Ice Fortress (A Jack Coulson Thriller)
Page 13
Nobody offered an explanation.
“How did it end up in the ice shelf, above sea level?” Sam asked the question before Jack had time to ask it himself.
Leah nodded her head slightly and raised her hand to quiet the debate while she thought through what Sam had just said. “Sam might be on to something,” she said.
Sam grinned like he’d just made a scientific breakthrough himself.
“Time, speed and space,” Leah proffered. She’d tried not to buy into the argument, but like the genie the former quantum physicist in her wouldn’t be put back in the bottle.
“I didn’t even make it through college. You’re going to have to fill in some blanks,” Sam admitted.
“Did you ever see the original Planet of the Apes movie? Charlton Heston comes back to earth from a space mission and the planet is being run by apes, right? Well that is a Hollywood take on the Einstein’s theory. Time passes slower the faster you travel toward the speed of light. So for an astronaut travelling in space at the speed of light time will pass slower than it will on earth. When he returns to Earth it could, in theory be years or even hundreds of years in the future in earth time, depending how long he’s travelled at the speed of light.”
“But that’s just a theory. Nobody’s ever travelled at the speed of light,” Jack challenged.
“True,” Leah agreed, “but it’s more than a theory. The GPS satellites that orbit the earth rely on precise synchronization between their onboard clocks and clocks on the ground to provide accurate navigation data. The speed at which they travel in orbit and the effect of gravity on the satellite mean that the clocks onboard the satellite have to be calibrated to ‘tick’ at a different rate in order to sync with earth based clocks. Relativity isn’t a theory, it’s a real thing,” Leah concluded.
“And that explains the U-Boat in the ice pack, how exactly?” asked Sam, his eyes glazing over in confusion.
Leah’s eyes blazed with enthusiasm as she continued her lecture, “NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer satellite was launched in the 1980’s to measure the speed at which we were hurtling through space as a result of the big bang theory.”
“Like the TV show?” Sam asked excitedly.
Jack leaned over and cuffed him on the back of his oversized ginger head.
“Over eight hundred and seventy thousand miles an hour.” Leah paused to let that sink in. That’s how fast we are travelling, in addition to the speed we travel around the sun on our annual orbit plus the speed the earth rotates on its axis every 24 hours.”
Blank stares greeted her as she surveyed her audience.
“Don’t you get it?”
Plainly nobody got it.
“If that U-Boat went into the future back in 1945 and if the other end of the wormhole spat it out in 2017, then the earth would not be in the same place that it was when the U-Boat went into the wormhole, so it’s not surprising that it ended up where it did. In fact, where it ended up more or less proves that it actually did travel through time.”
The faces surrounding her looked totally confounded.
“The Nazi’s actually created a machine capable of time travel and they sent the device and the U-Boat it was housed in, into the future which is right now, and they did it way back in 1945!”
Jack had only one question.
“Why?”
But nobody heard him over the screams that echoed through the ice fortress and the sound of automatic gunfire hitting the hull of the Barracuda.
Chapter 31
January 10, 1945
U-Boot-Bunker (Submarine Pen)
Kriegsmarine Base 211
Ronne Ice Shelf (Antarctica)
77° 51' 19.79" S -61° 17' 34.20" W
U-2532
A worm of blood escaped Kapitänleutnant Helmut Sohler’s nose, falling onto a faded black and white photograph with well-worn edges. The small wedding photograph was all he had to remind him of his beautiful bride, Helene who he had married in a rushed ceremony the night before receiving his orders to report to the U-2532.
With a baby on the way, Sohler insisted on doing the proper thing by both of them but now he was seeing the chances of holding his son or daughter in his arms slipping away by the hour.
He wiped away the blood with the back of his hand and spat the foul taste of copper from his mouth. Whatever that thing was discharging, the lead walls the shipyard had been ordered to fit to the compartment weren’t enough to stop it. Half the crewmen were dead already and the other half not too far behind.
Yet Kammler appeared totally immune to the device. The man wasn’t human. Day after day he worked on his machine in the lead box. Every so often he’d order all of the generators to be started and he’d man the control station on the dock which was tethered to the device with a myriad of thick electrical cables.
Nothing seemed to happen but they were all too sick to care one way or another. Hair fell out in clumps, blood hemorrhaged from every orifice and flesh sloughed from their bodies at the slightest touch, leaving gaping, oozy wounds that refused to heal. For many, death didn’t come soon enough.
Sohler felt blessed to have stayed away from the compartment as much as he was able. That probably bought him some time. Time enough to finish his log entries before trying to stop the madness.
No, Kammler wasn’t human at all. He was a monster, the manifestation of the vilest evil. The madman beamed with pride when he’d explained his grand plan to restore Germany to its rightful place on the world stage. His death camps were no more than a small scale experiment. A few million prisoners were nothing compared to the scale he envisaged with his huge ethnic ‘cleansing’ factories.
If the general’s madness went unchecked and if his hideous plan were allowed to succeed, the world would plunge into blackness and never recover. The Thousand Year Reich they had all proudly dreamed of at the start of the war would be defiled and corrupted. If Kammler had his way, it would become a thousand year pandemic, destroying the world as he knew it. His wife and child ...
