"Right, sir." He began speaking quickly into the needle mike of the headset he wore.
"Ahoy the sailboat!" The voice boomed across the water from a handheld loudhailer. DuPont was surprised it was English… until he remembered the American ensign flying from the taffrail. "Lower your sails and prepare to be boarded!"
A loudhailer was stored in a locker aft. He pulled it out, turned it on, and raised it to his mouth. "We are…" A squeal of feedback howled across the water. He adjusted the volume, and tried again. "We are a United States vessel in international waters!" he called back. "You have no right to detain us!"
For answer, a chain of waterspouts geysered across the surface of the sea directly beneath Sea Breeze's bowsprit, followed a second later by the crack-crack-crack of full-auto gunfire. Ginger, balancing one-handed against the mainmast as she stepped into her bikini bottom, squealed and fell to the deck. At first DuPont thought she'd been shot… but then he saw her scrambling for cover behind the forward deckhouse, unhurt but badly frightened.
"Lower your sails and prepare to be boarded!"
"Shit!" Kingsfield said at DuPont's back. "I don't think we have a choice, not against that firepower!"
Sea Breeze's fiberglass and aluminum hull would provide about as much protection against machine gun fire as tissue paper. DuPont nodded. "Strike the sails, Michael. I'll try to stall them." He hoped Davis was talking to Oahu by now. It was… what? Six hours' difference… so 4:30 on a Monday afternoon here would be 10:30 at night in Honolulu, but yesterday, Sunday, because of the date line. No matter. The people at Corporate in Oahu were supposed to maintain a 24-7 watch in the comm office. Somebody would be there to hear and pass the news.
Another burst of gunfire cracked across the water, and this time a line of five neat holes punched their way through the mainsail ten feet above the deck.
"Hold your fire, damn it!" DuPont called through the loudhailer. "We're bringing down the sail!"
Sea Breeze's entire crew — all save Davis — was on deck now. Kingsfield put the wheel over, bringing the yacht around to the right, toward the submarine and into the wind. As the jib fluttered and cracked fitfully in the breeze, the mainsail slid down the mast and was swiftly secured to the main boom. Spanker and jib were secured in short order, leaving the Sea Breeze rocking uncomfortably on the gentle swell.
A number of the armed men on the submarine were scrambling down into a pair of rubber rafts that had been dropped over the side. Kingsfield secured the wheel, then approached DuPont. "We could take 'em as they come across in the rafts, sir."
"And then what?" DuPont asked. "They machine-gun us from the submarine? I don't think the four of you would do much good treading water."
Kingsfield shrugged, unable to find a better answer.
DuPont turned to Nguyen. "What's likely to happen?" he asked. "Are we going to be interned?"
Nguyen's face was bland. "You Americans always assume people… what is it you say? Play by the rules. Out here … well, you will find it difficult to place a call to your consulate."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means the Chinese will do with us what they want. They claim these waters, as do we. Unfortunately, they have the upper hand at the moment. They could use you — and us — as examples of what happens to… I believe your word is 'trespassers.' "
DuPont took another look at the approaching rafts, getting a good look this time at the men on board.
"Shit!"
"What is it, sir?" Kingsfield asked.
"Those don't look like Chinese to me." Most of the men appeared to be in some kind of uniform, though he didn't recognize the nationality. Some, though, wore civilian clothing, with either turbans or scarves pulled tightly over their heads and tied at the back.
Kingsfield took the binoculars. "Huh. You're right. They look Middle Eastern to me. Or maybe… hell. Iranian? Afghan?"
"Afghanistan doesn't have a fucking navy."
"I know. But some of them have that look, y'know? I was in Afghanistan, sir, right after nine-eleven. Task Force Dagger."
"I know." If they weren't Chinese… what the hell were they? And what did they want with a private American yacht? He thought again about the high incidence of piracy in these waters… but that tended to be focused on fishermen and coastal traders.
And again, pirates did not have submarines.
"Mr. DuPont?" Schiffer was at his side. "Davis is sending the message. He'll keep transmitting as long as he can."
"Good."
"There's something else, though."
"What's that?"
"He picked up a message a few minutes ago. In Vietnamese and then in English. It was kind of fragmented, but…"
"But what?"
"The Viet base at Amboyna Cay, sir. It's gone."
"Gone? What do you mean, gone?"
"It stopped transmitting a couple of hours ago. Sounds like there was an explosion. A big one."
"Well… accidents happen…." But as he stared at the sharklike black silhouette of the foreign submarine off the starboard side, he had a feeling that very little accident was involved.
"I asked you a question, pollywog! What day is it?"
Wallace tried to clear his mind. He was on his hands and knees, stark naked, and shivering from the ice-water dousing he'd been getting each time he failed to answer a question to the satisfaction of the beings in front of him. Only his nose was painted bright blue, but he suspected the rest of his body was fast approaching the same hue.
"The pollywog defies us!" King Neptune roared. It was, in fact, Senior Chief Bollinger, but the COB was damned near unrecognizable — bare-chested, painted green from head to foot, and sporting a bushy white beard that would have done Saint Nick himself proud. He pointed at Wallace with his trident. "Methinks he needs another whack with the royal paddle!"
The Royal Baby stepped forward, wielding a smoothly sanded and varnished paddle. EM1 Hutchinson was the biggest man on board the Virginia, with a massive, jiggling paunch that spilled alarmingly over the waistband of the oversized diaper he wore.
"No! Wait!" Wallace cried. "It's… it's Sunday! No, Monday!"
"Well?" King Borealis Rex demanded from the throne at Neptune's side. "Which is it, pollywog? Sunday? Or Monday?" Chief Vance, rail-slender with a pinched face, looked terrifying with his skin painted bright blue and plastic icicles dangling from his white wig and beard.
Queen Amphitrite laughed. "I don't think the pollywog has the faintest idea, your Majesty!" TM1 Burn-ham looked quite fetching as Neptune's queen, in scarlet briefs and lipstick to match, fishnet stockings, and a bikini bra stuffed with tissue paper; long blond curls, a seashell necklace, strands of seaweed, and a crown made out of tinfoil completed his garb.
"What kind of seaman doesn't know what day it is?" Chief Kurzweil, in his role as Davy Jones, Secretary to His Majesty, hitched up his swim trunks. "/ say we dunk him!"
Wallace shook his head, trying to clear it. It was confusing enough since he wasn't entirely sure which side of the international date line they were on right now. He knew that if it was Sunday east of the line, it was Monday to the west. Which was it?
To make matters worse, the bulkhead clock in the crew's mess had been covered, and he didn't have his watch. He knew it was pretty close to midnight, but was it before? Or after? Were they using local time, which would be around midnight? Or GMT— Zulu — which would be twelve hours earlier… or was it later? God, he had to think!