“Jack, come on. We have to get the hell out of here!”
Again, he shook his head and then nodded. “Grab everybody. Charlie, Ryan, help those men. Come on, Swabby, let’s go see if anyone else is alive.”
Around them, the sound of the powerful generators was winding down like some giant turbine. The ship felt as if the power had been drained and she was now starting to sleep after a major tantrum.
As the Royal Marines and Russians worked together, Jack and Carl, followed quickly by Salkukoff, started for the double hatchway. All three barreled past dead men who had either been melted into the deck or electrocuted. A quick estimate counted twenty-two men dead just belowdecks. They all knew there was no rhyme or reason to the extent of the deaths or what had caused them. Some parts of the ship were affected, while others had remained as they always were—solid and unflinching.
As they took the stairs two at a time, they heard the giant generator finally slam to a stop. Then the lights once more went out. This didn’t slow them, as Carl flicked on a powerful flashlight. After five minutes of fighting to get above deck, they were stunned at what greeted them. Dead men were everywhere. Even Salkukoff was taken aback at the power of what just happened. His briefings failed to explain just what the parameters of the old experiment had been. Now he knew. Whoever operated this phase shift system from the ’40s had given themselves a death sentence.
“Good God, Jack. What in the hell happened?”
When Collins didn’t answer, Everett turned and saw what it was that held his attention. The skies to the north, south, east, and west were clear of any cloud cover whatsoever. Hurricane Tildy had vanished as suddenly as it had arrived. The seas were calm and floating debris was the only leftover from the mighty hurricane. But all of this was not the disturbing factor. The ocean was a purplish color. Gone was the sea green of the North Atlantic. In its place, a light violet water world met their amazed gazes as its swells met the hull of the Simbirsk with a mild lapping sound.
Carl nudged Collins and nodded at what was floating to the surface and at their new surroundings. Jack then saw the bodies floating in the waters surrounding Simbirsk. The trail of dead sailors led straight to the USS Shiloh. She was listing heavily to her port side by at least fifteen degrees. There was no crew upon her outer decks. They saw the crashed and burned Seahawk helicopter just outside her hangar. It was a smoking heap of wreckage. Fires were raging across her deck. Even as they watched, several of her crew finally managed to break into the upper deck with fire hoses and suppression gear. They were fighting to save their ship.
Carl grabbed Jack’s arm and pointed to the starboard side of the Shiloh. There they saw the last visage of the Dutch frigate De Zeven as she slowly rolled over, the massive flames engulfing her superstructure, hissing as they hit the violet-colored waters. Her proud fantail raised high into the air and then silently slid into the sea. They saw a few of her crew surface and cry for assistance. Several of the Shiloh’s damage control teams threw lines into the water as they tried desperately to save their fellow sailors. At close to a half a mile away, Jack still had to hold Everett’s arm as he tried to make it to the railing to jump from the relative safety of the Simbirsk in an effort at saving the Dutch seamen. He angrily realized Jack was right and pulled his arm free.
Jack looked around him at their own situation. The Simbirsk, minus her casualties above on her main deck, had come through the battering intact. There were no fires and no damage other than to exposed personnel. Collins reached for the radio on his side and raised it to his lips.
“Collins to Shiloh, Collins to Shiloh, do you read?”
“It’s no use, Colonel. You’ll get no response.”
They turned and saw that Salkukoff was just replacing his own radio. He watched the effort across the wide expanse of the Shiloh’s crew battling their fires. He shook his head.
“Our radios, even your digital watches, aren’t working. It’s as if we were involved in an EMP burst. Electronics everywhere, with the exception of the sealed area down below, have been fried. Peter the Great is not answering. If not an EMP, I can only assume she’s gone also.”
Jack looked at the radio and confirmed that he wasn’t even showing a power light. He quickly gestured for Carl to throw him his radio, which had been switched off during the electronic ambush by the Simbirsk. He tried to call again with the undamaged radio but received no response from Captain Johnson.
