Submerged

by Thomas F Monteleone

  Sinclair smiled. He liked the uncertainty.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Dex

  Portsmouth, New Hampshire

  Ten hours later

  He would have been surprised if his old C.O. had kept him out of the mission, but Dex knew Whitehurst had to throw his weight around to make it happen.

  It was obvious Drabek, the SEAL Commander, didn’t want any part of civilians when the brown matter hit the whirling blades. And being ex-Navy didn’t matter to guys like Drabek. Either you were a SEAL, or you were the rest of the world. Period.

  That’s why Dex was sitting by himself in a ready room by the dock. It was a small room with about 15 chairs with fold-down desk tops. There was a screen along the front wall and a digital projector on at the back. No windows, not even a photo of the President on the wall. He was tired and he was pissed. Even though he’d flown up to the Naval Yard with Drabek and some of his unit in anticipation of joining the party, the final decision had come from the highest offices. Dex would not be allowed into the Dragonfish entering One Eleven with the assault team. The Pentagon and the White House had authorized a classified rescue and recovery mission, which meant Dex had been relegated to observer-status and would be joining Parker Whitehurst at sea. Although Parker had not ruled out going in on the second wave after things had been secured.

  The only civilian going in would be the unfortunate guy they dragooned from MIT’s Nuclear Reactor Lab. Having been the nearest thing to an expert they could grab on short notice, they grabbed. He would be coming in on the same V-22 Osprey that would be taking Dex out to join Admiral Whitehurst and Harry Olmstead, who had flown direct to rendezvous with the USS Cape Cod. It was a LHD, an amphibious assault ship pulled from Atlantic Fleet maneuvers and full-heading it to the coordinates off the Greenland Coast. Based on the sum of Bruckner’s logs and what he’d told Dex, the DoD and the White House had decided they needed a look at whatever was left of the German base, its technology, and whatever they’d unearthed from hell-knew-what civilization.

  Just like the bad guys, they wanted a piece of inter-matter. They wanted to brush their hands across the philosopher’s stone. Dex could save them the trouble because he was one of the only people who not only knew Bruckner still had his piece, but also its location.

  But Dex wasn’t about to let anybody know it for the time being. If he did, the Navy might be less driven to get into the place Werner Heisenberg had called “Triple One.” Which meant, the chances of rescuing Tommy and Erich Bruckner would plummet.

  Better to let things play out, Dex had decided.

  Even though no one was talking about it—because the exact locations of the Navy’s submarines were always ultra-classified—it was apparent to Dex there weren’t any hunter-killers close enough to locate and effectively block the entrance to One Eleven. That had forced the Pentagon and Counter Terror Group to rely on surface vessels and limited range helicopters to get into position.

  The target coordinates were under heavy satellite surveillance and as far as Dex could figure, since no one was really telling him anything, the area remained clear. But that didn’t mean the enemy couldn’t show up at any moment. There was simply no way to know where they were or when they might appear.

  The worst part was the waiting. As the hours dragged past, he’d tried to get some sleep, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Tommy and Bruckner. Where were they? What did the bad guys have planned for them?

  Dex kept asking himself that question even though he had a damned good idea what the answer was. They needed the old man for the same reason the SEALs would have wanted him along—the location of the nuke and the safest way to disarm it. Only one problem: was Bruckner healthy enough to survive it. Dex had no idea how tough all the travel must be on a guy his age, but it had to be plenty brutal.

  And Tommy…

  If Dex knew him even a little bit, his young friend would try something ill-advised as soon as he got the chance. But that wouldn’t be an issue if they’d already killed him. Dex knew it wasn’t much of a stretch to assume something like that, given what they’d done to the Sea Dog. He wished more than anything they’d let him go along under the ice shelf, but he knew there was no chance of it.

  A door opened to his right, and an unlisted man leaned in. “Mr. McCauley? Your ride is here.”

