Somehow, that site marked on that map, which coincided with the location of the deepest spot in the Atlantic, the Milwaukee Depth, was important. And that was the data he was waiting for from Ahana. As soon as he’d been alerted by Foreman about the map on the Scorpion, he’d had the computers that recorded data from the Can focus on that spot almost on the other side of the world, recording the muons that came out of it.
“We’ve centered and plotted the muon emission pattern,” Ahana spun her seat about. “Very strange, sir.”
“How so?” Nagoya asked.
Ahana stood, indicating for Nagoya to take her place. “This--” she said, pointing at the screen-- “is the muon level reading. Note that the Bermuda Triangle gate is steady as we’ve always noted. This is the level we’ve been scanning around the world to map the gates. We never noticed anything different until you directed us to do a more thorough search of that specific area. I fine-tuned the sensors to record any muon activity down to one-tenth of the current gate reading.”
Her finger touched the monitor screen. “Note this very thin trace going from the Bermuda gate south? It ends exactly here, the same spot noted on the side of the Scorpion.”
“So they are indeed connected,” Nagoya said.
“Yes, sir. We not only have a longitudinal and latitudinal reading, but because we are reading this through the mass of the Earth, we were able to get a depth reading. That spot is at the very bottom of the ocean. And at that location it spreads and encompasses an area on the ocean floor over eight miles in circumference and a half mile in height that has low levels of muonic activity.”
“What do you think it is?”
“It’s not a gate,” Ahana said. “It’s on 'our’ side, in our world, but it has some qualities like a gate.”
Nagoya knew his assistant did not want to make a foolish guess but one thing he had learned over the years was that no guess could be too wild when dealing with anything associated with the gates. “A theory?” he prompted.
Ahana bit her lip, then spoke. “I think it is some sort of statis field surrounding an open space.”
“Holding what?”
“I don’t know.”
*****
The submarine cut the water smoothly, the special rubberized absorbing material attached to the outer hull leaving minimum disturbance in the ocean it passed through. The specially designed propellers gave off little signature making it the quietest submarine in the ocean. At full speed, this vessel was quieter than any other submarine built simply sitting still in the ocean.
At one thousand feet, the sub had at least another fifteen hundred feet of ocean to spare below it before the modular hull would experience any pressure problems. Speed was perhaps the most important aspect of the ship’s design as its nuclear power plant allowed it to cruise at thirty-five knots, almost forty miles an hour.
The Seawolf was the US Navy’s most modern and most expensive submarine. Designed from first deckplate to the top of the sail as an attack submarine, the Seawolf had one priority mission-- kill other submarines. At over two billion dollars cost, it incorporated every advance in underwater warfare ever developed. Not only could it kill other subs with its Mark-48 torpedoes, it was also armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, enabling it to target 75% of the earth’s land surface. 353 feet long, the Seawolf was actually not much longer than the first US Navy sub given that name during World War II. However, its forty foot beam was almost twice the diameter of those earlier vessels.
The rear two-thirds of the submarine were taken up with the nuclear power plant, engine room and environmental control systems. The crew of 14 officers and 120 enlisted men worked and lived in the forward third. Not as cramped as earlier submarines, the Seawolf still required a special type of man willing to work in tight quarters and live under the surface of the water for extended periods of time.
An example of the lack of space was the fact that the commander of this ship, Captain McCallum had to hold meetings with his officers in the wardroom where they also ate their meals. There was barely room for the twelve officers-- two remaining on watch in the operations and engine room-- to fit.
Since their abrupt departure from their home base in Groton, Connecticut, earlier in the day, the entire crew had been wondering what was up. The sub was sailing due south at flank speed. There was also the factor of a strange man being brought on board and kept isolated in the captain’s stateroom since sailing.
“At ease,” McCallum called out as he squeezed into the officers’ wardroom. The captain sat at the end of table, placing a file folder with a Top Secret cover in front of him.
“Gentlemen, we’re currently operating under direct orders from the National Command Authority. You can read into that the President himself has authorized this mission. Our mission is to proceed with all speed to designated grid coordinates north of Puerto Rico and remain on-station until further orders. Our task is to destroy the USS Wyoming, which is currently missing, if it reappears with hostile intentions, before it can launch any of its ballistic missiles.”
“Sir--” his executive officer, Commander Barrington began to protest but McCallum cut him off.
“Before disappearing, the Wyoming’s crew received a fatal dose of radiation. If it reappears, you can be assured that it would not be manned by our fellow sailors.”
McCallum could see the shock on his officers’ faces. He knew it was best to hammer home the situation and let them sort it out afterwards.
“Gentlemen, there is a strong possibility that the Wyoming might reappear with people other than the crew on board. In the 70’s a Russian submarine that disappeared into the Devil’s Sea gate reappeared a week later. The Russians sunk it. When our people tried to recover the wreckage they pulled up a section that had bodies of men who were not part of the crew on board. The nuclear warheads had been worked on and some are still missing as far as we know. No one knows how these non-crew members got on the ship, but the fact is they were there.
