“Look!” Carpenter drew Ariana’s attention away from the first aid efforts.
Another golden ball was forming, this one twice the size of the first one.
* * *
“What the hell!” Conners exclaimed. She jiggled the control stick for the KH-12 but there was no response. But her computer told her that the satellite was firing thrusters and maneuvering. “I’ve got no control,” she announced.
“Then who does?” Jimmy asked, looking over her shoulder, noting the indicators.
“I have no idea.”
* * *
Dane could now see the outline of southeast Asia below him. It grew larger at a tremendous pace, the shoreline expanding out of his view, only dark green below. He forced himself to slow down, not knowing how he was able to do it, but he could focus now, and he could see the faintest traces of a rectangle in the green below. And there, just off to his right, was the golden beam.
Dane adjusted, moving toward the beam, until he was going down, just parallel to it.
“Oh, man,” Freed said. The golden ball was now solid. He knew this one would take them all out. “Dane!” Freed shook the other man but there was no response.
* * *
Dane could now see Angkor Kol Ker below him. The golden beam just to his right. The KH-12 was inert mass now. All systems had been shut down and there was nothing to attract the attention of the power of the Shadow.
Dane gave it one last nudge.
The KH-12 weighed 18 tons, over 36,000 pounds. The solar panels had sheared off early on in the descent through the atmosphere, but their loss scarcely diminished the craft’s weight. It smashed into the top of the Prang at a speed of over 4,000 miles an hour. The mass times velocity equaled an explosion equivalent of the bomb Michelet had dropped to clear the landing zone.
Dane snapped his eyes open, He heard yelling around him, then the thunderous crack of an explosion. A fireball consumed the Prang and out of it flew large chunks of stone. Dane rolled over on his side, next to the others who were huddling behind several blocks. Dane peered up through the dust and debris. The Prang, and the golden beam, were gone.
* * *
“It’s stopping!” Jimmy was staring at his screen in disbelief. “It’s stopping!”
“What about the other sources?” Conners asked.
Jimmy shook his head. “They’re stopping too. We did it!”
“What did we do?” Conners muttered to herself.
* * *
Foreman was watching the data forwarded from the NSA. He understood it, but he didn’t allow himself to let go and feel the relief yet. The propagation through space had stopped but the Gates still existed. Isolated now, but that only brought them back to where they had been at the start.
* * *
“We’ve got a second contact!” Sills relayed to Captain Rogers. “Right behind the first one. Big. Damn big.”
“What is it?”
“Too big to be a sub. Jesus, it’s six times bigger than a Typhoon.”
Rogers knew a Typhoon was the largest submarine in the world, the pride of the Russian ballistic missile fleet and displacing over 26,500 tons when submerged. Almost two football fields long and almost fifty feet wide, a Typhoon was twice the size of his own submarine. But the thought of something six times bigger than that staggered him.
“Arm all weapon systems,” he ordered. “Bring us in closer.”
Rogers glanced around the operations center. The boat’s chaplain was moving through, quietly talking to men, giving last rites.
* * *
“Now would be a good time for that way out your friend talked about,” Ariana said, her hands still working on stemming the flow of blood from Beasley’s stomach wound. The ground under their feet buckled, staggering everyone the group, sending them searching for handholds.
“Oh, shit,” Freed muttered as the earthquake stopped for a moment. He pointed out from the wall.
The stone floor under the moat had split and cracked, the water pouring through, draining out. On the far side, the Naga was rising up, leaning forward, following the disappearing water with seven sets of eyes. It slithered into the moat.
Freed settled the stock of his M-16 into his shoulder and aimed.
“There!” Dane yelled, pointed to the right where Flaherty had appeared and disappeared. Another black hole was opening. Circular, about eight feet in diameter, it shivered a foot above the once more heaving ground.
Dane reached down and grabbed one of Beasley’s arms. “Let’s go!”
“In there?” Freed still had his weapon pointed at the Naga, which was now halfway across, less than two hundred meters away and moving quickly.
“You want to stay?” Dane asked as Carpenter grabbed the other arm and Ariana kept the pressure on the wound. They moved toward the black hole.
Freed fired an entire magazine on full automatic at the Naga. The only effect it seemed to have was to increase the serpent’s speed.
Freed yelled. “Move people, move.” He backed up, slamming another magazine home.
Dane reached the hole. Together, he and Carpenter lifted Beasley and thrust him through. Dane waved his hand, like a gentleman offering a lady the door, and Carpenter jumped through, Ariana following. He turned to Freed who was firing again.
The Naga was less than forty feet away, rising up, heads darting. “Come on!” Dane yelled as he jumped.
His body felt strange as he passed into the circle, like going into a thick, jellylike field, and being pressed through. Then with a snap he was in open air again. He landed on a metal grating, stumbling into Ariana who was just standing back up.
Freed’s face appeared, then the rest of his body.
“What the-” Freed began when the words turned into a scream as one of the snake heads came through the hole, the jaw snapping shut on Freed’s left arm. Freed’s eyes were wide open, the scream ending in a breathless gasp.
Dane grabbed Freed’s right arm as the creature began drawing Freed back through the hole.