  Getting out of the chair, Dex nodded, then saluted the sailor. He followed his guide down several corridors through a couple turns and a flight of stairs. Commander Drabek was standing by a set of double doors that exited onto a rooftop helipad. He nodded at Dex, gave him a sly grin. “Thanks for all the help, Chief,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it. “And don’t looked so pissed. You’re getting a front-row seat.”

  Dex said nothing.

  He pushed through the door, and walked out into the chilly evening where the VTOL aircraft awaited him. Spring came late to the rocky New Hampshire coastline, and the temperature was dropping steadily as Dex pulled his parka tighter around him. Of course, where they were taking him would make this weather feel tropical.

  There were two men in the cockpit watching him approach their aircraft, and another sailor waiting at the open belly door. As he climbed inside the cabin, the crewman directed him to one of three passenger seats near the front, then clanged the pressure door shut. The rest of the interior was comprised of jumpseats to hold as many as twelve troops.

  Instantly the aircraft’s twin props increased rpms, whining and lifting the Osprey straight up. As its airspeed increased, it started to pitch forward incrementally as the wing and engine assembly rotated into the airfoil position. Within sixty seconds, the craft was ripping northward toward the arctic air.

  As he settled in for what would be a long flight, he replayed Drabek’s comments. Maybe the guy was right. Dex shouldn’t be all that steamed they’d cut him out of the last hand. In these kind of operations. There was that situation called “knowing too much,” and he didn’t want to be in that place. If they thought they’d given you a key to the clubhouse and secret decoder ring, then you were part of them, and they owned you.

  As Dex sat in the belly of the Osprey, a single thought kept whispering though his mind like the passage of a scythe: maybe they already did. Because Dex already knew a lot more than civilians were ever allowed to know.

  That would be very bad news. Despite having very much enjoyed his time in the Navy, he’d called it quits on the military life, and had carved out a nice existence for himself in the civilian world. To think that might all be taken away chilled him.

  He could feel the Osprey reaching altitude as its engines smoothed out, climbing above the turbulent cloud cover. Dex tried to get comfortable in the functional but not accommodating seat. Best thing would be to get a few hours sleep. It was going to be a long ride, and he was starting to feel his old alarm instincts kicking in.

  Never a good sign.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Bruckner

  Greenland Shelf

  A clang! woke him from an uneasy sleep. It was a sound he had known since his earliest days at sea—the latch being thrown on a watertight bulkhead door. But there was one difference, this one had also been locked from the outer corridor.

  Looking up, Erich saw the door swing open to reveal a swarthy merchant seaman, who could be Portuguese or perhaps from a North African country. He banged his hand on the metal wall and gestured for Tommy to come forward.

  “What’s goin’ on?” said the young firefighter, who was sitting up on the edge of his bunk.

  The man said nothing, but reached into his insulated vest and pulled out a pair of plastic restraints.

  Tommy looked at him with mild disgust as he extended his wrists. “What, again? We’re on a boat in the middle of nowhere—I’m not goin’ anywhere, okay?”

  Erich watched the crewman secure Tommy’s hands together, then indicate he should s
tep into the corridor. The seaman pointed at Erich, giving him the same message. As soon as he did so, he saw another crewman waiting for them with two extra greasy-looking parkas. Where were they taking them now?

  “Put. On,” he said.

  A frigid draft of air snaked through the corridor, and Erich gratefully slipped into the heavy, insulated coat with a fur-lined hood. As he’d gotten older, he’d found cold weather increasingly difficult to bear, and the temperature even inside the ship’s passageway was close to intolerable.

  “Where’re we goin’?” said Tommy.

  “Shut. Up. You. Go.” The second crewman looked at him, pushed him forward toward a case of steel stairs leading abovedecks.

  Erich followed him. Feeling the pitch of the deck beneath his feet, as he moved, he felt overwhelmed by memories of gaining his “sea legs” when he was so much younger.

