Admiral Houston stood on the stern deck of the destroyer, the USS Hickman. Dawn had yet to rise, but to the south, fires raged, lighting the entire horizon.
He had never seen the ocean burn.
The nuclear strikes had been clean and decisive, destroying missile and air support installations along the blockade’s front. Batan, Senkaku Shoto, Lu wan: unknown to most of the world, these tiny outlying islands would soon become synonymous with Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Already, American forces were moving in to shatter the remaining blockade.
But not the Hickman. It was limping with the wounded back to the refuge of Okinawa. His right arm in a cast, Houston was counted among the injured. He had survived the sinking of the Gibraltar, escaping the ship just before the rain of missiles had torn her apart. Many had not. The dead and missing numbered in the thousands, including the C.O. of the ship and much of his command staff.
As he stood, he silently spoke their names…those he knew. There were so many more he did not.
“Sir, you shouldn’t be out here,” a lieutenant said softly at his side. The young Hispanic officer had been assigned as his aide. “We’re all supposed to be belowdecks.”
“Don’t worry. We’re far enough away by now.”
“The Captain—”
“Lieutenant,” he warned sternly.
“Yes, sir.” The young man fell silent, stepping back.
Houston felt a chill morning breeze slip through his loose flight jacket. With his arm in a sling, he couldn’t zip the jacket fully. He shivered against the cold. They would be reaching Naha on Okinawa within the hour, just as the sun rose. From there he was scheduled to ship back to the States.
Slowly, the fiery devastation sank beyond the horizon, becoming a fading glow. Dull booms occasionally echoed over the waters.
Houston finally turned his back. “I’m ready to go below,” he said tiredly.
The lieutenant nodded, offering an arm of support just as a klaxon blared. Both men froze. Radar warning. Incoming missile.
Then Houston heard it. A whistling roar.
The lieutenant grabbed his good arm, meaning to drag the admiral to the closest hatch.
He shook off the grip. “It’s heading away.”
As proof, the fiery trail arced high across the night sky, aiming north over the ship.
“An M-11,” Houston noted, moving to the starboard rail with the lieutenant in tow.
As they followed its course, another missile joined the flaming display…then another. The new rockets rose from the west, from China. Though coming from different directions, Houston could guess their target. Okinawa lay directly ahead. “Oh, God…”
“What is it?”
To the northeast new fireworks joined the show. A dozen thin flames streaked upward into the night, on intercept courses. The bevy of Patriot II missiles whistled skyward, like bottle rockets on the Fourth of July.
One of the Chinese missiles was struck a glancing blow. Its fiery arc became a tumbling fall, flaming out and disappearing. But the other two continued their course, vanishing over the dark horizon.
“What’s happening?” the lieutenant asked.
Houston just stared.
At first there was no sound. Just a flash of light, as if the sun itself had exploded beyond the horizon.
The lieutenant backed away.
A low sound flowed over the water, like thunder under the sea. At the horizon, the brilliant light coalesced down upon itself, forming a pair of glowing clouds, sitting at the edge of the world. Slowly, too slowly, they rolled skyward, pushed up atop fiery stalks. Brilliant hues glowed from the hearts of the caldrons: fiery oranges, magentas, dark roses.
Houston closed his eyes.
The blast wave, even from so far off, struck the Hickman like a hammer, burning Houston from the deck before even a last prayer could be uttered.
Dressed in an insulated dry suit, Jack climbed into the Nautilus as it bobbed in the small waves behind the stern of his ship. He wiggled himself down into the pilot’s seat and began running through one last systems check.
He knew it probably wasn’t necessary, and the press of time weighed upon him, but he used the routine to settle himself. He would not fail. He must not fail.
All night long, as the Deep Fathom continued to steam toward the site where Air Force One had crashed, his crew had labored at readying the sub for the long trek: charging the main batteries, topping off the oxygen tanks, changing the filters to the carbon dioxide scrubbers, lubricating the thruster assemblies. With a fresh wax and polish, it could’ve passed for new.
But it was all necessary. Today, Jack was about to take the Nautilus on its longest trip yet.
An hour ago the Fathom had dropped anchor on the lee side of a small island, no bigger than a baseball field. It lay some twenty nautical miles from the crash site. Jack’s plan was to sneak the sub in as close as possible, then coordinate with Dr. Cortez and Karen on a plan to free her from the sea base. It would take impeccable timing.
Jack gave a thumbs-up to Robert, who lowered the acrylic dome and used a portable power drill to screw the O-rings tight. This was normally Charlie’s job, but he had been holed up in his lab all night, working with the crystal.
Robert patted the side of the sub, the usual two-thump signal that it was okay to dive. Jack nodded to the marine biologist. Robert laid a palm atop the dome, silently wishing him good luck, then dove off the sub.
Jack glanced back. His entire crew had gathered along the stern rail. Even Elvis stood by Lisa’s side, the old dog’s tail slowly wagging.
He saluted them all, then hit a button, sucking ballast water into the empty tanks on either side. The submersible slowly sank. As the waterline rose over the dome, he felt a twinge of misgiving. He dismissed it as the usual predive jitters, but in his heart he knew that this time it was more.
In six hours the mother of all solar storms was going to strike the Earth — and if he and the others failed, it wouldn’t matter if Karen were rescued or not.
Jack let the sub sink under its own weight. He could have descended faster under thruster power, but he had to reserve his batteries. Around him the water turned a midnight-blue as he aimed for the fifty meter mark. Once there, he gave the thrusters the tiniest juice to push the Nautilus into a gentle glide, aiming away from the tiny island and out into open sea.
Slowly, the sub sank into twilight…one hundred meters…then full night…150.
Jack kept the ship’s xenon lamps switched off, preserving the batteries, guiding himself through the black waters with the computer alone. The region had been mapped by sonar when the Fathom first arrived and the information loaded into the sub’s navigation. He would switch to active sonar once he was near the bottom. He had also ordered radio silence between himself and the ship, maintaining as much stealth as possible.
