“But how did you know?” Warren asked.
“Let me see your pack,” Charles ordered.
“See this lump sewn in the side pocket? It’s the guts out of your pair of marine band walkie-talkies. I listened to every word you said on every trip out from the time you left ‘til the time you got back. And while you slept, I swapped batteries. I didn’t ask your sorry permission for two reasons. One – you would’ve said no. And two, you don’t have the right to tell me no. So, now, here I am and you can just kiss my fat rear if ya don’t like it.”
“How did you get that started?” Wattenbarger asked, looking at the pickup admiringly.
“Opened the door and turned the ignition. The keys were in it. And you guys think you’re such geniuses…”
“Lance, Lance… where’s Alex?” Mel asked, her voice clear and energetic. “You didn’t leave him alone in that cave, did you?”
Charles suddenly looked afraid as the rain poured all about them.
“What?” Wattenbarger asked, alarmed.
“I locked him up,” Charles whispered.
“You did what?” Warren asked.
“I had to. I couldn’t leave him alone and didn’t want him wanderin’ around outside lookin’ for us. So I locked him up. I stuffed him in Marbles’ travelin’ cage and padlocked it. I told him it’s like a little fort and I left a movie goin’ for him.”
“Good work!” Warren said sincerely. “Good thinkin’!”
“Lance, can you hear me?” Mel asked.
“He’s just fine,” Warren said. “He’s okay.”
As he was speaking, Lance stepped around inside the truck and pulled out a small chainsaw. “You know, the running all over hell’s mountain in the freaking dark wasn’t as bad as toting this.”
“My chainsaw!” Warren beamed. “You brought my chainsaw!”
“Yeah, and it ain’t for cuttin’ off her leg, either, Dr. Dog-Crap-for-Brains,” Charles said, looking insolently at Wattenbarger.
“Let’s go. Time’s a wastin,” Warren said, snatching the saw out of Charles’ hand and pulling on the rope. It started on the first tug, springing to life with a roar and a
cloud of oil-laced smoke.
Wattenbarger leapt to the top of the pile. “Hand it to me!” he shouted urgently.
Warren passed the noisy, rattling, smoking beast up to his outstretched hands. “Be careful how you cut the logs. The big one is trying to roll up over the top. So judge the force vectors before you cut and understand how they’ll separate.”
“Got it,” Wattenbarger said, but it was clear he had already worked that calculus.
“You guys can’t even use a chainsaw without a calculator,” Charles complained.
Warren looked back at Charles, then suddenly embraced him. “Oh my God! Oh my dear God! I’m so incredibly happy to see you, my friend. It’s so fantastic just to hear your voice!”
Charles pushed him away stiffly. “When the day comes that I want a hug from a crotchety old cracker, I’ll let you know.”
Warren just smiled in return. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but, Damn, son, you’re my hero!” Then he leapt up to the mound to help pull Mel out.
The saw roared to life under the able hands of Wattenbarger. In four minutes, there was a loud pop and the log that held Mel’s leg snapped and separated, releasing her.
Warren quickly pulled her up to the top of the pile where Charles gripped her shoulders, and pulled her down to the wet asphalt.
Wattenbarger followed an instant later and shut the chain saw down. His flashlight beam ran down the length of her lower leg. The knee had been crushed and the tissue was a deep blue.
Charles looked at Mel’s leg and held his breath.
Warren looked at Wattenbarger’s eyes. It was clear to everyone that the amputation may only have been delayed.
“Let’s get out of here,” Charles said.
“I’ll start off carrying her,” Warren said. “Every four minutes we’ll swap off. That way we can run at out most efficient pace.”
“It’s too late for that,” Charles said. “We have to take the truck.”
“No!” Warren snapped. “We already had that conversation!”
“Yeah, and I heard every word of it!” Charles responded. “And, for your information, I agreed with you back then, you were right. But now you’re wrong. Yeah, the road may be blocked and yeah, we’re goin’ back home a different and untried way. But we’re out of minutes to hoof it back and we won’t make it. So shut up and get in the truck; I’m drivin’.”