  Within minutes, they had reached the hatch leading to a wide, flat waist deck aft of the fo’c’scle. There were huge steel hatch covers sealing off an array of cargo holds, overlooked by the superstructure of a massive crane. On one of the hatch covers, crewmen were busy rigging a strange-looking boat—surely a submersible craft—to the cargo crane. The sky above the scene was gray and flat, whipped by a blistering, arctic wind.

  Erich shuddered.

  In an eyeblink, the memory of being corralled on the exposed deck of the 5001’s conning tower iced through him. He had never imagined suffering that terrible cold again.

  He stood with Tommy, flanked by two rough-looking seaman, who both appeared to be awaiting further orders. Across the waist deck, a bulkhead door beneath the bridge swung open and two familiar figures emerged—the tall, muscular black man and the shorter red-haired man with the pasty complexion. Erich found them to be an incongruous pair, but that did not keep them from radiating an air of true menace. Especially the smaller, pale-faced man. His dark eyes appeared pressed into his face like raisins in dough, and they regarded everything with a terrible flat gaze that reminded Erich of a shark. The eyes of something capable of killing you without a thought.

  The two men wore jumpsuits under their parkas, and they paused to give the submersible and crane assembly a quick evaluation. Behind them, four men carrying automatic weapons emerged from the bulkhead door. They escorted a thin man wearing horn-rimmed glasses, carrying an aluminum attaché or instrument case. As this second group began boarding the submersible, the black man approached Erich and Tommy.

  “Captain Bruckner,” he said, his deep voice cutting under the wind. “I think you have some unfinished business.”

  Everyone had moved with smooth, quick precision, getting Tommy strapped into a jumpseat along the rear compartment of the small submarine. One of the armed men assisted Erich into a seat in the forward cabin with the huge glass viewports that looked like the bulging eyes of a deep sea predator. His seat was center, middle, behind the two forward positions—one of the armed escorts sat to the left, the surly black man to the right.

  While both men had excellent views through the glass, Erich could duplicate what they saw on one of several screens. The interior of the sub was far roomier and comfortable than he would have ever imagined, and he was coolly regarding the details of its controls when the crane jerked it off the deck and slowly swung it out past the gunwale of the Isabel Marie.

  As the cable payed out, dropping the vessel very slowly into the angry arctic chop, Erich’s stomach resisted the sudden motion. He distracted himself by concentrating on the array of controls and digital display screens, looking to see if he could detect any of its armaments. Such a vehicle had been inconceivable the last time Erich had been beneath the waves.

  Beneath the waves.

  The notion touched a chord deep within him, resonating with memories of the sour-pickle confines of his U-boats. The last time he’d cruised under the cold sea, he’d been a young, young man. Erich shook his head.

  Barely out of boyhood, really. It did not seem possible. Had it really happened like that? Had he ever been so young? And had such boys really been in charge of such killing machines?

  He watched through the glass bubble and also the screens as the submersible slipped deeper into the dead dark sea. Here was a rattle and a loud snap as the crane’s cables and grapples released them, then the crewman in the left seat assumed control by activating four powerful halogen beams to guide their descent.

  The black man touched his throat-mic, spoke into it. “Topside…and Relay, we are a go. Scanners clear. Please advise if your data contradicts that.”

  “Our instruments confirm—clear.” A voice sounded from unseen speakers.

  “Looks like we beat ’em to the punch,” said the pilot.

  The black man shook his head. “Unless they’re already deep under the shelf. Already waiting for us.”

  The pilot smiled. “Well, I think it’s time we found out.”

  Erich watched the black man pull a note pad from his pocket, check it, then enter a few strokes into a keyboard. “Coordinates keyed-in. Going to a-nav…now.”

  For the next ten minutes, no one spoke. All attention remained fixed on the digital screens which displayed a startling variety of real and computer-generated views of the massive shelf of ice under the surface. Erich felt the vessel move with grace and precision in almost total silence and with unimagined speed. He felt a tightening in his gut, and he could almost hear his own pulse pounding behind his ears.

