Oceans of Fire

by Don Pendleton

  Everyone in the Computer Room was quiet for a moment. They all knew Wethers was right, and they all knew that the plan condemned Akira to certain death. “I don’t like the idea of launching an attack with Akira on the platform. I love that kid, but an overwhelming cruise missile strike that instantly wipes that platform and everyone on it off the planet is probably our best option. It is very likely Deyn would never even detect the strike before it hit. All information we have has indicated that Deyn has been collecting weapons but hasn’t deployed them stateside. If we’ve caught a break and the devices are on the platform, then there’s a good chance he’ll never get to detonate.”

  Carmen Delahunt didn’t like it. “This guy’s nuts, but he’s smart. We have to assume if he has the devices on the platform he’ll have them on a deadman’s switch for insurance.”

  Price was thinking the same. “All right, let’s assume it. All twenty-five thermonuclear demolition charges are on the platform and each device has been dialed to the maximum ten kilotons and is on a deadman’s switch. We either assault the platform or hit it with a strike and the devices detonate. What’s the worst-case scenario?” Price cocked her head. “Bear?”

  Kurtzman was furiously typing. “What? Oh.” He looked up distractedly and swiftly did the math. “Two hundred and fifty kilotons, given dead simultaneous detonations, or twenty-six kilotons, given a low-order detonation due to the missile strike.” He overlaid weather patterns on the map. “Since the detonations will take place out to sea, there’ll be little if any fallout except for insignificant bits of the platform itself. At twenty-six kilotons, damage from the blast itself would be fairly minimal. However, you would get a tsunami that would flood Cape Hatteras itself. The Cape natives would stand to take a significant dose of radiation, but by the same token the Cape Hatteras National Seashore would take the brunt of it. Take it to maximum, Cape Hatteras takes a horrible beating but damage to the continental United States would be minimal to nonexistent. The Cape acts as a buffer.”

  He resumed his speed-reading and scrolling.

  Price heaved a sight of relief. There was a glimmer of hope. “Deyn has to have those same figures, too. I’m willing to advise the President to negotiate for the surrender of the platform and the devices. Failing negotiation, I will advise for the cruise missile strike against the platform. I will also advise the immediate evacuation of Cape Hatteras.”

  Wethers shook his head unhappily. “Deyn will be monitoring the situation by satellite. If he detects an evacuation, he may detonate.”

  Price had considered that. “That will be for the President to decide, but given the Bear’s model, I believe those are the best options we can present.”

  Kurtzman stopped and looked up. His face had gone pale. “The model assumes that the nuclear devices are on the platform.”

  Price looked askance. “I know it’s not solid, but we have nothing that indicates any of the devices have been transferred to the continental United States.”

  “No.” He sighed. “I don’t believe they have.”

  “Then where are they?”

  Kurtzman opened up his file on the six-foot flat screen. Jaws began to drop around the room as the Stony Man cybernetic team read the file. Kurtzman nodded. “I believe at least some of them have been transferred to the Continental Shelf.”

  A light blinked over the radio at Price’s station. It was still monitoring the frequency of Akira’s last transmission. Price lunged for the button. “Akira!”

  A voice spoke in a cold, clipped German accent. “My name is Laurentius Deyn. I wish to speak with Aaron Kurtzman, the man known as the Bear. When I am finished, I strongly suggest you speak with the President of the United States.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The Situation Room, the White House

  Aaron Kurtzman tugged uncomfortably at his hand-painted Milanese tie. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d worn a suit. He could hardly remember the last time he’d left the Farm. He’d worn the suit only once before, and that was for a wedding. A Farm blacksuit who had been volunteered to assist him held a sealed white plastic bucket. Because Hal Brognola was indisposed, Kurtzman was about to directly address the President and his chief advisers. The Man’s secretary quietly picked up the phone, nodded and smiled.

  “The President will see you now, Mr. Kurtzman.”

  One of a pair of Secret Servicemen flanking the entrance like stone Buddhas suddenly smiled and opened the door. Kurtzman wheeled himself into the crisis center. The President, his VP and several of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and cabinet members were arrayed around the room. The President made no introductions and got straight to the point. “I’ve been briefed on the radio conversation between you and Mr. Deyn. Frankly, it sounds a bit fantastic to me. I understand you have researched the situation and run some simulations. Is what he’s threatening possible?”

