Jack knew the power enhancers well from their adventure through time with the help of the Traveler’s Wellsian Doorway, the very power enhancers stolen by the Frenchman after those events. He nodded to inform Henri he remembered. Henri then dropped what looked like a small rock into his hand. Jack examined it in the shattered moonlight. He looked from it to Farbeaux.
“That’s right, Colonel. Uncut, directly from the ground. I suspect this one fell from one of those mysterious baskets the miners brought in—you know, the ones conveniently lined up in the village?”
“Blue diamonds.” Jack turned the unprocessed mineral over in his hand. It was still crusted with dirt as if it had just been taken from the ground.
“I noticed elements of the diamonds earlier when you were engaged in making nice with the natives.”
“Inside the village?” Jack asked, amazed he hadn’t seen them.
“Yes, their spear tips and their arrowheads are made of blue and red diamonds.”
“Industrial blues,” Jack said.
“Yes, the blood diamonds are good for nothing but money, but those, we have seen what they can do as energy enhancers.”
Henri was right. If someone were here to mine this stuff, they could easily corner the energy markets on a massive scale back home.
“Colonel, I think you just discovered Salkukoff’s hidden agenda that the master chief just mentioned.”
What the two men and former enemies had discovered was not even feasible in their minds. How could the Russian manipulate blue diamonds from another plane of existence? They were thinking that he couldn’t do it. Then again they were both experienced enough in facing the impossible and adjusted their thinking. After the Antarctica Event, they were on a course to believe almost every outrageous theory possible.
Farbeaux stood his ground, not moving as he pulled another item out of his pants pocket. He unfurled it, and Jack again turned on his flashlight to see it clearly. Henri stretched it out.
“I found this also while you were being fed. It was inside the villagers’ armament hut.”
“Is that what I think it is?” Jack asked just as Jason returned to both men, curious as to what they were talking about.
The flag was black material of a sort that was woven and thicker than most, but they could see that it closely resembled a flag. On that flag was a symbol every one of them recognized from their childhood. It was a pirate flag. The old skull and crossbones.
“This is getting strange,” Jason added. “Remember the page from Treasure Island Garrison Lee found on the Eldridge?”
“There seems to be a connection here, and I’ll be damned if I can figure it out,” Jack said as he gave the flag back to the Frenchman. “Henri?” Jack said as he stopped on the game trail heading back to the landing boat.
“Yes, Colonel?”
“Neither Salkukoff or the Simbirsk can survive this.”
Farbeaux nodded.
“As a matter of fact, as far as that goes, if it comes to that, we stay here with both the Simbirsk and Salkukoff. All other concerns at this point are secondary. That man cannot return to our world with that ship.”
Around them, the jungle came alive with night sounds once more.
13
As the American-built Zodiac disembarked the Russian contingent accordingly between the Simbirsk and Peter the Great, Master Chief Jenks immediately removed the Europa system laptop from Charlie’s bag and opened it. As the rubber boat rode smoothly over the soft movement of the strangely colored seas, Jack moved in next to him.
“Europa, was your task completed?” Jenks asked.
“Assigned task completed at 1735 hours, Master Chief.”
“I can’t get used to Marilyn Monroe talking to me.”
Jack smiled as he heard the same argument he had been making since his arrival at the Group eleven years before. “I know how you feel.”
“Europa, run program Chameleon.”
On the small screen, Jack and Jenks watched the system start to scroll. The master chief smiled at Jack, and then he whistled.
“Ooh, good little spy we have here. Be sure to keep her out of my private server.”
Jack watched the specs pop up on the entirety of the phase shift experiment as conducted by the Russians in the mid-’40s, complete diagrams and reports on the completion of the stolen American design.
“There you are. They used unrefined uranium for their power source. Actually, in some areas, the nuclear question was years ahead of the American enrichment program of that time,” Jenks said as the reflection of the findings continued to scroll across the screen and onto his face.
