Ice Fortress (A Jack Coulson Thriller)
Page 12
As he and his team trudged through the crisp, powdered snow that covered the ice, a hellish wind tore at them like an invisible fist trying to drive them back. Progress was slow but they were making ground toward where he hoped to find the entrance to the bunker he’d circled on the map after receiving the coordinates from Barnes. Compasses were useless so close to the magnetic South Pole, so Muller was forced to rely on a GPS to navigate through the near zero visibility of the blizzard. He hoped like hell the damned batteries handled the cold better than he did.
Chapter 28
November 9, 2017, 05:30 UTC
National Security Agency
Fort Meade
Maryland
39° 6' 32"N 97° -76' 46 17" W
“What do you mean the navy doesn’t know where their subs are?” Preston was horrorstruck at the idea that the navy had nuclear weapons scattered around the globe like forgotten toys and nobody knew where they were. Not even Naval Command.
“Our subs run silent and deep during their patrols. Only the captains of these boats know their patrol area, which is highly classified. The Ohio class subs deployed with ballistic missile launch capability but the attack subs are deployed with Tomahawk cruise missiles and have both conventional and nuclear warheads,” DIA Director George Turner explained. “And one surgical strike with a nuclear tipped Tomahawk is all we need.”
Preston was only an Assistant Director and, worse, An AD in charge of SIGINT or Signals Intelligence. Turner didn’t think he had a right to know about the nation’s nuclear weapons capability in any detail, but the scenario unfolding before them called for extraordinary measures. The fact that The President had authorized a nuclear strike only served to confirm the true horror of the consequences should they fail.
“If PACOM don’t know where they are and if they are undetectable below the surface, then the enemy can’t know where they are, not even if they have a mole inside Pacific Command or any of the other navy command areas,” Turner continued.
“There must be another way,” said Preston. “We haven’t used nuclear weapons since 1945 and there’s a good reason for that.”
“Satellite communications are still patchy since Pine Gap got hit. We have no military to speak of anywhere near the Antarctic. The whole Antarctic continent was declared a military free zone since the 1960’s for God’s sake. McMurdo Station, even if we could even reach them, is full of meteorologists, glaciologists, geologists, oceanologists and about every other ‘ologist’ you could think of, but no military and no weapons. Besides, they’d never be able to fly to the Ronne Ice Shelf with the weather as it is.”
“But a nuclear strike? Seriously?” Preston pressed the point that he wasn’t on board with the nuclear weapon launch.
Finally Preston’s boss chimed in, “Henry, there’s no other way. We had a research sub down there — they went dark. We’ve had confirmation that the covert ops guy and one other we deployed from Pine Gap were dropped over the area, but they’ve gone dark, too. We have to assume we have no assets in the region.”
“But are we even sure this … this thing is even on board the U-Boat?” implored Preston.
“Son, we’re not sure of anything but the fact remains that this device can never fall into enemy hands, it can’t even fall into our hands. It’s just too dangerous and the consequences are beyond horrific. We’ve even had unconfirmed chatter regarding a neo Nazi organization that have been looking for it for decades. Can you imagine what would happen if they found it? My God, if that happened then you’d be begging me to send in the nukes.” Turner jabbed a finger at Preston, his cheeks flushed with anger.
“It’s a done deal,” Turner commanded. “As soon as a sub with nuclear warheads on board makes contact, they will be given the coordinates and nuclear strike orders.” He continued, “You’re only job is to manage the communications and see that everyone else stays the hell out of that hot zone. Have I made myself clear, Preston?”
With a barely perceptible nod, Preston capitulated. But that didn’t mean he had to like the idea.
Chapter 29
November 9, 2017, 06:00 UTC
U-Boot-Bunker (Submarine Pen)
Kriegsmarine Base 211
Ronne Ice Shelf (Antarctica)
77° 51' 19.79" S -61° 17' 34.20" W
USS Barracuda
The crew mess aboard the Barracuda was more spacious than Jack was expecting. Suited up in the pair of borrowed engineer’s coveralls, he’d made his way to the mess with Leah in tow to find out what had everyone excited. Loudly animated voices could be heard all the way to the sick bay.
