“Then who does?” Jimmy asked, looking over her shoulder, noting the indicators.
“I have no idea.”
Dane could now see the outline of southeast Asia below him. It grew larger at a tremendous pace, the shoreline expanding out of his view, only dark green below. He forced himself to slow down, not knowing how he was able to do it, but he could focus now, and he could see the faintest traces of a rectangle in the green below. And there, just off to his right, was the golden beam.
Dane adjusted, moving toward the beam, until he was going down, just parallel to it.
“Oh, man,” Freed said. The golden ball was now solid. He knew this one would take them all out. “Dane!” Freed shook the other man but there was no response.
Dane could now see Angkor Kol Ker below him. The golden beam just to his right. The KH-12 was inert mass now. All systems had been shut down and there was nothing to attract the attention of the power of the Shadow.
Dane gave it one last nudge.
The KH-12 weighed 18 tons, over 36,000 pounds. The solar panels had sheared off early on in the descent through the atmosphere, but their loss scarcely diminished the craft’s weight. It smashed into the top of the Prang at a speed of over 4,000 miles an hour. The mass times velocity equaled an explosion equivalent of the bomb Michelet had dropped to clear the landing zone.
Dane snapped his eyes open, He heard yelling around him, then the thunderous crack of an explosion. A fireball consumed the Prang and out of it flew large chunks of stone. Dane rolled over on his side, next to the others who were huddling behind several blocks. Dane peered up through the dust and debris. The Prang, and the golden beam, were gone.
“It’s stopping!” Jimmy was staring at his screen in disbelief. “It’s stopping!”
“What about the other sources?” Conners asked.
Jimmy shook his head. “They’re stopping too. We did it!”
“What did we do?” Conners muttered to herself.
Foreman was watching the data forwarded from the NSA. He understood it, but he didn’t allow himself to let go and feel the relief yet. The propagation through space had stopped but the Gates still existed. Isolated now, but that only brought them back to where they had been at the start.
“We’ve got a second contact!” Sills relayed to Captain Rogers. “Right behind the first one. Big. Damn big.”
“What is it?”
“Too big to be a sub. Jesus, it’s six times bigger than a Typhoon.”
Rogers knew a Typhoon was the largest submarine in the world, the pride of the Russian ballistic missile fleet and displacing over 26,500 tons when submerged. Almost two football fields long and almost fifty feet wide, a Typhoon was twice the size of his own submarine. But the thought of something six times bigger than that staggered him.
“Arm all weapon systems,” he ordered. “Bring us in closer.”
Rogers glanced around the operations center. The boat’s chaplain was moving through, quietly talking to men, giving last rites.
“Now would be a good time for that way out your friend talked about,” Ariana said, her hands still working on stemming the flow of blood from Beasley’s stomach wound. The ground under their feet buckled, staggering everyone the group, sending them searching for handholds.
“Oh, shit,” Freed muttered as the earthquake stopped for a moment. He pointed out from the wall.
The stone floor under the moat had split and cracked, the water pouring through, draining out. On the far side, the Naga was rising up, leaning forward, following the disappearing water with seven sets of eyes. It slithered into the moat.
Freed settled the stock of his M-16 into his shoulder and aimed.
“There!” Dane yelled, pointed to the right where Flaherty had appeared and disappeared. Another black hole was opening. Circular, about eight feet in diameter, it shivered a foot above the once more heaving ground.
Dane reached down and grabbed one of Beasley’s arms. “Let’s go!”
“In there?” Freed still had his weapon pointed at the Naga, which was now halfway across, less than two hundred meters away and moving quickly.
“You want to stay?” Dane asked as Carpenter grabbed the other arm and Ariana kept the pressure on the wound. They moved toward the black hole.
Freed fired an entire magazine on full automatic at the Naga. The only effect it seemed to have was to increase the serpent’s speed.
Freed yelled. “Move people, move.” He backed up, slamming another magazine home.
Dane reached the hole. Together, he and Carpenter lifted Beasley and thrust him through. Dane waved his hand, like a gentleman offering a lady the door, and Carpenter jumped through, Ariana following. He turned to Freed who was firing again.
The Naga was less than forty feet away, rising up, heads darting. “Come on!” Dane yelled as he jumped.
His body felt strange as he passed into the circle, like going into a thick, jellylike field, and being pressed through. Then with a snap he was in open air again. He landed on a metal grating, stumbling into Ariana who was just standing back up.
Freed’s face appeared, then the rest of his body.
“What the-” Freed began when the words turned into a scream as one of the snake heads came through the hole, the jaw snapping shut on Freed’s left arm. Freed’s eyes were wide open, the scream ending in a breathless gasp.
Dane grabbed Freed’s right arm as the creature began drawing Freed back through the hole.
Suddenly the black circle cycled shut, slicing through the snake head just behind the eyes, the cleanly severed head falling onto the metal grating.
“Get it off of me!”
Dane looked about. They were in a narrow compartment with metal walls and numerous pipes running along the ceiling. He saw a fire ax clipped to wall and grabbed it. Sliding the handle between the jaws, he levered them open, the fangs releasing Freed’s mangled arm, blood spurting from a severed artery. Dane whipped his belt off and wrapped it around the limb, just above the spurting red. He cinched it down and the bleeding slowed to a trickle.
Freed lay back against the metal wall, his face pale. “Where are we?”
Dane looked about, more slowly this time. He noted the name stenciled on the handle of the ax he had used. “We’re on the Scorpion.”
The hatch into the compartment suddenly opened and a sailor stuck his head. He blinked at the scene in front of him. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’ve got to talk to the Captain!” Dane said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Sonar has identified the first object, sir,” Commander Sills reported. “It’s the USS Scorpion.”
Rogers stared at his executive office in disbelief. Every submariner knew the story of the Scorpion, lost in deep water in 1968. He shook off his shock. “And the second?”
“Not a clue, sir, but it’s chasing down the Scorpion.”
“Move to engage the second.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
The Wyoming’s crew was dying but they had enough for one last battle. The sub raced toward the Scorpion, which was moving very slowly, They didn’t have a clue as to what the second, large object could be, but Captain Rogers was determined to protect the Scorpion at all costs. He had no idea how a submarine reported crushed in the depths of the ocean over forty years ago could have suddenly appeared, but if there was the slightest chance any of the crew were alive, he felt the sacrifice his own crew had already made would be worth it.