Ice Fortress (A Jack Coulson Thriller)
Page 18
“Why don’t you shut-the-fuck-up?”
“You’re right. I’ll shut up now. Unarmed and toe to toe, you wouldn’t last two rounds with me, anyway. You’re just a big kraut cheater. If you were as good as you thought you were, you might win in a fair fight.”
Muller’s chest puffed out and his eyes narrowed. Jack had read him right. The man’s ego wouldn’t let those words pass unchallenged. Especially not in front of his little sister.
Handing his machine pistol to Leah, he stomped toward Jack, tearing open the Velcro fasteners of his tactical vest as he walked. Jack wanted hand to hand and it looked like he was going to get it.
“You asked for a diversion, you got it,” he whispered.
“Geez, I said diversion, Jack. Not suicide.”
Chapter 53
November 9, 2017, 12:00 UTC
South Pacific Ocean
Location: Classified
Tomahawk Land Attack Missile – Nuclear Variant (TLAM-N)
Countdown to impact: 1.25 hours.
Chapter 54
November 9, 2017, 12:00 UTC
U-Boot-Bunker (Submarine Pen)
Kriegsmarine Base 211
Ronne Ice Shelf (Antarctica)
77° 51' 19.79" S -61° 17' 34.20" W
The cold hard concrete floor rushed at Jack like a runaway freight train before it collided head on, jarring every bone in Jack’s already traumatized body.
All eyes were on the two men fighting dockside like a couple of ancient gladiators. None of them could see how Jack was going to be able to stop Muller tearing him apart. That hulk of a man seemed almost invincible.
Jack spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground. The stark white of a broken tooth stood out in the sea of red. So far, it was all going perfectly Jack thought as he pushed himself to his knees and closed his eyes to plan his next move. As far as diversions went, he felt the audience was getting their money’s worth.
Years of unarmed combat training had taught him many things that he now tried to recall, because his life depended on it. Quarter of the bones in the human body are in the feet which are a fragile collection of bones, delicate muscles and a bundle of soft tissue and ligaments. Kicking someone in the head Chuck Norris style is more likely to break a dozen bones in the foot than a do the other guy’s head any significant damage. If you can’t stand, you can’t fight. Which is why Kickboxers kick with their shins — one big piece of near indestructible bone that could be swung like a club at an opponent’s thigh or ribcage.
Same deal with hands, Jack recalled. 27 delicate bones in each. Boxers wear boxing gloves to protect the bones in their hands from breaking, more than to protect the other guy’s face. And that was a reason nightclub bouncers stood with arms folded. At the first sign of trouble, they’d have elbows ready to land a knockout strike. Again, the elbow was a very solid piece of bone that could dish out and take a lot of punishment.
But Muller was setting a new benchmark, even for Jack. The man was built like a nuclear fallout shelter, absorbing blows to his face and gut from Jack’s elbows and seemingly unharmed by Jack’s most brutal roundhouse kicks to the giant man’s thigh. Those kicks should have damaged his sciatic nerve to the point where he shouldn’t still be standing.
Yet he was.
Towering above him, the herculean figure simply smiled at Jack’s feeble attempts to bring him down.
Tensing his muscles, Jack prepared to launch himself up off the ground. As he sprang, he dropped his shoulder and clenched his fist, ready to deliver a brutal uppercut. Not to Muller’s granite like jaw, though.
Thump!
Jack buried his fist, with all the power of his body channeled through his legs and into his arm, right into Muller’s balls. This was a street fight, there were no rules. Nothing was barred. It was life or death.
But when his knuckles hit something solid, Jack realized his mistake. The guy was prepared. He should have known that about him by now.
Muller was wearing a box. The cheating bastard had a groin guard in his pants.
Reaching down, Muller wrapped his thick arms around Jack’s torso. The muscles in his forearms bulged and rippled like steel cables as they lifted Jack off the ground like a doll and started to crush the life out of him.
Flashes of light passed across Jack’s eyes like dust motes. Oxygen deprivation. The man was suffocating him to death. Jack didn’t want this giant’s ugly face to be the last thing he saw before he died.
Think Jack. Think.
He’d never tried it before, but he remembered something he’d been taught long ago. His asphyxiated brain scratched away the edges of the memory … something about the arch being one of the strongest engineering structures. That was it!
With the last glimmer of strength, Jack stretched his neck and upper back, angling his head away from Muller’s face. Through his blurred vision, he tried to focus on the little vertical cleft on Muller’s top lip, just below his nose — the philtrum.
Then, like a whip, he cracked his head forward explosively, the arched crown of his skull colliding with the desired target — the sensitive cluster of nerves under Muller’s nose. The satisfying crunch as the nose shattered was a bonus, one Jack gladly accepted.
Muller bellowed like a wounded beast and released his grip enough for Jack to wriggle free and catch some much needed air.
Blood spurted from Muller’s broken nose and his eyes watered profusely, but the fight wasn’t anywhere near over.
As big and well-muscled as Muller was, Jack knew that there were a couple of places a man, no matter how many pounds he could bench press, would always be vulnerable. Now it was time to seize the advantage.
