Ripple (Breakthrough Book 4)

by Michael C. Grumley

  Waiting inside the large maintenance bay were both Gorski and Borger, along with the rest of the engineering crew. A few of them had already suited up for the second dive. Together they sat in a semicircle on standby.

  Gorski stood, with arms folded, in front of two rusted double doors. Both were open and leading into the Valant’s giant machine shop. The rest of the engineers faced Gorski, sitting on metal benches or against larger tables near the opposite wall.

  Caesare, Beene, and Corbin entered through a smaller door. Upon seeing the others, Caesare grinned sarcastically at Gorski. “Well, that was interesting.”

  Gorski scoffed. “Not exactly the word I was thinking of.” With arms still crossed in front of him, he raised his voice to address the group. “It seems our spaceship is full of surprises, gentlemen.”

  Elgin Tay, wearing wire-framed glasses and of Chinese descent, raised both eyebrows. “What happened?”

  “It appears the ship doesn’t just attract metal,” Borger answered. “It attracts energy too.”

  “What?!”

  “Our dive computers just experienced a sharp battery draw down.”

  “When we got right next to it,” Beene added.

  Jim Lightfoot, another of the Pathfinder’s engineers, frowned at Borger, then Gorski. “Is that even possible?”

  “I’m not sure,” Borger shrugged. “Maybe if there was a transformer or a motor involved. They have magnetic lines of flux to operate.” He thought for a moment. “If this ship had an energy field, it might be possible for it to absorb some of that energy. But that’s theoretical, and we’re not using any motors.”

  “I think we’re a little beyond what we consider possible with this thing,” Gorski replied. He glanced at Borger. “There’s not a hell of a lot making sense here. And this drawdown presents some serious problems. Those computers control the oxygen-helium mixture in the heliox. If something causes them to malfunction, and that mixture is off by only a fraction, then we’re going to be collecting your corpses when they float to the surface. At that depth and pressure, Mother Nature is damn unforgiving.”

  Tay looked back and forth between his team. “So, are we still going down?”

  “Not today. Not until we understand exactly what we’re dealing with.”

  “You know,” Steve Caesare thought aloud, “we could still get down to it, without being deep enough to need the computers or the lights. We can still get to the top of the thing using standard SCUBA equipment to get the drill on it.”

  The “drill” was a large two-handed unit used by underwater construction crews. It had been left onboard the Valant, and after undergoing some minor repairs, was now sitting on the metal floor in front of Lightfoot.

  The truth was, they could only go on mapping for so long. Sooner or later, they needed to know what the damn thing was made out of. Now more than ever. And that meant a sample. The waterproof drill was old but should nevertheless be able to provide a large enough piece of the hull to study.

  Gorski stared at Caesare, contemplating. The first drilling was expected to be done quickly, down and right back up. They could still go with all mechanical gear, without the need for any electronics. The only battery would be in the drill, and it was enormous. Once against the hull, thirty seconds was likely all they would need.

  “We do need a piece of it,” Borger acknowledged.

  “We can always go down again later to understand this energy draw,” Caesare offered.

  Gorski reluctantly nodded. They’d already carried out dozens of shallower dives, and only just detected the draw. Admittedly, the risk for the next dive wasn’t great.

  He looked to Tay. “Okay. But you’re down and back up inside of thirty minutes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Gorski twisted his wrist and looked at his large Oris Pro dive watch. “Then let’s get in the water. Time is not our friend.”

  ***

  Once in the water, it took less than seven minutes to reach the highest point of the alien hull. The broadly rounded section was exposed by only a small opening, which the team had made in the dense coral.

  Tay, along with Smitty, another of the Pathfinder engineers, moved into position. Lightfoot continued down behind them, lowering the tip of the drill for the first two men to guide in.

  The full-face rotary drill weighed over a hundred pounds out of the water, and even with the buoyancy of the ocean, they still had difficultly positioning its crystalline diamond cutter.

  Once it was finally in place, a small tripod extended forward around the end of the giant drill bit until each pad touched the hull, keeping the angle straight. More ripples of green snaked out from each of the three contact points and eventually faded.

  Tay nodded through his SCUBA mask, and the large unit was powered on, setting the large drill cutter spinning. Lightfoot grasped the large steel arm at the rear and slowly pulled it back, watching the cutting bit move forward inside a clear shaft.

  Tay checked the small cameras atop Lightfoot and Smitty’s neoprene-capped heads. Both appeared to be recording. Between the three of them, even with draining batteries, they should be able to capture some video.

  He double-checked the whirling bit and gave a thumbs-up before Lightfoot pulled farther back on the lever. The spinning increased and the charcoal-colored bit became a blur, extending out farther toward the alien hull.

  When the drill bit finally made contact, none of them were prepared for what happened next.

  16

  “Good God.”

  Borger couldn’t believe his eyes, nor could the rest of the engineering crew standing behind him. All packed into the small room.

  Behind Borger, Gorski was frowning again. It had only taken minutes to get his divers back to the surface but that was more than long enough for him. He turned around and looked at Tay, Lightfoot, and Smitty. All three were standing near the back. “You boys sure you’re okay?”

