The Demon Plagues (20 page)

“Make tubes one and two ready in all
respects, including opening outer doors, aye. Firing solution
computed, awaiting torpedo room actions.”

“Conn, Sonar, active contact, ice, depth four
eight zero. Quartermaster reports sounding five six zero feet.”

Captain Absen chewed his lower lip.
Only
eighty feet between the sea bed and the bottom of the iceberg.
The boat was less than fifty feet tall; he could try to go through
if he was willing to risk scraping the ice or the sea bottom.
Too close
. He had searched for and stalked this bastard for
the last week and he wasn’t going to risk his boat – and failure –
by rushing now.

“XO, plot and execute a circumnavigation of
that ice. Helm, all ahead standard. Morty, keep your ears on. If
you lose him I’ll have to cut your grog ration.”

The crew breathed a sigh of relief; at the
slower standard instead of flank speed, the noise of their passage
dropped dramatically as their screws stopped cavitating.

Fifteen minutes passed as they steered around
the iceberg. The XO reported, “Back on closing course, range twenty
thousand yards. Solution recomputed, we can fire any time now,
sir.”

“Isn’t it too far?” Ensign Cooper whispered
to the COB.

“Against an enemy sub, sure. They’d hear the
torpedo and have all day to take action. At least they’d shoot
back. But these guys are blind and deaf, or they should be.”

Sonarman Morton reported, “Target is blowing
tanks and rising.”

Absen looked at his second-in-command. “XO,
what do you think? Communicating?”

“Maybe they’re going to fire missiles.”

The captain rubbed the day-old growth on his
chin. “You think they could have defeated the interlocks and PAL
codes?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think, sir. We have to
assume the worst.”

“Right.” The captain stood up, crossing his
arms. “Lock solution into the Special and prepare to fire. Ensign
Cooper, take the firing station.”

“Solution locked aye. Ready to fire.”

“XO do you concur with special weapon
employment?”

The XO nodded, pulling the key from where it
hung around his neck. He took out a small plastic codebook and
broke the seal. “I have my code and key,” he said formally.

Captain Absen took out his key and code and
broke his seal in turn. “I have my code and key.”

The two men took their places at the two
nuclear weapon stations. They were across the small room from each
other, deliberately out of reach of any one man. The captain began
calling out the activation sequence.

“Select Torpedo Special One, Tube One.”

“Torpedo Special One, Tube One selected.”

“Input PAL code.”

“PAL code input.” This was the code that
allowed the nuclear warhead to arm itself.

“Confirm with key turn to the left, together
on the count of three then turn. Ready, one, two, three, turn.”

The two men turned their keys simultaneously
under the wide eyes of the control room crew.

“Confirm valid solution in Tube One.”

“Solution valid confirmed Tube One aye.”

Captain Absen looked across at Ensign Cooper.
“Fire One.”

There came a thud and a whoosh audible to
everyone aboard as the torpedo was ejected from its tube by
compressed air, and then began its run toward the target.

“Left full rudder, all ahead flank. Come to
course zero zero zero. Get us out of here. In about thirteen
minutes it’s going to be very, very noisy.” The captain’s voice was
calm, his tone dry and droll.

The crew relaxed. The Old Man had it under
control.

“Torpedo running hot, straight and normal.
Eighteen thousand and closing.” The torpedo forged ahead at high
speed, almost two thousand yards a minute.

Morton called from the sonar shack. “Target
has leveled and is slowing.”

The Captain and XO exchanged glances. “Shit,”
said the XO.

“I should have taken us under the ice. Damn
it. Call out range every thousand yards.”

“Target has opened outer doors and flooded
tubes. Wait, no. Something doesn’t sound right.” Morton fiddled
with his controls, rapidly typing commands into his keyboard. “Sir,
I don’t have an algorithm for our own boomers, so the computer
shows the closest match, but I think they just opened their missile
hatch. Hatches. I have…eighteen distinct signatures recorded.”