“He’s right, Lew, so let’s stop wasting time arguing for a change and get in. If we try and run it we’ll be in the full light of the sun for an hour and won’t make it. And we have to make it, Alex is locked in Marbles’ cage.”
“Whatever,” Warren relented with a sigh, obviously at the end of his energy, his emotions and his will to be in charge.
“Alex is what?” Mel asked, alarm grabbing her attention from her stupor of pain and shock.
“Alex is locked in Marbles cage so he wouldn’t escape the cave and go out lookin’ for us,” Charles confessed in a gush. “I’m sorry.”
“You did the right thing, Lance,” Mel smiled weakly. “I’m so happy you thought of that!”
“Then you’re not mad that I left your son in a dog cage?”
“He’s safe; that’s all that counts.”
“Hey, you think I may make a good father one of these days?” Charles asked.
“Oh yeah, oh yeah… just drive the truck, Lance,” Wattenbarger responded, biting his tongue to keep from saying what he really desperately wanted to say. Then he lifted Mel off the road and into his arms. “We get the back seat.”
They folded the pair into the tiny back seat of the pickup, and Warren rode shotgun as Charles gunned the engine and backed into the compound. He then drove along the length of the driveway’s high fence. Once clear of the pile of trees, Charles crashed though the fence, drove across the undersized ditch and onto the road.
Warren nervously glanced at his watch. On a good day, they could drive around both mountains on US Highway 64 to the base of Concharty Mountain , abandon the truck and run up its slope in about half an hour. But none of them knew what lay ahead. He earnestly prayed that the massive tornado that had devastated the mountain top had dumped its pile south of the route they needed to drive on. If it left anything at all on the highway or on the back roads they would have to use, they would never be able to make it to shelter in time. If anything blocked the miles of road that lay ahead of them, if they had a flat, or if they broke down for any reason, they would all die together in the brilliant first light of the Oklahoma morning sunrise.
As the truck roared away from the mountaintop toward the safety of their cave so many miles down the uncertain road ahead, the rain stopped and the clouds began to part. And through the nearly invisible wafting mist, they could see the first light of morning glowing just at the edge of the eastern sky.
67
Ten days had passed since Aaron Seven had ordered Pacifica to general quarters. The Chinese submarine Jiang Zemin , SSGN 421, had vanished without a trace into the Pacific void. The Leviathan and Phoenix both circled silently around Pacifica in coordinated, vigilant orbits, straining to the limits of their sonic detection capabilities for any sign of the Chicom submarine, but in ten days, there was no trace of it.
Inside Pacifica , the crew had been dutifully observing general quarters as best they could manage. But being cramped in their lifeboat stations with inadequate ventilation and air conditioning and a loss of privacy, the situation had become nearly intolerable. On three occasions, lifeboat compartments had sent emergency requests to Seven to relax general quarters – even for just 24 hours – to allow the crew to shower and stretch. And in the children’s lifeboat, the situation was even more extreme. Lacey Skillshakle had personally appealed to Seven as several children were now exhibiting signs of clinical depression.
B
ut Seven’s alternate sensibility would not relent and give in to the mounting pressure, even from his mother. He knew that if the Chicom submarine they referred to as the 421, fired even a single torpedo at Pacifica , it would be over before they could react. The Shkval torpedo would approach them at more than 230 miles per hour wrapped in an envelope of supercavitating gas. From the moment the torpedo was fired from the 421 at a distance of three miles, they would only have a total warning time of just over 45 seconds – not even long enough to sound an alarm or close a single watertight door. If they relaxed their guard for even a brief period of time and just one door was left ajar, all of them could die in less than a minute, lifeboat or not.
And yet, Seven also knew that the lifeboat stations were never designed for full time occupation by so many. He realized that the conditions there were becoming unbearable and that the human psyche was not configured to tolerate the stress indefinitely. He also knew that the time would come when he would have to take the chance and relax his guard. He struggled with just how to do it and when.
