“Sure, but what if he’s wrong?”
“Then he pays for it. Not you, not me. Be happy you’re not him. But someday you might be, and there’s a lot of worse commanders than him to be your example.”
Morton squeezed his sonar headset abruptly with his hands, staring at his displays. “Contact firm, screws bearing two two zero, Ohio class making turns for fifteen knots, range approximately twenty thousand yards.”
Captain Absen’s gaze narrowed. “Helm, come right and steer two two zero. Fire control, to torpedo room: Load tube one with a Special, two with Mark 48 ADCAP. Make tubes one and two ready in all respects, including opening outer doors.”
“Make tubes one and two ready in all respects, including opening outer doors, aye. Firing solution computed, awaiting torpedo room actions.”
“Conn, Sonar, active contact, ice, depth four eight zero. Quartermaster reports sounding five six zero feet.”
Captain Absen chewed his lower lip. Only eighty feet between the sea bed and the bottom of the iceberg. The boat was less than fifty feet tall; he could try to go through if he was willing to risk scraping the ice or the sea bottom. Too close. He had searched for and stalked this bastard for the last week and he wasn’t going to risk his boat – and failure – by rushing now.
“XO, plot and execute a circumnavigation of that ice. Helm, all ahead standard. Morty, keep your ears on. If you lose him I’ll have to cut your grog ration.”
The crew breathed a sigh of relief; at the slower standard instead of flank speed, the noise of their passage dropped dramatically as their screws stopped cavitating.
Fifteen minutes passed as they steered around the iceberg. The XO reported, “Back on closing course, range twenty thousand yards. Solution recomputed, we can fire any time now, sir.”
“Isn’t it too far?” Ensign Cooper whispered to the COB.
“Against an enemy sub, sure. They’d hear the torpedo and have all day to take action. At least they’d shoot back. But these guys are blind and deaf, or they should be.”
Sonarman Morton reported, “Target is blowing tanks and rising.”
Absen looked at his second-in-command. “XO, what do you think? Communicating?”
“Maybe they’re going to fire missiles.”
The captain rubbed the day-old growth on his chin. “You think they could have defeated the interlocks and PAL codes?”
“Doesn’t matter what I think, sir. We have to assume the worst.”
“Right.” The captain stood up, crossing his arms. “Lock solution into the Special and prepare to fire. Ensign Cooper, take the firing station.”
“Solution locked aye. Ready to fire.”
“XO do you concur with special weapon employment?”
The XO nodded, pulling the key from where it hung around his neck. He took out a small plastic codebook and broke the seal. “I have my code and key,” he said formally.
Captain Absen took out his key and code and broke his seal in turn. “I have my code and key.”
The two men took their places at the two nuclear weapon stations. They were across the small room from each other, deliberately out of reach of any one man. The captain began calling out the activation sequence.
“Select Torpedo Special One, Tube One.”
“Torpedo Special One, Tube One selected.”
“Input PAL code.”
“PAL code input.” This was the code that allowed the nuclear warhead to arm itself.
“Confirm with key turn to the left, together on the count of three then turn. Ready, one, two, three, turn.”
The two men turned their keys simultaneously under the wide eyes of the control room crew.
“Confirm valid solution in Tube One.”
“Solution valid confirmed Tube One aye.”
Captain Absen looked across at Ensign Cooper. “Fire One.”
There came a thud and a whoosh audible to everyone aboard as the torpedo was ejected from its tube by compressed air, and then began its run toward the target.
“Left full rudder, all ahead flank. Come to course zero zero zero. Get us out of here. In about thirteen minutes it’s going to be very, very noisy.” The captain’s voice was calm, his tone dry and droll.
The crew relaxed. The Old Man had it under control.
“Torpedo running hot, straight and normal. Eighteen thousand and closing.” The torpedo forged ahead at high speed, almost two thousand yards a minute.
Morton called from the sonar shack. “Target has leveled and is slowing.”
The Captain and XO exchanged glances. “Shit,” said the XO.
