The Gate (17 page)

*****

The battle became pitched as the North Koreans rallied and fought back ferociously. Their lack of firepower, only seven MAC-10s, was made up for by their training and disregard for their own safety. A hatch swung open in front of Nishin and two Koreans sprang out. He killed the first with a burst from the Steyr AUG. In his dying second the man threw himself onto the muzzle of the gun and Nishin was forced to drop it to face the second man, who was armed with a fire ax.

The man swung and Nishin leaped back, the ax scattering sparks as it hit the side of the bridge tower. Nishin jumped in, grabbing the Korean’s arm that controlled the ax and striking a kite blow in the direction of the man’s throat. He missed, his hand slamming into the man’s collarbone, snapping it.

The ax fell to the deck with a clatter, but the North Korean was far from being done. He snapped a front kick into Nishin’s gut, doubling him over. Nishin dropped the standard moves he’d been trained on and growled as he butted his head forward into the man’s stomach, wrapping his arms around the man’s waist. He lifted him and slammed him back against the wall. Again. Shifting slightly he did it a third time and the Korean screamed as the handle for the hatch ripped into his back, tearing through skin and muscle.

Nishin stepped back. The Korean was caught on the handle, but he was still alive, writhing in agony, trying by force of will to lift himself off the metal hook, but his feet could get no purchase, dangling six inches off the deck.

Nishin slipped past the man, ducking the dying blow the Korean threw at his head. Inside, a set of stairs beckoned to Nishin, heading up toward the bridge.

*****

Lake had his feet and knees tight together, just like the jump masters at Fort Benning used to scream through megaphones at novice airborne students to do as they drifted toward the ground on their first jump. The firing was much closer now, but the fog was just as thick. Lake glanced at his altimeter: one hundred feet.

He cocked his head. He could hear the throb of a ship’s engines in between staccato bursts of fire. He rotated his elbows in to protect his face and kept his knees slightly bent.

Something passed by, about twenty feet in front of him. A ship’s crane. He pulled in the last inch of slack in the toggle lines and then he touched down on steel decking, grateful for the deceleration of the square canopy that made his landing so soft. He kept on his feet and ripped open the canopy release assemblies on the front of his shoulder. He popped open the small steel loops inside. The parachute hadn’t even settled yet and he was out free of it. The chute drifted over the side of the ship and disappeared.

Lake unhitched the MP-5 as he looked about. He was on the forward deck, standing on top of one of the large cargo hatches. All the firing seemed to be coming from the rear. Lake began making his way to the stern.

*****

Quantity was prevailing over quality. Surprise also was a factor with a third of the North Koreans having died before they realized they were under attack. The platoon commander screamed commands from the open windows of the bridge, rallying his forces, with their final defensive line being the island the bridge was on.

He gave instructions to the ship’s captain, then went to the radio shack at the back of the bridge. It was a small, windowless room with half its space taken up by a sophisticated communications array.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, seeing the translator sitting at the small table, rapidly typing a message into the encryption device.

“I found it!” the man yelled excitedly. “You will not believe what it says.” He thrust the piece of paper he was copying off of in the platoon commander’s face.

“You have radioed this information?” the commander asked.

“Not yet,” the translator said. “I just finished typing the message into the encryption machine.”

“Good,” the commander said. He pulled out a double-edged knife from its sheath.

“What are you—” The translator never finished the sentence as the commander slammed the blade to the hilt into the man’s chest.

The commander shoved the body aside and sat down at the radio. He began checking the equipment to make sure it was properly set.

*****

Nishin pushed open the door to the room on the second floor and stepped in, muzzle of the AUG leading. The room was empty and he turned to leave when he noticed the box sitting on the small table in the center of the room. Stepping over, Nishin confirmed it was the box stolen from the university the previous evening. There was no time to investigate further. He had to make sure the Koreans were finished first. He went back out, closing the door behind.

