The room’s bright lighting seemed harsh and antiseptic now, illuminating our desperation. Were we desperate? I realized my grip on the table’s edge was hurting my fingertips. Sitting back, I watched Campbell thumb through pages, his lips moving as he read.
“Are you worried?” I said, my thoughts blurting into the silence. My wrist hurt. The source of the pain was a red welt where I had been popping the grimy rubber band against my flesh.
He looked up and spoke without hesitation. “Our training makes us the best soldiers on any battlefield. But I’ve never seen anything like this. That’s all I know.” The rest of his thoughts were hidden behind his eyes, and after a few unblinking moments, he returned to his work.
His answer disquieted me more than anything I had witnessed so far. Bodies didn’t upset me. Death’s nuances, quirks and unpleasantries were academic, just pieces of a crime scene. But the totality of the events on the Dragon added up to something more than death. Something that was outside my experience, too.
“Here’s something,” Campbell said, piercing my mental fugue. “‘Most secret.’ It’s the only reference of that kind so far. You want me to read it?”
“No, let’s gather everything that looks important first, then read through it all at once.”
He grunted and began poring over the documents again. I picked up the file he had pointed out.
Its contents were impenetrable. But I noticed several tables of numbers near the back of the folder. The column headings were in Korean, though, so I could have been looking at the medical records of the ship’s cat or a recipe for buckwheat pancakes.
Or secret weapons files. I kept myself from telling Campbell to forget the rest of this stuff, to just read these papers. An answer, any clue, seemed more necessary than breathing.
But I was silent, tearing at a hangnail with my teeth as he went through all the files and documents, pushing most to the side and stacking the rest in a pile in front of me. By the time he was finished, I was surprised I could speak without screaming.
“Well?”
“Got no more files, but seven individual pages. None say ‘serpent,’ but they’re all stamped with warnings and secret designations and shit.”
“But nothing about the serpent?”
“Not in the labels. Where do you want me to start reading?”
“Doesn’t matter. That one,” I said, pointing to the top of his pile.
He began to translate, each sentence again riddled with pauses. “‘To: Capt. Yoon Chong-Gug, Commander, No. 19, Dragon. From: High Command, Special Projects… Division. Orders are… as follows: Meet with… research vessel No. 2 between 2000 and 0400 hours 28 January. Research personnel will load… codename Serpent’—hey, I think this might be it—‘codename Serpent into… containment… structure. Delivery of research to… Facility No. 99 expected 31 January. Crew should not be… informed on mission. Officers on… need-to-know… basis only.’” He stopped. “It gives a routing number and stuff, but that’s the end of the text. There’s no date.”
“It’s kind of fuzzy on the details,” I said. “Not particularly concise. Where’s the research ship? Where is Facility No. 99? What is Serpent?”
“Yeah, exactly. It should spell all that shit out.”
Campbell was becoming more profane. There were worse ways to deal with stress.
“It assumes he knows where he’s going and what he’s going to carry,” I said. “He’s been briefed. This order is a formality.”
“It’s too secret to write down?”
“Maybe. If that’s the case, we’re wasting our time here.”
“Fuck it,” he said, dropping the page he had just read onto the bench next to him and grabbing the next one. “This has the same header… wait, no, the ‘From’ section reads: ‘Fleet Command West.’ Not familiar with that one. But the North Korean submarine fleet is pretty secretive.”
“Uh-huh. So what is it?”
“Um… ‘U.S. surface and… submerged units may be… patrolling area.’ And then it lists a bunch of ships. Looks like the Kitty Hawk battle group.”
“Terrific,” I said. “What’s next?”
“Another one from Fleet Command West. ‘Orders are as follows: Dragon will accept reassignment of officers, as requested. New… command staff members include: Lee Tae-Uk, commander; Choi Ji-Sung, lieutenant; Hyun Yung-Pyo, lieutenant… ’ These are the orders that pared down the crew to the size it is now.”
“Interesting. Yoon brought Lee onboard. How long were they planning this thing?”
“The orders are marked January 2,” Campbell said. “It’s got a locator tag on it, too. Looks like they were in port. So this essentially is the complement for the ‘Special Projects Division’ mission. They let him hand-pick the crew.”
“I don’t know anything about North Korean military culture. Is that typical?”
“It’s not typical anyplace, let alone there.”
“Nothing about this fucking sub is typical,” I said. “Keep-shit!”
The epithet had been triggered by Matthews, who had appeared in the doorway, his angular body wraithlike against the dreary background.
“You two: The situation has escalated. Lieutenant Larsen and I will need a briefing on whatever you have that may pertain to who we’re dealing with.”
“Whoa,” I said, my words stopping him as he began to return to the control room. “What do you mean, ‘escalated’?”
He looked at me, dark eyes peering from a face that looked more birdlike every time I saw it.
“Young, Wilkes and Henderson are dead.”
Now Campbell jumped in. “Dead? Who… when did this happen?”
“We’re not sure. We gave the order to shut down the diesel and switch to electric power, but the engine kept running. MacDonald, Ridder and Reyes were sent to see what happened.”
“And the engine room crew was gone?” I asked.
“No. Young’s body was on the top deck, Wilkes’s and Henderson’s on the bottom deck.”
“I’d like to see the bodies,” I said.
“That’s not possible. We’re locking the ship down. All our personnel are going to be in the electrical compartment, the control room, this compartment and the forward torpedo room.”
“Did their bodies have any visible wounds?”
“Young’s neck was broken and so was Henderson’s. Wilkes’s head is bashed in. It looks like he was slammed face-first into the port diesel.”
“Oh, Christ,” Campbell said.
“No one heard anything?”
“If there was anything to hear, it was drowned out by the engine noise. Look, we don’t have time for this. Lieutenant Larsen and I will be back in a few minutes.” He turned and stalked down the hallway.
I stared at Campbell, who looked ready to shoot his own shadow if it made a threatening gesture.
“Did you hear that?” he said, leaning across the table. “Did you hear that shit? All three of them dead, man! Fuck this. I’m going out there, and I’m going to ventilate this motherfucker.”
“He’s not getting away,” I said. It was going to be impossible to calm him down if his fear gelled with bloodlust.
“Yeah, no shit,” he said, standing.
“Wait! I need you to read some more of these. There’s something vital in here. Something that can help us, that can tell us who’s… who’s…” My words disappeared, smothered by a new, disquieting idea.
Campbell’s anger melted into confusion, then concern. He put his hand on my shoulder and squatted next to me.