Leviathan: An Event Group Thriller

by David L. Golemon

  “Our friends are starting their harassment run. Watch them and make sure they keep the proper safety distance.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Petersen stepped into the giant bridge of the Goliath and scanned the horizon. He finally spied the vessel in question, and he could see by her silhouette it was their old friend, the General Santiago, a small missile frigate formerly belonging to the French navy and then sold to Venezuela five years before.

  “I have visual contact. Send to General Santiago welcome and to please take up station to our starboard beam. Inform them we have a friendly submerged contact bearing one kilometer astern.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Petersen was about to walk out onto the bridge wing and view the Greenpeace run on his ship when a sudden, piercingly loud alarm warning sounded.

  “We have a submerged contact bearing zero-one-nine at two thousand yards. This is a hard contact, we wouldn’t have heard it, but—oh, my God—someone is opening torpedo tubes to the sea!”

  “What?” Petersen was taken back by the sudden, stunning announcement.

  “We have high-speed noises, possible torpedoes in the water!”

  The captain froze in abject horror. His first officer called out he had a visual on the spot of contact, but Petersen just stood frozen to the deck.

  “Torpedoes?” was all he could get out of his frozen throat.

  PRC (PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA)

  SUBMARINE RED BANNER

  “What do you mean, torpedoes?” Captain Xian Jiang asked loudly as he picked up a set of headphones at the sonar station and listened.

  The high-pitched sound was nothing like the turning propellers of any high-speed torpedo he had ever heard. His sonar man was saying something about the new quieter air-jet powered weapons the Americans had been working on instead of listening; he slammed his fist down on the operator’s shoulder to quiet him. He heard the sound of the approaching weapons when a loud pop sounded in the headphones.

  “More torpedoes in the water!” the operator called out. “They are actively seeking and are bearing right on us!”

  “Distance?” Xian shouted.

  “Three hundred yards—closing fast!”

  “Impossible. Nothing could have gotten that close without being detected.”

  “Sir, nonetheless, we are under attack. The weapons went active as soon as they hit the water—torpedoes have acquired!”

  “All-ahead flank, hard left rudder! Weapons Officer, match bearing on the attack line and fire! Countermeasures, launch a full spread!”

  The Chinese Akula class attack boat swayed and dipped violently as she maneuvered her heavy bulk to the left of the attacking torpedoes. Arrayed along the aft quarter of the submarine, a line of canisters popped free and began to release a burst of sound cocooned in bubbles into the surrounding water that was a mimicked recording of her own electric power plant noises, including the cavitations print of her bronze propeller. As the massive vessel turned, the two strange missile-shaped torpedoes turned with her. The Red Banner’s propeller finally grasped the water and shot down and to the left, but she could not shake the oncoming weapons that had doubled the boat’s speed—both weapons shot cleanly through the countermeasures without hesitation.

  The captain froze as men started shouting orders. He knew they had but three seconds of life left to them.

  The torpedoes struck almost simultaneously at the stern and under her keel amidships. The immense pressure wave cracked the Chinese hull like an eggshell and crushed all aboard in a microsecond.

  Petersen finally caught sight of the two fast-approaching torpedoes that had suddenly popped toward the surface. In absolute horror he saw, in surreal slow motion, the Greenpeace vessel Atlantic Avenger innocently and unknowingly swing her razor-sharp bow into the oncoming path of the outside weapon. The torpedo struck, blowing her beautifully painted bow off in a violent explosion that shook the giant oil tanker.

  Petersen now had a slim hope that the remaining weapon would not be enough to hurt his massive ship. As he grasped on to that lone shred of hope, a sudden explosion to the south sent water upward into a plume of white foam and violence that announced that two subsurface-to-surface missiles were launched, just as the errant torpedo had been sent into the wrong ship. First one, then the other missile arched into the blue sky. As one missile kept climbing, the other turned down, and to the north as it streaked far ahead of the waterbound torpedo. The missile slammed into Goliath at her stern, ripping free her rudder and sending men sprawling to her elongated deck.

