She had contacted her former Spetsnaz handler and negotiated a deal, signed by the President and the Prime Minister themselves. If she could get them the power of the tachyon, they would grant her a full pardon. She could return home, and return to active duty, serving her homeland.
The SOG idiot, West, had been easy to manipulate. While still in New York, preparing for the mission, he had been approached and seduced by a Russian agent. Men were so easy to play. A ‘chance’ meeting at a bar, a torrid, heated encounter in a cheap motel then the promise of millions of dollars and he was on board. He knew nothing of Nadia’s involvement of course but he served to be the exact decoy she had needed. When her encrypted communiqués to Moscow had been picked up, she had shifted the blame to him, allowing her to work freely until all the pieces of the mask were discovered.
But she had discovered something more. Something so much more.
The shark attack had been unexpected and terrifying, but she was a master of manipulating events in her favour. The attack had given her the opportunity she had needed to return to the boat without suspicion, contact the Spetsnaz team that had never been far away, and escape with her life. Sid’s death had been unfortunate and she hated herself for it. Likewise, slipping her bloody glove into Raine’s equipment had been regrettable but again necessary.
The Spetsnaz team had rendezvoused with the Ushakovs in the Kuril Islands where the other equipment Nadia had requested had also been waiting. The Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, had received information from within the States detailing the exact position of the Eldridge. Of course, the SVR and their predecessor, the KGB, had known all about America’s own tachyon experiments and Project Phoenix but no one, not even Nadia herself, had been able to create more than a single tachyon particle until the Moon Mask had been discovered.
It was the endgame at last. The cold war which had never truly ended between east and west was finally coming to a head. And Russia would emerge the victor.
Thanks to Nadia Yashina.
The pilot worked the Ushakov’s controls and brought the ‘flying submarine’ about. Narrow and cramped, the plane was in no way luxurious but with no time to commit the forces that China had to attacking the U.S. fleet, the two experimental planes had been the best option. Designed to fly low at near super-sonic speeds, they had covered the distance from the Kuril Islands in no time and evaded detection until late. As the American and Chinese planes fought their dogfights above, the two pilots had loaded the command into the on-board computers. Both planes had slowed almost to stalling point. Their wing flaps had redirected their noses towards the waves before the wings themselves had retracted back and locked into position on the fuselage. Then, like kingfishers diving in for the kill, they had torn into the storm-tossed sea.
Now, hydraulics in the locked-back wings caused them to move to the pilots’ commands and they were steered beneath the aerial battle, streaming through the gloom towards the GPS coordinates of the Eldridge.
When she saw the barnacled hull of the ship beneath the water, her heart skipped a beat.
She was close.
So close.
As her pilot steered the submerged vessel into position, she clutched the hard, lead-lined rucksack containing the fake Moon Mask even tighter.
Her time had come.
USS Eldridge,
Pacific Ocean
The first shot slammed into the bulkhead behind Nathan Raine’s head.
His reactions were fast and he dropped to the deck, swinging his P-90 up. He pulled the trigger and his bullet slammed into the U.S. Marine’s shoulder, spinning him around. It wasn’t fatal, but it would keep him-
A second bullet exploded out the back of the young man’s skull, splattering brains and gore over the bulkhead behind him.
Raine spun to Langley. “What the hell are doing?!” he demanded. “He’s American!”
“He’s the enemy,” Langley replied, eyes hard.
Three more marines hurried forward and opened fire. Automatic weapons fire strafed the walls, spitting up sparks. The invading team scattered, hurrying for cover.
They were inside the superstructure, having made it across the deck undetected. The dull grey corridor was pocked by several doors but the team had ignored them, heading straight for the central stairs which zig-zagged their way up to the bridge. There, they would find their objective. An auto-destruct sequence programmed into a designated computer. A fail safe. Should the Eldridge’s commander decide that the experiment below had gone awry, his orders were to activate the destruct sequence. Explosives set at structural points around the ship would detonate. Water would rush into the carcass and drag the vessel beneath the waves. Eventually, she would sink into the deepest place on earth, the Mariana Trench, from where any possible tachyon detonation would be cushioned by billions of gallons of seawater and crushing pressure.
Langley’s plan was simple. Get to the bridge. Active the self-destruct and get the hell off the ship before it, and the Moon Mask, were lost forever.
The fire intensified as yet more marines converged on their position. The ship was lightly crewed for fear of a repeat of the Philadelphia Experiment’s grotesque outcome but the files Langley and Rasta-Man had downloaded indicated that there was still a team of twenty marines on board, undoubtedly alongside Gibbs and the SOG team. Raine had already made certain that Langley and his team knew that Rudy O’Rourke had saved him and King and was not to be harmed. Yet, killing any US Marine felt inherently wrong to him. They were soldiers, simply following orders.
Just as he had once done.
Raine dived and rolled into the protection offered by the metal stairs. Booted feet thundered down them as more and more marines spilled onto the deck.
Bill had taken cover behind a T-junction in the corridor. Every few seconds he would swing around the corner and fire. Every shot landed on its target, blasting mercilessly through the marines body armour. One went down, then another. They fired back on full auto and the sound was deafening in the enclosed environment.
