One more time, Lee and Wild Bill Donovan had to show their identification, which was matched against a set of orders just received from Washington. Each man was allowed to pass into the darkness of the bunker.
Lee was quicker than Donovan to examine the inside of the bunker and its many occupants. Each naval technician sat at a console with scopes and electronic instruments that failed to be familiar to Garrison. Armed shore patrolmen were stationed along the far wall and watched all personnel with a wary eye. Lee shook his head and then stepped to the front. Leaning close to a radar tech, he saw outside, through a thick pane of glass, the bay. All shipping had been moved, and all viewing access to the water had been blocked by large cranes hoisting tent-sized tarps into the sky. In the middle of all of this was a brand-new destroyer escort. It was one Lee recognized immediately, as it was just featured in one of last year’s Look magazine articles. The USS Eldridge, a new breed of fast destroyer, sat majestically in the closed and calm waters of the navy yard. Lee stiffened when he noticed the crew of the Eldridge was placed along the railings of her deck. Her proud five-inch gun turrets looked as if they were manned and ready. Lee turned to Donovan.
“She’s fully crewed,” he said as if in astonishment.
Donovan turned to Harold Stark, who had sat down in a large chair toward the back of the bunker with two of his assistants.
“Didn’t you read the report we sent you in regard to the suspected German casualties?”
Stark gestured to a man in a white lab coat. “Professor Williston says what you described in your report was not feasible. Impossible is the word I believed he used. Isn’t that right, Professor?”
The short man turned and removed his glasses. He gestured toward Lee and Donovan. “These are the men?”
Stark smiled and nodded. The professor placed his hands on his hips and glared at the two civilian-dressed security men.
“I’ll have you know I had to answer questions for a solid three days after your report was sent to us. You made many people around here nervous with your propaganda.”
“Propaganda? Why, you little—” Lee reached out and took Donovan by the arm to calm him. The burly man relaxed and then shot Stark a look.
“It was my report, boss,” Garrison said as he calmly looked at the much smaller professor, who saw that maybe he shouldn’t be too accusatory.
“Needless to say, your fears are groundless, gentlemen. Our preliminary tests have shown us nothing but promise.”
“Why the full crew? Why not just the staff you need to make the attempt?” Lee asked.
“Because we have other readings we have to assess. Can the crew be hidden as well as the vessel? What are the initial effects of light bending on the human body? They are all volunteers, Colonel Lee. Not one man is on board that ship that does not wish to be.”
Lee and Donovan remained silent.
“Thirty seconds to generator start-up, Professor.”
The man turned with excitement and went to the machinist mate who had just informed him it was now time to commence what the world would come to know as the Philadelphia Experiment.
* * *
The USS Eldridge sat silently as her crew heard the warning siren sound. Men went to railings, and others vanished belowdecks to witness one of the great scientific achievements in world history.
Again, the blare of the siren sounded. Once, twice, and finally a third time. Four men had gathered at the fantail and watched as the men and scientists lining the quay disappeared into other bunkers for protection. The men felt the generators far below in the engine spaces start up. The hair on their arms rose straight up. The hair under the caps also pushed against the resistance of being held in place. The current of air smelled of thick ozone. Electricity sparked against steel bulkheads and railings.
Above the Eldridge, the skies darkened as suddenly as if a curtain had been pulled down upon a stage. Rain started to fall, and the wind increased by thirty miles per hour.
* * *
“We have a very serious formation of rain clouds slamming the coastal areas. The center of the storm is calculated to be right there!” The technician was pointing out of the thick glass at the now bobbing USS Eldridge.
“You still think this is a natural phenomenon, Dr. Frankenstein?” Lee asked as he, too, pointed at the weather developing outside.
“Commence power pulse!”
An acknowledgment came back from the destroyer. Before anyone could protect themselves, a loud, eardrum-piercing scream sounded, which brought those standing to their knees in pain.
“Damn!” Donovan shouted, and even Admiral Stark yelped and covered his ears.
