Atlantis: Bermuda Triangle a-2

by Robert Doherty

  Ragnarok simply wanted to be back on his ship. To feel the deck moving under his feet and the snap of the wind in the sail. The smell of salt water in his nostrils. Not to be standing in the middle of an English plain, the smell of cow dung in his nostrils, a chill wind blowing over hard stone the only sound. “Let us get this over with.”

  “Put your arms around the stone,” Lailoken ordered.

  Ragnarok grasped the cold stone to his chest, his knees bent. Penarddun had her hands raised to the sky, chanting in her native tongue. Ragnarok hoped she was appeasing whatever Gods ruled the stones now.

  Lailoken lifted his staff up and slid the spear end into the small slit on the top. It fit perfectly, sliding down two feet into the stone. The old man wrapped his gnarled hands around the Naga on the other end and twisted. The staff turned smoothly. Ragnarok heard a noise, metal on metal and he could feel something move inside the stone. Penarddun’s chanting grew more earnest.

  “Lift!” Lailoken ordered.

  Ragnarok strained and the stone moved ever so slightly. He let the stone back down.

  “Do you need help?” Tam Nok asked.

  Ragnarok growled at her, got his feet under him better and lifted once more. He grunted as the stone smoothly slid up out of the hole. Ragnarok staggered back, then bent his knees, dropping the stone on the ground, upright, next to the hole. He kept a hand on it to prevent it from falling over as he straightened up. The stone was five feet high, the bottom flat. The part that had been buried was darker and smoother, protected from the elements. Looking at it, Ragnarok realized the stone must have been in the ground for a very long time. He could see two dark holes on the side where the lock must have been.

  The old man and two women were on their knees around the hole, looking down into it. Ragnarok could see little as they blocked his view into the dark pit. However, he could tell that the pit was lined with something.

  Ragnarok jumped back and yelled in alarm as a blue, unearthly glow suffused the memory stone. A beam of blue touched him in the chest, slid up across his head, then flashed to Penarddun. It quickly raked across her in the same manner, then went to Tam Nok. There it paused, locked on to the amulet on her chest, then bounced from there up to her head. She stood, transfixed for ten seconds, then the blue light snapped out and they were left in darkness once more.

  Lailoken was the first to move, reaching out to Tam Nok and placing his gnarled hands on her shoulders. He peered into her eyes. Ragnarok had his ax ready, and he was staring at the stone like he would a snake, ready to strike it if something else happened. Penarddun was on her knees, hands over her eyes, muttering a prayer over and over.

  Tam Nok’s blinked and shook her head. She placed her hands on top of Lailoken’s and nodded. “I see where I am to go.”

  Lailoken released the Khmer woman and she turned back to the hole and got on her knees. Tam Nok reached down and pulled out a flat piece of metal from the very bottom. It was a foot wide by a foot long and so thin it bent slightly in her hand. Ragnarok had never seen such a metal. It looked almost like silver. Tam Nok tilted it so that the starlight reflected off the surface. Ragnarok could see lines etched on it.

  Ragnarok shivered and he looked about. His view was limited by the large stones surrounding them, but there was nothing moving on the plain that he could see. Still, that didn’t mean there was nothing out there.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Ragnarok recommended, his voice harsh and echoing slightly off the stones.

  “Put the memory stone back,” Lailoken said.

  The last thing Ragnarok wanted to do was touch the stone. Lailoken saw that and laughed. He placed his hands on top of the stone. “There is nothing to be afraid of. It is done.”

  Ragnarok reluctantly put his ax down and wrapped his arms around the cold rock. He replaced it by the simpler method of scooting it over to the hole and dropping it down inside. It slid into the hole with a thud. Lailoken turned the staff, the lock clicked, and pulled the spear head out of the hole.

  “I am done here,” the old man said. “It has been a very long time.”

