A smirking Jenks and Charlie pushed by the silent Russian. The good professor Gervais was next.
“Apologies, Colonel. I never thought of that,” the small, portly professor said in passing.
Salkukoff watched as the line of men entered the spaces. His eyes settled on the back of Jack Collins. He held his temper and stepped inside. He walked past Gervais with a small nudge.
“Don’t embarrass me again, Doctor.”
Jack and the others stopped as they came to the center of the room. Far beyond was the hatchway leading to the engine spaces. He nodded at Jason Ryan and two of the marines. “Go see what shape the power plant is in.”
“Go with them,” Salkukoff said to four of his own men. He gave Jack the briefest of smiles.
“What in the hell is that?” Jenks asked loudly enough for all conversation to stop.
Collins and the Russian colonel turned and saw what Jenks was seeing. Along both sides of the space was a thick glass partition. Behind that glass, only inches from the outer hull, was what looked like large lightbulbs. At least a million of them crowded the space. They looked to be situated on a conductive pad of ceramic. Wiring of every thickness ran from the ceramic platform to large consoles of dead indicator lights. They saw the workstations for at least fifty engineers. On the front of the twin aisles of electronics was what looked like a power generator. What was most disturbing to all was the fact that the stations looked recently occupied. Coffee cups with black coffee still inside, and tea glasses with the liquid still in them were everywhere.
“No dust, rust, or rot of any kind,” Charlie said as he picked up one of the glass teacups. The pewter stand that held it looked brand new. He quickly replaced it on the console he took it from. He saw a piece of bread on a small saucer and poked at it with his index finger. While not exactly fresh, it was still edible. He pulled his hand away and looked at the other faces of interest around him.
“The damn thing looks as if it were launched yesterday,” Everett said as he and Jenks looked closer at the workstations around them. Ryan picked up a clipboard and examined the Cyrillic writing.
One of the Russian commandos stepped forward and took the clipboard from Ryan’s hand. Jason looked angry but held his temper when Salkukoff stepped forward.
“Until we can get things worked out, we would rather not share much information. You understand, Colonel?”
“Shiloh to Colonel Collins. Shiloh to Collins, over,” came the voice of Ezra Johnson over Jack’s radio. At the same time, Salkukoff also got a call on his own walkie-talkie.
“Collins, go.”
“Colonel, CIC is picking up a spike on our infrared monitors. Sea temps have risen six degrees in the past ten minutes. Over.”
“Peter the Great has the same information. That combined with your Aegis defense system makes the information almost an absolute.”
Jack looked up at Salkukoff. “The timing of these spikes coincides with the lights coming on.”
“I think we can chuck coincidence out of the freakin’ window,” Jenks added.
“Chuck?” Professor Gervais asked.
“American slang for throw or toss,” Ellenshaw explained.
“Instructions, Colonel? Over.”
Collins again raised his radio to his mouth, but before he could say a word, the humming started. It was so intense that men had to quickly cover their ears. Then the lighting dimmed as the large lightbulbs sitting on their ceramic base started to glow softly.
One of the Russian commandos reached out and placed a hand onto the thick glass that separated them from the machine inside. The man was trying to steady himself from the onslaught of sound.
“No!” Jack yelled when he saw the movement.
Before anyone could react, a small bolt of electricity shot from the ceramic base of the machine, penetrated the glass, and slammed into the man’s hand. His body jerked, and a spasm coursed through him, and then he collapsed to the steel deck. All eyes widened when they saw the sparkle of light that coursed over the commando’s extremities. Then a loud pop was heard, and then the Russian soldier just vanished before their eyes. As suddenly as everything had started, it wound down. Lighting returned to normal, and then the bulbs inside the glassed-in chamber dimmed to almost nothing.
“Shiloh, Shiloh, this is Collins. Update on those readings, over.”
“Shiloh to Collins, we lost power momentarily but are back up. Readings are down to almost nothing. Sea temps still remain high.”
“Copy and stand by; out for now.”
