Fusako Shigenobu, the JRA's original founder, had announced from her prison cell that the unit had been disbanded, that the Japanese Red Army was no more.

Cowards. Cowards and traitors to the Cause. Ichiro Inui had never known his father, but Ichiro's mother had kept Tsuyoshi's memory alive. Kazuko Inui had instilled in the young Ichiro his father's fanatical devotion to world revolution and a seething hatred for the West and its soul-devouring ideologies of money, greed, and planetary rape. In 1992, at the age of twenty-four, Inui had joined the Kokusaiteki Kakumei Domei, the International Revolutionary League. Many of the KKD's members had had their start with the JRA and hoped that a new name, a new face, would gain the support of the masses. They still worked for world revolution but now emphasized the Green fight rather than the Red. United with Greenworld and other militant ecological movements worldwide, they sought to eliminate the import of radioactive material into Japan and end Japan's domestic atomic energy program.

In 1998, his militant beliefs and his association with the KKD carefully hidden, Inui had been commissioned as an officer in the Kaiso Jeitai. Last year, a cell of KKD officers within the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force had arranged for his transfer to the Ishikari, where he'd met Yano. For an entire year they'd waited, carrying out their mundane duties, until the KKD's leadership had issued them with their final orders.

The KKD had allied with al-Qaeda for a final, devastating strike at the hated West. The target of the operation was one of the plutonium shipments returning to Japan after reprocessing in England. And the Ishikari, with her two KKD sleeper agents, would be escorting the freighter home.

A hundred yards away, the Ishikari groaned, then shrieked, her gaping stern sliding under swiftly now, dragging down shattered deckhouse, bridge, the forward gun, and finally the bow, which sliced up out of the sea as a geyser of water and escaping air erupted aft. For a few seconds the bow hung suspended above the waves, and then, gracefully, it, too, slid down and submerged in a final, oily rush of churning water.

The Ishikari had been an ultra-modern design, highly automated, and with a crew of just ninety. A number of those crewmen struggled now in the water, oil-coated, exhausted, and in shock. There'd been no time to clear or lower lifeboats, though a few rafts were in evidence.

A small boat was putting out from the approaching Pacific Sandpiper Inui and Yano began waving their arms, trying to attract the boat crew's attention.

Bridge, Pacific Sandpiper 49deg 2V N, 8deg 13' W Saturday, 0919 hours GMT

"Helicopter off the starboard quarter astern, sir," the port side bridge lookout reported. "Six hundred meters."

"Very well," Jorgenson said. "Sparks! Raise that chopper. Tell them we need help spotting survivors in the water."

The Ishikari had gone down in a boiling fountain of water just five minutes earlier. In seas this heavy, with the surface covered with oil and debris, it was tough to spot human heads floating among all the flotsam, and the helicopter would be invaluable in the search.

Captain Jorgenson turned back to the bridge windows, looking down onto the ship's long forward deck. Since the explosion on board the Ishikari, members of the ship's crew--security troops and off-duty personnel, for the most part--had gathered on the foredeck along the starboard side railing. The security people were at their assigned posts, but the others were simply playing tourist. Some of them had cameras around their necks, for God's sake.

"Mr. Dunsmore," he said sharply. "Pass the word that the decks are to be cleared immediately. Only security personnel or crew members actively engaged in the rescue are to be on deck!"

"Aye, aye, sir."

It was only natural, Captain Jorgenson supposed, for the crew to go out and rubberneck, but it was damned unprofessional.

"I'd like the guns opened up as well," he added.

"I already gave the order, Captain. As soon as you said we were going to close with them."

PNTL's standard rules of procedure. The Sandpiper's guns weren't normally visible from the outside, but at certain times designated by the Piper's operational orders, sections of the deckhouse dropped open to expose three 30mm cannons, one at each corner of the deckhouse forward, overlooking the deck, and one at the stern, above the fantail.

Jorgenson certainly wasn't expecting an attack from the Ishikari's half-drowned survivors, but inflexible corporate doctrine demanded that the guns always be run out should the plutonium freighter approach another vessel or if she was approached by aircraft. They'd war-gamed numerous piracy and terrorist scenarios at PNTL headquarters back in the nineties, looking at the possibility of pirates pretending to be in distress at sea, or a helicopter filled with heavily armed troops landing on deck.

Actually, the captain personally disagreed with the policy of arming the vessels; adding seven tons of high explosives to an already volatile mix of radioactive plutonium and thousands of gallons of fuel oil simply didn't make a lot of sense in his estimation, an accident waiting to happen. But the rules were definitely the rules, and he intended to follow them to the letter.

"There's the chopper, Captain!" the armed guard on the bridge announced. He'd moved over to the starboard wing and was leaning out of the doorway leading to the weather deck outside. "AS 332 Cougar!"

Jorgenson glanced at the aircraft, gentling in to a slow-drifting hover less than a hundred yards abeam of the bridge. He scowled. Something wasn't right. "I thought that was supposed to be an ALAT helicopter," he said.

The AS 332, originally designed and marketed by Aerospatiale, had both military and civilian versions. The silver fuselage and the large, black tail number identified this aircraft as the civil transport version.

The side doors, he saw, had been slid back. He saw a number of men crowded inside . . .

"Sound the alarm!" Jorgenson cried. "That's not--"

"Tomare/" Wanibuchi, the Japanese liaison standing close behind the bridge security guard, shouted. He reached into his bulky yellow windbreaker and pulled out an automatic pistol with a long sound suppressor screwed onto the muzzle. "Ugoku na/"

It happened too quickly, was too shockingly sudden, for anyone to react. As the bridge security guard reached for his weapon, Wanibuchi swung the pistol up into line with the back of the man's head and pulled the trigger. With the suppressor, the sound of the shot was a sharp, hissing chirp that knocked the guard forward through the half-open doorway. "Do not move!"

