“You’re just going to walk right onto the island and say, ‘Hey, we would like a ride’?”
“It’s either that or waste the lives of a lot of young boys by trying to take Leviathan by force, all alone, when and if she surfaces,” Jack said, not turning away from the captain. “Personally, I’ve had enough of people dying lately. We want one chance to get our hostages back…. Just one, then she’s yours, Captain.”
Jefferson lowered his head. “Okay, Colonel, we may be able to track Leviathan, I’ll give you and the president that much, but we lost a bunch of subs and men learning that fact. Also absorb this little tidbit: We hit her with two Mark forty-eight torpedoes, and they didn’t even slow her down, as far as we know. Now explain to me how we can get any advantage on this thing whatsoever, if we even find her again after this little detour of yours.”
“Once aboard, my men and I will have to play things by ear. Captain Everett here is trained on how to get an edge against enemy subs, so you’ll have to wait and take advantage of what it is we come up with. Twenty-four hours. After that, hit her anyway you can with what you can. Captain, I want our people off that damn thing.”
Jack looked at Carl, then nodded his head. Everett handed the captain a yellow envelope with a red border.
“I think you’ll recognize the name and letterhead, Captain,” Carl said. “I think this will explain our sincerity about that one chance if we fail.”
Jefferson looked at the plain yellow envelope and then, without removing his eyes from Collins, broke the plastic seal. He pulled the single set of orders out and looked at them. When he was finished reading, he closed his eyes.
“Jesus Christ,” he mumbled, and handed the letter over to First Officer Izzeringhausen. The lieutenant commander read what the order called for, and his face went slack.
“You’ll have to excuse us, Colonel, we’re just not that experienced with sending men out on a suicide mission. If you ask me, you guys are out of your fucking minds,” Izzeringhausen said after reading the letter and the code that was attached to it.
“Take it easy, Izzy, I think they know what they’re asking.”
The first officer gave the letter from the president of the United States back to the captain and went back to speak with the chief of the boat.
“You know, it’s not only suicide for you fellas, but for the Missouri and any other American boat in the area. A nuclear war shot in a confined area will smash us to atoms, and we have to be within range of the target to guarantee a hit,” he said, tossing the letter onto the navigation console.
“Let’s hope we can do something other than that, Captain. We can be pretty sneaky at times,” Jack said.
The presidential order authorizing the use of Missouri’s nuclear capability was having a profound effect on Jefferson, and Jack could see that. The order would be the first in naval history to be carried out, if it came to that, and the responsibility was etched on the captain’s face.
“What if you’re shot to pieces when you motor up to their dock?”
“Track Leviathan the best you can and blow her to pieces, Captain.”
“Just who in the hell are you people?”
“Believe me, Captain, we’re no one special. We want our people back and we want Leviathan stopped.”
The captain accepted Carl’s answer and then looked at his chart.
“Izzy,” he said aloud, “it will be dark in twenty minutes. Get the colonel and his men suited up and tell the SEALs to get ready to escort them to Saboo.” Captain Jefferson looked up and held his hand out to Collins. “Colonel, I’ll just say I hope you get your people out.” He shook hands with Jack and then held his hand out to Everett. “But I really hope you talk some sense into the magnificent bastard that built that boat. I would hate to have to sink it and you, too.”
“Believe me, Captain, we hope the same thing,” Collins said as he followed the first officer aft.
SABOO ATOLL, THE MARIANAS
In the darkness just before moonrise, USS Missouri, the stealthiest submarine in the history of the U.S. Navy, surfaced without a sound a thousand yards offshore of the volcanic atoll called Saboo. With only the topmost section of her tower out of the water, her silhouette was almost nonexistent in the darkness of the night. Even her sail numbers were a darker shade of black against the hull. Captain Jefferson popped free of the hatch, quickly brought binoculars to his face, and scanned the sea.
“Sonar, conn, what have we got?” he asked quietly, knowing how well sound carried at sea.
“Nothing on sonar. We are no longer picking up Leviathan. She must be too far distant or at a stop, and air search radar is clear, Captain.”
“Okay, give me fifteen feet of air and clear the diving trunk, Izzy,” Jefferson said as he scanned the sea again with his binoculars, nervous about his sonar’s inability to find Leviathan.
“Aye, Captain, fifteen feet.”
As Jefferson scanned the faraway beach of Saboo and the few lights there, the black sub silently rose in the water, clearing the lower escape trunk on the Missouri‘s sail. The hatch quickly opened and two large bundles were tossed free of the boat. The two Zodiacs quickly inflated. Ten U.S. Navy SEALs exited and took up station on the hull of the sub as they assisted the five men of the shore mission. Collins looked up at the sail before he stepped foot in the first boat and saw Jefferson looking down at him. Both men nodded, and Jefferson saluted.
“Good luck, Colonel.”
Collins returned the salute and stepped into the boat with Dr. Gene Robbins in tow.
Three miles away in the darkest depths of the Pacific, Missouri was being watched. The eyes that scanned her were merely curious.
“Bring up maximum magnification on the scope, please, Mr. Samuels,” Alexandria ordered from her high station in main control.