  Could it be possible the U. S. Navy was waiting for them? If so, Erich had no idea how things might go. Of course, if the Navy was not waiting for them, Erich felt equally uncertain what lay ahead.

  “Sinclair, confirm position.” The voice from the speaker startled Erich as much from the breaking of the silence as giving a name to the black man.

  “Approaching the rift,” said Sinclair. “Steady as she goes.”

  Erich stared through the left front viewport. The beams of four powerful lamps probed the dark water and walls of ice. As the submersible dared ever closer, a shadow fell vertically across the shelf.

  A minute passed. Close. The shadow resolved into an absence. A split in the ice. An opening. Another minute. So close now that Erich could see it clearly—an undersea chasm yawning ahead. Revealed so brightly by the halogen beams, the scale of the Greenland Ice Shelf shocked him. He had not remembered the place to be so overwhelming in scope.

  “A-nav to hands-on.” Sinclair nodded to the crewman-pilot, who keyed a touchpad on his control console. Sinclair gripped a joystick that reminded Erich of an oversized version of the video games his grandson used to play.

  As he consulted the sonar display, Sinclair also appraised the distance between the submersible and the ragged, open maw of ice.

  Now the vessel decelerated silently as the walls of jagged ice loomed along the starboard and port sides. The sight of the dangerous passage struck Erich with a renewed respect for his U-boat and its crew, and how they’d run this gauntlet with fearless ignorance and primitive technology.

  He shook his head slowly and the memory faded. He had not anticipated how strongly the images from the past would affect him. It made him think of his old crew—hard-as-nails Kress, the avuncular Massenburg, Ostermann, and so many other young faces that refused to come clear in his mind.

  “Look familiar yet, Captain?” said Sinclair, turning to lean back and face him.

  Anger flared in Erich, and he calmed himself with effort. “Somewhat. My memory…it is not always good.”

  “It was plenty good enough to get us this far.” Sinclair grinned. “And I’m sure we can shake it up a little more.”

  Erich said nothing. He knew why they needed him on this mission.

  They wanted the secrets of Station One Eleven, but they also needed to find the bomb and ensure it presented no threat to their exploration of the ruins.

  Back then, he had no real appreciation of its
destructive power. It wasn’t until years later, on American television, that he saw what such a device could do.

  He had carried it across the Atlantic on the broad shoulders of his boat before casting it out. And now it lay under the ice like a sleeping beast. Did there remain a touch that could awaken its intended fury?

  How had he spent the last sixty years in such complacent ignorance? How had he watched all the newsreels and all the television shows and all the mushroom clouds without shuddering with complete terror at what he’d escaped, what he’d left undone?

  How had he indeed? The thought was like a blade twisting through him.

  Had there been, throughout all that time, a grim understanding?

  “ETA with surface in two minutes.” Sinclair touched his mic. “You copy, Topside?”

  The screens in front of Sinclair were aglow with graphics; a soft beeping emitted from an unseen speaker. Outside, under the probing beams of the vessel, the chambered ice slipped steadily past.

  “Copy that,” said a voice in the speakers.

  The final minutes dragged past.

  “There, look. It’s a little lighter. See it?” said Sinclair’s pilot.

  “Steady now,” said Sinclair. “We’ve got a visual on the surface. Ascending… Stand by.”

  Erich’s gaze held on the panorama beyond the glass bubble port. As the vessel veered upward, a dull, orange-red light from the surface imparted a soft sheen to the barrier they would soon penetrate. He felt his pulse jump, his eyes began to water.

  The submersible punctured the calm surface like a fisherman’s bobber, and as the water streamed away from the curving glass port, Erich felt a soft punch in his bowels as he saw the nightmare landscape take shape all around them. The images and memories ghosted back with such power, such immediacy, it was as if he only departed this place yesterday.

  “We are in. On the surface,” said Sinclair. “You should now have our visual feed, Topside. We are scanning for intruders now.”