Two hundred meters…small pinpoints of light began to appear. Bioluminescent plankton and other tiny multicelled bits of life.
Jack enjoyed the display. Even here, life found a way to survive. The sight gave him a flicker of hope.
Four hundred meters. He finally switched on the sub’s sonar for the final approach to the seabed. Where he was headed, it was too dangerous to fly blind. He watched both the analog depth meter and the sonar readings. With the deftest touches he manipulated the foot pedals to make tiny course corrections.
He watched the numbers climb. Five hundred meters. Finally, he thumbed the switch, and twin spears of light shot forward, penetrating the gloom, illuminating the landscape below.
Jack pushed a pedal and tilted the sub on its side, surveying the terrain below him. It was as perfect as he had hoped, the seabed maze of deep canyons. The section of broken landscape beneath him led all the way to the crash site. The plan was for him to use the sheltering cover to mask his approach, similar to the way he had used the sunken ruins to sneak up on David’s cutter. However, this time he hoped the end result would improve. Before, he had come back empty-handed.
As the depth gauge approached the six hundred meter mark, Jack angled the sub into a wide canyon between two ridges. He slowed his speed, balancing out his ballast to neutral buoyancy.
Ready, he engaged the thrusters and began the long winding journey.
The walls to either side were covered with clams and mussels, anemones and deep-sea coral. Lobsters and crabs worked around the boulders, waving and clacking claws at the stranger in their midst. Other life fled from his lights: schools of silver-bellied fish darted in unison and vanished in a blink, bloodred octopi swept away in panicked clouds of murky ink, and winged black skates shuffled deeper into the silt.
Momentarily awed by the marine life around him, Jack continued gliding along the canyon. Over the next hour, using his sonar and compass, he navigated the maze as best he could, wending a zigzag path.
Circling around a seamount, he dove into a long narrow canyon. It was perfect. Side channels and offshoots branched away, but ahead was a straight shot to his target.
He checked his watch. Four hours till noon. He was cutting it close. Gunning the thrusters, he shot into the channel. It was this sudden burst of speed that saved his life as the rock wall to his right suddenly exploded.
Caught from behind, the sub’s stern catapulted upward, flipping the Nautilus end over end and slamming it into the far cliff.
Jack gasped, his head cracking against the dome. The Nautilus scraped down the rockface, rolling. A sickening metallic scrunch sounded as something tore away from the sub’s undercarriage. One of the xenon lamps burst with an audible pop, casting shards of thick glass.
He fought to keep his seat, praying for the inner shell of titanium and bulletproof acrylic to maintain its integrity. Even a single seam rupture at these depths would implode the sub in a nanosecond, crushing the life from him.
Working the foot pedals, he righted the sub. His visibility was zero as he hovered in a cloud of silt and sand. Through his hydrophones, a hollow tumble of rock sounded behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he could just make out a collapsed wall of boulders.
He craned his neck up. Beyond the top of the seamounts the silt cloud was clearing as swifter currents swept it away.
Overhead, he spotted his attacker.
Another sub circled like a shark. Cigar-shaped with stubby wings, it prowled along, hunting. He knew this vessel.
The Perseus—the Navy’s newest submersible, as deadly as she was sleek. The admiral had shown him the specs on the night of the sabotage. She was twice the vessel the Nautilus was: quicker, able to dive deeper, more maneuverable. But worst of all — she had teeth.
Jack spotted the dorsal fin of this titanium Great White.
A stacked array of minitorpedoes.
With a twitch, Jack flicked off the remaining lamp of his sub. Darkness collapsed over him. Through the murk above, a weak beam of light sought him out, circling and circling overhead.
The hungry predator hunted its trapped prey.
Charlie paced the small confines of his lab, mumbling to himself. “The idea could work….” He had run the calculations over and over again, and tested the crystal several more times.
Still, he remained unconvinced. Theory was one thing. Before he was ready to commit to his plan, he wanted to consult with Dr. Cortez at the sea base. But time was running out, and Charlie had no way of checking in with the geophysicist. They were dependent on the sea base calling there.
Leaning back over the computer, he tapped a button, and a three-dimensional globe of the Earth appeared on the monitor. A hundred small X’s orbited the planet. They moved slowly in a complex ballet. Off to the left a radiating wavefront of tiny lines edged minutely toward the center of the screen, toward Earth. It marked the front edge of the solar storm blowing their way. Charlie checked the upper right-hand corner, where a little clock was counting down the time until collision with the upper atmosphere.
Four hours.
The dance of X’s around the globe were based on real-time data from the Marshall Space Flight Center, monitoring the incoming wavefront and extrapolating how it might affect the satellites in orbit.
Charlie placed his finger on one of the small X’s.
A knock on his door interrupted him. Lisa said, “Charlie, we have a call from Karen.”
Charlie straightened with relief. “Thank God! It’s about bloody time, mon!” He popped the disk of his latest data from the computer’s zip drive and dashed out the door.
He found Lisa and Miyuki gathered in front of the professor’s portable supercomputer. He immediately sensed the tension in the room. Neither woman looked happy.
“What’s wrong?” he asked Lisa, coming around the table.
On the screen, Karen had heard him and answered, “I was calling to see if you had heard from Dr. Cortez.”
Charlie bent in front of the camera. “What do you mean? Why not ask him yourself?”
“Because this morning I’d heard he’d gone topside during the night, and I’ve heard no word since. I had hoped he contacted you.”
“No. Not a word.” Charlie assimilated the information. “I don’t like this. With Dr. Cortez AWOL, maybe we’d better rethink things on our own. Just in case. Jack’s already left in the sub. I’ll patch you to the Nautilus so you two can coordinate on getting your ass out of there.”
