The Alboran Codex

by J C Ryan

James raised his hand. Laughing, Carter said, “Yes, James?”

  “What’s my role?”

  “You’ve done pretty well so far, you and Captain Randy, to get the President involved right away and getting us all these powerful friends to protect us. I’d say the two of you have earned a nice Scotch and a cigar.”

  “My kind of assignment,” James replied and winked. “Seeing that I’ve been told this is my last mission, I might as well get a bit of practice in what I’ll be doing in retirement.”

  “If we’re all clear, let’s get started.”

  Carter hadn’t remembered to include the Dolphins’ assignments, so when Mackenzie asked him if he needed her to make any requests, he snapped his fingers. “Darn! Of course, they could look for the nukes, save us some time if they find them before we find any references to them in the plates.”

  “Could we show them pictures of modern ones? Can they be much different?” she asked.

  “Let’s see what we can find on it,” he said, leading her to a computer to begin the search while everyone else got ready for the dive.

  Looking at images of nuclear bombs, they realized a couple of design requirements would probably be the same in ancient times as in modern times. All images they could find showed a range of round or egg-shaped objects, or a tapered object that resembled a rocket.

  “This makes sense,” Carter said. “They’d have to be aerodynamic to stay on course for their targets if they were dropped from flying machines.”

  “Okay, I see what you mean,” she answered. “I need to get the pictures across to Merrybeth.”

  Chapter 74 -

  The bunker

  Using the Dolphins to make the search for the nukes turned out to be more successful than Carter could have imagined. Once they understood, from the images, what Carter wanted, they swam into areas that the divers wouldn’t have reached for several days at the very least. While the retrieval of the plates went on, the Dolphins searched every space they could get into and even organized a sort of grid.

  Carter and Mackenzie made sure they mapped and tracked every part of the city that was being searched.

  Mackenzie laughed quietly as Carter told her it was almost like he would have organized a land dig. Of course, the buildings were a bit jumbled, but there was no need to actually dig, except where the silt had built up on fallen walls. It wasn’t exactly the same.

  On the third day, a group of the Dolphins, two of them carrying harnesses with comms equipment on their backs, found a sturdy looking structure that stood in sharp contrast to the rest of its surroundings, which were all in a state of ruin. The structure was huge and reminded Carter of a military bunker.

  He and Mackenzie guided the Dolphins around the structure looking for an entryway. They could find only one area where there could potentially be a door, a big one at that, but it was filled up with rubble and silt. The only way to know for sure was to get divers to investigate.

  Set away from the central area of the city, where La Solitude was anchored while supporting the divers who were still retrieving plates, it would have been too long a swim for Dylan and a dive partner. Moving La Solitude wasn’t an option. They reached a compromise. A small boat from one of the destroyers would take Dylan and one of the SEALS along with the ROV to the bunker. Carter was invited aboard to guide the excavation effort to avoid damage to the archaeological aspect of the site as much as possible.

  Everyone was nervous, from Carter, Dylan, and the SEAL to the Captain of the Navy ship, who’d necessarily been informed of what Carter suspected — or hoped — was in that bunker. Not one of them had any idea how unstable a fifty thousand-year-old nuke could be. The very concept of a nuke that old was incredible, but Carter’s certainty was enough to spook even the battle-hardened Navy skipper.

  Dylan and the SEAL were sweating inside their wetsuits. After clearing the debris from the spot, they confirmed it was definitely a door — but with no way to open it. No obvious handle, hinge, or anything else but the outline that proved the break in the wall.

  Carter said, “I’ve seen this before, and I know how to open that door. It’s risky. The mausoleum at the City of Lights had just such a door, and we opened it with electromagnetic pulses from our ground-penetrating radar.” He turned to the Navy Captain. “What do you have available that might be able to generate electromagnetic pulses?”

  The ship’s bosun was called in, and Carter explained what he required. The man nodded, “I’ve got just the thingamajig for your problem. Give me an hour, and it will be ready.”

  As promised, within the hour the bosun returned with a handheld device which two of his men had constructed using a few simple tools and materials, including a soldering iron, screwdrivers, enamel-coated wire, Scotch tape, and an old mobile phone. The device was packed in a see-through, waterproof bag, and he demonstrated to them how it worked.

  Before they went in, Dylan suggested the ROV be sent in to open the door first. He had a healthy enough regard for his own skin that he didn’t want to be right next to a nuke if it went off. Logically, he knew it would make little difference. A nuke going off inside the bunker would obliterate the bunker, him and his partner, and the destroyer as well. He still didn’t want to be at ground zero if it happened.

  Carter agreed for his own reasons. He wanted a look at whatever was inside before anyone else’s impressions influenced him. He asked the ROV operator to proceed and then held his breath.

  The makeshift EMP generator did its job as expected and had the door open in less than two minutes.

  The ROV quickly revealed a cache of large, round objects made of an unknown metallic alloy, stacked on shelves. All expedition members present, in person, or by video experienced a mix of emotions that made some of them doubt their sanity.

  They’d done it! But their emotions fluctuated from elation that they’d probably found what they’d been seeking for so long, to a sudden anxiety attack on the part of Sam’s assistant — it ran the gamut.