Seven looked about the Command Center . All the emergency stations were fully manned, and beside him sat Serea who never left his side. Both of them slept on the Command Center’s floor, taking turns operating the complex hub that would give them first warning of an attack. But as Seven’s eyes scanned about, he also knew that in the event of at attack, everyone in this room was doomed and would not have any chance of survival at all. That was why Professor Desmond with his ever-present assistant, the Commander, and Sean Conlin had been sent to a lifeboat station. If the Command Center was destroyed with Seven and Serea inside, they would have to assume leadership of the remnants of Pacifica .
There were two vital, uncompromising reasons that the Command Center had to be manned. One was to execute both a defensive and offensive strategy with the Leviathan and the Phoenix . The other was that all the life support and power systems had to be managed from there. If the Command Center was blown apart and the life boat systems survived, they would then have to manage from their back up emergency systems – a tenuous and iffy technical proposition, at best.
“Serea,” Seven said softly to his wife who sat shoulder to shoulder next to him at the command console.
“Yes, my dear?” she responded.
“Let’s see what we can do to work up a plan to relax general quarters,” Seven cautiously offered. “What do you think about opening up one lifeboat section at a time for two hour shifts in the main dome?”
“Ah, so Captain Bligh wakes up one morning with a conscience!” Serea responded with a crooked grin. “And I thought this was going to be just another day of random floggings.”
“May I point out that a real possibility of my outrageous leniency,” Seven returned without pause, “is that everyone leaving their lifeboat stations is subject to instantaneous drowning if we’re attacked while they’re talking their slothful leave?”
“Do we actually attach that warning to the tour brochures or just let them find it out on their own?”
“Start with the children,” Seven rejoined seamlessly. “Women and children get to drown first.”
“And I suppose that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with your mother’s voice hissing dire threats and warnings into your ear.”
“If you were cooped up with all those kids, you’d be hissing in my ear, too,” Seven defended.
“I’m sorry; it’s not my job to actually hiss in your ear…” Serea said serenely. “It’s more like whisper or gently blow...”
“Sir, the Phoenix has just swapped SROV-com 12 for SROV-com 16 on the commo duty station,” said a voice from the console behind them. The Sonic-ROV’s were acting as highly directional communications satellites orbiting between the constantly shifting positions of the Leviathan and the Phoenix . This enabled full communications between their three positions without alerting any outside submarines, other hostile forces in the area, or sharing their discussions with whomever else may be eaves dropping.
“Roger that,” Seven acknowledged, then said to Serea, “How about calling up each of the lifeboat station commanders and setting up times for relaxing the general quarters?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to make that call?” Serea asked. “Whoever actually does it will become an instant hero around here, and your image may need some rehabilitation at this point.”
“Sir, excuse me, I have an incoming priority message from the Phoenix ,” the watch officer interrupted.
“Patch it through,” Seven said, snapping his headset over his ears.
The communication from the SROV’s underwater circuit came through the plastic earpiece as a garbled, static-laced voice that sounded like it was echoing inside a long, hollow pipe. “Aaron, we’ve got a contact headed our way,” said Legend’s metallic voice.
“Any ideas?” Seven asked crisply.
“Yeah – it’s big and it’s fast; it can only be our Chicom bugger number 421. He’s back for real and he’s crashing the party like a Jap biker at a Harley convention.”
“Does the Leviathan have the word?”
“Yeah… yeah… he’s on the line with us now.”
“Bill, are you ready to execute our plan?”
“Yes, Dr. Seven, I believe we’re ready. We see him on our passive sensors and we’re positioning ourselves now.”
“Do you think he can see you?”
“Negative… or at least I don’t think he can. We were ready for him long before he made his approach. And he’s coming at us with a purpose, cavitating prop and no noise abatement at all.”
“Striker, you positioned for the strike?” Seven drilled in quick paced words.
“Yep, we’re deploying the killer bots as we speak.”
“Serea, pass the word to the life boat stations: this is it. Make double…triple sure that each station checks and rechecks their watertight hatches. Lock ‘em down and stand by to rock and roll. And get Edgar up here, on the double,” Seven ordered.
