Piranha: Firing Point

Chu shrugged into a harness with a dual scuba-type air bottle. Grabbing a gas mask hanging from the hose to the bottles’ regulator, he hung it around his neck.

Then he belted on two automatic pistols and a bandolier of grenades. Finally, he fitted his earpiece and boom microphone, looked up at his men, and saw that they were ready.

“Mr. Lo, set time zero when I pull up the hatch. There’ll be an indication in their control room as soon as we open it I want the ship taken within two minutes. Insert on my mark. Five, four, three, two, one, now!”

Chu plunged his fingers into a recessed groove and pulled up the hatch. Despite its mass, it was mounted on a counterbalanced spring and came up easily. Chu latched it in the open position, found the ladder down into the escape trunk, and noiselessly slid down the rails into the dark chamber. Switching on a battle lantern to see, he bent low to spin the central chrome wheel of the lower hatch. He pulled it up and latched it. The hatch opened into the brightness of the engine room below.

The sound of whining turbines came up from the hatch, accompanied by a cloud of heavy steam.

Chu slid down the second ladder. As his boots hit the deck of the engine room, he raised his AK-80 automatic pistol in his right hand, the long silencer screwed in. He stepped away from the ladderway as his men came down behind him, their boots quiet on the rungs. Chu walked silently aft past the motor control center to the nuclear control space. He looked in the narrow side door. The men inside were deeply involved in a conversation, the Korean syllables melodic in the space.

Chu snapped off three rounds per man, efficiently dropping the nearest at the throttle, the next two at a long console. The officer standing behind the three men looked over in confusion. His expression became a death mask as two bullets silently ripped into his chest. He sank to the floor slowly, his eyes shutting as his face clunked onto the deck.

After Chu waved one of his men into the room, he continued aft, dropping his spent clip and reloading without looking down. The noise grew to a shrieking roar of steam. He saw a figure between the two large turbines.

Chu fired and hit the man in the bicep. The man, an older officer, lunged in an attempt to hide, but Chu raced in and squeezed off another four rounds into the man’s chest. Blood began to run on the deckplates of the catwalk between the turbines as Chu continued aft.

He found another watchstander aft of the reduction gear and killed him, then ducked down a ladder to the middle level. There’d be one down here too. It took less than sixty seconds to find the man, standing between two turbines with a clipboard, checking a gauge. Suddenly he clutched his chest, blood spurting over his palm. Too late he looked up to see Chu, then sprawled onto the deck.

By the time Chu returned from the lower level, he found his platoon gathered at the opening to a ladder.

Lo Sun motioned them to the port side, where he’d located the duct leading to the fan room forward of the reactor compartment, where the air was redistributed throughout the ship. Chu gave the signal, and the men strapped on their gas masks. They checked the seals and valves in their regulators. Chu put his face into his own mask, testing the coppery, dry air. Then he fired four shots, shattering the mesh covering the duct. He took a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and hurled it into the duct, waiting to hear it explode. There was no loud report, only a dull thud as the hydrogen cyanide canister burst apart. The deadly gas would now be sucked to the fan room.

The door to the control room was open. As Chu hurried in and looked around, the dead men registered first.

They seemed to be everywhere. Considering how choked the room was with equipment, he was surprised that the American technology required so many individuals to run the ship. On his right was a ship-control station, where two men were slumped over airplane-style control yokes. One of his men pulled a Korean helmsman up from his seat, tossing him into the forward passageway, then taking the control yoke himself. Others did likewise, until the passageway was piled with bodies and the men of the Red Dagger platoon occupied every control station. Chu stepped up onto the periscope stand and checked the room. The two men at the ship-control consoles were maintaining depth at what the numerals said 550. That must be feet rather than meters, he thought, recalling the depth of the submersible and the fact that the deck had never taken a down angle during their assault. The speed indicator read 15, which would mean knots instead of meters per second.

Chu craned his neck around a periscope pole to look at the wraparound panel on the port side. He noticed red circles indicating the open hatch aft. The rest of the control room was much less important. With a nod at one of his men, Chu gave the next order — to harvest every technical manual they could find, given four minutes.