A pressure wave of air expanded outward from the now heavily rocking Eldridge. Rain started to slant as the wind speed increased to eighty-five miles per hour. Men were shouting out readings, trying desperately to be heard above the din. Bolts of lightning shot from the forward superstructure of the Eldridge. Men were tossed about as if the ship were in a heavy sea.
“Start the generators!” the professor yelled into the radio. Try as they might, they could not hear the response from the ship.
A bright, electric-blue circle of light surrounded the Eldridge and then went outward like the spokes of a wheel. The light slammed into the dock area so hard that sandbags were dislodged. Dust and dirt fell from the plywood ceiling, and men ducked as the light and pressure wave struck the thickened reinforced glass of the bunker. Lee tackled Donovan as the world went bright with white light as the glass exploded inward.
It was a man screaming words Lee couldn’t understand that made him move. Garrison helped Donovan to his feet as the scene quickly faded down to a dull light.
“My God, she’s gone!” a voice called out as rain soon found its way into the damaged bunker.
Men scrambled to their feet as technicians who had been terrified only a moment before were now pointing and shouting with glee. Lee looked at Harold Stark as he was assisted to the now empty window frame.
“You did it, Professor. She’s actually vanished!” Stark exclaimed.
Lee and Wild Bill watched as the harbor waters settled. There was a wide circle of white foam that filled the area where the Eldridge had lain at anchor. She was gone. Lee looked at Donovan and both men were speechless.
“Radar?”
“No contact!” came the reply filled with glee.
“Sonar?”
“All clear. Just the usual harbor floor clutter.”
The professor finally allowed Stark to turn him, and the two men shook hands. Other technicians joined in as the revelry was a charging tool for the men who had been frightened beyond measure only a minute before.
Lee slapped a console in front of him. The loud bang stopped the revelry as all eyes turned to the large man.
“Congratulations. Now do you have a way to get them back?”
The professor looked at Lee as if he were addressing a child of limited learning abilities.
“The generators will automatically shut down after a one-minute duration.”
Before anyone could comment, the weather once more turned ugly, and this time, it hit with a vengeance. More sandbags lining the bunker caved in, and these took several of the shore patrolmen down.
The electrical pulse shorted everything out. Lights, radar systems, sonar, all went down. Rain was horizontal as all was inundated with water from the hurricane-force winds that lashed the navy yard.
A tremendous pop sounded and made the men and women inside the bunker bend over. Most were nauseated beyond endurance, and most gave up their breakfasts.
Garrison Lee was first to raise his head up and see the outside world as the winds lashed the harbor. Waves washed over the empty dock areas, and many men were pulled back into the sea. Then he saw the impossible. The USS Eldridge reappeared.
The world had now opened a door that might not be able to be closed again.
“Recorder!” the professor yelled as the storm outside began to diminish in s
trength.
“Recorders are nonfunctional!”
“Then write this down,” the professor called out angrily as Harold Stark was looking beyond him at the most amazing sight he had ever seen in his life. “On this date, October 28, 1943, the United States destroyer escort USS Eldridge, DE-173, was successfully hidden from radar and visual detection. Mission, success!”
Everyone inside started clapping and cheering as they all proudly looked on. The Eldridge was steaming hot in the cold waters of the harbor. She was blanketed in a thickening fog that almost completely hid her from sight. Again, it was Garrison Lee who saw the first signs of trouble.
“What have you done?” he asked no one as his thick fingers grasped the broken window seal as the full image of the Eldridge came into clear view.
“My God. I guess this answers the question of Can we go too far?, doesn’t it, Slim?” Donovan said as he joined Garrison at the window. He turned and his eyes fixed on Admiral Stark.
Garrison examined the smoking, steaming hulk of the Eldridge and found he couldn’t breathe.
“Is this what you imagined your phase shift would look like, you maniacs?” Donovan asked angrily as he turned to the visibly shaken professor.
