Piranha: Firing Point

On the outside of his vision a border of darkness grew, forming a tunnel. The tunnel seemed to chase away the colors of the wood and carpet until they were spots of two tones of gray shrinking further to a small dot, the dot not so much winking out as swallowed by the black of the tunnel walls.

There was only dark, and there had only ever been dark, and he felt an acceptance of that. Yes, that was the word, acceptance. It was proper. It was… all.

As Chu advanced down the corridor, he looked for the flesh of faces, the black extensions of rifle barrels, the orange of Japanese uniforms. In the second door on the left side he saw all three — a rifle barrel pointed low, a pale face with dark eyes looking in panic up at him, an orange Uniform proclaiming his position. Chu’s reflexes took over, all the drills, all the simulations, paying off.

Four rounds clicked off, puncturing this face, changing it to a red and gray pulp.

A sudden motion from the right. Chu saw another figure, another wide-eyed face, another rifle barrel.

Three rounds in the man’s face, and the rifle barrel flew away from the body.

Chu spun around, checking behind him. His men had emerged from the hatch, moving slowly. Lo Sun was kicking open the doors on the right side close to the dead bodies. Chu turned back, continuing on, his eyes wide, his weapon up. There were doors on either side of the passageway. He slammed each open, weapon raised. Nothing in the first two on the left, a fleeting impression of berthing quarters revealed behind each door. The two doors on the right also revealed empty rooms, wider and more open rooms — recreational areas or dining facilities.

At the corridor’s end Chu reached a door near a ship’s ladder, a narrow, steep metal staircase, one flight leading up and aft, the other leading down and aft. He checked both ladders, then kicked in the door. Inside was a stainless steel and chrome bathroom, with three stalls, two showers, and three sinks. The open area was empty. Chu ran to the right, looking into the stalls, all the doors latched open, the room apparently empty. A door at the wall between sinks captured his attention. He opened it but found only the raw foam-insulated steel of the hull.

Several doors on the near and far walls revealed only storage space. Chu turned and left, emerging back into the carpeted corridor.

“U, below to the computer level. Take Yong. Zhang, secure the computer room. Xhiu, take the radio space. Lo, captain’s stateroom. Chen, take the first officer’s cabin. I’ll go first and secure the control room. Upperlevel officers, join me there when your spaces are secure. Report by radio in one minute. Mark!”

Chu grabbed the shining chrome rail to the ladder, spun himself around, and launched himself upward, three steps at a time, the platoon right behind him.

Chu ejected his clip even though it had a half dozen rounds left in it He wasn’t sure of the exact number of bullets remaining in the clip, and he didn’t care. He would enter the occupied upper level with a full clip.

The half-spent clip clattered to the deck far below, the new one clicking into place as he climbed the final steps of the ladder, emerging on the aft end of the wood-paneled passageway leading forward from the captain’s and first officer’s staterooms. He turned the corner and sprinted the five meters past the radio room and the computer room to the opening at the end of the passageway, where a heavy plastic curtain was pulled aside and fastened with a restraining strap. He knew the room layout by heart, having read and reread Mai Sheng’s intelligence manual so many times he could reproduce it by hand.

The worst problem in hijacking a submarine was taking over the control room itself. Coming in firing could cripple vital equipment, leaving them with scrap metal instead of a warship. Yet coming in without shooting was suicidal. The only reasonable solution was to use surprise as an ally, assassinating the control room crew members before they could react.

He had faced failure and death fully a half dozen times today, but the next meeting with potential failure — and death — he feared. That he had beat the odds so far made this even harder. The submarine was almost in his grasp, and here he was, about to lose it all if just one officer in the control room leveled an automatic rifle at him.

His death would not doom just him, it would doom the mission. Not just the attack on this submarine, but the sea battle he had planned in the East China Sea. If this mission had a glaring flaw, it was that too much expertise was concentrated in Chu’s own skull. Dammit, he cursed. One bullet, and Red China would never become the People’s Republic of China. His brainchild would be stillborn.

The pessimism rising in him fueled an anger far beyond the moment. That fury ignited him as he roared into the control room with another evil shriek.