The Gate (25 page)

In the rear, Kuzumi had spent an anxious flight, his mind going over all that he had been told by his various sources, trying to make sense of it. The fact that it didn’t make sense convinced him that his decision to come to America to personally take charge was the correct one. The stakes with Genzai Bakudan on the table were simply too great.

“We will be landing here,” Nakanga said, holding a map in front of the Genoysha. The point he indicated was in the Presidio at the south end of the Golden Gate.

Kuzumi remembered the place from his days at UC-Berkeley. “That is a military post,” he said.

“It is now a national park,” Nakanga said. “It will be deserted at night. I have not been able to get in contact with Ronin Nishin to meet us—” He paused as Kuzumi held up a hand and took the map from him.

“I will make arrangements for our meeting. It is not Nishin who I wish to speak to.”

Nakanga frowned but didn’t say anything. “Yes, Genoysha.”

“We must not be discovered,” Kuzumi warned.

“We are under the airport radar. We will not be detected.” Nakanga paused. “Sir, with all due respect, I believe I should know what is happening in order that I might serve you better. Who are we meeting?”

Kuzumi looked up from the map. “You will serve me by doing as I order.”

Chastened, Nakanga left the rear cabin to go back up front.

*****

“Hurry,” ordered Okomo, “we must beat the Koreans to the bridge so we can lie in wait.”

“We will get there before them,” Captain Ohashi calmly said. “It is right ahead. Prepare your men.”

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.

“Hai!” 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.

As he got closer Nishin decided on a course of action. He slid his hook down and then over the diver’s when it was paused. That locked the man in place. He looked up and Nishin smashed the butt of his knife into the other man’s mask, shattering the glass. The man flailed about, blinded. Nishin slipped the knife under his arms and slashed his throat. Blood squirted out into the light of the lamp.

The man let go of his hook and tried to kick for the surface, but Nishin reached out and grabbed hold of his weight belt, keeping him in place. Blinded and dying, the man offered little resistance. When there was no more movement, Nishin insured that the diver’s hook was jammed in place in a crack in the concrete, then he slipped the other end under the diver’s weight belt, holding him in place. Then he continued his journey down.

Occasionally he could see steel bars sticking out of the concrete or loops of metal where the workers sixty years ago had made an underwater scaffold. His entire world consisted of the slightly curving concrete wall in front of him and the inky blackness all around. Nishin could hear his breathing and he forced himself to slow the rate down. He had no idea how deep he was and he tried to remember what he had been taught in the fast and furious dive classes he’d been given as part of his training. He’d never had to use the training before, but he did remember that there was a definite limit to how deep he could go and how quickly he could resurface. He had to assume that since the two Yakuza had planned on going down here with the same equipment, that it was safe for him so far.

He spotted something and froze, then relaxed. The bottom, a brown, dirty spread of streaked mud pressing up against the concrete fender. Nishin went down the last few feet and stood, his feet sinking into the ooze. From the way his bubbles were blowing away, the current was not quite as swift here, but it was still strong.

Nishin looked left, then right. Which way? He chose to the right. Using the hook to keep himself from being washed away, he made his way around the base of the fender, his feet kicking up swirls of mud that were quickly swept away.

He made forty feet when he saw something ahead. With each step, the shape materialized out of the dark—a short blunt metal cigar-shape, half covered in mud. A conning tower was in the center bearing the rising sun of Imperial Japan. The sub was canted over on its right side, pressed up against the tender at a sixty-degree angle.

Nishin’s feet clanged on metal as he clambered up the steel slope of the forward deck. He could see the cable for the submarine’s anchor stretched into the mud. Another cable came off an eyebolt on the deck and was looped around an exposed steel rod from the tender.

Nishin reached the conning tower, but his gaze was drawn to the rear of the sub where two steel cables led back into the darkness. He adjusted the light and in the glow he saw a rectangular metal object at the end of the two cables. The mud was pressed up against the bottom half, but the top half was kept free of debris by the strong current. There was no mistaking the Japanese script written on the steel:
genzai bakudan.