  Tam Nok had taken out her map and was comparing it to the metal plate. The etchings on the plate were a continuation of her scroll. Ragnarok knelt down and stared- there was a gigantic country to the west of Greenland. The coast stretched down and down to the south. Further than around the tip of France to the coast of Hispanola which he had talked to sailors about. Into the middle sea, the Mediterranean, where the Romans and Greeks had sailed. There was land below, stretching almost to the very bottom of the world. Ragnarok felt like a child, his expeditions to Iceland and Greenland of which he had been so proud, now appearing to be a child’s wandering from the village, rather than a warrior’s epic journey.

  “What happened to you?” Ragnarok asked.

  Tam Nok was focused on the map. “I was given directions. Where to find the shield. And what to do when I get there.”

  Ragnarok looked up and noticed that Lailoken was walking out of the circle of stones. He tapped Tam Nok on the shoulder and pointed. She hurriedly put the map back in the bamboo, the metal sheet into her pack and ran after him.

  “Won’t you come with us?” Tam Nok asked the old man.

  Lailoken paused. “Another journey?” He shook his head. “I have been on many but I am too old now. My mission is done. This is your responsibility. The stone chose you just as it chose me a long time ago. I am done.”

  “The staff?” Ragnarok prompted.

  “Ah yes. The staff.” Lailoken smiled. “I am forgetful in my old age.” He held the staff out and Ragnarok took it. The old man stretched both arms over his head slowly, then back to his side. “It is nice to be free.” He laughed, then turned to Tam Nok. “Remember the shortest distance between two points is not always a straight line. In fact,” he laughed once more, a manic edge to it, “the shortest distance is sometimes not a distance at all. There are shortcuts if you know what to look for. Trust the voice. I wish you well on your trip.” He strode off into the darkness.

  “I must go also,” Penarddun said. “I have done what you asked. My people can’t know what has happened here. They would not understand. I don’t understand. In all my years praying here I have never seen such a thing.”

  “Thank you,” Tam Nok said.

  “I don’t know if I’ve done a good thing,” Penarddun said. “The king’s men will be back here. And those demon witches. You should leave too.” Without another word the Druid pulled her hood up over her head and slipped off into the night.

  Tam Nok pulled the straps on her pack tight. “Back to the ship. I will show you where to go once we get there.” She held out her hand and Ragnarok reluctantly gave her the staff.

  Chapter 17

  THE PRESENT

  1999 AD

  The sub pens in Groton are capable of holding the largest underwater craft the US Navy deployed, the Ohio class ballistic missile submarine which is almost two football fields long. There were four main pens, not only long enough to hold the biggest sub, but wide enough to put five side-by-side. Just north of Groton, technically called the New London sub base, the pens were on the Thames River in eastern Connecticut.

  In pen number 2, nestled between an Ohio Class and a Los Angeles Class attack submarine, the Scorpion was easily dwarfed. Security around the pen was heavy. The crew was quartered in barracks hewn out of the rock right next to the pen holding their ship as the powers-that-be in Washington tried to figure out how to explain their sudden reappearance after being proclaimed dead 31 years ago and the even more perplexing fact that not a man in the crew had aged more than a day in all those years.

  While the crewmembers underwent intensive debriefings- which so far failed to yield any more information about what had happened to the ship in the Bermuda Triangle- teams of technicians were going through the ship, searching for any physical clues to solving the mystery.

  They had already gone through the entire ship, excluding the nuclear reactor, and
now they were preparing to go into that last off-limits area. Donning protective garb, a team of four nuclear specialists opened the thick door blocking the plant control compartment from the reactor itself.

  Clad in their bright yellow suits, they walked through the tunnel separating the livable part of the ship from the deadly rear. And they finally found something out of the ordinary. Sitting on the floor of the main reactor chamber was a silver cylinder, three feet high, by two in diameter. Three beams of golden light came out of the cylinder and penetrated into the containment wall where the core resided.

  The investigators were still staring at this in puzzlement when a beam of gold from the cylinder raked across their bodies, then continued to the rear of the ship and locked into the reactor’s core.

  A split second later, the Scorpion’s reactor went critical.

  The Scorpion, the subs tied up inside the pen, and the entire crew of the Scorpion along with the other navy personnel inside, were vaporized in the nuclear explosion.

