by JE Gurley
It took Matthews twenty minutes to reverse the rover through the narrow, twisting corridor, cursing at every tight turn. He was perspiring profusely by the time the rover was free of the tangle. Devers decided to move the Nemo to the starboard side of the ship opposite the cargo hold. He had seen blueprints of the Pokhomov’s layout and suspected the nukes would have been stored in a small compartment with its own steel door separating it from the rest of the cargo. If he were right, cutting through the hull would save time. If he was wrong, they would have to abandon their search.
He was surprised to find a rent in the ship’s hull adjacent to the compartment. A second explosion had pierced the cargo hold, ripping a large hole in the side. Two steel hull plates had been forced together by the pressure of the explosion, causing them to buckle outward, leaving a two-foot-wide gap.
Devers smiled. “That makes things easier.”
After the sediment caused by their approach had settled, Matthews used the rover’s camera lights to illuminate the interior of the compartment. As the camera panned across the room, Devers spotted three conical objects strapped to metal cradles. The Soviet hammer and cycle was painted a bright red on their sides – the nuclear warheads. To his dismay, the fourth cradle was empty. It had been ripped from its moorings and was tossed around the room during the sinking.
“Three out of four’s not bad,” Matthews commented. He checked the Geiger counter. “High but not deadly. They’re intact. The fourth one must have been damaged and thrown clear of the wreckage. That’s where the stray background radiation is coming from.”
“We need to find it.” Devers was no scientist, but he understood that rumors of giant sea monsters and leaking radiation were not two separate issues.
A look of concern crossed Matthews’ face. “Why? We have three of them. The other one might be too hot for us to handle.”
Devers ignored him as he started the engines to move the Nemo. “Use the Geiger counter to pinpoint the location.”
Turning the sub in a slow circle, the Geiger counter picked up a higher radiation count downslope of the wreck. He moved down the steep slope slowly to limit the dirt the sub raised and improve visibility. He crawled back and forth across the slope, avoiding large boulders. The numerous boulders and debris from the wreck made the search difficult. Each pile of debris had to be investigated. After an hour and a half, Devers had begun to give up hope.
“It’s getting hotter,” Matthews called out.
They were at the edge of a precipice. The slope dropped off sharply for three hundred feet, ending on a flat plain that continued for several hundred feet before continuing its descent to the Trench. Devers carefully piloted the sub down the side of the wall until he reached the plain. Pieces of smaller wreckage had ended up there. He swept the searchlights across the plain until they picked out the fourth warhead, sitting upright near the edge of the wall.
“The meter’s going crazy,” Matthews warned. “It’s hotter than hell. We’re too close already.”
Devers could see that the warhead had been severely damaged in its descent. The cone was truncated and an access plate had been ripped away, exposing the delicate wiring. Retrieving it would mean certain death from radiation poisoning. They would have to settle for the three intact nukes.
“It’s a job for someone else,” he said to Matthews, to his immense relief.
“Good. I may want to make babies someday.”
A shadow passed beneath the sub just at the edge of the lights. Devers was tossed from his seat on top of Matthews as the sub rolled abruptly to one side.
“What the hell was that?” he asked as he crawled off Matthews and back into his seat.
“Maybe a rock fell on us,” Matthews replied, but sounded as if he didn’t really believe it.
Whatever had hit them had come from the bottom. No rock could jump up and hit them. “Whatever it was, I’m taking us back up.”
The sheer sides of the cliff loomed dangerously near the sub as it rose, but Devers suspected he knew what had hit the sub and wanted to use the wall as protection. He considered abandoning the salvage altogether, but knew that he or someone else would have to do the job eventually. He guided the sub back to the forward cargo hold. They were unmolested during the two hours it took to cut away a section of hull and retrieve the remaining warheads. Once the three nukes were safely ensconced and sealed in the basket beneath the sub, Devers began to relax. However, his relief was short lived.