  They nodded almost simultaneously.

  In the video, the moment the giant bit dug into the metal, a huge section of the hull burst into a bright white light. It was so intense that the normal ripple of green had all but disappeared.

  The video from each of the three cameras playing simultaneously onscreen abruptly jumped around as Tay and his men scrambled to disengage the drill. Lightfoot slammed the lever back up, while both Tay and Smitty clung desperately to each side as a series of massive jolts caused the machine to buck wildly.

  In all the commotion and shaking video footage, there was no sound. None of the cameras being linked to audio, the videos played in eerie silence. But the panic was evident. Each man worked desperately to get to safety without losing control of the drill, still spinning as it withdrew into its protective sheath.

  But what came next was truly remarkable.

  Tay, thinking quickly, ripped his tiny camera from its bracket and turned the angle of the lens back toward the illuminated hull. There the video on his camera showed a large fist-sized dimple where the diamond cutter had bored into it. A hole that was barely visible under the blinding light. And a hole that, within seconds, began to change.

  Borger reached forward to zoom in on the picture and watched in fascination as the outside edges of the hole began moving. Subtly, as if it were shrinking, its outside edges began to soften and close inward, millimeter by millimeter. It appeared as if the edges were actually attempting to crawl toward one another––bit by bit, until the last edges reached each other and the hole disappeared.

  The entire team stood watching in stunned silence, equally fascinated. In less than three minutes, any trace of the damage––any hint of anything––was gone.

  After several more seconds the video ended, leaving the entire room in silence.

  “Okaaay,” Caesare breathed out slowly. “Anyone ever seen anything like that before?”

  17

  Admiral Langford sat somberly around the dark rich mahogany table while listening to another heated debate between National Securit
y Advisor Stan Griffin and Fred Collier, the Chief of Naval Operations.

  To Langford, the president’s morning security meetings were growing, or rather devolving, into little more than political theater. At the same time, the geopolitical relationship with China continued to unravel. Most of the senior officers around the table remained fixated on the sinking of the USNS Bowditch, one of the Navy’s most prominent science vessels, several weeks earlier. To them, it was a blatant act of war that deserved an immediate response, if not an all-out retaliation.

  But what surprised Langford was how little those same men understood or appreciated the ramifications of what the U.S. had just done. In a last ditch effort to save John Clay, and more importantly what he held in his possession, the Central Intelligence Agency was forced to recall their entire network of undercover operatives throughout China and several other Asian countries. It was a proverbial Hail Mary play that by the grace of God worked, but the political vacuum it left in its wake was immense.

  The problem wasn’t simply the recall of U.S. operatives, but the unavoidable exposure that went with it as well. And just how deeply those operatives had penetrated various government departments in China. Espionage was rife between all major countries, but the depth of U.S. penetration that China was now coming to grips with was devastating. And the impact wasn’t just about those who had been extracted. It was about those who were still left. Chinese officials who had been utterly deceived and would now have to face the wrath of the Chinese government for allowing their departments and their secrets to be compromised.

  So the implications weren’t just about a U.S. extraction. It was about the damage left behind. About people who would be killed as a result and a seething Chinese government hell-bent on revenge.

  For the foreseeable future, any friendly relations with the Chinese were now merely superficial––the thinnest veneer of public relations for the world to see. China may have started the fight with the sinking of the Bowditch, but now after the extraction, the gloves were officially off.

  Langford looked to the head of the table and into the tired eyes of President Carr. The leader’s tall stature paused unmoving in his chair, slouched slightly and sharing the same look as Langford. They both knew that the price paid for getting Clay and the special DNA out was likely greater than most of the other officers in the room were admitting.

  His eyes flickered briefly at Langford’s stare and then back to Collier, whose voice suddenly grew louder.

  “If we are to do nothing in response to this, then when will we?” he said, stabbing the table with his finger. “If they can sink a naval ship, an unarmed ship, in broad daylight without a response, then what else can they do?! Will they have to invade before we fight back?!”

  Griffith shook his head. “What you don’t understand is that what we’ve just done is far worse than any military strike. We’ve just set off a bomb in the very heart of China and attacked their pride as a sovereign nation. It’s already a government barely holding itself together while its economy crumbles to the ground. Honor and reputation are everything to them—”

  “Honor?!” Collier exclaimed, leaning forward again. “Honor and reputation is everything to us!”

  To that, Griffith’s voice lowered and he merely shook his head, exasperated. “Not like this, Admiral. Not like this.”

  Collier shook his head in admonishment. “You tell them then. You tell our troops that their honor isn’t as great as the Chinese. You tell them and see what kind of reaction you get. Honor is the only thing that some of these men live by. They will fight to the death to defend this country. With no—”

  This time Langford interrupted. “And how hard would they fight if someone exposed them as fools? For the entire world to see. How mad do you think they’d be then?”

  “Take your anger over the Bowditch,” President Carr blurted, “and start multiplying.”

  Collier didn’t answer. His face showed his desire to but instead he forced himself back in his chair.

