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Entering the control room, he glanced at the carnage strewn about the deck plates. He snapped into a fresh air line and breathed.

Motion caught his eye, and he saw a man reaching for an air manifold. The man turned, disengaged, and walked toward Kim. The mask scrunched the face into an unrecognizable form, but Kim knew the uniform.

“Captain?” he asked.

“Whom did you expect, boy?”

The captain’s mask muffled his words.

“I had no idea,” Kim said. “They didn’t tell me.”

“They told you all you needed to know. Now we have work to do.”

The captain snapped his air hose free and joined Kim at his manifold.

“What sort of work?” Kim asked.

Kim saw the captain’s hands in front of his mask and felt his head being wrenched down. He resisted, and the mask slid from his face.

He suppressed his instinct to inhale and swatted away the captain’s arms. He turned and kicked the captain’s stomach. As the captain staggered, Kim mashed his mask to his face and squeezed his lungs empty. Poisoned air blew by his cheeks, and he inhaled. He felt dizzy.

As the captain lunged for him, Kim reached for his enemy’s hose, twisted, and pulled. He seized his adversary’s lifeline, held its air-starved nozzle against his chest, and moved in front of the air manifold.

He absorbed punches, and his ribs ached, but his arm stayed true holding his mask to his face. The punching stopped, and then desperate hands probed, groped, and tugged at the tubing. His arm burning, Kim denied the captain his hose, and the pulling stopped.

The captain fell to the deck, convulsed, and died.

Kim steadied his breathing and surveyed the control room. A digital display indicated that the submarine had drifted to a stop and was rising to the surface where it would be exposed.

He reflected that surfacing the Romeo was necessary in the Chinese plan to steal it. His instructions were to radio an infiltration force once surfaced.

But he questioned his instructions. Knowing the other agent’s identity, Kim wondered why the Chinese had plotted his death at the captain’s hands. Confusion quickened his pulse, and growing anger in his betrayal pumped throbbing blood through his neck.

A survival instinct focusing him, he calmed himself and changed his plans. He studied a navigation chart and noticed land eighteen nautical miles away. He memorized its direction.

As the submarine bobbed in surface swells, Kim inhaled, disconnected from the manifold, and walked to the hatch. He plugged in, inhaled several times, and detached.

Not knowing the differential pressure between the submarine and the outside world, he rotated the hatch lock half way, heard hissing wind, and retreated to a manifold to breathe.

Returning to the hatch, he grabbed the ladder with one hand and twisted the locking mechanism with the other. The hatch folded open as the cabin pressure equalized with the outside air. Kim climbed, leaned over the hatch lip onto glistening metal, and tore off his mask.

He breathed moist, warm summer air and pulled himself to his feet. He noted the angle of the moon and his memorized direction to land relative to the bow. He expected the water to be uncomfortable but survivable.

Before jumping, he scanned all horizons. He thought he saw a dark ship approaching with a low, ominous silhouette from behind the submarine, but he didn’t linger to find out.

As he dove into the Yellow Sea, the riddle’s answer revealed itself to his jaded mind. There was only one, the Romeo’s captain, but the Chinese needed insurance to verify their agent’s compliance. He, Kim, the lowly, vulnerable technician, provided that insurance.

He was the other.

CHAPTER 4

Pierre Renard tugged at his gray blazer and sparked flint into flame under his Marlboro. A breeze carried the scent of asphalt and salt across his face as he watched Jake Slate descend the jet’s stairway to the tarmac. His protégé appeared tired and agitated.

“It’s been a while, mon ami,” he said.

“Don’t you have a war to run?” Jake asked.

“The campaign will survive during my absence from the command center.”

Renard blew smoke.

“I thought you quit,” Jake said.

“A temporary indulgence during operations.”

Renard felt Jake pulling him into a hug and cringed.

“You know how I loathe this.”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you insist?” Renard asked.

Jake’s arms became vice grips as he squeezed. Renard squirmed until the pressure subsided.

“Because I know how you loathe it.”

* * *

Half the world’s second tier nations desired Renard’s arms-equipping and military advisory services. The other half sought his pelt for their mantles.

He had chosen and abandoned enough sides to mistrust all but his best clients, Taiwan providing him an ecosystem isolated from vengeful furriers but dense with nourishment. An opportunistic feeder, Renard had tracked his Asian clients to rich sources of imported weapons commissions and brilliant military victories. With vulpine cunning, he had crafted a hunt for his den mates, and he expected Jake Slate to pounce on their most prized prey.

Renard had found Jake distant during the ride from the tarmac and wrestled to squeeze banal information from him about his attempt to live a simple life in Michigan. He abandoned hope of reading Jake’s mental state while escorting him through security checkpoints.

Jake beside him, he entered the Keelung command center and felt two dozen eyes rise from an electronic navigation chart. The chief of staff stood straight.

“A hero has returned,” Admiral Ye said in English. “Welcome, Mister Slate.”

Renard sensed Jake’s hesitation and whispered.

“Go on. You remember him. Shake the man’s hand.”

“I’m not feeling it,” Jake said.

“There is nothing to feel. You’re just fatigued.”

“No,” Jake said. “It’s more than that. Something’s wrong. I don’t belong here.”

“Few welcome combat,” Renard said. “But it’s our fate. You are pursuing your destiny, man, I assure you.”

Renard felt Jake brush by him to greet the admiral. Gestures followed that repositioned planners around the navigational chart.

“We will speak English while briefing Mister Slate on the operation,” Admiral Ye said.

Renard nodded to his translator who moved beside the officers he recognized as having the poorest English skills.

As Renard looked down, a myriad of lights representing shipping dimmed, and baby blue lines rose to connect Taiwan across island chains to Okinawa and to the Philippines.

“The sound surveillance arrays,” Admiral Ye said, “are operational. They have tracked seventeen mainland submarines in passing east into the Philippine Sea.”

Five red dots framed by inverted semicircles shone east of Okinawa and south of Japan’s mainland.

“Japanese assets are tracking these five mainland submarines,” Ye said. “The other eleven are at large. Since we control the air and surface to the east of the arrays, these submarines are the primary threat.”

“What good are sound arrays that tell you you’re being overwhelmed by submarines?” Jake asked.

“An excellent question,” Renard said. “I advised the construction of these two arrays for a solitary purpose. They were laid to protect incoming shipping from either direction — from Japanese islands or from the Philippines.”

“You brought me here to escort convoys?” Jake asked.

“Nonsense,” Renard said. “There will be no escorting per se, as there will be a constant influx of supply shipping. But protection to shipping will be provided by air cover and by stealth vessels patrolling the hydrophone arrays.”