60
THE TENSION in the
Pentagon’s Situation Room had grown as tight as a drum. The
proverbial pin dropping would have sounded like a cannon
shot.
One of the staffers,
with a hand to the earphone of the headset he wore, relayed a
message.
“We’re confirming a
discharge from the Quadrangle site,” he said. “Continuous discharge
. . . Duration at least sixty seconds.”
No one moved. They
all stared at the screen and waited for the inevitable. Unlike
ballistic missiles with their seventeen-minute approach time, it
should have taken only a blink.
Ten seconds later the
lights were still on, the computers still running.
Everyone began to
look around.
“Well?” Vice
President Sandecker asked.
A female staffer
spoke up. “The networks are still broadcasting live,” she said. “No
sign of impact or damage.”
Brinks’s face began
to fill with color again. He turned to Dirk Pitt. “Your man did
it,” he said hopefully.
“His name’s Austin,”
Pitt said.
“Well, you give him
my thanks along with the country’s,” Brinks said. “Along with my
apology for being a bigmouthed idiot.”
Pitt nodded, guessing
that Kurt Austin would enjoy all three. He turned to the Navy brass
in the room. “He’s going to need a way off that ship.”
“Already on it,” one
of them replied, smiling.
That pleased Pitt.
But they weren’t out of the woods yet.
Up on the monitor the
icons that represented the USS Memphis
and the USS Providence were flashing. A
new ship’s status was being reported. They were going into
battle.
THE USS MEMPHIS had come up from the depths, just beyond
the edge of the continental shelf. Holding station there, it had
begun pinging away madly with the powerful sonar in its
bow.
This was not normal
operating procedure, as it gave away the ship’s position, but the
plan was to draw Garand’s fleet of small subs out from its bay and
allow the Trouts and Rapunzel to sneak
in behind them.
A further effect of
the violent sonar emissions would likely be confusion and even
terror on the part of the enemy.
Inside the sub’s
control room the sonar operator could see the plan working almost
too well.
“Five targets
approaching,” he called out. “Labeled bravo one through bravo
five.”
“Do we have firing
solutions?” the sub’s skipper asked.
The fire control
officer hesitated. His computer kept flashing green for yes and
then red for no.
“The subs are so
small, and continually changing direction, the computer can’t
create a solution.”
“Then fire on
acoustic mode,” the captain ordered. “On my mark.”
“Ready,
sir.”
“Fire from all
tubes.”
Over a period of five
seconds compressed air launched six Mark 48 torpedoes from the
Memphis’s midships tubes.
Seconds later the
sonar man heard a different sound. “Incoming torpedoes,” he called
out. “Bearing zero-four-three and three-five-five. At least four
fish.”
There were torpedoes
approaching from the right front quadrant and the left. It took
away their ability to maneuver.
“Hard to starboard,”
the captain shouted. “Full revolutions, bow planes full up. Deploy
countermeasures.”
The ship turned,
accelerated, and rose toward the surface. The countermeasures
designed to draw off the approaching torpedoes were dumped in the
water behind them.
Submarine battles
were slow-motion versions of aerial dogfights. And the wait as a
torpedo tracked inbound could be interminable.
Ten seconds passed
and then twenty.
“Come on, go,” the
skipper grunted.
The sub rose
fast.
“One miss,” the sonar
man reported. Then seconds later, “We’re clear.”
They’d managed to
avoid the incoming weapons. But the Memphis wasn’t as nimble as the small craft it was
fighting. Like a bear tangling with a pack of wolves, she wouldn’t
last long. As if to prove it, the sonar man called out
again.
“New targets, bearing
zero-nine-zero.”
“Full down angle,”
the captain ordered.
In the distance a
series of explosions rocked the depths as two of the torpedoes from
the Memphis found their marks in quick
succession. But there was no celebration; their own troubles were
too close.
“Bottom coming up
fast, skipper,” the helmsman reported.
“Level off,” the
captain said. “More countermeasures.”
The bow angle eased.
Another explosion rocked them from far off, but the sonar man
looked stricken.
He turned to the
captain, shaking his head. “No good.”
An instant later the
Memphis was hit. Anyone not seated and
belted in was thrown to the floor. The main lights went down. The
sound of alarms wailed throughout the ship.
The captain got to
his feet, managed a quick look at the damage board. “Emergency
surface,” he ordered.
The Memphis blew all tanks and began to
rise.
