“They must be using the latest dolphin tech,” Stark’s mother stated.
“Dolphin tech?” Davidson asked.
“Yes, it is the latest in submersible technology. The subs are built in the same size and shape as a dolphin, then the metal is covered in a semi-permeable artificial dolphin skin so that it looks just like the animal on radar, plus they use the same frequency sonar as the dolphins. On sensor scans, you just think it is a dolphin.”
Davidson remembered that Stark had reported dolphins in the area.
Damn it, that should have rung someone’s bell.
Well, it had. Bunny’s. She’d been worried ever since the boat had exploded. She’d known that the Righteous would have something else up their sleeve.
Another flash and another missile.
Davidson swung his rifle around, Firing once, twice and a third time. He’d struck the missile at least once, but not in the right spot to prematurely detonate.
“Incoming!”
* * *
Malvern threw himself over Bunny, tucking her head under his arm as the missile hit the cliff just above them. Rock rained down all around.
“Get to shelter!” Lopez barked. Malvern rose, helping her up, dragging her along the beach toward the white washed houses.
They barely made it into the structure before another missile hit, this time closer. The thin walled building rattled, threatening to tumble down on top of all their heads.
Amongst the panicked scholars, they raced through the small houses and burst into the stone tunnel just as the roof collapsed behind them. Even then they didn’t stop running until they made it to the stone chamber deep under the island.
One of the scholars turned on them. “You! You have brought this upon us.”
“Probably,” Lopez wryly answered as he looked up to the ceiling to see if was going to hold.
Another missile hit. This time it shook the ground beneath their feet and jarred the passageway, causing the rock to collapse upon itself. There was no way out now. They were trapped.
Prenner ran to the edge, trying to peer through the downed ceiling to see if there was a way out. “It is blocked. Completely.”
Then, as almost always there was the intense silence after an attack. To Bunny that was almost worse. Only the occasional tinkle of small pebbles trickling down the new rock face.
“Stark?” Bunny asked into her mic. There was no response. They had lost contact last time they had come in here.
“Plan?” Malvern asked.
“Hope Davidson takes out the submersible, then strategically blow our way out of here.”
Malvern shrugged. “Sounds as good as any plan.”
* * *
“Stark, dude, you gotta give me something,” Davidson pleaded.
Stark wished that he could.
“I’m shooting blind out here,” Davidson said just before another round roared over the com.
“Mom, tell me you’ve figured it out.”
Their scans had revealed a pod of dolphins swimming around a central figure. The submersible must have been putting out some kind of danger call, causing the dolphins to rally around the submersible.
Genius, just pure genius. Evil, twisted genius, but genius none the less.
“I think I can tell the submersible. The tail isn’t going up and down,” his mother reported. “Davidson I am sending you some coordinates and trajectories.”
Stark hoped and prayed his mother was equally genius. Everyone on the team’s life depended on it.
They had lost contact with Bunny and the rest, but Stark convinced himself it was just because they had gone deep under the rock for protection. Yes, that had to be it.
He couldn’t picture Bunny, dead, burnt and bloody on that beach. She had to have survived that first attack and made it underground with the rest of the team. She had to.
“Got them,” Davidson confirmed. “Honing in.”
There was a delay. Although in no way did Stark ever think that Davidson was hesitating. The man was like a well-oiled precision machine. He calculated before taking action. He wanted every shot to count.
* * *
Stark watched the live video feed play out on his tablet. He was watching the middle “Dolphin” the one that didn’t push its tail up and down. The submersible.
Underwater shots were tricky. The resistance of the water meant that you had to be pretty damned close otherwise even the best calibrated shot was not going to penetrate deeply enough to make any difference.
So here Davidson sat. As still as a church mouse. Controlling his breathing. Waiting for the submersible to get close enough for him to take his shot.
Another missile hit the cliff side, crumbling it even more. Stark had assured him that the central stone chamber was far beyond what these missiles could reach. So Davidson didn’t even bother to try and hit the missiles. He would save his ammo for that damned submersible.
Finally it was getting close enough. As a matter of fact, they looked arrogant enough to try and surface with him on duty.
But first the dolphins began beaching themselves.
Damn the Righteous. Nothing was beneath them, nothing.
Davidson couldn’t wait any longer.
He took a breath in, then let it go, firing on the trough of his exhale. He was rewarded with a stream of bubbles. He’d hit the submersible. He fired again before the vessel could maneuver away. More bubbles.
“You silenced them,” Stark announced in his ear. The dolphins stopped their beaching behavior and now tried to flop themselves back into the water.
Davidson fired again then another then another until a huge air bubble signaled someone had opened the submersible’s hatch.
Soon a figure surfaced. Davidson didn’t hesitate, taking him out.
“The submersible is sinking!” Stark cried out.
Davidson scrambled out of his tree. The time for the high ground was over.
He ran down the stone steps, leaping three to four at a time. He made it to the beach in time to drag a gasping dolphin back into the water. A few scholars that had survived the first attack joined him, helping get each of the beached dolphins back to safety.
