Okomo yelled out to the Yakuza gathered on deck and two of them began putting on wet suits and scuba tanks.
Still curled up off the edge of the bridge, Nishin continued to work feverishly to free himself. His hands were bleeding from cuts he had inflicted upon himself from the ice scraper. It was awkward holding the handle with just the edge of the fingers in his right hand and he nicked skin as much as he hit rope.
He had not seen any more of the woman and the figure in black. They must be in the room below the bridge. The tug was churning through the water, the deck plates vibrating from the thrust kicked out by the powerful engines. He could feel the chill air blowing across his skin, and looking down he could see the dark water of the harbor almost ten feet directly below.
“There is the south tower!” Ohashi said as he slowed the tug and turned the wheel.
The tower disappeared into the fog, the roadway 210 feet above not visible. Above that, the tower rose to over 746 feet above the surface of the water. Below the surface, the tower extended down over 100 feet into the mud and then bedrock.
At water level, the tower was perched upon a concrete and steel pier surrounded by a circular concrete fender. The pier base was over 65 feet thick. The concrete fender around it was 155 feet high, going from the bedrock below to 10 feet above the surface of the water. When the bridge had been constructed in the ‘30s, the fender had been built by first extending a pier from the south shore, over a thousand feet away to the proposed location. Divers were sent down and blasted through 20 feet of mud into the bedrock.
The wall was built up to its present height, then the water inside was pumped out, allowing the engineers to build the pier base inside the hollow and now dry interior. The tower was then built onto the base. A reinforcing iron frame and rock fill had been placed around the pier base after the tower had been completed and then water had been let back in to allow the entire thing to settle.
The Yakuza tug was dwarfed by the size of the pier base and fender. Warning lights flickered along the top of the fender, telling ships to keep away. The tug’s engines had to fight the swift current to keep steady, just a few feet away from the pitted concrete wall.
As Nishin continued to work on the rope, he wondered how the Yakuza knew the tower was where the Koreans would head. He also wondered who had put the bug in him. It indeed could have been done by the Black Ocean to keep track of him. Certainly they had the opportunity during his training to do such a thing. But he was also afraid it might have been done by someone else.
Regardless, he could wait no longer. The massive tower was just off the port side of the tug now. Everyone on the bridge was focused on that side as the two men were done putting their scuba tanks on. The first of the two slid over the side and into the water, holding a powerful light in one hand and a six-foot-long hooked piece of metal in the other. Nishin saw the purpose of the piece of metal as the man hooked into a crevice in the concrete ship fender to hold himself in place against the strong current.
The first diver had disappeared under the swirling water and the second one hooked into place. Suddenly Nishin understood where they were going and why they were going there and that kicked in an extra jolt of strength to his sawing.
The last strand of rope parted under the plastic point of the scraper. Nishin swiftly stood, grabbing the chain and sliding it through so that he was free.
“Hail” One of the Yakuza on the bridge spotted him and came running. Nishin slammed the. ice scraper into the man’s chest, pulled it back out, turned, and dove from the bridge to the water below, gulping in a deep breath as he went down.
He hit the surface and went under. Nishin finned hard, feeling the hull of the tugboat with his free hand, the scraper in the other. He could feel the current tearing at him and he knew he had only one chance to survive. He followed the curve of the hull, feeling barnacles attached to the metal tear at his free hand as he remained oriented.
The keel of the boat slipped by. He put both feet against the side and pushed off toward the hulking presence of the tower fender. He smashed his head into concrete, then scrambled his free hand along the pitted surface, tearing fingernails, searching for a hold.
His fingers slipped into a vertical crack and he was no longer moving, ten feet below the surface of the water. There were lights being played along the water above him and he imagined-the Yakuza there had their weapons trained all around the boat, waiting for him to surface. He twisted and looked about, tucking the scraper into his waist. He could see the underwater glow of light from one of the lamps to his left and slightly down. Nishin’s lungs were burning as he pulled himself down and in that direction.
Nishin spotted the top diver, just ten feet below him. He was uncertain whether he could make it but he had no choice. Hands pouring blood from cuts and scrapes he pulled himself down with every ounce of energy left in his body! The diver was unaware of his presence as Nishin closed the gap.
Nishin pulled out the scraper from his belt, turned head down in the water and pistoned the last part of the distance with his legs. He looped his left arm around the man’s neck as he jammed the point into his back repeatedly.
An explosion of bubbles from the man’s mouthpiece and blood from the wounds filled the water. The man couldn’t let go of the metal hook or he’d be swept away, but by not letting go he couldn’t defend himself against Nishin. By not solving that Catch-22 in time the diver died. Nishin dropped the ice scraper and grabbed the hook with that hand. Then he ripped the regulator out of the slack mouth and took a deep breath, tasting the man’s blood on the mouthpiece and not caring. He gasped in several mouthfuls of air.
Nishin pulled the tanks off the man’s back. He also took the man’s mask, putting it on and then clearing it with air from the regulator as he’d been taught. The light was dangling by a safety cord from the limp wrist and Nishin appropriated that. Then he took off the man’s weight belt and, with difficulty, strapped it around his own waist. He also took the man’s dive knife. Before he tucked the knife under the weight belt, Nishin slammed it into the man’s chest twice, once in each lung. He then pulled the dead diver to his chest to make sure all the air was out of them. When he let go, the body floated away at neutral buoyancy.
Looking below, Nishin could see the first diver was a faint glow about twenty to thirty feet away in the murky and pitch-black water, unaware of the struggle that had just occurred above him. Using the hook, Nishin began to follow him down.
“He was swept away by the current,” Captain Ohashi said.
Okomo cursed. The body of the Yakuza Nishin had killed was still lying on the floor of the bridge, a pool of blood underneath him. There had been no sign of the Black Ocean man surfacing. Yakuza lined the rails, weapons at the ready.
Ohashi pointed out to the west. “He will die many miles out to sea. No swimmer can fight this current.”
Okomo spit. “All right. Pull us away. Let us leave this open for the next ship, whoever that might be, to park.”
The tugboat slowly slid away into the fog, crossing the Gate directly under the unseen span of the bridge until it was just offshore, where the northern tower was built on the edge of the land. Hiding in the shadow of that tower, they would remain unseen by radar, yet be close enough to get back to the southern tower when necessary.
Nishin soon found the rhythm of sliding the hook down a couple of feet and pulling himself after it, then repeating the maneuver. He found it so well that soon he was only a few feet above the first diver who appeared as nothing more than a dark figure in the cone of light put out by Nishin’s light.