Leviathan: An Event Group Thriller

by David L. Golemon

  “Look up,” Alex said, gesturing with her gloved hand.

  As they did, the sight was terrifying. The sun, just rising on the surface of the Ross Ice Shelf, was showing like a fan of sunbeams through a massive crack in the shelf itself. It was at least a mile long that they could see, stretching far beyond the cavern.

  “Over five hundred miles of the shelf is breaking away. This single event will add more than three inches to the water levels of the world. More will soon follow.”

  “My God,” Alice said, taking Lee’s arm as she looked skyward.

  “Losing the ice shelf alone is bad enough, but that coupled with the melting of the Arctic will eventually be devastating to the coastal areas of the planet.”

  “This is what you are allowing with your alliance with the symbiants, Tyler,” Jack said, watching the man who had binoculars trained on a distant, hollowed-out section of ice.

  “Why haven’t we seen the crew? Are they released as you promised?” Sarah asked.

  “They will be released soon,” Tyler said, lowering his glasses and looking right at Sarah. “As soon as the captain gives us the launch codes for the weapons.”

  Everett took a menacing step forward, but Collins reached out and stopped him just as ten security men brought their automatic weapons up.

  “I fear … Sergeant Tyler and Yeoman Alverez are too late,” Alexandria said. “The fault line has opened even farther than the last time we were here. I would … say by at least a thousand feet. The cavern is too unstable for a launch.”

  “Nonetheless, we will launch in half an hour. Captain, I fully expect the launch codes once we get back below. Colonel, your people go first, and before you try anything, remember: I have men stationed at the bottom of the sail, and they will not be forgiving the second time.”

  Collins stared at Tyler, wishing for just two minutes with the sergeant. He then looked at the others on the sail and thought better of it. There still might be a time and a place.

  Moving down the steep staircase, Virginia grabbed for Alexandria as her knees let go. She held her upright until Mendenhall and Ryan stepped up to take the captain’s weight.

  “Take her down,” Tyler shouted from above as the first of the above-deck security men reached the opening of the conning tower hatch.

  As Jack’s feet hit the inside of the tower, the light from above them was suddenly cut off. The hatch had slammed shut. As men and women scrambled in the darkness, their eyes adjusted. Jack saw them first. It was three of the children. They had hidden in the darkness of the stairwell, then slammed the hatch shut and dogged it before Tyler and his men could follow them.

  The three children, one of whom was the small girl that Will had come across on Saboo, smiled at Mendenhall. They were silent as they looked at the assembled group. Then the girl, along with her two male companions, gestured for them to follow.

  Collins stopped the small child. “There are security men below us,” he said.

  “Yes, they are there,” the girl said, but turned and went down the stairs anyway.

  “I think we better follow the child,” Farbeaux said, limping after her.

  As they reached the bottom of the long staircase, they were amazed to see five more of the children. The pounding on the hatch above told them of Tyler’s anger. Around the children were the limp bodies of ten of Tyler’s security men. Collins didn’t even want to know how the children had subdued them.

  “There are … still … a few weapons in the … cavern,” Alexandria mumbled.

  “All ashore that are going ashore,” Everett said as he started to open the escape hatch on the base of the giant sail tower.

  USS MISSOURI (SSN-780)

  Jefferson was staring and thinking about the chart in front of him. Missouri was at station keeping—only using her thrusters to adjust for drift as she waited. They were one mile off from the Ross Ice Shelf. He looked every few minutes at the latest ELF message from National Command Authority—the president of the United States. The coded wording was clear after deciphering: Sink Leviathan through any means possible. Release of special weapons has been authorized.

  Captain Jefferson ran a hand through his graying hair, then looked up as his first officer approached.

  “Maybe the president doesn’t know that Collins and the others are still alive and onboard.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Izzy. He knows they very well may be, but our orders stand. When Leviathan comes out from under the shelf, we bushwhack her with a Mark seventy-eight ‘special.’”

