by Bobby Akart
Atlantic Ocean
The feeder bands of a tropical depression that had formed up in the Caribbean Sea off the southern coast of the Dominican Republic had caused the winds to whip up the surface waters of the Atlantic above the Puerto Rico Trench. The Ecuadorian salvage ship, containing two identical human-operated submersibles, moved deliberately through the water to their designated dive location. Churning through the choppy sea, the ship rode low, its bow crashing through the occasional rogue wave that sent sprays of seawater surging over its bow.
“Distance?” the captain of the vessel asked. The Hamburg, Germany, native came from a long line of ship captains. The man himself was the epitome of the cartoonish depiction of the ship’s captain on the package of the Gorton’s Fish Sticks box. He had sun-kissed, crackly skin, with a salty demeanor to boot. His sweat-stained clothes and gamey smell showed he had priorities other than hygiene. The scent of alcohol on his breath revealed he had an affinity for Jägermeister in his coffee.
The captain had not been hired to entertain tourists or kiss asses in the dining halls of a cruise ship. He was tasked with getting to a mark. Dispatching his assets. And disappearing into the night. He’d proved his capabilities to his employers on more than one occasion, including the Baltic Sea operation. Not that it mattered. His résumé began with the blood coursing through his veins. His grandfather had not been a national hero during his day as a naval commander, but he’d sacrificed much for his country.
“Six kilometers. Traveling at eight knots.”
“Have the first two teams been alerted?”
“Yes, sir. Teams are in place for the second drop. All crew members are in place to off-load the salvage and secure it during the second round of dives.”
Suddenly, a bridge wing door flew open, and an armed man dressed in khaki cargo pants and a skintight black tee shirt stepped through. He was drenched in rain and made no effort to keep the moisture from following him onto the bridge.
“What is it?” the captain barked. He was used to the armed security personnel insisted upon by his employers. He did not approve, however, of their total lack of respect for the captain, his crew, and the operations of his ship.
“The sea is rough and water is lapping over the decks. It will make unloading of the cargo treacherous.”
The captain couldn’t resist. “Are you sure it is not your own vomit? Those aboard my ship who are not sailors should leave this to me.”
The Polish man patted his holstered sidearm with his right hand. He was green around the gills, as they say, but it didn’t prevent him from doing his job. “I am responsible for the cargo and its safe delivery back to Moa. I cannot protect something that isn’t within my possession. None of this must be lost to an angry sea!”
“Get off my bridge. These seas that cause you to lose your stomach are nothing to my ship. In minutes, we will be underway to retrieve your precious cargo, and by dawn, we will off-load it into your precious plane.”
“I will accept nothing less.”
“Who cares what you’ll accept? We are not here for you. Now, leave us to our jobs.”
The captain spun around and studied the maps and photographs spread out on a table behind the helmsman. He nudged the man’s elbow and pointed to the map.
“Yes, sir. Two minutes away.”
The security man left the bridge, lingering for a moment in an effort to spite the captain, who couldn’t have cared less. Guys like him came and went. They held a gun, which made them think they had some kind of power over others. The captain had his own gun, too. However, he had a power the hired guns did not. Bloodlines.
For the next four hours, the two submersibles made their way to the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench. Two two-man dive teams, using state-of-the-art Chinese-manufactured exosuits, retrieved their salvage with the aid of propulsion-driven sleds. The underwater vessels not only allowed them to carry more of the sought-after salvage, but their power pulled the sleds and the divers quickly through the water, cutting their movement time along the sea floor by eighty percent.
After the second set of dive teams returned to the surface, the captain and the head of the security team descended upon the deck to interview the submersible crew.
“Is that all of it?” asked the security man.
“No, sir. One more dive is required, but with only one submersible.”
He shook his head in disbelief and stomped around the deck of the ship, gesturing as he screamed at the diver, “Why didn’t you get it all? This will take an hour that we don’t have!”