  Kurtzman collected his thoughts. “Perhaps a little history would be useful, Mr. President.”

  “Make it brief, Mr. Kurtzman, and make it pithy.”

  The computer genius had been given access to a computer and the main screen in the crisis center. He plugged in and pulled up a photo of a forbidding thousand-foot-high rock cliff. “Ladies and Gentlemen, that is Storegga, or the ‘Big Edge’ in Norway. Storegga looms on the edge of the European Continental shelf. Storegga didn’t used to be a cliff. It used to be a peninsula. About eight thousand years ago the bottom of the shelf dropped out in an underwater landslide that was one of the greatest slides in Earth’s history. More than a thousand cubic miles of sediment and rock rolled downhill in a solid wave. When it moved, the landslide made a hole in the ocean into which the sea rushed down, hit bottom and then bounced back up. This propagated a tsunami of gigantic proportions. Waves of twenty-to fifty-foot heights flooded the coasts of Scotland and Iceland. In Norway itself the narrow fjords may have channeled and crested waves sixty-five to seventy-five feet high. When all was said and done, where there was once a shelf, there is now the thousand-foot cliff you see on the screen.”

  General Jack Harper Hayes stared long and hard at the cliff. “What caused the slide?”

  “You will have to forgive me, but this is the most direct way I know of demonstrating.” Kurtzman rolled up his sleeve and pulled on a rubber glove. He nodded to the Farm security man. “Chuck?”

  Chuck cracked the seal on the bucket and Kurtzman reached in. Everyone in the room gave a collective gasp of disgust as the overwhelming stench of rotting eggs filled the crisis center. Kurtzman held up what looked like a beslimed chunk of white-and-brown ice. “This is methane hydrate.”

  “Methane?” The President wrinkled his nose. “So, you have ice from cow gas.”

  “Close. But not ice, hydrate. I won’t bore you with details. The simple explanation is this. Storegga is solid rock. The great landslide started beneath it, in a weak layer of porous sediment, around the middle of the Continental Shelf. That sediment was held to together by methane hydrate.”

  General Hayes nodded. “So the sediment beneath the rock was locked up in hydrate, making it solid.”

  “Exactly, General. However, approximately eleven thousand years ago, the Earth was in a warming cycle, and the last ice sheets retreated from Norway and the Norwegian Sea. Atlantic seawater flowed in and began warming the sea bottom by about nine degrees Fahrenheit. Now, it took about three thousand years for that warming to propagate down through the base of the hydrate stability zone. That’s the level where the methane is always on the verge of becoming gas.”

  General Hayes sat back in his chair, his combat engineer’s mind chewing the problem. “So, the methane hydrate warmed, went from solid to gas and bubbled up, leaving all the sediment with no support and billions of tons of rock on top of it.”

  “Indeed, General. It was most likely took a very long time, bits of the hydrate going gaseous in burps and belches, but, when enough of it escaped the shelf, the shelf collapsed and slid.”

  Kurtzman pulled up anot
her picture. It was all dark blacks and grays and whites, like a black-and-white orbital photo of Mars pocked with valleys and craters. “These are underwater photos of the Continental Shelf just north of the Storegga headwall. Some of these cracks are three miles wide and fifty feet deep. Notice the pockmark-like cratering. Geologists believe that’s where the methane went gaseous and escaped.”

  The Secretary of State gazed greenly at the chunk of hydrate in Chuck’s hand. “Can that go back in the bucket now?”

  “One last thing.” Kurtzman nodded to his assistant. “Chuck?”

  Chuck pulled out a lighter, chinked it open and lit it with a snap of his fingers. He waved the lighter beneath the chunk, and pale yellow flame instantly flared and licked upward around the gooey rock. “Methane hydrate burns at very low temperatures, and can melt and go gaseous at a thousand feet below the surface. Some scientists postulate that an earthquake actually started the slide, but no one questions the fact that the melting hydrates set up Storegga for the disaster.”

