Red Shark

“Yes, for your review and approval. You will see that I have organized the real estate portfolios into blocks ready for market. Having taken out the equity, when the U.S. market goes to zero, you can go back in with inflated yen, perhaps as high as twenty percent, and re-purchase. Also, your stocks in U.S. companies and U.S. Treasury bonds are set for sale. The conversion of billions of U.S. dollars to Japanese Government Bonds can be completed with the push of a computer key. If you carry out this plan, you will have turned the world’s financial markets upside down overnight.”

“Then there is no risk involved at all. Am I not betting on what the Americans would say is a sure thing?”

In the bridge cockpit atop the Reno’s sail, Jake Scott and McCoy Jefferson watched a Navy tug warp the sub into a berth at Yokosuka. The enlisted phonetalker had communications with the tug’s skipper and relayed Deacon’s maneuvering orders between the two vessels. Below, on the Reno’s rounded hull, linehandlers prepared to heave their mooring lines to waiting hands on the pier. The tug’s screw churned the harbor water to a froth; the Reno slid sideways; the gap between her and the pier narrowed.

“Hell of a welcoming committee,” Deacon cracked as he leaned out from the cockpit to check on his submarine’s swing fore and aft, toward the pier’s thick, tarry pilings. All hands topside tried not to notice the ambulance, doubling as a hearse, along with its crew of three Navy corpsmen, waiting to receive Ramos’s body.

“Shit, we’ll have all the welcoming committee we can handle,” Jefferson said under his breath to Scott. “The General’ll have a ton of questions for us to answer during debriefing. Hell, we’ll be lucky to even see an O-club. Course you’re heading for Tokyo and some fun.”

Some fun, Scott thought. He gazed out over the glittering harbor, and beyond, the tank farms and structures sited around the sprawling naval base and its gray warships.

Scott knew he didn’t have the answers Radford wanted. And he didn’t see how what he had learned on Matsu Shan would help the JDIH put a name to the mystery man. He pictured Admiral Ellsworth blaming him for their failure to dig up more material, for setting off a firefight, for whatever else Ellsworth wanted to dredge up.

Maybe Jefferson was right, Scott mused — that he should have stuck to what he did best, driving submarines, not playing commando. He saw the two women dressed in black on Fat’s terrace, saw them blown away, and with them the young girl with an AK-47 that was too big for her tiny hands. He felt his stomach lurch. He pictured the White Dragon being blown away too.

Still, the trip to Tokyo would be an opportunity to see Fumiko and… He forced an image of Tracy from his mind: Stay away from her, he told himself, stay away.

The OOD barking orders to the linehandlers and the motion of the ship warping in snapped him back to the present. He turned to Jefferson and said, “Come on ashore, Colonel, I’ll buy you a drink at the O-club.”

Part Three The Tokyo Express

26

Nam’po, DPRK