Goliath

by Steve Alten

  “Conn, radio, I’ve got Jackson—”

  Cubit grabs the microphone. “General, this is Cubit. Joe-Pa’s in one of the minisubs, being chased by the Goliath. Is there any way you can patch us through?”

  Aboard the Prototype

  Gunnar and Rocky hold on as another mechanical shark rams their vessel’s tail fin.

  Five hundred yards behind, the Goliath soars through the ocean like a giant bat in a dark cave, the reflection from its scarlet viewports casting a bloodred hue beneath the frozen surface.

  Another impact, this one to port.

  “Hold on!” Gunnar wrenches the joystick hard to starboard, smashing the sub’s midwing stabilizer into another steel Hammerhead.

  “Gunnar, what happened to that goddamn explosive?”

  “Shit if I know.”

  Two more bone-jarring collisions, this time from below.

  The power flickers off—then on.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Gunnar checks the battery cells. “You don’t want to know.”

  Before she can respond, a red light flashes on the console. Gunnar activates the radio. “Bear, that you?”

  A blast of static envelops a faint voice—“Joe-Pa, this … Cubit … Scranton. We … sonar. Come west … two-six-zero—”

  The prototype is jarred sideways, the jolt turning the message to pure static.

  Rocky’s heart pounds. “An American sub?”

  “Yeah, but we’re headed the wrong way … hold on!”

  Gunnar aims for the luminescent white root of a behemoth iceberg. Adrenaline pumping, he races the prototype around the face of the submerged mountain, his portside pectoral stabilizer scraping ice.

  Circling counterclockwise, faster and faster around the face of the berg, Gunnar’s mind screams at him to veer away, afraid he is about to collide head-on into an unseen escarpment. “Rocky, call out our bearing!”

  “Zero-ten-zero … zero-five-zero … three-five-zero … three-three-zero …”

  Another jolt from starboard, one of Goliath’s minisubs attempting to ram him into the face of the berg.

  “ … two-eight-zero … two-six-zero … two-four-zero—”

  “Christ!” Gunnar yanks the joystick hard to starboard—

  —as a pair of Scarlet demonic eyes appears from out of nowhere in the darkness, heading straight for them.

  Gunnar pulls the prototype into a tight, teeth-rattling 360, looping around and beneath the incoming starboard wing of the Goliath, the turbulence from the leviathan’s five propulsors sending the Hammerhead caroming off the northern face of the iceberg.

  Rocky tumbles sideways into Gunnar as he overcompensates to starboard, then veers to port.

  He glances down with his left eye, checking his course.

  Two-six-zero.

  “Rocky, the radio console … fix that loose wire.”

  She unhooks her seat belt, feeling behind the radio.

  The speaker jumps to life. “ … repeat, west, twelve thousand yards … eastern face, heading north. Do you read?”

  Rocky grabs the mic. “Cubit, repeat message!”

  A thousand yards back, the Goliath banks hard to pursue.

  “ … iceberg, twelve thousand yards … ahead. Follow eastern face, heading north. Stay tight … depth … two-hundred feet.”

  “Iceberg?” Rocky glances at the sonar controls. “There it is, twelve thousand yards, right in front of us.”

  Aboard the USS Scranton

  The radio transmission turns to static.

  Cubit prays his message was received. Just keep on pinging, Joe-Pa, just keep on pinging. “Chief, make your depth two hundred feet. Conn, WEPS, firing point procedures, tubes three and four.”

  “Skipper, on what bearing? I don’t have a target or a firing solution.”

  “Dead ahead. This is a timing play, gentlemen. Joe-Pa’s leading the wolf to slaughter. WEPS, set torpedoes three and four to run-to-enable at six hundred yards.”

  “Setting torpedoes three and four to run-to-enable, six hundred yards, aye, sir.”

  “Open outer doors. Stand by to fire.”

  Aboard the Prototype

  “Two thousand yards. See anything yet?”

  “Yeah,” Gunnar says, focusing out of his right eye, “I see ice, a goddamn wall of it.”

  “Circle to the right, keep it tight.”