  “Goddamned nuclear-tipped torpedo,” Izzeringhausen said, shaking his head.

  “Let’s get the cursed thing loaded into tube three. Load one, two, and four with standard Mark forty-eights.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Izzy, we will do our duty on this,” Jefferson said as he saw the look on his first officer’s face.

  “Yes, Captain, but no one said we have to like it.”

  Captain Jefferson frowned and looked down at the chart that depicted the Ross Ice Shelf.

  “Stay under the ice until Collins can pull something—anything—off, if he’s still alive.”

  20

  LEVIATHAN

  “Is … the captain … going to die?” the small child asked with tears forming in her eyes.

  Jack knew it would do no good to lie to the child. “Yes—but she … and we … are grateful for your help. What is your name?” he asked.

  “Natika,” she said, as she placed a small hand on Heirthall’s cheek. “And she is our captain.” It was as if it were that simple. Heirthall was the captain, and it could be no other way. Jack knew that, to the children, there was no other authority in the world.

  Everett managed to get the hatch open, and the cold wind entered the tower. The small girl turned away, and the others followed her.

  “Hey, hey,” Jack said as he stopped her and the others. “You have to come with us.”

  The girl just shook her head. “We have others we have to bring out. The crew are trapped in their quarters—they will die soon. My friends are also in the mess compartment. We must help them.”

  “Colonel, you have to get me to the command bridge,” Heirthall said, still held between Virginia and Alice.

  “They can’t launch without the codes, right?” Lee asked.

  “They can … get the … codes through … other means.”

  “This job sucks,” Mendenhall said, voicing the same opinion that he had on many an occasion.

  Collins made a quick decision. “Will, you and Jason go with the girl. Do what you can to free whatever crew is still alive, and be careful,” he said, taking two of the weapons from the downed security men and tossing each one to the lieutenants.

  Natika seemed to like the suggestion; her smile widened. She stepped up to Mendenhall and took him by the hand.

  “I guess we’re in your girlfriend’s hands,” Ryan quipped as he joined Mendenhall and the children.

  “Funny man,” Will said as they left the sail and disappeared through the hatch leading down.

  Jack reached for the other fallen weapons. Everett, who joined him, immediately tossed the automatic rifles to Robbins, Lee, Compton, Farbeaux, and finally Sarah, who shook her head, knowing what Jack was going to say.

  “Mr. Everett, I assume the captain has a way of stopping any missile launch from Leviathan. Take her with you and find a way into that control center. Get it done.” He pulled back the charging handle of the weapon, chambering a round. “Get it done.”

  “And you?” Everett asked as Sarah stepped up to Jack, shaking her head.

  “I’m taking a different route.”

  Jack placed his right hand on Sarah’s cheek and smiled. “Don’t worry, Short Stuff, I have an extreme desire to live. I have plans beyond today.”

  Sarah was about to speak when Collins turned and went into the elevator. The doors closed and he was gone. Everett quickly stepped up and eased Alexandria from the grasp of Virginia and Alice.
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br />   “Captain, shall we try and help?” Everett asked Heirthall when he saw her blue eyes open and alert.

  “By all means … Captain Everett.”

  “I’m not leaving without my friend,” Virginia said, then helped Carl with Alexandria’s weight.

  Yeoman Alvera sat on the edge of the captain’s bed. Her hand played over the coarse blanket as she watched two of Tyler’s men cutting into the captain’s safe. As the front of the steel safe popped free of its hinges, she stood and walked to the bulkhead. She eyed the two men until they moved away, and then she reached in and took out the safe’s contents. She tossed papers on the deck until she came to a plastic-coated envelope. She snapped the plastic into two pieces, then looked at the thick paper inside.

  “NX0021-001 Heirthall-one,” she said, reading the launch codes aloud.

  Alvera smiled.

