Tyler looked deeply into the captain's eyes until she looked away, then he turned without comment and left the command pedestal. Although Alexandria paid the hotheaded Tyler's breach of etiquette no notice, Samuels did. He watched as Tyler gave a last look back into the control center before leaving. After the first officer turned to his duties, Yeoman Alvera followed Tyler into the companionway.
"Maneuvering, bring Leviathan shallow and let's see what our uninvited guests are up to."
Leviathan started to rise in the water like an ancient behemoth, slowly pushing aside tens of thousands of tons of water. She rose as a sea god would to spy an intruder.
"You are challenging the captain's judgment in front of the command crew right in the open. Do I have to remind you that we will need those people if this is to succeed?"
Tyler saw the anger in the yeoman's eyes. The deep green pupil was now ringed in red and that in silver. He knew from Dr. Trevor that when Alvera became angry, microscopic pinprick hemorrhages erupted inside the ocular cavity, and those produced the bright colors in the eyeball. As he watched, the yeoman relaxed and looked around the empty passageway.
"You are not to do that again."
"The captain is acting very strange, she's becoming two-sided when it comes to her orders," Tyler said, leaning in so he could whisper.
"I suspect that she is putting up more of a mental struggle than even we suspected." Alvera leaned against the steel bulkhead as her eyes slowly became normal once more. "Alexandria is a strong-willed woman. Stronger than the part we need," she said admiringly. "We will have to act soon. Be prepared at a moment's notice for the right time to get what we need from her."
"She is showing signs that she knows. At this very moment, she is as alert as she has ever been, and maybe confused about her aggressiveness."
"Just do your job. We'll soon be at Ice Palace and then this will all end," Alvera said as she turned and started back for the control room. "We keep the captain happy by following orders, until such a time as she consistently gives us the right orders. Confusing to your kind, I know, but that's the way it is."
"Wait," Tyler called out. "What are we going to do about that bastard Samuels? He knows something, or at least suspects. And what about the captain making this stop at Saboo? I told you all along that she had no intention of questioning her old friend and that damn Group about what they know."
Alvera turned back and faced the sergeant. "Does it really matter?" She smiled. "After all, we have the captain of the most powerful warship in the history of the world on our side, even if Alexandria Heirthall isn't…. Yet."
Sergeant Tyler watched as the young girl made her way aft and back to her shift. He nervously turned and looked around and then shook his head. He was starting to regret the deal he had made.
Everyone knew the Devil always brokered deals that couldn't be broken.
* * *
The two Zodiacs were at the sea edge of the surf when Collins ordered the two boats to stop.
"This is as far as the SEALs go; we get off here. Come on, Doc, it's time to go swimming."
"Colonel, we don't mind taking the risk," the SEAL lieutenant said from his place at the back of the boat.
"Well, I do. No more lives are going into harm's way. Thanks for the ride, Lieutenant," Jack said as he grabbed Robbins and leaned backward, sending them both into the sea.
Everett watched from the second boat and followed suit, along with Ryan and Mendenhall. They started in toward an unknown reception on Saboo.
As they rode the surf in, Jack kept Robbins's head above water. When they gained their feet on the wet sand, Collins looked around at the silence that greeted them. The beach was deserted, just as advertised.
"Well, we didn't get all wet for nothing. Shall we go wait to be shot, or picked up?" Everett said as he stood next to Jack.
"By all means," Jack answered with a nod. "Take the lead, Captain, and let's go fishing."
EVENT GROUP CENTER, NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA
Pete was sitting at Niles's large desk, his glasses propped up on his forehead. He was having the hardest time of his life keeping his eyes from closing as he studied the duty rosters for the complex, with a minimal security supervisory team given the absence of Everett, Ryan, and Mendenhall.
One of the director's assistants, whom Pete had previously ordered to her quarters for the night, popped her head in through the door. She stepped in and, thinking Golding was finally sleeping, gently laid a pile of folders on his desk. As she started to turn away and leave, not wanting to wake him, Pete opened his eyes.
"What are these?" he asked without moving his left hand away from his head, where it protected his eyes from the glare of the overhead lights.
The young woman's shoulders slumped and she turned.
"The replacement files from Arlington on the vaults on level seventy-three and seventy-four. They faxed us another set."
Pete finally moved. He rubbed his eyes and replaced the glasses to their normal position.
"They may very well be redundant, since we now know what they were trying to hide," he said as he removed the top file from the bunch. As he did, the others slid from the stack and slid across his desk. "Damn," he said.
"Here, I'll just put them on my desk until you have more time to check them off your list," she said, moving forward to relieve Golding's desk of at least some of his workload.
As she did, Pete's eyes locked on a particular file for no other reason than that was where his eyes rested. He blinked, then placed his fingers on the partially obscured file number. He pulled it from the fanned-out stack, looked it over, and let out a small chuckle.
"I've got to get out more often and see the world — or at least the complex," he said as he opened the obscure file. "I never knew we had anything from P. T. Barnum's old New York Museum — better yet, why would we?"
The assistant looked at which file he was perusing and then relaxed.