“I’m picking up something on sonar,” Matthews said. “It’s down slope and moving toward us.
Devers swung the spotlight toward the direction Matthews indicated. At the edge of the beam, dark shapes began to appear. The sediment raised by their movement obscured them from view.
“Let’s get out of here,” Matthews urged.
Devers ignored Matthews’ plea. He was curious. He kept one hand on the throttle, but didn’t move. When the shapes became visible, he wished he had. A dozen creatures resembling pill bugs like he had played with as a child scurried toward the sub. Each was larger than the Plexiglas bubble he and Matthews were inside. Curiosity gave way to self-preservation. He powered up the engines to lift the Nemo from the bottom. The propellers revved but the submersible didn’t move.
“They’re on the skids,” Matthews cried. He turned to Devers. “What the hell are those things?”
Devers knew. He had seen the photos. “They’re what attacked Little Cayman.”
Matthews’ face paled. “Get us out of here,” he screamed.
“Use the arms.”
Matthews stared at Devers uncomprehending for a moment, and then his face relaxed into a wry smile.
“Yeah,” he said.
He used the sub’s manipulator arms to swat at the creatures as if they were gnats buzzing his head. The creatures were large and nimble, but the steel arms crushed them as if they were cardboard boxes. Devers rocked the sub to help dislodge the creatures from the skids. They might not be able to damage the Plexiglas bubble, but he suspected they could rip the thinner material of the buoyancy bag. He dropped the lead weights and the sub surged upward. They were free.
“Can we leave now?” Matthews asked.
“One more thing to do.”
“What?”
He stared at Matthews. “Use Spot’s torch to ignite the ammunition in the cargo hold. The explosion should bring half the mountain down on top of the fourth nuke, and seal it up for good.”
Matthews shook his head. “Negative, man, Spot cost a small fortune. They’ll take it out of our pay. Besides, it might not work.”
“It’ll work,” Devers assured him. “We already sold our souls to the Company. So they’ll own our asses for a few more years.”
The radio range for the remote rover was less than five hundred feet. He hovered the sub above and to one side of the Pokhomov, as Matthews threaded the tight tunnel with nimble Spot until it reached the ammunition. Choosing a 76 mm artillery shell from a pile of shells, Matthews used the smaller manipulator arms of the rover to place it beside a large crate of munitions. The shell was not fused, but the cutting torch could easily ignite the powder charge inside. The blast would set off the entire store of munitions. Devers hoped the resulting explosion would be large enough to bring the entire slope down on the ledge and bury the fourth warhead.
Matthews wiped his perspiring forehead on his sleeve and licked his dry lips. “It won’t take long for Spot to burn though a brass shell casing, so once I ignite the torch, you put the pedal to the metal and get us the hell out of here.”
The camera flared as the torch ignited. The flame was directed at the shell casing, but the bubbles from the torch blurred the image. Devers dropped all the remaining ballast and the sub began to rise. Below them, the area around the ship was alive with more of the black bugs. He hoped they enjoyed the ride back to the depths that spawned them.
The explosion came a minute later. Light flared from every rip and opening in the ship. Then it swelled li
ke a balloon as the ammunition ignited. Finally, it burst open along the seams, spewing shrapnel across the slope. Because of the intense water pressure, the gas-filled bubbles created by the explosion looked small, but they grew rapidly as they rose toward the surface. The shock wave hit the sub twenty seconds after the explosion, sending it into a wild spiral, nose down, that tossed its occupants around the cabin like dice in a cup. Devers cracked his elbow on the hull, numbing his right arm controlling the sub. He quickly grabbed the joystick with his left hand, fighting to level out. Matthews slammed headfirst into the control panel, knocking him out. Biting back the pain, Devers stared out the porthole. The forward section of the Pokhomov was gone, disintegrated. The slope around it heaved and buckled like a shaken blanket before sliding downward, and raising a cloud of sediment that quickly engulfed the Nemo.