“I should have taken us under the ice. Damn it. Call out range every thousand yards.”
“Target has opened outer doors and flooded tubes. Wait, no. Something doesn’t sound right.” Morton fiddled with his controls, rapidly typing commands into his keyboard. “Sir, I don’t have an algorithm for our own boomers, so the computer shows the closest match, but I think they just opened their missile hatch. Hatches. I have…eighteen distinct signatures recorded.”
“Seventeen thousand.”
“Jesus Christ! They’re going to launch their Tridents! Fire Control: Snapshot tubes three and four on submerged contact!”
The Fire control party at the weapons station frantically began the sequence to fire the two conventional Mark 48 torpedoes. Ensign Cooper stood helplessly by as the skilled enlisted men did everything much faster than he could have.
“Communications. Flash message to Fleet in the clear, send their estimated position and recommend immediate strike with anything they have.”
The XO stepped in close to his captain to speak softly. “It’s going to be too late. If Torp One doesn’t get them, nothing will.”
“I know. It’s better than doing nothing. And who knows, maybe the horse will sing.”
“Sixteen thousand.”
“Eight minutes. Just eight minutes. How many missiles can they launch in eight minutes?” Absen raised his voice. “Anyone? Master Chief? You were on a boomer before, right?”
“Yes sir,” the COB answered. “In eight minutes, maybe all of them, but it would be tight. Several, anyway.”
The XO gently banged his knuckles on a support pole in frustration. “Come on, no launch. Dear God, we need something to go wrong now,” he half prayed, half pleaded.
“Fifteen thousand.”
Morton’s hands froze on the headphones, his eyes so wide the whites showed all around. His voice cut through the tension. “I have missile launch.”
-26-
“One, two, three, launch.” Nguyen’s flat voice was immediately drowned out by an explosive roar and a shaking as the first missile, forty feet long and weighing more than fifty tons, was ejected from its launch tube like a gigantic jack-in-the-box. It was forced up through the last twoscore feet of ocean by its ejection charges and leaped into the air. At the top of its porpoise-like breach, its main engine ignited and the enormous weapon powered skyward on a column of flame and smoke, carrying twelve independently-targeted warheads toward their deadly destiny.
Bitzer fiddled with the controls, mumbling. He adjusted ballast to compensate for the lost weight and set down angle on the dive planes, keeping the boat from approaching the surface. There had to be enough water between each missile's main engine ignition and the boat, or it would fry them in the blowtorch of its exhaust.
“One, two, three, neutral. Select missile number two. One, two, three, arm. One, two, three, fire.” A pause for the next pounding, titans in a gigantic bowling alley. “One, two, three, neutral.”
The sequence proceeded according to Nguyen’s machinelike call, a metronome ticking off ejections of nuclear fireworks. Earth had never witnessed such a thing; the fifty-plus nuclear detonations scattered over the last few years were being overtaken even now in number and power by two hundred sixteen hells flung into the sky in merely six minutes.
Throughout, Bitzer fought the boat as it rang and shook. He pumped ballast and he an
gled his dive planes full downward and he worked the throttles to their full limits.
“That’s the lot, closing missile hatches. Diving the boat. Depth one hundred. One fifty. Two hundred. Twenty-seven knots. Probably the best we can do.”
A buzzing sound intruded on the now-quiet control room. “What’s that?” Jill asked.
“Oh, ballocks. Get over there where the light’s flashing. What does it say?” Bitzer asked.
She hunched down to look at the display. “It says ‘Countermeasures’ and below that it says ‘Inbound Active’ in flashing text.”
“Someone fired a torpedo at us. It’s within five thousand yards – two or three minutes at most. Here, lass, come here.”
She ran over to the helm, ignoring his familiarity.
“Take the helm, hold it just there. Just like I was, bloody hell.” Bonnagh wormed his way around the Marine to flip switches and punch buttons frantically at the countermeasures station. “Hail Mary full of grace. Jaysus, Mary and Joseph there we go. Both herrings away.” He came back and seized the helm from Repeth.