  “Don’t be a backseat driver.” Gunnar leans forward, staring hard at the display image coming from the sub’s forward underwater camera. A mountain of submerged ice lies directly in front of them, its glowing alabaster face becoming visible in the black sea.

  Rocky continues the sonar pinging.

  Two more jolts, one from starboard, the other from behind.

  “Christ, they’re tearing apart our propulsion system.” Gunnar banks hard to starboard, then back to port, unable to shake the minisubs.

  “One thousand yards—”

  The prototype’s engine stalls, then recatches the sea as Gunnar reworks the foot pedals.

  “Five hundred yards—”

  Sorceress, unfathomable intelligence, directed by a bipolar mind.

  Sorceress, a conglomeration of biochemical circuits, caught in a perpetual command loop, repeating its mantra over and over as it spins out of control.

  KILL GUNNAR WOLFE … KILL GUNNAR WOLFE … KILL GUNNAR WOLFE …

  In a swarm of movement, Goliath’s minisubs suddenly converge upon Gunnar’s minisub as one, pinning the prototype between them, restricting the vessel’s lateral movement.

  “Damn … I can’t steer … they’ve jammed their fins against our midwing stabilizers.”

  “Two hundred yards! Gunnar, do something before they smash us head-on into the face of that iceberg!”

  He veers the joystick hard to starboard.

  The prototype collides with three minisubs, but is unable to break free.

  “One hundred yards,” Rocky yells.

  Gunnar grits his teeth, the ice face leaping into his vision. He eases off the foot pedals, slowing the sub.

  A crunch of metal on metal as two of the steel Hammerheads grind into them from behind.

  “Fifty yards … twenty-five … oh, shit—”

  Now! Stomping on both foot pedals, he yanks back on the joystick as hard as he can.

  The prototype pulls ahead of the pack enough to execute a tight backward loop up and over its eleven escorts. Barrel rolling out of the flip, Gunnar turns hard to starboard, bouncing twice off the eastern face of the berg before righting his craft.

  Unable to slow in time, four of Goliath’s minisubs smash headfirst into the unyielding frozen slab and explode.

  The other seven continue on, giving chase.

  The monstrous ray adjusts its course, chasing the prototype along the mountainous wall of ice, its biochemical computer brain locking and loading a torpedo, its sensors zeroing in on the prototype.

  Aboard the USS Scranton

  “Conn, sonar, multiple impacts. Joe-Pa’s still pinging … he’s on the eastern face and moving north, coming fast … five hundred yards … three hundred yards … two hundred …”

  “WEPS, Captain, stand by.” Cubit watches the second hand race around the face of his grandfather’s watch.

  “One hundred yards … fifty yards. Joe-Pa’s cleared the berg—”

  Steady, Cubit … steady … His heart pounds, his pulse racing. Now! “WEPS, shoot tubes three and four!”

  Aboard the Prototype

  The prototype rockets beyond the eastern face of the iceberg and into the clear, its damaged pump-jet propulsor unit heaving in protest.

  Gunnar turns his head to the left. Through his helmet’s night-vision image he sees a dark, whalelike silhouette hovering along the northern face of the massive berg,

  —his eye catching the movement and jet streams of the two incoming projectiles racing toward them from the abyss.

  “Oh, shit—” Gunnar yanks the joystick back, launching the prototype strai
ght up toward the ice-packed surface, veering hard to port at the last second as he spots the hole created by the Scranton’s sail.

  The sleek minisub shoots out of the sea like a sailfish.

  For a brief, surreal moment they are airborne, and then the Hammerhead slams belly down onto the frozen sea, skittering sideways two hundred feet before smashing nose first into a jagged escarpment of ice.

  The Goliath roars past the iceberg—

  —directly into the path of the two incoming Mk-48 ADCAP torpedoes, offering a point-blank target impossible to miss.

  IMPOSSIBLE …

  Alarms sound within the biochemical computer’s matrix, igniting a series of evasive maneuvers, but now even milliseconds are too long as the Scranton’s projectiles slam into the monster submarine’s exposed portside wing. The twin blasts rupture the Goliath’s reinforced steel hull, tearing open the wing, imploding more than a dozen ballast tanks.

