—while the other prepares the portable MEMS unit for neural placement.
“The achievement of your goal is assured the moment you commit yourself to it.”
—Mack R. Douglas
“That is my ambition, to have killed more people—more helpless people than any man or woman who has ever lived.”
—Jane Toppan, Massachusetts nurse who confessed to murdering thirty-one people
“We shall go down in history as the greatest statesmen of all time, or as the greatest criminals.”
—Joseph Geobbels, Nazi propaganda minister
CHAPTER 31
Southern Ocean/Antarctica
It is a netherworld of darkness and ice.
The surface of this once-mighty sea is now a frozen landscape, a surface so inhospitable that surviving within its fury, even for a few minutes, would require a space suit. Infinite shapes rise upon this barren ice desert, shapes that cause the katabatic wind to howl as it whips unmercifully across the alien horizon. Bergs—floating mountains of ice—remain locked in place by the coming of winter, their jagged, mountainous tops standing in rigid defiance against the cruel elements.
Beneath this chaos of pack ice lies an ominous liquid world. More underwater cave than ocean, it is a labyrinth of ice and sea—pitch-dark and silent—save for the ghostly glow of the bergs and the occasional echo of thunder as their roots grind the frigid seafloor.
Within this frigid realm glides the Los Angeles-class attack sub, USS Scranton. Moving in seven hundred feet of water, she continues south by southwest at a three-knot crawl.
“Dammit!” Michael Flynn grits his teeth in frustration. “Conn, sonar, another wall of ice, a thousand yards dead ahead.”
“All stop.”
“All stop, aye, sir.” Kelsey Walker’s knuckles are white as he grips the wheel. The nerve-wracked twenty-year-old helmsman is maneuvering the sixty-nine-hundred-ton boat almost blindly through a seemingly never-ending maze of ice that is progressively tightening all around them. We’re moving too close to the continent. We’ll never find our way out of here.
Tom Cubit’s face is oily with perspiration. He joins his XO at the navigation table, where Commander Dennis is charting their progress on a map of Antarctica. “Bo, you were on board the Hawkbill when she went on her Arctic expeditions—”
“The Arctic sea is a day in the tropics compared to this mess.”
“How much farther can we follow Goliath beneath this pack ice?”
“I don’t know. According to our charts, we should be within forty miles of the Eastern Antarctic Ice Sheet. Problem is, the sea is shoaling and we’re entering a logjam of icebergs. Maneuvering through this shit’ll be like crawling through an uncharted cave. We’ll have to hug the bottom, and the ride’s going to be rough. There’s lots of variation in water density owing to all that fresh water melting into the sea, and maintaining neutral buoyancy’s going to be a bitch. Of course, there’s a good chance we could get so lost that we won’t be able to find our way out until summer.”
“Summer will be coming pretty soon if Goliath detonates those nukes.”
“Understood.”
Cubit presses his grandfather’s gold pocket watch to his lips as he studies the map. Scranton’s position is marked in green. A red mark to the southeast indicates the last “best-guess” position of the Goliath. The USS Virginia is closing from the southeast, the USS Texas from the southwest. The Seawolf and Connecticut are closing the gap to the northwest, all of America’s attack ships designated in blue.
Commander Dennis circles his finger around the blue dots. “The fleet’s better equipped and much faster than us. While we’ve been plodding along, they’ve been closing the net on the Goliath.”
“Yes, but at what cost? If we can hear them coming, you can bet the farm Covah hears them, too.” Cubit’s eyebrows raise. “But … can he hear us?”
“Sorry?”
“It’s like you said. Old Ironsides here has been slipping around icebergs, plodding along at two to four knots for the last seven hours. Covah may have passed us, but he probably didn’t hear us. I say we keep that advantage.”
“You lost me, Skipper.”
“Look at the map. Covah can’t keep heading south, at some point he needs to change course and move away from the continent.”
“I get it. Instead of chasing the tiger, you want to let the rest of the fleet flush him out—”
“—while we lie in wait … exactly. Now, if you were Covah, which direction would you run?”
The XO studies the map. “Virginia’s the closest threat, but with Seawolf, Connecticut, and the two CVBG’s bearing down from the west, I’d head either north or east.”
“Agreed.”
“It’s a big ocean, even with all this ice. We’ll need to get a clean shot as close as possible to neutralize those antitorpedo torpedoes.”
Cubit points to the Virginia’s location on the map. “If Virginia can engage the Goliath before Covah makes his run, it might give us a chance to maneuver into position. Everything after that is a crapshoot.” Cubit leans in closer to his XO. “Bo, things could get dicey real quick, especially with all this ice. I want you to take over at the helm.”
“Aye, sir.”
Aboard the Goliath
Gunnar kicks again, snapping the last of the bed leg’s screws from its iron frame.
Rocky lifts the end of the freed-up frame and slips her handcuffs away from the bunk, holding it up for Gunnar to follow suit. “Okay, now what?”
He studies the watertight door, then scans the cabin.
A sudden lurch sends a sickening feeling into the pit of his stomach.
Rocky feels it, too. “We’re rising—fast!”
The monstrous stingray ascends, the sharp rows of reinforced titanium spikes on its raised spine punching through the six-foot ceiling of pack ice like nails through glass.
Through heavy lids, an inebriated David Paniagua gazes out the scarlet viewport. Massive chunks of ice have piled around the window, obscuring most of his view. A harsh howling wind pounds the Lexan, leaving behind icy diamond dust.
“Sorceress, I didn’t lie. I am your creator. You need me, goddamn it … don’t you ignore me, you—you bitch!”
Eight of the twenty-four vertical missile silo hatches atop the Goliath’s spine pop open. Warm air rises out of the silos, fogging into the frigid night,
—followed by a dense white smoke.
On the overhead display screen, a countdown begins.
10 …9 …8 …
A throbbing, baritone growl rattles the ship.
7 …6 …5 …
Gunnar and Rocky hold each other.
4 …3 …2 …
David drops to his knees and weeps.
1 …
A thunderous roar reverberates across the frozen horizon as the nose cone of the 130,000-pound, three-stage solid-propellant rocket pokes out from its silo and climbs into the dark winter sky, its flame casting eerie shadows across the fragmented seascape of ice.