“Yeah, but our boys in New Mexico were going another way with it,” Jack retorted.
“Yeah, and didn’t that make the world a happier, kinder place?”
“Europa wasn’t compromised when she took over the Russian professor’s computer?” Jack asked, always concerned about the security of the most advanced computing system in the world, even if the laptop was only using 0.0001 percent of her capacity.
“Nah, that kid Morales, the new king nerd in the Group, said Europa has never been caught in the act.”
“Good. Now, how does this damn thing work?”
“Jesus, Colonel, do you have an extra three years for me to explain it to you?”
“That bad, huh?”
“Yeah, that bad. This stuff would give Virginia a raging migraine.”
At that moment, the Zodiac lightly bumped the boarding ladder, and the men were assisted to the deck of Shiloh. They were met by Captain Johnson, who looked worried. When Jack made the last step up, Johnson steered him away from the others.
“What’s up?” Collins asked.
“Number one, we tried several times to contact you by radio. We couldn’t raise you. My electronic warfare boys tell me we were being jammed.”
Jack pursed his lips, knowing that the Russians were up to their old parlor tricks again. But why now and why when other Russians were with them in their exploration of the village?
“Can you burn through it?”
“Yeah, now that we know someone is screwing with us, no problem. We’ll set the radios to random and roving frequencies.”
“What else? You don’t seem the type that gets worried over jamming.”
“Two other developments. One—we’re picking up a few sonar readings that we cannot figure out. The computers say they are transient in nature. But it sounds like hammering, voices on occasion, and escaping air. Computers are saying they are nothing more than biological sea life.”
“What do you think?” Jack asked, knowing that if the sounds from the sea bothered Johnson, he had better not ignore them either.
“No clue yet; we’ll keep evaluating. Now, number-two concern. Radar is working on and off. But at 1645 hours, we detected small craft moving toward the island. That was when the attempt was made to contact you. Don’t know the size or the disposition of these craft, but they did go to the island on the opposing side as your landing. Did you have any company at that time?”
Jack turned away just as Everett, Charlie, and Jenks walked up. He faced the captain once more. “Yes, there were visitors. One of the island’s children was murdered.”
“Children?” Johnson asked.
“We’ll brief you in the wardroom.”
Johnson nodded and moved off with the returning marines.
“What is it, Jack?” Carl asked when he saw his face.
Instead of answering Everett’s concern, he faced Jenks. “Look, Master Chief, we need to learn and learn fast how we can get that phase shift equipment operational with some modicum of control.”
Jenks frowned. “That will take some time. In a few hours, I should learn enough with the help of Captain Johnson’s electronics team on how to at least turn it on without blowing ourselves up.”
“Jack, why the white face?” Carl persisted.
Collins reached into his pocket and retrieved the dirt-encrusted blue diamond and rol
led it over in his hand. He also explained the flag Henri had discovered.
“Swabby, I’m beginning to think our Russian friends know a hell of a lot more than they are letting on about this mysterious world we have here. We’re running so far behind in this game, we may never catch up.” Jack looked up and saw Carl was still in the dark. “Look, Salkukoff may not be a regular visitor here, but they knew somehow what it was they were going to find. These.” He held out his hand and showed the blue diamond.
“That’s assuming an awful lot,” Everett said. “I don’t suppose you have proof.”
“No, no proof. My only evidence is the fact that whoever is running things in Moscow these days would have never risked the life of their most experienced man unless it was for a reason that could not be ignored. He’s here for one of two reasons. Either he knew these were here and the Russians are somehow taking advantage of it, or he was sent to stop the phase shift project forever.”
“Seems like if that were the case, Salkukoff would just have blown the ship out of the water as soon they entered the eye of Tildy,” Charlie Ellenshaw offered.
“Maybe our friend had just those orders,” Farbeaux said as he joined the group.
“Running his own game against the wishes of his bosses?” Carl asked, raising a brow.