“Sir, our instructions were to secure the cargo to prevent any breakage or accidents. There simply wasn’t room for—”
“Go back!” the man shouted, cutting off the diver’s explanation. “First team! Go. Now!”
The captain stepped in. “There is no more time. The Americans are on scene. We cannot run the risk of being discovered.”
The armed man swung around and stomped directly to the captain. His face was looking down on the much older man, close enough to feel his hot breath.
“We leave nothing behind! Do you understand me? We are wasting time!”
The captain reached into his pocket for his pistol. Two other members of the ship’s security detail raised their automatic weapons and pulled the charging handles. It was a signal to the captain that he was no longer running things.
The captain immediately pulled his hands out of his pockets and raised them to his waist, indicating he wasn’t going to argue the point. He pointed at his three best men, the same ones who’d accompanied him to the Baltic recently.
He waited on the deck to ensure there was no interference by the security guards as the final preparations were made for the last launch of the mission. As he waited, the old sea captain studied the rapidly clearing skies. The new moon allowed the heavens to brighten in all their glory.
It only took him a moment to identify the constellation Cygnus. Known to some as the Swan. For the captain, and others like him, it was der Nordkreuz. The Northern Cross.
Within minutes, the men were tucked into their submersible and headed into the Milwaukee Deep toward the wreckage of U-1226, the submarine on which the captain’s great-grandfather had perished.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The Den
Fort Belvoir, Virginia
“It took you long enough,” Ghost barked as the three operatives entered the Den. “I was told all three of you were at Tangier.”
Gunner scowled. “We were. We had the weekend off, remember?”
“Yes, I’m aware. I also know how long it takes to drive that damn speedboat of yours up the Potomac.”
Gunner shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. “Well, um, Ghost, it was our day off. We had a pretty good buzz going.”
Several of the analysts in the Den snickered at Gunner’s statement, or at his being dressed down by Ghost.
“Almost toast, actually,” added Cam, who was on the verge of being drunk when they got the call. She still had a little buzz despite Sammy loading them up with alcohol-soaking, greasy cheeseburgers and coffee for the ride up the river.
Ghost shook his head in disbelief. He couldn’t fault them for blowing off steam. They’d earned it. He walked to the center of the room and motioned toward the wall of monitors.
The Gray Fox team gathered around him. “This is a stock photo of the Sea Searcher I, a research vessel operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. This outfit is highly respected and well funded by philanthropists around the world.” He paused as he pointed to a second monitor.
“This is the actual vessel adrift in the Atlantic roughly two hundred miles, or maybe a little less, off Puerto Rico’s northern shoreline.”
“Is it under power?” asked Cam.
“No. This is live satellite footage from a stationary bird that covers this part of the Atlantic and the islands separating it from the Caribbean Sea. Zoom in, please.”
The analyst zoomed in to rev
eal the carnage on the deck of the ship near the submersible.
“Not pirates again,” Bear lamented.
“No, not this time,” began Ghost. “Here’s what we know. A Mayday went out just after midnight Atlantic time. The crew member reported the captain was extremely ill and that three members of a submersible dive had already died. She also reported several others were deathly ill. In the middle of the Mayday, she began to have a seizure of some kind, and then the radio went silent. Before she died, her last words were what have we done.”
Ghost stopped to take a deep breath. He rolled his head around his shoulders to relieve some tension before continuing. “For hours, the Coast Guard base in San Juan tried to reach them. At sunrise, they sent a chopper and discovered dead bodies strewn about the deck. Here are the photos they took from above.”
Ghost looked at the analyst and nodded. The gruesome photos appeared on one of the monitors in the form of a slideshow. Cam closed her eyes, pulled her hand to her mouth, and turned away. Gunner lowered his eyes and grimaced. The bodies were covered in a combination of vomit, blood, and some type of white foam around their mouths and orifices.