“And, as you all know, a Trident-- which had to have come from the Wyoming-- was fired out of the Bermuda Triangle gate yesterday and nuclear warheads were detonated in the Atlantic Ocean. That leaves twenty-three Tridents unaccounted for.
“And something else tells us subs can come back out of this gate, sometimes long after they’ve disappeared.”
McCallum reached to his side and opened the door. Another officer wearing the same rank stepped in-- the only difference was that this officer’s uniform was outdated, not worn since the Navy upgraded in 1975.
“Gentlemen, this is Captain Bateman of the USS Scorpion.”
Given that the Scorpion had disappeared in 1968 the appearance of the ship’s captain-- and his relatively youthful appearance belying thirty years-- the officers of the Seawolf forgot even military formality for a few seconds, before belatedly springing to their feet, as required when the captain of a ship entered the room.
“At ease, gentlemen,” Bateman said.
As the officers retook their seats, Captain McCallum opened the file folder and pulled out some pictures. He passed them around the table. “This is the Scorpion. It is currently being held under cover in the pens at Groton. As you can see, it appears as it did on the day it disappeared over thirty years ago.” McCallum pointed to his right. “As you can also see, so does Captain Bateman. Gentlemen, he doesn’t know why any of this happened or even how, but because he is sitting here in front of you, we have to accept it has happened. Captain Bateman is here to assist in whatever way he can as we patrol near the anomaly known as the Bermuda Triangle gate.
“We know little about this area-- which you can see on the satellite imagery defined by the black triangle. Captain Bateman’s ship was part of an experiment in 1968 to learn more about it. While a SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance plane entered a similar area over Cambodia called the Angkor gate, the Scorpion entered the Bermuda Triangle gate to attempt to make radio communications with the Blackbird. This would prove that there was a link
between the two sites. I’ll let Captain Bateman tell you what happened.”
Bateman was a short, balding man, his face pale. His eyes held a distance to them and as he spoke he kept them on the table, not making contact with anyone. His left hand had a tremor to it and he gripped the edge of his chair to keep it still.
“We entered the area. We didn’t have much information about what we were doing, other than crossing into a certain area and attempting to make communications via a surface buoy. We were on a heading of nine-zero degrees at a depth of two hundred feet. Our location was about sixty miles north of the northwest end of Puerto Rico.
“We began transmitting on high frequency radio. We made contact with the Blackbird, even though it was over Cambodia-- which was not possibly unless the signal was traveling through the anomaly we were in directly to the anomaly the aircraft was in.
“The Blackbird began reporting system’s trouble,” Bateman’s voice was almost a monotone. “We were ordered to abort. I told the helm to come hard about. Then we got pinged.”
“Sonar?” McCallum asked.
“It was like someone was using sonar on us, but the tone was slightly different. I didn’t have much time to dwell on that because we then had a problem in the reactor. Instruments indicated a coolant line failure. I ordered the reactor off-line.
“Then we picked up something very big coming in our direction on radar. Very big.” Bateman looked up from the table for the first time. “I’d never seen anything other than a land mass that large on the radar screen except this object was moving. I ordered us to emergency surface.”
Bateman fell silent.
“And then?” McCallum prompted.
“And then nothing,” Bateman said. “I blacked out. Everyone on the crew did. When we came to, we were cruising at two hundred feet in the same general area we had been in before. Except it was over thirty years later, the reactor was fine, and we had people on board who had come through what you call the Angkor gate. That’s all I know.”
“Our concern is to stop anything coming out of the gate,” McCallum said. “There are no plans to go into it. We are to stand off at a safe distance and be ready to engage targets.”
“What if the large contact my ship picked up comes out?” Bateman asked.
“We will engage and destroy it,” McCallum said.
“I think you need to be prepared for system failures,” Bateman said. “I didn’t have time to even think about combat when we were attacked. This boat is very nice and you have very sophisticated devices, but I recommend you come up with a plan to fight if you lose all your sensors and targeting equipment.”
“Our master computer has a back-up,” McCallum said to Bateman. “It’s also shielded to survive the electro-magnetic pulse generated by a nuclear explosion.”
The captain turned to his officer. “You have your orders,” McCallum said, ending the meeting. The officers filed out of the stateroom.
McCallum went to his stateroom. Built into the wall, next to his small desk, was a safe. It held the key that allowed the captain of the Seawolf to launch nuclear weapons. It also held sealed orders McCallum had been handed by a CIA man just prior to sailing.
McCallum opened the safe and retrieved the envelope holding the orders. He cut through the seal and slid the piece of paper out. He read through twice then ran the paper through his shredder. He picked up the phone on his desk and ordered the officer in charge of navigation to make a slight change to their course and destination.
THE PAST
Chapter 6
999 AD
Ragnarok turned the rudder over to Bjarni, and sat down on the rearmost bench. He peeled back his tunic to check the wound on his shoulder.
“You must clean it out,” Tam Nok said. “The wounds of these creatures can be poisonous.”
