It was ingenious and also a sign of desperation. The Patriot was one of the biggest failures of the Gulf War while being labeled one of the greatest successes. While American commanders were crowing about 33 launches equaling 33 SCUD kills, the Israelis sent a high ranking diplomat to Washington to claim that at best, the Patriot had a twenty percent success rate. The reality, the Israelis claimed, was that in modifying their SCUD missiles to extend their range, the Iraqis had simply welded in new section of missile to hold the extra fuel. The result was that the vast majority of SCUDs broke up in flight due to poor structural integrity-- many of these break-ups were erroneously claimed by optimistic American commanders as successful Patriot intercepts.
Not only was the Patriot suspect, it had originally been designed as an anti-aircraft system, not an anti-missile system. Even with extensive modifications over the years, even the manufacturer only claimed it was an anti-missile system working against tactical systems, such as the SCUD.
The Trident was no SCUD and the crews of the Patriot batteries and the crew of the AWACS knew that. The Patriot had a max speed of slightly over MACH 3, or about 2,200 miles an hour. The Trident at max speed was moving at over 16,000 miles an hour-- a classic tortoise and hare situation.
The hope was that if the Wyoming launched a second missile that two fortuitous things could happen. One was that the launch would be close to the Washington. Second was that the launch would be caught early enough for the Patriots to be fired and catch the Trident while it was still accelerating upward.
It was a plan that fell back on the age-old military theory of throw everything possible’ at the enemy. Not only were the Patriot batteries on board the Washington, but the guns and ship to air missiles of every warship around the gate were oriented inward. Every plane was ready to turn over the gate and engage targets. There was no one among all the military personnel deployed in this operation old enough to have been there, but it was very much the same approach the American navy had used in the latter days in World War II against Japanese kamikaze attacks.
*****
On the other side of the world, Professor Nagoya was caught between loyalties. Foreman wanted the Can oriented full-time toward the Bermuda Triangle gate. Japanese government officials-- those in the know at least-- were well aware of the Trident launch that had come out of the Atlantic, and they were also aware of the fact that other submarines, two of which carried nuclear missiles or torpedoes, had been lost in their own Devil’s Sea gate.
They were more concerned with the Pacific Rim, than the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. There were many places where a well-placed nuclear explosion would trigger massive earthquakes with subsequent volcanoes and deadly tsunamis, a threat which Japan was particularly vulnerable to. These officials wanted the Can, which after all was built on Japanese soil with a large dose of Japanese money, to exclusively monitor the Devil’s Sea.
Nagoya understood both parties’ concerns but he also thought both concerns were mis-directed. The importance of the Can was not to be an early warning system against a threat they could do little about, but rather to study the gates, to try to unlock the secret of what they were and possibly what was on the other side.
Still, Nagoya had spent enough years working for the government that he knew it best to placate the powers that be. He had the Can switching between the two as quickly as possible, forwarding data to his own military’s headquarters and the Pentagon War Room.
Meanwhile, he focused on studying the mound of data they had accumulated in the last twenty-four hours.
At least until the Can picked up a spike of muonic activity on the north edge of the Bermuda Triangle gate.
*****
“We’ve got activity!” Colonel Croner, the supervising officer in the AWACS announced over the intercom. “Coordinates, four-seven-three-six-eight-one. Lock in all weapons’ systems, prepare Patriots for launch on confirmation of Trident.”
Croner only hoped one missile came out,. What everyone was keeping their fingers crossed against was a multiple launch, with the Wyoming clearing all twenty-three remaining missiles in less than two minutes.
“We have a target coming out of the gate,” a radar operator announced. “Vertical at grid. Signature-- a Trident!”
“All systems engage,” Croner ordered. “Keep your eyes open for a second launch.”
*****
The Trident ICBM was already shedding its first stage rocket as four Patriot missiles roared off the deck of the USS Washington twenty miles to the north on an interception vector.
At the highest altitude they were capable of maintaining, navy and air force jets were vectored in over the Bermuda Triangle gate toward the path of the upcoming missile.
It was already too late for any of the surface ships to engage with either their guns or their anti-aircraft missiles and those crews could only watch helplessly the battle on the screens in their operations center.
One F-18 Hornet fighter pilot spotted the bright flame from the second stage of the Trident. He turned toward it firing his air to air missiles on straight trajectory as his radar couldn’t lock on the fast-moving target and then pressing his thumb down on the trigger of the 20mm Gatlin gun, hoping that by some miracle something would hit the Trident.
It roared past him a half-mile away so fast he never saw the missile itself, just the flame and smoke from the burning rocket fuel. Then his warning lights went on as one of the Patriots locked onto his aircraft as the most convenient target.
He barely had time to scream a curse as the Patriot hit and the jet blossomed into a fireball..
The other three Patriots were already being outpaced by the Trident and, after expending their fuel, began to come back down to earth.
Unimpeded, the Trident’s second stage fell off and the third ignited.
*****
In the War Room, Foreman watched the explosion of anger and curses from the military men that surrounded him. Once more they’d thrown the best defense they had against the Shadow and failed-- this time though, the frustration was doubled by the fact the Shadow’s weapon was one of their own.
