“Sir-” Ahana was back at the first monitor. “Look at the gate!”
“The gates are shrinking!”
“Are you sure?” Foreman held the earpiece tighter against his head to hear over the commotion in the War Room.
“The gates are shrinking,” Conners repeated. “I’ve got the latest imagery. Definitely growing smaller. There was some activity near the western edge of the Bermuda Triangle gate- what I’m not sure- but the damn thing is retreating. Fast.”
“They did it,” Foreman didn’t quite believe it. “They did it,” he repeated, as if by saying the words out loud, it made it true.
“The Glomar has been uncovered,” Conners said.
Foreman reached forward and picked up the SATPhone that linked him to the ship.
“Glomar, this is Foreman.” He waited a few seconds then repeated the call. There was a brief burst of static, then Ariana’s voice, very faint, came back over the link.
“I think they’re all dead on the ship.”
“What’s your status?” Foreman asked.
“I’m fine,” Ariana answered, “but the Glomar is drifting, so I’m drifting with it.”
““I’ll get someone to it ASAP. And Deepflight?”
“It’s just reappeared on my sonar, coming up out of the Milwaukee Depth. I’m going to try to ping it with sonar to bring it to me. What the hell is going on?”
“They did it,” Foreman said. “The gates are shrinking! They must have found the shield and used it.”
“Oh shit,” Conners’ voice in his earpiece immediately doused his growing optimism.
“What?”
“We’ve got a bogey on SOSUS. Just uncovered by the Bermuda Triangle gate shrinking. It’s the Wyoming!”
“Location?” Foreman demanded.
“South side of the gate. It’s moving west.”
Foreman looked up at the status board. The closest warship to that location was the Seawolf. He spun his seat toward his naval liaison. “Get me the Seawolf ASAP!”
“We’ve picked it up on the hydrophone,” Captain McCallum told Foreman. “It’s the only sensor we’ve got that’s working right now. Wait one-” his XO, Commander Barrington was signaling to him. “What is it?”
“Wyoming is going to launch depth. She’s flooding her missile tubes.”
“Jesus,” McCallum whispered. “Mister Foreman, Wyoming is preparing to launch. We are heading to engage.” He put the SATPhone down.
“Flank speed straight at the target,” McCallum ordered. “Range to target?”
Barrington shrugged. “Best guess is about two miles.”
With all their computers down, every active device the billion dollar submarine had to find and acquire targets was also down. Not only that, but they couldn’t then program in the necessary information into their torpedoes or cruise missiles. Not only was Seawolf sailing blind, she was unable to target her weapons. McCallum had already considered what to do if this situation arose and he immediately picked up a different microphone.
“AWACS Eagle this is Seawolf.”
“This is Eagle.”
“Do you have the Wyoming’s location?”
“I’m linking you to the NSA,” Eagle said. “Hold one.”
A new voice- a woman’s came over the radio. “Seawolf, this is Conners, NSA. According to SOSUS the Wyoming is one point six miles north of your location. Moving west at fifteen knots. I’m giving the coordinates to surface vessels to your west to target with cruise missiles.”
Barrington held a hand up, getting McCallum’s attention. “No more flooding noise. All launch tubes must be flooded.”
“You don’t have time for that!” McCallum yelled. “Her tubes are flooded. She’ll launch in less than a minute.”
He dropped the mike. McCallum stepped next to the firing platform. He pulled a key from around his neck. He flipped open a red cover and inserted it. “XO?”
Barrington’s face was white. He pulled a key from around his neck and inserted it in another hole.
“On three,” McCallum said. “One, two, three.” The two men turned their keys. Lights on the panel went from yellow to flashing red.
“We have weapons armed status,” Barrington announced.
McCallum let go of the key. “Weapons officer, fire tubes one through four! Spread pattern, range four thousand meters. Now!”
“Yes, sir. Firing one. Firing two. Firing three. Firing four.”
The Seawolf shuddered slightly as the four MK-48 torpedoes left the ship. A spool of wire trailed out from each, normally allowing the torpedoes to be directed to their target by the submarines sophisticated targeting systems. Right now, they simply churned through the water on a straight course, spreading apart from each the further they got from the Seawolf.
“One thousand meters,” the weapons officer announced, checking his stopwatch.
“Sir-” Barrington began to speak then stopped.
“Two thousand meters.”
“We’re doing what we have to,” McCallum said.
“Yes, sir,” Barrington acknowledged. Every eye in the control room was on the weapons officer and the ticking stopwatch in his hand.
“I can hear missile doors opening on the Wyoming,” the hydrophone man announced. “She’s going to launch.”
“Three thousand meters.”
“No, she isn’t,” McCallum said. He reached down and hit the firing command button linked to the four torpedoes.
Four nuclear warheads exploded, a thousand meters from each other, three thousand meters from the Seawolf. Everything, to include the Wyoming and the Seawolf within five miles was destroyed.
EPILOGUE
Dane stood on the platform that ringed the top of the derrick, looking out past the Glomar to the open sea. There was a slight breeze and the water was calm. The sun was coming up in the east, a glowing orange ball on the horizon, foretelling good weather for the day.
He heard someone coming up the metal stairs, but he didn’t turn. He had sensed Ariana’s presence coming up the stairs long before he heard her arrival. A new crew had been flown in by the navy the previous day and pulled up Deeplab and the docked Deepflight. There was no sign of the original crew of the Glomar except for numerous blood trails, mainly centered around the well-pool. More casualties to add to a list that was approaching a half-million, Dane thought. Iceland was now only a dozen or so active volcanoes poking above the surface of the North Atlantic. Puerto Rico was still trying to clean up the damage from the tsunamis. The sub pens at Groton were hot and a large evacuation had taken place for miles all around. The Seawolf was gone, with no trace of the wreckage although the navy was still looking for both it and the remains of the Wyoming.
“Foreman wants us back in Washington,” Ariana said. “He says Nagoya has some interesting hypotheses about the nature of the gates he wants us to look at.”
“Can he keep them closed forever?” Dane asked.
“I don’t know. From what Foreman said- and he was being very guarded- Nagoya has an idea how the gates work.”
Dane didn’t turn. “Where are all the people?”
“What people?”
“From the ships and planes we saw in the graveyard? From Deeplab?”
“On the other side,” Ariana said.
“And what does that mean?” Dane asked.
“We’ll have to go to Washington to see what Nagoya and Foreman have come up with,” Ariana said.
Dane shook his head. “The answer isn’t in Washington. And this isn’t over. All we did was repeat history. We shut the gates but they’ll open up again. Next time, maybe we need to open the gates and take the war to the other side.”