“Gotta be poison,” opined Bear. “There’s no evidence of gunshot wounds or even blunt force trauma. All of the bodily fluids are around the face and head.”
“What was their mission?” asked Gunner.
Jackal got involved in the briefing. She made a few keystrokes on her computer, and the picture of the captain appeared.
“This is Captain Tobias ten Brink. Well respected in the marine research field. Former USGS scientist. From all I can find, an aboveboard guy. He was leading an expedition to confirm a theory based upon a prior Woods Hole research mission.”
“What was it?” asked Gunner.
“Just by accident, the prior expedition discovered a shipwreck at the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench, the deepest part of the North Atlantic. It’s within the boundaries of the infamous Bermuda Triangle.”
“Are we getting set up for some kind of conspiracy theory here?” asked Cam as she continued to study the monitors.
“No, but we may have stumbled upon something else,” replied Jackal. She once again returned to her keyboard and brought up an image of the wreckage.
“Holy shit!” exclaimed Cam.
“A U-boat,” muttered Bear. “That conn is in amazing condition. Looks like a type IX, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Very good, Bear,” said Ghost. “The Germans had an exceptional underwater naval program throughout the war, causing the Allies fits. They came into the Gulf of Mexico on several occasions and had a very chilling effect on commercial travel in and out of those ports. The primary goal was to disrupt our supply lines to the European theater.”
“Where did you get this image?” asked Gunner, turning to Jackal.
“Woods Hole accessed the Sea Searcher’s onboard computers to retrieve footage from the three-man submersible sent to the bottom of the ocean to inspect the ship. One of the members of that crew, Walt Ballard, a NASA astronaut, walked the wreckage in an exosuit that was equipped with video and still cameras.”
Cam, who continued to stare at the images displayed on the large monitors, suddenly walked toward them and pointed. “Pause it! That one, right there. Can you zoom in on the deck around the submersible?”
“Yes, ma’am,” one of the analysts replied.
“Do you see it?” she asked, swinging around toward Ghost and Gunner.
“The silver canister?” asked Gunner.
“Yeah. You’re a diver. Have you ever seen an air tank like that?”
Gunner walked forward until he was only a few feet away. “I don’t think it’s an air tank. It’s too small. Look at it in relationship to the body lying next to it. A scuba tank is the diameter of a man’s thigh, only longer. This canister is comparable to the body’s forearm, again slightly longer. Besides, a tank like this would never be used on a dive that deep.”
“Everyone, I just received more raw footage of the submersible’s dive and the exosuit’s recordings,” said Jackal.
“Bring up the exosuit first,” said Gunner. Ghost nodded his agreement.
The video began to play.
“He’s within the conning tower,” Bear began to narrate as Ballard moved slowly through the sub’s interior. “Now the bridge. I can’t believe the detail we can see and the condition considering this wreck is almost a century old.”
“He’s going deeper into the sub,” interrupted Cam. “Toward the crew quarters?”
“No, that would be in the bow, if I remember correctly,” said Bear. “He’s headed toward the stern, which appeared to be pretty torn up from the first image we—whoa! What the hell are those?”
“We’ve found our canisters,” said Ghost.
“Hundreds of ’em,” added Bear.
Gunner walked forward and focused on the rows and the number of racks visible through Ballard’s recordings. “Maybe a thousand or more.”
“Why aren’t they rusted or even destroyed after all these years?” asked Cam.
“Titanium, most likely,” replied Gunner. “Whatever is inside those canisters, the Nazis wanted to make sure it was protected from the corrosive effects of salt water and sea spray.”
His eyes darted from one screen to the next, studying the deck of the ship and the submarine’s interior. He turned to the team.
“We’re going back in the water.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Aboard Gulfstream C-37A
Two Hundred Miles Southwest of Bermuda
North Atlantic Ocean
“We’re ridin’ in style today,” said Bear as he relaxed in the spacious interior of the Gulfstream aircraft. The C-37A, the military equivalent of the Gulfstream V, known as the G-five, was ordinarily reserved for high-ranking Coast Guard and Homeland Security officials. The team reviewed what they’d learned in their briefing in the Den.
