Red Shark

“You see, at Chenjigang the bottom steps out gradually until it reaches thirty-five fathoms at the north-south shipping lanes. There perhaps we can pick up a merchant vessel heading for, say, Okinawa, and use it to mask our passage across the East China Sea and through the Nansei Shoto.”

The first officer nodded his agreement. “Captain, as you say, these routes are heavily traveled by commercial ships. A fleet of submarines could follow in their wakes and remain undiscovered for weeks.”

Park put down his instruments. “Until then you will double the sonar watch. If that Kilo returns, this time she may be accompanied by aircraft. You will also maintain a taut ESM watch. I want air- and surface-discriminator reports on the half hour. Meanwhile I am going aft to inspect that damaged bleeder line in the fuel cell.”

“Can it be repaired, sir?”

“That’s what I intend to find out.”

Seated in the Kilo’s wardroom, Deng Zemin pored over secret reports on AIP subs. Written by The Chinese People’s Naval Intelligence, the report stated that only China, Russia, and Germany had operational AIP boats. Other such boats, scattered among a half-dozen Western navies, were either laid up for lack of funds or serious mechanical problems: damaged fuel cells, valves, and piping. No evidence had been found by naval intelligence to indicate that the DPRK had an operational AIP boat or that it was building one, though the report concluded that North Korea had tried, in the early nineties, to obtain secret computer files containing detailed drawings and descriptions of fabrication methods that would have enabled them to replicate a German Type 213. Various components for such a submarine — engines, electronics, and weaponry — were rumored to have been purchased by the North Koreans on the open market.

The report included a set of grainy pictures taken from a Chinese GUK satellite of a World War II German U-boat-style submarine pen that had been blasted out of the granite bluffs surrounding the port of Nam’po. The pen was said to house a building way where a submersible of some unknown type had been under construction for at least five years.

Chinese naval intelligence asserted that the submarine was a conventional diesel-electric, likely a midget. But that assertion had proven wrong when GUK imagery had discovered that the North Koreans had instead launched a full-sized submarine, one that looked exactly like an old Russian Tango-class diesel-electric, a design at least 35 years old. The report stated that while the launching of the Tango demonstrated the DPRK’s capacity to build a submarine on its own, it didn’t have the capability to build a modern nuclear or AIP submarine.

Zemin studied the picture of the submarine built inside the pen. For a Tango, its shape seemed all wrong: bulges where there shouldn’t be any; hull too short and stubby; sail plating askew here and there, as if it had been hastily applied to cover something up. A poor job of camouflage, he thought.

Zemin tossed the report aside and concluded that Admiral Shi’s vaunted intelligence service’s assessment was dead wrong. The North Koreans had in fact built a German Type 213 right under Shi’s nose. That in itself was amazing enough. More amazing was his discovery of this submarine so far from its base in Nam’po at a time when the DPRK and the U.S. were on the brink of war.

Zemin’s mind flooded with possibilities: Find and destroy it — no, capture it in Chinese territorial waters. To attain such a prize would be worth risking his and his crew’s lives. Not only would it tamp down North Korea’s ambition to be a regional power but it would also show the U.S. Navy once and for all that it was China, not the U.S., that controlled East Asian waters.

A portable phone warbled in Marshal Jin’s quarters, where he was soaking in a steaming tub of bathwater. A halting aide brought the phone, and when Jin heard General Yi’s voice, he ordered the aide to leave the room. After a brief exchange, Jin ended the call. Ten minutes later, wrapped in a thick kimono and drinking soju, he waved General Yi into a private study.

Yi saw a shaken and deeply worried Jin. “With apologies, Dear Leader, for intruding at such a late hour.”

“You said there was a news report that Iseda Tokugawa had been killed, shot to death. How?”