The view on the free-floating hologram changed and flashed off for a split second. Then a three-dimensional view of the sail of Missouri appeared, but of far more interest to Heirthall were the two Zodiacs bobbing in the sea beside the sub.
“Someday you’ll have to tell me how you can be so right all the time, Captain,” Samuels said, as the darkened face of Colonel Jack Collins became crisp and clear.
Alexandria didn’t respond at first; she just looked from the hologram to her crew as they monitored their stations. Her eyes were again dilated and she was calm, in control.
“Never underestimate a man’s tenacity, James.” She smiled and looked at the first officer. “Or his love for another, for that matter. Those two things make events predictable to a certain degree. Besides, with this Group Ginny surrounded herself with, I knew it would only be a matter of time before they broke our good Dr. Robbins. It was inevitable that Saboo would be compromised.”
“What to you think their plan is?” Samuels asked as he left the sonar station and walked up to the high pedestal.
“I don’t believe they have one, and I surely don’t believe they plan on taking Saboo with fifteen men. We’ll watch and see.”
“The Missouri?” he asked.
“No threat there. Just monitor her. If she lingers around Saboo, we’ll chase her off. As long as we don’t move until she clears the area or allow our damaged surfaces to compromise us, we’ll be fine. Then we’ll just dive so deep that their limited technology can’t detect us.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Would you have Mr. Tyler escort Lieutenant McIntire to my sail observation suite and seat her outside until we bring our new guests aboard, then report to me for instructions?”
Samuels hesitated momentarily, as the captain never allowed anyone inside her private suite at the bottom of the sail tower. “Aye, Captain.”
Alexandria watched as the two Zodiacs shoved off from the Missouri and silently started for the shores of her island of Saboo.
“Soon I will have everyone aboard that I need,” she whispered to no one but herself.
“Captain?” Samuels asked, thinking he heard her speak.
Samuels looked around and saw Sergeant Tyler watching them from his security station.
“We need not inform anyone. On your off-watch report, say you’re inspecting the engineering damage,” Alexandria said, with a quick look at Sergeant Tyler. “One other thing, James. You’ll know my mood. If you discover I’m out of sorts when you arrive, mention nothing about dinner, just return to your cabin until I speak with you.”
Samuels tried desperately not to be taken aback by the captain’s invitation and warning. As he saw that she was done, he nodded. “Yes, Captain.”
“Until twenty-three hundred, then.”
Sergeant Tyler stepped away from the security station after observing the conversation between the captain and Samuels. He watched as Samuels stopped in front of him and relayed the captain’s orders regarding Sarah. Then he watched Samuels move away. Tyler then approached the captain.
“Captain, as head of security, I must say this is unacceptable, bringing this man back onboard Leviathan. You yourself warned us about this Group’s ability to get information, and with what he already knows about us, to allow him access—”
“Sergeant, I have been commanding this vessel long before I took you onboard her. I think I can make clear decisions without consulting you. Now, escort Lieutenant McIntire to the sail and await my orders.”
Tyler looked deeply into the captain’s eyes until she looked away, then he turned without comment and left the command pedestal. Although Alexandria paid the hotheaded Tyler’s breach of etiquette no notice, Samuels did. He watched as Tyler gave a last look back into the control center before leaving. After the first officer turned to his duties, Yeoman Alvera followed Tyler into the companionway.
“Maneuvering, bring Leviathan shallow and let’s see what our uninvited guests are up to.”
Leviathan started to rise in the water like an ancient behemoth, slowly pushing aside tens of thousands of tons of water. She rose as a sea god would to spy an intruder.
“You are challenging the captain’s judgment in front of the command crew right in the open. Do I have to remind you that we will need those people if this is to succeed?”
Tyler saw the anger in the yeoman’s eyes. The deep green pupil was now ringed in red and that in silver. He knew from Dr. Trevor that when Alvera became angry, microscopic pinprick hemorrhages erupted inside the ocular cavity, and those produced the bright colors in the eyeball. As he watched, the yeoman relaxed and looked around the empty passageway.
“You are not to do that again.”
“The captain is acting very strange, she’s becoming two-sided when it comes to her orders,” Tyler said, leaning in so he could whisper.
“I suspect that she is putting up more of a mental struggle than even we suspected.” Alvera leaned against the steel bulkhead as her eyes slowly became normal once more. “Alexandria is a strong-willed woman. Stronger than the part we need,” she said admiringly. “We will have to act soon. Be prepared at a moment’s notice for the right time to get what we need from her.”
“She is showing signs that she knows. At this very moment, she is as alert as she has ever been, and maybe confused about her aggressiveness.”
“Just do your job. We’ll soon be at Ice Palace and then this will all end,” Alvera said as she turned and started back for the control room. “We keep the captain happy by following orders, until such a time as she consistently gives us the right orders. Confusing to your kind, I know, but that’s the way it is.”
“Wait,” Tyler called out. “What are we going to do about that bastard Samuels? He knows something, or at least suspects. And what about the captain making this stop at Saboo? I told you all along that she had no intention of questioning her old friend and that damn Group about what they know.”
