He stood up. “I’ll call Mom and get things moving on her end. You can start looking at flights to San Diego.”
“Delta?”
“Any airline that’s not a puddle jumper,” said Neal. “Don’t worry about frequent flier miles. And let’s try for non-stop if we can get it. A lot of frightened people are going to be flying west right about now, and we don’t want to risk the kids getting bumped off an overbooked connecting flight in Podunk, Iowa.”
Leila got to her feet as well. “Good point.”
The Atwoods exchanged a quick hug and then went to carry out their separate tasks.
With a little luck, they could have their children booked on a westbound flight before the sun came up.
CHAPTER 42
Hwa Yong-mu shifted in his command chair and swallowed a mouthful of copper-tasting saliva. His gums were bleeding again. Not as badly as last time, but he would have to take care not to show his teeth until the moment of weakness had passed.
He fought a compulsion to lick his lips, to wipe away any telltale traces of his body’s betrayal. The urge to scratch his head was nearly as powerful, but he had learned the hard way that unnecessary contact with his scalp tended to make more of his hair fall out.
Everyone aboard the Steel Wind wore severely short haircuts, to make the loss of hair less obvious. But even when the length was only a few millimeters, the shed follicles could gather on the shoulders and collar of a man’s uniform, where they detracted from his military appearance.
None of the physiological reactions were unexpected. Hwa and his crew had been exhaustively briefed by a team of doctor-researchers who were specialists in the symptoms of low-level radiation exposure. The charts and evidence were quite clear — as long as everyone took their pills, monitored their contamination badges, slept under the foil blankets, and followed the other precautions — they could be successfully treated and returned to perfect health at the end of the voyage.
In the meantime, a few physical debilities were an acceptable price for carrying out the vital mission entrusted to Hwa and his men. Or so he told himself whenever his body revealed some new sign of fragility.
That didn’t stop a troublesome little voice in his mind from wondering if all of the wondrous safeguards might be counterfeit. The pills, the foil blankets, the restorative skin ointments, and the other things, were supposedly the products of miraculous scientific breakthroughs, known only to a small number of North Korean doctors and researchers. But what if it was all fakery? What if the only purpose of the preventive measures was to quell the doubts of the crew as each man’s body reacted to the inevitable consequences of radiation bombardment?
Sometimes as he lay in his cramped bunk trying to sleep, Hwa couldn’t stop going over the math in his head. The submerged displacement of the Steel Wind was only 502 tons. That small a vessel could not possibly support the kind of 100-ton radiation shield carried by most nuclear submarines. So the Steel Wind had been outfitted with a high-tech laminate radiation barrier that only weighed four tons. Alternating layers of carbide and oxide ceramics, interleaved with micro-thin films of lead and tungsten foil. It was supposed to be a nearly mystical combination, allowing the supercavitating submarine to use just four percent of the usual shielding mass, with only a minimal increase in overall exposure.
What if the increase wasn’t minimal? What if the accumulation over the length of the mission was enough to permanently damage the health of Hwa and his crew? Or even kill them?
That wasn’t possible, was it? Everyone aboard the Steel Wind wore a contamination badge, which darkened in response to contact with harmful radiation. There was an official medical chart for interpreting the badges: with white for no exposure, light gray for minimal exposure, followed by darker grays shading toward black, where the cumulative dosage became a serious threat to health.
The colors of all fourteen badges were scrupulously examined and recorded every day, with a written report to Hwa as the submarine’s commanding officer. True, the badges were gradually growing darker, but that was expected to happen as exposure accumulated over the length of the voyage. So far, they were all toward the light gray end of the scale, well within acceptable tolerances for human health.
But Hwa’s troublesome internal voice had reservations about the badges as well. It was possible that those trusted monitors of safety were nothing more than swatches of chemically treated cardboard that darkened slowly over time. The progressive changes in color might have no relationship whatsoever to actual radiation exposure.
Hwa Yong-mu did everything in his power to suppress these thoughts. Misgivings of this type were not worthy of an officer in the Korean People’s Navy, or a citizen of the Democratic People’s Republic.
His rank was chungjwa, the North Korean equivalent of commander, and he was young to have risen so high — and to have been entrusted with so vital a mission.
Perhaps his youthfulness was a flaw in his character. Perhaps a more seasoned officer would have the fortitude to purge himself of impure thoughts.
But Hwa refused to believe that. He was a loyal follower of the Supreme Leader. He had reread Juche sasang e daehayeo, Kim Jong-il’s masterful treatise on North Korean socialism, until he could recite entire chapters from memory. He was a faithful believer and a fervent patriot of the fatherland.
So why did these shameful questions continue to plague his mind? His men were not afflicted by such reprehensible suspicions. Or were they?
Occasionally Hwa thought he spotted something furtive in the eyes of one of crew member or another, unless that was more trickery from his imagination.
With an effort of will, he dragged his attention back to the mission, away from the self-reinforcing circle of dark thoughts.
There was a job to do: one that required his complete concentration, whether or not the insidious voice inside his head was right.
He swiveled his chair to regard the attack station less than two meters away. The Weapons Officer was putting the final touches on the current firing solution. Passive bearing fixes continued to stream in from sonar. Two weapons were prepped and waiting in their tubes. One would be sufficient, but no submariner ever willingly passed up an opportunity to prepare for the unplanned.
The target was an American warship, identifiable by acoustic frequencies from its General Electric LM2500 gas turbine engines. Hwa’s sonar operators had not been able to narrow the signature down to a particular hull, or even make a positive determination of the ship’s class, but the contact was definitely a combatant.
He didn’t care whether it was a cruiser, a destroyer, or a frigate. His mission was to shatter the illegal imperialist blockade, sending every enemy vessel to the bottom.
He secretly hoped to catch an aircraft carrier in his sights, to become the first military commander since 1945 to sink a U.S. Navy flattop in combat. But whether or not fate ever permitted him such an honor, he would see this job through to the end.
Bleeding gums or not; shameful inner voices or not; he would destroy any American ship that came within range of his supercavitating torpedoes.
The Weapons Officer looked up from the attack station and gave Hwa a nod. The firing solution was locked in.
Hwa swallowed another mouthful of blood and returned the nod.