Chapter 3

3

The Sea of Japan

Wonsan Naval Base

North Korea

A hard rain lashed the entire region. Thick drops pelted the temporary metal shelter like ball bearings poured into an empty steel drum. The sound was deafening.

Captain Song-hyok looked around at his tiny command. Like his men, he was dressed in blue pixelated camouflage. He checked his watch. Thirty seconds to go.

The weather was perfect to shield tonight's rendezvous from the prying eyes of American satellites. The metal shelter hanging over the pier was just an extra precaution as per the Vendor's instructions.

Song-hyok, a seasoned naval officer, surveyed the scene again, running through a mental checklist. The area had been ordered entirely cleared of nonessential personnel. Standing next to him was a naval intelligence officer—a lower-ranking lieutenant commander—and his adjutant, an anxious lieutenant, junior grade.

The dutiful truck driver sat quietly in his cab farther down the pier, as did the lift driver. Both vehicles were parked under portable tarps. Each driver was secretly employed by the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), North Korea's far-more-terrifying version of the KGB.

A half dozen trusted enlisted men stood ramrod straight in the downpour, soaked to the bone and shivering. A portable gangplank lay nearby.

"There," the high-strung lieutenant said, pointing excitedly at the roiling water.

Song-hyok checked his watch. Exactly on time. Moments later, the submarine gently broke the rain-spattering surface of the dark water. Strangely, it had no "sail." The lack of a superstructure gave the appearance of a huge torpedo instead of a sub.

The intelligence officer pulled a small Sony digital camera from his pocket and snapped photos of the hull, angled like the fuselage of a stealth aircraft.

Song-hyok, a surface warfare officer, was no expert on submarines. But in his estimation the vehicle's skin appeared to be something other than steel; possibly carbon fiber. It also seemed to be wrapped in some sort of anechoic sound-absorbing material. If powered by an air-independent fuel cell propulsion system, it would indeed be nearly impossible to detect.

The fact it was completely automated and AI-driven made the machine even more wondrous and terrifying.

Song-hyok and the senior intelligence officer exchanged a glance. Both had been in contact with coastal command over the last two hours. Sonar, radar, and underwater detection units were on full alert and yet nothing had been triggered by the submarine.

Incredible.

Both men shared the same thought. An undetectable drone submarine was worth as much if not more than the valuable cargo it carried on board. But their instructions were clear. Do not board the submarine to effect transfer until instructed to do so, and under no conditions attempt to enter the submarine.

Once the vessel's deck cleared the surface, the bubbling discharge from the ballast tanks stopped and a red LED warning light on the deck began flashing. The sub had surfaced exactly next to the large rubber fenders protecting the pier. Its automated navigational sensors must have been accurate to within millimeters. Song-hyok shook his head in silent amazement.

The boat sat in the water motionless save for the blinking red LED light. Mechanical noises hummed and clanged beneath its decks. Several minutes passed.

"What do we do now?" the young lieutenant asked. He had to shout over the noise of the rain pounding against the sheet metal above their heads.

"We wait," his commander said.

"How do we know this isn't an enemy vessel? An explosive device? It looks just like a torpedo."

The senior intelligence officer's expressionless face panicked his young subordinate. The lieutenant had put himself out on a limb. There was no turning back from his position without losing face. Tonight's mission was historic and the young officer was determined to rise to the occasion.

"Sir, perhaps there's been a malfunction. What if it sinks? What if it leaves without delivering its payload to us? We'll look like fools if we just stand here all night."

The senior intelligence officer squinted at Song-hyok, then turned to the lieutenant. "What do you suggest?"

"A closer inspection."

"We should follow instructions," Song-hyok said. But in truth, he was intensely curious about the strange vessel.

Five more minutes passed. The mechanical sounds suddenly stopped.

The three men shared a worried countenance.

The two senior officers exchanged a few whispered words.

The lieutenant strained to hear them. He caught a few of the terrible words that haunted every North Korean citizen and soldier. " Our responsibility…our fate…we will be blamed… " These words had been echoing in the lieutenant's own fevered mind.

The young officer was unsurprised and, in fact, relieved when his supervisor turned to him and said, "You have permission to board and inspect the vessel. Perhaps there has been a malfunction. But you must exercise extreme caution."

"Understood."

The eager young lieutenant threw a snapping salute and dashed to the pier. It was an easy leap to the deck. His boots landed with a nearly silent thud on the sound-absorbing material. He began searching the deck area with his flashlight.

