For the past six months the Americans had been working alongside the British Government and Ferran & Cardini’s research department in an attempt to erase a glitch in the new Kirill-Chimera seek — retrieve — and destroy programme. The Sea Predator’scomputer system had been loaded with the prototype and while undertaking trials ona number of Russian mafia targets — had momentarily become visible to them. Kirill had written the programme in such a way for it to constantly alter its script, once it had infiltrated the target’s hardrive and operating system — allowing all data to be extracted remotely and sent back to the Sea Predator- Kirill had then created a deletion protocol that was activated after releasing a death virus onto the target’s hardrive.
A young rating by the name of Zak Ryan had immediately spotted the glitch. Had informed Taylor, who barked the order to get off-line and shut down the programme. He was now hoping that their invasive snooping had not been noticed by any eagle-eyed nerds working for the Russian Mafia… The border of Kazakhstan with Russia had, in recent times, seen a hundred fold increase in drug smuggling activities by the Mafia cartels, who were using the inhospitable terrain of the Ural Mountains to transport raw opium all the way up to the coast of the Kara Sea. The opium would then be processed in laboratories and distributed throughout Europe by a sophisticated network of transport routes. From the same labs came the latest designer drug — peddled to the higher end of the market and only available to the wealthiest of addicts with the promise of a never before experience. What they found was narcotic hell. This drug, Red Horse as it had been nicknamed, had made the Mafia-led cartels billions of dollars and even more powerful, but was costing the government financially, politically and, of course, socially. Ferran & Cardini had asked the American Navy if they could have the assistance of the Sea Predator in an attempt to locate the labs that were producing and distributing the Red Horse drug and erase them with her lethal payload of missiles.
A day earlier, the Sea Predatorhad been tracking an unnamed vessel that was under suspicion of drug trafficking; the vessel was the size of a container ship, of unknown origin, and had been making slow progress from the north-east, close to Russia’s Artic coast. Its heading had been on a direct course towards the island of Ostrov Kolguev.
Now however, the vessel had disappeared.
Taylor used every resource that the Sea Predator had to find it, to no avail. As a last resort he dispatched two tracking torpedoes, these did not have warheads, instead they were equipped with the latest satellite navigation and tracking systems housed in the nose cone. The torpedoes had a two hundred mile range and had never let the commander of the stealth ship down before. If the mysterious ship that had so far evaded their state-of-the-art searches was there, then they would find it.
For now, though. They were playing the waiting game.
Taylor shook his head and sighed, running a hand through his fair coloured hair. He stood up, and paced around the bridge, if for no other reason, than to stretch his legs and relieve the tension he was feeling in his neck and shoulders. He went and took his seat again. “Anything back from the torpedoes?”
“Negative, Commander.”
“What about the satellite video stream?”
“The same Commander, negative. We currently have three satellites passing over this sector, and according to the data they’re sending back down to us. There are no vessels visible to them.”
Taylor cursed.
“What is the position of the torpedoes?”
“They’ve separated, Commander. The first is ninety-five miles due north of us, the other due east approximately seventy miles. If there’s anythingout there, they will find it and report back.” Taylor moved across the bridge to where the young Navy rating was sitting in front of his monitor screen. He looked up and said, a little nervously.
“Commander, they’ve never missed a target.”
Taylor nodded, rubbing wearily at his temples. “Have you informed command HQ or Ferran & Cardini of this?”
“No Sir, I haven’t.”
“Do so. They may have further intelligence relating to this vessel. What did we find out before it — vanished?”
“Only that the vessel is approximately four hundred and twentyfive feet in length. That there is a possibility of some sort of weapons system on board. Predator’ssystem has also calculated that the vessel’s speed and distance it covered during the time we were tracking — is much faster than any ship of that size has a right to move at.”
They waited, watching the torpedoes progress on the display screen. A tense silence filled the entire bridge with the glittering glow of computer monitors displaying data feeds and map co-ordinates. Blue light scattered like sapphires across Taylor’s haggard unshaven face, and his eyes narrowed as his gaze fixed on one of the torpedoes.
He pointed, “What’s that?”
There was an instant where the screen went completely blank, resuming a moment later — minus both of the torpedoes.
“What information was sent back by the torpedoes and can you confirm that they have been terminated?”
“Zero information, Commander. And yes both torpedoes have been destroyed.”
“That’s impossible! They’re supposed to relay data back to us on a constant stream. Could there have been a system failure — are you positive that they have been destroyed?”
“Affirmative, Commander. Both torpedoes have definitely been terminated.”
Taylor continued to stare at the blank monitor screens, frowning. And then like a tiny Sun exploding from a central black pinpoint, they turned white and then in reverse action — went black again. The Commander turned his attention to the two torpedo-linked scanners before them. A stream of encrypted data started to appear on the screens at lightning speed — lasted for approximately fifteen seconds — and then, like a visual tidal wave, the lines were swept out and into a virtual darkness and death.
Taylor stared, numbed, at the scanners. Both were now black.
Both torpedoes had been destroyed.
“Report status.” he asked, his voice a dry croak.
“Negative, Commander. All information relating to both torpedoes — appears to have been deleted from our system.”
“Deleted?”
“Affirmative, Commander. Deleted.”
Both torpedoes destroyed; and not a single shred of information left to give the Sea Predatora clue to their attackers, had been registered; not a single warning given. Nothing.
Taylor could taste the sweet Bourbon on his tongue and he longed for a drink.
Then, his common sense shouted at him.
“Contact Command HQ and Ferran & Cardini, again. Tell them we have an emergency situation.”
“Transmitting, Commander.”
They waited fifteen seconds — a very long fifteen seconds of tense wondering filled with uneasy sweat and thoughts about death as every man on the bridge waited for a reply, looking out of the stealth ship’s windscreens into total darkness and the black waters of the Barents Sea below their craft. Imagining their enemy with incredibly superior technology — the sort of technology that could make a container ship disappear, the sort of technology that could evade their most sophisticated scanning systems, and the sort of technology that could seek and destroy two fast moving torpedoes that were also equipped with a stealth mode — without giving away any indication of their location or weapons used.