Karen’s image flickered. “Maybe we’d better. The last scientists are due to leave in an hour, leaving me alone with David’s second-in-command. If there’s gonna be a rescue, it’ll have to be soon. But what about the pillar? What are we going to do if we don’t hear from Dr. Cortez?”
“Pray we do. Pray he’s been too damn busy making arrangements to save the world to bother updating us.” But even Charlie knew that such a prayer was unlikely to be answered. “Listen, Karen, I’ve been working on something, something we might try. Let’s all keep in close contact from here.”
“I’ll try, but it’ll be difficult. Lieutenant Rolfe is below assisting in the launch of the next sub. I feigned an urgent need to go to the bathroom to make this call.” She checked her watch. “And I’m running out of time. I should be getting back down there.”
“Then let me patch you through to Jack.” Charlie turned to Miyuki.
The professor hit a button and spoke aloud. “Gabriel, can you patch this line to the Nautilus.”
A pause. “I am afraid I cannot comply. There appears to be some sort of interference.”
Karen’s brows knit with worry, then her image flickered, giving way to static, which ate the rest of the transmission.
“Gabriel, get her back!” Charlie ordered.
“I am afraid I cannot comply. There appears to be some sort of interference.”
Before Charlie could ask for clarification, the sound of someone running down the stairs drew his attention.
Robert’s voice came over the tiny intercom speakers, “We’ve got—”
“Company,” Kendall McMillan finished as he burst into the room. “Two ships, military, circling around from both sides of the island.”
They all moved toward the stairs except Miyuki, who remained at her computer, her fingers flying over the keyboard. “I’m not abandoning Karen,” she called to him. “I’ll keep trying to reach her, let her know what’s happening.”
Charlie nodded. “Do your best. But if we’re boarded, hide that computer. It may be all that stands between us and the end of the world.”
He climbed to the stern deck of the Fathom and watched a long ship sweep around the southern coast of their little islet.
An air horn blared from its deck, followed by a message. “Prepare to be boarded! Any resistance will be met with deadly force!”
McMillan stared. “What are we going to do?”
“We have no choice,” Charlie said. “Not this time. We surrender.”
Karen tried typing in Gabriel’s address again. Still no answer. Checking her watch, she pushed out of her seat. She could delay no longer without risking suspicion. She frowned one last time at the computer. The abrupt end to her conversation with the Deep Fathom threatened to send her into a panic.
Crossing to Level 2’s ladder, she climbed down, her mind still on the communication glitch. As she reached a leg down to the next rung, her ankle was grabbed and yanked.
She squawked and fell from the ladder.
Rolfe caught her, clamping her upper arm. “What took you so long?”
Karen swallowed, avoiding his accusing stare. She forced a tremor into her voice; not all of it was feigned. “It…it’s…”
“It’s what?”
She glared at him. “It’s my time of the month, if you must know!”
Rolfe’s face grew a shade more ruddy. It seemed even these tough SEAL-trained assassins did not care to know about such fine womanly details. “Okay then, but stick by my side. We’re just about to launch the last shuttle to the surface.”
Karen did not like the sound of that. Last shuttle…What about her?
Rolfe led her to the docking bay’s control station. He gazed through the window, then spoke into the thin-poled mike. “All set, Argus?”
Karen peeked through the window. The pilot and the last two scientists, both crammed into the rear passenger compartment, were locked into the sub.
“Systems green. Ready for launch,” the pilot radioed.
“Pressurizing.” Rolfe poked a large blue button, initiating the docking bay system.
Karen watched. As soon as the pressures equalized, the outlet pipes opened and water poured into the bay, quickly swallowing up the sub. She studied it all intently. Without Dr. Cortez here, she might need to do this herself.
All morning long she had dogged Rolfe’s steps, learning by quiet observation how the base operated. It was all user-friendly, thanks mostly to this compact control station. A bank of four monitors showed external views from all around the station. An additional two monitors for the ROV robots rested above a pair of joysticks. The remainder of the panel was devoted to the docking bay itself.
She watched the seawater level rise past the tiny porthole observation window. As the bay filled, a glint of metal caught her eye. Something small floated loose in the docking space. She dismissed it as some mislaid tool and returned her focus to the sub. Across the bay, the pilot tested the sub’s thrusters, floating up from the deck.
But again the glint drew her eye. It was the same object, whirling past the tiny window now.
Leaning closer, Karen recognized the bit of flotsam.
A pair of eyeglasses. Its lenses broken, its frame twisted and bent.
She covered a gasp with a hand over her mouth.
Hidden in a cloud of silt, Jack edged his sub along the base of the cliff, clinging under a lip of rock to diminish his sonar shadow to the sub above. He feathered his pedals with the lightest touches, trying to move no faster than the current. He dared not move any quicker, lest he raise a wake trail in the cloud and reveal his position. Overhead, the glow of the Perseus’s spotlight swept past in a crisscrossing pattern, searching, waiting for the silt to settle.
Jack knew he had to be gone before that happened.
Still, he forced himself to maintain a snail’s pace, flying the sub blind, no lights, guided by sonar alone. He edged forward. His goal: a side canyon up ahead. He had no idea where it led or if it was a blind alley, but knew he had to be out of the main channel before the cloud dissipated.
Then a voice blared from his radio earpiece. “I know you’re down there, Kirkland. You can’t hide forever.”
Spangler…great…no surprise there.
Jack remained silent, playing dead.
“I have your woman trapped at the sea base, and your ship impounded. Show yourself and I’ll let the others live.”
Jack resisted the urge to laugh. Sure you will.
The silence stretched. David’s voice returned again, growing more angry. “Would you like me to teach Professor Grace a few lessons in your absence? Perhaps hear her screams as Lieutenant Rolfe rapes her?”
Jack clenched his hands into fists but remained silent. Revealing himself would hurt Karen more than it would help. His best chance lay in stealth.