Jack slid his hand over Muller’s wrist and executed a perfect and very painful wrist lock. Even a man Muller’s size couldn’t handle the pain of having a joint twisted cruelly beyond its normal range of rotation and he quickly dropped to his knees to relieve the force on his wrist joint.
Jack applied more pressure.
Muller screamed.
But still he struggled. He wasn’t broken yet, but his wrist almost was.
Lining up for a strike to the wailing man’s throat, another area that remained vulnerable no matter how many hours spent in the gym, Jack prepared to finish him off once and for all. He’d choke on his own crushed larynx, slowly enough that Jack’s smiling face would be the last thing he’d see before the lights went out.
Schlick. Schlick.
The smooth metal on metal sound of an automatic weapon chambering a round rang out.
Leah didn’t speak. She didn’t have to.
Jack lowered his hand and stepped back from Muller.
“Lucky you’ve got your sister to stand up for you in the playground, tough guy.”
Muller’s face was etched with pain and unbridled hatred as he began to stand, ready to launch himself at Coulson.
A booming voice from behind caught their attention, including Muller’s.
“I know this isn’t exactly a who’s-got-the-biggest-dick contest, but if it was, I think I’d win, don’t you?”
They all turned.
He’d done it.
Sam stood astride two of the old generators, looking almost like a statue of some kind of Roman war god. Over his massive shoulder rested a long metal pipe with, from what Jack could see, looked like an overinflated football stuck on the end of it. The football-like warhead was aimed directly at The Bell. At that distance, Sam couldn’t miss.
So that’s a Panzerfaust, Jack thought.
Chapter 55
November 9, 2017, 12:15 UTC
South Pacific Ocean
Location: Classified
Tomahawk Land Attack Missile – Nuclear Variant (TLAM-N)
Countdown to impact: 1.00 hour.
Chapter 56
November 9, 2017, 12:15 UTC
U-Boot-Bunker (Submarine Pen)
Kriegsmarine Base 211
Ronne Ice Shelf (Antarctica)
77° 51' 19.79" S -61
° 17' 34.20" W
Sam’s special skillset was anything to do with demolition and munitions or “blowing shit up,” as Sam usually described it.
He’d scuttled ships, destroyed bridges, deployed sea-mines and generally had a field day with every type of munition there was. But one thing had always eluded him — the Panzerfaust or ‘tank fist’ as it translated in English. Another groundbreaking design from the Germans during the Second World War, the one shot, recoilless ‘tank destroyer’ was light, easy to shoot and cheap to manufacture. The design principles of the Panzerfaust influence similar RPG weapons to the present day.
During the war, the Panzerfaust proved highly effective against even the most heavily armored Allied tanks. It was one of the first weapons to use a ‘shaped charge’ in the warhead, which would detonate on impact, concentrating the blast in the direction of travel and punching a hole in armor up to 2 inches thick with a plasma jet that would kill the tank crew.
Today, Sam hoped it would prove just as effective against the device on the dock.
“You won’t fire that,” Leah challenged. “If you don’t blow yourself up with that antique, you’ll kill all your friends.”
Muller herded the submariners, scientists and Jack closer to the shrouded bell at gunpoint.
“We all know the score,” Sam countered. “We’d rather die than let you Nazi nutjobs use that … monstrosity.”
“I’ll give you three seconds to lower that weapon,” Muller called to Sam.
Sam remained unmoved by the threat. He had the Panzerfaust. What did they have?
But Muller didn’t look as fazed as Sam had expected, given the threat he posed to what he’d been treating as a holy relic.
He felt it before he heard it.
The bullet tore through his shoulder, shattering bone and slicing through muscle and sinew before he heard the shot ring out.
The Panzerfaust clattered to the ground and Sam watched the bloom of crimson spread across his chest before he followed the Panzerfaust down to the concrete floor.
Chapter 57
November 9, 2017, 12:30 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
“I’ve stopped the bleeding but he’s lost a lot of blood,” Jameson said, his voice betraying that he didn’t think Sam would make it. “I might have done more aboard the Barracuda, but here, the medical supplies are rudimentary and that’s putting it politely.”
“They want the Barracuda for themselves. That I get, but why have they locked us up in here?” Jack pondered.
Coulson was still beating himself up over being outflanked by Leah. Again. The cunning bitch had a sniper hidden in the conning tower of the U-Boat the whole time. She always seemed to be one step ahead.
Juan and Dave sat at the two planesman stations, the only place they could sit without getting in the way of Jameson’s first aid efforts. Krupsky was laid out on the floor so they could work on him before moving him to a bunk in the crew quarters. There was no sick bay aboard the U-2532.
Durand and Jack stood by the periscope.
“Hey Coulson, do you think this still works?” Durand asked rubbing his hand over the well-worn periscope handles.
Jack shrugged, not caring one way or another. He’d blown the mission. “I guess so. Everything else seems to be in working order.”