They’d known there was almost no chance of stopping an ICBM once it was launched and that knowledge had just been confirmed.
Foreman was linked to the AWACS and he had one major concern. “Colonel Croner, do we have multiple launches?”
“We show no second launch yet, sir. We’re past due for a second missile if they’re firing in salvo.”
Foreman relaxed slightly. This wasn’t the end.
He looked up at the master screen at the front of the War Room. The Trident was now being tracked by Space Command as it moved north-north-east across the Atlantic.
“Projected impact?” he asked of no one in particular.
“Spread pattern, along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,” an air force officer answered. “This time, much further north, at max-range, four thousand nautical miles.” The officer used a laser pointer. “In the vicinity of Iceland. We won’t know exact touchdown points until the warheads actually land.”
*****
Iceland is a geological anomaly, almost unique on the face of the Earth. It was one of the few remaining land masses still above sea level, produced by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It is a very young island, in terms of geographic age, still in the throes of change.
The landscape was so twisted by the forces of nature that ravaged it, that it had been chosen by NASA to send the crew of Apollo in 1968 to train on, as it was the one place on earth they felt most closely resembled the lunar surface.
In 1973 the island of Heimaey off the southern coast had to be evacuated after a large eruption by the volcano Helgafell. Earthquakes are common and the island is dotted with hot springs. The center of the island is a high plateau surrounded by mountains leading down to the coast where most human habitation was clustered, between the rocky slopes and the sea. A tenth of the island’s mass was covered by glaciers, the largest being Vatrnajokull, which alone encompassed over three th
ousand two hundred square miles.
The island had no armed forces, the only military present being that of the Americans serving at the airbase at Keflavik. Thus the only ones who had a warning of the incoming Trident missile were those from the country that had built the missile.
There was nothing for anyone to do except pray these warheads also struck the ocean, as the first missile’s had.
That hope disappeared in the flash of the first MK5 nuclear warhead detonating on the southern shoreline where the Pjorsa River reached the ocean. Ten seconds later, thirty miles to the north-north-east the second warhead impacted. In slightly over a minute, all eight warheads, each one many times the power of the one that was dropped on Hiroshima, impacted and detonated in a line bisecting Iceland, directly along the center of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Only five thousand people died in those initial explosions, due to the sparse population in the interior and on the two spots on the coast directly affected.
In Reykjavik, the earth shook and the sky to the east glowed red. Electro-magnetic pulse washed over the city, shutting down almost everything ran by electricity. One hundred thousand of the quarter million people who inhabited Iceland lived in the capital city and most rushed out to the streets, fearing an earthquake, then noting the glow in the sky.
The nukes had hit every thirty miles, close enough that the force of their blasts reached each other. In essence, the bombs split Iceland in half, letting lose the pent up energy of the unquiet earth below.
Magna flowed into the cracked earth, pushing upward toward the surface. One of the bombs had been aimed directly into the crater of a long-dormant volcano. The nuclear explosion took off the top five hundred meters of the mountain. Within minutes, a secondary explosion blew the rest of the top of the mountain off as gasses powered their way up.
*****
In Deeplab, Ariana Michelet was getting live satellite imagery forwarded to her from Foreman through the Glomar Explorer. The center of Iceland glowed red in the thermal imaging and already one volcano was spewing a large cloud of deadly gas into the sky, the trade winds pushing it safely to the north and east for the moment.
“What do you make of it?” Foreman asked.
Ariana knew the CIA man had access to hundreds of experts through the War Room but she sensed he wanted the truth, up front and as quickly as possible. She knew what she was seeing-- ever since the previous Trident firing, she had been thinking about possible scenarios and this fit.
“Iceland is going to be gone,” she said.
“Gone?”
“It’s already split,” Ariana said. “Right over the rift between the tectonic plates that it sits on. There’s going to be two dozen volcanoes active within twenty-four hours. While they fill the air with deadly ash, the land mass will begin to collapse in on itself, filling the void where the magna isn’t coming up. Some of the island may remain above water, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere on it.”
“How long?”
“Thirty-six hours.”
“There’s a quarter million people living there,” Foreman said.
“There won’t be in a day and a half.”
THE PAST
Chapter 24
999 AD
Ragnarok had never been this far north. The main Viking community on Iceland was on the southwest coast where the warmer water made the weather at least livable. The coast that they had traveled around for the past day and a half was rocky, with numerous glaciers flowing into the ocean.
It was a bleak land, devoid of human contact. Early the previous evening they had spotted a smudge of smoke-- at first Ragnarok had hoped it was a settlement, but as they got closer to land, they could see the smoke was coming out of the top of a mountain. As darkness fell, the smoke was lit from within by a red glow, something the crew took as an ominous sign. They pressed on, nonetheless, skirting the rocky shore.
“There!” Hrolf was standing next to him, near the tiller. He was pointing shoreward.
Ragnarok eyes followed the old man’s finger. Steam was rushing up into the air in the craggy rocks on shore in a loud hissing they could hear a mile off shore. It went on for a minute then subsided.
