Submerged

by Thomas F Monteleone

  “Hmmmm. Nothing to sneer at. That’s a lot of fish. Could be significant. Depending on how many times it’s happened.” said Parker.

  “I agree.” Hanson checked another file, then: “But we can’t be sure about that. We can only work from the instances it’s been observed—the first time was in December of 1946, and thirteen times since then.”

  “What? Thirteen’s a lot. Any pattern to the occurrences?”

  “A cyclic pattern is suggested of approximately every five or six years. The gaps in the pattern might be times when nobody noticed it.”

  “Is it possible there’s some naturally occurring phenomenon causing it? Temperature drops? Vulcanism?”

  “From what I can find, nothing much has been done about it, other than make note of it. But funny you mention vulcanism—a routine Geophysical Satellite mapping survey uncovered something strange at essentially the same coordinates.”

  Parker’s instincts were humming like a high tension wire in an electrical storm. What the hell had McCauley sent him? “Tell me.”

  “The satellite’s instruments detected an unusual heat signature several hundred feet below the surface and also some unexpected data to suggest widely varying densities in a localized section of the shelf.”

  “Heat signature like what?”

  Hanson shook his head. “Not sure. I didn’t have enough time to dig into it. But I’m telling you, Admiral, there’s a lot going on at those coordinates—if we can pull it all together.”

  “Looks like my old Chief McCauley already did.”

  Hanson looked a bit sheepish as he picked up another folder. “Well, sir, there’s something else…”

  “Are you serious?” Checking his watch, he saw his work day slipping away, but Parker had a feeling he’d be cancelling anything else on the planner. He motioned his aide to keep talking.

  “I found an unconfirmed report that the Russians lost a hunter-killer class near these coordinates.”

  “What?”

  “1981. One of their Alfa class. Naval Intelligence was never able to verify verbal rumors with either documented evidence or SOSUS data.”

  “What in hell’s damn does all this crap mean?” Parker sat on the edge of the desk, aware of the alarms in his head. The papers spread before him had a strange and terrible but unknown significance.

  “I have a feeling we’ve barely gotten a glimpse.”

  Parker nodded, glanced at the chronometer on his desk, one of those engraved commemorative things they give you when they ease you out of an assignment. He looked at his aide. “Time to close up shop, Pye. We can schedule more time for this tomorrow.”

  Hanson looked disappointed. He gestured at the spread of files and printouts on the table. “Very well, sir. Should I leave this here, or—”

  “You can leave it. No one will be in here to bother it.”

  “What about McCauley? If he calls again?”

  Parker grinned. “He won’t. He knows he’s given me all I need to get back to him.”

  After dismissing his aide, Parker called his driver and told him he may be delayed in leaving the building. Then he called Karen and told her the same thing, but she had long ago stopped caring about things like that.

  As he sat down behind his desk, holding the memo from McCauley in his left hand, Parker Whitehurst reached for his phone with the other.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Erich Bruckner

  Greenland Shelf

  3 May 1945

  The interior of the 5001 clanged and rocked with celebrations. Erich wanted to join them, but there was one final thing still troubling him. His friend and Exec had also kept his elation under control, and was just standing there, awaiting the next order. Erich spoke softly to him.

  “Manny, will you join me topside?”

  The night was cold and clear and the light of a thousand stars burned over their heads as they emerged from con’s hatch. Both men pulled their parkas tightly around their necks.

  “Well, Captain, it has unfolded as you imagined.”

  “But we have one final, loose thread to gather in.” Erich looked at his friend while Manny fumbled to light a cigarette in the cool air.

  “A thread? Is that what you call it?”

  Erich chuckled. “Thread…actually more like a hawser.”

  “I assume you are talking about our secret weapon.” Manny pulled on his cigarette, its tip glowed brightly in the cold air.

  Erich nodded. “I say we get it off this boat. As quickly as possible.”

  “You mean toss it overboard?” Manny looked apprehensive at this solution.

  Erich shrugged. “That is one possibility. But perhaps fate has prepared something different for us?”

  Manny exhaled a thin plume of smoke, pretended to study its shape and dissolution. “All right. I am listening.”

  “I am not normally so mystical,” said Erich. “But I believe we found that place for a reason. There is something…wrong about it. Maybe even…evil. I don’t know if I can even explain why I feel it—I just do.”

  “I don’t follow you. What are you saying?”

  Erich cleared his throat. “There is only one place for that device…”

  “What?” Manny’s tone revealed his sudden understanding. He looked at him, then out across the cave-dark sea toward the Greenland shore. “You…want to go back? Down there? In there?”

  “Crazy. Yes, Manny, I know. But I feel it. Just like I feel we carry a great terror on this boat. You suspected. You knew.” Erich paused, felt oddly embarrassed as he discussed his orders. “I wanted to confirm it for you, but my orders forbade it.”

  Manny smiled. “We talked, remember. You did not have to verify it.”

  Neither man spoke for a minute or two.

  Manny exhaled, his breath captured briefly in the frigid air. “Well, we have time to make rendezvous and…and still do what you want.”

