“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Johnson answered as he gestured toward the gangway and the waiting Zodiac. “But you know, I think I’ll take a marine strike team with us. I like to share my experiences.”
“And Henri,” Jack said, smiling. “I like the way the Frenchman gives Salkukoff the creeps.”
“I like that aspect also,” Johnson agreed.
“We’re starting to think more alike every hour, Captain,” Carl said as he and Jack followed the captain of Shiloh to the waiting Zodiac.
* * *
Deep in the bowels of Shiloh and her darkened CIC, several radar men were busy making adjustments to their repaired systems and failed to see that the horizon had momentarily filled with a blip that, if they had seen it, would have been comparable in size to an entire battle group, just sitting there on the horizon.
Their own three ships were about to face the entire home fleet of their aquatic enemy.
LOS ANGELES–CLASS ATTACK SUBMARINE USS HOUSTON
Tempers and fears remained high as sailors accustomed to having everything they ever needed supplied to them by the navy had been exhausted. They fought tooth and nail with repairing so many systems that none of them suspected they would ever see home again. Several times, Houston started sliding down the mountain shelf as her weight turned against them. The ballast tanks remained filled with seawater as they battled the pumps that would eject that water from their tanks.
“Okay,” the chief of the boat said from a crawl space. “Try her now.”
With relief exploding from his pent-up breath, Captain Thorne heard the outer and inner vents open and then just as quickly close. He squeezed his eyes shut in offered prayer, as did the tired and frightened men around him.
“That did it, Chief,” Thorne said as he winked at the young ballast control technician next to him. The chief crawled out of the small enclosed space. He was covered with sweat.
“Remind me to write one hell of a nasty letter to the Electric Boat Division about making more room behind these damn consoles!”
Thorne assisted the small career navy man to his feet and slapped him on the back. “I’ll deliver it myself, Chief.” Thorne turned and nodded back into the control room. “Okay, Gary, give her a shot of air, and we’ll see if the chief’s magic works.”
Inside the control room, Gary Devers nodded at the ballast control officer. The man closed his eyes and then turned the small switch that activated the powerful pumps. They heard it throughout the boat as the ballast pumps kicked in. Every man heard the pumps start doing their job as water was beginning to be forced from the ballast tanks.
A loud cheer went up throughout the entire length of Houston. Captain Thorne stepped through the hatchway and watched the faces of his XO and of his ballast control officer. He waited for the word.
“Pumping ballast from the boat to the sea!” the officer called out loud enough that another cheer shot through the boat.
“Gary, have the engines ready for all back.”
“Aye. Make ready for full astern, and then—”
The explosion sounded distant, but every man knew exactly what it was. Ballast control had blown another one of her precious circuit boards as the makeshift system was unable to withstand the load of the powerful pumps.
Houston settled and calmed as the pumps wound down. The lights flickered and then steadied as USS Houston started to slide down the large shelf they had come to rest upon. The boat scraped and shuddered as every man felt the boat start to speed up. And then, as suddenly as the slide of death had started, it skidded to a stop and then silently went back to her death slumber precariously close to the end of the shelf.
Thorne placed his head into the crook of his arm and then cursed their luck. They had gone through every circuit board that they found, washing machine parts to privately owned stereo equipment. Even the old movie projector had been used. It all seemed hopeless.
“Close the outside vents. It doesn’t seem Houston is ready to leave just yet,” Thorne said with a wink to those control room crew who were watching him. This time, he saw the hopelessness in their eyes as the realization struck them that odds were fast climbing they would never see the open sky again. Thorne once more brought up the 1 MC mic. He started to talk but faltered, and then he momentarily hung his head. Instead of talking to his crew like he should have, he replaced the mic and then started forward, away from the despondent eyes of his young crewmen.
As he made his way forward, he passed his sailors, and they avoided his eyes.
“Captain, have a minute?”
Thorne stopped as he wanted to turn and tell whoever it was that he had all the damn time in the world, just as they all did, but stopped when he saw the weapons officer. He just nodded once.
“Skipper, I have to report something, and I just don’t know how.”
Thorne focused fully on the young man before him. He raised his brows as he refused to allow his voice to betray his distress over Houston’s situation to show.
The officer offered the captain a small jar. Thorne took it from his hand and looked at it. He rolled the bottle over and then held it up to the light. He lowered it, and the confusion on his face was evident. The water inside had a purplish hue to it.
“What is this, some kind of contamination?”
“No, sir. The water we took on during the initial attack, or whatever it was, was normal. Seawater, nothing more. This here is still seawater, but as you can see, it’s not the right makeup of color and other nutrients from the oceans of the world.”
“Just what in the hell are you saying, Lieutenant?”
“Skipper, when we were hit, we were in a normal surrounding of ocean water. After the flooding was controlled, we sprung a few leaks here and there, but it was controllable. But what we didn’t expect was what came through those leaks. This,” he said as he tapped the water in the small jar. “I tested the ballast tanks also, Skipper. They’re full of this stuff. The seas we’re in are violet in color and lacking commercial contaminants. Nothing—no oil or other pollution we find in oceans all over the world. No matter where we are or how deep, we always have dirty seas. But this, it’s like the ocean has never seen an oil- or diesel-powered ship. Ever.”
