by Jon Land
In actuality, no sub as fast as the Rhode Island could operate silently. Instead of trying to, she sent out contradictory signals that sensors normally read as schools of fish. Electric Boat had set out to build the perfect warship, and the feeling on the eve of the Rhode Island’s maiden voyage was that they had come very close.
Mac heard footsteps approaching, then a key being turned in his door. It wasn’t mealtime, so he must have miscounted the days. Today must be the eighteenth, not the seventeenth, time for his three-day signal pass to COMSUBLANT—Commander of the Submarine Force in the Adantic. No matter, for he’d already composed in his mind the masked message he intended to send to advise COMSUBLANT of what was really going on aboard the Rhode Island.
At fifty-three he had considered himself too old for such a command and had let himself be talked into it against his better judgment. If the Jupiter class of super-Tridents was to be utilized to its utmost potential, he was told, it needed men of Mac’s savvy and stature at the helm.
That stature might have been defined by many things, but size was not one of them. McKenzie Barlow stood barely five and a half feet tall. He had been christened “Mighty Mac” back in his early training days when he fought to join the SEALs, the navy’s elite commando company, against concerted antagonism from those who believed he didn’t fit the image. Mac had proved them wrong then and later in Vietnam, where his specialty was underwater demolitions. Though records weren’t kept, he had probably spent more time behind enemy lines than anyone else serving with Navy stripes.
On one mission the Cong locked on to the gunboat transporting him and a team out of a fire zone, and Mac had risked capture and death by venturing back into the flames on four separate occasions to carry out the rest of the crew. The incident left him with multiple skin grafts on his arms and permanently damaged shoulder joints from the pressure of carrying two of the men for three miles through enemy jungle.
That was the last combat Mac ever saw as a SEAL, but his subsequent rise though the Navy chain of command was swift, culminating in his holding the con of the Trident sub Florida for six years prior to his retirement. They had lured him back into the command chair to take the Rhode Island only after assuring him that this maiden voyage would be strictly window dressing: in other words, no nuclear armaments on board. The order of business was thirty days at sea just to check out the silent-running systems and give the press something to write about. Mac even agreed to participate in the christening ceremonies at Electric Boat in Groton. He was on board running systems checks when sealed orders arrived from the vice-admiral of COMSUBLANT to steam out of Groton for Newport News, Virginia, to take on a full complement of twenty-eight Jupiter-class missiles prior to deep-lie mission. If he had known … But who was he kidding? He was Navy all the way; he would never have said no to them, no matter what. He was miffed that they had kept him in the dark, but he knew it was nothing personal, just a matter of security. The very existence of the Jupiter-class missile hadn’t been made public yet, and a leak prior to the Rhode Island’s maiden voyage could sink her faster than any charge from a Victor or Charlie.
Mac fumed until the first hours at sea refreshed him and he lost himself in his command. The first two days out of Newport News by way of Groton were totally without incident. The Rhode Island drove like a sports car, and Mac treated her as such, airing her out beneath the sea that to him was like one giant superhighway without a speed limit. As a boy he had loved driving his bike through the back roads of Wisconsin, turning and twisting until he was hopelessly lost. Deciding on a course for this Jupiter-class prototype was much the same, except the instruments were always there to tell him where he was. Took some of the fun out of it, if you asked McKenzie Barlow.
But all the fun disappeared seventeen, no, eighteen days ago. Commanders generally allow themselves little sleep, and even at fifty-three, Mac was no exception—four hours at most per day, and often not even that much. Without the guidelines of night and day, sleep seemed less important anyway. He was just coming out of a rare dream when the alarm bell chimed and drove him up like a bolt. Mac recognized the ring as that of an on-board systems failure, and the darkness in his own quarters, broken only by a single emergency lamp, told him the damn power had gone out all over the ship. He stumbled for the door and was immediately thrown against the wall by the force of the sub heaving herself nose-first for the surface like a swimmer who knows he has reached his underwater limit. Since a similar power failure had destroyed the Thresher more than twenty-five years before, all Trident, attack, and 688-class subs had been built with an automatic surface feature that was triggered in the event of a power failure.
The Rhode Island was halfway up when Mac finally finished his climb to the bridge.
“Status?” he asked the officer of the deck.
“Source of failure unknown, Commander.”
“Two thousand meters,” from sonar.
“Damage?” Mac wanted to know.
“Structure is tight and sound. It’s electrical. Computer should have it pinpointed by the time we reach the surface.”
“Fifteen hundred,” sonar announced.
“Damn,” Mac muttered to himself. Something felt wrong about this. Maybe he was getting old. “Check vertical sonar. Anything above us?”
“Negative, sir.”
Mac told himself to relax. They would surface, pinpoint the problem, and be under again before even the currents knew the difference.
“One thousand,” sonar reported.
“Sir, I’m showing something on vertical,” said the man seated next to him.
“Coordinates?”
“Directly above us. Small patches, like several oil spills. No movement, no confidence of engine.”
“Five hundred meters.”