"What do you see?" the intelligence officer shouted.

"Nothing, sir." The lieutenant's eyes swept over the seamless surface like a tenacious terrier sniffing for a fox's scent. He suddenly knelt down. The red LED light flashed against his smooth young face.

"A hatch!"

"Don't touch it," Song-hyok called out.

Too late.

The lieutenant's fingers sought purchase beneath what appeared to be a small latch. A trigger activated.

Instantly, an electric current coursed through his body, sparking a massive tetanic contraction that seized all of the muscles of his body—including his heart. Three seconds later he collapsed to the deck in a tightly wound coil of stiffened flesh.

Dead.

The enlisted men observing the spectacle didn't move. If any of them gasped in horror it was masked by the noise of the torrential deluge.

The sub's flashing red LED light turned green. Whining electric motors opened two large doors in the forward section of the boat. Immediately after they opened, three twenty-seven-foot-long torpedoes were lifted into view on a horizontal rack.

Song-hyok's heart raced at the sight. His career was staked to that rack of torpedoes. He was gambling his life—and the lives of his family—on the success of this mission, all based on a relationship with the Vendor, a man he had never met.

It was a risk worth taking both for his nation and his career. The new cold war was heating up and the Asian seas would soon be brought to full boil as the great powers rushed more and more naval assets to the region.

In the last several months, the Russians had increased their long-range missile exports to North Korea hoping to distract the Americans from events unfolding in Europe and elsewhere. But their Russian comrades wouldn't sell the tactical naval weapons the North Korean Navy needed to protect itself, especially the Shkval, their vaunted supercavitating torpedo, capable of underwater speeds exceeding two hundred miles per hour. Originally designed in the 1970s and perfected over the years, no navy in the world had accomplished a similar feat.

And yet, the Vendor had promised to supply something even better—his own advanced copy of the Khishchnik. Supposedly still only in the Russian design stages, the Khishchnik torpedo—really, an underwater rocket that traveled inside of its own self-generating vacuum bubble—was supposedly capable of ten times the speed of the Shkval. And unlike its predecessor, the stealthy Khishchnik was highly maneuverable, self-guided, and carried a next-generation targeting package. Compared to the great-power navies, North Korea's possession of this Wunderwaffe would give it incomparable advantages, like driving a V12 Lamborghini Revuelto at Le Mans against a fleet of rusted Yugos.

Captain Song-hyok barked an order. The enlisted men hesitated, fearful of the mysterious but deadly boat. But they all knew a North Korean firing squad was even deadlier, especially the ones that featured flamethrowers.

They dashed for the gangplank, lifted it as one, and set it in place. The lift driver eased his vehicle into position opposite the torpedo rack. He extended the long forks horizontally into place as the enlisted men secured the first sling over the top torpedo.

Over the course of the next twenty minutes, all three special torpedoes were loaded onto the waiting transport truck. As soon as the last torpedo had been lifted, the submarine's empty rack began retracting into the hull. The green LED light now flashed yellow in the downpour.

Song-hyok issued another order as he watched the empty torpedo rack disappear belowdecks and the automated doors shut tightly again. The enlisted men retrieved the coiled corpse of the dead lieutenant and rushed it across the gangplank. They carefully set the body down beneath the metal shelter at a respectful distance from the two scowling officers. They then rushed back to retrieve the gangplank just seconds before the submarine's yellow light shut off and the sub slipped beneath the churning water.

Song-hyok stared at the corpse of the eager young officer. It was an unfortunate occurrence. Thankfully, the man was under the lieutenant commander's authority. No doubt he would find a clever way to explain away his own responsibility for the boy's death.

"Congratulations on a successful assignment, Captain," the intelligence officer said. "With these new torpedoes in hand our beloved fatherland can assert its rightful dominance of the sea-lanes."

"As soon as my technical office confirms their readiness status, we'll launch our first real-world test."

"My office will be monitoring your progress with great anticipation." The intelligence officer's smile betrayed the menace in his eyes.

Song-hyok nodded at the lieutenant's fetal-positioned corpse.

"Ah, yes. Tragic, isn't it?" the wily intelligence man said. "Another act of cowardly suicide, so prevalent among our undisciplined youth these days. I imagine his secret access to TikTok spawned a mental illness. Don't you agree?"

Song-hyok offered a noncommittal grunt, turned on his booted heels, and marched toward the waiting truck.

If all went according to plan, the world as he had known it for the last five decades would soon change forever.