Ryan and the Russian professor leaned over to the spot where the electrocuted man had been. There was a vague outline where he had fallen prone to the deck, but nothing else. Professor Gervais moved his hand over the cold steel of the deck and immediately pulled it back when the steel gave way by at least two inches. It was like poking a bowl of Jell-O. Then the deck solidified once more. Jason and Gervais looked up and then over at Collins.
Salkukoff smirked as if the joke were on Collins. “Before we start tossing accusations around, Colonel, perhaps we should—”
The sound of the generator starting to spin wildly filled the space. Each man knew this assault was different. Electricity filled the air. The smell of ozone wafted freely, and men started to gag. The bulbs inside the chamber flared to life once more, only this time they were so bright that they burned the eyes of those who turned that way. Each man, through natural instinct, hit the deck.
“Shiloh, Shiloh, seal the ship! Get every man belowdecks!” Jack screamed into the radio just as Salkukoff was doing the same with Peter the Great.
Suddenly, everyone felt the electricity shoot through their bodies. The noise was ear shattering, and the deck beneath them actually warped and became sickeningly pliable. The sound of the powerful generator nearly burst the eardrums of those closest to it. Charlie Ellenshaw screamed in pain and was soon joined by all.
The very air around the writhing men turned into a wave of nausea-filled movement and liquidity.
The last sensation Collins had was the feeling of falling.
* * *
Outside, the world was on fire. The burst of power from the Simbirsk flowed over and around the men on her upper deck. Those closest to the hatchway leading below vanished in a puff of blackened dust as those farther away just burst into flames. The towline to Shiloh melted and then snapped with a twang, sending the far end into the Shiloh and her riggers, slicing them in two. Then the heat wave struck Shiloh and sent her fantail high into the air until it came crashing down into the sea. Every one of the riggers burst into flame or was thrown into the boiling waters surrounding the large cruiser. Everything that was flammable on the outer decks melted or flamed so brightly it looked like a magnesium explosion.
Inside the bridge, Captain Johnson hit the deck hard, as did his control crew. Windows smashed inward, and then to the captain’s horror, he felt the deck beneath him start to tremble and then actually wave up like an early morning surf. It was like he was lying in a soft pool of water. Seeing this, one would think the deck and other steel members of the ship didn’t dance under them, but to the sensations the body felt, they were moving and felt almost as if the very atomic structure of the deck and hull was breaking down. Johnson tried to stand and, with much effort, finally managed. As he did, it felt as though the deck had become a piece of melting rubber. He looked out of the broken bridge window just as the Simbirsk vanished in a bright explosion of light and sound.
Before he could react, the USS Shiloh and her burning and battered Dutch escort ship, De Zeven, blinked out of existence 1.2 seconds after the Russian ship.
* * *
The pressure wave expanded outward. It was now a wall of water and heat that resembled a nuclear detonation. It traveled at the speed of sound outward from a spot that was now nothing but vapor and the largest whirlpool ever created on the surface of the world’s oceans. It was gaining power exponentially as it moved out and down.
LOS ANGELES–CLAS
S ATTACK SUBMARINE USS HOUSTON
The pressure wave was almost as intense below the sea as it was above. It caught Thorne and his crew unawares as the thump of seawater from above slammed into them. Lights went out, and the power plant screamed to keep her station between the Russian cruiser and his own surface assets. It wasn’t enough. Water lines broke, and the heavily welded seams of the boat started to be stretched beyond her engineering. Not one but two forward torpedo tube outer doors were twisted at such an angle that not only did her outer doors collapse, it warped the heavy pressure door inside. The interior forward spaces of Houston were now open to the sea.
“Emergency lighting!” Thorne said over the din of yelling men at their stations.
“Conn, sonar, we have a massive surface detonation. Unable to pinpoint at this time.”
Before Thorne could answer, the bow of Houston dipped down. Then they all felt the acceleration of the boat as it started a plunge for the seafloor two and a half miles below.