Suddenly the black circle cycled shut, slicing through the snake head just behind the eyes, the cleanly severed head falling onto the metal grating.
“Get it off of me!”
Dane looked about. They were in a narrow compartment with metal walls and numerous pipes running along the ceiling. He saw a fire ax clipped to wall and grabbed it. Sliding the handle between the jaws, he levered them open, the fangs releasing Freed’s mangled arm, blood spurting from a severed artery. Dane whipped his belt off and wrapped it around the limb, just above the spurting red. He cinched it down and the bleeding slowed to a trickle.
Freed lay back against the metal wall, his face pale. “Where are we?”
Dane looked about, more slowly this time. He noted the name stenciled on the handle of the ax he had used. “We’re on the Scorpion.”
The hatch into the compartment suddenly opened and a sailor stuck his head. He blinked at the scene in front of him. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’ve got to talk to the Captain!” Dane said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Sonar has identified the first object, sir,” Commander Sills reported. “It’s the USS Scorpion.”
Rogers stared at his executive office in disbelief. Every submariner knew the story of the Scorpion, lost in deep water in 1968. He shook off his shock. “And the second?”
“Not a clue, sir, but it’s chasing down the Scorpion.”
“Move to engage the second.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
The Wyoming’s crew was dying but they had enough for one last battle. The sub raced toward the Scorpion, which was moving very slowly, They didn’t have a clue as to what the second, large object could be, but Captain Rogers was determined to protect the Scorpion at all costs. He had no idea how a submarine reported crushed in the depths of the ocean over forty years ago could have suddenly appeared, but if there was the slightest chance any of the crew were alive, he felt the sacrifice his own crew had
already made would be worth it.
The forward torpedo tubes were armed and Rogers fired as soon as they were within range.
* * *
“The Gates are shrinking,” Foreman reported.
“I can feel it changing,” Sin Fen spoke into the satellite phone. Chelsea was at her side, snout raised in the air, also sensing the difference.
“Do you have contact with Dane?” Foreman asked.
Sin Fen reached out to the west, but there was nothing. “He’s not there. Or he’s not alive.”
“Damnit, we need him. He stopped this but I don’t think we’ve seen the end of it. We need to know what happened and we need him.”
Then Sin Fen caught the faintest of touches, like a hair against her skin. “He’s alive.”
“Where?”
Sin Fen focused. She briefly saw what Dane saw. “He’s on the Scorpion in the Bermuda Triangle!”
* * *
“The Scorpion is still moving, sir,” Sills reported
“What’s the readings?” Rogers asked.
“Radiation is down. The Gate is closing in on itself, but both the Scorpion and the large contact are still inside.”
“Range to Scorpion?” Rogers asked.
“Two kilometers and closing.”
“Can we talk to them?”
Sills ran a hand though his hair. “In ‘68 their radios were much different than what we use. They-”
“Can we talk to them?”
“I’ll try, sir.”
* * *
“You’ll be all right,” Dane told Freed as he started to follow the sailor forward. He checked the improvised tourniquet he had put on the man’s arm. “I’ll get the ship’s doctor.”
The sailor was still staring, not so much at them, but at the huge severed snake’s head that was oozing black blood. “Who are you?”
“Take me to your captain,” Dane placed a hand on the man’s shoulder and pressed with his mind into the other’s.
“Aye-aye, sir.”
The sailor turned and went through the hatch, Dane following. The next compartment was the galley and they passed a couple of sailors, then they were in the sub’s control room.
Men were working furiously, commands were being yelled.
A man in his mid-30s stood in the center, next to the periscope. He had the eagle of a Navy Captain on his collar. He saw Dane and paused in mid-command.
“Who are you?”
“Sir, there’s no time,” Dane said. “We have to get out of here!”
“What is going on?” Captain Bateman. “My reactor went off-line and we’ve lost all contact with our surface-”
“Sir!” a man called out. “I have radio contact with a submarine calling itself the USS Wyoming.”
“There is no USS Wyoming,” Captain Bateman. “Put it on the speaker.”
There was a crackle, then a voice came out of the speaker. “This is Captain Rogers of the USS Wyoming. You must take a heading of 270 degrees immediately at the fastest speed possible. You are in grave danger.”
“Identify yourself,” Captain Bateman demanded. “I’ve never heard of your ship.”
“We don’t have time,” Rogers replied. “You’ve been missing for forty years and if you don’t start moving you are going to be missing again!”
Bateman turned toward Dane and stared at him in shock.
“It’s true,” Dane said. “You’ve been gone for over forty years.”
“It can’t be,” Bateman shook his head. “It’s 1968.”
“You entered a Gate,” Dane said. “You know that. You were working for Foreman and you entered something very strange.” Dane stepped forward and grabbed Bateman on the shoulders. “Captain, you have to save your ship. A heading of 270 degrees. Now!”
Bateman shook his head, but he yelled to the helmsman. “Two-Seven-Zero degrees. Flank speed.”
* * *
“Torpedoes are tracking,” Sills was looking a computer screen that relayed the firing data. “Torpedoes at impact.”
