Everett faced Jack, and at first, Collins failed to hear his words. He shook his head, and then Carl’s mouth movement started to make sense.
“Jack, come on. We have to get the hell out of here!”
Again, he shook his head and then nodded. “Grab everybody. Charlie, Ryan, help those men. Come on, Swabby, let’s go see if anyone else is alive.”
Around them, the sound of the powerful generators was winding down like some giant turbine. The ship felt as if the power had been drained and she was now starting to sleep after a major tantrum.
As the Royal Marines and Russians worked together, Jack and Carl, followed quickly by Salkukoff, started for the double hatchway. All three barreled past dead men who had either been melted into the deck or electrocuted. A quick estimate counted twenty-two men dead just belowdecks. They all knew there was no rhyme or reason to the extent of the deaths or what had caused them. Some parts of the ship were affected, while others had remained as they always were — solid and unflinching.
As they took the stairs two at a time, they heard the giant generator finally slam to a stop. Then the lights once more went out. This didn’t slow them, as Carl flicked on a powerful flashlight. After five minutes of fighting to get above deck, they were stunned at what greeted them. Dead men were everywhere. Even Salkukoff was taken aback at the power of what just happened. His briefings failed to explain just what the parameters of the old experiment had been. Now he knew. Whoever operated this phase shift system from the ’40s had given themselves a death sentence.
“Good God, Jack. What in the hell happened?”
When Collins didn’t answer, Everett turned and saw what it was that held his attention. The skies to the north, south, east, and west were clear of any cloud cover whatsoever. Hurricane Tildy had vanished as suddenly as it had arrived. The seas were calm and floating debris was the only leftover from the mighty hurricane. But all of this was not the disturbing factor. The ocean was a purplish color. Gone was the sea green of the North Atlantic. In its place, a light violet water world met their amazed gazes as its swells met the hull of the Simbirsk with a mild lapping sound.
Carl nudged Collins and nodded at what was floating to the surface and at their new surroundings. Jack then saw the bodies floating in the waters surrounding Simbirsk. The trail of dead sailors led straight to the USS Shiloh. She was listing heavily to her port side by at least fifteen degrees. There was no crew upon her outer decks. They saw the crashed and burned Seahawk helicopter just outside her hangar. It was a smoking heap of wreckage. Fires were raging across her deck. Even as they watched, several of her crew finally managed to break into the upper deck with fire hoses and suppression gear. They were fighting to save their ship.
Carl grabbed Jack’s arm and pointed to the starboard side of the Shiloh. There they saw the last visage of the Dutch frigate De Zeven as she slowly rolled over, the massive flames engulfing her superstructure, hissing as they hit the violet-colored waters. Her proud fantail raised high into the air and then silently slid into the sea. They saw a few of her crew surface and cry for assistance. Several of the Shiloh’s damage control teams threw lines into the water as they tried desperately to save their fellow sailors. At close to a half a mile away, Jack still had to hold Everett’s arm as he tried to make it to the railing to jump from the relative safety of the Simbirsk in an effort at saving the Dutch seamen. He angrily realized Jack was right and pulled his arm free.
Jack looked around him at their own situation. The Simbirsk, minus her casualties above on her main deck, had come through the battering intact. There were no fires and no damage other than to exposed personnel. Collins reached for the radio on his side and raised it to his lips.
“Collins to Shiloh, Collins to Shiloh, do you read?”
“It’s no use, Colonel. You’ll get no response.”
They turned and saw that Salkukoff was just replacing his own radio. He watched the effort across the wide expanse of the Shiloh’s crew battling their fires. He shook his head.
“Our radios, even your digital watches, aren’t working. It’s as if we were involved in an EMP burst. Electronics everywhere, with the exception of the sealed area down below, have been fried. Peter the Great is not answering. If not an EMP, I can only assume she’s gone also.”
Jack looked at the radio and confirmed that he wasn’t even showing a power light. He quickly gestured for Carl to throw him his radio, which had been switched off during the electronic ambush by the Simbirsk. He tried to call again with the undamaged radio but received no response from Captain Johnson.
“Carl, see if we can get a signal lamp up and running, I don’t care if you have to use smoke signals — I have to speak with Captain Johnson. We need a navy corpsman as soon as they can spare one.”
“You got it, Jack,” Carl said and then vanished into the bottom of the wheelhouse.
“How in the hell could we have suffered an electromagnetic pulse?” Collins asked aloud.
“Baffling, to be sure, Colonel,” Salkukoff said as he joined Jack next to the railing. “I estimate we lost well over half of both complements of our men.”
Jack nodded as he turned with the wish to see the conning tower of the USS Houston break the surface of the sea. But he knew there would be no way such a fragile boat could have withstood the powerful event they had just survived.
“However, I think the discussion of how and why can wait. In case you haven’t noticed, Colonel, the ocean is the wrong color.”
Of course Jack had noticed, but he wasn’t willing to think about the whys and why-nots of their current situation. The first priority was to save lives and then establish contact with Shiloh.
“Also, it seems our lady Tildy has given up her fight.” There was debris from their vessels, bodies, and other flotsam, but strangely, Jack saw what looked like palm fronds and other organic plantlike material you would usually see after a powerful storm had swept through.
“Yes, I did notice, Colonel.” Jack turned and faced the Russian. “Perhaps it’s about time we come clean here. This event is a variation on what conspiracy nuts in my country called the Philadelphia Experiment. What was yours called?”
“Operation Czar. I guess someone back in the day thought it witty to make something disappear like the czar and his family. Although it needed to be done, it was still all rather tasteless.”
“Rather tasteless? The murder of innocent children is just rather tasteless? We’ll have to get into detail about taste some other time,” Jack said angrily. “Until then, Colonel, maybe you didn’t notice, but look over there.”
Salkukoff turned in the direction Collins had indicated. His eyes widened when he saw what had made the American far paler than a moment before.
“Either we’ve been blown off course by about ten thousand miles and ended up off the coast of Hawaii, or we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
The island was green and beautiful. It sat in front of them like a postcard of some fabulous vacation spot only found in the South Pacific. Collins reached for his binoculars in their case and then raised them to his eyes. He could see birds and trees from their distance of five miles away. At this range, none of the species of bird could be discerned. The birds were just birds, but their feathered plumage was spectacular and stood out even from that distance, colors he had never seen before. The trees were an entirely different matter. They were tall and had thick branches halfway up and then at their crown. Some were the familiar palm trees, others unrecognizable. The rolling waves crashing against the island’s deep brown sands were violet and gleamed in the early morning sun. The most glaring sight was the rise of a small mountain at the exact center of the island.