Seconds ticked by. “Three hundred. Three fifty. Four hundred. It looks like the countermeasures pulled it off us. Might want to strap in. If we make it to six hundred we may live through this.”
-27-
Silence fell in the Tucson’s command center. “Shit,” someone muttered.
“Maybe he’ll be slow. Maybe we’ll get him before he launches them all.”
“Launch two.”
“Fourteen thousand.”
“Not fast enough. Dammit, not fast enough.”
The crew waited, frozen to their stations, for the inevitable countdown of launches. Sonar finally said, “Sounds like eighteen was the last one, all hatches closed and I hear turns for flank speed.”
“They’re running.”
“Three thousand.”
“Conn, Sonar: countermeasures, countermeasures in the water.”
The control room crew let out a collective groan.
“Countermeasures again. Looks like he launched both of them.” Countermeasures were sophisticated torpedo-like drones that mimicked the signature of the submarine itself, hoping to draw away any weapons aimed at the boat.
“Amateurs,” muttered the XO.
“Hardly matters,” Captain Absen replied. “He must have detected the incoming torp. Now I wish I’d launched a Mark 48. Then we could be right behind it and ensure we killed the bastard.”
“No way of knowing, sir. We could turn around now.”
“No point. Helm, come to periscope depth.”
“Periscope depth aye.”
“Conn, Sonar: two thousand yards now, probably. I’ve lost the boat itself, we’re too far out of range.” The sonarman took off his headset. “Gentlemen, you might want to grab onto something.”
“Uh, yes sir, special weapon detonation in under one minute,” Ensign Cooper announced nervously.
Everyone took a seat and strapped in. The Captain picked up the PA mike. “Now hear this, all hands, special weapon detonation, I say again nuclear detonation at thirty thousand yards in under one minute, crash positions, take crash positions.” He put his hands over his ears and opened his mouth, watching his crew do the same as they waited.
Shockwave.
-28-
Repeth and Nguyen strapped themselves hastily into the semi-mobile seats bolted to the deck.
“Four fifty. Five hundred. Five fifty. Six hundred. Six fifty –”
The sledgehammer of an angry god struck the submarine, rolling it over ninety degrees in less than a second. Alkina, still taped into her chair, was propelled a short distance until the mobile fittings holding her seat to the deck brought her up short. Her upper body flopped, tearing the tape, her head slamming into a console. She lolled, a rag doll puppet, while the other three rubbed bruises, slowly releasing themselves from the straps.
“They do build these things tough, I’ll give ‘em that,” remarked Bitzer.
“That was a nuke.”
“Yup. What did you expect?” He laughed, on the edge of hysteria.
“Why didn’t it EMP us?” Jill asked.
Bitzer sneered, “What, shielded by thousands of yards of seawater, grounded by the whole ocean, the biggest electrical sink in existence? Didn’t you ever take any physics?”
“In high school,” Jill snarled. “Not lately.”
“That’s enough, you two,” snapped Nguyen. “Will they strike us again?”
“I doubt it. Every two minutes we’re a mile farther from the launch site in an unknown direction. They will have lost us in the shockwave. And ours should be detonating soon, right? That will knock out all their sensors and command and control. Anything on the surface will be firing blind into a thousand square miles of ocean.”
Jill laughed, shaky. “Then we made it. We’re home free.”
“Probably,” Colonel Nguyen replied. “Gunnery Sergeant, you did outstanding work today but now we have to focus ourselves back inside this boat." He pointed at Alkina. "That Australian operative there tried to interfere with the launch and we need to find out why. Trank her again, would you, and repair her bindings.”
“What the hell just happened?” Major Muzik stood in the open pressure doorway, his foot on the lip and his hands holding his swaying body upright by the jamb.
Bitzer laughed again, then choked it back. “We just launched eighteen nuclear missiles. We just set everone's command and control back a hundred years. We just balanced the scales.”
