Stay with her, Parker. Don’t let her get away … “Helm, all ahead full, steady three-one-zero. WEPS, Captain, firing point procedures. Sierra-1, ADCAP torpedo, tube two.”
Aboard the Goliath
Sorceress registers the Virginia’s change in course and speed, a combat response it had anticipated. The biochemical computer floods minisub docking bay number five.
Seconds later, a remotely controlled steel Hammerhead is released into the sea.
The Goliath continues heading north by northwest, leaving its minisub behind. Invisible in the ebony sea, the mechanical shark hovers … and waits.
Secured to its belly, held firmly between its two clawlike claspers is an underwater mine.
Aboard the USS Virginia
The Virginia pushes through the black waters of the Antarctic at thirty-four knots, moving through the bitter sea like a 7,700-ton, 377-foot steel sperm whale,
—its crew too focused on the Goliath to notice the occasional orcalike clicks coming from the seafloor.
Goliath’s minisub allows the Virginia to pass overhead before accelerating after it. Hovering alongside, it pinpoints its target—a set of steel plates located just forward of the American attack sub’s retractable bow diving planes.
Chief Petty Officer Justin Bowman is stationed in the Virginia’s tactical missile room, a chamber that contains an arsenal of Tomahawk cruise missiles. He looks up, startled by the sudden sound of scraping.
Clunk.
The Chief Petty Officer’s heart thuds. Instinctively, he turns to flee—
Wa-boom!
—his existence instantly caught between a brilliant flash of light and the suffocating, thunderous embrace that impales him from behind, extinguishing his life, as the lethal detonation vents the Virginia’s forward compartments to the frigid Antarctic sea.
Captain Parker is tossed to the deck, his crippled ship twisting beneath him. Screams, explosions, and darkness blanket the chaos, and then an icy wall lifts him up and carries him away.
Aboard the Goliath
The Goliath slows, allowing its minisub to redock. Instead of continuing north, the devil ray descends to the seafloor, Sorceress shutting down the ship’s engines.
Scanning the ocean depths, the biochemical computer listens … and waits.
Antarctic Ocean 12 nautical miles due north of the Goliath
The 4-million-ton barge of ice, a tabular berg half the size of the island of Manhattan, is trapped, locked in place along the ocean’s frozen surface. Three years have passed since this glacierlike monster first separated from the Ross Ice Shelf to begin its journey north. Too large to clear the inlets surrounding Antarctica, it had taken several summers before the process of melting could shave enough mass from the berg’s imposing keel to again release it to open waters.
Currents had taken the frozen mountain halfway around the continent before releasing it to the open sea. From there, it had drifted another forty-eight miles before Antarctica’s wintry fingers again reached out to seal it in place.
A four-story-high plateau of ice marks the visible tip of this frozen monster. Flattopped and steep-sided, it is as barren as a moonscape, and just as devoid of life.
The harsh katabatic wind howls along the plateau’s northern rise and down its exposed cliff face to the seven-foot-thick pack ice. Below the frozen surface, held within the Southern Ocean’s frigid embrace lies the rest of this glacierlike mountain. At 590 feet thick, with a keel stretching 1,145 feet deep, the iceberg could easily provide every person on the planet with two glasses of fresh water per day … for the next two thousand years.
Within this ebony realm, the berg’s luminescent alabaster glow reveals an ominous presence hovering in silence along its vast northern face.
Positioned close to the prodigious ice island, its engines shut down, is the Los Angeles-class attack sub USS Scranton.
Four long hours have passed since the American attack sub went quiet. Now, tensions rise once more as a series of man-made acoustics violates the tranquil waters of the Antarctic.
Tom Cubit hovers over Michael Flynn’s right shoulder. The sonarman’s hands are trembling noticeably.
Flynn shakes his head in disbelief. “She’s gone, Skipper, Virginia’s gone.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Explosion was too big to be a torpedo.”
Cubit squeezes his eyes closed. “And the Goliath?”
“She went silent right after the explosion. I mark her last position approximately nine miles to the southeast.”
Cubit nods. She knows we’re close, but she’s not sure where. “Find her, Michael-Jack. If one of Covah’s crew so much as farts, I want to know about it.”
“Aye, sir.”
“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson
“Don’t go to sleep, ’cause I’m going to kill you.”
— Ricky Briscoe, before tossing kerosene on his girlfriend and burning her to death
CHAPTER 33
Aboard the Boeing 747-400 YAL-IA 40,000 feet over the Southern Indian Ocean Antarctic Circle
General Jackson stares at the image of the president of the United States and his Security Advisors, all of whom are listening, ashen-faced, as Nick Nunziata reads NORAD’s latest report.
“The Trident II (D5) only has a range of about five thousand miles. With the exception of Sydney, there are really no major cities or military installations that fit Covah’s agenda. However, further analysis of the trajectory of three of Covah’s nukes revealed a disturbing conclusion.” Nuziata looks up. “Covah wasn’t aiming for cities, gentlemen, he was trying to detonate volcanoes.”
“Volcanoes?” President Edwards looks baffled.
“Yes, sir, volcanoes. Big pyroclastic ones.”
“I don’t understand. Why volcanoes?”
“Imagine eight eruptions on a scale that would put Krakatau to shame. Be like the asteroid impact that struck Earth 65 million years ago, killing all the dinosaurs—only worse. The environmental holocaust that followed would have blanketed the planet’s atmosphere with debris for years.”
“Good … . God, a nuclear winter?”
“More like an ice age. That Russian lunatic is out to destroy every god-damn-life-form on the planet.”
Jackson feels the blood drain from his face, leaving him light-headed, dizzy.
“General Jackson, how many more nuclear weapons does Covah have left?”
“At least eight more D5s, Mr. President,” Jackson hears himself saying, “enough to give this doomsday scenario one last try. We believe he’ll leave Antarctic waters and head either north or east in an attempt to lose the laser plane.”
Nick Nunziata nods. “If he’s after volcanoes, the Northern Hemisphere’s got plenty of ’em. He could surface in the North Atlantic or Pacific and choose from dozen of targets, all of which are well within range of his missiles.”