“What is this, some kind of contamination?”
“No, sir. The water we took on during the initial attack, or whatever it was, was normal. Seawater, nothing more. This here is still seawater, but as you can see, it’s not the right makeup of color and other nutrients from the oceans of the world.”
“Just what in the hell are you saying, Lieutenant?”
“Skipper, when we were hit, we were in a normal surrounding of ocean water. After the flooding was controlled, we sprung a few leaks here and there, but it was controllable. But what we didn’t expect was what came through those leaks. This,” he said as he tapped the water in the small jar. “I tested the ballast tanks also, Skipper. They’re full of this stuff. The seas we’re in are violet in color and lacking commercial contaminants. Nothing — no oil or other pollution we find in oceans all over the world. No matter where we are or how deep, we always have dirty seas. But this, it’s like the ocean has never seen an oil- or diesel-powered ship. Ever.”
Thorne was even more perplexed and lost. He looked at the water and then at the young face of the lieutenant.
“How many crew know about this?” he asked as he handed the sample back.
“Just me and my weapons people. But word’s spreading fast, Captain.”
“Well, there’s not a lot we can do to investigate that right now, Lieutenant.” Thorne paused and bit his lip and then came to a decision. He took the lieutenant by the shoulder and then leaned in conspiratorially. “Lock your men up. Tell the cooks in the galley to send you all your meals. You’re now too busy to stop your leaks to venture forth.” He winked. “We can’t let this spread. These boys have too much on their plate already. Hold them until we find out one way or the other about ballast control.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Thorne nodded, and the lieutenant turned and left. Alone, Thorne faced the cold bulkhead separating some of the men’s sleeping quarters from the forward torpedo room.
“Help us out here, old girl.” He patted the steel beneath his touch. It was cold.
“Skipper?”
Thorne turned to see XO Devers standing there with a young man off shift from the torpedo room. Thorne nodded as he felt betrayed by his voice once more.
“Machinist Mate Ramirez says he might have an answer to our problem. He says it’s dangerous, but he believes it may work in getting the pumps back online.”
Thorne looked at the young man who stood nervously waiting. The captain recognized the boy but could have sworn he had never exchanged so much as a hello before this day.
“Machinist Mate?”
“The Mark 48, Captain.”
“A torpedo?” Thorne asked.
“Yes, sir. I know the Mark 48 from its tail fins to her warhead. I believe inside her guidance system there is a board we can use to rig the ballast pumps.”
“I have a feeling you have a but to offer here, Ramirez.”
“Yes, sir. It’s a big but for sure. Almost the size of my wife’s.” He smiled but found no one was smiling with him.
“Go ahead, Machinist Mate Ramirez. It’s the day for bad news.”
“We have to take the Mark 48 completely apart to get to that guidance chip.”
“I suspected that much, Ramirez,” Thorne said.
“Yes, sir. I know you did, but we have to disassemble the actual warhead. It’s the chip on the circuit board that tells the Mark 48 when and where to detonate. It’s real sensitive. Even a small charge of static electricity will set off the warhead.”
Thorne closed his eyes and then suddenly opened them.
“Can you do it without blowing us from here back home? Although that’s far more acceptable than where we are now.”
“Yes, sir, but it’s like brain surgery. The boat can have no movement at all.”
“Well, great. With the gravity slides we’re experiencing, I don’t know how we’ll be able to pull that off.”
The XO and the machinist mate waited.
“Okay, Dr. Ramirez, let’s get surgery ready.”
USS Houston might not be as dead as earlier believed. But then again, with Machinist Mate Ramirez taking apart one of the world’s most powerful torpedo warheads on a boat that only wanted to slide into a deep oblivion, suffocating might have been preferable.
Thorne closed his eyes again and this time prayed for his entire crew. He touched the cold steel of Houston’s hull once more.
“One break is all we ask for, Gray Lady.”
In answer to his prayer, Houston began another slide toward the jagged edge of the mountain.
Their break might have to come in some other form.
PART THREE
PIRATES OF THE PURPLE SEA
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! But I, with mournful tread, walk the deck my Captain lies, fallen cold and dead.
15
Niles looked up from his hushed conversation with Xavier Morales as the others sat down. The missing heads of all the departments suggested Niles had some news concerning their mutual friends in the North Atlantic. They were wrong.
“I want to say something about what is really happening. It’s not just about the colonel and his mission team in the Atlantic. The entire battle group is missing. This rumor you may have already heard, as I failed to stop the scuttlebutt before it started. It’s true. They are not lost, just missing. That is not why I asked you here. I figure you deserve a more detailed mission objective. Virginia may need some input from someone other than me or Xavier. She may need your input also. I put Xavier and Virginia in the clean room of Europa and sequestered them to do some very deep research through Europa. She did her job and may have a bread-crumb lead as to what the Russians are playing at where our field team is concerned. We suspect that things inside the Russian government are not as they appear. These facts are being forwarded to our friends in Britain, as they have suspected the same thing for the past thirty years. Virginia?”
Virginia stood at her normal seat at the conference table and cleared her throat and then nodded.
“The information we gathered through Europa and her cyber activities is not only disturbing, it’s terrifying. It seems we have been duped since the great military purges of Stalin’s in the ’30s. We have learned that not only is the Russian government not in control of that nation, they haven’t been since the spring of 1941. With the start of Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin became nothing more than a figurehead of that nation.”
“Tell them your suspicions, Doctor,” Niles said with encouragement.
“The people behind this charade since 1941 are now preparing for all-out war with the West.”
“We worked closely with them during the Overlord operation; we had no indication at that time of any deception,” Alice said.
“That is because we were dealing with people who had no knowledge of this hidden government outside the office of the president. Putin may not even know he is not in charge. He is nothing more than a mouthpiece but thinks it’s him calling the shots. Just like every leader that country has had since Stalin. They are all figureheads. They fall from grace, no problem, next man up as appointed by this hidden group,” Virginia said as she shook her head at the disbelief of her own voice.
“Okay, now you know as much as we do. Virginia, prepare a presentation, and I’ll speak with the president as soon as you have it.”