The God Particle

by Tom Avitabile

  “That explains the rerouting of a nuclear submarine on deep deterrent patrol. My orders are to take you to Midway so the hospital can get a crack at you and from there you’ll jump a Special Air Missions ride to D.C. We’ll make Midway by nightfall tomorrow.”

  “Can I radio my report? You do have secure uplink on this boat, don’t you?”

  “Yes, we have all the factory installed options on this model — cup holders, twenty-four multiple reentry Trident D5 strategic missiles, heated seats…”

  Brooke gave him a confused look. Maybe she was still too groggy for Mush’s brand of humor.

  “Lady, this is an Ohio-class fleet ballistic missile submarine, a stealth-operating, floating launch pad. I assure you, we’ve got all the bells and whistles.”

  “Sorry, Captain, I was a little out of it when you came to my rescue.”

  “Ma’am, who are you?”

  “I guess we missed that part: Brooke Burrell, special agent FBI, attached to the Quarterback Group at the White House.”

  “Means nothing to me. Is it some super-secret Presidential operations cluster?”

  “Something like that.”

  “How did you wind up on a capsized Kodiak?”

  “What’s a Kodiak?”

  “It’s what we call the Russian Zodiac-styled boat you were clinging to.”

  “Russian!” It was starting to come back together for Brooke. “Captain… this entire boat might be in danger.”

  “More than usual?”

  “I was on a Somali tanker, I was in a cabin… negotiating with an intermediary to an arms merchant when the world exploded.”

  “Tankers sometimes combust, especially if the crew is untrained in siphoning off built-up gases that collect in holding tanks and…”

  Brooke held up her hand. “Wait, let me think…” She started pulling on the threads of her memory that were coming together as she focused. “I ran out to the deck. I was looking over the railing…” Brooke rubbed the bump on the back of her head. “I remember now; just before the explosion. A crewman ran in all agitated about something in the water — oh, what was it?”

  “Well, we got surface radar, sonar and a few other gizmos so sensitive that we will know if a whale bumps into a minnow, so we should be safe.”

  “Whale! That was it! He said a whale had come up to the hull and then something about a mine… a limpert mine?”

  “Limpet mine?”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  The captain reached over to the interphone on the bulkhead. “Con, this is the captain. Take her up! Fast. Emergency blow. I want to run the surface all the way to Midway. And double the lookouts.”

  “What are we looking for, sir?”

  “Whales, Mr. Sarin, whales.”

  “Wow. That was quick.” Brooke said as a klaxon sounded three times and a voice came over the P.A. “Secure for emergency blow.”

  “Better hold on here. We’re headed for the roof.” Mush said as he gently placed Brooke’s hand on the railing of her bunk. The boat took on a deep angle and then she felt the sudden stomach-wrenching feeling similar to the first drop of a rollercoaster, only in reverse. Seeing Brooke’s concern and uneasiness, Mush spoke in regular measured tones as if this gut-wrenching rapid ascent was commonplace. “You got me with the limpet mines.”

  “What?” Brooke said, nervously looking around at the now almost vertical stateroom, as some things slid and collected in the corners.

  “Nasty devices that frogmen attach to the side of an enemy’s vessel to sink them. I don’t know what’s going on, but we can’t see biologicals with our equipment; just the cavitation they leave in the water when they get spooked by us. But if there is a killer whale out there, armed with limpet mines, our only chance to see it coming is from the surface. In fact,” he reached for the interphone again, “Mr. Sarin, raise Diego-Garcia. Tell them we are on a special op for COMSUBPAC and request they scramble a TACAMO for around-the-clock air cover starting immediately. Compose the message; I’ll be up to authorize it in a minute.”

  “Yes sir.”

  He switched off the box and turned to her. It struck him how good looking she was. Not the frail, dainty features of a model, but the kind of pretty that endures and gets better as it gets older. “You can really see whales better from the air.”

  “Captain, I have to tell you, I am a little surprised you reacted so strongly to my wild story. I mean, it sounded crazy to me as I was telling it to you.”