SAN FRANCISCO HARBOR

THURSDAY, 9 OCTOBER 1997

12:09
a.m.
LOCAL

“Negative radar contact,” the young rating called out from his chair on the left side of the bridge.

Captain Carson, the Coast Guard officer in charge of the U.S.S. Sullivan, looked over at the man who had identified himself as Agent Feliks. Upon boarding, the man had flashed both a badge and a set of documents indicating he was a very high-ranking federal officer and that Carson was to obey his every order. “Course, sir?”

Carson, being a cautious man, had called his higher headquarters to check on the papers and received verification. Apparently this Feliks fellow was high up in the dark world of government intelligence. Carson had had DEA, CIA, and FBI operatives on board the Sullivan at various times, so he didn’t find this so odd. The Coast Guard was the branch of the government assigned with policing the nation’s waterways and coastlines, so whenever any other government agency needed to operate in that area, they called on the Coast Guard.

It had taken Sullivan twenty minutes to gather a crew together and get the ship ready. They had pulled out of the Coast Guard station five minutes ago and would cross under the Golden Gate in another couple of minutes.

“There’s a North Korean trawler out there,” Feliks said. “We need to track it down and my men will board.”

Carson looked down at the dozen men dressed in black, wearing body armor and carrying machine guns that crowded his forward deck. His own crew was at battle stations, the forward five-inch gun manned and ready, along with four .50-caliber machine guns located about the ship. “My radar man reports negative contact,” Carson said.

“It’s out there,” Feliks insisted. “We had positive satellite contact up until the fog rolled in an hour ago.” He put the tip of a finger on the chart on the table in the center of the bridge. “Right here.”

“It’s not there now,” Carson said. “We’d pick it up.”

“Then it’s hiding.”

Carson looked across at his executive officer, then back at Feliks. “You can’t hide from radar on the surface of the ocean, sir.”

“Could it have turned and gone out of range?” Feliks asked.

“If it was here,” Carson touched the chart, “an hour ago, then it would still be in range of our radar even if it turned around and headed west at flank speed.”

“Then it’s around here somewhere. What if they’re hugging the shore?” Feliks asked.

“They might be able to hide in shore clutter, but...” Captain Carson didn’t complete the sentence. He had long ago learned to let these visitors on his ship make their own decisions and take responsibility. The minute he gave an opinion, responsibility started to shift.

“It’s out there,” Feliks said with certainty.

“Yes, sir,” Carson replied.

“Then let’s get out there and find it.”

“Yes, sir.”

*****

Two hundred yards behind the Sullivan, Lake could just barely see the stern running lights of the Coast Guard ship through the fog. He could hear foghorns all around, blasting out their warning at different notes and pulses so they could be identified.

He flipped open the navigational book for the West Coast that was in a small drawer next to the controls and flipped through it. He found what he was looking for: there was a foghorn on the south tower and north tower of the Golden Gate. He read the code for the south tower: two short blasts, one long, three short. Repeated every thirty seconds.

Lake cocked his head and listened. Finally he heard it, almost due south. He was near the bridge, and even as he realized that, he could hear the echo of traffic on pavement above his head. He couldn’t see the bridge, but from the noise he knew he was directly below it. And that meant the Sullivan was heading out to sea.

“You don’t know shit, Feliks,” Lake said for the second time this evening. He spun the wheel of his boat hard left and turned south.

Adjusting for the strong seaward current, he headed toward the foghorn on the south tower. Within a minute he spotted the warning lights on the tower fender. Lake circled around the massive concrete fender. There were no ships.