“Yes, sir. The bending of light by electromagnetic fields, rendering massive interference to any radar in the world, essentially blinding them, is now a fact, even if … if…” The words trailed off. His statement was like he was rendering it by rote without his usual enthusiasm.
“But something has obviously gone very wrong,” Lee said as if to finish the professor’s weak statement.
“No, no, no,” Stark said as he tried not to look at the smoldering Eldridge. “It went right, better than anyone could ever have imagined. It did vanish from every radar within three miles of the shipyard. You saw it yourself, Donovan. It just disappeared. Went away. It came back seventy-five seconds later. From my viewpoint, it was a rousing success that just may win this war for us.”
Donovan stepped forward but was stopped by two naval shore patrolmen before he could throttle the admiral.
“Look at that! You call that a success?”
Below, men were seen half in, half out of steel bulkheads. Sailors had died in agony as they had been exposed to the phase shift’s power, the exact same outcome Donovan and Lee had warned the navy of. Now it was there for all to see. All sailors abovedecks had been fried to death by men of their own nation.
As they watched, men were rushing aboard without regard to their own safety. Security, shipmates who had been left ashore for the testing, and other naval personnel crowded the decks as they rushed to help those men hideously killed by the power of the experiment.
Stark couldn’t help it any longer, his argument about the success of the experiment no longer viable as he bent at the waist and vomited.
Lee swallowed hard as he watched men below trying to remove several bodies from the Eldridge’s superstructure. Sailors were buried half in, half out of her decks and her bulkheads, and all were burned to a crisp. This last observation was causing several of the men attempting at cutting the bodies free to lean over and vomit. This was happening the entire 306 feet of the brand-new destroyer.
Colonel Lee pushed several security personnel away from the collapsed opening. Many were assisting Admiral Stark as he also tried to get out. Lee felt Wild Bill Donovan grabbing his suit jacket as the two men made it out into the hazy light of day. The weather had magically cleared, and with just the exception of the heavy ozone smell of electricity, all was seemingly normal.
Lee grabbed one of the shore patrolmen by the arm as he ran by and directed him to assist several sailors who had been washed over the pier railing by the tremendous backwash of seawater as the Eldridge returned from its maiden voyage to somewhere. His eyes fell on the destroyer sitting three hundred yards away. Steam was still rising from her superstructure, and even as he watched, the strong anchor chain on her bow crashed down into the sea. The large ship swayed both to the starboard and then port as she settled into her watery placement. Boats of all sizes were rushing to her now settling hulk. Lee saw one of these whaleboats as they cast off with a slew of medical personnel aboard.
“Don’t go out there!” Donovan ordered as he adjusted his eyesight to the scene before him. Wild Bill had taken Lee’s arm in his to try to stay him from boarding the whaleboat.
Garrison removed Donovan’s hand and then ran toward the accelerating boat. He jumped the six feet from the pier to the now moving boat. He crashed down inside and was helped to a sitting position by two navy medics. Lee’s eyes settled on the fast approaching Eldridge. The ship was hissing steam jets. The capacitors lining the sides of her hull were so hot that the gray paint covering her hull plates sizzled and then burst into small flames, and then as the capacitors burned out, they went dead of power. This was happening the entire length of the destroyer.
“What in the hell happened?” one of the naval medics said. The closer they got to the Eldridge, the more of the horrors became visible.
“The price of being gods,” Lee mumbled, confusing those aboard who heard the obscure comment.
Garrison saw many of the rescuers who had already boarded were in the process of throwing up. Many were on their knees. Some even wept as they came across their fellow seamen scorched and charred. The whaleboat slowed, and then Lee, not waiting, jumped to the boarding ramp that fronted her starboard side.
Gaining the deck, Lee couldn’t help it. He also bent over as his stomach threatened to disgorge the breakfast he had eaten three hours earlier. He allowed his stomach to settle. The smell of scorched flesh kept that little maneuver in check until he gradually became used to the smell. The man’s eyes were wide as he was being spoken to by a kid no older than nineteen. The sailor was holding the man’s hand and talking calmly to him.