  The President of the United States watched as Chuck plunged the burning methane hydrate back into the bucket and sealed the lid. “And Deyn has embedded thermonuclear demolition charges into the methane hydrate ridge off Cape Hatteras.”

  “That’s what he’s claiming. As I’ve said, the circumstances that set up the Storegga slide took thousands of years, and the gas bubbled up and escaped in fits and starts. Some scientists think the slide took hours, others think it happened slowly over days or even weeks. Deyn has threatened to light off the entire Hatteras hydrate ridge like a firecracker, instantly, with twenty-five thermonuclear devices.”

  The President’s face was stone. “Damage estimates?”

  “I’ve only had an hour to run the simulations, but even best-case scenario, it’s bad, Mr. President, very bad.”

  “Give me worst case.”

  “Very well.” Kurtzman took a deep breath. “Even if he’s only emplaced a few weapons, the fact is there is a very good chance that the entire hydrate ridge will catch fire. It has never been completely mapped, but it is extensive. Marine geologists caused quite a stir in the scientific community when they discovered cracks and pockmarks much like the ones off Norway at the edge of the Continental Shelf near Cape Hatteras.”

  “Damage, Mr. Kurtzman.”

  “If the Cape Hatteras shelf slides, the entire Mid-Atlantic seaboard will be submerged beneath vast tsunamis. As I mentioned before, the fjords in Norway made the Storegga tsunamis worse. Geographic features can funnel a wave like rapids in a river. An immense wave, and possibly a series of them, will roar up Chesapeake Bay, splitting and gaining size and velocity as they hit Point Lookout on the inland tip of Maryland. By the time the waves reach the mouth of the Potomac they could be one hundred feet high.”

  Everyone in the crisis center realized the room they sat in could be submerged at any moment.

  “It should also be kept in mind that rather than a gradual escape of gas, this deluge will be caused by possibly twenty-five ten-kiloton nuclear devices. You will all recall during the South Asia tsunami large inland stretches of land at sea level were covered with mud and sediment. In this instance, much of that mud will be radioactive, underwater fallout if you will, and it will inundate the Mid-Atlantic soil and water table. Even in a best-case scenario, Mr. President, Laurentius Deyn has designed a nuclear and geological disaster of biblical proportions, and it could happen at any moment. After this briefing I strongly suggest you and the Joint Chiefs get into Air Force One and get off the ground immediately.”

  The crisis center sat stunned.

  Kurtzman sighed. “I must also point out that IESHEN Group erected their research station off Cape Hatteras in 2002. I’ve been working on this problem for the past two hours. Mr. Deyn has had years to plan this situation to inflict absolute maximum damage.”

  “Mr. Kurtzman, this government, like every government before it, has maintained a policy of no negotiations with terrorists.”

  “I believe it would be useful in this situation, Mr. President, to remember that Laurentius Deyn is not a terrorist. He has no political agenda. He blames Washington for the screw-up that cost him his sons. The commander of the mission is a retired colonel. He lives on beachfront property on Chesapeake Bay. Deyn is a madman, bent on revenge. Stopping him is our only option. Any negotiations he may engage in will be feints or simple stalls for time.”

  “So, we hit the platform with a cruise missile strike, hope there’s no deadman’s switch and pray for a partial or low-order surface detonation.”

  The vice president didn’t like it. “We still lose three towns on the Cape.”

  General Hayes closed his eyes, hating the words coming out of his mouth. “Considering the scope of the situation, I would have to advise that those are acceptable losses.”

  The President rubbed his temples. “I am very open to a Plan B.”

  Everyone in the crisis center stared at one another.

  Kurtzman cleared his throat.

  “Tell me you have a plan, Mr. Kurtzman.”

  Harebrained scheme was a more apt description. “We’ve had an idea, Mr. President, but we’ll have to move fast.”

  Patuxent Naval Air Test Center, Maryland

  “THERE YOU HAVE IT, GENTLEMEN.” John “Cowboy” Kissinger and Gadgets Schwarz stood proudly in front of what they had wrought. Mack Bolan, Able Team and Phoenix Force stood at a table covered with maps and charts, staring past them at the hot-pink monstrosities hanging on the racks. Four massive, bulbous pressure suits half again the size of a man stood like giant cyclopean robots inside the hangar.