Alvera turned back and faced the sergeant. “Does it really matter?” She smiled. “After all, we have the captain of the most powerful warship in the history of the world on our side, even if Alexandria Heirthall isn’t…. Yet.”
Sergeant Tyler watched as the young girl made her way aft and back to her shift. He nervously turned and looked around and then shook his head. He was starting to regret the deal he had made.
Everyone knew the Devil always brokered deals that couldn’t be broken.
The two Zodiacs were at the sea edge of the surf when Collins ordered the two boats to stop.
“This is as far as the SEALs go; we get off here. Come on, Doc, it’s time to go swimming.”
“Colonel, we don’t mind taking the risk,” the SEAL lieutenant said from his place at the back of the boat.
“Well, I do. No more lives are going into harm’s way. Thanks for the ride, Lieutenant,” Jack said as he grabbed Robbins and leaned backward, sending them both into the sea.
Everett watched from the second boat and followed suit, along with Ryan and Mendenhall. They started in toward an unknown reception on Saboo.
As they rode the surf in, Jack kept Robbins’s head above water. When they gained their feet on the wet sand, Collins looked around at the silence that greeted them. The beach was deserted, just as advertised.
“Well, we didn’t get all wet for nothing. Shall we go wait to be shot, or picked up?” Everett said as he stood next to Jack.
“By all means,” Jack answered with a nod. “Take the lead, Captain, and let’s go fishing.”
EVENT GROUP CENTER, NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA
Pete was sitting at Niles’s large desk, his glasses propped up on his forehead. He was having the hardest time of his life keeping his eyes from closing as he studied the duty rosters for the complex, with a minimal security supervisory team given the absence of Everett, Ryan, and Mendenhall.
One of the director’s assistants, whom Pete had previously ordered to her quarters for the night, popped her head in through the door. She stepped in and, thinking Golding was finally sleeping, gently laid a pile of folders on his desk. As she started to turn away and leave, not wanting to wake him, Pete opened his eyes.
“What are these?” he asked without moving his left hand away from his head, where it protected his eyes from the glare of the overhead lights.
The young woman’s shoulders slumped and she turned.
“The replacement files from Arlington on the vaults on level seventy-three and seventy-four. They faxed us another set.”
Pete finally moved. He rubbed his eyes and replaced the glasses to their normal position.
“They may very well be redundant, since we now know what they were trying to hide,” he said as he removed the top file from the bunch. As he did, the others slid from the stack and slid across his desk. “Damn,” he said.
“Here, I’ll just put them on my desk until you have more time to check them off your list,” she said, moving forward to relieve Golding’s desk of at least some of his workload.
As she did, Pete’s eyes locked on a particular file for no other reason than that was where his eyes rested. He blinked, then placed his fingers on the partially obscured file number. He pulled it from the fanned-out stack, looked it over, and let out a small chuckle.
“I’ve got to get out more often and see the world—or at least the complex,” he said as he opened the obscure file. “I never knew we had anything from P. T. Barnum’s old New York Museum—better yet, why would we?”
The assistant looked at which file he was perusing and then relaxed.
“Oh, well, Colonel Collins said to include it because it was the vault located directly under the Leviathan enclosure.”
Pete looked up, partially closed the file, and then looked into the assistant’s innocent countenance.
“Directly under the vault? On level seventy-four? Wasn’t that where accelerant was also found?”
“Yes, sir, but the engineers said that could be explained by the liquid seeping through the rocks and falling inside tha
t particular vault.”
Golding nodded his head and excused the assistant, then looked at the file in his hands. It wasn’t a thick file, and stapled to the inside jacket of the folder was a small notation made by the forensics department stating that the artifact was totally destroyed by the fire. Pete read the first page of description from the report filed by the Event Group back in 1949, when the specimen was discovered in an old repository building in Florida owned by Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, The Greatest Show on Earth.
“ ‘The Mermaid of the Pacific Isles,’” Pete mumbled as he looked at a photograph of something that resembled a jellyfish, and a rather degraded jellyfish at that.
There were enhanced details that had been added by the Group back in ‘49 that outlined what looked like a pair of legs and small arms. The see-through mass was unlike anything Pete had ever seen before, and by far the most disturbing feature of all was in the next color photo: The damn thing looked as though it had hair. Long, black, and flowing, as it was laid out on a stainless-steel examining table. The whole thing, from head to jellylike, fanned tail, was about four feet long.
Pete flipped over to the next page and read the details of its discovery. The specimen had been one of the only items salvaged from the great fire in midtown Manhattan in 1865 during one of the many draft riots during the Civil War. The P. T. Barnum American Museum, located on Broadway and Ann Streets, burned, with a loss of more than 90 percent of its displayed oddities. It was reported by witnesses that Barnum himself rescued only one item from the burning structure, and that was from a locked storage bin in his personal office. That item: the Mermaid of the Pacific.
For many years after, people saw a cheap version of the mermaid (actually made from a torso of a monkey and the tail of a giant black sea bass) on display at the museum Barnum built to replace the one lost. He never gave an explanation of the obviously fake replacement to people who had heard the rumors of a far more delicate and humanlike specimen that gossip said was kept at Barnum’s own New York home.
Leviathan: An Event Group Thriller Page 28