Leviathan: An Event Group Thriller

by David L. Golemon

  Jack cleared the access tunnel and came out onto deck five. He immediately spied Ryan and Mendenhall with more than forty crewmen as they splashed their way toward the spiral staircase ascending to deck four. Just then the submarine became a horror ride of shaking and dipping.

  Suddenly a man rolled down the staircase and landed with a thud on the deck. Carl Everett looked up at the stunned faces around him.

  Everett grabbed Jack’s leg and held on as the flooded companionway rocked, sending a torrent of water that went far over their heads.

  “Come on, swabby, it’s time to get control here before those assholes blow up a bunch of cities,” Collins said, splashing toward Ryan and Will to organize the assault on Leviathan‘s operations center.

  The giant pressure wave from the nuclear detonation—which was low in yield but multiplied a thousandfold because of the dense sea—ran toward the center of the Ross Ice Shelf. The heated water hit the underside of the shelf and actually lifted it by one and half feet. The fault line running the entire length of the world’s largest sheet of thick ice separated completely. The giant walls of the crevice started crumbling, and the two halves moved—minutely at first, then picking up speed with the change in currents.

  The Ross Ice Shelf started to come apart from the continent of Antarctica.

  ICE PALACE

  The syms realized something was wrong long before the human defenders. The attack stopped as suddenly as it started, and the syms started retreating from the walls.

  “Bastards are quitting,” Henri screamed in triumph, as blood poured from the open stitches at his hip. He was leaning on the boat hook for support just as the first tremor struck the area of the shelf where the ancient ice bubble had created Ice Palace.

  Dr. Robbins and Niles Compton were the first to realize what must have happened. They turned and saw several of the slower-moving, older syms as large chunks of falling ice fell and crushed them. The ceiling was collapsing; they heard ice the size of small houses strike the second floor of the man-made shelter.

  Suddenly everyone fell to the rubberized flooring as the shelf separated. The curious sensation of floating hit them all at the same moment—but it was Robbins who voiced it first.

  “The shelf has broken away!”

  “Look!” Alice said, hanging on to Senator Lee for dear life.

  The bright sun was showing through the massive crack above them. It penetrated the darkness like a magical laser beam, obviously caused by the ice particles in the air. The Ross Sea heaved and crashed in toward the ancient cave, and then smashed into the carved-out buildings of Ice Palace.

  A loud and deafening explosion sounded as the Ross Ice Shelf separated from the continent.

  USS MISSOURI (SSN-780)

  The nuclear shock wave struck the Missouri in a bow-down attitude, flipping her over onto her back and sending her crewmen wheeling and grabbing for anything they could hold on to. The lights went dead, and red emergency lighting took their place. Alarms started sounding throughout the boat as seals broke loose. Her outer torpedo doors, still in the open position after firing her spread of torpedoes, could not absorb the pressure that was slammed back into her. One inner door in the forward weapons room bent, curled, and then opened to the sea. Missouri took on ten tons of water in her forward torpedo room.

  “Blow ballast, blow everything! All back full, full rise on the planes!”

  “We’re going to lose her, skipper!”

  “Do we still have fish in the tubes?”

  “Aye, but we are flooding in all the forward spaces.”

  “Weapons release, now!”

  As the reactor on Missouri went to full power, the crew could hear her one screw bite the water, but they all knew it might be too late—they were getting too heavy, too fast. Still, they listened to the new girl fire off her last punch.

  Jefferson knew he was about to lose his command as the new Virginia class submarine slowly started heading for the bottom of the Ross Sea.

  LEVIATHAN

  “All sections report damage,” came Alvera’s voice over the loudspeaker. “All hands, USS Missouri is on her way to the bottom. Commence preparations for weapons launch in five minutes.”

  “Damn efficient little bitch, isn’t she?” Everett said to Jack as they headed down the main companionway.

  They met Ryan coming around the corner from the armory, where he had been sent two minutes before.

  “Report, Mr. Ryan,” Jack said.

  “Too well guarded; we would have been shot to hell before we got within twenty feet. There are at least twenty of Tyler’s men there. But we did manage to get ten of these,” he said, holding up one of the strange automatic weapons. “All we can figure is that they were left by the cutting crew when they went to work on the hatches.”

  “Well, they will have to do,” Collins said.

  Everett handed out the automatic rifles to the oldest of the crewmen.

  “What is it, Jack, a full-out frontal assault?” asked an angry Everett as he thought about those boys on the Missouri.

  “Right now it looks like we have little choice. Hit them from both ends of the control companionway, and hope we don’t run into Sergeant Wonderful before we get there.”

  Everett suddenly swung the rifle up, and all fifty-six men and women and the three children turned as one as one of the floor hatches popped up. A slim hand came out holding a thick coil of insulated wire, then Virginia popped her head through and tossed the wire onto the deck. She reached back down into the hatch, brought out a large rolled schematic, and laid it beside the wiring. Then she leaned back into the hatch, struggling with something else.

  “Don’t just stand there—help me. She’s damn heavy!”

  Several Leviathan crew ran forward, relieved Virginia of Alexandria’s weight, and pulled her the rest of the way up through the hatch.