“Except the ventilation.” Durand screwed up his nose. “Cigarette smoke, diesel fumes and hydrogen sulfide. Nice combination.”
Durand flipped a small lever and the hydraulics pumped to life, raising the periscope.
“How did you …”
Then Jack remembered that Peter Durand spoke and read German.
“I haven’t used one of these since training. It’s kind of cool. Makes you think of how they did things before we went all high tech and electronic,” he mused as he turned the periscope through a full rotation.
“See anything?” asked Jack.
“Yeah,” Durand laughed, “a bunch of guys trying to get that bell into the Barracuda. Bet they wish they hadn’t shot Krupsky, now.”
Jack looked down at Sam. He was pale but at least he was alive. “I bet he wished they hadn’t shot him, either.”
“I think they’re going to try to shoehorn that thing into the empty VPT,” Durand observed as he zeroed in on something that caught his attention.
“VPT?” quizzed Jack.
“Vertical Payload Tube. It’s a big module that holds 6 Tomahawk missiles for vertical launch. But ours is empty and full of sonar gear for the survey. They’ve cracked the hatch and are stripping it bare to hold that thing.”
Juan and Dave heard that their gear was being dumped, but neither man reacted. They were beyond caring. They’d given up.
“They can’t get away, can they? I can’t see Muller as a submarine school graduate, can you?”
“They have something better than that.” Jameson joined the conversation.
Jack and Durand both stared at him. Jack with a look of confusion. Durand with a look of total shock.
“Shit,” said Durand as he slammed his hand on the periscope.
“What?” Jack turned from one man to the other.
“They’ve got Leah. She’s been in the control room day in day out, watching every move.” Jameson explained.
“And now we know she’s a computer expert,” Durand added.
“How does that help?” Jack didn’t understand.
“Every system on that boat is computer controlled. It’s literally a fly by wire nuclear submarine. She could almost take the damn thing anywhere she wants single handed. Punch in the GPS coordinates and the boat practically sails itself,” Durand explained. “She’s got more than enough manpower onboard to get underway.”
“We can’t just sit here with our thumbs up our asses while they disappear with that bell thing. We have to come up with another plan!” Jack ran his fingers through his hair as he tried to come up with something.
“Scuttle —”
It was Sam. He was trying to tell them something. Jack knelt down alongside him.
“What do you mean scuttle? Scuttle them? How?”
Sam shook his head and coughed. Droplets of blood shone on his lips.
“Scuttle charges. They’ve set scuttle charges. You need the rat —”
Sam’s head fell back on the deck plating. He was unconscious again.
“Scuttle charges? What’s he talking about?” Juan squawked, his voice an octave higher with the stress.
Jack remembered Sam trying to tell him something earlier, but he shut him down. Now he wished he’d listened. And what was that about rats?
“Those Nazi bastards have set scuttle charges on this boat. They’re going to send us to a watery grave after they set sail out of the bunker.”
Jack didn’t think Juan or Dave could get any paler.
He was wrong.
Chapter 58
November 9, 2017, 12:45 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
“Instead of sitting there sucking up oxygen, why don’t you two start looking for these charges?”
Juan and Dave looked clueless. They were techno geeks, not bomb disposal experts.
“Now,” Jack bellowed at them. “Go!”
“Captain, what was Sam trying to tell us about the rats?”
“No idea, Coulson. Not a goddamn clue.”
“Durand?” Jack turned to the XO, their last shot at solving the puzzle.
“When I was doing nuke training at Goose Creek, I heard some of the old timers working there talking about how they used to kill rats aboard a submarine, but that’s all I can think of.”
“How?” asked Jack.
“How what?”
> “How did they kill the rats?”
“Fire extinguishers. They’d freeze the little fuckers to death with a blast of a CO2. If one of them needed a fire extinguisher, he’d say ‘hand me that rat killer over there’ or something like that”
“That’s it!” Jack’s face lit up. “Okay, Durand, you’re with me. We’re going to round up as many extinguishers as we can get our hands on.”
“I’ll go help the nerd brigade find the explosives,” Jameson called over his shoulder as he ran after the two scientists.
Durand started unclipping the control room fire extinguishers from the bulkheads, piling them up below the periscope.
“Mind telling me what we’re doing exactly?” Durand asked.
But Jack had already run through the aft hatch on his way to find more extinguishers.
If this didn’t work, the world could be swallowed up by the darkness of another Reich.
But they wouldn’t live to see it.
Failure is not an option, Jack kept telling himself as he ran the length of the boat.
“We’ve found them,” Jameson reported entering the control room. “What now?”
“How many are there and can we move them?” asked Jack.
Jameson shook his head. “Half a dozen, small but well placed to sink us fast. I wouldn’t be trying to move them, though. They’re all wired to some pretty high tech looking touch screen timers. If they have inertial sensors, we’re screwed.”
Jack considered that for a moment. “Here’s the plan — Juan and Dave, grab as many of those extinguishers as you can and follow me. The rest of us,” he looked to Durand and Jameson, “will carry what these guys can’t and head to the first charge.”
“What happens then?” Durand looked perplexed.