The lunatic had to be stopped.
Of course, like so many others, Sohler was convinced that Kammler intended to turn the tables on their enemies with the use of a weapon everyone thought couldn’t be built — an atomic bomb.
What he didn’t know was that the truth was even more chilling and horrific than that.
Chapter 32
November 9, 2017, 07:00 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
“How many men up top?” Jack yelled to Captain Jameson over the cacophony of shouts and screams of the three terrified civilians.
“Six,” he replied sharply, one military man to another.
Jack turned to the XO, “Weapons?”
“A few SIG-Sauer handguns and some ammunition. We weren’t planning on being attacked on a scientific voyage.”
Jack pointed at the captain and the XO, “You two break out the weps locker. Take the civilians with you and get them armed.”
Leah and Jack caught each other’s gaze for a moment. Jack gave her his best impression of his you’ll be fine face. But his eyes said otherwise.
Durand snatched the U-Boat captain’s log and shoved it into his waistband, then made his way to the corridor leading to the weapons locker. The three civilians trailed in his wake and Captain Jameson brought up the rear. Jameson wanted to ask Jack what his plan was but thought better of it. It might be his boat, but right now, he was out of his depth with a team of land based armed hostiles closing in on them.
Jack stabbed a finger in Sam’s direction, “Combat packs and weapons?”
Sam reached under the table with both hands and pulled out a 60 pound combat pack in each, like they weighed nothing at all. To each pack was secured a short barreled LWRC ‘stow and go’ Individual Carbine Personal Defense Weapon or IC-PDW as it was known
.
Jack’s face lit up. He’d left his pack and weapon behind in his haste to get out of the U-Boat but Sam had come through for him, again.
“Good man, Bluey. These’ll stop those bastards farting in church,” said Jack as he unclipped his ultra-compact, automatic weapon and tested that the unique collapsible stock had survived the rough treatment they’d been dealt.
“You couldn’t find us anything smaller?” Sam had wrapped thick, sausage like fingers around his weapon and it looked ridiculous given his proportions.
“Body armor penetrating 5.6mm NATO rounds that’ll punch holes through steel, eight and a half inch barrel, weighing in at less than six pounds.” Jack’s eyes blazed with delight. “These bad boys are the weapon of choice for confined environments and if that’s not where we are now —”
“Alright, enough of the sales pitch, let’s go help those unarmed navy boys up there.” Sam blustered his way past Jack toward the ladder, slapping a full magazine home with his huge palm as he did. He’d emptied one mag trying to save Jacks ass up on the ice. “Come on army boy, you look like you don’t know whether to shit or go blind! It’s time to saddle up, lock and load.”
Jack would have preferred to talk tactics before they stuck their heads out of the hatch and into the line of fire, but Sam clearly had other ideas.
Sam had already begun climbing the ladder when a metallic, almost bell like sound dinged its way rhythmically down the companionway.
“Oh, shit,” Jack yelled and not for the first time this mission.
“What, now?” Sam misunderstood Jack’s reaction and assumed he was sand bagging to avoid the firefight.
Jack said one word, “Grenade.”
At that, Sam practically threw himself off the ladder, nearly concussing Jack in the process. As the two men regained their footing, a metal cylinder landed at their feet and rolled across the deck.
“Block your ears and close your eyes,” Jack shouted as he picked up the grenade and hurled it like a baseball along the length of the narrow corridor. As soon as he’d released the grenade he turned his back and covered his ears.
A blinding flash blazed through their closed eyelids and the concussive blast of the ‘flashbang’ grenade had the desired effect — it disoriented and dazed both men.
At least they still want to take us alive thought Jack. They didn’t have to use non-lethal stun grenades. Strange. Even with the effects of a flashbang in a cramped space, Jack still had enough capacity to realize that this mission was raising more questions than answers.
Through the thick haze of smoke, Jack closed in on Sam. He’d started up the ladder again. The man didn’t know how, or when, to quit.
He grabbed Sam’s belt and pulled with enough force to get his attention.
“Stay down,” he mouthed as he pointed to the deck at the base of the ladder. He knew Sam wouldn’t be able to hear him after the blast.
Sam shook his head.
If he couldn’t work alone as usual, why couldn’t they at least pair him up with a real professional?
Jack yanked on Sam’s belt more forcefully and reluctantly Sam dropped down. Using a combination of hand signals and mouthing like a mime artist, Jack managed to convey his plan to Sam who quickly got on board with it and took his place as instructed.
To climb up the ladder now would have been suicide. The enemy would have shot them like fish in a barrel and they’d have no cover in the narrow tunnel.
It didn’t take long before two of the combatants from the outside dared to descend through the companionway. As Jack suspected, they were waiting for them to climb up and when they didn’t, they must have assumed the men below were unconscious. Mistake.
As the men swept their weapons from side to side, Jack and Sam lay on the deck face down toward the ladder. Both men had their weapons inches from their fingertips but because they weren’t holding them, the two soldiers dismissed them as a threat. Another mistake.