Jack tossed the blue diamond into the air, and Charlie fumbled and then caught it, and then it dropped to the deck and slid over the side and into the sea. Ellenshaw looked horrified.
“Don’t worry about it, Charlie,” Jack said. “I suspect they have a whole mountain streaked with them. There’s plenty more where they came from.”
They all watched Jack move into Shiloh. The Frenchman soon followed.
“You know what makes me the most nervous?” Everett said to Charlie, Jenks, and Ryan.
“What makes you nervous, Toad?” Jenks asked.
“When both of those men are confused and without answers concerning the motives of a man like Salkukoff, we may have a major problem on our hands.”
“I’m not following,” Jenks said.
“He means, is Salkukoff following orders or is he in this for himself?” Ryan answered for Carl.
“You guys are some worrisome sons of bit—”
Jenks found himself standing alone as the others followed Jack in the hopes of figuring this out before the Russian knew they were on to him.
* * *
Inside the wardroom of the Shiloh, Johnson, Carl, Jack, and Farbeaux sat with the captain and his officers and ate a light meal. In the far-off corner, coffee was being consumed at an extraordinary rate by Jenks, Charlie, Ryan, and the electronic warfare department of Shiloh as they tried to figure out the complicated design of the phase shift engine on Simbirsk.
“What makes you think that the sneaky little bastard won’t just up and vanish on us without us in tow?” Ezra Johnson asked, voicing the fear of his officers sitting around the table.
“Master Chief,” Jack called out until Jenks looked up from the newly printed schematics stolen from the Russians’ own computer. “What guarantee do we have Simbirsk won’t up and disappear on us in the middle of the night?”
Without looking up from the plans, Jenks reached into his front pocket and tossed something all the way across the wardroom, where Jack caught it and then held it up.
It was a small crystal-looking ball with several leads connected to it.
“What is that?” Johnson asked.
“It’s the power converter from the phase shift generator. One of a kind. They can’t start her up again without it. Unless they take some of those unrefined blue diamonds and construct a new, vastly improved converter.”
“And the master chief is just tossing the damn thing around?” Johnson’s first officer asked in shock.
“Jenks said the crystal is damn near indestructible. That’s why it was the only essential part he chose to steal.”
“I may be off point here, but just who in the hell are you people, Colonel?” the first officer of Shiloh asked.
Collins chose to ignore the same question he had been asked by everyone, from the leaders of the free world to his own mother.
“Captain, what is the EMP damage?”
“Some good news, some horrible. We have nothing but close-in weapons support. Four .50-calibers and handheld weaponry from the armory. Good news is that we do have the Phalanx system, but no radar for her targeting. No offensive or defensive missiles. Fire control on those systems was totally disabled. Radios are now working along with radar. Sonar, as we discussed, is still spotty at best.”
“Are the Russians in the same predicament?” Jack asked with hope.
“Their pulse shielding is damn near the same design as our own,” Johnson answered.
“What are you talking about, sir? It is the same design. Just like their missile control, all stolen from us before their prototypes were even built.”
Johnson smiled at his XO as everyone on board ship knew how the Russians obtained most of their sophisticated systems.
The men inside the wardroom continued their duties on through the midnight hour, and they would work until they were comfortable with their strange situation.
Within an hour, they would never be comfortable again.
KIROV-CLASS BATTLE CRUISER PETER THE GREAT
Four Russian sailors stood at the fantail of the giant warship, smoking and drinking tea during their off shift. They had been slaving below, trying in vain to get their missile systems operational. They had found themselves in the same shape as the Americans as far as replacement parts for those systems—they just had too much electrical damage to fix. Captain Kreshenko had ordered all crew not on duty to be armed from the arms locker. The night watch was tripled, and the radar shack was to be triple manned. The few British and American marines assigned to Peter the Great were mostly hanging out forward, as they didn’t mix well with their new Russian friends.