  “It was a close-run thing, Colonel,” Virginia said, out of breath. “Tyler and his men broke through only moments after Alex lost control of her command suite. I swear I never saw so much firepower concentrated in one small area. I’ll never know how your guys can deal with crap like that—I thought we had had it.”

  “Her condition?” Jack asked, leaning over the captain.

  “Exhausted, hemorrhaging, and her systems may be starting to shut down.” Virginia held her hand on Heirthall’s still features. “She did real good, Colonel.”

  “Try and bring her around. We have two helmsmen here. We were lucky there, but we lost the entire complement of chiefs in their staterooms. We need her awake.”

  “You’re going to try and take the command bridge?” Virginia asked, looking from face to face.

  Mendenhall and Ryan answered by slamming home magazines into their weapons.

  “No other choice.”

  “Look, Jack, Tyler has both ends of that sealed passageway covered. You’ll be fighting in a blind alley, and he has reinforcements he can call up; you don’t.”

  “We will have to—”

  “Jack, Alex had a plan. She made me strip this wiring from auxiliary control before we evacuated. I just don’t know what it was.”

  Collins looked at the coiled wire. He tilted his head in thought.

  “Shock … electric shock—under control center.”

  Virginia knelt and listened, but Alexandria had blanked out once more.

  Jack heard the captain, and then he knew what her makeshift plan consisted of.

  “Virginia, I need you to pull off that engineering stuff you’re so fond of bragging about,” Jack said as he reached down and took the wiring. He then explained that she had to return to the crawlspace.

  Everett, Mendenhall, and Ryan watched as Jack detailed his plan to Virginia. They all raised their brows when they heard it, but they knew it would be their only chance without losing a lot of the people. Virginia nodded and accepted the task.

  “Leave the captain here with her people. They aren’t trained to take on people like Tyler, plus the captain ma
y need them if this damn thing works. Doctor, you have to rig this thing in five minutes.”

  Tyler waited with fifty of his men at the forward access companionway into the control center. He was angry, as he knew he had lost a chance after finally breaking through into the auxiliary control suite, only to find that Heirthall had vanished. They had emptied weapons into the crawlspace beneath the deck, but he now knew that that woman had nine lives. He surmised that attacking the control center was the only logical move for the captain. Thus far, he had to give Heirthall and that damnable Collins credit—they had thwarted him at every juncture in trying to subdue them. However, he now knew their only choice was to come through him and his men.

  ICE PALACE

  Farbeaux formed a plan in a split second. His mind started clicking just as it had before the death of Danielle, his wife. It felt good to have purpose once more.

  As the sea crashed against the carved buildings, the salt deteriorated the walls, and the giant halves of the ice shelf separated for good. The sky one mile above the ancient ice hit the sea for the first time in two hundred thousand years. Ice Palace was floating, and its ice shores were only thirty feet from the cresting swell of sea.

  “Sarah, get the children in order. This section of ice will be unstable in the next few minutes.”

  “What?”

  “He’s right, look!” Niles called out.

  Sarah and the others looked around and saw that the building had a decided tilt to its foundation. The children were starting to lose their footing as the giant ice floe started to tilt backward.

  “I believe this shelf is now what is called an iceberg, dear Sarah. It is going to flip over. The Ross Ice Shelf is no more. If we don’t do something, we’ll be thrown into the sea, and with my injured hip, I don’t think I could swim to McMurdo Station.”

  Sarah responded quickly, gathering the children together with the help of Lee, Alice, and Robbins.

  “I hope you have a plan,” she said.

  “As a matter of fact, the answer to our situation is right in the lower rooms of this enclosure. Now, we need everyone to go down and assist in taking the items we need.” Farbeaux started down first, followed by Sarah just as the enclosure tilted to thirty degrees. The stable half of the remaining shelf was starting to drift farther away.

  They had but moments remaining before the section they were riding would flip over into the freezing sea.

  LEVIATHAN

  As the second group of Tyler’s mercenaries waited, Collins caught them off guard from behind when he cleared his throat. He and Everett stood facing the men with their hands up. Ryan and Mendenhall were standing behind them, angry at having to surrender without a fight.

  As Tyler’s men rushed forward to take them into custody, Everett looked over at Collins.

  “Ballsy, Jack, I’ll give you that.”

  “Yeah, but can you think of a better way to get into the control center without getting everyone shot to hell?”

  As they were pushed out of the companionway toward the rest of Tyler’s men, Everett had to smile.

  “It is good to have you back from the dead, Colonel. My life would have been as boring as hell without you.”

  ICE PALACE

  They had struggled to get one of the oversized Zodiacs to the main level and out of the steep incline, which had become even more dangerous. As Henri pulled the air bottles that inflated the giant Zodiac, a massive cracking sound rent the air around them. As they looked up, the far-back portion of Ice Palace disappeared into the water and the surviving half went skyward, tossing everyone off their feet. Then it slammed back down into the sea. The Zodiac flew from the small shelf and went flying into the water, eighty feet away. The rough seas started tossing it about like a toy boat.

  “We’ve had it!” Sarah said. “We wouldn’t last three minutes in that water trying to retrieve it!”