As they entered the mess, Leah maneuvered her way past Jack to introduce her team, Dave and Juan and the two submarine officers, Captain Frank Jameson and the Executive Office, Peter Durand. All four men leaned forward and shook hands with Coulson before taking their seats and scooching over to make way for Leah in the booth.
Sam sat alone in his own booth. He’d managed to dry his clothes. Jack suspected they didn’t have anything to spare that would fit him, anyway.
“Leah, this is Sam Krupsky, my U-Boat expert.” After Jack made introductions he sat next to Sam. “I suppose you’ve told them the story of how we came to be here, not that I’d expect anyone to believe it.”
Sam nodded.
Jack sensed something was off. Sam wasn’t himself.
“What’s all the excitement about? Tell me you didn’t find a hoard of Nazi gold on the U-Boat, Sam?”
An awkward silence fell over the small group.
“I wish I did,” said Sam. His expression was grave. “I found the U-Boat commanders log book on one of the bunks and there’s a non-standard compartment on the boat that’s been welded shut.”
“That’s not unusual, is it?” asked Jack.
“From the inside.” Sam’s face darkened further.
“And then there’s this.” Jameson held up the leather bound log, its dog eared pages filled with a neat and very precise script and passed it to Jack.
“I speak enough Arabic and Farsi to get by in the Middle East, but my training didn’t include any German, I’m afraid. They’re on our side, after all.” Jack flipped through the log, regardless.
“That’s alright, I took enough German in college to make out most of what’s in there,” Durand offered. “Up until a few days before the log finishes abruptly,” he went on, “it’s a boring narration of life aboard a U-Boat. Navigational data, weather, crew issues, damage reports. Boring as bat shit. Until …”
Jack waited for him to continue. The man clearly had a sense for the dramatic.
“Until?”
“Until some kind of experiment with what they refer to as a Wunderwaffe … that’s Wonder Weapon,” he explained.
“Yeah, I kind of worked that out.” Jack didn’t really care for Durand. His instincts were rarely wrong and they were on full alert with this guy.
“Anyway,” Durand continued, unfazed, “it seems the captain, Helmut Sohler wasn’t too happy with having the weapon on his boat or he had some other beef with the guy that built it Kam —”
“Kammler,” Juan broke in, “the guy who built the weapon was Dr. Hans Kammler, a real nasty piece of work, even by SS standards …”
All eyes were now on Juan who realized that he’d interrupted the XO.
“Don’t stop now,” Leah encouraged, “you’ve got us hooked.”
“The name didn’t mean anything when you first said it,” Juan acknowledged Durand, “but it came to me just now. He was a top ranking Nazi General, reporting directly to Hitler. Those gas chambers disguised as showers in the concentration camps … they were Kammler’s brainchild. He did a bunch of other stuff, too, like the V2 rockets. He was supposed to be a hot shot engineer.”
“And he came here? On the U-Boat?” asked Sam.
“That’s the thing, he disappeared after the war. The Russians claimed the Americans had him as part of Operation Paperclip and the Americans thought the Russians had captu
red him and were using him to develop their own nuclear weapons program.”
“Operation Paperclip?” Leah raised her palms, not having a clue what Juan was talking about.
“That’s what the U.S. government called it. They scooped up a couple of thousand super smart Nazi scientists brought them to America and gave them and their families new identities and jobs in our own top secret military programs.”
“No way,” Leah objected.
“Yeah, way,” Dave cut in. “When I was studying the history of sonar technology, we learned a lot from research done by some of those guys. Their work was way ahead of anything we’d come up with during the war.”
“And who do you think put us on the moon?” asked Juan.
“Kennedy?” Leah suggested.