  When Carter, Dylan, and the SEAL returned to La Solitude, before they did anything else, Captain Randy broke out a case of champagne he’d laid in for the occasion. The entire team celebrated appropriately, but Merrybeth was heard to ask Mackenzie why the land-humans were making such strange noises.

  Carter himself developed a stomach-ache at the thought that anyone could have found them. If the artifacts were what he and most of the onlookers were almost certain they were, and they’d been found and somehow detonated, even inadvertently . . . It didn’t bear thinking of. Countless lives, ancient cultural treasures — so much would be lost. But the horse had bolted.

  “If we were at home, Carter, my mother would tell you not to worry about something that could happen. Instead, worry about making sure it won’t happen,” Mackenzie said.

  “That’s exactly what I’ve done my dear,” he answered. “I’ve already spoken to Bill, and he’s got a couple of nuclear scientists on the way to have a look at them. Meanwhile, we still have plenty of work to do. In fact, from what I’ve seen so far, there’ll be work here for many years to come.”

  Chapter 75 -

  The strangest cargo

  Carter continued to direct the work below for the two days it took the scientists to arrive, while driving Mackenzie crazy as he constantly bemoaned the fact he was still not fit to dive. She understood his frustration. Carter was used to being hands-on. She comforted him by saying no one else would be as efficient as he was at directing the complex mission — she refused to call it a dig — because no one else had the eidetic memory to know who was where and doing what at any given point in time.

  Within the next day and a half, the divers had cleared out the library. Thanks to the lightweight and virtually indestructible alloy the plates were made of, great armfuls of them could be stacked into makeshift containers and brought to the surface. One of the Navy ships was brought in right above the library to help with its onboard cranes in bringing up the containers.

  Afterwar
d, Carter set up a virtual grid and had them further explore and map the site so the permanent archaeological crew wouldn’t have to do so when they got there.

  It had taken two days for the scientists to arrive because it took a frantic search on the part of the NSA, with the President and the Director blowing down their necks, to locate two they could trust with the secret and who could be persuaded not to throw their toys out of their cots when they heard that the nukes they were going to see were over fifty thousand years old.

  As it was, they still came as close to having that hissy fit as one can get and maintain dignity. One of them flat-out called it a lot of bovine droppings but quickly added he would, however, believe whatever the President of the United States told him to believe — until he could prove differently. It took several hours to convince each of them that it wasn’t an elaborate prank being played on them. They finally agreed to go, but wanted their disbelief officially noted — in writing. They were not prepared to lose credibility amongst their colleagues as the two nut cases who went on a wild goose chase after fifty thousand-year-old nukes without written evidence of their protestations.

  So, forty-eight hours after the suspected nukes were found, two very skeptical nuclear experts dropped in by helicopter to inspect them, first underwater through the lenses of the video cameras of the ROV.

  There were, per their rough estimate, about five hundred devices of various shapes and sizes in that bunker. Compared to the over fifteen thousand modern nuclear weapons in existence, it was a drop in the bucket. On the other hand, no one could guess how powerful these ancient weapons were. Maybe five hundred could destroy the planet — who knew? And in the hands of the wrong people, just one of them could wreak havoc and unimaginable panic.

  The two scientists had the same misgivings as the others about their chance of survival if any of those devices were, in fact, nuclear bombs and went off — not to mention if the whole lot of them went off at once. They remained incredulous about the whole thing. But they were also not prepared to take any chances and call it a hoax — not yet.

  To validate it one way or the other, they had to get close enough to the devices to inspect them. Neither was a diver, and even if they were, neither would be expected to make a dive, and Sean was sure neither would volunteer.

  By now, there were several destroyers and an aircraft carrier anchored nearby. So, they gave the order for everyone to clear the area and move out at least 10 miles minimum. No sense in wiping out half of the 6th Fleet in a nuclear explosion. Not with fifty thousand-year-old nukes. They kept only a skeleton staff on the ship with the two scientists on board, amongst them the captain.

  The Chinese corvette had ungraciously tucked its tail between its legs and left the area days before.

  Once it was only the one Navy ship left in the danger area, they sent down the ROV on its first of many missions fitted with different kinds of high-tech scanners, gauges, and measuring devices to determine just how “live” those “nukes” were. None of them were prepared to take a ride down in one of the mini-subs readied for them to have a closer look.

  After two days of back and forth, the scientists agreed that it was probably safe to bring one of the “objects” — they still refused to call it a nuclear device – aboard for closer scrutiny.

  Once the first “object” was secured on the deck and inspected, the nuclear scientists confirmed they certainly had been nuclear weapons, but they had been neutralized by some mysterious means. The scientists still appeared to be skeptical of the provenance of the weapons, but by now it was only because they hadn’t had time to adjust to the surreal nature of it all. And Captain Randy, with his Scotch, was not on hand to help them assimilate everything as smoothly as he and his crew had the privilege of doing.

  The core of fissionable materials seemed to be inert. But the half-life of the isotope that modern bombs used was over four billion years; longer even than the newly-expanded estimate of human history. Even if it had been a different isotope, none of them had a half-life that short. How could it be inert after fewer than one hundred millennia? That was a question they couldn’t answer on the deck of a ship. They told Carter they’d need to take them back to their laboratories in the US for further study to even hope to understand it.