Ahead, a side canyon finally opened on the right. Jack guided the Nautilus into the narrow cut. He juiced the thrusters. Sonar feed began to fill the computer navigation screen. He sighed in relief. The side canyon was not a dead end. It wound far, branching and dividing.
Anxious, he moved more swiftly. He raced along the deep crack. Walls flashed past. He needed time and distance to shake the bastard.
“Where you going, Jack?” Lights flared behind him.
Jumping, Jack craned around. Damn it…
The Perseus swept down into the slot canyon after him, diving with murderous intent.
Staring behind him, Jack realized his error. A dusty spray of silt trailed behind the sub’s tail, coughed up from the seabed floor by his passage. A clear trail. A stupid mistake.
Giving up any pretense of hiding, he speared on his lamplight and floored the pedals. The Nautilus shot up, corkscrewing out of the canyon.
As he spun, a minitorpedo zipped past the sub’s dome, narrowly missing his vessel. To the left, a brief explosion flared as the torpedo struck a seamount, its thunder echoing through his hydrophones.
Jack tilted his sub into a steep dive, riding the shockwave, and dropped into a neighboring canyon. Flattening out, the bottom of his sub scraped through the silt, casting up a cloud.
What had betrayed him a moment ago could save him now. He thumbed off his lamp and coasted without thrusters, vanishing into the widening cloud of sand and silt.
He heard David over the radio, swearing. In David’s anxiousness to pursue him, he had forgotten his radio line was still open. Jack did not correct this mistake. He eavesdropped. “Goddamn you, Kirkland. I’ll see you die before this day is out.”
Jack grinned. Keep trying, asshole. He raced down the chute, gliding around an outcropping. A sonar warning chimed. The canyon ended in a flat cliff face only twenty yards away.
“Oh, shit…” He flung the thrusters in reverse, earning a high-pitched whine of protest, and flung the nose of the sub straight up. But it wasn’t enough to halt his momentum. The bottom of the Nautilus struck the wall hard.
Jarred forward, the belts of his harness dug into his shoulders. He forced himself back and worked the thrusters, climbing straight up the wall.
A new warning rang from his computer. His batteries were running low.
“Great…just great…”
Clearing the wall, Jack leveled out and sped along the mount’s summit. He prayed his power lasted long enough. Sensing movement on his left, he turned and was blinded by a shaft of light.
The Perseus flew out of a nearby canyon, straight at him.
Rather than being rammed broadside, Jack rolled the sub, taking the collision on his undercarriage. The Nautilus jolted violently. Struck at the stern, Jack’s sub spun. He struggled to right himself, to no avail. The sub struck the seamount, burying its nose in the thick silt.
Sweating, ears ringing, he fought the thrusters to tug himself out.
With a groan of stressed metal, the Nautilus popped free.
As he swung his sub upright, he peripherally saw the Perseus swinging in a tight loop, its torpedo array swiveling in his direction.
Time to go!
He slammed the foot pedals. Thrusters whined. The sub rumbled and tremored but refused to move. His front thruster assembly was jammed with sand. “C’mon, c’mon…”
He slammed the sub into reverse, blowing clear the choked props.
The Perseus sped closer, determined not to miss this time. “Ready to die, Kirkland?”
Free of debris, Jack goosed his thrusters. With no time to escape, he aimed straight for his adversary, playing a risky game of chicken, trusting in David’s cowardice. An explosion too close would threaten David’s own sub.
He floored the foot pedals and streaked forward.
Rather than shying, the Perseus remained on course.
Jack flicked on his xenon lamp. Light lanced out to stab the other sub, blinding its pilot.
At the last moment Spangler angled away.
Jack flashed under the enemy sub. He caught a quick glimpse of David sprawled on his belly in his cigar-shaped glass pod. Then the Perseus was gone.
Watching it retreat, Jack spotted the torpedo array spinning to track him as the Perseus fled. A finger of fire spat from the array.
“Oh crap!”
Jack straightened in his seat. The nearest canyon lay too far away. His sonar picked up the incoming torpedo as it sped toward him. He found himself leaning forward, as if that would increase his speed. “Move it…”
Laughter sounded over his radio. “Adios, asshole!”
Jack realized he would never make the canyon. He searched for other options and spotted a large boulder resting on the seamount’s summit. Slamming the left pedal, he dove at a steep angle toward it.
“Suicide, Jack? At least die with honor!”
Jack’s gaze flickered between the speeding torpedo and the oncoming collision. He bit his lip, calculating. At the last moment, he blew out his ballast tanks and gunned his thrusters. The nose end of his sub slammed into the silty bottom in front of the boulder — and bounced.
With the increased buoyancy, the tiny vessel flipped over the boulder, like a gymnast flying over a vaulting horse.
But the torpedo couldn’t.
The huge rock burst under the Nautilus. The blast shoved up the sub’s stern, peppering its underside with shards. Jack whooped, riding the concussion while sucking up new ballast. The shock wave shoved him right over the edge of the canyon.
He dove, dropping like a lead weight straight into the next chute.
Near the bottom, he angled out, skimming along the seabed. Relief and excitement mixed, but it was short-lived. The dark waters above him soon grew lighter as David pursued, closing in with his faster sub.
Jack examined his sonar readings. A strange shadow showed up ahead. He kept his lamps lit, unsure what was coming.
He needed a place to hide — and soon!
Sliding around a slight curve in the canyon, he spotted the anomaly. An arch of rock spanned the chute, a high bridge of thin stone.
He glided under it. It was too small to hide him, but it gave him an idea. He slowed and settled to the silty bottom.
It was time to even the odds.
Lawrence Nafe stood before the computerized strategy map glowing on the rear wall of the White House’s Situation Room. Behind him were gathered the Joint Chiefs, the Cabinet, and the Secret Service.
On the map, the tiny island of Okinawa glowed red.
Destroyed. Hundreds of thousands killed in a blinding flash.