Only after they were all swimming away, did Davidson look to the spot where the scholars’ homes had been.
It was nothing but rubble now. All of the white had been charred into black. Several of the scholars were trying to move rock away from the entrance, but Davidson knew it was futile. In a cave in of that magnitude, manually moving rock wasn’t going to cut it.
“Stark? Give me some reason to hope,” Davidson asked.
* * *
“The satellite we have doesn’t have deep rock scanning capabilities, but we are retasking a satellite that does from Turkey,” Stark explained. He looked to his mom who was doing the coding.
It was a Russian satellite, so it was taking her a few more seconds than normal.
“You might want to get your explosives ready,” Stark stated. “Once we see the damage, we might be able to find a vector for you to punch into the cliff without bringing it down.”
“Tiny problem with that. I barely have enough C4 on me to knock down a door. Prenner is carrying the bulk of the explosives and he is going to be itching to use them.”
Stark shook his head even though he knew that Davidson couldn’t see him. “We’ve got to stop him. That cliff face is extremely fragile. If he places the explosives in the wrong place, he could bring the mountain down upon him.”
“We are going to have to figure out another way to communicate then,” Davidson stated. “We’ve got to get word to them to wait until we have a vector.”
Stark racked his brain. Rock was difficult. What made a material dense was how closely packed it’s atoms were. The type of rock they were talking about was so densely packed it was nearly impossible to get any kind of signal through them.
And that chamber was deep inside of the island. The Russian satellite’s feed bloomed to life on his screen. There was no wa
y they were going to get any kind of conventional signal that deeply into the mountain.
“I can see them,” Stark reported. “I think… I think they are getting ready to blow the wall.
“But that’s going to bring the island down on them?” Davidson asked.
“Afraid so. They can’t see the fissures that are running away from that chamber.”
“On it.”
“On what?” But Davidson didn’t answer. He just got busy.
* * *
Davidson waded out to the destroyed dolphin submersible. It was pretty amazing tech. They crammed just enough room for a single man and it looked like six missiles plus the hardware to run it all.
He would stop and really marvel at it all if he wasn’t under such tight time constraints. He pulled the remaining missile out and carefully cracked it open, scavenging the explosives.
“What are you doing?” Stark asked in his ear.
“Watch and learn,” Davidson answered.
Loaded down with their payload, Davidson rushed back to the cliff and smeared some of the explosive on the rock, then plugged his handheld detonator into the explosive, backed away a little, there wasn’t much explosive, then hit the button.
A small explosive lit against the rock. Davidson repeated the maneuver again and again, hoping that the guys inside would understand his message, if not, then they were all doomed.
CHAPTER 15
Bunny cocked her head. There was that sound again. It was faint and felt far away, but still appeared to have some kind of rhythm to it. It sounded manmade.
“Oh, I am going to kiss Davidson on the lips when I see him!” Lopez announced. “Prenner back off that detonator.”
“But I’m ready to blow the debris.”
Lopez laughed, “Don’t you recognize that? It’s Morse code,” the corporal chuckled. “Davidson must be using micro charges like knocking on pipes to communicate with us.”
Bunny’s heart soared. She hadn’t wanted to think about what had happened to the sniper out there. Now that it was confirmed he was alive and well, she felt her shoulders relax.
“What is he saying?”
“Well, since I am proficient in Morse, I believe he just told us to ‘wait.’”
“For what?” Levont asked.
“Hell if I know,” Lopez answered. “But we wait.”
Bunny concurred wholeheartedly. As dust sprinkled down from the ceiling, she was pretty certain why he wanted them to wait. Prenner had warned them that any attempt to break through the debris might bring the ceiling down on them. Apparently Davidson and therefore Stark must have agreed.
Another faint “pop” sounded.
“Shh!” Lopez hissed, tilting his head against the wall.
There were a string of other pops. Some long and some short. Bunny knew the concept of Morse but had never studied it as Lopez apparently had.
“Back,” Lopez finally said once the pops stopped. “He said back.”
“Back of what?” Levont asked.
Everyone turned about, trying to figure out what Davidson meant.
“There,” Bunny said, pointing to the crude wool blanket that separated the chamber from the high Rabbi’s chamber.
One of the scholars stepped between her team and the room. “Those are Trabitti’s private quarters.”
Bunny brushed past him to enter the small rock hewn room. There was a single narrow bed and a gilded arc. The sacred receptacle of the group’s scrolls. Nothing unusual there for the leader of an extreme Jewish religious sect.
“Where is he?” Bunny asked
“He left before the bombing,” the scholar said, his chin up, looking down his long nose at her.
“No, he didn’t,” Levont stated. “He came back here.”
Bunny nodded. “There must be a way out through this room.”
“Down here,” Prenner said as he kneeled next to the golden arc. “There are groove marks in the floor.”
“Well then, let’s see how they made them,” Lopez stated putting his shoulder into the side of he arc.
“You can’t! This is sacred ground!”
The scholar’s tone was getting shrill. What else could he do though against a room full of Special Forces?