  Merl Miller, the Secretary of Defense, frowned. “They’re going to come at us hard. And it’s going to be nasty.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning something quiet. And out of the public view.”

  “Cyber warfare,” the president said.

  “Most likely. The NSA is already working to harden every system they can. So far they haven’t seen plans for any concerted attack, but it’s just a matter of time. God knows they’ve already been in our systems enough to know where our vulnerabilities are.”

  President Carr leaned forward onto his elbows and sighed. They couldn’t wait until it was too late. They had no idea what form the retaliation would take, but they had to do something. “Raise the threat level. And tell local law enforcement to remain sharp. This could come from anywhere.”

  The grave irony of the situation was not lost on anyone in the room. Years ago, the NSA had embarked on a mission that would forever change the face of cyber warfare––all under direction from the White House. It started with developing the Stuxnet worm to help Israel disable Iranian centrifuges, just enough to render the uranium enrichment unusable. It was the first time in history such development had been undertaken at a state level. And when Stuxnet proved successful, it didn’t stop there. The NSA pushed forward with more sophisticated forms of hacking that pushed the envelope even further. Coupled with their secret monitoring of every system they could access, the secret directive initiated a firestorm around the world, bringing their espionage tactics to the attention of other countries, including allies. The viruses or “worms” that had been created were almost something in the realm of science fiction. Spyware that could infiltrate every hard drive on the planet it came in contact with. And so malicious that it could never be removed, even when detected. The only remedy was to destroy the hardware itself.

  In just a few short years, all major countries had their own state-sponsored hacking teams. Armchair soldiers now waged wars on a battlefield that few could even see.

  What the NSA and its Stuxnet brain child had done was to demonstrate that it was possible to inflict real-world damage from the cover of the virtual world. The greatest irony of all was that it was the U.S. who had opened Pandora’s Box. And now, years later, it was the U.S. who would bear the brunt of a full-scale cyber war as a result.

  Carr stared blankly across the table in front of him. An air of dread hung heavily in the room.

  “God, I hope this was worth it.”

  18

  The city of San Juan, Puerto Rico, was founded by famed explorer Juan Ponce de León. He was a man obsessed with immortality and the search for the legendary Fountain of Youth––an ironic twist considering one of Hospital San Francisco’s patients, recently transferred from a nearby island.

  Outside, a row of palm trees waved in the soft morning breeze as a veil of thin white clouds passed overhead. Inside, the morning sun left the room inundated with bright light and drew attention to Alison Shaw as she sat on the edge of the soft bed, smiling warmly at Chris Ramirez.

  He was raised almost into a sitting position and returned the smile to both Alison and John Clay, who was standing behind her. Chris noticed Clay’s cane and gave him a tired wink.

  “It looks like you’re healing up well, Mr. Clay.”

  “We both are.”

  Alison placed one of her hands on top of Chris’s. “How are you feeling?”

  “Not bad. A little loopy from the medication, but all in all, pretty good.”

  She nodded and studied the gauze on his head. “Well, the bandages seem to be getting a little smaller. That’s encouraging.”

  “I can’t tell,” Chris grinned. “They won’t give me a mirror.”

  “I don’t blame them. It looks worse than it is.”

  “Well, I’m clearly getting better. They’re letting me drink coffee again.”

  Alison followed his nod to the side table and an empty mug, causing her to shake her head sarcastically. “You a
nd your coffee.”

  “It’s better than jelly donuts.”

  At that, her eyes narrowed playfully.

  “What was that?” Clay asked.

  “You don’t know?” Chris’s grin widened. “Ali here has a jelly donut addiction.”

  “No,” Clay replied, amused. “Somehow that’s never come up.”

  Alison glared at Chris before twisting around. “Addiction is a bit of a stretch.”

  “Oh, really? I seem to remember you eating the whole box.”

  Alison stopped before shrugging at Clay. “It was during our research project in Costa Rica. The family I was staying with made them for my birthday.” Her eyes widened when Clay laughed. “What?! You couldn’t find them anywhere down there!”

  The men laughed together and watched Alison’s face redden. She opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted when the large door to the room burst open, slamming against the inside wall. Alison and Chris both jumped, and all three turned to find Lee Kenwood standing in the room.

  “Geez, Lee! You scared us!”

  “I’m sorry,” Lee replied, still panting. “I didn’t mean to.” He nodded at the bed. “Hey, Chris.”

  “I thought you were coming this afternoon?”

  “I was. But something came up.” Without waiting, he rounded the far side of the mattress and stopped at Chris’s bedside table. “I have to show you guys something!”

  In one motion, he slid off his backpack and pulled his laptop computer out. He set it carefully on the surface of the table and turned it sideways.

  “What’s going on?”

  Lee opened the lid, and the screen came back to life. He took a deep breath and tried to slow his breathing. “Something big. Something really big.”

  “Did something happen?”

  Lee nodded excitedly. “You could say that.” He typed quickly on the keyboard and logged in. When his screen brightened, it had a large window open. Lee turned back to the others with hands that were almost trembling. He suddenly stopped, catching himself, and looked at Chris. “Wait, how are you feeling?!”