“Blow ballast. Give me full rise on the planes. All back full! Shut off those damn alarms!”
As the command was relayed, Thorne felt the bow fall to an even steeper angle of dive. He heard the two powerful GE nuclear reactors scream in protest as the engineering department took Houston to 115 percent power. She would either redline or explode in the next four minutes.
Then the real pressure strike hit. The stern of the Houston was thrown up and then actually overtook her forward momentum, and the giant attack sub somersaulted downward. Finally, her bow planes dug their teeth in, and Houston righted herself as the wave flowed past them.
“Helm’s not answering, Skipper,” XO Devers called out. He was bleeding from his head and was soaked after getting one of the many leaks shut down. “Engineering says we’re close to redlining.” All the men were injured in some way from their circular ride to the roof and then being slammed to the deck. Most quickly recovered and resumed their watch. They were now hanging on to their stations as the world tilted downward. What was even more disturbing was the fact that several of the crew felt their hands travel completely through their consoles. Their feet were also being sucked into the steel of her deck. As men nearly panicked, they looked down and around but could not actually see the deck and other solid objects bend or soften. It was if they were sensing it but not able to see it. Most thought they were hallucinating these factors.
Thorne grimaced, as he knew he was moments away from losing his ship. He quickly turned to the navigation console and studied the map. He then ran for the sonar shack. The run was downhill and totally out of control as the down angle increased. Thorne finally arrested his run and entered the tight space of the sonar room. He immediately saw the sonar supervisor was busy putting out an electrical short with a fire extinguisher.
“Captain, we’re at nine hundred feet, approaching crush depth.”
Thorne ignored the frantic call from the control room and instead leaned over the nearest sonar operator. His eyes moved rapidly until he found what he had been looking for. It was the same thing he had just spied on his navigation chart.
“Eleven hundred!”
“Jesus, we implode at twelve hundred,” one of the youngest operators said in a shaky voice.
“Stow that shit, mister,” Thorne said as he quickly calculated what it was he was looking at. He hit the intercom. “XO, fifteen degrees starboard. When I give the command, flood the aft torpedo room and give me full rise on all the planes!”
“Aye, Skipper. What do you have in mind?”
“I think we have to crash-land Houston.”
Without explanation, he called out to his sonar operators, “That mountain range, find me a shelf … now!”
“A what?” one of the operators asked in confusion.
“A place to land this damn thing!”
All four operators went facedown into their scopes until the one who had commented on their crush depth pointed. “Large shelf, bearing five degrees starboard.”
The order went out to basically call for Houston’s destruction. The venting inside the sealed and isolated aft torpedo room was open to the sea, weighing the stern of the giant submarine down and bringing her bow up. The powerful electric motor of the boat still screamed in reverse as Houston plummeted.
“Thirteen hundred and fifty feet!”
“Come on, come on. Rise, damn you, rise!” Thorne prayed aloud. Then into the intercom: “All hands, brace for impact!”
The USS Houston slammed into a shelf on the side of the Challenger Rise mountain peak. The long, ledge-like protuberance circled the mountain in a twisting road-like run downward. Houston hit at a little over thirty knots. Her bow plowed into the rock and sand with a noise like that of tearing paper and ripping steel. She bounced once, twice, and then finally came down on the small valley shelf, sliding to a stop only seven hundred feet from a drop of two and a half miles.
Captain Thorne never realized they had made it as the lights and Houston’s power plant shut down, along with the conscious minds of her entire crew. She settled onto the bottom with no power, and the sensation of a liquefied deck and hull plating once more became solid to those sailors who had become aware of it.
USS Houston was sitting alone on the bottom of a world that had changed around them in a momentary flash of brilliant light and sound.
KIROV-CLASS BATTLE CRUISER PETER THE GREAT
Captain Kreshenko, along with his entire bridge crew, saw the devastation coming right at them. He saw through his binoculars the massive wall of water as it built in ferocity. He knew without thinking that the Simbirsk and the two NATO vessels had been destroyed as he had lost them soon after the bright burst of light from the area thirty miles out. The initial detonation looked momentarily as if a giant bubble of light had formed over the old Russian ship, and the American and Dutch surface vessels were caught in that bubble.