His Secretary of Defense spoke behind him. “We need to choose a target, Mr. President. Retaliation must be swift and severe.”
Nafe stepped away from the map and turned around. “Beijing.”
The men around the table stared.
“Burn it to the bedrock.”
On his belly in the sub’s sleek pod, David sped around a curve. Sweat ran down his face, into his nose and mouth. He didn’t bother wiping it away. He dared not release his grip on the controls. A heads-up display glowed across the poly-acrylic nose cone. Sonar lines were superimposed over the view of the real terrain.
Circling around the bend, David spotted his quarry. He smiled. So the bastard hadn’t escaped the blast unharmed.
Under an arch of stone, Jack’s darkened sub limped and teetered, clearly compromised. David watched as the desperate man fought to get his sub moving, sand and silt choking up, but with no success. His sub continued to founder.
Like a fledgling with an injured wing.
“Having problems?” he radioed over.
“Go fuck yourself!”
David grinned. He lowered the Perseus, adjusting his lights to illuminate the interior of the other sub’s dome.
Inside, he saw Jack struggling.
Excited, David lifted his sub and angled over his enemy. As he glided under the arch, he adjusted the Perseus’s lights, keeping the focus on his trapped enemy. It gave him a thrill to see Jack fighting frantically for his life. As David passed directly over the damaged sub, the two adversaries faced each other.
Jack glanced up at him, while David grinned down.
That close, David saw no fear in Jack’s eyes, only satisfaction. Jack lifted a hand and flipped him off — then the Nautilus blasted straight up.
Caught off guard, David couldn’t get out of the way in time. The two vessels collided. David’s chin cracked against the pod. He bit the tip of his tongue. Stars flared across his vision; blood filled his mouth.
For a moment Jack’s dome ground against David’s nose cone. Both men lay within an arm’s reach of the other, yet remained untouchable.
Jack grinned up at him. “Time to even the odds, you bastard.”
David glanced to his sonar array. He suddenly understood the trap — but a fraction too late.
The top of the Perseus struck the stone arch overhead. David swore a litany of curses. With a screech of titanium, the torpedo array struck the unyielding rock. One of the minitorpedoes ignited, shooting down the canyon and exploding against a distant cliff face. The remainder of the array broke off and tumbled away.
His trap sprung, Jack’s sub sank away. “As you said…adios!” The Nautilus dove forward, aiming for the sheltering cloud cast up by the stray torpedo’s explosion.
Spitting blood, David flicked a switch. “No you don’t, asshole.”
Jack’s grin disappeared as the Nautilus suddenly lurched under him. He jerked hard in his harness as the sub’s progress was halted in mid-dive.
Twisting around, he saw the Perseus had latched onto his sub’s frame with a single manipulator arm, its pincers clamped tight. David was not letting him run. The titanium arm tugged; metal screeched.
Warning lights flashed red across Jack’s computer screen. He was snagged and trapped. Caught from behind, his own sub’s manipulator arms could not fight back.
Titanium continued to protest as the pincers on David’s sub crushed and tore. The computer flickered. The carbon dioxide scrubbers went silent. David had clamped the main power line. This was not good.
Thinking fast, he dove toward the bottom, taking on ballast, dragging the Navy’s sub behind him, meanwhile beginning to circle during the descent. Flashing on his xenon headlight, Jack aimed at the mangled torpedo array on the seabed floor. His lights dimmed as the Nautilus’s power line was crimped. He ignored it, concentrating on his goal.
When he was close enough, Jack reached to the controls for his own sub’s manipulator arms. He extended the right arm and grabbed one of the discarded torpedoes resting on the seabed.
By now David realized the danger. The Nautilus was jostled as David shook the vessel.
Rattled, Jack bobbled and dropped the torpedo, but he deftly snatched it back up with his other manipulator arm. Before he lost it again, Jack wound back the arm and whipped it forward, lobbing the torpedo against the base of the stone arch.
The blast blew out the support. The stone arch broke, falling toward them.
As Jack had hoped, David was not willing to risk his own skin. He freed the Nautilus, spinning away. But Jack spun the other way and grabbed the Perseus’s back frame, turning the tables, catching the shark by its tail.
“Leaving so soon?” he asked.
Overhead, the main section fell toward them.
“Let me go! You’ll kill us both!”
“Both? I don’t think so.”
Smaller boulders landed around them, blasting craters in the silt. Jack monitored both his sonar and the tumble of rock. Using his other manipulator arm, he tore at the Perseus’s main thruster assembly, damaging the propellers, then released his pincers and backed at full throttle.
David’s sub lurched, trying to crawl from under the fall of rock, but it was no use. Boulders crashed deep into the silt.
As Jack watched, a small burst of bubbles exploded from around the Perseus. He initially thought the sub had imploded, but as the bubbles cleared, a small pod of acrylic shot out from the external titanium frame. Spangler had employed his sub’s emergency escape mechanism. The ejected glass “lifeboat” blasted away from its heavier external shell. The abandoned section was immediately pounded flat by tons of rock.
The bastard was escaping!
Jack scowled, climbing with his thrusters above the spreading silk cloud.
Under positive buoyancy, the lifeboat and its single passenger rose rapidly. A tiny red emergency light on its tail winked mockingly back at him. In his heavier sub, Jack had no hope of catching it.
He followed the escape pod’s course with his xenon light as it cleared the canyon walls and climbed into the open sea.
Jaw muscles tense, Jack gripped his controls, unsure about what to do — then a flurry of movement to the side caught his eye.
A large creature stretched from a rocky den, reaching for the escaping glass bubble. The explosions, the threat to its territory, must have drawn it.
Jack touched his throat mike. “David, I think you’re about to be dinner.”
David frowned at Jack’s radioed message. What was he talking about? What harm could he do? Jack’s sub could never catch him. Though his own lifeboat bore no weapons and had no maneuverability, it did have speed. The sleek torpedo of acrylic was light and extremely buoyant.