“This is not a good land,” Hrolf said. “Odin is angry.”
As Ragnarok was concerned, the god could express his anger all he wanted on Iceland. It was the ocean ahead that worried the Viking leader.
“We must leave the shore behind now,” Bjarni said. The helmsman inclined his head slightly to the right. “The place we seek is that way.”
“How far?” Ragnarok asked.
“Not far-- if the witch’s map is correct. Just over the horizon.”
“Are you certain we are in the right place?” Tam Nok had come down the boat to join them.
“I’ve gotten us this far,” Bjarni said. “I think I can get us a little further without getting lost.” He pushed the tiller over and the dragon turned from shore to the open sea. The geyser erupted once more, spewing steam into the air as if warning them not to go further.
Ragnarok crossed his arms over his chest, feeling the ship take the waves at a different angle. The shore slowly faded away, the sound of the geyser lasting even after it was out of sight.
But soon there was only the wind in the sail and the sea against the boat. The sun was going down in the west, with another two hours of daylight left by Ragnarok’s experienced eye.
“Will we make it before nightfall?” Ragnarok asked.
“We’ve made it,” was Bjarni’s simple answer. “Look.”
A dark wall was ahead, growing closer. It even thicker than the fog they’d been in off the coast of Norway where they met Tam Nok. Ragnarok did not like the look of it at all. The wind was not moving the cloud. It sat like a festering scab on the surface of the ocean, hiding some terrible wound in the water itself.
“The Shadow is in there,” Tam Nok said. “I have seen this before.”
“What do you want to do, captain?” Bjarni asked. “It will be dark soon.”
Ragnarok was startled by the formality of the question and he recognized the double-meaning behind his helmsman’s statement.
“We’re here,” Ragnarok said. “We will go in and see what is there.”
As the dark wall got closer, Ragnarok issued orders preparing his men for battle. Shields were hung, bows notched and swords drawn. Ragnarok moved to the front of the ship, Hrolf and Tam Nok at his side.
He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise as the dragon head entered the fog. As he crossed from light to dark, the air itself changed, becoming colder, thicker with a sick taste to it. Ragnarok looked over the side. Even the water appeared different, darker, more malevolent. It did not smell of salt, but danker, like an animal that had been killed and left too long in the open.
The ship slipped into the darkness, visibility dropping to less than twenty feet. Even sounds were different, the water against the hull now duller. The wind was gone completely and Ragnarok let the ship coast for a minute before ordering half the crew to the oars, the other half to stand fast with their weapons.
“To the left,” Tam Nok pointed.
Ragnarok could see nothing but he had the order relayed to Bjarni at the rear of the ship instead of yelling it out. He had a feeling there was something out there listening, waiting and he had no desire to provoke it.
“Look,” Bjarni nodded to the right. A small boat made of seal skins stretched over a frame listed in the water. The skins were torn in places and it was barely afloat.
“The Irish monk must have found what he was looking for,” Ragnarok said.
“I hope we don’t find whatever found him,” Bjarni muttered.
“How far?” Ragnarok asked.
“I don’t know,” Tam Nok was staring into the fog as if she could see through it. “But not far.”
Suddenly she turned to the right. “Faster,” she hissed.
Ragnarok chopped his hand and the rowers picked up the pace.
“T
hey’re coming,” Tam Nok had Lailoken’s staff in her hand, the spear tip pointing to starboard.
“The Valkyries?” Ragnarok squeezed the wood handle of his ax.
“Yes. And more.”
There was a startled yell from amidships. Ragnarok turned. A long red tentacle had reached out of the sea and was wrapped around one of the rowers. The man was lifted out of the boat before anyone could react and disappeared under the black waters.
“Kraken!” Hrolf hissed.
The other rowers nearby abandoned their oars and grabbed their weapons, staring fearfully over the side of the ship. Seconds later a half dozen tentacles came out of the water, waving about blindly while a trio of screams came echoing over the water, one right after the other.
The arms came forward, onto the boat, searching for victims. Warriors hacked at them with sword and ax. Ragnarok was about to join the battle when he spotted a Valkyrie floating through the fog, coming toward the bow.
“I will deal with this,” Tam Nok had the staff ready. “You get rid of the beast.”
Ragnarok reluctantly ran to the middle of the ship, Hrolf at his side. With one swing of bone-cutter he severed an arm that had wrapped around one of his men. Two more dashed forward at him. Ragnarok recoiled as he realized there were six inch wide mouths on the tip of each arm, snapping open and shut, revealing rows razor sharp teeth. One of the arms hit a man next to him and bored into his body, eliciting an agonized scream.
Mouth still in the man’s innards, the arm lifted him into the air and tossed him overboard. Ragnarok ducked under the other arm and looked into the water. The body of the Kraken was just under the surface, forty feet long, ten wide, two large saucers eyes over two feet wide staring up at him. A large mouth below the eyes had the body of the man just thrown overboard half ingested.
Atlantis: Bermuda Triangle Page 23