More gunshots came from the left where Raine realised Langley had taken cover through one of the doors. He lay on his belly and fired into the corridor, taking out first the soldiers’ feet then, as they fell, finishing them off with a headshot.
Godfrey sprinted down the corridor and dived behind a shipping pallet piled with food outside the door to the galley. A bullet slammed into his hip just as he dropped behind the cover and Raine heard him scream in agony. One marine let loose on full auto and his bullets tore into the food tins and containers. Splashes of pummelled produce splattered over the bulkhead and Raine realised Godfrey wouldn’t last long under the onslaught.
Two more marines ran down the corridor behind Bill. The veteran noticed at the last possible moment, spun and fired. He dropped one but the second got a shot off which crunched into his shoulder. Protected by Kevlar, the shot wouldn’t kill but it still slammed the man back into the bulkhead. He slid down it, gasping for breath, giving the marines the time they needed to advance.
“Nate! What at you waiting for?” Langley yelled into his radio.
Hidden beneath the nook of the stairs, the marines had come down them and run right past him, oblivious to his concealment. He was therefore right in the middle of their ranks. Right where they would least expect a threat.
“Nate!” Langley practically screamed at him. The marines closed on the open door and Langley was forced to roll fully inside so as not to be hit. It also meant that he couldn’t hit them.
With all their positions overrun, Raine had no option.
He had killed United States soldiers before.
He had sworn he would never do it again.
But he had no choice.
He rolled out from the cover of the stairs, keeping low beneath any stray bullets, and planted a shot directly into the head of the marine attacking Godfrey. Before the boy had dropped to the deck, Raine spun, aimed down the corridor betwe
en the legs of the marines advancing on Langley and fired. The bullet sizzled between them and ripped into the throat of the man aiming at Bill. The two heading for Langley spun but, flicking his weapon to auto, Raine pummelled lead into their bodies and faces, making them dance for a second before they dropped to the deck.
More footsteps came from above, more marines descended. Godfrey struggled up over the smashed food produce and fired at the stairs. A scream and a thud and another body rolled down the steps.
Bill was back in action, swinging around the corner to take out another. Langley burst out of the room he had been hiding in and took down one more. As the final body splashed down into the pool of blood on the deck, a surreal silence descended upon them.
Blood, brain matter and gore dribbled down the bulkheads and soaked into Raine’s clothes. His eyes were hard as crystal, his heart thudded angrily and he shot an evil glance at Langley.
Langley ignored it and hurried past him to the stairs. “Godfrey,” he glanced at the injured man. Raine could see that the bone of his hip had been smashed and his entire leg lay at an awkward angle. His face was ashen and covered in sweat. For a moment, he felt a pang of respect at the fact that he had managed to keep fighting through the sheer agony.
“I’ll hold off anyone who comes this way,” he grunted.
Langley nodded, jumped over the body at the bottom of the stairs and then started up them, gesturing at the remainder of his team. “Let’s go.”
Raine was just about to follow when it struck him.
He spun around, searching through the carnage.
“Where’s Ben?”
59:
Belly of the Beast
USS Eldridge,
Pacific Ocean
Benjamin King ran away from the thunderous gunfire in the corridor.
He did not, however, run in fright.
Instead, he ran with purpose.
He twisted down the corridor, desperately searching the bulkheads and opening any door he came to. There had to be another staircase somewhere. The one where Raine and the others had fought the marines only led up, but he remembered seeing on the ship’s plans access ladders leading below decks. He had to find one.
The P-90 assault rifle he clutched felt bulky and obtrusive yet gave him a sense of comfort and protection as he fled down the corridor. The sounds of the gun battle and, further off, the Chinese aerial assault, echoed along with his footsteps. His breathing sounded loud in his ears and his heart raced.
He came to another branch in the corridor. It looked much the same as the others, featureless and dull, save for a door at the far end. He considered ignoring it, then changed his mind and ran to it. He spun the circular handle and heard the lock disengage. He pulled the heavy door open. Behind it was a narrow vertical shaft with a ladder leading straight down into the belly of the beast.
“He’s gone for the Mask!” Bill spat angrily but Raine knew it was more than that this time. When he locked eyes with Langley he knew that his former commander had come to the same conclusion. But, he also read something deeper and darker in those eyes that had once been so fatherly towards him.
“He’s going to use it,” Langley said.
They all should have seen it! Distraught over the death of Sid, how could he not take up an opportunity like the one the Eldridge presented? Yet, so caught up in the revelations of the Urshu, Langley and Phoenix, he had totally neglected King’s obvious motivations!
His eyes locked onto Langley’s. He knew that King couldn’t be allowed to change the past any more than anyone else could. And, he knew that Langley would go to any lengths necessary to stop him. He’d seen the way he had so easily killed the marines who got in his way. King was nothing to him, just another obstacle, a wild-card, an oversight.
Silent communication passed between the two men, the teacher and the student. Raine knew that Langley would kill King to stop him. And Langley knew that Raine would never let that happen.
Just like that, their brief alliance ended.