At the same time, both Sam and Jack reached out, slid their fingers through the trigger guard of their PDW carbine’s and fired a couple of short busts. The two snow suited soldiers had their guns up, ready to engage a standing enemy. Before they could lower their sights to the prone figures on the deck, they both toppled like puppets with their strings cut, legs turned to bloody stumps as the vicious armor penetrating rounds tore them apart.
Jack sprang to his feet and in one smooth motion, drew a bead on each man in turn and put one round in each of their heads.
Sam lumbered to his feet and looked at the dead men. As a navy man, he wasn’t accustomed to seeing death up close and personal.
“Now can we go topside?” he asked, deferring to Jack’s authority now that he’d seen the man in action.
“No. We’re going to the weps locker. We need handguns and radios. Ours were lost with the other equipment.”
“But the men …”
“Sam, they’re already dead. They were probably dead before we even got to the ladder. There was nothing we could have done. These guys got the jump on us, so let’s try to make sure that doesn’t happen again. We need to tool up.”
Sam nodded. He looked up through the hatch and knew he’d hear the shouts of the sailors if they were still alive.
“Come on Bluey, let’s get this done. As soon as the others have finished poking around the U-Boat, they’ll be coming over here to find out what happened to these two.” He waved the barrel of his carbine across the lifeless bodies of the dead men.
As he did so, he noticed that they were equipped with Heckler & Koch MP7 machine pistols. Something seemed odd about the choice of weapon given the environment, but he couldn’t piece it together. The concussion from the grenade was blurring his memory.
“We’ll take these,” he said pulling a pair of H&K USP handguns from the dead men’s tactical vests. “They won’t be needing them.” It looked like someone was getting a bulk discount from their friendly H&K supplier. Something told him, though, that brand allegiance could get someone killed in this case, but still the memory was fuzzy and tantalizingly out of reach. Jack hoped the recollection would come to him in time to do him some good. He needed all the help he could get.
He tucked one of the semi-automatics in his own vest and handed the other one to Sam. As an afterthought, he grabbed a few spare magazines for good measure.
Something else caught Coulson’s attention. Night Vision goggles. They both had them raised up on their helmets, giving the dead men an almost insect like appearance. They weren’t expecting the place to be lit up. That meant they hadn’t expected the Navy sub to be there. Interesting.
Jack grabbed a pair of night vision goggles from one of the dead men and slid them over his head. It never hurt to be prepared.
“Let’s go find the others.” With a slap on Sam’s back, Jack shouldered his pack and took off in the opposite direction to where he’d thrown the grenade, leading the way for Sam to follow.
Sam took another look up the companionway, and then looked at Jack’s back growing smaller as he sped down the length of the sub.
“Fuck it.”
Hand over hand, his huge feet clanging against the steel rungs, Sam climbed the ladder with amazing speed for someone his size. Then again, he’d been climbing ladders between decks his entire navy career.
Nearing the top he slowed, favoring stealth over speed. Very slowly and without a sound he reached up through the opening, expecting to have his hand shot off at any moment.
Chapter 33
November 9, 2017, 07:30 UTC
U-Boot-Bunker (Submarine Pen)
Kriegsmarine Base 211
Ronne Ice Shelf (Antarctica)
77° 51' 19.79" S -61° 17' 34.20" W
U-2532
Muller sent two men to deal with the personnel in the American sub, thirty to search the cavernous base and with the remaining eight he proceeded to the wet dock alongside which the U-Boat had been so thoughtfully tied up by the American sailors, right before he emptied an
entire clip of his machine pistol into them. To him, they weren’t sailors, unarmed or otherwise. They were simply witnesses and his orders had been very clear.
The sound of the exploding grenade and the ensuing bursts of automatic gunfire brought a smile to his thin lips as he climbed the conning tower of the U-Boat. He would be the first German aboard the boat in over 70 years. He could almost feel the spirit of the founder of The Brotherhood he served. He was climbing the very same ladder General Kammler would have climbed when he began his journey to the Antarctic.
When he climbed into the conning tower, he waved his men to hold position. He wanted to savor this moment alone. From a pocket in his snow camouflaged parka he removed a small handheld device no larger than a smartphone. Only this was more like a Geiger counter than a smartphone, one calibrated to detect the emissions of a substance not detected by any instrument on earth for decades — Xerum 525. The last quantity in existence and manufactured during the final months of the war before the camp that had enriched it was liberated by the enemy.
Removing his glove, Muller swiped the screen to activate the small detector. A graphic wheel began to spin on the screen, like a snake chasing its tail. Seconds later the graphic changed from red to green and formed a solid circle. A reading of ‘100%’ appeared inside the circle.
They’d found it. The weapon was theirs once again.
His cold blue eyes fell to the screen once more to verify the reading. It remained the same.
Muller’s orders were to report the success immediately to Barnes, a man not known for his patience. A quick look around at the immeasurably thick concrete that covered every surface put an end to the idea of using the satellite phone. He could barely hear half a dozen words from Barnes when he was using the phone out on the ice shelf. In the bunker, he wouldn’t have a chance in hell.