Comdr. Toshumi Tanaka was still awake in his stateroom, reading the message traffic about the coming of the American Navy’s carrier battle groups. One of the messages was from his father, addressed to the entire Destiny force at sea in the waters near the Home Islands.
The message read that the approaching battle groups might attempt to set up a blockade, but no matter what happened, no submarine was to attack or molest any incoming American unit — even if there were American submarines approaching in close. Admiral Tanaka allowed the Destiny force to shadow the Americans, but even at that he was being cautious, ordering the Japanese submarines to remain outside a half-kilometer distance from any American ship.
It was ridiculous, the younger Tanaka thought. He was in the middle of thinking about how he would change those orders when a knock came from the door to the head Tanaka shared with his first officer, Lt. Comdr. Hiro Mazdai.
“Come,” Tanaka said.
“Evening, Captain. Is everything satisfactory?”
“Fine, Mr. First, why?”
“I was in the head and saw your light on, sir.”
“Anything on your mind. First?”
“The crew is uneasy, sir.”
“About the American battle groups?”
“No, Captain. I think it’s just the situation.”
“Explain.”
“Sir, our Two-class manned ships are in the waters of the Home Islands. Our Three-class ships have set sail for the deep Pacific — and for the near Pacific, where the closest incoming aircraft carrier group is approaching. Only two things can happen. Either our fleets engage or they don’t. Either the Americans shoot at us and we shoot at them, or we return to our separate ports with all of our weapons still aboard.”
“First, is there a point to this?”
“Just that, one could say if we go down the path of shooting, both sides may lose. At first we should prevail. The Americans will be sunk. But they will send more ships. We will return to port to get more torpedoes. One can only hope the Americans run out of ships before we run out of torpedoes. Our own ships will take losses, some of us will die. The American fleets will be hurt worse, but America has an air force too. Will they not fight back, bomb our country, maybe shoot their missiles at us, drop paratroopers onto our soil? How long can we fight? How long will we watch our children and women dying? Some, sir, say we were wrong to attack Greater Manchuria, that we should say so now. They say it is a new century, that it seems wrong to fight the same fight we did in the last.”
“Are you speaking for yourself or others?”
“Sir, I am an officer of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force. I will do my duty to the day I die. I will follow my orders. I will shoot torpedoes at hospital ships if ordered. I will blow up this submarine before allowing it to be captured, if ordered. I am an officer, but I am also a man. The time for Samurai warriors is over. Our leaders have not realized that.”
“That’s quite a speech. First. I had no idea you felt this way. I order you to keep these opinions to yourself. Failing that, I will shoot you myself. Now get out.”
Mazdai returned to his own stateroom. Tanaka stared at the door, amazed and angry. Did others in Japan really think this way? Mazdai’s argument had no attraction for him. Mazdai had not lost his mother, the one person who loved him on this earth, to the uncaring, incompetent and hurtful Americans. Mazdai had not spent his young years being spit at and taunted by Americans.
Mazdai had not been forced to live with them, with their disgusting food and arrogance about being the best country in the world, the one and only world power.
Mazdai had not had to suffer their vicious racist attitudes toward Japan, toward all people of color.
Toshumi Tanaka had, and even if his torpedoes didn’t make the world a more peaceful place for flower-loving Mazdai, they would at least even the balance sheet. The torpedoes were named Nagasakis for a reason. The cruise missiles were named Hiroshimas for a reason.
To hell with the Americans.
CHAPTER 18
Comdr. Bruce Phillips scanned the horizon with his binoculars, searching for the lights of merchant ships, fishing boats or pleasure craft, although there was no way a yacht would be out tonight. The blizzard was the worst Phillips could remember since he was a child, back in the storms of ‘93. The snowflakes were the size of nickels and quarters, fogging his binoculars, getting inside the collar of his parka. He dropped the binoculars and stared out at the fog, cursing the slowness of their journey. Somehow, though, it seemed fitting that a trip under the polar icecap would begin with a blizzard. The fog obscured vision, the horizon coming in, then receding again. The fog and the snow and the late hour made the Sound dead quiet. The only sounds were the dull rumble of the tugboat’s diesel engines, the thudding roar of Piranha’s own emergency diesel generator and the wash of the wake against the hull. The Piranha was moving at little more than five knots, her diesel running to provide power to start the reactor. As soon as the Sound was deep enough, he would order the ship to cast off the line to the tug and he’d submerge the ship. It would be a hairy operation taking it down on battery power alone.
“Control, Captain,” Phillips said into his boom microphone, “mark distance and time to the fifty-fathom curve.”
“Captain, Navigator,” Court’s voice replied in his single earpiece headset, “forty minutes to fifty-fathom curve, distance three point three nautical miles.”
“Present sounding?”
“Forty-one fathoms.”
“Very well.” Phillips looked at the officer of the deck, Lt. Peter Meritson. “Well, Pete, what’s Deanna think of all this?”
“I told her it was no big deal.” Phillips looked over the lip of the sail to the port side, the Vortex missile canisters ruining the flow of water around the ship, the missiles half the length of the submarine. They were certainly ugly, he thought, wondering if the missiles would work. He looked back over at his sonar officer and officer of the deck.
“Yeah, but what does she think?”
“She thinks I’ll be wearing a flag at the bottom of the Sea of Japan.”
“She said that?”
“No, Deanna actually said, ‘Be careful, honey, I’ll worry about you,’ but her tone of voice said ‘You’re not coming back.’ It’s a bit much for her to take.”
“What’s Deanna do again?”
“She’s a nurse. Takes her show on the road, makes rounds of older folks’ homes.”
“Tough job. Hope she’s not going out in this weather.”
“No, she’s at her mothers’.” Phillips sighed. “Let’s get this bucket of bolts ready to submerge, Pete. I’m laying below. Rig the bridge for dive and shift control to the control room.”
“Aye, sir. I’ll see you in fifteen.”
Phillips took off the headset and handed it to Meritson, then took a long look around at the sea, shrouded in fog, the snow drifting heavily, densely down and vanishing as it hit the water. He consciously took a deep breath, tasting it, knowing that his air for the next days or weeks or months would be canned, flavored with ozone, sweat, sewage, oil and garbage, as well as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, amines and other chemicals used inside the ship. The breath exhaled, Phillips raised the deck grating and lowered himself into the rigged for-black tunnel, the vertical tunnel’s lights extinguished so they would not ruin the officer of the deck’s night vision. Blindly Phillips came down the long ladder, passed by feel through a smooth lip of a hatch and further down into darkness.
Inside the ship now, there was still blackness surrounding him. He felt for the blackout curtain entrance, pushed through it into the dim red wash from the upper deck passageway red lights. The red light that made the ship look ghostly. He went down through the center of the ship past the opening to the crew’s mess, past the chiefs quarters — the “goat locker” it was called, in reference to the age of the ship’s senior enlisted men — down a steep set of stairs to the middle level. There in the stairwell was a large hatch leading aft. The lights in the tunnel were bright white, the red no longer applying, the difference between the ship’s operating habits starkly different for the forward tactical sailors and the aft nuclear-trained men.