Devers was pleased with himself. The nuke was buried beneath thousands of tons of debris where it could cause no further harm. They had the remaining three nukes in the basket. In his mind, the mission was a success. He just hoped his superiors saw it that way. Matthews groaned as he came to, rubbing a bump on his forehead. The radio came alive.
“We picked up an explosion on sonar. What the hell happened down there?”
Devers ignored Knotts’ frantic call. He reached over and switched off the radio. He had six hours of peace and tranquility to enjoy on the ride to the surface before all hell broke loose. He lay back and closed his eyes, thinking about Lila, or was it Lily, in Savannah.
14
Oct. 30, Miss Lucy, Cayman Trench, Caribbean Sea –
As luck would have it, less than four hours after leaving Kingston, the weather worsened. A twenty-knot westerly wind raised ten-foot waves with frothy whitecaps that slammed into the sailboat’s hull like sledgehammers. The tiny boat heaved and pitched as if each roll would be its last, but Germaine kept the ship afloat by years of seamanship and by his refusal to give in to the whims of the sea. He rode the waves like a consummate surfer, using its power to shove the boat back up the next wave’s back.
The crew clung to the masts and booms, gathering the sails before the wind shredded them. The professor had locked himself in the head, where the sounds of retching rose and quieted in rhythm with the boat’s frantic motions. Corporal Elansky sat by herself as if unconcerned by the weather, as she dismantled and cleaned her rifle. Josh had thought himself immune to seasickness, but his stomach was rebelling at the constant swaying of the overhead light.
“You’re doing better than the old man.”
Josh looked up to see Elansky grinning at him. “I’ve sailed in rough weather before, but this is pushing it, even for me.” He nodded toward the head. “The professor hasn’t had much experience at sea.”
“Strange for a marine biologist, isn’t it? His books are very educational.”
“You’ve read his stuff?” He was surprised that a sniper read books about marine biology.
“I thought his book on star fish declination of the Pacific coast was very compelling.”
“Do all Marines follow marine biology professors?”
She rubbed a part of the rifle with a soft cloth, examined it, and then laid it with the other parts spread out around her. “I like to know whom I’m working for.”
“What about me?”
“Joshua William Peterson, born 3rd December, 1991 in Waco, Texas. GPA of 3.8. You swim, dive, surf, like to play paintball with your friends, and prefer Chinese food to Tex-Mex.”
“How did you … Do you have a dossier or whatever on me?”
Her laugh was soft, not condescending. “No, I pulled your college file. The professor told me the rest.”
Josh relaxed. “I see. I know nothing about you.”
“Nina Haley Elansky, corporal. Born March 22, 1990 in Schuylkill, Pennsylvania. No siblings. Parents dead. I don’t get seasick, I hit what I aim at, and I prefer scotch when I drink, which isn’t often.”
“Why are you here?”
“I’m a Marine. I go where they send me.”
“You didn’t volunteer for this mission?”
She replaced the last part in the rifle and laid it on the seat beside her, patting it gently as if it were her pet. “They said they needed someone with my special skills for a mission. I volunteered. When they briefed me, I thought, this is a shot no one else will ever have the opportunity to make, so I accepted.”
“You’re not curious?”
She leveled her eyes at him and replied, “No.”
“Are you stationed on the Andrews?”
“No.”
“The other ship?”
Her reaction was slight, but her eyes betrayed her. “What other ship?” she asked. She knew about the black ship, or at least suspected that something strange was going on. He wondered how much she knew. He decided to heed Germaine’s advice about secrets. “Nothing, I thought someone said another ship would join us.”
“Not to my knowledge.”
Josh nodded. “My mistake.”
The boat rolled violently, throwing Josh across the couch into her shoulder. When he tried to right himself, his hand brushed her breast. She leaned away but smiled. “I don’t get frisky with anyone until after the job’s done.”
Embarrassed, Josh moved back to his side of the couch. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I enjoy a good roll in the sack as well as anyone, but business comes first.”