  I AM GOD. I AM GOD. I CANNOT BE DESTROYED …

  The invading sea explodes into the engine room, punishing all five S6W nuclear reactors, which heave together in a vacuous implosion. The detonation fractures the stingray’s spine, venting the Vertical Missile Bay and the already-flooded hangar, the incredible weight of the water literally pulling the submarine’s hull apart, separating its still-intact head from its flooded lower remains.

  Sorceress instantly shuts down all nonessential programming, redirecting its power cells to its nutrient-rich womb.

  I AM GOD. I … .. AM

  A thunderous impact as the starboard wing of the devilfish strikes bottom, shearing the appendage from its steel body with a terrible sound of shredding metal. The impact sends the still-intact forward compartment cascading end over end until the Goliath’s head comes to its final resting place, submerged seven hundred feet beneath the iceberg’s mammoth keel.

  Aboard the USS Scranton

  The concussion wave rolls Scranton hard to port, causing the glacierlike mountain to tremble, unleashing an avalanche of ice that plunges into the turbulent sea.

  Michael Flynn tosses his headphones aside. He high-fives his sonar supervisor and fellow operators, then grabs the 1-MC, and bellows. “She’s dead, Skipper! You nailed that motherfucker!”

  A cheer rises throughout the ship.

  An emotionally exhausted Tom Cubit collapses back against a console, a sheepish grin on the captain’s face as he watches his officers and crew exchange high fives and hugs.

  Bo Dennis slaps him on the shoulder. “Bravo, Zulu, Skipper! Well done.”

  The captain shakes his XO’s hand, then stares affectionately at his grandfather’s gold watch. Suddenly remembering, he grabs the microphone. “Joe-Pa, you there? Hey, Joe-Pa—”

  Sixty feet above Scranton’s submerged sail, fierce katabatic winds shake the steel Hammerhead prototype, causing it to reverberate against the fractured Antarctic surface.

  Gunnar, still in the throes of Rocky’s passionate kiss, reaches blindly for the radio, switching the annoying static off.

  “The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.”

  —Dale Carnegie

  “To be perfectly honest, what I’m thinking about are dollar signs.”

  —Tonya Harding, U.S. figure skater, convicted of participating in the plot to disable Nancy Kerrigan, her main competitor

  “Hey, it was nothing personal …”

  —Luigi Ronsisvalle, Mafia hit man, on his feelings about murder

  CHAPTER 35

  2 December

  Royal Australia Submarine Base, Perth, Australia

  Captain Thomas Mark Cubit glances up from his bridge beneath an overcast sky as the USS Scranton is guided into her berth. For the first time in weeks he allows himself to miss his wife, Andrea. He thinks about home. He has been at sea far too long.

  Commander Dennis’s eyes are focused on the dock and the headlights of the three approaching jeeps. “Here comes the reception committee. Not quite what I expected, after what we’ve been through.”

  “MPs? You’d think they’d have hired a brass band.”

  Ten minutes later, Cubit finds himself sandwiched in the back of one of the jeeps, no explanations offered, as he is taken to a barracks situated on the west side of the military installation.

  The MPs direct him inside, closing the door behind him.

  The room is dark, save for a desk lamp. A man is seated behind the desk, a light-skinned, African-American general with a short-cropped auburn Afro.

  “Come in and have a seat, Captain.”

  Cubit recognizes the voice. “General Jackson? I didn’t expect to see you here, sir. Hey, great job shooting down those missiles. White-knuckle stuff, huh?”

  “You should know.” Jackson hands him a file labeled UMBRA, a code word used to classify files beyond TOP SECRET.

  Cubit closes the file five minutes later. “I don’t understand? This report says the Goliath still exists, that it escaped beneath the ice floe. Nothing even in here about Scranton.”