  Ryan and Mendenhall followed Natika toward deck five and the crew level. Ryan looked at Will as the girl started acting strangely. She placed her hands on each hatch as they passed them. She would slowly, sadly shake her head, with tears in her eyes.

  “What is it?” Mendenhall asked, leaning down in front of her to bring him to eye level.

  “They are all dead. They died scared—frightened at not knowing what was happening to them.”

  The girl started again, passing the first, then the second, until she came to the third compartment. She stopped and her small hand wavered, then it moved higher, then lower.

  “Alive,” she said, closing her eyes. “Ten—twenty—maybe forty crew—they are cold, scared—they want out.”

  Ryan quickly looked at the large spot welds on the hatch wheel and the four on the hatch and frame. Then he turned to look for something, anything, to break the welds.

  “Damn it, we need a cutting torch,” Mendenhall said, looking behind him, expecting Tyler’s men at any minute.

  Ryan spied something on the composite hull—a fire hose and ax in their case. He ran, smashed the glass, and removed the heavy ax.

  “You any good at chopping wood?” he asked Will.

  “Man, I’m from L.A., I—”

  “Forget it. Stand back,” Ryan said as he raised the ax and swung at the weld holding the center wheel in the middle of the hatch.

  The blade struck, making an unbearably loud ping. Then he swung again, and then again. Natika was holding her hands to her ears as protection from the loud noise. Finally, on the fourth swing, the makeshift spot weld gave way.

  “Turn it, Will. I’ll start on the hatch welds.”

  Mendenhall cranked on the wheel. It refused to turn at first, then slowly spun in his hands.

  “Got it,” he cried.

  Ryan didn’t hear. He swung at the right side of the hatch and the first weld broke free. A small trickle of water started oozing out along the seal. After breaking the second and third welds, more water started squeezing between the steel and the rubber gasket as the pressure from within started to push the water out. Ryan moved Mendenhall and Natika to the safe side of the hatch, and was just raising the ax for the last weld when they were surprised.

  Two men stood standing at the juncture of the companionway, pointing weapons at them. They stepped forward, coming within three feet. Will pulled Natika in toward him and stepped next to Ryan as Mendenhall, with his free hand, raised his weapon.

  The two men raised their weapons. Ryan was about to throw the ax when suddenly, and without warning, the last weld broke free. The hatch gave way as the single weld was no longer strong enough to hold back the pressure of the water inside. The hatch sprang so hard and so suddenly that the two guards never knew what hit them. Their bodies were smashed as the hatch crashed into them. Water cascaded from the compartment, along with bodies, live men and women, and the detritus of the personal lives that once sat in lockers and upon tables.

  Ryan, Mendenhall, and Natika were washed thirty-five feet down the companionway before the flood subsided.

  Several of the crew sputtered and spat. The survivors were half-frozen, but grateful to be alive and free. They splashed through the water and looked around confusedly, helping those who were worse off than others.

  “Well, they’re not much, but that’s the army we have to work with,” Ryan said as he tossed the ax in the water. “Not much of a cavalry coming to the rescue, but we do what we can.”

  With that, they started explaining to the rescued crewmen what was happening, and where their captain was.

  The second and deciding battle for Leviathan was about to start.

  21

  Tyler sat on a stool next to the navigation table after his men had retaken the conning tower. An hour and a half had passed since Heirthall and the Event Group escaped into Ice Palace. They had brought the warheads, which had been stored in one of the vast caverns where they had not run into Collins or any of the others, and had installed all thirty of the MIRV weapons on the missiles buried inside their launch tubes. Tyler looked at his watch. In record time, too, he thought.

  Tyler looked around at the security men and midshipmen at their consoles, then at the captain’s chair above him. He was tempted to climb into the large chair, but felt that since Alvera was forsaking the seat of power, he would also. He felt there was no need to risk a power showdown before the launch was complete. Then he could take command with his men at the controls.

  “Putting to sea while Captain Heirthall is free is a foolish and unnecessary risk,” Tyler said as he stepped up to the navigation table where Alvera was studying the hologram of the Ross Sea.