David tapped in a code on his computer, preparing to patch through to the sea base. He would order the anthropologist killed, slowly. Rolfe was a skilled “interviewer.” He had loosened many a stubborn tongue. David would make sure her cries and pleadings were dispatched to Jack before she was killed.
As he typed in the final connection, the life pod was jolted, tossing David onto his side. He searched the water around him but saw nothing in the weak glow of the blinking emergency beacon in the stern. He rose up on an elbow. Then the lifeboat was jarred again, and suddenly dragged straight down. David’s head struck the thick acrylic.
“What the fu—” Words died in his mouth as he glanced past his toes. In the light of the red beacon, he spotted a large dinner-plate-size sucker attached to the shell of the lifeboat. He watched a long tentacle wrap around the pod, drawing him back into the depths, reeling him in like a hooked fish.
A giant squid!
He had read the report of Jack’s battle with the same monster. He pressed his palms against the glass, panic setting in. He had no weapons. He searched the sea around him. Strobed in the red light, other tentacles and arms flailed, descending on its trapped prey.
The pod was flipped around roughly. David rolled and found a huge black eye staring at him.
A small gasp choked out of him.
The eye disappeared as the pod spun in the monster’s grip. David braced himself. All around was a blur of tentacles.
Staring past his toes, David suddenly sensed danger above his head. He jerked around — and screamed.
An arm’s length away a huge maw opened, lined by razor-sharp beaks, large enough to bite the slender pod in half. Still crying out in horror, he was drawn head first into the hungry creature’s mouth. It gnawed on the glass end, grinding its surface with its viselike beak.
David retreated, cramming himself into the stern half of the lifeboat. As he did, his elbow struck the communication system.
His eyes flicked to its palm-size screen. He still had communications! He could call in a rescue. Perhaps the bulletproof glass would resist the creature long enough. Or maybe the squid would tire of its stubborn prey and simply let him go.
Clinging to this small hope, he forced down his panic, told himself to stay focused, in charge.
Elbowing his way forward, David reached the transmitter. As he called up topside, a horrible noise echoed through the pod.
— crack—
He stared overhead. Tiny cracks skittered across the glass. Oh. God…no… He remembered the way Dr. Cortez had died, crushed, his skull imploding.
The monster continued to gnaw. The threadlike stress cracks spiderwebbed around him. At these immense pressures, implosion was imminent.
David clenched his fists as his hopes bled away. He was left with only one desire: revenge.
His boss, Nicolas Ruzickov, ever paranoid, had built in a fail-safe system in case the pillar site were ever compromised. The CIA director had not wanted the power here falling into foreign hands. “Better no one get it than lose it to another,” Ruzickov had explained.
David called up a special screen and typed in a coded sequence. His finger hovered above the Enter key.
He looked up. The beast’s maw continued to grind against the glass. More cracks.
Monster or pressure…which death was worse?
He tapped the final key.
FAIL-SAFE ACTIVATED blinked for a brief second.
Then the lifeboat collapsed, crushing the life out of him in a heartbeat.
Sitting beside her captor, Karen knew time was running out. In a little over two hours the solar storm would hit. She had to contact the Fathom and let them know Dr. Cortez had been murdered. But her bodyguard had refused to let her out of his sight.
As she sat with her hands clutched in her lap, Lieutenant Rolfe leaned over the radio. A call had been wired down from topside. Though he whispered, she managed to make out two words: “evacuation” and “fail-safe.”
Straining, she tried to eavesdrop on more of the conversation.
Finally, the lieutenant hung up the receiver and turned to her. “They’re sending down the Argus. We’re leaving immediately.”
Karen noted the man refused to make eye contact. He was lying — he might be leaving, but she wouldn’t be.
Feigning acquiescence, she stood and stretched. “It’s about time.”
The lieutenant got to his feet, too. Karen saw his left hand drift to the knife strapped to his thigh. No bullets. Not at these pressures.
Turning, she hurriedly crossed toward the ladder that led down to the docking bay. She mounted it first, keeping an eye on her adversary.
He nodded for her to climb down, hand leaving the hilt of his knife.
Karen quickly calculated. She’d been taught the safety systems as soon as she boarded here. Everything was automated. For her plan to work, she had to time this perfectly. She moved slowly down the ladder, a rung at a time. Rolfe followed, keeping close, as usual.
Good.
Halfway down, Karen leaped from the ladder, landing with a thud.
Lieutenant Rolfe frowned down at her. “Careful, damn it!”
Karen thrust herself to the wall and smashed her elbow into the safety glass, breaking the seal. Pushing through the glass, slicing her fingertips, she reached to the emergency manual override. It was a safety feature to lock down the levels in case of flooding.
Understanding in his eyes, the lieutenant, who stood halfway through the interlevel hatch, pushed off the rungs, dropping toward her.
Karen yanked the red lever.
Emergency klaxons blared.
The hatch whisked shut.
Karen rolled away as the lieutenant fell through the hatch, kicking at her head. But his attack was halted in mid-swing.
Twisting around, she saw him hanging from the hatch, gurgling, his neck caught in the sliding door. It closed with a pressure meant to hold back six hundred meters of water pressure.
Bones cracked. Blood splattered the deck.
She turned away as his body fell to the floor, headless, twitching.
She ran a few steps away and vomited, remaining bent over, her stomach quivering. She knew she had no other choice. Kill or be killed, Jack had told her once.
Still…
An intercom at the control station buzzed. A voice spoke. “Neptune, this is Topside Control. We’re reading an emergency hatch closure. Are you okay?”
Karen straightened, heart thudding. The Argus must be on its way down. She could not risk being caught. Hurrying to the controls, she frantically tried to remember how to work the radio, moving toggles and dials. Finally, she thumbed the right switch and leaned to the mike. “Topside, this is Neptune. Do not attempt evacuation. I repeat, do not attempt evacuation. The station has been damaged. Implosion imminent. Do you copy?”