“She’s on her way,” Serea responded, her fingers dancing over the keys that opened the circuits up to each lifeboat station simultaneously. She began to speak instructions softly and calmly into her microphone.
“Okay team, this is what we’ve been drilling for. The 421 is waltzing right into our web,” Seven said aloud to the assembled team in the Command Center .
“Contact slowing,” the watch officer intoned. “Two and a half nautical miles out and slowing at 175 degrees true.”
“Be sure and make your reports to Leviathan and Phoenix as we planned,” Seven said, now pacing across the large upper deck of the Command Center . His eyes raised themselves to the huge color monitors mounted above his head. On them he could see the position of the oncoming submarine and the positions of the Leviathan and the Phoenix as well as the constellation of shifting ROVs of various shapes and sizes.
“We have a positive ID on the contact,” said the voice of Bill Harper from the Leviathan. “It’s the Chinese nuclear boat alright, the Jiang Zemin, SSGN 421. It’s the same boat, same skipper, same crew, unless they swapped personnel in Singapore.”
“Roger that,” Seven acknowledged. “We’re ready for him this time ‘round.”
“Continuing to slow,” came the report.
“Our only hope is that the skipper wants to cut a deal. If he starts firing without talking, we’re finished,” Seven reminded the Command Center . He needed time to get the Leviathan to her firing position without being noticed and to allow the relatively slow ROVs to make it from the Phoenix to the submarine, which had to be dead still in the water for them to approach, rendezvous and position themselves adjacent to her hull.
“Loud cavitation, engines reversing,” the watch officer reported, indicating the great ship might indeed stop as they had planned.
Seven’s eyes drifted back to the panel. The Leviathan was moving with an awful slowness into its position directly behind the bulk of Pacifica to shield it from detection by the enemy’s sonar. The h
uge Leviathan could only move so fast, or else give her position away by her propeller and engine vibrations. The original plan was to shield the Leviathan with the Phoenix’s SROVs, but there were not enough of the bots to meet the cloaking needs of both craft and still have enough left over to carry the mini explosives to the hull of the 421. The only way the plan could succeed was for the Chinese skipper to be worried about the position of the Leviathan and know nothing about the presence of the Phoenix .
“3000 yards and slowing.”
Seven’s mind did the calculus and saw that the Chinese boat would slow to a stop in exactly the same position as it had before, just in front of their wide windows. But he was certain that the skipper would be in a somewhat different frame of mind this time and may well fire his torpedoes before he came to a complete stop. If he did that, the rest of their lives would be measured in but fractions of a second.
With that thought, an ear piercing tone echoed throughout the Command Center , the sound of the Chinese submarine’s bone jarring sonar ping painting them and the ocean around them with a brilliant spike of acoustic energy. It was a move they had planned for.
“2200 yards, still slowing.”
Seven’s eyes scanned the panel above him. He could see the computer’s representation of the sonic cone that emanated from the boat. Startlingly, it had painted the last few feet of the Leviathan just as it rounded the northern limits of Pacifica ’s acoustic shadow. He could also see nine of Phoenix ’s Slave ROVs flying together in tight formation away from the Phoenix toward the Chinese sub, each carrying their load of high explosives.
“1800 yards, sir.”
Seven’s eyes carefully scanned the plot over him. The Chinese sub was on a direct approach from the south. It clearly showed the Leviathan ducking behind the main sphere to the north. The Phoenix hung back to the south east quadrant, painfully far away, her little bomb toting ROV bots slugging toward what Legend obviously thought was going to be the position of the sub just as she slowed to a stop. The scenario was unfolding just as if they had written it in a carefully planned script. They had, in fact, discussed this very development over and over. There were many variables, of course, such as from which direction the sub would approach, whether she would fire upon and destroy Pacifica from a distance, or if the Chinese were bent on occupation. All bets were on the latter and their defensive strategy was so devised, because if the 421 wanted them dead, they would have little say in the matter.
Quantum Storms - Aaron Seven Page 62
