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.”
“We copy.”
The red-haired man with the Scottish accent moved forward to get a better look. “Bloody hell! What the fuck is this place?”
Sinclair said nothing. He could only stare at the strange place in defiant respect.
“The area is clean,” said the pilot as he consulted a variety of displays concerned with the presence of any other vessels or entities. “No activity detected.”
“Okay,” said Sinclair, turning to face Erich. “We move to the next phase, Captain Bruckner.”
Erich stared at him, said nothing.
“Captain Bruckner, you will now lead us to the place where you left the nuclear device.”
“What if I refuse?” He already knew the answer to this, but needed to hear them articulate it.
The red-haired man smoothed his mustache, smiled. “Come on, now, Cappy… surely you must’ve realized why we’ve bothered to bring along that numbskull friend of yours, now don’t you?”
Erich understood all too well. There was a good chance he and Tommy would be eliminated regardless of his actions. But as any submariner will tell you — even a small chance is better than none at all. He nodded, said nothing.
The pilot vacated his seat to Erich as Sinclair assumed full control of the submersible. The view through the eye-like bubble port was slightly distorted by the curvature of the thick plastic, imparting an even more surreal aspect to the strange subterranean interior.
“Which way, Captain?”
“I need to get myself oriented properly.” Erich pointed to the digital displays. “Is there a map you put on there with our position?”
Sinclair said nothing, but he keyed in a command which produced a CGI map on one of the screens. Erich squinted at it as he tried to make the topographical display agree with his memory. The more he looked at the representations, the more familiar it became, and he remembered.
“Very well,” he said. “Do you prefer compass headings or visuals?”
Sinclair remained expressionless. “Whatever works for you.”
Erich supplied a heading which angled the vessel across the vast underground sea at a cautious speed. As it closed slowly on the far shore, Erich watched Sinclair, who tried to remain stoic as he regarded the strange landscape. Not much chance of that.
Outside, the surface of the inland sea barely rippled. Bruckner stared at it, looking in the direction where he now remembered they had taken the bomb. There had been a small cove with a shallow shoreline. The dinghy carrying the device had drifted easily to a place where they’d dragged it up to the soft shore.
The minutes passed in a silence punctuated only by the occasional narrative of Sinclair to his relay contact called Topside. As the distance between the shoreline and their vessel closed, more details became discernible, but Erich could not see anything that looked like the wooden boat they had beached so long ago.
The rising walls of the great cavern drew into sharper definition as Sinclair eased within 30 meters of the shore. He tested his depth with sonar and advanced with caution.
“Do you see anything familiar, Captain?”
Erich shook his head. He had been certain this was close enough for a visual confirmation. Was it possible the device had been found sometime in the past?