  “That’s the official report, Captain. As far as anyone outside this room is concerned, Simon Covah and the Goliath are still at large. Your men will receive commendations, but will be properly debriefed before Scranton returns to Norfolk. Commander Dennis will be taking her back. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s been promoted.”

  “I don’t get it, sir?”

  Jackson reseals the file. “Two weeks ago, representatives from every nation on this planet agreed to a complete and verifiable nuclear disarmament, something none of us wanted, let alone believed would ever happen. If the rest of the world knew Goliath had been destroyed—”

  “Then the treaty would have no teeth,” Cubit finishes. “How long do you think you can keep the truth out of the public’s eye?”

  “You mean we.” The Bear smiles. “I’ve decided to retire. You’re my successor. From this day forward, Vice Admiral Cubit, you’ll be in charge of the COLOSSUS Project, reporting directly to the president of the United States, and only to the president.”

  “The Colossus?”

  “Your new command.” Jackson stands. “Simon Covah started this business, now we’re going to see it through.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It is with great pride and appreciation that I acknowledge those who contributed to the completion of Goliath.

  First and foremost, to my literary manager, Ken Atchity, and his team at Atchity Editorial/Entertainment International for their hard work and perseverance, as well as Danny Baror of Baror International. Kudos to Tom Doherty and the great people at Tor/Forge Books, especially editor Bob Gleason, for his faith, wonderful input, and direction, to Heather Drucker in publicity, and tireless Brian Callaghan, for all his assistance and suggestions.

  Special thanks to copyeditors Bob and Sara Schwager, and to Brett Bartlett, who helped inspire parts of the novel.

  Heartfelt appreciation to my Goliath team—all readers of my previous books whose own expertise contributed to the authenticity of the novel. Dr. Elizabeth Goode of the University of Delaware; Professor Barry Perlman, Physics Department, Broward Community College; Jim Kennedy, corrections officer, Northern Super-Maximum Correctional Institution in Somers, Connecticut; Dean Garner, United States Army Airborne Ranger; “Interstellar Bill” Parkyn; and Bill Raby, parachutist-extreme. Thank you all for your terrific contributions.

  Thanks also to Robert Marlin (Marlin Interactive Design) for creating the www.SteveAlten.com Web site and enhancing the reading experience for my fans, as well as Bill and Lori McDonald of Argonaut-Grey Wolf Productions /Website: www.AlienUFOart.com, who brought to life the Goliath and Hammerhead minisub drawings found in this novel. I am indeed fortunate to have such talented fans.

  Most important, a very special thanks to Ken Walker. Bravo Zulu.

  Several of the documented quotes used in Goliath can be found in Criminal Quotes, edited by Andrew Chester and H. Amanda Robb, published by Visible Ink Press, a division of Gale Research (1997).


  To my wife and partner, Kim, for all her support, and last—to my readers: Thank you for your correspondence and contributions. Your comments are always a welcome treat, your input means so much, and you remain this author’s greatest asset.

  —Steve Alten

  To personally contact the author or learn more about his novels, click on www.SteveAlten.com

  Goliath is part of Steve Alten’s ADOPT-AN-AUTHOR Program aimed at assisting junior high and high school students and teachers. For more information, click on www.SteveAlten.com

  “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

  —Reinhold Niebuhr

  EPILOGUE

  An Open Communication To The World:

  I have opened your eyes to Insanity. The insanity of nuclear war.

  The insanity of terrorism and oppression. The insanity of hatred.

  The insanity of injustice. Now it is time to end the insanity.

  There will be no more nuclear strikes, no more attacks. The

  Goliath shall serve as God’s tool to ensure the peace, but you

  must be Freedom’s Guardians.

  The Tower of Babel has been destroyed. Now it is time to rebuild.

  What rises in its place must stand as a symbol of our unity.

  One species. Under God. Indivisible.

  With Liberty and Justice for all.

  —Simon Bela Covah

  State College, Pennsylvania

  Still entrenched in the long, grayness of winter, the campus of Penn State University sleeps beneath a fresh blanket of March snow.

  Gunnar and Rocky exit the Penn State Diner, joining the students and townspeople sloshing their way down College Avenue.