  “We’re hit!” someone called from the bridge.

  Petersen wanted to scream in frustration for the officer to tell him something he did not know. However, before he could he saw that the second missile had turned toward the advancing Venezuelan missile frigate. Just as he saw the naval vessel start a slow turn to the west, the first torpedo slammed violently into Goliath‘s side, sending a giant mushroom cloud of steel and vaporized oil into the sky. Petersen tried to pick himself up off the deck as the ship was rocked again, this time from a distance as the second missile found its mark and slammed into the afterdeck of the guided missile frigate General Santiago, two miles away.

  Who could be doing this? His mind raged as he reached for the sill lining the front windows of the bridge. Could it be the Americans, the Russians? They were the only two nations capable of such stealth and weaponry. The captain finally managed to gain his feet and look out onto the expanding horror that was Goliath‘s foredeck. Fires were raging, and he could see the giant ship was starting to list severely to starboard.

  “Mr. Jansen, counterflood! Goddamn it, counterflood the port bunkers!”

  “More missiles in the air!” someone screamed.

  As Petersen looked on in shock, six separate trails of fire exited the sea. Four streaked to the west, gaining altitude, and two came directly at them. He managed a quick glance down at Atlantic Avenger just as she started to slide bow first into the green sea, and crew and protesters were sliding and jumping from her decks. He closed his eyes in a silent prayer for them as the next two missiles found their mark, driving deep into the superstructure of the tanker.

  The detonations shook the ocean for thirty-five miles in all directions as the old ship came apart and evaporated in her final, violent, split-second death. The expanding fireball that incinerated all who struggled to remain on the surface swallowed the surviving crew along with the remaining detritus of the Atlantic Avenger. Those who fought for survival beneath the water were torn to pieces by the pressure wave that slammed into them at over a thousand feet per second, sending their flesh into a billion microscopic additions to the raging sea, and also into the gathering mushroom cloud that was expanding like the rising sun over the green ocean.

  CARACAS, VENEZUELA

  The newly constructed crude-oil facility owned and operated by the Citgo Oil concern was a monstrosity that had displaced seventy-five thousand impoverished inhabitants in the suburbs of Caracas. Outside of her main gates, six hundred of these citizens stood side by side with five hundred union workers, protesting both their recent treatment by Venezuelan government and the nationalization of the oil industry, thus tossing the unions into oblivion.

  Security was not only there for the protesters. Word had come down that there had been some sort of threat passed on by the American government concerning the opening of the world’s most controversial oil facility.

  Two miles inside the main gates, officials from China, Cuba, and Venezuela were on hand for the dedication ceremony. The concern was a joint financial venture between the three nations in an effort to thwart the United States and her allies—mainly Saudi Arabia—in what they considered unfair manipulation of the world’s oil supplies.

  The CEO of CITGO Petroleum and the interior minister of Venezuela shook hands, smiling broadly. The latter was there in place of president for life Hugo Chavez, a sworn enemy of the very democracies that had helped them in their national oil ex
ploration treaties a decade before. Even after the threat that had been passed on by the president of the United States, Chavez still held firm that nothing and no one would stand in the way of his achieving an international power base and a strategic partner in China for his oil products. He even had announced plans for expanding into the Gulf of Mexico—an area that was quickly becoming a hot spot for environmentalists.

  The interior minister was about to take the microphone to denounce the unpatriotic actions of the protesters outside the gates when air raid sirens began to blare loudly around the new facility. The Venezuelan minister looked around in confusion, the smile still stretched across his dark features, when three security men jumped upon the stage, took him by the arms, and moved him off the raised platform. The Chinese representative looked on in confusion, as did his Cuban counterpart. Then another set of military police appeared and harshly pulled the two diplomats to their feet.