“Werner Von Braun. The same Nazi rocket scientist who developed the V2 rocket to destroy entire cities came over to our side and became the designer of the Saturn V rocket that put the first man on the moon.”
“Is this another one of your tinfoil hat conspiracies?” Leah arched a skeptical brow at Juan.
“I can vouch he’s telling it as it is,” said Durand. “The military history courses I took when I did my training at Groton lines up with what Juan’s saying, for sure.”
Sam’s angry baritone voice boomed through the crowded space, “So one of Hitler’s Nazi scientists actually put the first man, an American, on the moon?”
Juan responded, “Well, I doubt it actually says that on the About Us page on NASA’s website, but that’s more or less how it happened. It was literally a space race. We were racing the Russians, the communists, for the high ground. Space.”
Jack had a question for Juan. “Okay, so getting back to Kammler, you’re saying that he basically went missing, vanished without a trace after the war and each side thought the other had him, but he fled here, on the U-Boat and with this secret weapon?”
“When you say it like that, it sounds a bit thin,” Juan responded, “but the diary and the sealed compartment support the proposition. We’re scientists … we just follow the evidence. The question I’m asking is why they built this place. It must have been a mammoth undertaking, even by Third Reich standards and they were known for doing things in a big way.”
Coulson stroked his chin in thought. “I was thinking the same thing. This place has virtually zero strategic value from a military perspective. Could it have been for scientific or engineering reasons?” he asked Juan and Dave.
“We’ve only had a quick look around, but there’s no evidence of laboratories, manufacturing facilities or anything much of anything really, other than some decrepit generators and a few crates of ammunition of some sort,” replied Dave with a shrug.
“That only leaves one possible explanation,” Jack said, shaking his head as he said it. That couldn’t be right. His eyes tracked to the ceiling of the pokey mess room. Impossible.
But the heavily armed force up there on the ice suggested Jack was right.
He wished he wasn’t, but he kept his thoughts to himself, for the moment.
Chapter 30
November 9, 2017, 06:30 UTC
U-Boot-Bunker (Submarine Pen)
Kriegsmarine Base 211
Ronne Ice Shelf (Antarctica)
77° 51' 19.79" S -61° 17' 34.20" W
USS Barracuda
“I think the U-Boat commander wanted someone to find this.” Durand held up the old log. “He’s documented a lot more than just operational notes. He seems fixated on something he calls ‘Die Glocke’, The Bell.”
They were all enthralled by Kapitänleutnant Sohler’s handwritten account by now and waited eagerly for Durand to read and translate each page at a painfully slow pace. Sam had even stopped wolfing down the boats rations as he listened raptly to the story as it unfolded.
“It’s not clear how he knows this, but Sohler claims the device, The Bell, was designed as a propulsion system to be used on aircraft to deliver speed and maneuverability beyond anything possible with the jet engines of the day.” Durand paused and looked around the room, “How does a propulsion system become weaponized? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe we’ll all find out if you get back to the log entries,” Sam suggested.
Durand’s finger traced each word in German across the page and his lips moved as he read to himself in a whisper, like a preschooler. Other than that, the room was silent. Even Captain Jameson remained silent, his mind preoccupied with the crazy events of the past 24 hours.
Finally Durand’s finger stopped tracing the lines on the page and his face paled noticeably.
“If this is true, then God help us.” The hands of the man who made a career of patrolling the depths in a steel tube with a nuclear reactor trembled as he lowered the wartime log.
“What is it, XO?” Jameson asked. He hadn’t known the man long enough to have the measure of him, but you didn’t get to be the XO of an attack submarine by being a pussy. Jameson wanted to know what had his officer so spooked.
“I don’t understand some of the jargon, but he’s suggesting that Kammler revealed to him how the thing works …”
“And?” Jameson prompted.
“Well, it sounds like it works by bending space and time, somehow, so it can move from one place to another, well … in an instant. He talks about Jew physics, Einstein’s theory of relativity and about …”
His words caught in his throat.
