White Water td-106 Page 3

  "Ingo Pungo sounds Korean," said Remo. "Why am I meeting a Korean ship?"

  "It is connected to the last contract I negotiated with the Master of Sinanju," explained Smith.

  "Oh, yeah? Usually you ship the yearly gold tribute to the village by submarine. Why is a Korean ship coming here?"

  "That is not as important as your making the drop zone on schedule. Can you get to Lubec?"

  "Probably. But don't I need a semi?"

  "Make the drop point. I will arrange for another truck."

  "Okay." Then Remo had a thought and he groaned. "I hope Chiun isn't bringing a bunch of his relatives to come live with us."

  But Harold Smith had already terminated the call.

  Abandoning the truck, Remo used his thumb. No one offered him a ride, so he waited until the next eighteen-wheeler came barreling down the highway.

  Climbing atop the cab of his own semi, Remo crouched there, waiting. His eyes tracked the approaching rig. He calculated instinctively-and not by numbers-variables such as speed, wind velocity and timing.

  When the semi roared past, emitting diesel exhaust, Remo launched himself from his crouch; landed on the semi with his arms and legs spread and became a human suction cup.

  Slipstream tried to tear him off, but his body adhered to the stainless-steel top as if Super Glued there.

  Squeezing his eyes shut to protect them, Remo climbed down the blind side of the truck and slipped under the chassis where the spare tire sat flat in a tubular rack. There was enough room for Remo to stretch out if he deflated the tire. Which he proceeded to do with kneading motions of his long thin fingers.

  There Remo sat like a frog on an inner tube on a pond, protected from view, wind and discovery.

  He just hoped the truck was going where he was going.

  EVENTUALLY, THE TRUCK pulled into a truck stop; and the driver got out to chow down in a diner. Remo slipped from his perch and called Harold Smith from a pay phone.

  "How are we doing?" he asked.

  "You have an hour," returned Smith.

  "I'm in Machias."

  "Hire a cab. Have the driver drop you off a quarter mile from the zone. Walk the rest of the way. You will find a power boat moored to a blue buoy."

  "Power boat?"

  "Take the boat fifteen nautical miles due east."

  "You might as well say fifteen furlongs. I don't know nautical miles from kilometers."

  "Rendezvous with the Ingo Pungo. Tell them to hold their position until you have secured a new truck. Then return to shore and find the truck."

  "Okay, got it. So what's this all about?"

  "It is all about punctuality," said Harold Smith. "Now hurry."

  "Damn that Smith!" said Remo, hanging up.

  He was walking back to the highway when the truck driver caught his eye. A tall, rangy blonde with a pleasant but lined face, she was on the scruffy side in torn jeans and flannels. But Remo decided she had an honest face. He needed someone like that now.

  She beat him to the punch.

  "You look like a guy who could use a lift," she said.

  Remo said, "I need to get to Lubec fast."

  "I'm running a load of sea urchin to the cannery there. I could use the company."

  Remo climbed aboard. He watched as the woman double clutched the big rig onto the highway and laid down rubber for Lubec, hoping to pick up a few pointers.

  "Name's Ethel."

  "Remo."

  "What's your business in Lubec?" Ethel asked.

  "Gotta meet a boat," Remo told her.

  "Say no more." She fell silent. It was a very thick uncomfortable silence.

  Remo decided it didn't matter what she thought, as long as he got the ride.

  Dusk was falling, but the interval between the sun dropping from sight and night seizing the world was brief.

  After a while, Ethel started talking again. "I'm from Nashua. New Hampshire, that is. You?"

  "Boston."

  "Beantown," she snorted. "Where they drive like they learned how in bumper cars, and the rules of the road are-there ain't none."

  "No argument there," said Remo.

  "But it's home, right? I know. Once I finish this run, I go back to four walls full of boredom. But it's home."

  The unspoken invitation hung in the noisy cabin for a full mile.

  Normally Remo's tastes didn't run to truck drivers, but this was a special situation. He took the opening. "Can I hire your rig to haul some stuff back to Boston?"

  Her smile was tentative. "Could be. If there's money in it. What stuff?"