“Seventeen thousand.”

“
Jesus Christ!
They’re going to launch
their Tridents! Fire Control: Snapshot tubes three and four on
submerged contact!”

The Fire control party at the weapons station
frantically began the sequence to fire the two conventional Mark 48
torpedoes. Ensign Cooper stood helplessly by as the skilled
enlisted men did everything much faster than he could have.

“Communications. Flash message to Fleet
in
the clear,
send their estimated position and recommend
immediate strike with anything they have.”

The XO stepped in close to his captain to
speak softly. “It’s going to be too late. If Torp One doesn’t get
them, nothing will.”

“I know. It’s better than doing nothing. And
who knows, maybe the horse will sing.”

“Sixteen thousand.”

“Eight minutes. Just eight minutes. How many
missiles can they launch in eight minutes?” Absen raised his voice.
“Anyone? Master Chief? You were on a boomer before, right?”

“Yes sir,” the COB answered. “In eight
minutes, maybe all of them, but it would be tight. Several,
anyway.”

The XO gently banged his knuckles on a
support pole in frustration. “Come on, no launch. Dear God, we need
something to go wrong now,” he half prayed, half pleaded.

“Fifteen thousand.”

Morton’s hands froze on the headphones, his
eyes so wide the whites showed all around. His voice cut through
the tension. “I have missile launch.”

“One, two, three, launch.” Nguyen’s flat
voice was immediately drowned out by an explosive roar and a
shaking as the first missile, forty feet long and weighing more
than fifty tons, was ejected from its launch tube like a gigantic
jack-in-the-box. It was forced up through the last twoscore feet of
ocean by its ejection charges and leaped into the air. At the top
of its porpoise-like breach, its main engine ignited and the
enormous weapon powered skyward on a column of flame and smoke,
carrying twelve independently-targeted warheads toward their deadly
destiny.

Bitzer fiddled with the controls, mumbling.
He adjusted ballast to compensate for the lost weight and set down
angle on the dive planes, keeping the boat from approaching the
surface. There had to be enough water between each missile's main
engine ignition and the boat, or it would fry them in the blowtorch
of its exhaust.

“One, two, three, neutral. Select missile
number two. One, two, three, arm. One, two, three, fire.” A pause
for the next pounding, titans in a gigantic bowling alley. “One,
two, three, neutral.”

The sequence proceeded according to Nguyen’s
machinelike call, a metronome ticking off ejections of nuclear
fireworks. Earth had never witnessed such a thing; the fifty-plus
nuclear detonations scattered over the last few years were being
overtaken even now in number and power by two hundred sixteen hells
flung into the sky in merely six minutes.

Throughout, Bitzer fought the boat as it rang
and shook. He pumped ballast and he angled his dive planes full
downward and he worked the throttles to their full limits.

“That’s the lot, closing missile hatches.
Diving the boat. Depth one hundred. One fifty. Two hundred.
Twenty-seven knots. Probably the best we can do.”

A buzzing sound intruded on the now-quiet
control room. “What’s that?” Jill asked.

“Oh, ballocks. Get over there where the
light’s flashing. What does it say?” Bitzer asked.

She hunched down to look at the display. “It
says ‘Countermeasures’ and below that it says ‘Inbound Active’ in
flashing text.”

“Someone fired a torpedo at us. It’s within
five thousand yards – two or three minutes at most. Here, lass,
come here.”

She ran over to the helm, ignoring his
familiarity.

“Take the helm, hold it just there. Just like
I was, bloody hell.” Bonnagh wormed his way around the Marine to
flip switches and punch buttons frantically at the countermeasures
station. “Hail Mary full of grace. Jaysus, Mary and Joseph there we
go. Both herrings away.” He came back and seized the helm from
Repeth.

Seconds ticked by. “Three hundred. Three
fifty. Four hundred. It looks like the countermeasures pulled it
off us. Might want to strap in. If we make it to six hundred we may
live through this.”

