Above him in the gloom he saw a faint rectangle of light appear as they passed beneath the base and then he saw his men ascending up toward the rear dock. Veer adjusted his ballast and began to rise as he kicked his fins and accelerated toward the surface.
‘Get that rig set up, now!’
Riggs yelled his warning as he jumped down onto the rear dock and hurried across to the tent. Inside, Sully was attaching a C4 charge to the side of the Black Knight, his face hidden inside a biohazard suit as he backed out and re-sealed the tent behind him. Hannah stepped down onto the dock and watched as they prepared the base to defend against Veer’s men.
‘Enemy!’
Sully pointed at the water, which until moments ago had been as smooth as silk. Now, ripples of motion could be seen expanding outward in concentric circles, disturbances from below the surface rippling the water.
‘I don’t see any bubbles,’ Hannah said.
‘Closed breathing apparatus, Special Forces kit,’ Sully explained, and then called a warning in a harsh whisper to Riggs. ‘They’re coming up!’
The SEALs filtered back off the dock toward the hatch. Even as they did so, Hannah saw
that Sully had attached the C4 charges to the surface of Black Knight itself and she cried out a warning to Riggs.
‘Amy said that the device might react to high-intensity sound! You blow that charge, you might set the thing off!’
‘Priorities,’ Riggs replied with a tight grin. ‘If Veer’s men come up through here they’ll overrun us and any worries we might have about Black Knight will be history.’
‘Chandler said that this thing melted the flesh off people,’ Hannah insisted as she grabbed his arm. ‘I call that a damned priority!’
Riggs looked at her, his gaze buried deep into her eyes.
‘Not your call to make,’ he growled back. ‘You don’t like it, then get the hell off the dock and away somewhere safe. Our people will be here in minutes and I don’t intend to miss the ride!’
‘There won’t be a ride if that thing activates!’
‘Good, because if this thing is so lethal it’ll take out all of Veer’s men!’
Riggs pushed her aside and Hannah backed off as she watched the SEALs set up their firing positions inside the main hatch. Ethan had remained in the command center, helping Saunders maintain a steady rate of fire on Veer’s main force, and she wished desperately that he were here now to help convince Riggs to shut off the charge.
‘Are you getting inside or what?!’ Riggs demanded of her.
Hannah looked at the charge on Black Knight and she knew that she couldn’t risk it blowing them all to hell. She launched herself off the stairwell and down onto the dock.
‘Ford, get away from there!’
Hannah ran for the Black Knight, and then all at once she realized that she was too late as four figures broke the surface of the water, ugly black assault rifles pointing at her as the entire cavern erupted to the sound of deafening gunfire.
Veer’s men broke free of the water just above him, and almost immediately he saw bullets zipping trails of bubbles through the water as they came under attack, heard the muted rattle of machine gun fire as they fired back. Veer pulled his rifle carefully off his back and hesitated beneath the surface, watching as his soldiers fired at their assailants up on the docks.
One of them twisted violently in the water as his head snapped back, a cloud of scarlet blood billowing in the water as he was hit in the face and killed instantly. His body rotated in the water to lay flat on its back with limbs extended, and Veer kicked for it as he reached the surface, using the dead body as a shield.
Veer broke the surface and opened fire on two Navy SEAL gunmen huddled in a narrow hatchway above the dock. Even as he fired he saw four of his men clamber up onto the dock and hurl grenades at the hatch.
‘Grenade!’
The scream went up from one of the SEALs and they vanished into the corridor and slammed the hatch shut. The two grenades bounced off the closed blast door and detonated, blowing it open again. The blasts were deafeningly loud as Veer’s men ducked to avoid the shrapnel burst from the weapons, chunks of metal zipping through the chamber in all directions. Veer ducked behind the corpse of his soldier before he kicked for the dock and hauled himself out of the water.
Veer turned to look at the biohazard tent and the strange object contained within, a dull black bell-shaped structure. ‘Secure it!’ he bellowed.
The troops swarmed over the object, two of them bursting in through the tent entrance. Veer saw them creep up to the object, their weapons held before them as they reached out to open the interior flap of the tent, and then he saw Hannah Ford hiding beneath the stairwell, crouched with her hands over her ears as she squinted and turned away from Black Knight.
‘No!’ Veer yelled at his men.
A sudden, deafening blast erupted from within the object and Veer ducked and turned aside as from the corner of his eye he saw their heads torn from their necks in a cloud of flame and smoke that ripped through the tent’s transparent plastic.
The tent collapsed around the object, the two bodies of the dead soldiers slumping against it as blood pulsed from the ragged remains of their necks. Two thumps from inside the tent echoed through the dock as their heads bounced on the unforgiving dock beside them.
Veer, his hands clamped over his ears to prevent the blast from bursting his eardrums, saw Hannah Ford break from cover and dash to the hatch.
‘They booby trapped it!’ somebody shouted.
‘Congratulations, genius!’ Veer roared as he pointed to the base door. ‘Get that open! Whatever was inside this thing has likely gone with them!’
The soldiers rushed up to the door of the base, even as Veer’s radio crackled. ‘General, we’ve got company!’
Veer heard a blast of gunfire distort the line as he bellowed his response. ‘What’s going on out there?!’
‘The Navy’s here sir! They’ve got a submarine!’
Veer glared at the door of the rear of the base and realized that he’d been duped. If the submarine surfaced then reinforcements would flood the base and this would all be over — he’d be kissing goodbye to his fortune. He yelled his reply.
‘Drop charges into the water and scare them into staying deep! We’re on our way!’
He was about to make for the door to the main base when a strange vibration caught his attention. Suddenly, he realized that the chamber was shaking softly, and slowly his men fell silent as they all turned to look at the Black Knight.
The strange hieroglyphic text around the base of the object was glowing a bright electric blue, like a halo that was growing in intensity with every passing second. Veer squinted as a piercing pain struck his eardrums and he whirled away. Nausea wrenched his stomach and he staggered sideways and vomited onto the dock, his vision blurring and the entire dock trembling as though struck by an earthquake.
Through blurred eyes he saw and heard his men staggering about and crying out in agony as the emanations from the Black Knight grew in intensity. The water of the dock rippled and swirled in angular peaks, like a model of an impossibly uniform mountain range, and Veer grabbed at his facemask as he hurled himself toward the water.
To his left, alongside Black Knight, one of his men’s agonized cries was twisted to a new and unbearable crescendo as his flesh seemed to melt off his bones, his wetsuit bubbling as though made from boiling oil. Veer saw the man’s face collapse in upon itself as the chamber’s walls shivered and chunks of ice began spilling from the walls and crashing into the dock.