  Designed to withstand a close hit by a nuclear weapon, the top of the sub pen buckled, broke and collapsed, but managed to contain most of the explosion. The walls between pen 2 and 1 and 3 shattered, causing massive damage to the submarines in those other two pens.

  * * *

  Foreman was the calm in the center of a storm. Alarms were screeching, phones were ringing and orders shouted- the noise only partially absorbed by the sound panels on the sides and roof of the War Room.

  The generals and admirals were reacting to the twin disasters in Puerto Rico and Groton, moving ships and planes and men to help minimize the after-effects and help the survivors.

  To Foreman both those events were already in the past. And both were threats of things to come in the future. The tsunami just a taste of what might be coming out of the gates shortly. The nuclear explosion in Groton was more of a mystery to him.

  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Tilson strode up to Foreman and slammed a fist down on the top of the conference table. “We just lost as many sailors as we did at Pearl Harbor! I’m recommending to the President that we nuke the Bermuda gate.”

  Foreman could see a vein bulging in Tilson’s forehead. “Sir that may be exactly what the Shadow wants us to do. We don’t have enough data yet-”

  “Yet?” Tilson leaned forward. “You’ve been studying these goddamn things for fifty years and you don’t have enough data yet? Do you have more now? Do you?”

  “I don’t think a nuke would do any good,” Foreman said. “The gates have strong electro-magnetic and radioactive properties. We believe the laws of physics inside the gates are different than ours.”

  “Then get me something I can use to fight this,” Tilson said. “Because if you can’t, I’m going to go to the president and recommend we shut these goddamn things with the strongest weapon we have available and that’s a goddamn nuke-tipped cruise missile right smack into the center of these things.”

  Tilson stalked off to rejoin the branch chiefs in the forward part of the War Room. Foreman leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a second, running recent events through his mind.

  In all the excitement, the information he had been given by Conners about SOSUS had been shuffled to the bottom of his crisis reaction. Most of what was going on in the War Room was out of his hands now. He knew the most important thing was to be able to figure out not the what, but the why of recent events. He punched the direct line to the NSA.

  The other end was answered immediately. “Conners.”

  “Any changes?” he asked.

  “Other than the tsunami and the nuke blast in Groton? We’re tracking fallout from the sub pen from our eyes in the sky. So far it doesn’t look too bad and the current winds are seaward which is lucky. The eastern tip of Long Island will get a little hot but we think the dosage won’t be fatal.

  “We’ve down-linked to the relief agencies in Puerto Rico, giving them the latest sit-rep. It looks pretty bad there.

  “As you can see from the data we’ve forwarded you, the Bermuda Triangle gate is now further south. Closer to the Milwaukee Depth. The other gates are beginning to show some activity, particularly those in the water.”

  “What about the SOSUS infiltration?” Foreman asked.

  “No change.”

  “Can we shut SOSUS down?”

  “Maybe that’s what the Shadow wants,” Conners said. “Maybe there’s a plan and they want you to react. We shut SOSUS down, we’re effectively going to be blind underwater.”

  “We’ll still have the Can,” Foreman said.

  “True, but what if they send the Wyoming back at us?”

  “Christ,” Foreman muttered. Conners had been right before. “The Seawolf can cover the Bermuda Triangle gate if we shut SOSUS down.”

  “Then I’d check to make sure everything’s OK with the Seawolf,” Conners said.

  Foreman punched in a number on his SATPhone, accessing FLTSATCOM, the Navy’s communication system. After a brief burst of static, Captain McCallum’s voice answered the other end.

  Foreman wasted no time on pleasantries. “Where is Bateman?”

  “Down below,” McCallum responded.

  “Get him.”

  “Wait one.”

  Foreman tapped a finger on the conference table top as the seconds dragged into a minute. Then two.

  “Captain McCallum?” Foreman finally asked.

  The voice on the other sounded harried. “Yes?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Captain Bateman seems to have locked himself into our computer control center. We can’t get in there, nor can we raise the crewmen who were on duty in there.”