“Holy shit. And I slept through it. This bitch…” he walked over to Alkina’s bound and bloody form. “This bitch tranked me.”
“Me too, don’t feel too bad,” replied Repeth. She fished her trank pistol out of her cargo pocket, removed the safety cap and put the muzzle against Alkina’s neck. The drug hissed into her system with a quick pull. Jill began taping her up again, this time fastening the seat straps first, wrapping the silvery sticky stuff over the whole arrangement. She stopped for a moment to remove a slim carbon fiber blade from Alkina’s boot. She stared at the blood on it for a moment before tossing it to the Colonel. “Someone got stabbed.”
He caught the blade deftly and looked at it. “All right, you two sweep the ship. Find the others. They might be wounded…or worse. We’ll stay here.” Nguyen nodded toward Bitzer, whose hands remained glued to the submarine’s helm controls.
Three minutes later they met back in the control room. Repeth remained grim and silent but Muzik began cursing, a stream of angry profanity punctuated by slams of his muscled forearm against the bulkhead.
“She killed them. The bitch killed them – Doc, Harres, Kelley. Thrust to the brain up through the mouth. With that.” He pointed at the slim black blade where it lay on a console. “She’s a Psycho, just like you said.” Muzik stomped over to grab Alkina by her bobbed black hair. He shook her head, snapping it side to side. “Wake up, bitch!”
“Major! Cease that at once. We can’t get answers if you harm her in anger. But I don’t want to have to watch her at every moment and feed her and clean up her mess here in the control room. Before she comes to, cut her out of that chair and lock her in a storeroom. Make sure you search her first. Then I want to look at…at our technicians.” Nguyen swallowed. “Go!”
Muzik and Repeth stowed Alkina in a storeroom, locking the outside with a screwdriver through the hasp, and then joining the Colonel back in the control room.
“Where are they?” he asked.
“In the missile room. I’ll show you.”
One minute later they crouched by the bloody bodies of their three technicians. “Very cold. Very calculating,” Nguyen said as he turned Kelley’s blindly staring head with a fingertip. He stood to look around the room. “What’s that?” He pointed at the missile computer console.
“Looks like…I don’t know. A data module?” Jill stepped over to pull it out of the data port.
Nguyen nodded. “Now we know why she killed them. It was to keep the
m from interfering while she used that. But for what? The missiles launched correctly.” He rubbed his bare chin, his nostrils flaring.
Repeth got it first. “But where did the missiles go?”
“What the hell do you mean?” asked Muzik.
“I believe she means, did that –” he pointed at the thumb-sized data stick “– change the missile’s targeting or detonation parameters? And there’s no way to tell.”
“What do you mean, there’s no way to tell?” Muzik asked angrily.
“I mean, Major, that none of us knows enough about these things to find out. The three men who could tell us are dead. The only way to find out is to eventually surface and make contact with someone, and not get killed or captured in the process.”
“But where do we go, sir?” asked Repeth. “Can we trust the Australians?”
Nguyen stared at her for a long moment, then shrugged with a sigh. “I’m not sure. Chief, can we find the mini-sub again?”
“Certainly, sor. Assuming the whole goddamned UG Navy isn’t there to greet us. Assuming we could reach it, it’s thousands of miles away from here. They could have found it. If I was them, I’d tag it and watch it with an attack boat, just waiting for us to come back.”
“All right. Not practical. Any other ideas?” The Colonel looked around at his three subordinates.
“South Africa? Argentina?”
“How long will that take? Chief?”
“Three thousand nautical miles to Argentina, six thousand to South Africa. The UG Navy will be covering the routes to Argentina. Much safer the long way round to South Africa. Call it two weeks, give or take. We’re already headed west.”
Nguyen said, “I’m not going to wait that long. We’re just a few days from Australia. The Council’s orders were to turn the boat over to the Australians, so that’s what we’ll do. The Free Communities need those six missiles to speed along the space program; they need the warheads to threaten retaliation. We’ll just have to hope that the Australian government will play fair.”
The Demon Plagues Page 15