“We need men over here!” came a shout not far away. Garrison looked up and saw medics running toward the stairs that led to the bridge wing of the destroyer. “Cutting torches! We need cutting torches over here!”
Lee scrambled and turned the corner on the charred decking. He came to a screeching halt when he saw one of the Eldridge’s crewmen. The man was buried up to his chest in burned teakwood. The deck sectioned the man completely in two—one part below and one above the deck. Lee had to get closer to learn all he could about what had gone wrong. He knelt as close as he could without interfering with the rescue attempt. Lee swallowed when he saw the blood soaking into the burned wood of the decking. It spread in a wide arc around the sailor who was obviously in shock. The boy’s lips moved, and Lee thought he heard him say, “What took them so long?”
“The duration of the event was only one minute,” came a shocked voice from behind them. Lee straightened and saw Stark and the professor as they watched with wide eyes the attempt at freeing the man buried in the deck. Lee knew that the situation was helpless, and he knew the men who had caused this guessed the same. He angrily tried to hear what the boy was saying.
“I didn’t get that, son. What did he just say?” he asked.
The medic, who was talking softly to the sailor, answered without turning away from those frightened eyes. “He’s in shock; I wouldn’t take anything he has to say seriously.”
Lee got closer. “What did you see, son?” he asked, drawing a severe look backward by the medic.
“We … were … boarded. They took the ship … in less than five … minutes,” came the slow, pain-filled words.
As the men around him prepared to start cutting the deck away from around the boy, the hairless and scarred head slowly sank forward as the boy died from being severed in two. Lee stood and faced the professor and Admiral Stark. He then silently turned to Wild Bill Donovan, who had just joined them.
“We need to get a marine detail up here,” he said as he turned and ran to the gangway, where a security force of four boatloads of marines started to board. Garrison confronted the lieutenant leading the four separate teams.
�
�We may have an intruder force aboard this ship,” he said as the young marine officer was staring wide-eyed at the carnage around him. Lee reached out and took the marine by the shoulders and shook him. “Get a fire team together, son.”
Donovan joined them and then, with his terrifying and booming voice, got the marines to react. They shook off their initial terror.
“Belay that order! We have men to help here!” Admiral Stark shouted as he saw what Lee was attempting to do. Both Lee and Donovan knew that Stark felt the control he wielded over the project starting to slip away.
“Marine, we may have men trapped inside that ship, do you understand? Do your duty,” Lee said as he tried to get the officer to ignore Stark and his concerns for controlling the situation.
“Right. I want one squad forward of section three, another to the aft hatches. The other, come with me.”
Lee, without thinking, reached out and quickly unsnapped the marine’s shoulder holster and pulled out the lieutenant’s Colt .45. The boy looked but said nothing. He noted the size of the man directing him and decided not to reference any provenance toward command. He nodded and then bounded up the steel stairs toward the bridge section high above them.
The thirteen men plus Lee passed several bodies that had succumbed to their injuries. Garrison knew then that any personnel caught abovedecks were already dead. He knew this from the German reports on their failure five years before. Lee swallowed and followed the marines to the open bridge wing. The first of the squad to reach the hatch was a gruff sergeant. He gestured for two men to open the large hatchway. One turned and shook his head.
“Hatch has been dogged,” the sergeant said as he stood and went in another direction. They traveled around the bridge wing to the opposite side. They met the second fire team as they started to breach the hatchway on the opposite side. The marine sergeant saw the explosive being placed just to the left of the dogged hinges of the steel barrier. Lee bent low as the word was given and the explosive charge was detonated. The boat rocked the men as the hatchway blew inward. Several of the marines took up station to the front, and with their combined strength, they pulled the thick steel outward where one of the strong hinges had held. They finally freed the hatch, and the first two men vanished inside the darkened bridge.
Beyond the Sea--An Event Group Thriller Page 3