“Carl, see if we can get a signal lamp up and running, I don’t care if you have to use smoke signals—I have to speak with Captain Johnson. We need a navy corpsman as soon as they can spare one.”
“You got it, Jack,” Carl said and then vanished into the bottom of the wheelhouse.
“How in the hell could we have suffered an electromagnetic pulse?” Collins asked aloud.
“Baffling, to be sure, Colonel,” Salkukoff said as he joined Jack next to the railing. “I estimate we lost well over half of both complements of our men.”
Jack nodded as he turned with the wish to see the conning tower of the USS Houston break the surface of the sea. But he knew there would be no way such a fragile boat could have withstood the powerful event they had just survived.
“However, I think the discussion of how and why can wait. In case you haven’t noticed, Colonel, the ocean is the wrong color.”
Of course Jack had noticed, but he wasn’t willing to think about the whys and why-nots of their current situation. The first priority was to save lives and then establish contact with Shiloh.
“Also, it seems our lady Tildy has given up her fight.” There was debris from their vessels, bodies, and other flotsam, but strangely, Jack saw what looked like palm fronds and other organic plantlike material you would usually see after a powerful storm had swept through.
“Yes, I did notice, Colonel.” Jack turned and faced the Russian. “Perhaps it’s about time we come clean here. This event is a variation on what conspiracy nuts in my country called the Philadelphia Experiment. What was yours called?”
“Operation Czar. I guess someone back in the day thought it witty to make something disappear like the czar and his family. Although it needed to be done, it was still all rather tasteless.”
“Rather tasteless? The murder of innocent children is just rather tasteless? We’ll have to get into detail about taste some other time,” Jack said angrily. “Until then, Colonel, maybe you didn’t notice, but look over there.”
Salkukoff turned in the direction Collins had indicated. His eyes widened when he saw what had made the American far paler than a moment before.
“Either we’ve been blown off course by about ten thousand miles and ended up off the coast of Hawaii, or we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
The island was green and beautiful. It sat in front of them like a postcard of some fabulous vacation spot only found in the South Pacific. Collins reached for his binoculars in their case and then raised them to his eyes. He could see birds and trees from their distance of five miles away. At this range, none of the species of bird could be discerned. The birds were just birds, but their feathered plumage was spectacular and stood out even from that distance, colors he had never seen before. The trees were an entirely different matter. They were tall and had thick branches halfway up and then at their crown. Some were the familiar palm trees, others unrecognizable. The rolling waves crashing against the island’s deep brown sands were violet and gleamed in the early morning sun. The most glaring sight was the rise of a small mountain at the exact center of the island.
“Where in the world are we?”
“I think the question is, what world are we in?” Jack turned away just as Ryan walked up to report.
“Thirty-seven dead. I haven’t had the time to count uniforms. But rest assured it’s most everyone.”
Jack patted Jason on the shoulder and then pointed to the island off their port beam.
“What the f—”
“You’re a navy man. Ever seen an island like t
hat before?”
“No. The mountain alone is far too big for any island I’ve ever seen outside of Hawaii. It looks like a dormant volcano. What in the hell happened, and where are we?”
Before any answers could be thought about, it was Charlie Ellenshaw who stepped free of the wheelhouse with his mouth agape. He stuttered, and when he found no voice, he just pointed.
Jack, Salkukoff, and Ryan both turned and saw the most stunning sight any of them had seen since their nightmare had begun. The setting early morning moon was still visible on the horizon. Only it wasn’t exactly the moon they all remembered. The moon, which they had all stared at, kissed girls under, and marveled at her power and beauty, was still there, only it was now just a battered and smashed rock in space. Its white surface was broken into millions of smaller pieces, with the largest of these at its center. The rubble revolved around the ancient disk and spread out across the sky in a long tail of utter destruction. The moon had been smashed into gravel for the most part and looked as if the gravitational forces were turning it into a Saturn-like ring system around the largest section of the old moon.
