By the time they got themselves organized, Remo had reached bottom and ducked through a hatch. He dogged it shut. That let him in and kept them out.
Moving down the cramped corridor, Remo came upon a sailor with a white-and-blue face.
"Speak English?" he asked casually.
The sailor was unarmed. He ran. Remo grabbed him by the shoulder and began to squeeze his hard rotator cup.
"Habla espanol?" he asked.
The man screamed. No words. Just high, mindless screaming.
"Parlez-vous Francais?''
More screaming.
"Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"
He apparently didn't speak German. So Remo tried Korean. "Hanguk-mal hae?"
The man's rolling eyes turned white. They matched his face. It created an interesting effect. While his mouth was open, Remo checked to see if he had a tongue. He did. A pink one.
Having exhausted his stock of languages, Remo put the screaming sailor out his misery with a hard tap to the temple. The man collapsed in the corridor, and Remo stepped over him.
Back the way Remo came, the trapped sailors began pounding on the dogged hatch. That was all they did. Pound. They said nothing. They might have been completely mute. Or what they seemed to bemimes.
"What would mimes be doing with a sub?" Remo muttered to himself, wishing Chiun were here. The Master of Sinanju would have an answer. It was even money it would be wrong, but at least it would be something to argue about. This slipping around a submarine wasn't exactly Remo's idea of a productive evening.
Remo knocked on each closed hatch as he passed by, hoping to draw someone out. He got no takers. A white-faced sailor dogged a hatch after himself when he saw Remo coming.
That meant they were afraid of him-always a good way to start an interrogation. All Remo needed was someone to interrogate.
Behind him another hatch clanged shut. It was far behind. Then, not twenty yards down the passage way, a hatch opened and a hand tossed out a grenade.
Remo shot into reverse, knowing the blast radius would be small.
When the grenade let go, it did so with a pop, releasing a spurt of yellowish white gas cloud. The cloud had nowhere to go but Remo's way.
Remo smelled the first wisp of gas and understood he was not at risk. It was pepper gas. Nonlethal.
Pausing, Remo picked a hatch and tried to undog it. The wheel wouldn't turn. Someone had locked it on the other side. The same was true for the next hatch. He took hold of it with both hands and forced it to turn. It did give a bit, then it cracked and Remo found himself holding a broken section of useless wheel.
A hatch at the end of the corridor was locked, too.
And the white exhalation kept spreading Remo's way.
He pinched his eyelids shut, making them tear. That was to protect his eyes.
Closing his mouth, Remo sucked in a long breath of air. It stung a little, but was mostly good. Then he began to exhale in a long, slow release of carbon dioxide.
As long as he kept air flowing out through his nostrils, no gas could get in.
That left him practically blind and with limited oxygen. Remo just hoped the gas didn't work through the pores, too.
Turning to face the hatch, Remo found the exposed hinges. They were massive. Laying the side of his hand against the top one, he brought it back and chopped hard at the place his sensitive fingertips told him the metal was weakest. The hinge shattered. Remo chopped the other one. It broke, and a chunk of cold steel fell with a clang.
Grabbing the wheel, he exerted pull. The wheel remained locked, but without functioning hinges, it was useless. Remo wrestled the hatch off its shattered hinges, and the locking mechanism twisted out of its groove.
Dropping it on the floor, Remo moved on.
He found another hatch that was open. It led to a corridor. He moved down its length by feel, ears alert for the pounding of excited hearts. Every sense was alert.
After a while it felt safe to open his eyes. Remo squeezed out the last protecting tears as he tried to figure out his next line of attack.
Before, he had been headed toward the control compartment amidships. Now he was angling back toward the tail.
Remo could feel eyes on him. From time to time, he spotted ceiling video cameras. Remo waved at them where he could.
No one waved back. No one tried to stop him, either.
But a lot of hatches were hastily shut as he approached them. After he passed them, too.
Just to see what happened, Remo knocked on one hatch.
"All clear!" he shouted through the steel. He repeated the call, knocking loudly.
He heard a gunshot. A smooth spot on the hatch abruptly bulged out, followed by two closely spaced ricochet sounds.
Remo decided to leave well enough alone. These guys were so nervous they were capable of sinking the sub with everyone aboard, including Remo.
He moved on. It was weird. The crew seemed pretty scared of him-which they should be. But this was a different scared. Usually Remo had to pile the bodies to the rafters to get this kind of reaction.
Finally he found himself under the deck hatch through which the two sailors first emerged to attack him.
Behind him a hatch clanged shut. The other hatches were also closed. Only the deck hatch remained open like a clear invitation.
Then, with a sudden gurgling of moving water, the sub began shifting and settling. They were blowing the ballast tanks.
Bitterly cold brine began slopping down from the open hatch. Remo saw he had two choices: close the hatch and sink with the sub or get topside and swim for it.
He decided to swim for it.
Remo went up the hatch like a moth on wing, gained the deck and sprinted through the sloshing water surging over the deck plates for his bobbing power boat.
He jumped into it, unhooked the line and pushed off.
The engine refused to start. Remo pressed the starter button again and again. Finally the props churned water.