Immediately, a second shot, followed by a third, sounded from the radio shack, and Robert Orly stumbled through the door onto the bridge, the side of his head a scarlet mass. He fell forward, the cord jerking his headset from his ears as he fell full-length on the bridge deck. The second corporate liaison, Kitagawa, stepped out, his pistol held in a tight, two-handed grip. Dunsmore lunged for the alarm klaxon on the bridge console, and Wanibuchi shot him down before he'd taken two steps.

"Nobody move!" Wanibuchi shrilled, the gun in his hand swinging wildly from the crumpled Dunsmore, to Jorgenson, to Kinsley, the helmsman, to Mathers, the navigator. "All of you! Hands up!"

Feeling a deathly cold rippling up his spine, Jorgenson did as he was told. Mathers and Kinsley raised their hands as well. Dunsmore was writhing in a spreading pool of blood, arms folded across his belly. "May I help my officer?" Jorgenson asked. "He's hurt!"

"No! Get down on the floor!" Wanibuchi shouted. "All of you. Lay on the floor! Facedown! Spread your arms and legs wide apart! Do it! Do it!"

Floor; Jorgenson thought as he moved to obey, not deck. These people weren't seafaring men, then. Perhaps they could use that.

Wanibuchi barked something at Kitagawa in Japanese.

"Hai!" the man replied, and left the bridge, taking the central passageway aft.

"How many of you are there?" Jorgenson asked as he spread himself on the deck. "Only the two of you? You can't possibly take over this ship!"

"Be quiet, Jorgenson," Wanibuchi replied, his English perfect. "Another word and I will shoot your navigator at the base of his spine. It's an agonizing way to die."

Jorgenson heard footsteps and then a metallic clatter. Turning his head, he saw Wanibuchi picking up the SA80 assault rifle dropped by the guard. Wanibuchi saw the movement and raised the rifle. "Turn your head! Look at the wall!"

Again Captain Jorgenson did as he was told, and wondered how he could fight back.

Gun Compartment Two, Pacific Sandpiper 49deg 2V N, 8deg 13' W Saturday, 0921 hours GMT

Chujiro Moritomi had to restrain himself to keep from breaking into a run. The excitement of the moment pounded in his heart and throat and head, to the point that he was having trouble breathing. He felt powerful, though, even superhuman. Some of the radio operator's blood had splashed Moritomi's jacket, but he ignored that. He had killed the man, had walked up behind him and fired two bullets into the side of his head and killed him.

They'd located the positions of the ship's guns during their first inspection of the vessel, days ago. The number two gun was on the starboard side of the deckhouse forward, three decks down from the bridge. Holding his pistol behind his back, he reached the door, turned the handle, and pulled it open.

A cool breeze slapped him in the face. The compartment's outer panels had been dropped, converting it to a kind of outdoor balcony overlooking the forward deck to the left and the wreckage-strewn ocean off the ship's starboard side straight ahead. Two of the civilian guards were inside, one leaning against a stack of ammo cases, the other in the saddle behind the 30mm chain gun.

"Well, hello," the man by the ammo cases said, looking around at Moritomi's entrance. "Whose little wog are you? ..."

The gunner turned, startled. "Here, now! You're not allowed--"

Except for the M230 chain gun, neither man was armed. Moritomi brought his pistol around, put two shots into the gunner's head, then shifted aim and shot the loader as he lunged for the door.

Stepping through the door, Moritomi turned, pulled the door shut, then shoved the body of the gunner out of the saddle. The M230 was aimed in the general direction of the helicopter off the ship's starboard beam.

Moritomi had trained with these weapons at the camp in Syria. He checked the ammo feed, made sure the power was on, and dragged back the charging lever with a rasping snick. Then he swung the weapon around to the left, depressing the barrel to aim at the Sandpiper's crowded forward deck, and switched off the safety.

Forward Deck, Pacific Sandpiper 49deg 21' N, 8deg 13' W Saturday, 0923 hours GMT

Jack Rawlston turned from the ship's starboard railing and looked at the crowd in disgust. "Here, you lot!" he shouted. "Clear the deck!"

There was, inevitably, a certain amount of friction between the regular crew and the "specials," the civilian security guards provided by PNTL and the UK Atomic Energy Authority "Up yours," an older seaman growled. "Who made you captain?"

"Clear the fucking deck!" Rawlston bellowed, swinging his arm. "We need some order up here!"

He was assuming they would be bringing survivors up onto the forward deck, and this crowd of rubbernecking tourists was going to be in the way. The skipper might want that helicopter to land, too, and they would need the entire length of the deck clear for that.

"You heard the man!" Timmy Smithers shouted. "You people make yourselves useful and--"

He never finished the sentence. Rawlston heard an angry highspeed rattle of automatic gunfire, and then the Pacific Sandpiper's steel deck was erupting in white puffs of smoke and hurtling shards of shrapnel. Smithers was jerked to one side, his upper chest and left shoulder exploding in a pink spray. Merchant seamen began falling as explosions ripped through the crowd with murderous detonations.

It reminded him, Rawiston thought as he dived for cover behind a hold cover, of autocannon fire from a helicopter gunship, and he assumed the helicopter was firing on them. He hit the deck, pulled his SA80 off his shoulder, and came up with his weapon aimed and tracking, ready to return fire.