MILES AWAY, Paul and
Gamay Trout couldn’t see any screen or hear any radio calls
describing the action. But the ocean carried sound much more
effectively than the air, and echoes from the booming explosions
reached them one after another like the sound of distant
thunder.
Neither of them
spoke, except as necessary for navigation.
Finally, Paul slowed
the craft. They’d dropped from the Navy helicopter, descended into
the far end of the canyon, and wound their way back toward the
platforms.
“We’re at two hundred
feet and holding,” Paul said. “If the inertial system is right, the
platforms are less than a mile away.”
Gamay was already
activating Rapunzel ’s program. She
wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible.
“Detaching
umbilical,” she said.
She felt herself
sweating once again despite the cold. And then she felt Paul’s hand
on her shoulder, massaging it softly.
Another series of
explosions rumbled through the depths, these far bigger, closer,
and more menacing than any that had come before.
“Do you think that
was one of ours?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he
said. “Don’t think about it. Just do what you have to
do.”
She tried to block it
out, even as another, smaller boom reached them, but there was
nothing to see through her visor except darkness.
Seconds
passed.
“How far?” she
asked.
“You should be almost
there,” Paul said.
Something was wrong.
“She’s not moving,” Gamay said.
“What?”
Gamay studied the
data feed from the little robot. “Her motor is operating, but she’s
not moving. She’s stuck.”
“How is that
possible?” Paul asked.
Gamay, with a flip of
her right hand, switched on Rapunzel’s
exterior light. The answer to Paul’s question came through
instantly.
“She’s stuck in a
net.”
Gamay put
Rapunzel in reverse and pulled her back
a few yards. The net was no fluke; it was draped from
above.
“Antitorpedo nets,”
Paul said. “We must be right beside the platform.”
Gamay switched on
Rapunzel’s cutting tool. “I’m cutting
through it.”
THE MEMPHIS had broken the surface but was taking on
water fast. The order to abandon ship was given, and men were
scrambling from the hatches and into boats or just into the sea
itself.
But the survivors
were well inside the Event Horizon line. If their enemy wanted to,
he could fry them all with a single burst from his
weapon.
ON THE ONYX, Kurt noticed the lighting returning to
normal. He was thankful that the bow thrusters hadn’t come back to
life. He hoped that meant the high voltage was still out and the
Fulcrum array was still off-line.
He moved back to
where Katarina sat in the hall. “Ready for one more run?” he
asked.
“I don’t think I
can,” she said.
He studied her hand.
The blood flow had slowed, the wound was finally
clotting.
“Come on,” he said.
“You’re a champion. Prove it to me.”
She looked into his
eyes and clenched her jaw. He helped her up, and they began to
move.
“Do you still want to
get to the coolant room?” she asked.
He nodded. “They’ll
get this power back on soon enough. We have to permanently disable
this thing.”
“I know another way
to get there,” she said. “They’ll never expect us to use
it.”
She led him forward
until they came to another hatch. This one was sealed
tight.
Kurt dropped beside
it and grabbed the wheel.
After two full
rotations it spun easily. He opened it to see a ladder dropping
down through a shaft. Dim red lights lit the rungs, and glacial air
wafted up toward him. Kurt suddenly thought of Dante’s Inferno, which depicted some of Hell’s outer layers
as frigid, Arctic-like zones.
“What’s down there?”
he asked.
“The accelerator
tunnels,” she said.
That didn’t sound
like a safe place to be, but the sound of feet pounding on the
metal deck above changed his mind.
He helped her onto
the ladder, climbed down behind her, and shut the hatch. At the
bottom they dropped into a tunnel.
It reminded Kurt of
standing on a subway platform, like the Washington Metro, only
narrower. The familiar high-voltage lines and liquid nitrogen
conduits raced down each wall and also along the ceiling and floor.
Rows of the shiny gray rectangles that Kurt knew to be the
superconducting magnets traveled off into the distance, curving
slightly at the limit of his vision.
Kurt exhaled a cloud
of ice crystals. He was already chilled to the bone. It reminded
him of the Fulcrum’s compartment only colder.
“If we go this way,”
she said, “we can pop up through the rear access hatch. One level
down from the coolant room.”
Kurt began walking,
with Katarina leaning heavily on his shoulder. It was a great plan.
The crew would never search for them down there, he was sure of
it.
“What if they turn
this thing on?” he asked.
“Then we’ll be dead
before we even know what’s happened.”
“All the more reason
to hurry,” he said.