The voice returned, somber. “Read you. Implosion imminent.” A long pause. “Our prayers are with you, Neptune.”
“Thank you, Topside. Over and out.”
Karen bit her lip. Finally free, she now turned her attention to more important concerns.
Where the hell was Jack?
Jack limped down the last canyon. He spotted lights ahead. It was the crash site! He was so close. He pumped the foot pedals, trying to eke a little more power from the drained batteries. The thrusters whined weakly.
If nothing else, the frantic chase through the seamounts had brought him within a quarter mile of the base. After watching David’s lifeboat implode, it had taken Jack only eight minutes to reach the site. However, his computer screen was riddled with blinking warning lights in hues of red and yellow. Worst of all, the battery power level read zero.
The charge was so low that he’d been forced to turn off all immediately unnecessary systems: lights, carbon dioxide scrubbers, even heaters. After such a short trip, he was already shivering violently, lips blue from the icy cold of these depths.
And now with the lights of the base illuminating the last of the canyon, Jack turned off his sonar. This earned him another half minute of power to his thrusters. He glided the Nautilus forward. The sub’s skids, bent and twisted, rode an inch above the sandy bottom.
At long last he pulled free of the canyons.
After so long in the dark, the lights glared. He squinted. The pillar lay twenty yards to his right, the sea base straight ahead, its three doughnut-shaped sections lit up brightly. He swore under his breath at the distance yet to travel. Why had they constructed the base so far away? He’d never make it.
Proving his words true, the thrusters whined down and stopped with an ominous silence. Jack pounded the foot pedals. “C’mon, not when we’re this damn close!” He managed to earn a weak whine, but nothing more.
He settled back, thinking. He rubbed his hands together, his fingertips numb from the cold. “Now what?”
Karen wiped the blood from her hands onto her pants. She had climbed back up to Level 2 after disengaging the emergency lock-down. For the past five minutes, she had been fruitlessly trying to raise Gabriel.
Cut off, she felt blind and deaf. What was she going to do?
She stood up, trying to pace away her nervousness. She considered calling topside and coming clean. The fate of the world depended on someone taking action…anyone. But she knew her chances of convincing somebody in authority were futile. The disk with the data from the Fathom was gone, missing along with the body of Dr. Cortez. And who would believe a woman who had just decapitated a decorated member of the U.S. military?
Karen scratched her head, her heart pounding. There had to be a way.
As she paced, a small temblor shook underfoot. She stopped. The vibrations rattled up her legs. She held her breath. All she needed right now was a deep-sea quake. She moved to one of the portholes. As she peered out, the rattling died away. A fading light caught her eye. It was coming from the pillar.
Karen narrowed her eyes, studying it. Strange.
Suddenly, the light flared up in the pillar. The ground shook again. She gripped the walls, holding herself steady. For the briefest moment, as the light flared, she spotted the glint of something shiny and metallic.
Something was out there.
The quake ended, and the light faded.
She stared, straining, squinting — but could discern nothing more.
“What was that?” she mumbled to herself.
As she stood, arms tight around her, Karen thought of a way to find out.
Teeth chattering and weak from stale air, Jack struggled to grab another rock from the silt with the sub’s manipulator arm. Of the first four stones, he had managed to hit the pillar twice. Not bad.
Earlier, as the sub had rested dead on the seabed floor, he’d remembered Charlie’s lesson about the pillar’s sensitivity to energy, even kinetic energy, like something striking its surface. He had just enough battery power to work one of the manipulator arms and lob stones at the pillar. The ground trembled, the pillar flared. But was there anyone to see his SOS? Had the base been abandoned already? He had no way of knowing.
He struggled to dig free another stone. His vision blurred. The cold and the carbon dioxide were taking their toll. As he fought to stay conscious, the manipulator arm froze up. He tugged at the controls. Not enough power.
He tried the radio one last time. The batteries’ remaining dribble of juice was enough to power a final call. “Can anyone hear me? Charlie…anyone…”
Groaning, Jack collapsed back into his cold seat. No answer. He shivered and trembled all over. Waiting. The deep waters had sucked all heat from the small sub. His vision dimmed again. He began to swim in and out of consciousness. He fought it, but the ocean was stronger.
On his last flicker of consciousness, he spotted the large monster bearing down at him…then darkness swallowed him.
Karen sat before the control station on Level 1. She manipulated the joystick for the ROV robot named Huey, guiding its arms to grab onto Jack’s sub. On the monitor before her, she watched her work from remote. The grips extended and latched onto a section of the sub’s titanium tubing, clamping tight.
Satisfied she had a firm hold, she backed Huey along the path toward the base. The sub seemed to resist for a moment, then budged slowly. Karen wiped sweat from her eyes. “You can do it, Huey.”
The Volkswagen Bug-size robot continued backing, dragging the sub with it. As it retreated, Karen swiveled the remote camera’s eye, making sure to avoid obstructions while ensuring that she didn’t lose Jack and his sub.
Through the acrylic dome she watched Jack’s form jostle around as the sub was hauled. His head lolled and his arms hung limp. Unconscious? Dead? She had no way of knowing, but refused to give up.
Working quickly, her eyes darted from the screen to the clock on the wall. Her grip grew slick on the joystick. Less than two hours. How could they possibly hope to succeed? On the screen, she watched Huey trundle backward, hauling the dead sub. Either way, she wasn’t going to leave Jack out there.
Struggling with the joystick, she steadily drew the sub along the silt. Luckily, the track between the pillar and the station had already been cleared by workers. Even the stray bits of jet pieces had been vacuumed from the silt. Karen worked as quickly as safety allowed, praying for more time.
Then a familiar voice rose from the control station’s speakers. “Dr. Grace, if you can hear us, please respond.”
