“Exactly what she just said, sir,” the SEAL said, snapping his head toward the officer. “This thing, whatever it is, can apparently heal like a motherfucker and is smarter and stronger than he was before. He’s definitely called ‘the Serpent,’ and this sub was definitely sent to pick him up.”
“Now answer Lieutenant Matthews’s question, Myers,” Larsen said. “What can you tell us about this thing? How do we fight it?”
I pointed at the stack of documents. “The only thing we know for sure is that freezing it made it harmless. But apparently not dead.”
“So we just need to zap it with some ice cubes? Fantastic. What a load,” Larsen said. But he stayed in his chair.
“No, I didn’t say that. You aren’t planning to ship it; you’re planning to kill it. And according to these healing tests, it’s susceptible to normal attacks. Bullets, knives, clubs, whatever. You just need to keep shooting it and make sure it’s dead, because, as Campbell put it, it can indeed heal like a motherfucker.”
“How is it hiding from us?” Matthews spoke again, his eyebrow twitching with increasing frequency.
“It’s smart,” I said. “Its IQprobably is at genius level. What you have to do is systematically eliminate all possible hiding places. Make a sweep, from point A to point B, and make sure there is no place, absolutely no place, it could be lurking.”
“Bilge bays, lockers,” Larsen muttered.
“Exactly,” I said. “If you eliminate everyplace it could be but one, then it will be in that last place. Being systematic is the key. No matter how smart this thing is, it can’t escape that.”
Larsen and Matthews looked at each other. Then Larsen stood again. “Thank you for your help,” he said to me, but he had already turned to face Campbell before the sentence was finished. “Dr. Myers and these documents are key. You are responsible for keeping all of it safe.” Then, to both of us: “We’re going to hunt this thing. Your compartment will remain unsealed, but if there is gunfire, serious fighting, lock it down.” There was resolve and violence in his voice. But I wasn’t comforted. “We should also contact the escort sub,” I said. “Even if there’s nothing it can do immediately, it should know what’s going on.”
“Out of the question,” Larsen said. Matthews was shaking his head as his superior spoke. “We don’t contact them because it would give away our position. They don’t contact us for the same reason. Unless we start sinking, the Rickove/s orders are to monitor us, protect us from other vessels, and report to shore anything that happens. We’ll win this fight on our own.”
He walked out the door, and Matthews extricated himself from his seat and followed. Before he could disappear around the corner, I spoke again.
“Wait.”
Matthews turned and raised his brows, making his eyes appear even more deeply embedded in his head.
“The other thing is… based on what we’ve read, the Serpent is probably insane. Don’t expect him to behave rationally all the time. Insanity isn’t predictable.”
“Oh. Right,” he said, frowning in my direction. Then he nodded and walked out of sight.
Campbell looked like he’d be a lot more comfortable if he had something to shoot at. He was blinking too fast, as though dust had contaminated both his eyes.
“Eleven versus one. There’s no way he can escape,” the SEAL said. He wanted me to agree.
“If they do it right, there’s no possible place for someone to hide. I was serious when I said they had to be-what is that?” I paused, feeling a new sensation creeping through my feet and up my legs. This was much less obvious than the diesel engines-just a tiny, constant shiver in the deck that would have been imperceptible in any other setting.
Campbell saw the look on my face. “It’s the electric engines. We’re moving again.”
As he spoke, I could feel my inertia pull me aft as the sub picked up speed. I smiled.
“It’s nice to be getting closer to home, isn’t it? How fast can we go with the electrics?”
“Well, we’ve only got one operable battery bay. So even though we can max out at thirteen knots, we only can travel about seven nautical miles at that speed. But we’re still at least twenty nautical miles from shore.”
The diesels should have been rumbling underfoot. They would have been a comfort, a sign of mechanical well-being and progress. But my thoughts flashed down the hallway, through the control room and electrical compartment and visited the space where five men, now, had been brutalized.
“I don’t think Larsen wants to risk having a crew in the engine room anymore,” I interjected.
“Yeah, exactly. So we’ll go at five knots or so on the electrics and only switch to the diesels if it looks like we can’t stretch it into port.”
“That means we’re still four hours from shore. Jesus.”
Campbell reached across the table but stopped short of taking my hand.
“I know. I don’t like it either. Shit,” he said, pulling his hand back and resting it on his rifle. “How do you stay so calm? It’s not like I’ve never seen a dead body before, but when I saw Miller, I… I kind of locked up. I couldn’t react. That should never happen to a SEAL. You were fucking icy down there, though.”
“It’s nothing to be proud of,” I said. “I’ve seen a lot, that’s all. You learn to look at it clinically, or you can’t do your work. You were thinking like a person, like a human being.”
“I don’t like just sitting in here. I’d rather be with the other guys hunting down the Serpent.”
“I’m curious to see what they find.”
“What?”
“You know, just from an intellectual point of view.” I was serious. I had discovered that my fear had once again retreated into the background, leaving my scientific mind to wonder how such a being functioned. “Don’t misunderstand: I want it dead, too. Or at least captured. My first priority is getting back to shore with a pulse. It won’t bother me if preserving our lives means ending the Serpent’s.”
He seemed satisfied with my answer. Then he tilted his head and stared into space.
“What would it be like to go against a whole platoon of these things?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? It seems like this is the prototype. But I’d be scared to see a whole bunch of these unleashed on a battlefield. He’s been unarmed, too, remember.”
“You don’t have to sound so admiring,” the SEAL said.
“I don’t admire it any more than you do. Goddamn, Campbell, give me some credit. You just said as much yourself: the Serpent, solo, is a serious threat. Imagine what a squad of Serpents carrying automatic weapons would be capable of.”
“They can die. And we would kill them.”
“Uh-huh. So here’s a question for you: Say the U.S. uses this research and makes its own Serpent. What would that be like?”
He laughed. “It’s just a weapon. Right? Like a gun. We make it, we aim it, we shoot it.”
“You seemed a little more concerned about bioweapons when we first noticed the freezer in the battery bay. I believe you said something about letting guys in rubber suits handle it. As opposed to heavily armed SEALs.”
“I trust my commanders,” he said. “I don’t trust some foreign army with a bunch of Petri dishes. Doesn’t bother me if our brass decides to deploy this thing.”
“It doesn’t bother you? Are you serious? A person isn’t a gun. And this particular person is barely a person-it’s like a Human Being, Version 2.0. What if they wanted to upgrade you?”
“You don’t get it. We are weapons, a sword in the hands of our commander and country.”
I snorted. “Oh, please. What kind of poetic, bullshit patriotism is that?”