"Oh, well, Colonel Collins said to include it because it was the vault located directly under the Leviathan enclosure."
Pete looked up, partially closed the file, and then looked into the assistant's innocent countenance.
"Directly under the vault? On level seventy-four? Wasn't that where accelerant was also found?"
"Yes, sir, but the engineers said that could be explained by the liquid seeping through the rocks and falling inside that particular vault."
Golding nodded his head and excused the assistant, then looked at the file in his hands. It wasn't a thick file, and stapled to the inside jacket of the folder was a small notation made by the forensics department stating that the artifact was totally destroyed by the fire. Pete read the first page of description from the report filed by the Event Group back in 1949, when the specimen was discovered in an old repository building in Florida owned by Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, The Greatest Show on Earth.
" 'The Mermaid of the Pacific Isles,'" Pete mumbled as he looked at a photograph of something that resembled a jellyfish, and a rather degraded jellyfish at that.
There were enhanced details that had been added by the Group back in '49 that outlined what looked like a pair of legs and small arms. The see-through mass was unlike anything Pete had ever seen before, and by far the most disturbing feature of all was in the next color photo: The damn thing looked as though it had hair. Long, black, and flowing, as it was laid out on a stainless-steel examining table. The whole thing, from head to jellylike, fanned tail, was about four feet long.
Pete flipped over to the next page and read the details of its discovery. The specimen had been one of the only items salvaged from the great fire in midtown Manhattan in 1865 during one of the many draft riots during the Civil War. The P. T. Barnum American Museum, located on Broadway and Ann Streets, burned, with a loss of more than 90 percent of its displayed oddities. It was reported by witnesses that Barnum himself rescued only one item from the burning structure, and that was from a locked storage bin in his
personal office. That item: the Mermaid of the Pacific.
For many years after, people saw a cheap version of the mermaid (actually made from a torso of a monkey and the tail of a giant black sea bass) on display at the museum Barnum built to replace the one lost. He never gave an explanation of the obviously fake replacement to people who had heard the rumors of a far more delicate and humanlike specimen that gossip said was kept at Barnum's own New York home.
After Barnum's death in 1891, a locked chest was willed to the famous Greatest Show on Earth and then sent to Florida, where it was stored and forgotten. That was where an Event Group field team discovered it in an old warehouse in 1949.
The forensics report was confused for the day; there was absolutely no relationship of the specimen to that of modern-day jellyfish or any vertebrate found in the fossil record. The deterioration of the specimen was so vast that no acceptable biopsy of the material could be conducted.
Pete noticed a small notation placed in the margins of the report and had to turn the file on its side to read it.
"The sample of hair was found to be human, and the lone sample of fingernail found was also closely related to man. The brain, made up of clear and bluish material, was thought to be far larger than that of any creature indigenous to the sea in relationship to its size."
Golding turned to the last page for the Group's conclusion.
"Because of the nature of Mr. Barnum's personality, it must be concluded at this time that this is a forgery on a grand scale. Although far more encompassing and impressive than his obviously fake 'Fiji Mermaid,' displayed from 1865–1881, the findings do not support Mr. Barnum's claims of finding the Mermaid of the Pacific off the coast of Venezuela, in the Gulf of Mexico. One item of note, the specimen was found in an enclosure engraved with the seal of the University of Oslo."
Pete laid the file down when he read the last words of the report. Coincidence? he asked himself as he picked up the phone.
"Miss Lange, get me Professor Ellenshaw down in crypto on the phone. Tell him I need some research done ASAP."
He hung up the phone and looked at the file. Could this be what those people wanted to remain hidden from the world instead of the submarine? he asked himself.
Golding looked at the 1949 color picture of the Mermaid of the Pacific. As he did, he noticed for the first time the intense blue eyes of the creature, even in death. Nothing else but the small arms and hands resembled a human. It was the hands that would give him time for pause before sleep. The fingers, he could tell, were long and delicate, and now that he was examining the photo closer, he could swear he could see femalelike breasts. He shook his head and closed his eyes.
The phone finally rang and he picked it up.
"Charlie, thanks for getting back to me so soon."
"No problem, I was just dozing off at my desk."
"I need to ask you something, Charlie. Your department believes in the existence of many, many strange things—"
"Come on, Pete, did you call just to rag on me?"
"Professor, I think you are one of the smartest people in this complex, so knock it off. I need to know your opinion on the existence of mermaids, or something like them?"
The other end of the phone produced nothing but silence for the longest time.
"Charlie?" Pete asked, thinking the connection had been lost.
"Pete, to believe in mermaids is a little far out, even for us. Now, if you're done joking around, I'll get back to dozing and dreaming about the Yeti and—"
"Professor, what would you say if I told you that we've had a specimen of an undersea creature since nineteen forty-nine that could possibly be what sea lore described as a mermaid, and that is what this whole Leviathan thing may be about?"
"Well, I would say that the Event Group was left in the wrong hands."
Pete winced as the phone was slammed down on Ellenshaw's end. He wanted to slam his down also, but instead eased it into the cradle.