  “You need-” Foreman began but he was interrupted by a yell from McCallum.

  “What the hell! XO, abort dive. Abort!”

  There was a few seconds of static, then McCallum’s voice shouting. “XO, what is going on?”

  “Captain McCallum?” Foreman leaned forward. “Captain McCallum!”

  The only reply was the hiss of static.

  * * *

  On board the Seawolf McCallum was dealing with a very unique situation, one that his training had not prepared him for. The nose of the submarine was already under as the submarine began to submerge. Except the Captain had not given the order, he had six crew men still on the top of the sail with him and the hatch below him was open.

  He dropped the SATPhone as he yelled once more into the intercom. “XO, abort dive!”

  Commander Barrington’s voice echoed out of the speaker with an answer McCallum didn’t want to hear. “We can’t, sir! Controls won’t respond!”

  “Emergency override, blow all tanks,” McCallum yelled.

  “We’ve tried, sir. No response.”

  McCallum looked forward. The sea had covered the forward deck and was now around the base of the sail.

  “Clear the bridge! Clear the bridge! Emergency dive!” McCallum yelled. The six man bridge crew reacted well.

  The captain stood aside as the crewmembers on the bridge dashed past him and slid down the ladder to the operations center. Water began breaking over the top of the bridge as the last man went by him. McCallum jumped into the hatch, grabbing the side of the ladder with both hands and sliding down until his head was clear.

  “Bridge clear, close hatch!” he yelled.

  “It won’t close, sir!” A crewman was standing next to the ladder, slamming his palm against the large button that controlled the hydraulic arm which shut the four hundred pound hatch.

  A wave of water splashed through the open hatch, inundating McCallum. He shook his head, getting salt water out of his eyes. He had less than five seconds before an unstoppable tunnel of water poured through the opening.

  “Down! Close the bottom hatch!” McCallum ordered the two sailors just below him.

  “Sir-” one of the men began to argue but McCallum had no time.

  “Move it!” he screamed as he pulled out the manual crank arm
.

  They disappeared through the bottom sail hatch and the hatch swung shut, trapping him in the sail access tube. Another wave of water slammed McCallum against the ladder. He gasped in pain as three ribs broke from the impact.

  The Seawolf was now almost completely under water except for the very top of the sail. McCallum desperately turned the crank and the top hatch slowly began to shut.

  Another wave splashed through, blinding McCallum once more, but he had no time to clear his eyes. He blindly kept turning.

  The top of the sail went under water and a torrent poured through the open hatch, battering Captain McCallum as he struggled with the crank. He felt water around his feet and knew that meant the sail access was already half-full of water.

  Three more turns and the hatch was three-quarters closed but the water was around his chest and still rising. The Seawolf was completely submerged now, and McCallum knew alarms were ringing in the operations center below him because of the open hatch. He also knew this was never supposed to happen- the emergency computer system would not allow the crew to submerge the ship with the top hatch open. Either the system had failed or someone had over-ridden it.

  The water reached his neck and McCallum pushed himself as high as he could in the compartment while still turning the handle. He took a deep breath as water lapped over his face. The handle stopped turning- the hatch was shut.

  McCallum opened his eyes. With the boat angled down there was a small air bubble, perhaps a foot deep by two feet wide in the upper rear of the compartment and he pushed against the ladder to reach it. His face pressed into the air and he took a deep breath, savoring the oxygen.

  Even with just the second breath from the air bubble McCallum could tell the air was turning bad and he had less than a couple of minute’s good oxygen. Breathable air was something every submariner was an expert on. He also knew that his Barrington was in a bind- the optimum solution would be to blow air into the sail to clear it of water, but if the sub was in an uncontrolled dive, the XO had a hell of a lot more on his hands than clearing the sail. At least McCallum had shut the outside hatch, which gave the hull pressure integrity. The inner hatch was only designed for emergency use and was rated down to five hundred feet while the outer was rated to the sub’s maximum dive depth of three thousand feet.