Mac’s mind was working feverishly. “Helm, can you give me anything?”
“Sir?”
“Steer us away from those patches, man!”
“Two hundred and fifty meters.”
Helm tried some buttons. “Negative, sir. She’s coming up too fast.”
“One hundred meters,” said sonar.
A sudden thrust shook the Rhode Island as she crested nose-first through the surface and her vast bulk began to settle.
“Get us back under!” ordered Mac.
“No response, sir. Power’s still down, still …”
Already the voice was sounding faraway, words shrinking into darkness as Mac slid to the floor. The last thing he felt was the rhythmic bobbing of his ship.
When he awoke in his quarters, a stranger was standing over his cot. The man wasn’t much taller than he and was dressed all in black. His eyes were cold and dark, and his hair was long on the sides but showed a dome on top. A pair of larger men stood back by the door as deterrents against Mac’s first impulse.
“Your ship is mine, Commander Barlow,” the dark man said flatly.
“I guess we’re past the name, rank, and serial number stage.”
“Quite.”
“You have the advantage of me.”
“The name is Jones,” said the stranger.
“Really?”
“Smith if you prefer.” He smiled, very much at ease.
“Where’s my crew?”
“They’re being held prisoner, but they are all safe. They are no longer on board.”
“What?” Mac sat up so suddenly that the deterrents started forward.
“We’re already underwater again, riding smooth,” Mr. Jones said. “All necessary personnel have been replaced with my men. Fear not. They’re well schooled in the operation of this vessel.”
“And yet I’m still on board.”
“Because we need you. You’re going to help us.”
“Am I?”
“Oh, most definitely.” The stranger in black slid a chair closer to the cot and seated himself. “I foresee no problems whatsoever.”
“You got bad vision, pal.”
“Let’s say there are things you have
n’t seen yet, Mac. May I call you, Mac? I understand under some circumstances even enlisted men address you that way.”
“You got a commission?”
“Better—I’ve got your ship.”
“Terrorists?”
Jones looked insulted. “Please, Commander.” He moved his chair still closer. “I represent a totally unaligned party who requires this vessel for nonmilitary reasons.”
“You don’t hijack a super-Trident in the name of peace.”
“I assure you there is a plan.”
“Excuse me for saying your assurances aren’t worth a hell of a lot.”
The man remained deadly calm and even friendly. “You’re wondering how we accomplished all this, no doubt.”
“My head hurts a little too much to think about it.”
“You’ll experience no long-lasting effects from the gas, Mac. We shot high-pressured darts through your hull just behind the sail. The darts were attached to hoses which instantly began pumping the gas into your air supply. Remarkably potent stuff. Explains why it took so little time to knock your whole crew out. Don’t worry, we plugged the holes before diving again.”
“The blotches that were identified as oil spills—rubber rafts?”
Jones smiled. “Very good, Mac. You’re as good as I was led to believe.”
“The rafts were drifting in the water with the currents, so vertical sonar couldn’t have picked them up before—”
“Before the power failure—is that what you were going to say? Of course you realize now that that was our doing. A circuit in your main console board shorted out, and the whole system would have overloaded if not for the automatic shutoff device. Under normal circumstances, a simple matter for you to pin down and rectify on the surface.”
Mac was confused now. The dark stranger was describing a type of sabotage that had been explicitly ruled out in a super-Trident.
Jones seemed to read his mind. “Yes, all the computer chips that could arrange the ‘appearance’ of such a short circuit are tested for tampering dozens of times before implementation, and all have backups. But no amount of tests can guard against the use of two such chips, and both their backups, working in tandem, one useless and thus undetectable without the other.”
“My God …”
“Everything was on timer. Quite brilliant.”
“But you knew where we were. You tracked us.”
“A homing beacon of sorts, Mac. We’ve followed your progress almost since you left Groton. Of course we already knew about your stop in Virginia, so there was no reason to pick you up until you were well at sea.”
“The ship was swept. Everything. I supervised the process myself.”
“The storage cupboards in the galley, Mac?”
“Yes.”
“But not the condensed milk itself. When mixed with water, a radioactive isotope was activated. It was a very mild dose, but with five days’ worth in each man’s system, well, let’s just say that for anyone who knew what to look for, you weren’t hard to find.”
“All carried out for nothing, I’m afraid,” Mac said. “As you said, I’m still on board because you need me, except there’s nothing you can do or say that will make me cooperate.”
“Then I suppose I’ll have to show you something instead.”
“I think you’ll find this interesting,” Jones said after they were seated before the television in the ship’s rec room. The super-Trident’s expanded size allowed for a number of luxuries not included in the earlier models, including a quarter-mile running track and a workout center complete with free weights and Nautilus equipment. There was even a racquetball court adjacent to the rec room. Jones signaled to one of his men to insert a cassette into the VCR.
There were a few moments of flutter, and then the picture sharpened to reveal Mac’s wife and two surviving sons, who were both in high school. The three of them were seated in chairs in a room he had never seen before. They were obviously frightened. The camera backed up, and the four men standing behind them became clear. Two held rifles.