*****

Lake surprised two men locked in combat on the left side of the bridge tower. He killed them both with a short burst from his MP-5. There were several other bodies scattered about, both Korean and Japanese. Lake could hear firing coming from above him and he knew that was where he had to go.

* * *

Nishin cleared the bridge with one sustained, silenced burst from the Steyr AUG. He leaped over a body and kicked open the door at the back of the bridge. A man sat by the radio, his hands on a computer keyboard, a body at his feet. Nishin fired, his bullets slamming the man up against the radio console, blood spraying the machinery.

Nishin rushed over but he saw he was too late. Two words flashed on the computer screen:
message sent.

There was a paper in the man’s hand. Nishin knelt and carefully pulled it out of the dead fingers that clutched it. He stuffed it inside his shirt. He checked the numbers on the digital displays of the radio, committing them to memory.

There were voices speaking behind him in Japanese. He re-entered the bridge. Oyabun Okomo was standing with a handful of surviving Yakuza, several of them sporting wounds.

Okomo pulled a body off of the bridge controls and grimaced. “We are sinking.”

His words caused Nishin’s trigger finger to pause just a millimeter from pulling back. He looked about. The ship was listing slightly to the right. Three more Yakuza entered the left side of the bridge, weapons at the ready. Nishin removed his finger from the trigger.

“The captain opened the seacocks to scuttle the ship,” Okomo explained, slapping the control panel. “They are jammed. We cannot close them. We must get to the tugboat before it is too late.”

“We have achieved what we came for,” Nishin agreed. He would get the box on the way out. They all turned for the stairs.

****

Lake heard the voices one flight up. There was no more sound of gunfire. He edged open a door, the muzzle of his MP-5 leading. An empty cabin with a couple of bunks and a small table. On the table a cardboard box stood unat tended. Lake slid into the room and checked. The box was the one that had been stolen from Harmon’s archives. A folder was open on the table top, Xeroxed pages pressed flat about halfway in. Lake quickly shut the folder and stuffed it into the box. He pulled a couple of plastic garbage bags out of his wet suit and wrapped them around the box, sealing each one with duct tape.

He could feel the ship angling over to starboard. Lake estimated about a ten-degree list, getting worse very quickly. Since he had heard no explosion he had to assume someone was scuttling the ship. He worked faster.

As he sealed the last bag, Lake heard footsteps clattering on the metal stairs outside. A head poked in the door and Lake greeted it with one round from the MP-5 right between the eyes. He could see two men behind, but the door swung shut before he had a chance to shoot again.

*****

Pieces of skull and gray brain matter exploded into Nishin’s face from the Yakuza in front of him who had looked in the room. He flattened against the bulkhead. He had had just a glimpse into the room, but that had been enough. The American gun dealer again! What was he doing here and why was he with the box? The man was wearing a wet suit, which indicated he had gotten on board the ship after it left the harbor, even though they hadn’t seen anyone board. Nishin checked the magazine on the AUG. He was going to finish this meddlesome round-eye once and for all.

Okomo was on the other side of the door and held up a hand as Nishin reached for the door handle. “Leave whoever is in there. The ship will be down soon. We must go! Now! We do not have time for this.” The Oyabun’s voice brooked no dissension. Nishin was tempted to kill the old man then and there, but there were too many of his henchmen about. Now was not the time.

Recovering the box was not essential, Nishin knew.

Making sure no one else would ever recover it was. If the ship went down, that would be sufficient.

Nishin grabbed a fire ax and slid the wood handle through the metal spokes of the hatch’s handle. It jammed against the far side of the hatch, effectively freezing the wheel. The American would die with the ship.

They continued on their way out of the bridge castle. As they ran they could feel the trawler listing farther to the right.

The tug was still nudging the right rear of the trawler, although closer to deck level now that the trawler was lower in the water. Nishin grabbed one of the lines that was tied off on the railing and lowered himself hand over hand to the waiting deck.