Raine watched Langley’s every move: the tightening of his grip on his weapon, the shifting of his eyes, the silent order passed to Bill. Time seemed to slow around him. It was like a stand-off in some wild-west movie. They stared each other out, trigger fingers twitching, fighting stance shifting-
Bill made his move, but Raine was a fraction faster!
Just as the other man was about to bring the muzzle of his weapon around, Raine lashed out with his own. The two P-90s clashed with a metallic clang, his own slamming Bill’s up and punching it into his nose. He cried out as bone, gristle and cartilage crunched under the impact and a spray of blood erupted like Vesuvius. Godfrey fired but Raine hurled Bill into the path of the bullets. They pounded into his Kevlar vest but also into his unprotected legs. Before Godfrey could release his trigger finger, countless bullets had ripped the appendages to shreds and he lay on the deck, writhing in agony, screaming.
Langley made his move then and fired. Raine arched back, out of range of the bullets. He swung under the stairs and slammed the butt of his P-90 between the steps upon which Langley stood. The blow was powerful and Raine felt the bone of the man’s ankle give. He dropped, crashing down the steps but rolling across the deck to fire at Raine.
Raine pushed back, leaving his rifle wedged in the steps, jumped to his feet and ran, skidding around the corridor and out of Langley’s line of sight.
“Nate!” his former friend screamed behind him. “We can’t let Ben use the mask!”
Mrs Marley’s warning echoed through Raine’s skull as he set off down the corridor at a sprint.
‘Kha’um believed that the Moon Mask could control time. If he could harness its power, he could go back and save his wife and his son. But that would have given him the power over life and death and who was he to say who lived and who died, or even who does or does not even exist! To control the Moon Mask is to control the power of god, and no man should have that power.’
Unfortunately, Raine had come to the same conclusion.
At the bottom of the access shaft, King had come to another hatch, this one lying below him. He spun the lock and then heaved it open before continuing down the ladder and dropping onto a metal catwalk.
He paused for a moment, his breath catching at the sight.
The immense cylinder into which he had emerged was three hundred feet long and almost entirely filled the hollowed-out innards of the World War Two-era destroyer. Four metal walkways ran the entire length of it at the top, bottom and to either side, suspended by metal struts to the multi-faceted walls of the particle accelerator. Lines of thick tubes, currently glowing a dull, suffused bluish tinge lined the sides also, terminating at a large red and blue disk at the bow of the ship which itself was injected with dozens of cables and antennas.
He had the sudden sense of being on some alien planet, an unwelcoming realm into which he had trespassed.
Indeed, he supposed he had.
Half way down the aft bulkhead, the control room was little more than a single-story box, about ten feet high but extending into a conical tip about thirty feet long. The tip itself was attached to numerous high-tech antennas and emitting diodes.
A sudden loud clang startled him and he wheeled about to see that the hatch through which he had just come had slammed shut. The mechanical clunk of large bolts electronically sealing echoed through the cavernous space.
For a moment, he felt trapped and toyed with the idea of climbing back up the ladder, but then he focussed his thoughts, set his resolve and headed off down the catwalk to the control room.
“All access hatches are sealed,” one of the technicians reported.
Lawrence Gibbs glanced at Doctor Tobias. Small, bald and bespectacled, Tobias was everything he expected him to be. Reserved and quiet, there was no doubting his genius. For the last thirty years he had been involved with Phoenix, struggling to use constantly developing technology to put the theory of science�
�s greatest minds into practice. Now, his lovechild was about to be born, one of the greatest moments in history was developing, and still he hunched over the screen of his quantum computer, watching the readouts with a meticulous and oh-so-unexcitable demeanour.
“Okay,” he replied. “Bring the accelerator online. Lock the source material into position-”
“Doctor,” the technician interrupted. “The particle accelerator’s failsafe is preventing the start-up sequence.” He paused. “It’s detecting an unexpected heat signature on the upper walkway.”
“What?” Tobias frowned.
“What’s going on?” Gibbs demanded. By order of the president, this was his project, his baby. He wanted to be in-the-know every step of the way.
Tobias held up a hand to silence him as he accessed the technician’s readings. He brought the surveillance cameras up on the position of the heat signature and gasped when he saw that it was a human heat signature.
A human that Gibbs recognised all too well.
“King,” he snarled.
Raine and King could wait, Alex Langley had decided.
He limped up the stairwell, the agony of his broken ankle shooting white-hot fire up his leg and almost overloading his nervous system. After every few steps, he had to pause to catch his breath before it was snatched away again the moment he placed his foot back down.
Bill and Godfrey were both dead. Godfrey had passed out from the pain and blood loss and never woken back up. Bill had struggled on, determinedly clinging to life until Langley had put him out of his misery with a bullet to the head.
For a moment, he had considered pursuing King, certain that the archaeologist intended on using the Moon Mask to rescue his lost fiancé. Instead, he had decided to continue with his original plan. Whether it was King or Gibbs, someone was going to try to use the mask. The best thing he could do was stick to the plan, sink the ship and prevent anyone from messing with the timeline.
Moon Mask Page 61