“Just for show,” Jones explained, following Mac’s eyes. “I was against it. I loathe even the suggestion of unnecessary violence.”
“You fucking bastard!”
Jones nodded almost sadly. “To you, I suppose I am. Maybe even to myself. But I promise that nothing will happen to your family so long as you cooperate. They are safe and sound and will be released just as soon as we are finished with you and your ship. I know it’s probably not worth much, but you have my word on that.”
Jones froze the picture, and there it was, Mac’s whole life right before him, and this bastard held it in his hand. Mac looked at his wife and kids and felt the conflict inside himself: his ship and country on one side, everything else he loved on the other.
“This is about the missiles, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so, Mac.”
“Then you’re out of luck, mister, because I can’t fire them alone. Four keypad combinations are required, and unfortunately you have removed the other three from the ship.”
“Four to fire,” Jones corrected. “One to enable. You and only you, Mac.”
“What the hell good is enabling the warheads if there’s no way you can fire the missiles?”
“All in good time, Mac, all in good time.”
“Where are we heading? Can you tell me that much?”
“South,” Jones replied. “Our journey will take approximately twenty-four days. When we reach our destination all you need do is supply the enabling codes and your family will be released.”
“And I’ll be freed to join them?”
“If you wish, yes.”
“After seeing your face and the faces of all your men?”
“It won’t matter. Believe me.”
Mac felt chilled by the grim intent in Jones’s response. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“A man charged with helping to remake destiny. I’ll explain it all to you in time. I promise. I owe you that much, and when I explain you’ll understand, though I’m sure you won’t agree.”
“You can bet on that.”
“I’m sorry we had to take your family, Mac, I truly am. A man’s family is sacred. A man’s family is everything until …” Jones stopped himself just as emotion began sneaking into his voice. “Please realize I could have used drugs on you, or torture. But you are not my enemy, and if I violate your dignity, then what is mine worth?” The emotion crept in again. “Too much of that very commodity has been lost, necessitating this mission.”
Mac just looked at him. He had the presence of mind to realize that there was no way for Mr. Jones to get word off the Rhode Island about anything to anyone, including the captors of his family, without risking betraying their position. So he had—what was it?—twenty-four days to try something.
But now eighteen had passed and he hadn’t done a thing. Five times now he had been brought by Jones to the ship’s com center to provide the rotating status code to COMSUBLANT, and on each occasion Jones had made it a point to show him the videotape again. He knew it by heart now. The camera stayed on each boy for eight seconds, then lingered for twice that long on his wife. The final shot pulled back to include all of them sitting there side by side in a grotesque family portrait, holding just long enough to ensure Mac could see their frightened faces.
On days when he was not taken from his cabin, Mac spent much of the time replaying the tape in his mind, using the image to fire his courage. Strangely, the effect of watching it seemed just as great on Jones. After the third viewing or maybe the fourth, Mac could have sworn he saw tears welling in his captor’s eyes and thought, I know this man. Somehow, somewhere, I’ve seen him before.
But none of that mattered. Nothing mattered except the fact he now had a plan along with the courage to implement it.
Today.
The door to his cabin was opening, and McKenzie Barlow made sure his face was impassive and his body relaxed so he would not betray h
is intentions.
“Ready, Mac?” Jones asked as he stepped through the doorway with the ever-present deterrents just behind.
“Absolutely.”
The Third Trumpet
Toy Soldiers
Thursday, November 19; 10:00 A.M.
Chapter 9
KIMBERLAIN SPENT THE FLIGHT from New York to Atlanta familiarizing himself with the dossier Captain Seven had compiled on Lisa Eiseman. He lingered over her picture, trying to supply color to the black-and-white head shot. She was beautiful, but was her hair dark brown or black? Her eyes were dark, and she seemed to be olive-skinned. The file said that although she was now the chief executive officer of a $500 million corporation, she still drove herself to work every morning. The Ferryman liked that.
He went over parts of her dossier a third time toward the end of the flight in an attempt to keep his mind from wandering to thoughts he liked to keep shelved high and out of reach. But sometimes they toppled and needed to be restacked.
Lisa Eiseman, age 29. Born in Atlanta. Father was Burton Eiseman, founder and owner of TLP Industries. Specializes in toys and games for children and adults. Company enjoyed banner success in the early through middle ’70s, then floundered gravely in the early ’80s. Bankruptcy considered. Burton Eiseman died in 1980 at age 52. Circumstances sketchy. Official verdict was heart attack, but suicide suspected.
Kimberlain felt his thoughts start to veer and let them go. Lisa Eiseman had been twenty-two when her father died, just one year younger than he was on the day that had changed his life. He had finished training with the Special Forces and been accepted for a tour with the anti-terrorist commandos of Delta Force. At the time it was the high point of his life. He remembered how excited he had been making the phone call to his father, a career officer who had recently retired with the rank of sergeant major. The senior Kimberlain had always stifled his enthusiasm but couldn’t on that day, for he knew the appointment meant his son was the elite of the elite.