  "I don't know."

  She looked at him sideways, her nostrils flaring. "You can't expect me to swallow that line."

  "I'll know when I meet the boat, not before."

  "You must be in a fascinating line of work."

  "If you're not interested, I'll make other arrangements," Remo said.

  "Hold on, now. Believe me, I'm interested." Her voice got low. "You ain't married, are you?"

  "No," said Remo.

  "Good, because I don't care to have my ass shot off by law or lovers. If you catch my drift."

  "Been there, too," said Remo.

  "I'm making a good living hauling urchin now. Don't want to mess it all up to do the midnight cha-cha."

  "Urchin?"

  "Yeah. Used to haul sardines, but the industry's in decline. Would have died, but the Japanese have a yen for seaurchin roe. They pay big. I make good money taking it to the processing plant. Wouldn't touch the stuff otherwise. I'm a steak-and-potatoes kind of gal. The kind you can take home to mother."

  She threw Remo a wink. Remo threw it back. That seemed to satisfy her, and the cabin fell quiet, which was how Remo liked it. In her Red Sox ball cap and raggedy work clothes, she was too tomboy for Remo's taste.

  It was after sundown by the time they pulled into Lubec. Remo didn't see much of the town except it was old and on the hardscrabble side.

  Within sight of the water, Ethel braked the truck. "I'll let you off here and go on and unload my cargo," she told him. "Meet you by the water as soon as I can. Deal?"

  "Deal," said Remo, getting out. He hated to trust a stranger, but she had such an honest face.

  REMO FOUND THE BOAT moored to a blue buoy. It was a long, sleek, ivory white cigarette boat. The kind drug smugglers use down in the Florida Keys.

  The Lubec coast was very rocky, and the boat bobbed in the water a quarter mile out. There was no sign of a rowboat to take him out to it, so Remo simply started out along a long finger of rockweed-covered granite and kept on running when he hit the water.

  It was a short sprint to the boat, and the tops of Remo's Italian loafers were dry when he hopped into the cockpit.

  Running on water was one of the most difficult techniques Remo had mastered, but he made it look easy.

  Venting the gas tank so it wouldn't explode when he fired up the inboard-outboard, Remo waited impatiently.

  By the moon's position in the night sky, he was running ten minutes late. Maybe it wouldn't matter on this run.

  The boat aired, Remo started the engine, threw off the spring line and backed the craft away from the buoy. When he had good draft, he turned it around and let out the throttle.

  He hoped the Ingo Pungo was big enough to spot by moonlight. Otherwise there was a real good chance he was going to miss it completely ....

  Chapter 3

  Captain Sanho Rhee knew his cargo. He understood his destination. What he did not understand was the why of the long voyage from Pusan, South Korea, through the Panama Canal to the North Atlantic.

  Was this somehow illegal?

  He didn't think so. There was nothing illegal about his cargo. Such cargo was routinely transported from port to port.

  Of course, he'd left his home port empty. The cargo was picked up along the way, some here, some there. That was normal. That was the kind of ship the Ingo Pungo was. That was what it did.

  Normally the perishable cargo was off-
loaded in a commercial port. Not this time. This time they were to lower the cargo over the side to a waiting craft. No port duties. No inspections. No nothing.

  This clearly wasn't legal. But arrangements had been made. It was all taken care of.

  So the Ingo Pungo, her full holds displacing four hundred tons of the cold Atlantic, steamed through the waters off Nova Scotia.

  These were dangerous waters these days, with the Canadians so protective of their exhausted fisheries. But the Ingo Pungo had done nothing to disturb Canadian waters. There would be no trouble from Canada.

  Captain Rhee was in the wheelhouse watching the scaly effect of moonlight on the cold water when the sea before them turned green and luminous.

  A whale, he thought.

  Right Whales sometimes surfaced in these waters, an impressive sight. Their great, hulking bodies would churn the naturally phosphorescent phytoplankton of the sea. This would account for the greenish phenomenon.

  But the black nose slamming up from the deep was no whale's snout. It was metal. Made by man.