After breaking down the videos from the Sea Searcher’s computers and examining the dead from afar, it was clear to Ghost and his superiors that some type of deadly toxin had been released aboard the research vessel. If the team’s theory was correct, the source of the toxin was the shiny metallic canisters seen in the wreckage.
“Here’s a message from Ghost,” said Gunner. “The Woods Hole people have another ship en route to assist. It’s the Sea Searcher II, a larger boat with rescue and recovery capabilities. It also has a submersible identical to the one used in the dive to the U-boat.”
Cam leaned back in her chair, deep in thought. “I have to ask. Is there any chance this is radiation poisoning? I mean, we were working with nuclear materials at that time. Maybe the Nazis were running their own parallel version of the Manhattan Project.” The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons, led by the U.S.
“That’s very possible,” replied Gunner. “It would also explain why this sub was full of titanium canisters. According to Jackal, that would’ve been very rare back then. This took some intense planning and forethought.”
“How did the U-boat get taken out?” asked Bear. “Our naval commanders were pretty good about recording their kills.”
Cam scrolled through the complete briefing materials sent to her by the Den. “There’s no recorded sub kills in this particular area during the war. Most of the activity was farther north off the coast of New England or, as Ghost mentioned, in the Gulf of Mexico.”
“It could’ve simply failed. Maybe a malfunction of some kind?” asked Gunner.
“Possible. Or it was the damn Devil’s Triangle,” replied Bear.
Cam threw a pillow at Bear. “Come on. That’s a bunch of superstition and stories made up by drunk sailors.”
“No, it’s real. I saw this episode of Ancient Aliens once. They showed evidence of ancient structures a mile below sea level that might be Atlantis.”
Cam shook her head in disbelief and looked to Gunner. “Why do we
even listen to this crap?”
Gunner laughed. “Anything is possible, Cam. At the end of the last ice age, sea levels rose nearly four hundred feet until present day. During that period, the inhabitants of these cities would never have known what hit them.”
“Yeah, Plato said it too,” added Bear.
Cam rolled her eyes. “Who? Plato? Gimme a break.”
“Seriously, Cam. Plato wrote about violent earthquakes and floods,” explained Bear. Then he adopted his best television narrator’s voice. “In just the matter of a day and night, the great city of Atlantis sank into the sea.”
Cam leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. “Jesus, take the wheel.”
Gunner asked, “Did the scientists at Woods Hole give our people any ideas of what they think happened?”
Cam navigated on her iPad to that portion of the report obtained from Woods Hole, titled “Marine Geography.” She handed it to Gunner.
“You understand this stuff better than I do.”
He took the iPad and began to scroll through the material. After a few minutes, he nodded and returned it to Cam.
“This makes sense. Based on this, getting taken out by one of our ships, probably through depth charges, would be my bet. Natural causes, so to speak, is also a possibility.”
“Or it was the Devil’s Triangle,” interjected Bear.
“Shut up about the damn devil!” admonished Cam.
Gunner laughed. “Maybe you’re both right. Think about it, back before science and advanced technology, man tried to explain unusual occurrences based upon the knowledge base that existed at the time. According to the Woods Hole scientists, this region of the Puerto Rico Trench is known for its large deposits of methane gas below the ocean floor. When this gas wants to escape, it blows open a vent of seven-hundred-degree gas and water mixed. This can cause some hellacious turbulence in the ocean.”
Bear felt vindicated. “See? Hellacious equals the devil.”
Cam was about to browbeat him again when Gunner raised his hand. “At least as far as mariners and scholars knew at the time. Now we know these huge methane bubbles may push water away from a ship, causing it to sink. And think about it. If the highly flammable methane then rises into the sky, it could ignite in an airplane’s engine, causing it to explode and disappear.”
