Now he had to help Jack.
Removing his combat pack, Sam rummaged through the contents for something that he could use and came up empty. Then he looked down at the tactical vest he was wearing. Wearing a multitude of deadly weapons might have been second nature to a SEAL or Marine but was completely foreign to the navy man and it took a moment for a solution to register. His beefy hand wrapped around a fist sized canister hanging from the front of his vest, pulling it free before he pulled the pin out of it and tossed it down toward the pallet Jack was working on. Ducking for cover again, Sam hoped he’d chosen the right one.
Thick red smoke discharged from the smoke grenade that bounced across the ice toward Jack. Suddenly Jack’s senses became acutely aware of the approaching danger, although the source of the smoke grenade remained a mystery. With his combat instincts firing on all cylinders, Jack triangulated the path of the bullets chewing up the ice as they approached him, his position and the relative position of the conning tower ladder, which was his only option.
He’d never make it. Even on ideal terrain, he’d never cover that distance in time. On the slick ice? No way.
Cover fire spewed from the top of the conning tower. Sam had broken out the LWRC carbine that had been strapped to his pack and was giving the unseen enemy a taste of its own medicine. Jack could have kissed the big ginger headed brute. The line of fire across the ice stopped abruptly as the shooters broke for cover.
It was now or never.
With the grenade smoke shielding his movements and an interruption to the incoming fire, Jack made a dash to the tower as fast as the glassy ice would allow. Half way up the ladder, he heard Sam’s weapon fall silent.
Reload. Jack began counting off the seconds it should take Sam to slam home a fresh clip.
The shooters wasted no time and within seconds the side of the steel tower lit up with sparks from a volley of rounds only inches from where Jack clung to the icy ladder.
Scrambling up the slippery rungs, Jack was only a foot from the lip of the tower when his feet betrayed him and he started to fall toward the ice pack. And the waiting enemy.
Inexplicably, he remained suspended in mid-air. Looking up he saw that the grinning giant had leaned over the top of the ladder and managed to loop his big ham fist through one of the haul loops on Jacks pack, unmoved by the shower of bullets that sprayed around them.
With apparent ease, the big man hoisted Jack over the vertex of the conning tower structure and out of harm’s way. At least for the moment.
“Lucky that strap held or I could easily have dropped you in the ice hole.” Sam gave Jack a reassuring slap on the back.
Jack nodded. Now they were even. In one hell of a shitstorm, but even.
Risking a brief look over the edge of the conning tower, Jack could see, through the clearing smoke that they were surrounded on all sides by a heavily armed squad wearing NATO style snow camouflage. What he found most interesting was the fact that the crack team had adopted the exact same tactical approach to the submarine as he would have done if he were in their place.
He had no idea who the white suited enemy was, but he did know they were bloody good at their job. It was also becoming apparent, given all they had been through since arriving at Pine Gap, that the stakes were a lot higher than some old paintings or a few bars of gold. Someone was launching a serious and very deadly mission and sparing no expense in the process.
“Okay, covert ops boy, if you have a plan to get our asses out of this mess, I’m all ears.” Sam didn’t need to risk having his head blown off to see what was happening down on the ice. The look on Coulson’s face told him all he needed to know.
“I’ve got no idea what kind of goat rodeo we’ve been dropped into, but I’m betting some big chief at the Pentagon knows a lot more than we —” Jack’s words were cut off when a burst from a high-caliber machine gun hammered against the tower.
“Whatever it is that we’ve been sent to safeguard,” he continued when the thundering .50 caliber rounds paused for a beat, “it must be a lot more important than Colonel Daniels was told — he only sent the two of us. Whoever these other guys are, they’ve brought a whole fucking army!”
Chapter 12
November 9, 2017, 01:30 UTC
Ronne Ice Shelf (Antarctica)
77° 51' 19.79" S 61° 17' 34.20" W
USS Barracuda
Depth 1500 feet
Captain Jameson knew it wouldn’t be long before alarms were raised at Pacific Command. There was no way a nuclear sub went off the grid without raising a stink. Operational protocol called for the Barracuda to go shallow at regular intervals and report via an VLF comms link to PACOM. All they had to do was wait it out and remain silent and deep and hope that someone at Pearl had the good sense to send help.
“Conn, Sonar,” the Barracuda’s sonar tech called, quick with urgency, “I’m, picking up gunfire and lots of it. Some of it heavy.”
Captain Jameson turned to the sonar operator, “Heavy?”
“Heavy caliber, sir,” Porter, the sonar operator explained.
“You can tell the caliber from this depth?” Jameson looked skeptical.
“Sir, I’ve got this gear so finely tuned if they drop a beer can in the water I can tell you if it’s Miller or Bud.” Porter was equal parts proud and defensive of his high tech baby.
“How are we even picking up surface small arms fire?” asked Durand.
Porter looked a little sheepish. “I’m not real sure, sir. It might sound weird, but I think someone is actually shooting at the UFO or sub or whatever it is up there and that’s what CAVES is picking up.” The young sonar tech was referring to the Barracuda’s state-of-the-art Conformal Aperture Velocity Sonar array.