  Erich looked at him, pulled an envelope from his pocket. “These are sealed orders for you and Kress.”

  “Kress?”

  Erich nodded. “Yes. At rendezvous, when we were supposed to take on the pilots from the Sturm, Kress would be required to arm the bomb. Just before we launched the ME-5X.”

  Manny laughed lightly, not from any humor in the words, but rather its maniacal obverse. He looked at his friend, his mirth suddenly gone. “We are all insane.”

  Erich nodded. “Does that mean you agree with me?”

  Manny looked toward the shore. “We have carried this evil in our bellies for a while now. Even just suspecting it had sickened me. Let’s heave it up. Here. Now.”

  When Erich gave the command to return to the ruins, his crew could not mask the shock on their faces. Even Massenburg and Ostermann could not maintain their decorum. Erich ignored their attempts to get more information—only telling them the 5001 had a final addendum to the new orders they’d received.

  “Take her down,” Erich said to the helmsman, and almost instantly felt the big boat respond to his command. The thought of returning to that strange and terrible landscape was anathema to him, went against the silent vow he had made when he had closed the hatch on it not twenty-four hours ago. But he believed he had little choice in this.

  Manny stayed at the viewing port relaying visual information as the boat re-entered the under-ice passage. Slowly, they retraced their initial path until they surfaced on the dead calm of the nameless sea. As they floated near their entry point, Erich stood in the nest of the conning tower, peered through his Zeiss field glasses, looking for the location to suit his purpose. Although destruction of the city would be ideal, he would be happy with merely sealing it off, collapsing the cavern and the underwater entrance.

  His problem was that he had no real appreciation for the power in the device they carried. Without witnessing the hellish displa
y, no man could understand. High Command had tried to convey a sense of it to him, but it was only theoretical. Conjecture was never the same as reality.

  “We are ready when you are,” said Manny, who had appeared in the hatch.

  Erich nodded. “Open the hangar.”

  Manny nodded, scurried down the hatch. Erich turned to watch the blister-doors of the hangar deck. There was a clanging sound, the whir of an electric winch and the sealed panels cracked open, swinging wide to reveal the seaplane with its wings tucked under itself like a sleeping raptor. Yawning wider, the doors uncovered three men standing on the deck—Manny, Kress, and Massenburg. While Kress eased himself under the belly of the seaplane to gaze up into the open bomb bay, the other two men carefully swung a wooden motor-launch, a powered lifeboat, over the side and hand-cranked it down to the water. The boat was to have been used by the launch crew as they readied the seaplane for take-off, but Erich had other plans for it now.

  Erich watched all three of his men, waiting patiently until they had finished their preliminary preparations. Manny and Helmut had pulled themselves back up to the deck as Kress levered himself out from under the plane.

  Standing up he looked up at Erich. “I am ready, Captain.”

  “Can you do it?”

  Kress held some folded paper in hand. “Ja. We have the means.”

  “Very well. Get it into the boat.”

  Kress snapped off a salute and enlisted the other two men to help him. Their first task was to lower the bomb from the Messerschmitt’s bomb rack with the set of dual hydraulic jacks used to originally load it. The jacks had been designed to raise and lower the device as needed during the arming process. The trick, Erich knew, was the re-engineering of the crane and winch. If successful, the assembly could easily get the bomb into the launch, rather than swing the seaplane out off the deck and lower it into the water.

  The process proved time-consuming although not as difficult as he imagined. The bomb was more than 3 meters in length, and less than a half-meter in diameter. But its size was not as challenging as its weight of more than two thousand kilograms. Which is why they needed to employ the crane to lower it into the launch, and why it demanded time and care, as well as leverage.

  Several hours later, Erich joined them in the motor-launch and directed them toward a small cove along the nearest shoreline. They towed a rubber dinghy behind them as they paired up and flanked their terrible cargo supported by the hydraulic jacks.

  “Tell me one more time, Herr Kress,” said Erich.

  Nodding slowly, Kress kept one hand on the bomb’s outer shell, as if to stabilize it. “The detonation design is called the ‘gun method’,” he said. “It uses a standard 105mm shell casing to fire what the orders describe as ‘sub-critical material’ into the bomb’s target rings which are made of the uranium isotopes.”

  “And you can make this work without killing us?” Manny looked at him cautiously.

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Then you are not certain?”

  “The orders and instructions are fairly straightforward. I have modified a timer and shaped charges from one of our scuttle packages,” said the engineer. “I will give us up to an hour to be quite far away.”

  Erich nodded. “And the charge will be enough to detonate the 105 shell?”

  Kress grinned in the spirit of all young boys who like to blow things up. “Oh. yes, Captain. It should be more than adequate.”

  Erich looked ahead as Massenburg maneuvered the launch into the cove. The beacon tower and the nameless city lay on the opposite shore shrouded in mist. They were almost invisible, but Erich could sense their presence like a weight hanging over his head.

  “Well, then,” said Erich. “My only concern is an answer we cannot obtain—how far away do we need to be to be safe from this thing?”

  Kress shrugged. “I think we will know soon enough, Captain.”