  “What is the meaning of this?” the Cuban minister cried out in Spanish as he was pulled unceremoniously from the dais.

  “We have an air force warning of incoming cruise missiles. Please come with us, we have to—”

  That was as far as the military security guard’s explanation got, as the sound of four shrieking missiles froze everyone inside and outside the oil facility.

  “Look!” the Chinese minister shouted as he pointed skyward.

  As they turned, they saw the distinctive vapor trails of four missiles as they crossed over dry ground from their trek inland from the sea. The first missile dipped and came apart just over the crude-oil loading facility. A nuclear airburst set to detonate at three hundred feet vaporized both the docks and the pipeline that carried crude from the plant to the oceanside loading facility. The next three missiles traveled one, two, and three miles inland, then detonated over the two-mile-wide plant itself. The fireball created by the simultaneous detonations was in the yield range of 5.5 megatons each, a relatively light package by military standards, melting steel and flash-frying human flesh as the brand-new controversial facility, along with everyone present, ceased to exist in the blink of an eye. The weapons did not differentiate protester from government lackey, as all were instantly vaporized in a microsecond of heat and wind.

  Twenty miles offshore the great monster rose from the sea to expose her conning tower and the large rudder fins at her stern—the tower so tall that if viewed it would have looked as if a mountain suddenly rose from the roiling sea. The great beast’s interior electronics recorded wind conditions and temperature variants from the sea and outlying land coordinates, without a soul having to be exposed to the air. The gleaming black hull glistened in what remained of the morning sun and blue sky, which was quickly becoming cloud-laden and threatening rain. The darkening skies nearly matched the countenance of the giant vessel’s captain, as the attack area was surveyed on monitors in the main control center and the conning tower overlooking the scene of devastation.

  The captain stood, walked to the spiral staircase that wound its way upward through the skyscraper-sized conning tower, and then opened the hatch to the private observation suite. Once there the captain examined the waters outside the three-foot-thick, twenty-five-foot-diameter port viewing window sitting just above the waves that hit harmlessly against the vessel’s sonar-absorbing hull.

  As the captain scanned the now-calm sea, a body floated by, bobbing in the gentle swell. The captain’s eyes closed as the body struck the hull and then continued, spinning and dipping in the sea. The dead had been a woman, dressed in civilian clothes, indicating she might have been one of the Greenpeace volunteers from the unintentionally destroyed Atlantic Avenger. The captain looked away just as orders were shouted below to get under way, and the burned and mangled body mercifully vanished from sight.

  “Captain, we have a submerged contact at twenty kilometers and closing—possible submarine close-aboard. Computer says there is a ninety-three percent possibility it is a Los Angeles class attack boat. We will have her prop signature momentarily.”

  The captain continued to stare at the now-s till waters where three ships and a submarine had once been. Then the deep blue eyes closed as three mushroom shaped clouds slowly rose from the west, indicating their attack there had concluded.

  The war those fools sought had begun in the violent way all wars start, and the winner upon this new battlefront would be no nation that currently held power in the world. The winner would be life itself.

  “Take her down to two thousand feet. As we clear the continental shelf, bring her up to seventy-five knots, on a heading to our next objective. It is neither the time nor the place to confront the U.S. Navy. They’ll have other concerns very soon.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  With that, the giant vessel slipped under the waves and silently departed the attack zone specifically chosen two years before this dark day, just after the announcement of the day that oil operations were to commence at the damnable facility.

  The captain moved away from the thick acrylic window, using a control on the chair behind to close the clamshell titanium cover, and then slowly made for the control room. “Please send the surgeon to my cabin.”

  “Aye, Captain,” the first officer said as he snapped his fingers at the bridge security officer and pointed aft, sending him to collect the doctor.

  Around the fully holographic control center of the giant beast, the crew looked upon their captain with admiration and dedication.

  The most amazing machine in the history of the world was brought up to her cruising speed, and then silently started making her way south.

