Yokang noticed a broad three-lane highway that swept up from the capital of Pyongyang to a certain point on the western coast. The highway went right to the edge of the water and stopped dead. There seemed to be no purpose in this. The map showed nothing but a blank area where the highway terminated. No doubt it was one of the Great Leader's many extravagances. North Koreans were not permitted to own motorized vehicles, yet the state boasted of its progressive highway system.
After he had all the information he needed to make himself fabulously rich, Captain Yokang asked the voice a reasonable question. "Who are you, comrade?"
"Call me Comrade," said the smooth voice.
IT WAS just after dusk in the West Korea Bay when Naval Commander John Paul Seabrooke was interrupted by the voice of his executive officer coming over the boat's intercom system.
"Captain, we're approaching Point Sierra."
"On my way," Seabrooke said. He wolfed down the last of his evening meal, wriggled his stocking feet into his spit-polished shoes and pushed his way past rushing seamen through the smelly steel innards of the USS attack sub Harlequin to the control room.
In his hand he clutched his sealed orders. Ripping as he ran, he extracted a single sheet of paper.
The orders were brief. They instructed him to look for a particular beach landmark and, once sighted, deploy his cargo on rubber rafts and simply leave it there on a beach.
The orders were signed, "Admiral Smith." Seabrooke had never heard of Admiral Smith. But the U.S. Navy was full of admirals. It was full of Smiths, too, and Seabrooke wondered why the man hadn't bothered to use his first name or at least his initials.
The instructions were simpler than he could hope for. With luck the boat could surface in utter darkness, do its duty and slip back through the Yellow Sea without being detected by North Korean gunboats.
"All secure, sir," the exec reported as Seabrooke entered the bridge. The Harlequin was running submerged at periscope depth. The periscope was down in its well.
Seabrooke ordered it raised.
A snap of a switch brought the viewer rising to meet him. He seized the handles and turned them. The scope rotated easily as Seabrooke moved his body around.
The viewer showed black water under a thin slice of yellow moon. He looked for the Horns of Welcome, as the landmark had been called in his sealed orders. It had not been described. Evidently, whatever they were, they would be hard to miss even in the dead of the North Korean night.
The thought of where he was sent a shiver through Commander Seabrooke's rangy body. North Korea was practically the only Communist holdout left standing these days. It was also the most insular and dangerous. Estranged from both Moscow and Beijing, Pyongyang was going it alone. The ruler, Kim Il Sung, was nearing the end of his life, and his son, Kim Jong Il, was anxious to take over.
It was well-known that while Kim Il Sung was a despot, Kim Jong Il was a dangerous megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur far beyond the petty vulgar dreams of his father.
There were rumors of food riots and insurrections all over North Korea. The long border with South Korea was tense. Intelligence reports predicted that when the elder Kim finally passed on, the son might make a grab for the south. Because only by involving his people in total war could he hope to hold on to his crumbling country.
No, it was not a good time to be in the West Korea Bay, Seabrooke mused. And it would be an especially bad time to be caught there.
Still, the U.S. Navy would not have sent the Harlequin into off-limits waters unless it was for a damn good reason and the odds of success were great. The Navy still remembered the Pueblo incident. Or Seabrooke fervently hoped Admiral Smith did.
They were running parallel to the coast. Seabrooke scanned the moonlit swatch of land. It was as forbidding as a moonscape. Mud flats and rock ledges. Nothing moved. Not even a sea gull flew. That meant the waters were bare of fish.
Then he saw them. Twin rock formations, one at either end of a particularly dead-looking stretch of mud flat. If they had been closer together, they would have made a pretty fair natural arch. Set apart as they were, they made Seabrooke think of the buried horns of some Precambrian dragon.
The Horns of Welcome. Had to be.
"Captain of the watch, rig controls for black and prepare to surface," Seabrooke barked, snapping up the periscope handles.
"Aye, aye, sir."
Instantly the order was repeated, and the red illumination lights were doused. The bridge became a claustrophobic space in which the tense faces of his executive officers moved in and out of the creepy illumination of control indicators.
"Blow main ballast tanks."
"Blow main ballast tanks."
Air hissed in the tanks. The sub began to rise, its stressed hull plates groaning.
"Contact, sir!" a voice shouted. "Bearing mark 056."
"Belay that blow-tanks order," Seabrooke cried, running to the sonar.
The scope showed a large object cutting across their bow.
"A surface ship, sir."
"Looks like a damn gunboat or something," Seabrooke hissed.
It was. They realized that when the sub suddenly lurched in place. Everyone grabbed for something solid. Men were thrown about the control room.
"Depth charge!" Seabrooke cursed. "Dive, damn it!"
"Dive! Dive! All dive!"
But they were in less than one hundred fifty feet of water over an ocean floor choked with monolithic stones and sandbars. There was no place to hide, and everyone knew it.
A second charge detonated over the stern. The Harlequin bucked like a great horse stung by a hornet. Hull plates groaned and popped. Damage reports began coming in from all quarters. The lights winked out, coming back on only when Seabrooke called for backup generators. The screws refused to respond.
Dead in the water, the Harlequin crew waited, all eyes on the sonar scope operator.
"The contact is coming about, Captain," the sonar officer said nervously.
It was. In a long slow arc.
"They have us dead to rights, no question," Seabrooke whispered.
The battleship, whatever it was, slowed on the approach.
"Looks like they're going to take another whack at us," the exec muttered.
Captain John Paul Seabrooke watched the green blip on the sonar scope, his face like a death mask. He had two options, both grim. Try to run and risk North Korean battleships converging on his small boat, or surface and surrender.
His orders had contained no instructions for that eventuality. Now that he thought about it, that was unusual. It was as if COMSUBPAC had expected no problems.
"Surface," he rasped.
The orders were carried out smoothly and efficiently. The Harlequin groaned anew and, leaking at several seams, clawed for open air. She broke the surface with a gushing hiss of cascading sea water.
"Pop hatches," Seabrooke ordered. "Sparks, alert COMSUBPAC that we are challenged by North Korea battleship and have surfaced to hear terms. XO, you're with me."
The exec followed Commander John Paul Seabrooke to the main bridge hatch. They grabbed their oils on the way and put them on.
"Maybe we can bluff our way out of this," the exec said with a nervous laugh.
"Don't expect miracles," Seabrooke snapped back. They went up the hatch and stepped out onto the slippery deck atop the Harlequin's great sail.
IT WAS A FRIGATE, Najin class. Seabrooke recognized its bulky lines, which closely resembled the old and obsolete Kola-class frigate of the former USSR.
A spotlight sprang to life and blinded Seabrooke and his exec as an amplified voice bellowed, "USS Harlequin, this is Democratic People's Republic of Korea frigate SA-I-GU. You must surrender."
"They know who we are!" the exec exploded Seabrooke decided to bluff it out. "By what right do you attack a United States submarine in open waters?" he shouted through his megaphone.