*****

Lake heard the feet move away, but he continued to wait another couple of minutes, fearing a trap. He tried the door but it didn’t move. He tried again, straining against the metal wheel. Nothing. Now he knew the meaning of the Japanese words he had heard but not understood and the sound of wood on metal that had followed them.

Lake ran through the options. He turned about. There was no other door and no portholes in the room. Just metal walls, ceiling and floor. Conduits in PVC pipes disappeared through the ceiling. There were two pipes, each three inches in diameter. Even if he ripped them out he would barely be able to get his arm through, never mind his whole body.

Lake looked back at the door. The metal wheel handle had no exposed screws or nuts that would allow him to remove the entire handle. He grabbed hold and tried turning in the opposite direction from open. The handle moved about an inch then froze. He shifted back the other way an inch. Then again.

*****

The trawler’s engines were contributing to its rapid death by pushing water into the openings in the hull. The trawler was still moving forward, albeit slower than before, as it was ten feet lower in the water. Fifty yards to starboard, Nishin was watching the ship go down. He hadn’t gotten the box, but that wasn’t the important thing—it was going down with the ship and no one had it now. The American, well that was a puzzle, one which he would not have to figure out now.

“We must circle and make sure there are no survivors,” Nishin said.

Okomo grunted out some commands to Captain Ohashi and the tugboat began circling.

“I lost sixteen men,” Okomo said. He spit. “The Koreans fought better than I expected.”

Not as well as Nishin had expected, though. There were still a dozen armed Yakuza on board the tug. His wish to get rid of Okomo and his thugs would have to be forgotten. He needed them to make it back to the safety of land to report the mission’s success.

He was concerned about the man he had killed in the radio room, though. The Koreans had managed to send out a message. What had been the message? He hoped Nakanga would know, yet at the same time he dreaded informing him of it. He thought of the piece of paper he had taken off the man at the radio, but he knew he dared not read it in front of Okomo.

A wave crashed over the bow of the trawler. “How deep is the water here?” Nishin asked.

“Eighteen fathoms. Just over a hundred feet,” Captain Ohashi said.

A voice cried out on the forward deck. Nishin looked down at a Yakuza who was pointing to the port. Two figures in life vests were struggling in the heavy swell.

A Yakuza raked them with fire from an AK-47, killing both men. “Pull the bodies on board!” Okomo yelled out. “Take their lifejackets off and throw them back for the sharks to have.” The Yakuza did as they were ordered. “Another circle,” Okomo said. “I want no one alive to tell tales.”

*****

Lake’s arms were like pistons as he rammed the handle back and forth in the one inch of slack. He was leaning now, the deck beneath his feet angled at thirty degrees to starboard. There was no give yet in the wood on the other side, but there were no other options. Perspiration poured down his neck, seeping into the collar of his wet suit, joining the sweat that was already soaking it.

There was a loud crashing sound and the ship paused in its forward momentum. Lake didn’t stop, his arms moving back and forth.

*****

“One of the forward cargo hatches just went,” Captain Ohashi said as the sound reverberated through the fog. “It won’t be long now. The water will get to the engines soon.”

They had circled the trawler twice now and found no other survivors. The bow of the trawler was now completely underwater. As the ocean cascaded into the forward hatches, the ship dipped farther down until everything was under except the bridge castle, angled over to the right, sinking down a couple of feet a second.

“Let’s go home,” Okomo ordered.

Ohashi spun the wheel about and pointed the prow of the ship toward the Golden Gate. Nishin turned and watched, his last sight the top of the bridge of the trawler disappearing and nothing left on the surface. Then the fog swallowed up the tug.

*****

Lake had listened to the engines sputter and stop a couple of minutes ago. At least the list wasn’t getting any worse, staying steady at about thirty-five degrees to starboard. But he could hear hatches blowing out and water tearing through bulkheads under his feet. The ship was dying and he didn’t have very long before he matched its fate.