“Why the hell would anyone be shooting at … whatever that is up there?” Leah chimed in.
“Probably the same reason that someone’s been hunting us. I think there’s a player in this game who knows something we don’t. There’s something serious going on here but we’re operating in the dark without comms.”
“So we just bob around under the ice and hope like hell the other sub doesn’t find us and finish us off for good?” Leah said aloud what the other Barracuda men had been thinking. “It sounds like whatever it is we’ve found ourselves in the middle of, it’s closing in fast. But what do I know? I’m only an oceanographer.”
That was it. Suddenly Jameson saw an idea that had been clawing at his subconscious snap into sharp focus. Of course …
He pointed to Sutton and Alvarez, “You two, work with Porter over there and plot us a course through that opening or tunnel or whatever you called it. Get us inside that structure and at least we have somewhere to hide while we figure this out.”
Dave and Juan looked to Leah for confirmation. She was their boss, after all.
“Do it,” she instructed the men. She looked the captain in the eye, “Maybe my science geeks will turn out to be useful after all.”
Jameson scanned the maps on his monitor, annoyed that she had to have the last word, like a typical woman.
“Let’s not forget,” he said to no one in particular, “It was this floating science fair that got us into this situation in the first place.”
“We think we’ve plotted a way through the ice mountain, Captain,” Porter announced an hour later.
“I should think so, too,” Captain Jameson snapped back, looking not at his own man but the two civilian sonar and computer experts. “If this … structure … is what I’m quite sure it is, then Nazi submarine captains were navigating through that tunnel, at a depth of 300 feet with no more than a map, compass and sonar equipment so old it had vacuum tubes in it.”
Silence filled the Command Center.
Previously, the talk of German U-Boats had been no more than an abstract historical concept, like finding any other submerged shipwreck, something Leah and her team had done their share of over the years.
But now, the captain was adding another hideous layer
of reality to their reality. It looked like they’d stumbled upon a Second World War German submarine base. One that, in all likelihood, given its proximity to South America, had been used to aid the escape of high ranking Nazis and Waffen-SS officers when their monstrous crimes marked them as hunted war criminals.
It had been said aloud and there was no possibility of the genie being put back in the bottle. Neither the hardened military men nor the contingent of civilian scientists were prepared for such a revelation. To a man, and woman, they wished Juan had been right and that they had found a UFO in the ice.
“XO, take us in,” Jameson commanded before anyone had a chance to object.
Chapter 13
December 2, 1944
Gandau Airfield
Breslau (now known as Wroclaw)
Poland
Yet again the dull overhead lights dimmed further as the experimental chamber placed an impossible strain on the lab’s power grid. Bulbs exploded, fuse panels showered sparks and the tang of ozone filled the air as the circuits became increasingly over loaded.
“Dr … Kammler,” the former professor stammered as he watched the dials and gauges dance behind their glass binnacles, “a power surge could destroy the device.” And take us all with it, he failed to add. Maybe he should have remained silent, like the obedient prisoner that he was.
The familiar blue light glowed brighter than before, the extra Xerum 525 and additional power seemingly producing results.
The rail thin prisoner huddled in the corner of the chamber soiled himself as he began to illuminate with the same eerie radiance that blazed from the machine itself.
Kammler stood in front of the thick glass window, his hands clasped behind his back. He sensed something was different with this test. Somehow the piercing sound and the diffuse blue glow felt more stable. More controlled.
The General had taken an unprecedented risk in deceiving the Fuhrer. The financial backing had only been made available in such generous sums because of the promise to create a propulsion system that would win the war for the German military. A propulsion system so advanced that it defied the laws of physics as they were understood.
What Kammler had not told the Fuhrer, especially with his mental health deteriorating at an alarming rate, was how his new propulsion system worked. Better to let Hitler think it was a nuclear device rather than find out what it really was — a device that used what the Fuhrer called ‘Jew Physics’. Such a revelation would not have saved him from the firing squad, no matter how well the device worked.
“Dr. Kammler?” the prisoner at the control panel prompted again, disrupting Kammler’s reverie.
“Wait.” General Kammler’s tone was commanding and threatening at once.
The prisoner in the chamber shimmered like an apparition.
Then he was gone.
His chains. His uniform. Vanished.
“Shut it down!” Kammler shouted at the technician.
Immediately the two counter rotating hemispheres of the device slowed, the high pitched sound quieted and the glow faded.
The shimmer returned and the vanished prisoner began to take shape once again. Only this time, he was different. The grubby, emaciated prisoner was … smiling.
And he was on the wrong side of the room.
Hans Kammler threw open the door to the chamber as soon as the bell shaped machine stopped spinning.
“Where did you go?” The prisoner at the controls heard him shout with uncharacteristic emotion.
When the prisoner, still in his chains with a sneering smile on his lips, refused to answer, Kammler grabbed him by the front of his filthy, threadbare uniform and shook him violently. The former professor had never seen the pristine and meticulous general touch anything or anyone so repulsive.