  “I have one hundred fifty-five souls on this ship, Miss Burrell, you make one hundred fifty-six. We are also the fourth largest nuclear power on earth, all by our lonesome. And we cost about one thousand billion dollars when you add up all the special equipment and Trident D5 warheads. So let’s just say, erring on the side of caution is better than making a trillion dollar hole in the water.”

  Brooke took all that in and a warm feeling of safety wrapped around her for the first time since she started on the mission. “Thank you for saving me.”

  “I was just looking for the son of a gun who shot at my boat.”

  Brooke was about to say something silly like “guilty” or “I didn’t know it was loaded,” but a sharp pain from her leg froze her brain.

  Sensing her sudden discomfort, he unconsciously placed his hand on hers. “You want me to have Howell give you a shot or something?”

  “No, it subsided; I need to have my wits about me to write my report.” She looked into his eyes and saw genuine concern there. It made her wonder if he was a dad. Owing to her grogginess, she was about to ask him if he had kids, but he spoke before she did.

  “I have to get to the con; just let us know if you need anything.” He left and closed the door behind him.

  I did shoot at his boat. To Brooke he suddenly went from a dad to a teenager with a new car, preening and caring for it, sympathetically hurting with every ding and scratch. Boys and their toys, she thought. The last thing she focused on was her freshly laundered bra, on a hanger, under the overhead, as she started to glide off into a light slumber. It didn’t last long…

  II. WHALE OF A TAIL

  Aaaooooga aaaa oooooo ga! The klaxon horn sounded and startled Brooke awake.

  On the bridge, Mush swung around with his glasses trained on the rear of the 560-foot-long Nebraska, as a plume of white water and orange flame erupted out of the sea. The giant ship shuddered. Then he saw it. A huge gray mass in the water. The huge amount of bubbles told him that the boat’s hull had been breached. He screamed into the interphone, “I want weapons free, now!”

  He pulled off the binoculars, scrambled down the hatch and came out the access hatch on the deck. He grabbed an AR-22 assault rifle from a sailor emerging from the rear torpedo hatch and ran toward the stern. The massive form was coming in again, maybe with another mine. He started shooting into the body of the thing. Soon more sailors armed with heavy weapons joined in. Thousands of rounds entered the water and most hit the hulk just under the surface; it started to shake. Then Mush noticed something odd — there’s no blood, no wounds. The bullets went clean in and only air bubbles were coming out. He kept firing. It was working; the thing had slowed its approach to the hull. He turned to the conning tower and yelled to his exec, “Hank! All ahead full now; get us away from this thing. All ahead full!”

  A few men lost their footing as the big ship dug a hole in the water and lunged ahead. The grey mass stayed aft of the rudder. A huge tail was the last sight above the water, then nothing. Mush ran to the base of the conning tower and yelled up. “Damage report?”

  “Port propulsion plant is flooded, four hurt. Starboard got us out of here. But we are taking on water.”

  “Close all watertight hatches, get the pumps working in Port Prop.” Mush headed toward the rear hatch.

  “Aye, aye.”

  As alarm bells started calling to secure quarters, a midshipman asked, “What the fuck was that, Captain?” Then realizing he was cursing to a superior officer, recanted, “I mean wh
at in the name of …”

  “Carry on, Sailor” Mush snarled as he hefted the gun to the pimply-faced sailor. When the young seaman was out of earshot Mush mumbled to himself, “Just call me fucking Ahab!”

  ∞§∞

  “Attacked? A U.S. nuclear sub was attacked?” President Mitchell couldn’t believe his ears.

  “We are just getting the details now, sir. But it appears the USS Nebraska was on a special op when it was either mined or torpedoed in open water,” the secretary of the navy reported.

  “Special operation? For who?”

  “Why for you, sir,” a slight tinge of confusion tightening his brow.

  “Slow down. Me?” The president leaned to one side to yell around the SECNAV’s body, “Reynolds!!!!”