  A lookout spoke the word before Rhee's brain framed the startled thought.

  "Submarine! Submarine off port bow!"

  "All engines, stop. All stop!" Rhee screeched.

  And belowdecks the laboring diesels ground to a halt.

  The submarine finished crashing down from its sudden surfacing breach. Rhee could not recall the name of the maneuver, but understood that it involved rising bow first until the sub's nose broke the surface, poised like a missile, only to smash down, throwing up brine, and wallow in the unsettled seas.

  The submarine wallowed now. It blocked their way, then inched ahead slowly as if to let the Ingo Pungo pass.

  "Raise this submarine," Rhee ordered.

  The Ingo Pungo's radioman got busy. He spoke in the international language, English, for five excited minutes, then turned his confused face Rhee's way.

  "The vessel does not respond."

  "Searchlight! See what flag they fly."

  Deckhands sprang to action. Searchlights were energized and brought into play. They roved the choppy water, then converged on the black submarine hull.

  There was no readable name on the bow. Faint white letters showed just below the waterline, but the water distorted them into unreadability. On the conning tower was a swatch of white with a blue mark sprawled in the white field. It was very ornate.

  "I don't know that flag," Rhee muttered.

  They were sliding past the sub now. Soon it fell behind their stern, making no move to follow or intercept.

  "Maneuvers. They are on maneuvers," Rhee decided.

  But still they kept their lights and their eyes on the silent black submarine.

  As they put distance between the submarine and their stern, Captain Rhee noticed the sub began to submerge. It was a very slow but also sinister maneuver. The steel cigar bubbled slowly from sight, and the conning tower slipped down like a dull predator returning to its watery lair.

  "Maneuvers," muttered Rhee, returning to his course. The searchlights were doused and covered again with canvas protectors.

  Moonglade mixing with the fading phosphorescent wake was their only warning of approaching trouble.

  Something cut through the moonglade on the black water, roiling it noticeably. Then the long, lazy, bioluminescent tail their screws were bringing to life went crazy.

  A lookout announced it. "Torpedo! Astern and closing!"

  Rhee's mind went blank. Then he heard the impossible word again.

  "Torpedo!"

  "Hard a-port full!" Rhee screamed. It was a blind order. It might save the ship. It might not. His was a commercial vessel. It had no experience in wartime. He didn't even know that there was a war on.

  The great ship lurched in response to the wheel. It heeled left, sliding into the beginning of a long turn it never completed.

  The torpedo struck the stern with a dull thunk that immediately flowered into a thunderous boom. The Ingo Pungo lurched ahead, shuddered deep within-and so rapidly that it was like an ugly miracle, it began to list to the stern.

  The ruptured stern was drinking bitter ocean, engulfed by a thirst that filled the rear holds with heavy, draggy brine.

  Terrified seamen started pouring up from below. Rhee met them at the top of a companionway.

  "How bad?" he demanded, his voice a rip of sound.

  "We are sinking!" one moaned.

  "We cannot sink."

  "We are sinking. We have no stern."

  On the verge of nervously pushing past the uprushing seamen, Rhee knew he had only time to accept the word of his crew if he was to save their lives.

  He turned and cupped both hands around his mouth to give his orders volume. "Abandon ship! Abandon ship!"

  Alarms rang the length of the Ingo Pungo. Confusion overtook all decks. Boats were put over the side. Anxious crew ran them down off davits, and they made splashes in the water.

  Rhee ranged the deck stem to stern, calling out the abandon-ship order. He wouldn't lose a man if he could help it. He wouldn't lose a single seaman, no matter how lazy and unworthy of life.

  Leaning over the side, he called to the large boats below. "Row away! Row as fast as you can! Lest the sinking ship suck you all down to your doom."

  His men fell to rowing. There was time yet, he hoped.

  More lifeboats splashed into the water-until only one remained.

  Satisfied that he had done all he could, Captain Rhee helped his remaining crewmen swing the last lifeboat out on its davits. When it was poised over the heaving ocean, they urged him to climb aboard.