Thorne was even more perplexed and lost. He looked at the water and then at the young face of the lieutenant.
“How many crew know about this?” he asked as he handed the sample back.
“Just me and my weapons people. But word’s spreading fast, Captain.”
“Well, there’s not a lot we can do to investigate that right now, Lieutenant.” Thorne paused and bit his lip and then came to a decision. He took the lieutenant by the shoulder and then leaned in conspiratorially. “Lock your men up. Tell the cooks in the galley to send you all your meals. You’re now too busy to stop your leaks to venture forth.” He winked. “We can’t let this spread. These boys have too much on their plate already. Hold them until we find out one way or the other about ballast control.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Thorne nodded, and the lieutenant turned and left. Alone, Thorne faced the cold bulkhead separating some of the men’s sleeping quarters from the forward torpedo room.
“Help us out here, old girl.” He patted the steel beneath his touch. It was cold.
“Skipper?”
Thorne turned to see XO Devers standing there with a young man off shift from the torpedo room. Thorne nodded as he felt betrayed by his voice once more.
“Machinist Mate Ramirez says he might have an answer to our problem. He says it’s dangerous, but he believes it may work in getting the pumps back online.”
Thorne looked at the young man who stood nervously waiting. The captain recognized the boy but could have sworn he had never exchanged so much as a hello before this day.
“Machinist Mate?”
“The Mark 48, Captain.”
“A torpedo?” Thorne asked.
“Yes, sir. I know the Mark 48 from its tail fins to her
warhead. I believe inside her guidance system there is a board we can use to rig the ballast pumps.”
“I have a feeling you have a but to offer here, Ramirez.”
“Yes, sir. It’s a big but for sure. Almost the size of my wife’s.” He smiled but found no one was smiling with him.
“Go ahead, Machinist Mate Ramirez. It’s the day for bad news.”
“We have to take the Mark 48 completely apart to get to that guidance chip.”
“I suspected that much, Ramirez,” Thorne said.
“Yes, sir. I know you did, but we have to disassemble the actual warhead. It’s the chip on the circuit board that tells the Mark 48 when and where to detonate. It’s real sensitive. Even a small charge of static electricity will set off the warhead.”
Thorne closed his eyes and then suddenly opened them.
“Can you do it without blowing us from here back home? Although that’s far more acceptable than where we are now.”
“Yes, sir, but it’s like brain surgery. The boat can have no movement at all.”
“Well, great. With the gravity slides we’re experiencing, I don’t know how we’ll be able to pull that off.”
The XO and the machinist mate waited.
“Okay, Dr. Ramirez, let’s get surgery ready.”
USS Houston might not be as dead as earlier believed. But then again, with Machinist Mate Ramirez taking apart one of the world’s most powerful torpedo warheads on a boat that only wanted to slide into a deep oblivion, suffocating might have been preferable.
Thorne closed his eyes again and this time prayed for his entire crew. He touched the cold steel of Houston’s hull once more.
“One break is all we ask for, Gray Lady.”
In answer to his prayer, Houston began another slide toward the jagged edge of the mountain.
Their break might have to come in some other form.
PART THREE
PIRATES OF THE PURPLE SEA
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! But I, with mournful tread, walk the deck my Captain lies, fallen cold and dead.
—Walt Whitman,
“O Captain! My Captain!”
15
EVENT GROUP COMPLEX
NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA
Niles looked up from his hushed conversation with Xavier Morales as the others sat down. The missing heads of all the departments suggested Niles had some news concerning their mutual friends in the North Atlantic. They were wrong.
“I want to say something about what is really happening. It’s not just about the colonel and his mission team in the Atlantic. The entire battle group is missing. This rumor you may have already heard, as I failed to stop the scuttlebutt before it started. It’s true. They are not lost, just missing. That is not why I asked you here. I figure you deserve a more detailed mission objective. Virginia may need some input from someone other than me or Xavier. She may need your input also. I put Xavier and Virginia in the clean room of Europa and sequestered them to do some very deep research through Europa. She did her job and may have a bread-crumb lead as to what the Russians are playing at where our field team is concerned. We suspect that things inside the Russian government are not as they appear. These facts are being forwarded to our friends in Britain, as they have suspected the same thing for the past thirty years. Virginia?”
Virginia stood at her normal seat at the conference table and cleared her throat and then nodded.
“The information we gathered through Europa and her cyber activities is not only disturbing, it’s terrifying. It seems we have been duped since the great military purges of Stalin’s in the ’30s. We have learned that not only is the Russian government not in control of that nation, they haven’t been since the spring of 1941. With the start of Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin became nothing more than a figurehead of that nation.”
“Tell them your suspicions, Doctor,” Niles said with encouragement.
“The people behind this charade since 1941 are now preparing for all-out war with the West.”