There was a metal ladder leading up to the top of the fender for servicing the lights and foghorn. Lake eased up to the ladder, then quickly jumped up on the prow of the boat and tied it off. The current immediately swung the boat around and pressed it up against the concrete, ruining the paint job as the swell slammed it back and forth. That was the least of Lake’s worries right now. He grabbed the scuba gear and began rigging. He was glad that the dive locker also contained a head lamp that strapped on above the face mask. Last, but not least important, Lake took the Hush Puppy out of its holster. He inserted a muzzle and chamber plug into the gun, waterproofing it.

Fully equipped, Lake walked to the rear of the boat and opened the dive gate. He walked off and into the water. He was instantly pressed up against the fender and, like a mountain climber in reverse, he began climbing down, his fingers searching out holds in the surface, his feet pushing him down. It was disorienting work being upside down, but Lake kept his focus close in, using his rising bubbles and the slight curve of the fender to keep himself oriented.

*****

A hundred feet below, Nishin was shivering, sitting in the cold metal interior of the midget sub. It wasn’t just the cold water that was knee deep on the inside that caused his condition. The mummified body of a disemboweled man was directly across from him in the cramped space of the sub. On the body’s chest was the tattoo of the Black Ocean and the dagger still sticking out from his stomach where it had finished its diagonal cut, had a handle carved with Black Ocean symbols.

Nishin had entered the sub through the conning tower, which was simply a double hatch. He’d opened the top hatch to find the inside of the tower flooded and another hatch at his feet. He’d closed the top hatch, then opened the bottom, the water falling inside. He’d carefully lowered himself into the darkened interior. He’d checked the air and found it breathable after all these years. The suicide of the only crewman helped explained that—he had not waited for his air to turn bad.

The inside was small, about eight feet long by four wide and five high and crowded with instruments. The midget subs weren’t designed for comfort and could hold a maximum crew of two. The rear half of the submarine was taken up by the engine. The angle the sub rested at canted everything inside at sixty degrees from horizontal. There were rudimentary controls near the front and two metal seats. There was no window, just a small periscope.

Nishin propped the underwater light on a shelf. He looked around for any record of what had happened. Why had the submarine stopped here and why hadn’t the bomb been detonated? He could see a metal box in the corner near the body that had warnings all over it. He picked it up. There was a metal cover that he opened. A faded red knob rested underneath, set into a long slot. The Japanese word next to the knob said SAFE. The word at the bottom read FIRE. It was the remote detonator for the bomb. There was a dial with a listing of range frequencies. Nishin closed the cover.

Searching further, Nishin found the ship’s log jammed on top of a metal box next to the body. Opening it, Nishin immediately went to the last entry. Written in shaky Japanese it explained what he had found:

2 SEPTEMBER, 1945

With the guiding hand of the Sun Goddess behind me I have reached the objective as ordered. I was released four kilometers from the target as arranged. The current was as strong as we feared but staying low to the bottom allowed me to arrive at the south tower of the American bridge although it used almost all my battery power as also expected.

I exited through the hatch using the rebreather and secured the submarine to the tower. The bomb is still attached to the submarine and seems to have made the journey intact.

I am tempted to use the remote control to detonate the bomb myself. We could see in the 1-24 ‘s periscope the cloud that rose above Hungnam right after we left. We could feel the shock of the explosion in the submarine even though we were many miles distant and submerged. I have no doubt the bomb will destroy the bridge. I would prefer to go further into the harbor and strike at a military target but my orders directed me here.

I do not understand why the primary target of the American fleet was canceled and we were diverted here, but I believe that the Genoysha knows what is best and my wonderings and questioning must stay with me.

I also do not know why I was told not to detonate the bomb; that it would be taken care of by another. What if this other person is delayed or stopped? I am here now. I can do it. But duty must come first. I obey.

I am wet and cold and I will be dead soon. If this is found, please excuse my ramblings. I do not question my orders, but a man who is about to die should be allowed to speak to the paper freely. If you find me, you will know I did my duty as I was ordered to.

However, I know there is another detonator and I believe that this submarine, my body, and all around will cease to exist soon, if the Sun Goddess smiles upon our homeland.