  He saw the second torpedo charge toward the starboard. The wake was like a furious, foaming arrow. It ran between two lifeboats, nearly upsetting them. Men clung to the gunwales in fear.

  With a sudden drying of his mouth, Captain Rhee saw that the torpedo was going to strike the Ingo Pungo amidships. Strike at the waterline directly beneath the spot where he intended to deposit the last lifeboat.

  And he knew all was lost for himself and his remaining crewmen.

  The ship shuddered alarmingly upon impact. Cold salt brine was thrown up. It streamed down Rhee's openmouthed face, freezing instantly, stilling his tongue and sealing one eye shut to the elements.

  Rhee grabbed for the rail but it slipped from his grasp. The deck was already pitching. It pitched its brave captain overboard, which was a kind of mercy.

  The Ingo Pungo slipped beneath the waves as if dragged to its doom by something inimical. From the moment the first torpedo demolished the stern, ten minutes had transpired. But only two more after the starboard hull had been breached.

  The sucking of water drew three of the lifeboats down into a brutally cold vortex, carrying its crew to a violent death.

  But not as violent as those in the surviving lifeboats.

  They were bobbing in the water in sheer disbelief of the calamity that had overtaken them, when the heaving sea around them flattened strangely, belled, then heaved up again as if from some subsea earthquake.

  In their midst a black steel snout surfaced, hung poised for a heart-stopping moment, then came crashing down to dash every last lifeboat into kindling.

  A hatch popped up in the top of the gleaming conning tower.

  A man whose face was as white as the flag on the sail stepped out and looked around. His face mirrored the blue heraldic design in the flag.

  He called out. Not words. Just a questioning shout.

  He got a return shout from the water. Frightened and disoriented.

  A sweeping searchlight raked the disturbed Atlantic. It fell on a bobbing human head.

  The bobbing survivor of the Ingo Pungo called out for rescue, his shivering arms lifted imploringly.

  The man with the blue device marking his death white face lifted a short-barreled machine gun and chopped the lone survivor into fresh chum.

  Then the searchlight began picking out other bobbing heads. And the machine gunner began picking them of
f with methodical precision. A few ducked when the hot lights swept toward them. They never resurfaced.

  The rest screamed or prayed or did both in their last, terrible moments before the searchlight blazed a pathway for the merciful bullets. Merciful because a ripping bullet was preferable to drowning or hypothermia.

  The black submarine slipped beneath the waves soon after that.

  Other than scattered slicks of blood in the water, no trace of the Ingo Pungo remained.

  Chapter 4

  Remo Williams held the thundering cigarette boat on a dead eastern heading, his dark eyes raking the tossing seas before him.

  It was bitterly cold, but the bare skin of his forearms showed no gooseflesh. The wind whipping through his short dark hair seemed to not bother him at all. It pressed his black T-shirt to his chest, and made his black chinos flap and chatter off his legs.

  In the moonlight Remo's face had the aspect of a death mask. Old plastic surgeries had brought out his skull-like cheekbones under the tight, pale skin. His eyes were set so deep in their sockets they looked empty, like skull hollows. Long ago Remo had been electrocuted by the state of New Jersey so that his past could be erased. He might have been the old Remo Williams come back from the grave to avenge his own death. But he had never died. The chair had been rigged, his execution faked.

  Remo's body temperature was slightly elevated to compensate for the cold. It was a small technique in the greater repertoire of Sinanju, the Korean martial art from which all succeeding martial arts were descended. Sinanju placed Remo in full control of his body and at one with the universe. Conquering deadly cold or running as if weightless across open water were things he had mastered long ago and would never forget.

  Somewhere beyond the drop point, Remo smelled blood in the water. Remo knew death more intimately than most men know their wives, so he knew human blood from ape blood. Chicken blood from beef. He could even sometimes distinguish male blood from female, though he couldn't put the difference into words.

  The blood he smelled was human male. And there was a lot of it.

  He let his nose guide him toward the metallic scent.

  Moonlight on the water didn't show up the blood. It was his nose that told him when he was in the middle of it. He chopped the engine and sent the power boat gliding around in a long arc that brought it back to where the blood scent was.