“For God’s sake, man, out with it,” Jameson commanded impatiently.
“Time travel, sir. He says that the device had been re-engineered to move through time.”
Jack noticed that for the last minute or so, Juan and Dave had been looking directly at Leah. Not in that way, either. There was something they knew that the others didn’t. But Leah remained tight lipped and avoided eye contact with her two prodigies.
The room fell silent, yet again.
Juan’s excited outburst punctuated the stunned silence. “He’s talking about Einstein’s theory of relativity. Hitler debunked it because Einstein was a Jew, I think that’s why Sohler mentions ‘Jew Physics’. Leah? Want to help me out here?”
Shaking her head, Leah waved her hand for Juan to continue his physics tutorial.
“Okay, so a few years before the Second World War, Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen, also a Jew, published a paper detailing what they called their general theory of relativity. In it, they hypothesized the existence of wormholes and suggested that these ‘bridges’ or wormholes connected different points in space and time.
These wormholes or bridges were naturally occurring but short-lived and highly unstable, so they were of no practical value. It was purely conjecture that they could be used to travel vast distances in a short space of time, yet that’s exactly what Star Trek and Dr. Who have built their franchises on — travelling through the galaxy or through time using wormholes.”
“So where does this ‘Bell’ come into it?” Jameson asked.
Durand had composed himself and resumed his explanation, “It seems this Kammler fellow had tried to develop a propulsion system using this bridge theory so that aircraft could move from one place to another in an instant using a bridge or wormhole created artificially by the Bell.”
“Which is how we speculate that UFO’s are able to maneuver in three dimensional space as fast as witnesses report they do. Way faster and more agile than any jet fighter,” Juan added.
“Yeah, during The Second World War pilots reported seeing spherical ‘bogies’ darting around the sky. They couldn’t explain what they were or how they moved like lightning, so they just called them Foo Fighters.”
“I’m still not seeing how this propulsion system is a weapon. If the Nazi’s had this technology earlier, then maybe they could have won the war, but even though a lot of their tech was superior to what the Allies had, it was developed too late in the war and in not in enough volume to make much of a difference,” suggested Dave Sutton.
Jack Coulson’s analy
tical mind had been churning and processing the data that he’d been absorbing since the mission began. A picture was beginning to emerge from the murky collection of facts and speculation that he’d gathered.
Jack decided to take the floor and share what had been going through his mind. “I’m no scientist I’m a black ops soldier, for those who hadn’t figured that out already.” He paused and looked them all in the eye. Juan and Dave looked almost impressed, but the others gave nothing away in their expressions.
“The hostile force we encountered on the ice was extremely well armed, highly motivated and extremely well trained. Men like that aren’t easy to find. The fact that they seemed hell bent on capturing that U-Boat,” he gestured to the where the German boat lay alongside the Barracuda, “suggests that there’s something on board that is of extremely high value to whoever is overseeing the hostiles.
Now, given what you’ve been saying about this device, is it possible that this base was built for a single purpose — to hide and safeguard the U-Boat and the weapon or wormhole machine or whatever it is?”
Durand and Jameson both nodded.
“It certainly explains the location and the rudimentary facilities,” Jameson added.
“I know this sounds way out there,” Coulson continued hesitantly, “but is it possible that the U-Boat looks like it’s fresh out of dry dock because … well, it is? Like it was transported from 1945 to now using whatever that Bell thing does to make that happen?”
Juan looked enquiringly at Leah. For a former quantum physicist she wasn’t participating as much in the discussion as he would have expected.
“Anything’s possible, I guess. But time travel? Really? That’s quite a leap,” said Leah.
“You haven’t seen inside that boat,” Jack replied, “it’s uncanny. Everything works. The batteries are charged. The electric engines got us in here, didn’t they? If anyone else can tell me how a 1945 U-Boat can do that, I’m all ears.”