Warren Murphy: The Eleventh Hour

But it was crazier this year. The Darter was being refitted for the mission when emergency orders came in: ship out a week early. It was an impossible order. But the cargo was loaded and ready. All Captain Leahy had to do was recall the crew, who were scattered to the four winds. Captain Leahy had never seen such a mobilization. He would have thought World War III was about to break out. Instead, two civilians were airlifted to the sub under cover of darkness. A Caucasian and an elderly Korean. Leahy assumed the old one was Korean. They were bound for Korea, weren't they? Leahy had seen them both before. He had ferried them to North Korea before. Whoever they were, they were VIP's with two V's-Very, Very Important People.

On this run, as on the previous crossings, the pair stayed in their stateroom. They even cooked their own food there. Captain Leahy had once sent them a couple of London-broil steaks from his personal larder. The steaks were found in the trash-disposal unit on the leg home. Were they afraid of being poisoned? Entering Control, Captain Leahy wondered, for the thousandth time, who they were. His wildest imaginings didn't even come close to the truth. "We've reached Point Sierra, sir," the executive officer told him, giving the code name for their destination. It snapped him out of his glassy-eyed reverie. "Captain of the Watch, rig controls for black and prepare to surface," Captain Leahy barked.

"Aye aye, sir."

The scarlet illumination lights in the control room winked out. Only the eerie glow of the control indicators shone.

The Darter broke surface two miles off the North Korean coast. The Yellow Sea was cold, gray, and running high. It always ran high at this time of year, which was probably the reason the dropoff was always in November.

"Pop hatches," he said, getting ready to climb out on deck. "Get the rafts ready."

Dressed in oils, Captain Leahy stood on the icy upper deck trying to keep his teeth from chattering. Cold waves crashed against the conning sail, sending needles of spray into the air.

It had been years since Leahy had to land the gold in the rocky Korean harbor by frogmen. Now they let him surface off the North Korean coast and land the cargo by rubber raft. NSC for sure, he said to himself. The fix was in. But the knowledge didn't relieve his peace of mind one whit. He remembered what had happened to the crew of the Pueblo so many years ago, when they had been captured in North Korean waters.

Captain Leahy scanned the distant shore with his binoculars. The horizon was a broken line of rocks. But he was looking for two rocks in particular, the formation that his original orders called the Horns of Welcome.

When Captain Leahy spotted the Horns of Welcome, he sent word below.

"Tell the passengers we're here."

"Where?" asked his officer of the deck, who was new to this operation.

"Don't ask. I looked at a map of North Korea once. I think we're off the shore of a place called Sinanju."

"What is it?"

"Sinanju. That's all I was able to learn."

"Tells you a lot."

"It's more than we should know."

Two sailors brought the old Korean up the weapons-shipping hatch in a strap-in stretcher. Once topside, they undid the webbing restraints and transferred him to a wicker wheelchair. The Caucasian issued the orders.

"Be careful with him."

The old Korean looked like a pale wrinkled mummy, as if he were near death. But when one of the sailors carrying the cargo-five crates of gold ingots-tripped over his own feet and dropped one crate, the old man's long-nailed hand seemed to drift out and lightly touch the offending crewman's right elbow.

"Be careful with that, white!" the Korean hissed. The sailor grabbed his elbow and went into a dance like a man who had stuck his tongue into a wall socket.

The crewman had to be replaced while the crates were loaded onto five collapsible motor dinghies, each manned by one sailor.

Next came the fourteen lacquered steamer trunks. They were loaded into rubber rafts, one for each trunk.

Finally, the Oriental was gently set in another raft, and the Caucasian got in with him.

"My God, this looks like a beach-assault operation," the officer of the deck groaned. "What happens if a North Korean destroyer stumbles across us?"

"It happened once, two years ago," Captain Leahy said grimly.

"Oh? What happened?"

"They hung around long enough to identify us as American. Then they came about and ran."

"They had us dead to rights and they ran?"

"No. They had us dead to rights and dead in the water. We were sitting ducks. That's when they ran."

"My God, what kind of operation is this?"

"I don't know, but my guess is we're making some kind of history here."

"I hope I live long enough to read about it," the officer of the deck whispered.

"Me too," Captain Leahy said fervently. He watched the progress of the rafts through his binoculars. Half the time they were invisible in the choppy seas. He waited. It was a bad place to wait.

When the boats at last returned, empty, the leader of the landing party climbed aboard.

"Mission accomplished, sir!" he said, saluting.

"Excellent. Now let's get the hell out of this place."

"Until next year, anyway," the officer of the deck said.

"Shut up, mister," Captain Lee Enright Leahy snapped. "You may be here next year, but I won't. They've got me up for early retirement. I just hope I have enough good years left in me to enjoy them."

Chapter 7

The package arrived in the office of the General Secretary of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at ten-thirty in the morning. It was addressed to the General Secretary personally and carried the following warning, in letters of the Cyrillic alphabet: "FOR THE EYES OF THE GENERAL SECRETARY ONLY. IMPORTANT SECRET ENCLOSED.

Mysterious packages did not often come to the Kremlin's bustling mailroom. The package was immediately placed in a lead-lined bucket and sent by dumbwaiter-a relic from czarist days-to a basement bunker.

There, a team of explosives-disposal experts placed it under a fluoroscope. The X ray revealed the ghostly outlines of a rectangular box containing what appeared to be two coils. That was enough for them to bring in the dogs.

They sent in the German shepherds, specially trained to scent explosives. While the dogs sniffed the package, their trainers hunkered down behind a five-foot-thick concrete buttress.

When, after five minutes, the dogs did not howl, the experts emerged timorously, shedding their protective outfits.

"It appears to be harmless," muttered the head of the team.

"What if you are wrong?" asked the second member of the team.

"Then we will be wrong."

"You will sign the certificate of safety then, comrade."

"Then I alone will get the credit."

"I will sign the certificate also," said the third member of the team, who was in charge of the dogs. They all signed the certificate and the package was run up the dumbwaiter to the office of the General Secretary.

The secretary to the General Secretary brought the package in to her superior.

"I did not open it, Comrade General Secretary," she said.

The General Secretary regarded the package. His high forehead wrinkled in perplexity, sending the wine-colored birthmark that rode high on his skull into convulsions. There was no return address on the outside of the package.

"You did well. Now leave me."

The General Secretary slit the edge of the package, which was of reinforced cardboard, with a letter opener and undid the end flap.

Out popped a black video cassette wrapped in a copy of Izvestia. Within the page was a thick sheaf of pages, closely typed. There was also a note, handwritten.

The note read: General Secretary,

This tape contains information of global import. I beg you to watch it in solitude. Enclosed is a transcript of the person speaking on the tape, first in his native language, then in English, and again in Russian. The Russian transcript is mine. If you wish to speak to me on this serious matter, I am in the Military Ward of the Kremlin Clinic.