Warren Murphy: White Water

"Gotta meet a boat," Remo told her.

"Say no more." She fell silent. It was a very thick uncomfortable silence.

Remo decided it didn't matter what she thought, as long as he got the ride.

Dusk was falling, but the interval between the sun dropping from sight and night seizing the world was brief.

After a while, Ethel started talking again. "I'm from Nashua. New Hampshire, that is. You?"

"Boston."

"Beantown," she snorted. "Where they drive like they learned how in bumper cars, and the rules of the road are-there ain't none."

"No argument there," said Remo.

"But it's home, right? I know. Once I finish this run, I go back to four walls full of boredom. But it's home."

The unspoken invitation hung in the noisy cabin for a full mile.

Normally Remo's tastes didn't run to truck drivers, but this was a special situation. He took the opening. "Can I hire your rig to haul some stuff back to Boston?"

Her smile was tentative. "Could be. If there's money in it. What stuff?"

"I don't know."

She looked at him sideways, her nostrils flaring. "You can't expect me to swallow that line."

"I'll know when I meet the boat, not before."

"You must be in a fascinating line of work."

"If you're not interested, I'll make other arrangements," Remo said.

"Hold on, now. Believe me, I'm interested." Her voice got low. "You ain't married, are you?"

"No," said Remo.

"Good, because I don't care to have my ass shot off by law or lovers. If you catch my drift."

"Been there, too," said Remo.

"I'm making a good living hauling urchin now. Don't want to mess it all up to do the midnight cha-cha."

"Urchin?"

"Yeah. Used to haul sardines, but the industry's in decline. Would have died, but the Japanese have a yen for seaurchin roe. They pay big. I make good money taking it to the processing plant. Wouldn't touch the stuff otherwise. I'm a steak-and-potatoes kind of gal. The kind you can take home to mother."

She threw Remo a wink. Remo threw it back. That seemed to satisfy her, and the cabin fell quiet, which was how Remo liked it. In her Red Sox ball cap and raggedy work clothes, she was too tomboy for Remo's taste.

It was after sundown by the time they pulled into Lubec. Remo didn't see much of the town except it was old and on the hardscrabble side.

Within sight of the water, Ethel braked the truck. "I'll let you off here and go on and unload my cargo," she told him. "Meet you by the water as soon as I can. Deal?"

"Deal," said Remo, getting out. He hated to trust a stranger, but she had such an honest face.

REMO FOUND THE BOAT moored to a blue buoy. It was a long, sleek, ivory white cigarette boat. The kind drug smugglers use down in the Florida Keys.

The Lubec coast was very rocky, and the boat bobbed in the water a quarter mile out. There was no sign of a rowboat to take him out to it, so Remo simply started out along a long finger of rockweed-covered granite and kept on running when he hit the water.

It was a short sprint to the boat, and the tops of Remo's Italian loafers were dry when he hopped into the cockpit.

Running on water was one of the most difficult techniques Remo had mastered, but he made it look easy.

Venting the gas tank so it wouldn't explode when he fired up the inboard-outboard, Remo waited impatiently.

By the moon's position in the night sky, he was running ten minutes late. Maybe it wouldn't matter on this run.

The boat aired, Remo started the engine, threw off the spring line and backed the craft away from the buoy. When he had good draft, he turned it around and let out the throttle.

He hoped the Ingo Pungo was big enough to spot by moonlight. Otherwise there was a real good chance he was going to miss it completely ....

Chapter 3

Captain Sanho Rhee knew his cargo. He understood his destination. What he did not understand was the why of the long voyage from Pusan, South Korea, through the Panama Canal to the North Atlantic.

Was this somehow illegal?

He didn't think so. There was nothing illegal about his cargo. Such cargo was routinely transported from port to port.

Of course, he'd left his home port empty. The cargo was picked up along the way, some here, some there. That was normal. That was the kind of ship the Ingo Pungo was. That was what it did.

Normally the perishable cargo was off-loaded in a commercial port. Not this time. This time they were to lower the cargo over the side to a waiting craft. No port duties. No inspections. No nothing.

This clearly wasn't legal. But arrangements had been made. It was all taken care of.

So the Ingo Pungo, her full holds displacing four hundred tons of the cold Atlantic, steamed through the waters off Nova Scotia.

These were dangerous waters these days, with the Canadians so protective of their exhausted fisheries. But the Ingo Pungo had done nothing to disturb Canadian waters. There would be no trouble from Canada.

Captain Rhee was in the wheelhouse watching the scaly effect of moonlight on the cold water when the sea before them turned green and luminous.

A whale, he thought.

Right Whales sometimes surfaced in these waters, an impressive sight. Their great, hulking bodies would churn the naturally phosphorescent phytoplankton of the sea. This would account for the greenish phenomenon.

But the black nose slamming up from the deep was no whale's snout. It was metal. Made by man.

A lookout spoke the word before Rhee's brain framed the startled thought.

"Submarine! Submarine off port bow!"

"All engines, stop. All stop!" Rhee screeched.

And belowdecks the laboring diesels ground to a halt.

The submarine finished crashing down from its sudden surfacing breach. Rhee could not recall the name of the maneuver, but understood that it involved rising bow first until the sub's nose broke the surface, poised like a missile, only to smash down, throwing up brine, and wallow in the unsettled seas.

The submarine wallowed now. It blocked their way, then inched ahead slowly as if to let the Ingo Pungo pass.

"Raise this submarine," Rhee ordered.

The Ingo Pungo's radioman got busy. He spoke in the international language, English, for five excited minutes, then turned his confused face Rhee's way.

"The vessel does not respond."

"Searchlight! See what flag they fly."

Deckhands sprang to action. Searchlights were energized and brought into play. They roved the choppy water, then converged on the black submarine hull.

There was no readable name on the bow. Faint white letters showed just below the waterline, but the water distorted them into unreadability. On the conning tower was a swatch of white with a blue mark sprawled in the white field. It was very ornate.

"I don't know that flag," Rhee muttered.

They were sliding past the sub now. Soon it fell behind their stern, making no move to follow or intercept.

"Maneuvers. They are on maneuvers," Rhee decided.

But still they kept their lights and their eyes on the silent black submarine.

As they put distance between the submarine and their stern, Captain Rhee noticed the sub began to submerge. It was a very slow but also sinister maneuver. The steel cigar bubbled slowly from sight, and the conning tower slipped down like a dull predator returning to its watery lair.

"Maneuvers," muttered Rhee, returning to his course. The searchlights were doused and covered again with canvas protectors.

Moonglade mixing with the fading phosphorescent wake was their only warning of approaching trouble.

Something cut through the moonglade on the black water, roiling it noticeably. Then the long, lazy, bioluminescent tail their screws were bringing to life went crazy.

A lookout announced it. "Torpedo! Astern and closing!"