Her comment irritated Ragnarok, as if he had never been wounded before. Every weapon could cause poison to grow in the body. The skin had been sliced smoothly. Ragnarok squeezed around the edges, forcing more blood to flow out. He called out for Askell the Healer. The old man, bent from years behind an oar, made his way down the ship and peered at the wound with sad gray eyes.
He checked Ragnorak’s chest. “A burn. It is already clean. It will heal,” was the brief summation. “I will work on your shoulder.”
He reached into the large pouch hanging out his side and brought out what he would need. As Askell pressed a poultice onto the opening, Ragnarok considered his situation. They were holding course away from land. Bjarni-the-Farsighted was excellent at being able to keep the ship moving in a straight line without benefit of landmarks. Ragnarok wasn’t quite sure how he did it, but the skill had been proven over and over again during the years they had sailed together that he had an implicit faith in the helmsman. Fog still surrounded them, although the wind had died somewhat. Nothing was visible in any direction except dark gray. Most men dared not sail out of sight of land, for fear of becoming lost on the open sea, but Ragnarok knew once the sun rose, they could always reverse course and sail in the direction the sun came from to find land once more. He had sailed up and down the coast of Norway many times, although never this far north.
He had come along the coast looking for arable land, a valuable commodity in this part of the world. All he had found were steeper hills, worse weather, the burning mountain and fog and subsequently the encounter the previous evening.
There were rumors going around the Viking world of strange things happening. Traders from the south talked of earthquakes that killed many. The religion of the Christians had taken over much of the world south of the Vikings and even now was claiming many a Norseman converted. And there were many Christian monks who were warning of the coming of the millennium since the birth of one they called God. That there was to be a second coming after much devastation.
Ragnarok didn’t believe in the Christian god. They claimed they had only one, yet they spoke of three, which he didn’t understand. And while some of the priests of this religion claimed pending doom, others said nothing of it. He had participated in raids on several monasteries in England and Eire Land and while he didn’t accept their religion, he did respect the fortitude of the monks he encountered who wavered not the slightest in their steadfast belief in their god, even as they died on the sword.
Ragnarok believed in the Norse gods of his mother, but they were not the most important thing in his life. The ship that swayed under his feet was the center of his life and had been for years.
The longship was over eighty feet long and fifteen feet wide at the center beam, a large but not overly big longship. Ragnarok had heard that King Olaf Tryggvason in Norway had had a ship built the previous year over 160 feet long, twice the size of his ship. Ragnarok wished he could see such a massive ship, but he also knew that if he ever came across the King’s ship on the water, it would be the last thing he would ever see unless he could outrun it.
The keel of Ragnarok’s boat was hewn from a single large oak tree and curved using the strength of many men. The keel beam was carved in a T-shape, the thinner end of which extended into the water. Long experience at sea had taught the Vikings that this shape aided in steering a true course.
The ship’s ribs were also of solid oak to give strength and stability. The outside of the ship was constructed using inch thick sections of overlapping oak planking called strakes. The strakes were nailed to the ribs and also tied with spruce-root bindings. The total effect was a very strong, yet flexible ship, able to take on the batterings of an open ocean sailing yet drawing such little water that it could easily be pulled up on a beach and then pushed back into the water.
The mast was actually not very tall for such a long ship, only twenty-five feet high, hewn from a single tree. What the sail lacked in height it made up for in width, being over forty feet wide. That unique design allowed it to be raised or lowered quickly. It was made of a double layer of coarse wool, a dusky gray color except where a large blood red hand silhouette had bee
n painstakingly dyed into the cloth.
Supplies were carried under floorboards that gave access to the low lying space beneath them and the keel. Just behind the mast, an iron pot was hung over a large hearth stone where, when the sea was totally calm and conditions favorable, a fire could be used to cook meals. Those conditions were few and far between and the crew usually subsisted on dried meat and stale bread while they were at sea. Caskets and barrels where lashed here and there, containing other supplies and, most importantly, drinking water.
The crew was totally exposed to the sea at all times, the only shelter coming when they slept under the nominal cover of the rowing seats, three feet wide, that stretched across the width of the ship. There were fifteen seats, accommodating thirty rowers. Over each row station shields hung on hooks. At the prow of the boat, a dragon head had been carved, the beast’s eyes searching the sea ahead.
The rudder was also a uniquely Viking invention, fixed to a large block on the right side of the rear of the boat. Bjarni steered the boat using a tiller bar. On the opposite side of the tiller, two vertical wood poles were set into the top of the hull, which the men held onto, rears sticking over the sea, in order to void their bowels.
The ship was all Ragnarok had and he had helped build it over the course of three years as a young man. He had sailed it for the past ten years and it had been his only home for the past four.
A voice came from the front of the boat. “We’re clear of the fog!”
Ragnarok looked up and the front of the boat was bathed in the early morning light. They slid out of the fog. Ragnarok looked back. The fog was like a wall behind them, the gray surface covering the horrors they had experienced.
Atlantis: Bermuda Triangle Page 7
