Warren Murphy: White Water

Rhee's mind went blank. Then he heard the impossible word again.

"Torpedo!"

"Hard a-port full!" Rhee screamed. It was a blind order. It might save the ship. It might not. His was a commercial vessel. It had no experience in wartime. He didn't even know that there was a war on.

The great ship lurched in response to the wheel. It heeled left, sliding into the beginning of a long turn it never completed.

The torpedo struck the stern with a dull thunk that immediately flowered into a thunderous boom. The Ingo Pungo lurched ahead, shuddered deep within-and so rapidly that it was like an ugly miracle, it began to list to the stern.

The ruptured stern was drinking bitter ocean, engulfed by a thirst that filled the rear holds with heavy, draggy brine.

Terrified seamen started pouring up from below. Rhee met them at the top of a companionway.

"How bad?" he demanded, his voice a rip of sound.

"We are sinking!" one moaned.

"We cannot sink."

"We are sinking. We have no stern."

On the verge of nervously pushing past the uprushing seamen, Rhee knew he had only time to accept the word of his crew if he was to save their lives.

He turned and cupped both hands around his mouth to give his orders volume. "Abandon ship! Abandon ship!"

Alarms rang the length of the Ingo Pungo. Confusion overtook all decks. Boats were put over the side. Anxious crew ran them down off davits, and they made splashes in the water.

Rhee ranged the deck stem to stern, calling out the abandon-ship order. He wouldn't lose a man if he could help it. He wouldn't lose a single seaman, no matter how lazy and unworthy of life.

Leaning over the side, he called to the large boats below. "Row away! Row as fast as you can! Lest the sinking ship suck you all down to your doom."

His men fell to rowing. There was time yet, he hoped.

More lifeboats splashed into the water-until only one remained.

Satisfied that he had done all he could, Captain Rhee helped his remaining crewmen swing the last lifeboat out on its davits. When it was poised over the heaving ocean, they urged him to climb aboard.

He saw the second torpedo charge toward the starboard. The wake was like a furious, foaming arrow. It ran between two lifeboats, nearly upsetting them. Men clung to the gunwales in fear.

With a sudden drying of his mouth, Captain Rhee saw that the torpedo was going to strike the Ingo Pungo amidships. Strike at the waterline directly beneath the spot where he intended to deposit the last lifeboat.

And he knew all was lost for himself and his remaining crewmen.

The ship shuddered alarmingly upon impact. Cold salt brine was thrown up. It streamed down Rhee's openmouthed face, freezing instantly, stilling his tongue and sealing one eye shut to the elements.

Rhee grabbed for the rail but it slipped from his grasp. The deck was already pitching. It pitched its brave captain overboard, which was a kind of mercy.

The Ingo Pungo slipped beneath the waves as if dragged to its doom by something inimical. From the moment the first torpedo demolished the stern, ten minutes had transpired. But only two more after the starboard hull had been breached.

The sucking of water drew three of the lifeboats down into a brutally cold vortex, carrying its crew to a violent death.

But not as violent as those in the surviving lifeboats.

They were bobbing in the water in sheer disbelief of the calamity that had overtaken them, when the heaving sea around them flattened strangely, belled, then heaved up again as if from some subsea earthquake.

In their midst a black steel snout surfaced, hung poised for a heart-stopping moment, then came crashing down to dash every last lifeboat into kindling.

A hatch popped up in the top of the gleaming conning tower.

A man whose face was as white as the flag on the sail stepped out and looked around. His face mirrored the blue heraldic design in the flag.

He called out. Not words. Just a questioning shout.

He got a return shout from the water. Frightened and disoriented.

A sweeping searchlight raked the disturbed Atlantic. It fell on a bobbing human head.

The bobbing survivor of the Ingo Pungo called out for rescue, his shivering arms lifted imploringly.

The man with the blue device marking his death white face lifted a short-barreled machine gun and chopped the lone survivor into fresh chum.

Then the searchlight began picking out other bobbing heads. And the machine gunner began picking them off with methodical precision. A few ducked when the hot lights swept toward them. They never resurfaced.

The rest screamed or prayed or did both in their last, terrible moments before the searchlight blazed a pathway for the merciful bullets. Merciful because a ripping bullet was preferable to drowning or hypothermia.

The black submarine slipped beneath the waves soon after that.

Other than scattered slicks of blood in the water, no trace of the Ingo Pungo remained.

Chapter 4

Remo Williams held the thundering cigarette boat on a dead eastern heading, his dark eyes raking the tossing seas before him.

It was bitterly cold, but the bare skin of his forearms showed no gooseflesh. The wind whipping through his short dark hair seemed to not bother him at all. It pressed his black T-shirt to his chest, and made his black chinos flap and chatter off his legs.

In the moonlight Remo's face had the aspect of a death mask. Old plastic surgeries had brought out his skull-like cheekbones under the tight, pale skin. His eyes were set so deep in their sockets they looked empty, like skull hollows. Long ago Remo had been electrocuted by the state of New Jersey so that his past could be erased. He might have been the old Remo Williams come back from the grave to avenge his own death. But he had never died. The chair had been rigged, his execution faked.

Remo's body temperature was slightly elevated to compensate for the cold. It was a small technique in the greater repertoire of Sinanju, the Korean martial art from which all succeeding martial arts were descended. Sinanju placed Remo in full control of his body and at one with the universe. Conquering deadly cold or running as if weightless across open water were things he had mastered long ago and would never forget.

Somewhere beyond the drop point, Remo smelled blood in the water. Remo knew death more intimately than most men know their wives, so he knew human blood from ape blood. Chicken blood from beef. He could even sometimes distinguish male blood from female, though he couldn't put the difference into words.

The blood he smelled was human male. And there was a lot of it.

He let his nose guide him toward the metallic scent.

Moonlight on the water didn't show up the blood. It was his nose that told him when he was in the middle of it. He chopped the engine and sent the power boat gliding around in a long arc that brought it back to where the blood scent was.

Reaching over the side, Remo dipped his fingers. They came back mercurochrome red. He could see the red clearly now. It blended with the black of the night sea. There was a lot of it.

Standing up, Remo looked all around. Other smells came to his nostrils. Human smells again. He smelled fear-sweat. There was no mistaking that odor, either. Machine smells. Machine oil. Diesel fuel. Other things that he could not identify by scent but that he associated with ships.

A big ship with a big crew had been on this spot not long before. Remo arrived. But a ship that big should be visible on the water. There was plenty of moonlight.

As Remo scanned the horizon all around, something went bloop behind him. Turning, he saw nothing but heaving swells.

Then the blended stink of oil and diesel filled the air.

He saw it then. A rainbow slick. Something far below had vomited up diesel fuel.