  A highly perplexed looking naval officer stood with Barbara Price.

  Schwarz was still heavily bandaged from his injuries in Berlin. They hadn’t kept him from feverishly working with Kissinger. “These are Hardsuit 2000s, fully autonomous, anthropomorphic, atmospheric diving suits, or ADS. Capable of diving as deep as two thousand feet.” Schwarz pointed to what looked like four electric fans anchored on the back and waist of the suits. “You have two 2.25 horsepower thruster modules, two directed vertically, two horizontally, which are controlled by footpads within the suit. These allow you to fly through the water or maintain station within a current.”

  McCarter stared at the monstrosities. “How do you move the bloody things?”

  “Normally you couldn’t. The suits weigh hundreds of pounds, but the arms and legs each have four hydraulically compensated rotary joints that will allow you to move the limbs. You’ll find they’re surprisingly flexible.”

  Calvin James had seen such suits before. “What’s the duration of the life support?”

  “Six hours without external resupply. That should be more than enough to get down to depth, do the job and get back up. You’re bringing your own pressurized environment down with you, so decompression isn’t a problem.”

  “None of us has any experience in one of these.” James glanced at the naval officer. “Why don’t trained Navy divers handle it?”

  Commander Lloyd Cole was a short man who might as well have had the word “Diver” tattooed to his forehead. “That was my initial response, as well. However, I am informed that this will be a combat mission. My men who are trained on these suits are trained in submarine rescue and salvage. I’m told you men have a great deal of experience in unusual situations such as this. My job is to get you up to speed on these suits ASAP.”

  “Which brings us to armament options.” Kissinger took a wooden pointer and indicated the ugly black implements that had been strapped on both arms of each suit. “We had exactly six hours to work these up, and we had to do it without degrading the suits’ structural integrity, so it’s all strapped on and operated with pulleys. On the right arm of each suit is a Russian APS underwater assault rifle. Most of you have fired one before. The bad news is, as you can see, the suits’ hands are little more than pincers, so reloading isn’t an option. You have twenty-six rounds in the magazine and that’s it. Your trigger is a
simple cable between your claw and the rifle’s trigger housing. Turning your manipulator claw all the way down, like flexing your wrist, will pull the cable taut and fire the weapon. It will be slow, and getting on and off the trigger will be problematic. I give you no more than two bursts at best. That’s the lightning.”

  Kissinger tapped the left arm of a suit and the pair of rails and cylinders strapped to it. “This is the thunder. Two Russian RKG-M antitank grenades just like you used in Moscow. The trigger is the same as the rifles. You crank the manipulator claw all the way to the right and it will pull the cable taut enough to trigger the first piston. The piston will shove the rail and the grenade mounted on it two feet forward of the suit’s claw and at the same time pull the grenade pin. There’s a magnetic ring on the edge of the grenade as well as waterproof adhesive. With a good seal you should get a proper detonation, and even if you don’t, the effect should still be ugly at a short distance. Turning your manipulator claw all the way to the left will extend and fire the second charge.”

  James’s mind was running the situation like the trained underwater warrior he was. “What kind of opposition are we expecting?”

  Price picked up the ball. “We can’t be sure. Deyn has stated if he hears any kind of approach above or below water he will detonate, so we have to assume he’s got passive sonar as well as being able to ping if he wants. The submarine USS Virginia has been sitting and listening passively off station. As you’ve read in the dossiers, we’ve heard construction noises down on the ridge. Their computer has logged all sounds, and we have detected at least six different motor signatures that match the thrusting modules on the ADSs you see before you. So you have to expect men suited up the same as you. There have also been several different submersible noises. They don’t match anything in the sonar sound catalog so we have to assume they are private craft developed by IESHEN Group. What kind of armament they have down there, we just don’t know. If they’re placing nukes, then you can expect them to have drills and other equipment that they could turn hostile pretty quickly. Regardless, you’re all going to have to get very close to inflict any hurt on one another.”