He looked at the file in front of him. As he closed it, he knew that Leviathan and this artifact were linked somehow, in some fashion, but also knew he was at a dead end. He couldn't even pass on the information to Jack and Carl.
His new opinion of the events of the past week had just taken a turn toward the Twilight Zone.
SABOO ATOLL, THE MARIANAS
Jack could feel eyes on him, physically and electronically. He looked at Everett and knew he was having the same sensation.
They were standing on the lone dock on the island that was fronted by a small building looking as if it had been constructed during the Second World War. The small hut was boarded up. Phone lines ran from the building to a point one hundred feet from the dock, where they disappeared into the white sand. Ryan and Mendenhall, with Robbins between them, were busy watching the sea.
"Colonel Collins, we are indeed shocked, though pleasantly so, to see you again so soon," a voice said from behind them.
They turned and saw a lone figure standing on the edge of the dock, illuminated only by the stars in the night sky. The voice sounded vaguely familiar to Jack.
"My name is Dr. Warren Trevor, formerly of Her Majesty's Royal Navy, and ship's surgeon for Leviathan. I was sent to greet you in case you needed to see a familiar face."
"You treated me while I was onboard?" Jack asked as he and the others walked toward him.
"Indeed I did," the dark figure answered.
Jack moved his eyes from their host to Ryan, who was busy tapping out an ELF (extremely low frequency) message to Missouri, saying they had made contact.
"Will you have your companions their equipment, Colonel? There will be no need for any outside paraphernalia onboard Leviathan." He gestured toward Ryan. "And young man, I can assure you, the Missouri has indeed left the immediate area; therefore they cannot hear your transmission. My captain would not allow that at any rate."
Ryan closed the small transmitter and tossed it into the pack at his feet.
"Now, gentlemen, if you will follow me. Dr. Robbins, the captain is most anxious to find out if they treated you right."
Robbins looked from Ryan to Mendenhall. They both smiled.
"Our people?" Jack asked.
"They have survived their ordeal, I assure you, Colonel."
Jack and the others watched as the dark figure of the doctor turned away and started for the beach end of the dock. Robbins stepped from the group, shrugging off Ryan's and Will's hands, and quickly started forward, as if he were anxious to be on his way.
"Where are we going, Doctor?" Collins called after the dark figure.
The man stopped and turned once he reached the old shack, and as the moon fully breached sea level, they could see the doctor smiling as he waited.
"Why, to take you to meet the person you came here to meet, of course," he said, and turned to enter the shack. Robbins followed him in without a backward glance.
"Well, let's go meet Captain Nemo, shall we?" Collins said in all seriousness.
Everett, Mendenhall, and Ryan fell into step behind Jack as they made their way to the shack.
The moon rose slowly over Saboo Atoll. There was nothing to indicate that they were about to venture into the very birthplace of Leviathan.
15
Collins and his team stepped into the barren and empty shack at the edge of the dock. The doctor was there, dressed in a navy blue jumpsuit with a matching Windbreaker. The only adornment on his uniform was the two dolphins flanking the L on his breast pocket. The doctor smiled as the interior of the shack was slowly illuminated by the rising moon, revealing itself to be filled with floats, a broken radio, and numerous fishing poles, all with dust on their surfaces. The doctor made sure the door was secure, then said aloud, "Level two."
The flooring broke away from the foundation of the shack and started descending into the sandy beach. Once the small elevator was beyond the wall of the shack, Jack and the others saw they were inside an acrylic shaft. The elevator was being lowered below the water table of the
island and into an excavated chamber. Soon they broke free into a cavernous level that housed crates and other bulky materials, and for the first time, as Collins and his men looked into the most amazing man-made cavern in the world, they saw the inhabitants of Saboo Island — children.
The doctor watched the four men and smiled. "Our future — or what we hope our future is," he said, gesturing toward the thirty or so children within view just as the glass door slid aside. He stepped out without worrying about the men being behind him.
The engineering was amazing. Steel beams that were sixty feet thick and hundreds of feet long were supporting the giant cave. The spider-webbing of support rebar snaked in and out of the entire structure — they could see that the engineering was old, possibly pre-Civil War. The base of the cavern was taken up by a two-thousand-foot lagoon with a concrete dock that extended two hundred feet into the water. On the far side of the immense cavern, two massive dry dock facilities rose from the unnatural lagoon. There were cranes and derricks, shops and warehouses. On the small beach around the lagoon, there were tents arrayed, and they spied a few of the children exiting carrying small backpacks.
"Jack, this may have been their home once, but look at these buildings — they haven't been used in years," Everett said, leaning into Collins.
"Gentlemen, may I point out dry dock number one," the doctor said, pointing to the far left of the lagoon, "the very dock that launched the first Leviathan back in the eighteen hundreds. The larger of the two dry docks, number two, as you can see is quite a bit larger. That is the birthplace of the current Leviathan. Forty years for its creation and commissioning."
"It's large enough to launch a supercarrier," Everett observed.
"The children?" Jack inquired.
"As I said, they are our future; you might say the very best of both worlds are standing before you, Colonel. The birthplace and onetime home of Leviathan and the family Heirthall, and these children."
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