I have no family so to the Society I say my farewells. I will do as I must to end my life. I do not wish to allow the cold or lack of air to kill me. It is not the brave way.

Hatari.

Black Ocean.

Nishin looked up at Hatari. He had committed hara-kiri in the traditional manner, pushing the knife in, then slicing across his abdomen. To do it required tremendous strength of will. To do it alone, on the chance that the wound would not be immediately fatal and not having a person acting as second to behead you in that case, took even more courage. Nishin bowed his head toward his long-ago comrade and said a prayer to the Sun Goddess. Then he noticed that there was a folded page further in the log. He turned to it and uncreased the page. In the slant of the characters and the angry way the pen had been pressed into the page, Nishin could tell the mood of the man who had written it.

I could not kill myself right away. I wanted to wait, to experience the final moment when the bomb explodes. Yet it has been eight hours since I arrived here.

I have been betrayed! I have tried the detonator. It does not work. I opened up the back. It is not functional! Perhaps the frequency they gave me is the wrong one. They did not trust me. Why? Why?

It is as I feared. I had heard rumors that the Genoysha was negotiating with enemies of Japan. With the Russians at least. Maybe with others. What was my purpose in bringing this weapon here if I was not to set it off? That question bothered me as I crossed the ocean and I thought of the second detonator. But I trusted in the Sun Goddess, the Society, and the Genoysha. But I am here now, at the target, with a detonator that cannot work. I have been betrayed!

If you find this, then know that I die alone and I die bravely. Braver then those who sent me here. I curse them!

Nishin read that page, then reread. He looked at the detonator and checked the screws on the back. It was obvious from the way the metal was scratched that it had been opened.

Now it was Nishin’s turn to question his mission. Why had he been sent here to stop the Koreans and then told to do nothing when the Koreans were coming again? Why had the Yakuza turned on him? Why did he have a tracking device inside of him? How did the Yakuza have so much information?

As he sat down against the cold wall of the sub, across from Hatari’s body, Nishin was no longer praying. He was thinking.

*****

Lake came across the body of the diver hooked onto the metal pole. He looked at it for a second, noted the stab wounds, then continued.

*****

A mile and a half to the west of the Golden Gate, the Sullivan and the stealth ship slid by each other less than eight hundred meters apart, neither aware of the other’s presence. On the bridge of the stealth, Araki was watching the small computer screen on his ever-present laptop.

“The reading is weak,” he said. “Distorted.”

The captain of the stealth had tracked homing devices before and was familiar with all the possible readings. “That is because the man you are seeking is underwater.”

“Get me there,” Araki ordered. “Prepare the swimmer-delivery vehicle and my dive gear. Now!”

The captain looked at the digits on the clock above the control panels. “Sir, if we are to make—”

“Do as I order!” Araki yelled.

The captain was not happy, sailing about blindly in the fog. He could not turn his own radar on because it would cancel out the ship’s invisibility. Reluctantly, he ordered the engine room to increase thrust.

*****

In the shadow of the north tower, Okomo and Ohashi had watched the Sullivan go by on their radar screen. There had been a slight image just after that, as if a small boat was out there but it had quickly disappeared.

Okomo checked his watch. His divers had another half hour of air. Then he was going to have to go back for them regardless of whether anyone else showed up or not. He went to the floor below the bridge to inform his passengers of that.

*****

Just to the south of the drama being played out on and in the waters of the Golden Gate, the tilt-jet was slowing as the wings rotated from horizontal to vertical. Looking out the window, Kuzumi could see that they were very low over the ocean, perhaps thirty feet up. He could see a line of white in the darkness ahead: breakers hitting the shore.

Kuzumi could tell that Nakanga was very nervous. Kuzumi had not filled him in on what was going to happen, but he knew there was very good reason why that was so. It was because Kuzumi didn’t know what was going to happen. He was playing this by ear. He just wanted to be within earshot to do something once he did find out what was happening.