“Order the Admiral Levchenko to take the wave head-on!”
“Too late!” Dishlakov said as he watched in horror through the bridge windows. Kreshenko saw the heated wave of water and light as it struck the smaller destroyer and flipped her completely over from stern to bow, not once but twice. The tough old ship snapped into three sections and then settled into the calming waters. Then a tremendous explosion erupted underwater, and then that wave of destruction also reached out for Peter the Great. Just as both walls of water, electric-filled light, and fire reached them, every man ducked as the ship was caught in the massive bubble the Americans had experienced.
The captain’s last thoughts were wasted trying to grasp the might of the American weapon that had been used on them. They had fired on NATO ships, and this was their just reward for doing so.
Fire erupted over the deck of Peter the Great. Every man who was exposed burned to death or melted into her superstructure as the intensity of light and flames from the exploding destroyer consumed all flammable material just as it had on board Shiloh. Men scrambling to get belowdecks found their feet sinking into the solid steel plating of the decking. One man tripped and fell. His head and shoulders smashed into a bulkhead, and the upper portion of his body vanished. His legs kicked momentarily until he died. Others fell completely through to other decks far below. The sensation of pliability was no longer just that; it was real, and the Russian battle cruiser was experiencing it.
Kreshenko felt his ship roll to starboard and not right itself. He knew Peter the Great was going to capsize. The last sensation he felt was the rolling of the enormous cruiser and the strangeness of his own steel deck as it warbled and waved underneath him. He attempted to raise his head to give the order to abandon ship when the decking came up with his movement. It was like his face had been stuck in tar. He collapsed with his mind flowing in horrid understanding.
Then Peter the Great vanished in a flash of light that would have been mistaken for a nuclear detonation—if anyone would have been left alive to have witnessed it. The bubble of light that had emanated from Simbirsk engulfed them and then c
ontracted to a smaller ball, and then the air and sky popped like a rubber band being stretched beyond endurance.
* * *
The sea inside the eye of Hurricane Tildy was calm and also void of all life—sea or land—for one hundred miles in all directions. Even aquatic life caught in the phase shift vanished beneath the waves.
As the North Atlantic began to settle, the outer edges of the eye of Tildy collapsed, just like a falling curtain. Its dark clouds flowed downward into the sea and upward into the sky as if some giant god had waved a magic wand and disbursed the hurricane. The darkness of the swirling clouds fell into the roiling waters, and then the storm and the clouds that made up her bulk dissipated and then vanished.
Hurricane Tildy was gone as if never there.
9
KIROV-CLASS BATTLE CRUISER SIMBIRSK
Jack awoke to men screaming in agony. As he tried to raise his head, he felt the skin on his cheek being tugged at. He pulled harder and then felt the searing pain as some of that skin was torn free. He shook his head and felt the area where skin had been. His fingers came away bloodied. He looked next to him as Carl was slowly rising from the same eerily pliable deck. Jack saw that Everett had lost some skin also but knew he was all right as he stumbled over to assist Ellenshaw, who was lying still over one of the engineering consoles. The calls for help came in English and Russian.
As for Colonel Salkukoff, he had been saved when he fell on one of his men. That man was now dead. Half in, half out of the floor decking. Others were in the same pose of death. But it became quickly evident that this effect did not apply to all areas of the mighty ship. Collins quickly deduced that the laws of physics did not apply to every scene of death. Some men were fried beyond recognition, while others had succumbed to the strange atomic makeup of the ship itself. Jack quickly looked for his team and was glad to see the master chief and Ryan had survived and were even now administering first aid to those who needed it.
Everett faced Jack, and at first, Collins failed to hear his words. He shook his head, and then Carl’s mouth movement started to make sense.
Beyond the Sea--An Event Group Thriller Page 15