  Ten minutes later, the motor launch, with its massive deadly cargo, lay beached in the small cove. Erich, Manny, and his Chief Warrant Officer all hunkered down in the rubber dinghy watching Kress, who turned a spring loaded dial, depressed the timer, and sloshed through the water to join them as fast as he could.

  “Now we must be quick,” he said.

  More than fifteen minutes elapsed before they had sealed the hatches and slipped beneath the surface. As Manny guided the 5001 through the under-ice maze, Erich kept watching the sweep-tick of his watch, which seemed to moving faster than he had ever seen it.

  How far would they get? How far would they need be?

  Erich and his three accomplices sweated out the diminishing minutes as their boat cleared the ice shelf and broke into the open sea. The rest of the crew went about their tasks with not an inkling of the terrible force they now fled.

  When they finally surfaced several kilometers south of their exit-point, Erich left the control deck with Manny and Helmut, joined Kress in the engine room. All of them held their timepieces in front of them. Now the notching of the tiny hands slowed. The final minutes fell away with stubborn resolve. Minutes finally reduced to scant seconds.

  They studied them and each other’s faces, and…

  Nothing.

  The allotted time had slipped past them and they felt nothing, heard nothing.

  “Could it be possible to be…so insulated?” said Manny.

  “No, not at all,” said Kress. “We would hear a torpedo at this distance.”

  “What happened?” said Massenburg. “A dud?”

  “Perhaps only for the moment,” said Erich.

  But it had proved to be wishful thinking.

  If he would make rendezvous, Erich could not remain in the vicinity to acknowledge any delayed activity. He had no choice but to accept failure—either in his own plans or those of the men of Project Norway. The bomb remained silent, impotent as the rest of the Nazi war effort. It was beyond his control now, and so would it remain.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Sinclair

  Interstate 83

  He had been driving in silence, cursing their inability to draw in the net closer. Driving toward Lancaster on a calculated hunch was all they had for the moment, and he had no guarantees things would improve. Sinclair was gambling right now, and he hated being pushed to that final tactic. It was not how he’d survived all these years. Throwing dice up against a wall was no substitute for shrewd analysis.

  As he headed east on US 30, Entwhistle began downloading some responses to his last set of queries to thin out the data he’d requested. “Hel-lo!” he said slyly. “I think we have something here.”

  “Fill me in.” Sinclair adjusted to changing traffic patterns but listened acutely.

  “The pay phone was in a Stop’n’Go petrol station on the corner of Chestnut and Prince Streets.”

  “And that is significant why?”

  “You’re going to like this.” Entwhistle chuckled. “The pay phone is across the street from an establishment called Manny’s Tap Room.”

  Sinclair shook his head. His exec’s habit of stretching out information as if playing a game was sometimes infuriating. “Why should I ‘like’ that? Get to the fucking point.”

  “The ‘Manny’ referenced is listed on the original papers of incorporation as Manfred Fassbaden and the other name is Erich Bruckner.”

  Sinclair knew he should be connecting the dots by now, but he was tired, pissed off, and having trouble keeping his thoughts focused. He’d just passed a sign announcing the proximity of Lancaster: seven miles. “Just tell me what you’re getting at.”

  “Both men were officers in the U-boat service.” Entwhistle’s voice was low and deliberate.

  “No such thing as coincidence.” Sinclair, who felt a sudden flash of vindication in heading toward Lancaster. “A good first step, but we need more than that.”

 
“I’m not finished yet. Fassbaden and Bruckner graduated the unterseeboot academy at Flensburg together. They served on different vessels until April, 1945, when they were both slated for a secret mission. No details beyond that, but it connects them rather well, wouldn’t you say?”

  “No such thing as coincidence,” Sinclair repeated. “How can we use it?”

  Entwhistle chuckled. “Try this: I have a Richard and Margaret Bruckner living on Foxshire Drive in Lancaster.”

  “Any other Bruckners in this town?”

  “None.”

  “Put that address into the GPS. That’s where we’re going to wrap this thing up.”

  Entwhistle began punching in the correct digits. “Do you foresee extreme methods?”

  Sinclair eased out a breath. “Probably…”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Dex

  “Hold it…” said Dex. “You left an atomic bomb under the Greenland Shelf? And—you left it hot?”

  “That is correct,” said Bruckner. “You see now why I wanted to speak to you?”

  Dex grabbed the remains of his bourbon, poured it down his throat, but barely felt it. This whole story was getting way too strange now. “I don’t know how those things work—is it dangerous? After all this time?”

  The captain shrugged, shook his head. “I have no idea. I was hoping you would.”

  “Me?” Dex shook his head, still trying to wrap his thoughts around this latest piece of the story.

  Tommy nudged him softly. “Any way we can find out?”

  “We’re going to need to talk to the right people,” said Dex. “This is so out of our league…”

  Jason moved to put a hand on his shoulder. “Opa, this is crazy, man. You’re not kidding us, are you?”

  Bruckner looked at him with irritation. “I may be old, but I am not a…a nut. Of course it is true.”

  “Why didn’t you ever say anything? Till now?” His grandson looked embarrassed, panicked.