  On the surface above, only smoldering debris marked the spot where the giant vessel had been only moments before. The captain of this strange submarine knew that soon the sea would heal itself, and the sea life there would return to normal, never to be placed in danger by humankind again.

  USS COLUMBIA (SSN 771)

  125 KILOMETERS EAST OF VENEZUELAN

  COASTAL WATERS

  The United States fast-attack nuclear submarine USS Columbia was shallow as she attempted to gather readings from the air and water surrounding the boat. Then the large sub went back into deep water to evaluate their readings.

  The Los Angeles class submarine had been on maneuvers with one of the newest Ohio-class missile boats, USS Maine (SSBN 741) while they conducted DSEM (Deep Submergence Evasive Maneuvering), a new drill thought up by COMSUBLANT (Commander, Submarine Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet).

  The Columbia, normally based in Hawaii, had recently finished a scheduled refit at Newport News, Virginia, at the general dynamics facility. From there she was ordered to conduct operations with Maine on her return trip back around the Horn of South America. The drill suddenly halted when the waters fifty kilometers to the south erupted in sound. While the Maine went deep and evacuated the area for security reasons, the Columbia went south at flank speed to investigate the war noises emanating somewhere off the coastline of Venezuela.

  Captain John Lofgren watched the readings on the infrared detectors and frowned. He turned to his first officer, Lt. Commander Richard Green, and shook his head.

  “Whatever happened up there, it was hot as hell. The water temperature is twenty degrees above normal. Moreover, what were those strange noises prior to all hell breaking loose? They weren’t any torpedo sounds I’ve ever heard before.”

  “We have confirmation, Captain,” the chief of the boat called out. “We have elevated but still low radiation readings on the surface. Computers still say nuclear detonation, probably light in yield.”

  “We’re also picking up elevated levels of airborne contaminate coming in from the west,” a second tech called from his station.

  “What in the hell is going on?” Lofgren asked as he returned to control. “Dick, we have to get this off to COMSUBLANT—let’s get Columbia up to periscope depth.”

  TWO HOURS LATER

  Captain Lofgren was holding the set of headphones to his ears as he listened inside of the B
QQ-5E sonar suite.

  “I still don’t hear a thing,” he said to his sonar team.

  “It’s there, Captain, five miles outside of the target area. Just as we were approaching station it passed right beneath us,” Petty Officer John Cleary said as he adjusted the volume control to the captain’s headset.

  “Tell me again what in the hell it’s supposed to be I’m listening for?”

  The young petty officer seemed lost for words again as he looked from his captain to the first officer standing just inside the curtain of the sonar station.

  “It’s like … like … a pressure wave of some kind, and it’s moving extremely fast. The only thing that can cause something like that is a large object moving through the sea. We hear the same thing with whales, only on a smaller scale.”

  “I just don’t hear it.”

  “How fast did you say it was moving again?” the first officer asked.

  This time the operator looked at his training partner, who had also failed to hear the strange noise. He swallowed, then looked at the two officers.

  “About seventy-six knots. I measured the speed of the pressure wave against our static location.”

  Lofgren removed the headphones and looked at the operator, but Cleary kept his eyes straight ahead, not flinching away from his captain’s questioning look.

  “Captain, it went to almost eighty knots speed after I detected it, and at the moment it passed beneath us I felt the boat …” He stopped, knowing the explanation would sound too amazing to believe.

  “Felt the boat what?”

  “I have the computer and depth track on paper to back me on this, Captain.”

  Lofgren didn’t say anything as he waited.

  “Columbia actually rose in depth by eight feet as water under our keel was displaced by whatever it was that plowed beneath us when we came into the affected area.” The sonar man pulled a graph and showed it to the two officers. “One minute we’re at three hundred and three feet of depth, the next we went to two hundred and ninety-five—a difference of eight feet. Something monstrous passed beneath our keel at that exact time. What could move a Los Angeles class boat by that much depth from that far away?”