  Chief of Staff Ray Reynolds was entering President Mitchell’s office as the Commander-In-Chief was bellowing his name. “I was just coming in, sir. Yes. This is Hiccock’s operation. You approved it two weeks ago — to try and get hold of the Russian crucibles.”

  “Any casualties?” the commander-in-chief asked.

  “No fatalities, four crew injured,” the SECNAV said.

  “How did a nuker get involved?”

  The SECNAV went to intercede but Reynolds jumped in. “Boomer, sir, the Navy calls them boomers.”

  “Whatever; how did a warship get involved and attacked as part of my — Hiccock’s plan?”

  “We don’t know if this has anything to do with that mission, except for the fact that your mission operative was rescued by this boat,” the Secretary said.

  “So this is Burrell, the agent who went undercover to buy the bomb-making hardware?”

  The SECNAV turned to Admiral Shorn who then took over the hastily called briefing. “Yes, it would seem so, but the attack may or may not have anything to do with her mission or the procurement of the nuclear contraband.”

  “Was she injured?”

  “Yes, but before the Nebraska recovered her, clinging to a raft in the Indian Ocean. She was not injured further in the attack on the sub though, sir.”

  “Who attacked us?”

  “No way to know yet sir, but it was not a conventional naval attack, of that I am sure.”

  “How can you know that if you don’t know all the details?”

  “Because the Nebraska is commanded by Bret Morton. He’s as fine a Naval man as you’re ever going to find.”

  “Morton… Morton. Is that Mush Morton’s kid?”

  “Grandson, sir; Dudley “Mush” Morton was one of the best sub drivers in WWII and wrote most of the book on modern submarine warfare on the spot under Japanese fire. The kid’s genes got diving planes on them, sir. No conventional warship or threat could get to within 5,000 yards of a boomer and especially one with a Morton in command. I’d stake my last two stars on the fact that this one came out of nowhere or from a new weapon technology we haven’t counter-measured yet.”

  “Okay, I want hourlies on this till that boat is at our base; Admiral you assign someone to brief me.”

  “I’ll do that myself, sir.”

  The president nodded to the admiral, then turned to Ray. “Get me Hiccock on the double.”

  “On his way sir; turned him around as he was heading home.”

  ∞§∞

  Joey met Bill at the portico off the East Wing of the White House. “The shit’s hit the fan, Billy boy. The boat that picked up Brooke got attacked. The SECNAV is in there now with Admiral Shorn.”

  “Geez, I leave here for ten minutes and … is anybody hurt?”

  “Four crewmen wounded — one is critical. The boat’s limping back to Midway, and it’s got air cover and a support ship is zeroing in.”

  “Was Brooke hurt?”

  “Not from this attack, but she was pretty beat up when they took her aboard.”

  “Do we know who did it?”

  “No. But they’d either have to be real stupid or really looking to start World War Three.”

  “You think it’s the Russians?”

  “It was their junk we were trying to get. Brooke may have stumbled on to something in Malta and been a loose end they weren’t willing to let go of.”

  “Do we have her report?”

  “Not yet, what with the attack and all.”

  ∞§∞

  Two Navy Stallion helicopters flew in close formation above the crippled Nebraska as it made headway on one turbine back to Midway. Two F-18 Hornets, off the deck of the Enterprise, flew Combat Air Patrol ten thousand feet above, alternately topping off their tanks from KC-135 tankers out of Diego Garcia. The entire CAP was under the watchful eye of the TACAMO. The ‘Take Command and Move Out’ aircraft that was a flying command center for tactical operations. All this because a boomer and her mission were secret and silent; the Navy wasn’t comfortable with her exposed on the surface unable to submerge. So this elegant machine, this marvel of U.S. technology packed with the ultra-top secret systems, this battleship of the nuclear age, got the escort befitting her status as America’s random player in the still very deadly game of ‘who can launch and kill the other guy without getting too bloody a nose.’

  In her stateroom, Brooke was writing her report on USS Nebraska stationary when Mush knocked on the jamb. “May I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well Miss Burrell, now we are even. If that mine had gone off while we were submerged, none of us would have made it. So we may have saved you, but you saved our boat with that warning about the whale and the limpet.”