Karen cried out with relief. Keeping one hand on the joystick, she used her free hand to patch into the communication system. “Gabriel!”
“Good morning, Dr. Grace, please hold for the Deep Fathom.”
On the monitor, Huey finally reached the station. Karen slowed the robot and carefully pulled Jack’s sub underneath the base. She tilted the camera, coordinating to position the sub under the docking bay doors.
“Karen!”
“Miyuki! Oh, thank God!”
Before her friend could respond, a new voice came on. It was the ship’s geologist, his Jamaican accent giving him away. “Professor Grace, time is of the essence. Have you heard from Dr. Cortez? What is going on?”
Karen gave him a summary as she initiated the docking bay pressurization. The two quickly compared notes. She learned the support ships topside were all leaving, steaming under full power away from the site and abandoning the Fathom. Once they were gone, communications had reopened.
“Why are they leaving?” she asked.
“Gabriel picked up a coded transmission. He was able to decrypt it. Apparently some fail-safe command was initiated. To wipe out the area. It seems they’re not taking any chances on losing whatever resources lie down there to a foreign power. The place has been targeted for a missile strike.”
“When?”
“Gabriel is still trying to work that out.”
Karen suddenly felt faint, light-headed. From how many different directions could death aim their way?
“What about Jack?” Charlie asked.
Karen focused back on the monitors. “I’m trying to get him on board, but I don’t know. The robot can’t lift his sub into the bay. Jack has to do that himself, and I think he’s out of power.”
“I’ll have Gabriel patch you over to the sub. See if you can wake him.”
“I’ll try.”
As she waited, Karen leaned over and peered through the observation window. The bay was flooded and the doors were gliding open.
“Dr. Grace, you are hooked up to the deep-water radio of the Nautilus.”
Karen spoke into the microphone. “Jack, if you can hear me, wake up!” She kept an eye on the monitor, focusing Huey’s camera on the glass dome. She used the robot’s arms to shake the sub. “Wake up, damn it!”
Jack swam through darkness, chasing a whisper. A familiar voice. He followed it up toward a bright light. The voice of an angel…
“Goddamn it, Jack! Wake your ass up!”
He jolted in his seat, groggy and blinded. He threw his head back. Lights shone all around him. He couldn’t see.
“Jack, it’s Karen!”
“Karen…?” He wasn’t sure if he spoke or if it was all in his head. The world swam with light.
“Jack, you have to raise your sub fifteen feet. I need you to enter the bay over your head.”
Jack craned his head up. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw a large open hatch above his head. Understanding seeped through to him. “Can’t,” he mumbled. “No power.”
“There must be a way. You’re so close.”
Jack stared up, remembering Spangler’s death. Maybe there was a way.
Karen spoke, desperate. “Jack, I’ll see if the ROV robot’s arms are strong enough to push you inside.”
“No…” His tongue felt thick and slow. He searched between his legs. His fingers found the release brake for jettisoning the external sub frame. He yanked on it. It was stuck, or he was too weak.
“Jack…”
Taking a deep breath, he grabbed it again with numb fingers. Bracing his feet, he used both his arms and his upper back to crank the lever up between his legs. He heard the muffled pop of the manual pyrotechnics. The external frame locks blew off, freeing the inner pilot’s chamber.
Buoyant, the chamber rose from its shell, like an insect shedding its old carapace. Pressures thrust it upward through the open hatch.
Jack saw none of it, passing out again.
On the screen, Karen saw the sub appear to crack in half. She gasped with fright until she saw the inner chamber shoot upward — right through the open hatch. She hit a button on the controls, initiating repressurization.
She stepped to the observation window. Jack’s escape pod bounced and rolled along the ceiling. Under it, the bay doors closed. The thump of the pumps began to sound.
Karen watched, holding her breath. Jack hung slack in his harness.
The five minutes to drain and equalize the pressure was interminable. She briefly contacted the Fathom, updating them. She learned that Charlie was working on some plan of his own with Gabriel.
Karen, afraid for Jack, barely listened.
At last the green light flashed above the door to the bay. She twirled the lock and hauled the hatch open. The pilot pod, half acrylic, half titanium, lay on its side. Karen had already been instructed over the radio by Robert on how to open it. Snatching an emergency oxygen bottle from beside the bay door, she ducked through the hatch.
She ran over to the pod, grabbed the manual screw pull, and began winding it around like a car’s jack handle. She stared inside. Jack’s face was blue. She cranked harder, pumping her arms. The seals peeled open with a hiss of escaping air. Karen smelled the foulness to it — stale, dead.
She reached to the loosened dome top and kicked it open. Kneeling down, she freed Jack’s harness and hauled out his limp body. His skin was cold and clammy. She was sure he was dead.
Sprawled on the bay floor, Karen checked for a pulse in his neck. Faint and thready. His breathing was shallow. She slid on her knees and collected the small oxygen bottle, unhooking the tiny mask. She twisted the flow valve and placed the mask over his mouth and nose.
Leaning near his ear, she whispered, “Breathe, Jack.”
Somewhere deep inside, he must have heard her. His chest rose and fell more deeply. She turned and zippered down his neoprene dive suit, freeing his rib cage.
As she did so, a hand rose and weakly took her wrist.
She looked down at Jack’s face and found him staring at her.
He spoke through the mask. His voice was hoarse. “Karen…?”
She began to cry, and hugged him gently around the neck. For a moment neither one tried to move.
Finally, Jack struggled to sit up. Karen helped him. He shoved aside the oxygen mask and minitank. His color was already improving. “Tell me what’s happening,” he asked, teeth chattering.
She did.
Jack rolled to his knees and coughed thickly. “What’s this plan of Charlie’s?”
“He wouldn’t exactly say.”
“That sounds like Charlie.” Jack stood with her help, rubbing his arms. “How much time do we have left?”
“One hour.”