  “Can we get one of the others?” Alice asked loudly over the cracking of ice, with Lee assisting her in standing.

  “We’re out of time,” Henri shouted as a large crack zigzagged through the center of the main building’s remains. It was an exact center cut, separating the front half from its middle. The stairwell leading to the lower level was starting to separate from the front.

  As they stood on shaking ice, they didn’t see Gene Robbins looking about him, his eyes settling on the frightened children. He was shocked when he closed his eyes and his thoughts went to Captain Everett, a man he outwardly despised but inwardly envied for his blind bravery. Robbins quickly made a decision.

  Garrison Lee saw a blur of motion and heard Sarah yell out. As he turned, he knew he was too late. Robbins sprinted for the edge of the ice and dived headfirst into the freezing Ross Sea.

  “The fool, he’s just killed himself!” Niles said as the frustrated Lee slammed his broken cane against the ice, angry he didn’t think of doing the same thing himself.

  “Yes, Director Compton, he has indeed just killed himself,” Farbeaux said, watching Robbins’s weakening strokes as he splashed his way toward the floating rubber boat. “A magnificent gesture”—he turned toward Niles—”for a traitor, wouldn’t you say?”

  As Henri shouted his rebuke to the others, Robbins went under the rising sea and reached for the Zodiac. They waited, frightened that he wouldn’t resurface from under the freezing water. Then they were relieved as he splashed up to the surface. Ice was forming on the computer scientist’s face and hair as he tried desperately to get his limbs to function.

  “His body is shutting down,” Lee said sadly. “Come on, son, push, push!”

  Robbins pulled the Zodiac to within ten feet of the shrinking shelf, and then pushed with all of his remaining strength. The giant rubber boat bounced over one swell and then struck the ice as Sarah, Niles, and Farbeaux grabbed for it in a desperate moment of near-panic.

  Lee couldn’t believe what had just transpired.

  “Swim, Doctor, swim toward us,” Alice shouted as a section of the grounded side of the ice shelf calved away and fell into the sea with tremendous force, creating an impact wave of more than ten feet that rushed toward the struggling Robbins.

  “He can’t, his body has already died,” Lee said. He watched as Robbins looked toward them with an expressionless, ice-covered face. The ten-foot wave rolled over him and he disappeared.

  They couldn’t believe how easily Robbins had given his life for them. Then again, they never knew that all the doctor had thought before making his final decision was the question, What would Captain Everett do?

  “He died well, give him that—you owe him that,” Farbeaux said as he pulled the Zodiac up and out of the wave’s way. “Now, get the children inside the boat. We must head for the grounded section of shelf.”

  LEVIATHAN

  As the captured Event Group was pushed, shoved, and slapped to the deck, and then up against the starboard bulkhead, Jack saw Tyler step forward and then lash out with his booted foot, catching him on the side of his head. Jack fell backward as Mendenhall and Ryan tried to stand.

  “At ease, lieutenants!” Jack called out, shaking his head to clear it.

  “You are a pain in the ass, Colonel. I knew we were asking for trouble letting you go the first time. Well, that situation is finally about to be remedied, isn’t it?”

  Jack looked up into the Irishman’s face, not responding at all. His expression was blank, which made Tyler uneasy.

  Alvera turned away from the scene, as she was slightly disgusted at Tyler’s bullying ways.

  “Why don’t you just kill them?” she asked, staring at Tyler.

  “He knows where the captain is, and as long as she is alive, she’s a danger.”

  “Strange, I think I told you that very same thing a few hours ago.” She turned away and raised the 1mc microphone. “Sonar, conn, what is the status of Missouri?”

  “Sonar is still scrambled from the EMP effect. It is just now clearing, it looks as if we have no—”

  Alvera heard
the words catch in the sonar operator’s throat as she attempted to explain why the sonar suite went offline momentarily during the effects of the electromagnetic pulse—an electrical field that shorted out all nonshielded electronics in modern weapons platforms by a nuclear detonation. The yeoman became concerned very quickly. As Leviathan came out from under the now-broken and free-floating Ross Ice Shelf, she noticed one red blip speeding toward them as it came up on her holographic display.

  “Conn, we have a single torpedo in the water and it is actively seeking—no, it has acquired Leviathan, and is tracking!”

  “Helm, hard-right rudder, take us down to three thousand feet—”

  “Sensors are picking up a nuclear trace element!”

  Jack raised his brows and looked at Everett, then at Tyler, who was also taken aback by the news.

  Alvera froze. Missouri had somehow managed to get off a snap shot as she started going down, and it was not only a torpedo, but a nuclear-tipped one.

  Alvera looked at the blip as it closed. The order for countermeasures caught in her throat as she realized her training never fully prepared her for this.

  “Weapons, prepare to launch vertical tubes one through thirty for deep submergence launch. Helm, take Leviathan deep. Launch a full spread of countermeasures!”

  “Yeoman, did you know that Sergeant Tyler was planning on selling Leviathan and her technology to the highest bidder?” Collins said, finally utilizing the paper Farbeaux had passed him from Heirthall’s medical file.