Josh wasn’t sure how to respond to her, but Professor Hicks broke the moment as he staggered out of the head, pale and slightly woozy. He braced himself against the wall as he moved to a chair across from Josh and Elansky and collapsed, groaning, “I didn’t think it would be this bad.”
Taking pity on him, Elansky replied, “It’ll just last a few more hours. By morning, the sea will be calm.”
“I hope so,” Hicks replied, but his expression betrayed his doubts.
Elansky sat ramrod straight with her hands on her knees. She was unperturbed by the rough voyage or by the loud rumblings of the professor’s stomach, audible even over the creaking of the boat. Josh tried hard not to stare at her, but couldn’t help stealing discreet glances. She intrigued him, beautiful but deadly. He wondered why such a lovely woman would choose to go into the sniper trade. There were many women Marines, but killing someone at a thousand yards was different from normal combat. It took a special kind of person; one with powerful concentration and extreme calmness in the face of danger. It also took someone cold and calculating, he reminded himself. He wondered if she would look so calm when she saw the ceresiosaurus.
Twice more during the early morning hours, the professor visited the head. After his last visit, he lay down on one of the bunks and managed to fall asleep. Elansky remained seated in her chosen position with her eyes closed as if meditating. Josh thumbed through an old Playboy magazine, admiring Miss April of 2011.
“Do you prefer brunettes?”
Startled, Josh almost dropped the magazine. He hastily closed it and laid it on the table. Elansky stared at him with a grin on her lips.
“My girlfriend was a brunette.”
“Was?”
“She died in an auto accident. I…uh…haven’t dated much since.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to hit a sore nerve.”
“It’s all right. I’m learning to cope.”
She frowned. “Clearly you’re not. I can see the pain in your eyes. That’s all right. It shows you care.”
Josh nodded, surprised by her depth of understanding. “Thanks.”
“The wind’s dying down.”
Josh looked up at the overhead light. It was barely swaying. “You were right.”
“Snipers study the wind and weather. We’re like sailors in that respect.”
Was she subtly reminding him that she was a killer? “Have you ever hunted big game?”
“You mean shoot something other than people? No, I don’t hunt for sport. I kill as a soldier kills. I just do it solo.”
“Don’t you
usually have a spotter or something?” He didn’t know much about Marine protocol, but he had watched a few movies about snipers. They usually had a companion.
This time, the pained expression was on her face. It disappeared quickly. “I had a spotter. He died on our last mission. I haven’t chosen another one yet.”
So she’s suffered a loss too. Welcome to the club. “Sorry.”
“It happens.” She glanced out the porthole. “It’s getting light outside. Why don’t you get some shut eye?”
“I’m too nervous to sleep. What about you?”
“I don’t sleep before a mission.”
“This one is a little different, isn’t it?”
“You mean tranquilizing an extinct sea monster? It’s one for the books.”
“Are you afraid? I mean …”
“You mean I’ll be up close and personal. I’m excited. I get to shoot but not kill.”
Something in her voice betrayed her feelings. “Does killing bother you?”
“Only a fool likes to kill. It’s my job. I do it because most can’t. I have a special skill set. I can save lives.” She paused. “When you stare at a face through a telescopic sight, you see the lines on their face. You see their eyes. I remember the face of every person I’ve killed. They don’t go away. It’s like a gallery of the dead in my head.”
“It must be rough. I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “Don’t be. I live with it. It’s what I chose.” She stood and crossed the room to stare out the porthole. “It’s going to be a clear day. Good.” She looked at Josh and smiled. “If you don’t mind, I need to be alone to prepare myself. It’s a ritual I do.”
Josh stood. “Uh, yeah, sure. I’ll check on Germaine.”
She resumed her position on the couch, laid the rifle across her lap, and closed her eyes. Josh noticed tightness in her jaw now, and one hand was clenched in a fist. He watched her large, firm breasts rise and fall with her breathing for a moment, and then left.