The sailors joked, but again, like the Americans, their laughter and joking was limited to their work and not their situation. All you had to do was look out at the strangely colored sea in the shattered moonlight to figure that one out.
The four men were just getting ready to head below and go to sleep when one of them heard a sound he didn’t recognize. He went to the railing and looked down. At first, all he saw was the lapping of sea against the hull of Peter the Great. Then his eyes widened when the broken moonlight showed something just beneath the violet-colored waters. The face looking up at the sailor burst through the froth and covered the seventeen feet to the fantail before the sailor could pull his head back. The other three men watched in stupefied wonder as their companion went over the side without uttering a word. They heard the splash and ran to where he vanished. Then before they could even look over the side, more figures burst from the sea and gained the main deck of the Russian warship.
The intruders were dressed in sharkskin pantaloons. Many had a form of vest, and all twelve of them had very sharp harpoon-like spears. They started to stab and decimate those at the fantail with what resembled ancient swords of a curved nature and the long spikelike spears. One man managed to pull his Makarov pistol and get a shot off as an ax came down on his hand. The man screamed and looked into the face of his attacker. His eyes widened beyond what he ever thought they were capable of.
The face was light green in color, the skin nearly transparent, as the sailor could see the muscle and veins just beneath. The tentacle-like appendages curled and uncurled at the corners of its mouth, and each was adorned with a brightly colored ribbon of material. For all the world, the creature looked as if it had stepped directly from a pirate novel. The eight tentacles swung with every motion from where they were attached just below the neck. The scales on the attacker’s chest were thick and darker green than its face. The thing hissed as it brought the ax down again. This time, the sailor’s scream was quickly silenced.
More shots rang out as the deck watch saw what was happening at the fantail. As spotlights
started illuminating the chaotic scene below, alarms started sounding throughout the ship.
Peter the Great was being boarded.
TICONDEROGA-CLASS AEGIS MISSILE CRUISER USS SHILOH
Jack came near to spitting out the cold coffee he had just sipped when the alarms started sounding throughout the cruiser.
“Action stations, action stations surface. All hands, action stations surface.”
“Is that bastard moving on us already?” Everett asked as he followed Shiloh’s command team up and out of the wardroom.
As men scrambled out of their bunks or into their varying departments, Jack and Everett let Captain Johnson and his men go to the bridge while they went to the main deck just below. They were the only men above deck.
“Maybe this isn’t the best place to be,” Jack said.
“You heard the captain. We don’t have any missile control. They can’t let loose with anything, so the deck is as safe as anywhere at the moment. Look!” Carl said, pointing six hundred yards away.
Peter the Great was lit up like the Fourth of July to the Americans. Tracer fire and the loud thump, thump, thump of her heavy twenty-millimeter gun were going crazy. Spotlights crisscrossed the water, and that was when Jack saw the enemy. Hundreds of small boatlike vessels were streaming toward the giant Russian battle cruiser. Her deck guns were laying down a withering fire. Tracers reached out like a laser beam and cut several of the small boats to pieces. Through binoculars, they all saw the largest of the ships at the center of the attacking smaller boats. The flag waving at the topmost of the mast was the exact duplicate of the flag Henri had found: the skull and crossbones of a pirate vessel.
“What in the hell is going on?” Jenks said as he, Charlie, and Jason joined them at the railing.
“Look out!” Collins cried as a spear thrown from somewhere in the dark streaked by and struck the hatch that Henri Farbeaux had just stepped from. The spear struck the steel of the hatch, and the tip bent, and the shaft nearly took the Frenchman’s head off. Jack then reacted far faster than anyone realized as he quickly unholstered his nine millimeter and shot three times at the greenish figure reaching out for the railing. As he fired, several more hands were seen reaching over the cable. Some had long, curved iron swords. More gunfire erupted from the Shiloh’s .50-caliber machine guns on the bridge wings.
Beyond the Sea--An Event Group Thriller Page 22