Rogers waited as his ship closed on the Scorpion. He knew how long it would take for the sound of the explosion to travel through the water. The seconds passed by. He raised an eyebrow at Sills.
“We’re passed time, sir. They all must have missed.”
“How could we have missed something six times bigger than a Typhoon?” Rogers demanded.
* * *
“What happened to us?” Bateman demanded.
Dane was the focus of every man in the control room.
“I don’t know,” Dane answered. “We have to get out of here and then we can try to figure it out.”
* * *
“Object is less than a klick away.”
“How far to the Scorpion?”
“Eight hundred meters. The Scorpion is underway. Heading, 270 degrees.”
“Slow to one third,” Rogers ordered. “Bring us about, hard to port.” Rogers was watching the symbol representing the Scorpion on his screen and picturing the relative positions of his sub and the other one in his mind.
“Contact is closing on Scorpion again.”
“Sir!” the radio man held up a handset.
Rogers took it. “Yes?”
“This is Foreman. You must save the Scorpion at all costs. Is that clear?”
“Clear.” Rogers handed the set back. “Great.” He turned to Sills. “How long before the Scorpion is clear of the Bermuda Triangle Gate at the rate she’s moving?”
Sills punched into his keyboard. “A minute and twenty seconds.”
“And until the large contact closes on her?”
Sills had that number ready. “Forty-five seconds.”
“Put us between the two.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
“How long will that take?”
“Thirty seconds.”
Rogers glanced to his side. “Chaplain, I’m afraid you need to pray faster.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Wyoming slid between the Scorpion and the large contact it had on its screens. The contact was a gigantic sphere, over a mile and a half wide, the surface a dull black, but obviously made of some sort of metal. In the front center, a huge doorway spiraled open, over a hundred meters wide.
The sphere was on course for the Scorpion, but the Wyoming was directly in the way. The sphere slowed as the Wyoming slid into the opening.
* * *
“The Scorpion is appearing on SOSUS,” Foreman was listening in to the report from Naval Headquarters. “It’s clear of the Gate! Surfacing!”
Foreman picked up the phone. “Conners, what’s the latest on the Bermuda Triangle Gate?”
“It’s still shrinking,” she reported. “At an even faster rate.”
“Angkor Gate?” he asked.
“It’s down to a small area, about six kilometers wide and getting smaller.”
* * *
Captain Bateman shoved the hatch aside and climbed, Dane right behind him. Dane blinked in the bright sunlight. He looked about. To the rear of the Scorpion he could see the mist, but it was getting further away with every passing second, the storm closing in on itself.
Carpenter, Beasley, Freed and Ariana joined him. They looked in the same direction.
“Are we safe?” Freed asked.
Dane nodded. “For now.”
Foreman’s elation was dampened by the next report from naval headquarters. “The Wyoming is gone, sir.”
EPILOGUE
“The last time we met, you were pointing a gun at me,” Foreman said.
Dane stared at the old man on the other side of the conference table noting the changes the years had etched. Foreman had aged well, except that his once-thick snow-white hair was thinner than Dane remembered. “You were lying to me then,” Dane continued, reaching down to his left and rubbing Chelsea’s left ear. The golden retriever cocked her head and pressed against his hand.
“Withholding information,” Foreman clarified. “Lying is too strong a word to be u
sed for the situation.”
They were seated in a conference room inside CIA headquarters at Langley. Sin Fen sat next to Foreman. Foreman would be leaving shortly for a high level meeting in Washington with the president and the National Security Council to discuss what had just occurred both in the Angkor Gate in Cambodia and the other Gates.
The shocking sudden reappearance of the submarine Scorpion-listed as lost in US Navy logs in 1968-was being kept under wraps, but Dane knew it could not last much longer. They could not explain the fact that not a man in the crew seemed to have aged a day in forty years. Nor could the crew explain it. As far as they were concerned, just minutes had passed between the time they last radioed Foreman in 1968 that the reactor was going off-line as they entered the Bermuda Triangle to the moment Dane appeared on the ship’s bridge two days ago.
“Why do you still need me?” Dane asked.
“Because that mission you started on forty years ago never ended,” Foreman said. “Because you stopped the invasion through the Angkor Gate.”
“For the moment,” Sin Fen added.
Foreman nodded. “That’s why I need you.”
Dane glanced at Sin Fen. Her mind was a black wall to him. Then back at Foreman. There, he could tell more, but not as much as he would have liked. He knew the old man was telling the truth, but he also sensed there was so much Foreman didn’t know or was holding back. Based on his experiences with the CIA man, Dane knew it was likely a combination of both.
“I put everything in my report,” Dane said.
“Also,” Foreman continued as if he had not heard, “we lost the Wyoming, inside the Bermuda Triangle Gate.”
“Other submarines have been lost in the Gates,” Dane said.
Foreman steepled his fingers. “Not one with twenty-four Trident ICBMs on board. With each missile carrying eight Mk 4 nuclear warheads rated at a hundred kilotons each. That’s 192 nuclear warheads. And our friends on the other side, whoever or whatever they are-the Shadow as your man Flaherty called them-seem to have a penchant for radioactive things. We defeated their weapons in this first assault, but we might not do so good against our weapons that they’ve captured.”
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