  Alvera raised her eyebrows and straightened up from studying the coordinates where the missile launch would take place. Eight circles of red were targeted for the opening salvo of Heirthall’s grand invention—the very first breed of stealth cruise missiles. The main naval ports of the United States, France, England, Russia, China, Germany, and Australia were the hard targets of the strike. Eight reentry warheads would be targeted for each nation, which would effectively destroy each of the deepest water ports, knocking out a good percentage of those nations’ surface and subsurface fleets without them putting to sea. The rest of the threats could be taken care of from another launch location.

  “Heirthall is nearly dead; the others with her will be located soon by the syms. No, Sergeant, these people are no threat.” She looked at Tyler and briefly smiled. “As easy as it was for them to escape you and your men, they won’t be so lucky against my family. My family will find them and kill them all. Now, let’s get under way, shall we?”

  “Sonar, conn, anything close aboard?” she asked over the intercom.

  “Inconclusive contacts at this time. The movement and instability of the ice shelf above us may be masking any potential threats.”

  Alvera looked down at the chart and made her final straight line from under the Ross Ice Shelf.

  “You seem worried,” Tyler said.

  “That American Virginia class submarine could be lurking in open water, and we wouldn’t know it until she put two torpedoes into us.”

  “Leviathan can take anything Missouri can throw at her.”

  “That vessel is a Special Operations platform—do you understand what that means? Let me enlighten you, Sergeant—they are stealth capable. They can sit for hours and we wouldn’t know they were there unless we put our laser web on them. Here’s one more fact for your files, since you seem to have missed the captain’s classes on the subject of American capability. She may have nuclear weapons onboard, and unless Leviathan is protected by depth, it is possible that they can destroy her. It would take a lucky shot, to be sure, but it’s still possible.”

  “Then we rely on your ability to evade. After all, you were personally trained by the captain.”

  Alvera ignored the false compliment by Tyler. “Watch officer, make your depth six hundred feet, course heading three-three-zero degrees at fifty knots,” Alvera ordered. “Weapons, load tubes one through twenty with Mark sixties, activate and warm up vertical tubes one through thi
rty with SS-twenties—special war shot.”

  “Aye.”

  Alvera reached for the dive alarm and looked at Tyler one last time.

  “All hands prepare for dive.” She hit the horn. “Dive—dive!”

  Leviathan spewed more than a million gallons of seawater straight into the air as she started sliding beneath the trapped inland sea. What remained of the now-stranded Event Group, along with Robbins and Farbeaux, watched from a distance, behind a wall of calved ice.

  “Good luck, Jack,” Niles Compton said as Sarah joined him at the edge of the ice.

  She looked around and then above them. The ice looked even more unstable than it had an hour before.

  “Look at this,” Lee said, making Sarah and Niles turn away from the view of the giant Leviathan disappearing underneath the Ross Sea. As they did, they saw ten of the children emerge from one of the carved-out ice buildings. They reached Henri Farbeaux first as they gathered around the group.

  “Some of them made it out,” Alice said.

  “I’m afraid their escape may be for naught, my dear Mrs. Hamilton,” Farbeaux said as he looked beyond the children who gathered around him.

  Compton and the others turned to see the clear-skinned hand of a symbiant taking hold of the ice and starting to pull itself up.

  “Get the children inside,” Sarah said. “We don’t stand a chance out here.”

  As they turned to herd the children back, more syms swam to the surface and started making their way ashore.

  The Group’s only hope now was that the few hurt and tired men, women, and children left aboard Leviathan could somehow stop the missile launch and then return to save them.

  It was now all in the hands of Captain Heirthall and Jack Collins.

  USS MISSOURI (SSN-780)

  “Conn—sonar—we have a possible disturbance under the shelf.”

  “What have you got exactly?” Jefferson asked, nodding for his sonar officer to rejoin his department.