“Colonel, may I suggest we get your Master Chief Jenks and my learned Professor Gervais down below and shut down that damn power plant before we go somewhere else we don’t really want to be?”
Jack didn’t answer, as he spied something that eased his mind somewhat. He pointed with a small smile on his face.
The USS Shiloh was breathing once again. Her engines sprang to life, and the roiling of white water churning at her stern told Jack they were once again under power.
“They’re signaling, Colonel,” Ryan said as he eased the binoculars from Jack’s hand.
Across the distance of a mile, Collins, Charlie Ellenshaw, and Salkukoff saw the flashing signal lamp from the starboard bridge wing of Shiloh.
“Will come about for assistance. Pulse shielding of most electronics worked as designed. Weapons system down. Communications down. Casualties heavy.” Ryan turned and faced the colonel. “They’re asking if we need medical assistance.” Jack only nodded, and Jason said he would get Carl to pass it along. Collins was as content as Charlie to stare at the comforting sight of the Aegis cruiser making her wide turn in the deep purple of this strange sea.
“She’s also reporting that all contact with the Houston has been lost.” Ryan lowered the field glasses and faced the colonel. He sadly handed the glasses back and then slowly walked away to help Jenks and Henri.
Jack watched the naval aviator and knew he was feeling the loss of the Dutch and American sailors on both vessels. Navy men took losses of ships very seriously.
As he turned back, Collins knew that De Zeven and Houston might not be the last to be lost. With one last look up at the shattered moon, Jack put his arm around crazy Charlie Ellenshaw, and then they went belowdecks.
“Let’s see if this Russian bucket has any of that American coffee we gave to Comrade Stalin back in the day.”
Ellenshaw smiled, agreeing that it would be nice to do a normal thing like drinking coffee.
As for Salkukoff, his eyes and field glasses were raised in an entirely different direction. They were trained toward the north and the line of smoke that rose from the violet-colored sea beyond the visible horizon. He only hoped it was his one remaining surface asset that he could count on.
He could only hope that Peter the Great was out there somewhere so he wouldn’t have to use his ace in the hole.
* * *
Three hours later, Shiloh was tied up alongside Simbirsk. No fewer than ten lines held the two ships mated together as the grisly task of collecting the bodies continued. Several corpsmen from Shiloh made the horrid task of removing the bodies from the deck where they had melted into the pliant steel. Three of these medical corpsmen were women, and Jack was proud that they were the only three who did not continuously vomit at their tasteless task.
Jack was watching the crew of Shiloh as they slid the remains of the Seahawk helicopter from the fantail of Shiloh, where it hit the water and then vanished. Collins felt his eyes slowly closing as the sounds of men and women working coupled with the soft lapping of the strange seas against the hulls of the two ships worked to relax him for the briefest of moments. The days without sleep were getting their revenge. He felt the tap on his shoulder. He turned.
“Thought you could use some of this,” Master Chief Jenks said as he handed Jack a clear glass cup of hot coffee. “Damn Russians don’t have real mugs on this tub, just tea glasses.”
Jack smiled as he accepted the coffee. “When we get back, we’ll file an official protest with the Russian government.”
Jenks nodded. He then faced the island five miles away and sipped coffee.
“Any theories or opinions?” Jack asked.
“Not a one, Colonel. But I do wish Ginny could see this ocean and that island. Be a good honeymoon spot if it weren’t for the circumstances.”
Collins lowered the coffee and fixed Jenks with a funny look. “I think you’ve got it bad, Master Chief. Imagine that the Big Bad Wolf has fallen hard for Little Red Riding Hood.”
“Ah, it’s nothing like that.” Jenks tossed out the black coffee with a grimace on his face. Then he faced Jack. “Yeah, I guess it is like that.”
Collins smiled and then nodded, finally realizing that the old crew-cut navy man actually was a human being.
“As for opinions and theories, I think you have to ask the nerd king about those. He has a far better grasp on that than I do.”
