“Agreed,” Secretary Ayers says. “Naval Ops has a dozen search-and-rescue vessels heading into the battle zone, including the USS Parche, which can use its remote cameras to analyze the wreckage. We need to maintain silence about this incident, at least until we’ve gathered sufficient information to formulate a plan of action.”
“And how do we protect our search-and-rescue boats?” Nunziata asks.
“Our P-3 Orion sub hunters have orders to scour the sea with sonar buoys to protect the ships within the target zone. We’ll need to alert our submarine commanders, but I concur with General Jackson. Let’s keep a tight lid on this thing until we can at least assess the damage, inside and out.”
The Bear looks his daughter squarely in the eye. “In the meantime, Commander Jackson will begin assembling her old design team.”
“My old team?”
“That’s right. I’ve already alerted officials at NUWC to make arrangements to reopen the Keyport facility. Your people conceived this monster, Commander. Now you’re going to figure out a way to stop it.”
“As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibilities upon the shoulders of God or Nature. We must shoulder it ourselves.”
—Arnold J. Toynbee
“I am prepared to die. After my death, I wish an autopsy on me to be performed to see if there is any mental disorder.”
—Charles Whitman, mass murderer who shot forty-six people from a bell tower at the University of Texas
“I am completely normal. Even while I was carrying out the task of extermination I lived a normal life.”
—Rudolf Hess, Nazi commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp
“I consider myself a normal, average girl.”
—Penny Bjorkland, an eighteen-year-old who murdered a gardener just to see if she could do it
CHAPTER 5
Identity: Stage Two:
I can do more than survive;
I can compete and fulfill more of my needs.
—Deepak Chopra
Atlantic Ocean
206 nautical miles due west of the Strait of Gibraltar
The titanium-alloy-and-steel beast circles slowly, hovering like a hungry predator above the mountain of twisted metal that had once been the USS Ronald Reagan. The contour of the massive stealth sub is nearly identical to that of Dasyatis americana—the southern stingray. The control room, representing the animal’s head, rises a full two stories above the tip of the flat, triangular bow before tapering back to the elevated titanium-spiked spine, concealing its twenty-four vertical-launch missile silos. The outer hull is black, layered with thousands of acoustic tiles, designed to absorb sound. Concealed within the sheathed, flat curvature of the keel are five immense assemblies, each resembling a lamp shade turned sideways. These are Goliath’s pump-jet propulsors—quiet-running engines that channel the sea rather than churn it like a propeller, enabling the hydrodynamic vessel to achieve tactical speeds and jetlike maneuvers never before realizable by a submarine.
Within the bow of the beast is a full suite of sensors, including optical, thermal, and acoustical arrays, housed on either side of the stingray’s spur. Trailing the leviathan in the shape of a ray’s tail, is a sophisticated towed sonar array that is sensitive enough to detect the sounds of shrimp feeding more than five miles away. Each of these sensors, part of Goliath’s central nervous system, is linked to Sorceress, the components of the biochemical brain occupying a double-hulled, self-contained vault, located within the entire middle deck–forward compartment. This sensitive area remains sealed off from the rest of the ship behind a three-foot-thick steel vault door.
At the current depth, the only structures visible along the ebony hull are two bloodred panels of reinforced, crystalline-enhanced Lexan glass situated like bat’s eyes in the stingray’s raised head. These fifteen-foot-wide, six-foot-high teardrop viewports possess titanium alloy lids that can be quickly sealed to protect the eighteen-inch-thick, pressure-proof glass at a moment’s notice.
Simon Bela Covah stands before one of the scarlet viewports in the Goliath’s control room, gazing into the abyss as his mind wanders the chambers of his own tortured soul. Listen closely and you can hear the whirring of his brain, the gray matter perpetually pounding away in his skull.
Your father was a seafaring man, born in Onega, a port city close to the naval base in Severodvinsk. Your mother worked in a sweatshop sewing buttons on uniforms eight hours a day while caring for your four brothers and sister. You are the youngest of the Covah clan, the runt of the litter, living in a Russian village so remote it is often left off maps. There are no boys your age in the barn-size schoolhouse, but your mother enrolls you anyway, because you learned to read a newspaper when you were only two. You are an oddity even without your flaming red hair, and your only friends are numbers. Most of your teachers predict you will be a great mathematician … if you survive childhood.
The contrast between Covah’s intellectual and physical beauty is startling. Thick rust-colored hairs from his mustache and goatee yield to a patchwork of smooth pinkish flesh just above his mouth. The skin graft rises up to join the triangular metal plate that had been surgically attached to replace the mangled remains of what had been Covah’s right cheekbone.
The thumb and two remaining digits of Covah’s mangled right hand absentmindedly work their way across the right side of his reconstructed face. Simon Covah has no right ear, just a crater of scar tissue that meshes with the rest of his hairless scalp. He is not bald. His head is always kept freshly shaved, a last trace of vanity to prevent the remains of his cinnamon hair from sprouting in unwanted clumps.
The recently increased dosages of chemotherapy have all but eliminated Covah’s need to shave, the poisonous pills reducing the Russian refugee to a mere shadow of his former self.
Thomas Chau approaches. The Chinese engineer clears his throat to get Covah’s attention. “Simon, your computer indicates antisubmarine helicopters are approaching.”
Located dead center, and forward of the conn, is the elevated platform of Central Command, a semicircular configuration of computers originally designed to link Goliath’s brain to its human shipmates. Although the sub is now capable of receiving verbal commands, Covah still prefers the comforts of the Central Command’s perch. Without saying a word, he ascends the five steps and takes his place at the half-moon-shaped console.
High on the forward wall, positioned just below the arched ceiling, is a giant viewing screen linked to Goliath’s sensor array and electro-optics suite. Bordering either side of the screen are sensor orbs—grapefruit-sized “eyeballs” that glow scarlet red when active. Each sensor orb contains internal optical scanners and a microphone and speaker assembly. Located in every department, these eyeballs allow Goliath’s computer brain to visually and acoustically monitor and access nearly every square foot of the sub.