“Looks like you guys have done a fine job so far,” I said.
“Nothing’s blown up. We’re not taking on water. We’re on course. And hey, when we get a little closer to the coast, we’ll be in waters that are shallower than this tub’s crush depth, so that’s a comfort.”
He glanced at his wrist, checking the time.
“Are we on schedule, Lieutenant?”
“Yeah, we should get there in plenty of time.” He leaned forward and pointed at my chest. “So, I’ve come up with a theory about what caused that zoo of death downstairs. Want to hear it?”
“Shoot.”
He pulled an imaginary trigger with his pointing finger, then chuckled.
“Pow! OK, here’s the deal. I’m not sure why this wasn’t obvious to me before, but it sure as hell is now. There was a mutiny.”
“Tell me why,” I said.
“It’s not too hard to figure out, actually. This boat was defecting, committing treason against its home country. Everyone onboard was part of the conspiracy. But do you know how hard it is to get thirty people to go through with an act like that, let alone keep it a secret?”
“I was wondering about that myself earlier.”
“See? It makes sense. But stay with me. When they got close to the coast here, the dissenters decided to make their move. They probably arranged to do it while most of the crew was sleeping. You saw all those bunks down there. But someone woke up. The alarm spread. Pretty soon everyone’s fucking pounding on each other down there.”
“But the chlorine…”
“I’m getting there. It’s not going well for the mutineers. So one of them, in a last-ditch move, starts the water leak in the battery bay, which just happens to be adjacent to the room where most of the fighting was taking place, and tries to gas the crew into submission.
“There were a couple people with gas masks in the forward battery bay, right? They were trying to fix the leak, but they couldn’t really separate themselves from the fight and ended up losing their masks and dying anyway. Meanwhile, one of the good crewmen — the ones who wanted to defect-is like, ‘fuck this,’ and runs up to the control room to surface the ship and ventilate it.”
“Hold on a sec,” I said, tapping the table with my fingertips. “I was going to ask you about that… is surfacing the ship pretty standard if there’s an accident like this?”
“You’re catching my drift. That’s right — if the atmosphere is contaminated, you surface and ventilate the whole thing. Otherwise, you can’t recirculate the air and you’re screwed. So that’s what the mechanic, whatever his name was…”
“Ahn.”
“… Ahn, that’s what he was trying to do. But one of the mutineers, the leader, I’ll bet, sees him go. He chases him. Pops a couple caps in him.”
“Sure, but why did he then try to escape the sub?”
“Because if you don’t surface the sub, the whole thing’s going to be filled with chlorine and you’re fucked. And remember, he doesn’t want us to get hold of the boat. So he’s just going to abandon ship, maybe leave the hatch open so it starts flooding, and float to the surface.”
“Float to the surface? If he floats to the surface, he’d still have big problems. So he’s just bobbing in the ocean, miles from the coast?”
“But he’s not dead. And all the other witnesses are!” Larsen punctuated the sentence by pounding his fist on the table, making the evidence on it jump. “This close to shore? He’d get picked up before he died of exposure or thirst. Then he can tell whatever story he wants. Maybe he becomes the good guy, tried to thwart a mutiny, ended up being the only survivor. It doesn’t matter. All that does matter is that he’s prevented us from getting the intelligence we wanted, and he keeps us from ever knowing what happened on the boat.”
He leaned back again and raised his eyebrows. “See? It all fits.”
“It makes a certain amount of sense,” I said. “But there still are lots of things we don’t know. That don’t fit.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“If you’re going to stage a mutiny, why wait until you’re just hours away from the end of a journey that took months? Why not try to take over the ship when you’re still near the coast of your homeland, where the sub can be recovered?”
“Maybe they just had to work up their courage. They probably didn’t start to worry about the defection succeeding until they realized how close they were to the United States.” Larsen waved his right hand in the air between us, dismissing my questions. “It’s not really important.”
“Not important? Well, how about this: If they wanted to take out the crew while they slept, why not just trigger the chlorine spill and seal off the galley and sleeping area? That would kill everyone in there without risking any of the mutineers’ lives.”
“Poor planning. It happens.”
“Well, someone took the time to seal off the front hatch in the forward battery bay. Why?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Go check it out. Someone wrapped heavy-gauge chain around the locking wheel in the torpedo room and secured it to a pipe so the hatch couldn’t open.”
“Could just be busted. That happens, too. Or maybe the mutineers didn’t want to give the crew more than one way out when they started their attack. Look, when I left this room, you were all upset because you couldn’t figure out why all those people were dead down there. And you’re an expert.” Larsen had raised his voice a few decibels. “So please, Doctor, I’d like to know if you have a theory now. Do you?”
I didn’t blink as he stared at me.
“I’ll bet I can put something together,” I said.
V
“You’re on the right track in trying to come up with a motive for the fight,” I said. “There has to be a motive, you see… you’re not going to get thirty people brawling, thirty people who have military training and are used to submarine life, over something small like an insult or stolen magazine. Something major went down here.”
Larsen shifted in his seat. But he was listening.
I brandished the camera at him. “And these pictures show us where the epicenter of the violence was: on the lower deck, in three compartments that likely were flooded with chlorine. And we both can agree that the gas was not an accident, right?” I paused and he nodded. “Further, we know that both Lee and Ahn were involved in the melee, or at least were in that area, because both expired due to chlorine exposure.
“So everyone on the sub was down in those three compartments when they were flooded with a noxious, painful, deadly gas. There was a way out, but only two left. I promise you, if you’re involved in close combat in the middle of a chlorine cloud, you’re going to break it off and try to get away. But none of these people did. Why not?”
“It’s your world,” he replied.
“Something kept them there. Chlorine gas is brutal. I told you what it does to the body when it’s inhaled. Whatever their motivation for staying, it was powerful. And important.”
“Oh, Jesus. No-” Larsen said, but I didn’t let him finish.
“Yes. Come on, are you going to tell me that the biohazard container isn’t utterly out of place on this sub? That it probably has nothing to do with the intelligence that we’re after? Think about it. It provides a motive.”
“OK, let’s say you’re right. Let’s say it provides a motive: mutiny. Someone didn’t want it to fall into our hands. What the hell is your point?”