“Charlie?” Jack asked, frowning at the taste of the burned coffee.
“He says we are not on Earth anymore—at least our Earth.”
“Is that right?” Jack asked. The theory seemed to fit what they had witnessed thus far. He frowned again and then thought the better part of valor was to not drink any more of the seventy-year-old coffee, or at least coffee that was brewed inside a death ship. He handed Jenks the glass when he spied Captain Johnson on deck below them supervising the aviation fuel cleanup. He picked up the bullhorn.
“How is the chow over there?” he called out.
Johnson turned and saw the colonel for the first time. He waved and then accepted his own bullhorn. He raised it to his lips.
“The mess was the first thing we got up and running. You know the navy can’t function without coffee and a sandwich to shove down their necks.”
“That’s why the phone call, Captain. I don’t know if we can trust seventy-five-year-old canned beets and Spam.”
“I get your point. I’ll have the galley send over a hot meal and fresh coffee.”
“How are your electronics?” he asked through the high-pitched whine of the bullhorn.
“We should have communications and radar back up within the hour. We had the necessary circuit boards in ship’s stores. The weapons systems are something else. They are fried. So, for right now, we have only our .50-caliber and five-inch Bofors systems available.”
Jack lowered the bullhorn in exasperation. In the strange world they found themselves in, he was not happy about the weapons situation. “Captain, we need to get together and talk. Let’s get everyone on Simbirsk and figure out where we go from here. We should have some answers soon on just where in the hell we’re at.”
“Is that little toy of yours turned off?” Johnson said, not joking one bit.
“We think. But then it was turned off before this little adventure started, so we’ll see.”
“Then I reluctantly accept.” Johnson lowered his head and then spoke again. “Also, we have over one hundred men we have to get buried. May I suggest at sunset?”
“I’ll confer with our Russian guests and confirm.”
Johnson waved once more and then tossed the bullhorn to a passing sailor.
Collins turned to the master chief. “I’m getting real tired of burying kids.” Jack tossed the bullhorn to the deck, where Jenks retrieved it and then watched the colonel’s back as he sadly moved off.
“Amen to that
.”
KIROV-CLASS BATTLE CRUISER PETER THE GREAT
Captain Kreshenko prayed that the pumping and counterflooding would work. His warship was still listing at fifteen degrees to her port side after nearly capsizing after the initial wall of water, light, and heat had struck. He had had little time in feeling sorrow for the lives lost on the escort destroyer Admiral Levchenko. His ship had lost almost as many crew as their doomed escort. He was down 175 men from the assault of the American weapon.
“The pumps are catching up, and the counterflooding is working, Captain,” said a tired and worn Second Captain Dishlakov as he came into the shattered bridge of the giant cruiser.
Kreshenko saw the disheveled state of his first officer. The man was burned on the right side of his face, and his arm may have been broken, as he was holding his left with his right as he reported. The captain frowned as he took the man in.
“Now, your orders are to go below and get some hot soup and tea, Vasily. I’ll need you in the next few hours. Have the doctor check that arm, and get something for that burn.”
“I’m all right, Captain. We need to get our electronics suite up and running.”
“Communications is a priority at the moment.”
“What about our weapons systems?”
Kreshenko chuckled. “In case you have not noticed, my old friend, we lost. Our priority now is to communicate with Moscow and get our men home. First we have to make contact with the only naval force in the area and hope that tempers have calmed to the point where we’re not shooting at each other anymore. Besides, I’m still not sure if my ship can make it home, and I am not losing any more of my men to this craziness. We’ll go and find the Americans and hope we don’t have to fight this thing all over again.”
He saw the questioning look on Dishlakov’s face and tilted his head, waiting for his response. It took him only a moment.
“Captain, what about the color of the sea, the shattered moon?”
“I have no answers for that, Vasily. I am not that sure I want to know. We have to go on the assumption that it is all explainable and that our only duty is to these men aboard our ship.”
Beyond the Sea--An Event Group Thriller Page 16