'I'm in the other sub. Put your exterior lights on so I can see where you are.'
Schofield did so.
At which moment Knight's voice said, 'Oh, fuck me . . .'
'What?'
'Do you have power?' Knight said quickly.
Schofield tried his instrument panel. No response. 'I have air, but no propulsion. Why? What is it? Can't you just come and get me?'
'There's no way I can make it in time.'
'In time? In time for what? What's the problem?'
'It's a . . . uh . . . very big one . . .'
'What?'
'Look up, Captain.'
Schofield peered up through the top dome of his mini-submarine.
And saw the hull of the supertanker—impossibly huge—gliding steadily down through the water above him, freefalling through the Channel waters like the moon falling out of the sky . . . its colossal mass heading straight for him.
Schofield swallowed at the awesome sight: 100,000 tons of pure supertanker was about to land right on top of his tiny submarine.
Its bulk was so vast, so immense, that it generated a deep vibrating rrmmmmmm as it moved down through the water.
'Now you don't see that every day,' Schofield said to himself. 'Knight!'
'I can't make it in time!' Knight yelled in frustration.
'Shit,' Schofield said, looking left and right.
Options! his mind screamed. He couldn't swim away from the tanker. At 1000 feet long and 200 feet wide, it was just too big. He'd never get out from under it in time.
The only other alternative was to stay here and be crushed to death.
Some choice. Certain death or certain death.
But if that was all there was, then at least he might be able to achieve something before death came.
And so on the bottom of the English Channel, Shane Schofield keyed his satellite mike.
'Book! How are you doing over there in New York?'
'We own the Ambrose, Scarecrow. All enemy troops are down. We're at the control console now, and I've plugged the satellite uplink into it. I have the time as 1152. You've got eight whole minutes to disarm this thing.'
Schofield saw the supertanker falling through the water above him—a silent freefalling giant. At its current speed, it would hit the bottom in less than a minute.
'You might have eight minutes, Book, but I don't. I have to disarm those missiles now.'
And so he pulled his CincLock-VII unit from its waterproof pouch and hit its satellite uplink. The unit came to life:
sat-link: connect 'ambrose-049'~uplink connection made.
activate remote system.
missile launch sequence in progress.
press 'enter' to initiate disarm sequence.
first protocol (proximity): satisfied.
initiate second protocol.
The red and white circles from the New York launch ship's missile control console appeared on Schofield's screen.
And with the mighty hull of the Talbot thundering down through the great blue void above him, Schofield started the disarm sequence.
The supertanker was gathering speed.
Falling, falling . . .
Schofield's moves became faster.
The supertanker was eighty feet above him.
A red circle blinked, Schofield punched it.
Sixty feet. . .
Fifty feet. . .
The noise of the falling supertanker grew louder—rrmmmmmm.
Forty feet. . .
Thirty feet. . .
Schofield hit the last red circle. The display blinked:
SECOND PROTOCOL (RESPONSE PATTERN): SATISFIED. THIRD PROTOCOL (CODE ENTRY): ACTIVE. PLEASE ENTER AUTHORIZED DISARM CODE.
Twenty feet. . .
The water all around his little submarine darkened dramatically, consumed by the shadow of the supertanker.
Schofield entered the Universal Disarm Code: 131071. Fifteen feet. . . The screen beeped:
THIRD PROTOCOL (CODE ENTRY): SATISFIED. AUTHORIZED DISARM CODE ENTERED. MISSILE LAUNCH ABORTED.
And as he waited for the end—the true end; the end that he physically could not escape—Schofield closed his eyes and thought about his life and people who had been in it:
He saw Libby Gant smiling that thousand-watt smile, saw her kissing him tenderly—saw Mother Newman shooting hoops on her garage basketball court, saw her big wide grin on her big wide face—and tears welled in his eyes.
That there were still missiles to disarm somehow didn't bother Schofield. Someone else would have to solve that this time.
When it came, the end came swiftly.
Ten seconds later, the supertanker MV Talbot hit the bottom of the English Channel with an earth-shaking, earth-shuddering boom.
It landed right on top of Schofield's stricken ASDS and crushed it in a single pulverising instant.
I
The thing was, Schofield wasn't in the sub when it happened.
Seconds before the Talbot hit the bottom—when it was barely twelve feet off the seabed, its shadow looming over the mini-sub, and Schofield was lost in his thoughts—a dull metallic clunk was heard hitting the outside of his ASDS.
Schofield snapped to look out the windows and saw a Maghook attached to the metal exterior of his little submarine, its rope stretching away across the ocean floor, disappearing into the darkness to the side of the falling supertanker.
Knight's voice exploded in his ear: 'Schofield! Come on! Move! Move! Move!'
Schofield was electrified into action.
He took a breath and hit the 'hatch' button.
The hatch irised open and water gushed into the sunken mini-submarine. It took barely two seconds for it to completely fill the sub, and suddenly Schofield was outside, moving fast, grabbing the Maghook attached to the sub's flank.
No sooner had he clutched it than Knight—at the other end of the rope—hit the hook's demagnetise switch and the Maghook's rope began to reel itself in quickly.
Schofield was yanked across the ocean floor at phenomenal speed—the falling supertanker looming above him, its great endless hull hovering over his body like the underside of a planet, while a foot below him, the sandy ocean floor zoomed by at dizzying speed.
And then abruptly Schofield emerged from beneath the supertanker, his feet sliding out from under it just as the gigantic vessel
hit the bottom of the English Channel with a singular reverberating boom that sent sand and silt billowing out in every direction, consuming Schofield in a dense underwater cloud.
And waiting for him in that cloud—sitting atop the second ASDS, breathing from a new Pony Bottle and holding Gant's Maghook in his hands—was Aloysius Knight.
He handed Schofield the Pony Bottle and Schofield breathed its air in deeply.
Within a minute, the two of them were inside Knight's mini-sub. Knight repressurised the sub, expunged it of seawater.
And then the two warriors rose through the depths of the English Channel, a short silent journey that ended with their little yellow sub breaching the storm-riddled surface—where it was assaulted by crashing waves and the blinding glare of brilliant halogen spotlights: spotlights that belonged to the Black Raven hovering low over the water, waiting for them.
AIRSPACE ABOVE THE ENGLISH CHANNEL 1805 HOURS LOCAL TIME (1205 HOURS E.S.T USA)
The Black Raven shot through the sky, heading south over the English Channel.