  The other ships were called back, and carefully they started hoisting the ancient bombs out of the water with the help of a dozen or so divers. As each device was brought to the surface, they reassured it was neutralized, and then it was loaded onto one of the destroyers to transport to the USA.

  That destroyer was certainly going to be the ship that carried the strangest cargo of any vessel ever to cross the Atlantic.

  Two of the bombs were airlifted with the scientists and flown out to Rota in Spain, where a military jet was standing by to transport them to Los Alamos National Laboratories, the birthplace of the US nuclear weapons program. And although the facility’s focus shifted at the end of the Cold War from developing new warheads to maintaining the safety, security, and reliability of the existing nuclear stockpile, they did continue research, design, and development of advanced technology concepts.

  What remained to be seen was how well they were going to cope with research on nuclear technology more than fifty-thousand-years older than what they had.

  Not to mention finding out how those nukes were incapacitated.

  Chapter 76 -

  Permission to stand down, sir?

  Carter conceded he’d be more comfortable with the bombs out of the site, and indeed out of the Mediterranean, even if they were crippled.

  A few more days of mapping the site, and everyone aboard La Solitude agreed — they’d had a great time. They’d had a lot of fun, a lot of sadness, again commemorating the loss of their two friends, and a lot of adventure. But they also agreed it was time to head home.

  Mackenzie asked Merrybeth to gather her pod where they could all hear the heartfelt thanks of the expedition members. Each of the land-people who’d had a personal encounter with a Dolphin thanked them by name and bid them farewell for now. No one could imagine not ever seeing or talking to their Dolphin friends again, so goodbye was not the right word. Most settled for “so long” and “see you later.” Mackenzie was in tears when she and Carter thanked the whole pod and told Merrybeth they would see her and her “family” again soon.

  So much depended on their potential involvement in the dig. Would they see her soon? Mackenzie certainly believed so. On the other hand, she missed Loki and Keeva terribly, and her children even more. She’d be overjoyed to see them all again when she and Carter got home. Freydís was where her heart lived.

  That afternoon when Captain Randy gave orders for La Solitude to set sail for home, Carter walked over to James and invited him to follow him to the lounge, where he ordered a double Scotch on the rocks for each of them. With drinks in hand, Carter turned to James and said, “Mission accomplished, Mr. Rhodes. You hired me to find you the ancient nukes. I found them, and they’re on their way to America. Permission to stand down, sir?”

  James choked up, and said, “You’ve done well, son. Your Grandpa Will would have been a very proud man today.” He downed half of his drink and went out to the rails, where he stood alone and stared out over the waters of the Alboran Sea in the direction of Israel. After a while he raised his glass and whispered, “Ben Friedman, my old friend, you and your people can relax. We found them. All of them. I’ll call you when I get back home.”

  Epilogue

  The 6th Fleet were tasked to keep a vessel on the site at all times to guard against anyone else from pegging a claim on that underwater city.

  When the expedition team left the site, they were stunned to learn that their top-secret mission was now common knowledge among at least fifty known individuals, and who knew how many more unknown?

  No one would ever know how, when, or by whom it was leaked, but leaders of every country surrounding the Mediterranean, plus the Chinese, the Russians, and privately, the N
abateans, had an opinion about the discovery. Carter noted that none of them mentioned the nukes, but he knew it was just a matter of time before that would be leaked as well.

  Naturally, the Russians and Chinese were the least vocal in the media, where there was a frenzied buzz about an international conspiracy of an unknown nature. However, they were the most vocal through diplomatic channels.

  The Russians wanted their citizens back, and the Canadians were under pressure to hand them over. That put them in the middle, since they’d allowed the US to take the ex-Spetsnaz operatives, so they were pressuring the US to hand them over. The operatives in question had applied for emergency asylum on humanitarian grounds, knowing that if their government got hold of them, they’d be lucky to wind up in Siberia rather than simply disappearing with no trace.

  The Chinese still had their noses out of joint because of the explosions that crippled the boat that was flying their flag while remaining quaintly silent about their harassment of La Solitude’s crew. Since no one could prove anything about the reason for the explosions, all traces of C4 having been washed away by the sea afterwards, they would get no satisfaction. This frustrated them enough to throw temper tantrums by means of the international media, which only served to make them look more foolish because they couldn’t, and probably wouldn’t want to if they could, provide information about the boat’s true owners.

  However, the Politburo did undergo what the Chinese media called a “minor” restructure, when the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the President both developed undisclosed health issues and announced their retirement.

  The Mediterranean countries for the most part were simply grateful that the US had discovered an unspecified danger in the sea close to them and removed it.

  No doubt some would have changed their tunes if they’d known the specifics. The only countries not taking this line were Egypt, Libya, and Syria. Egypt announced that Carter and Mackenzie were declared “undesirable aliens” and would be denied visas to their country in perpetuity. Carter would never see the City of Lights again — well, at least until the Egyptians came to their senses, and that might take a long time.