“We are not violating the arc itself,” Bunny reassured the scholar. “We are simply moving it as it was built to move.”
The man seemed no happier with that explanation as the sound of stone scraping on stone filled the room. Sure enough there was a crude stairwell that let upwards.
“Ladies first?” Malvern stated bowing to Bunny.
Levont snorted, “Yah, right.”
Bunny didn’t mind when first Levont then Prenner stepped ahead of her. She was used to it. Malvern just smiled as he fell in behind her. “Perhaps in a perfect world.”
* * *
Stark was riveted to the screen, watching Bunny and the rest’s thermal images climbing up the long stone stairway. He bit his lower lip so hard that blood welled to the surface.
The island was having mini-quakes after being so assaulted by the missiles. This whole area was fairly geologically active and the Righteous’ attack had created large fissures through the substrate. Fissures large enough that seawater was now channeling through the interior of the island, widening the cracks, making the island even more unstable.
There had been a four point two quake just a few minutes ago. Anything larger than that and the island could split in two.
Davidson was racing up the outer staircase to meet the rest of the team on the far side of the plateau.
“We’re going to need a way off,” Davidson said as the island shook again.
Like Stark didn’t know that, but he couldn’t just rustle something out of thin air. This was an island in the middle of the Aegean Sea. He didn’t have a whole lot of options. And lord knew the Turks weren’t going to help. They were still a little pissed off about Brandt’s last trip to Istanbul.
Not that Stark blamed the Turks. Brandt had destroyed not only the Blue Mosque but the Hagia Sophia as well.
“Working on it,” Stark tried to reassure Davidson even though he didn’t have a lot of hope.
A burst of static startled him. They were finally starting to get feed from Bunny’s side of the team.
“Over?” Lopez asked.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that,” Stark admitted.
“We are feeling tremors. How serious are they?” Lopez asked.
“Um, pretty bad…” Stark couldn’t lie.
“And transport?” Lopez followed up.
Geez, everyone was all over him. He was a tech, not a magician.
“Nothing in the area, right now, but I’m scouring for private vessels in the area.”
* * *
Davidson tripped and nearly fell as the ground underfoot gave out. A crack appeared in the dirt and rapidly spread across the plateau. He had to make a quick decision and jumped left, toward the larger patch of ground.
He’d guessed correctly as the ground to the right crumbled into a crevice.
Kicking up the speed, his rifle bouncing on his back, Davidson raced across the island. It sounded like there was a wrecking crew out, shattering the island to pieces, despite no human doing any such thing. This was nature at work. A series of geological events set off by the Righteous.
Bastards.
He caught site of the rest of the team. They were racing toward him. Not good. Once they met, where would they head then?
Lopez waved for Davidson to start running in the opposite direction. “Go!”
“There’s nowhere to go!” Davidson shouted back.
The group met at the center of the island. Fissures ran every which way. Huge gaps with hundred foot drops opened all around.
“What are we going to do?” Bunny asked. Her eyes wide open in fear. He hated it when she looked like this. Yet, she’d never looked so beautiful.
“We better do something,” Levont said, dancing away from a crumbling edge.
“I am so sorry. The best I’ve got is a fishing boat sixty miles out.”
As the rest of the group groaned, Davidson stilled his mind. There was only one option. No one was going to appreciate it of course.
“We’ve got to lemming,” Davidson stated matter of factly.
Lopez looked at him as if he were mad, then gulped and nodded. “He’s right. If we stay here, we’re toast.”
“Lemming?” Malvern asked.
“We’ve got to jump,” Davidson explained. He knew how insane it sounded, but to stay was death. To make a calculated jump was the best shot they had.
Malvern opened his mouth as if to argue, but then the earth quaked beneath their feet and even he shut his trap.
“Where though?” Levont asked.
“Stark?” Davidson asked.
“The best place looks like the northeast corner, but you’d better hurry, there are already deep fissures developing.
Lopez didn’t have to give the command, Levont set off at a run toward the spot. Everyone else fell in.
Now if they could make it in time.
* * *
Bunny grit her teeth trying to ignore the pain shooting up from her ankle. She had twisted it at some point during this headlong flight. She couldn’t allow the pain to slow her down though. They were so close.
“There!” Levont shouted pointing ahead.
The only problem was there was a huge five foot chasm between them and the ledge they needed to get to.
“Let me,” Malvern whispered in her ear.
He grabbed her around the waist and the two of them launched together. His strength carried her over the gap. They landed hard, again on the bad ankle. Bunny gingerly tried to rise, but couldn’t. It was Malvern again who assisted her.
“Lean into me.”
That wasn’t hard to do.
They made their way across the crumbling ground to a narrow precipice.
Everyone looked down to the crashing surf.
“You are sure?” Davidson asked.
“It’s got the least underwater rocks. It is your best bet to survive a high jump.”
“Let’s get this over with,” Prenner said, stepping to the edge, his toes dangling over.
“Together,” Lopez said, taking Bunny’s hand.
Bull's Eye Sniper Chronicles Collection (The Second Cycle of the Betrayed Series) Page 18