“Where did you go?” he screamed again, spittle flying from his lips as he continued to shake the silent, smiling man like a rag doll.
Through his parched, smiling lips the man whispered so softly that the general was forced to ignore the foul fecal odor that rose form the man in order to bring his ear closer to the man’s mouth.
The prisoner whispered again, his smile growing more arrogant as he spoke.
Unable to hear what the man had whispered to Kammler, the professor could only surmise that it was not anything positive. The color drained from the general’s face as he stood and walked back into the laboratory, his face painted with a blank expression.
“General?” he asked as the Dr. Kammler entered the room, walking behind him.
“I did it,” the general said in total disbelief.
The scientist in him was elated that the experiment was successful, but he also knew what that success meant for the Third Reich and the barbarity that would be unleashed on his people, in turn. He opened his mouth to offer a word of congratulation to Hans Kammler on his scientific breakthrough, after all, collaborating with the Nazis was the only thing keeping his wife and six year old daughter alive. But the words never reached his lips.
The General had sliced the professor’s throat, severing his larynx and carotid artery in one swift stroke of a surgical scalpel. So fast and so clean that he was dead before he realized what had happened.
The general dropped the scalpel on the floor where it was slowly engulfed in a growing pool of blood. He turned on his heel and strode from the laboratory with renewed vigor in his step and only one irritating concern.
He would have to find someone new to clean up the mess in the lab.
Chapter 14
November 9, 2017, 01:30 UTC
National Security Agency
Fort Meade
Maryland
39° 6' 32"N 97° -76' 46 17" W
Assistant Director Henry Preston was accustomed to being seated at the head of the table and having his underlings report to him. Not this morning, though. It was 21:30 and he was bleary eyed from lack of sleep and seated half way down the table. He wondered what he was doing there at all.
His director, George Turner sat at the head of the table and looked like he’d just walked in off the golf course. His tanned face made him look younger, but Henry knew he’d turned 62 a few months ago. Casual pants, Ralph Lauren polo shirt and tasseled loafers were apparently acceptable meeting attire at the Director level. His silver hair was slicked back and still damp, somehow he’d had time for a shower before the crisis meeting. The room was heavy with notes of citrus and vanilla from his aftershave.
Preston barely had time to grab his jacket and tie before slamming his office door on an inbox full of unread emails and a bunch of phone messages he’d never likely have time to return. Things had gone crazy since the Pine Gap incident and he was putting out one fire after another. He looked at his reflection in the glass wall surrounding the boardroom table and saw that, in his haste he was wearing the same rumpled shirt he wore yesterday. He felt like a fish out of water in the director’s private meeting room.
Director Thomas Burgess of the Defense Intelligence Agency sat opposite Henry and despite the lack of uniform, his bearing was military through and through, even the creases in his chambray sport shirt were ironed to perfection. Preston guessed that at any other time of the working day he’d be in uniform with campaign ribbons on display across his broad chest. In his late fifties with a face lined with the stress of his position, Director Burgess was a no-nonsense man with a brusque way about him.
“Are you the one who woke me at 3am the other night?” Burgess grilled Henry without bothering with pleasantries or introduction.
Henry looked to his boss for explanation after all he was the one who instructed Henry to call the DIA director.
“Sorry, Tom, that was my call,” admitted George.
“I was on holiday, with my wife, damnit. She’s not going to let me forget this, you know. I promised her I’d actually stay the distance this time and not get called back to the office. This had better be important.” Burgess sat ramrod straight in his chair, hands splayed in front of him on the t
able.
“When I took this job three years ago,” George Turner explained, “I was read in on a few sensitive files and one of them had quite specific instructions with regard to calling you and you alone under certain circumstances,” Turner explained.
Director Burgess remained plain faced on the matter. Henry made a mental note never to play poker with the man. His eyes showed no flicker of interest as to what the ‘sensitive’ files might refer to. Henry was impressed.
Turner continued, “Actually there were two files that prompted the call. The first related to any incident that rendered the Pine Gap monitoring facility dark and the second related to any incident involving one of our submarines in the Antarctic. Congratulations Tom, you’ve rolled snake eyes.”
Henry watched the DIA Director’s face pale before his eyes. Not so much the poker player after all. But none of this explained why he’d been called into a high level meeting with two men from different intelligence agencies each of whom was way above his own paygrade.
Reaching to the center of the table, Henry slid a glass in front of Burgess and poured him some water. The man drank with a slightly trembling hand, not even acknowledging Henry or his polite gesture.
“We’re still waiting for news from Pine Gap but it appears that whatever happened there, it was catastrophic as our entire communication grid can’t raise them by any means,” Turner added.
“And the submarine?” Burgess spoke at last before taking another mouthful of water.
He was economical with his words Henry observed watching the exchange between the two senior directors.
“Missing. No distress call. Nothing. It failed to report in on schedule and hasn’t been heard from since. That’s all we know at this stage,” responded Turner.
Ice Fortress (A Jack Coulson Thriller) Page 7