“We worked closely with them during the Overlord operation; we had no indication at that time of any deception,” Alice said.
“That is because we were dealing with people who had no knowledge of this hidden government outside the office of the president. Putin may not even know he is not in charge. He is nothing more than a mouthpiece but thinks it’s him calling the shots. Just like every leader that country has had since Stalin. They are all figureheads. They fall from grace, no problem, next man up as appointed by this hidden group,” Virginia said as she shook her head at the disbelief of her own voice.
“Okay, now you know as much as we do. Virginia, prepare a presentation, and I’ll speak with the president as soon as you have it.”
Virginia just nodded as a brief thought of Jenks and the others flashed through her mind. She was prepared to do as ordered, when she stopped and then pulled out her electronic notepad. “We do have one more item that is as confusing as the rest. It seems the Russians are out to acquire as many industrial blue diamonds as they can get their hands on.”
“And why are blue diamonds so important to the Russians?” Niles asked Virginia.
“That we don’t know. But one thing is for sure: the Russian government as we know it does not exist, and what their plans are for them we haven’t a clue.”
Niles remained sitting and thinking as Virginia sat back down. He looked at Alice in the hopes she had some advice as far as why the Russians would want blue diamonds, but her face said that she was just as stunned as he was. She just shook her head.
“We have to stand down for now until we have more information. I’ll get word to our friends in MI6 somehow and see what they can come up with.
“Captain, you haven’t commented since you came in. Is it that you’re worried about Jack and the others? Or is the thought of the Russian agenda for war against the West?”
Will Mendenhall gathered his briefing materials and then faced his director.
“I think war has already been declared here, Doctor, and we’re just learning who is declaring it. It might already be too late.”
Niles watched as they filed out of his office and conference room. He picked up the phone and made the connection to the Oval Office.
“How in the hell do I start this conversation?”
KIROV-CLASS BATTLE CRUISER SIMBIRSK
Master Chief Jenks watched as Professor Gervais covered the ground that he and Charlie Ellenshaw had already covered without the Russian scientist’s knowledge. Jenks wanted to see how up front the good professor was in telling the Americans the truth of the science of phase shifting.
“As you see, gentlemen, the phase shift occurs when the correct frequencies are struck between the field generator on board Simbirsk and the surrounding air. For a reason no one’s science can explain adequately is why the vessel vanishes at all. The electrical field generated around the ship disperses and then takes the ship with it into an adjoining dimension that fits the electrical field frequency. This world just happens to be on the same frequency as the phase shift field. Eventually, by adjusting varying frequencies, we can discover new worlds, new peoples, new assets for our own.”
“Professor, trust me when I say we have had some experience in this area.” Jenks paced around the glass separating the field coils for the phase shift engine and placed a hand on one of the large lightbulb-like electromagnetic pulse projectors. He removed it quickly when he remembered Charlie’s hypothesis that it was these innocent things that burned sailors to death when their electrical field was released. “The Simbirsk cannot hit the same frequency twice, much less continuously send it to the same dimension. It would be random at best. So why does the Simbirsk travel to the same one every time?” Jenks turned and faced the small Russian, and Charlie saw that the man was apprehensive at best. “You would have to have a targeted transponder to guide the shift to that same location, thus here we are in Cand
yland with the purple sea. So, you see my concern here, Professor? The electromagnetic field and the frequency of this world cannot be random, as you suggest. You don’t know the frequency. You would need a transponder, a signal to lock on for that correct freq.”
“How do you know it would take a corresponding beacon or transponder? Maybe this is the only other dimension there is,” Gervais said, thinking his argument was sound enough for the Americans to become believers.
“I don’t want to get into the whole Einstein thing about there being a varied world of differing dimensions. That stuff gives me a massive headache. But rest assured, Professor, we know for a fact that dimensions are vast and varied. Time, space, all that E = MC2 crap, while not proven”—Charlie smiled as he glanced at Jenks—“is a fact of life.”
Jenks saw the worry on the face of Gervais. “Believe me, we’ve been down a lot of roads, and we suspect Mr. Alien Brain Einstein was pretty accurate.” Jenks moved back to the small worktable with the diagrams Professor Gervais didn’t know the Americans already had. “Now, why don’t you tell us what it is you people are really up to here?” Jenks lit a cigar, knowing that was forbidden to do inside the phase shift engine area.
“I don’t understand,” the Russian said as he glanced toward the main hatch, where a Russian commando watched them.
Jenks reached into his pocket and produced a second blue diamond that Jack had given him for this little confrontation. “You have a field element here already, don’t you, Doc?”
Gervais looked from the filthy diamond to Jenks and Charlie. Ellenshaw was smiling, as he loved confronting people about the truth or lie of their predicament.
“Field element?” he asked, looking again at the Russian watching them. He seemed more attentive than he had been just a moment before.
“What ship is out there, Professor?” Jenks persisted.
“I don’t know what it is you mean.”
Beyond the Sea--An Event Group Thriller Page 24