  “I felt the explosion. Is anyone hurt?”

  “Four men wounded, one seriously. Bennis got the worst of it. I’m watching him now, but he’s a tough sailor. He’ll beat it. No whale’s going to beach him.”

  “It sounds so Jules Verne; how can they use a whale like that?”

  “Well, whales are mammals, and most mammals can be trained. But…”

  “But what?”

  “There was something fishy about that whale.”

  “Did you capture it?”

  “No, it slipped back under and, as far as we can tell, hasn’t resurfaced.”

  “I heard shots fired.”

  “We laced into the thing and it stopped advancing for the second strike, but it was odd; not what you’d expect.”

  “How so?”

  “We hit it point blank with heavy weapons fire but there was no blood, no whale blubber, no mournful cry or spouting air hole… fishy!”

  “You know a bullet is deflected when it hits the water; maybe all you did was shock and sting it. Maybe they only lodged in the skin but didn’t perforate the layer of fat.”

  “Got to be something like that, ’cause it just sounds crazy, and they’re going to think I’m crazy when I report this to fleet.”

  “We’ll if they don’t believe you, we’ll run a Section Twenty-One B.O.I., and I’ll be a witness.”

  “How do you know about Naval Boards of Inquiries?”

  “I was JAG for four years out of Harvard Law.”

  “Wow, you are full of surprises. So how’d you go from being a Navy adjutant to FBI?”

  “I enlisted because my oldest brother Harley — I’ve got four brothers — died in the first Iraq war.”

  “I am sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you. Yeah, he and his platoon were in a firefight for twelve hours, and right before they were extracted, his corporal took a hit fifty yards from him. He scrambled over the wall they were using as cover and retrieved him. As he was lifting him back over the wall to safety, a sniper got him in the back. He didn’t make it back to the forward operating base.”

  “That must have been quite a loss for you.”

  “I was devastated; he was always there for me, pushing me to do better, caring about my feelings. He protected me in school when the boys weren’t so nice. And I’d swear, Captain, he was with me out there in the ocean.”

  “Sounds like a great guy; I would have liked to meet him.”

  “At his funeral, I just ma
de up my mind to enlist. Anyway, out of the Navy with my law degree, I was easy pickins’ for the FBI, so I survived Quantico and started up the glass ladder. And now I am floating around the vast Pacific with a character right out of Moby Dick, not to mention the big whale out there as well.”

  Mush straightened up a bit. “You don’t like the cut of my jib?”

  “Captain, you look like Hollywood’s idea of what a dashing scallywag of a captain should look like.”

  “In the Johnny Depp or Fred Thompson mold? Please say Depp, please say Depp.”

  “More like a young Harrison Ford with the beard from The Fugitive.”

  “I can live with that.”

  She smiled, “Me too.”

  The obligatory long moment passed between them and then Mush turned his brain back on. “And like, you’re not some picture mogul’s idea of a damsel in distress? Flailing about the ocean, stunning every man-child on the boat with a face that would relegate Helen of Troy to launching a thousand Staten Island ferries?”

  “Okay, this is starting to get a little thick in here. Truce, Captain?”

  “Thank God you called for it; that’s hard to do.”

  ∞§∞

  Hiccock was home by eight. He found Janice just putting 18-month-old Richard Ross Hiccock to bed. He was glad that tonight he made it home in time to catch the ritual. Afterward, he decided to put off going through his e-mails in favor of watching his old alma mater try to secure a berth in one of the many new college bowls. So many that now it seemed every team had a shot at being in at least the Corner Grocery Store Bowl. Still, a good ranking meant a school could attract better players, and Stanford was due for a new crop. His own playing time there was still a matter of much focus these days, due to his current stint as the science advisor to the president; mostly because he was the first science advisor anyone had ever heard of. To Bill it was a good trade-off; his grid-iron notoriety got people talking about science again, and his non-traditional route to his post, from college football quarterback to scientist serving the president, was a bit of glitter that gave the average science teacher, fighting for the attention of students, a little more “cool.”