Silence fell in the
Tucson’s
command
center. “Shit,” someone muttered.

“Maybe he’ll be slow. Maybe we’ll get him
before he launches them all.”

“Launch two.”

“Fourteen thousand.”

“Not fast enough. Dammit, not fast
enough.”

The crew waited, frozen to their stations,
for the inevitable countdown of launches. Sonar finally said,
“Sounds like eighteen was the last one, all hatches closed and I
hear turns for flank speed.”

“They’re running.”

“Three thousand.”

“Conn, Sonar: countermeasures,
countermeasures in the water.”

The control room crew let out a collective
groan.

“Countermeasures again. Looks like he
launched both of them.” Countermeasures were sophisticated
torpedo-like drones that mimicked the signature of the submarine
itself, hoping to draw away any weapons aimed at the boat.

“Amateurs,” muttered the XO.

“Hardly matters,” Captain Absen replied. “He
must have detected the incoming torp. Now I wish I’d launched a
Mark 48. Then we could be right behind it and ensure we killed the
bastard.”

“No way of knowing, sir. We could turn around
now.”

“No point. Helm, come to periscope
depth.”

“Periscope depth aye.”

“Conn, Sonar: two thousand yards now,
probably. I’ve lost the boat itself, we’re too far out of range.”
The sonarman took off his headset. “Gentlemen, you might want to
grab onto something.”

“Uh, yes sir, special weapon detonation in
under one minute,” Ensign Cooper announced nervously.

Everyone took a seat and strapped in. The
Captain picked up the PA mike. “Now hear this, all hands, special
weapon detonation, I say again nuclear detonation at thirty
thousand yards in under one minute, crash positions, take crash
positions.” He put his hands over his ears and opened his mouth,
watching his crew do the same as they waited.

Shockwave.

Repeth and Nguyen strapped themselves
hastily into the semi-mobile seats bolted to the deck.

“Four fifty. Five hundred. Five fifty. Six
hundred. Six fifty –”

The sledgehammer of an angry god struck the
submarine, rolling it over ninety degrees in less than a second.
Alkina, still taped into her chair, was propelled a short distance
until the mobile fittings holding her seat to the deck brought her
up short. Her upper body flopped, tearing the tape, her head
slamming into a console. She lolled, a rag doll puppet, while the
other three rubbed bruises, slowly releasing themselves from the
straps.

“They do build these things tough, I’ll give
‘em that,” remarked Bitzer.

“That was a nuke.”

“Yup. What did you expect?” He laughed, on
the edge of hysteria.

“Why didn’t it EMP us?” Jill asked.

Bitzer sneered, “What, shielded by thousands
of yards of seawater, grounded by the whole ocean, the biggest
electrical sink in existence? Didn’t you ever take any
physics?”

“
In high school
,” Jill snarled. “Not
lately
.”

“That’s enough, you two,” snapped Nguyen.
“Will they strike us again?”

“I doubt it. Every two minutes we’re a mile
farther from the launch site in an unknown direction. They will
have lost us in the shockwave. And ours should be detonating soon,
right? That will knock out all their sensors and command and
control. Anything on the surface will be firing blind into a
thousand square miles of ocean.”

Jill laughed, shaky. “Then we made it. We’re
home free.”

“Probably,” Colonel Nguyen replied. “Gunnery
Sergeant, you did outstanding work today but now we have to focus
ourselves back inside this boat." He pointed at Alkina. "That
Australian operative there tried to interfere with the launch and
we need to find out why. Trank her again, would you, and repair her
bindings.”

“What the hell just happened?” Major Muzik
stood in the open pressure doorway, his foot on the lip and his
hands holding his swaying body upright by the jamb.

Bitzer laughed again, then choked it back.
“We just launched eighteen nuclear missiles. We just set everone's
command and control back a hundred years. We just balanced the
scales.”

“Holy shit. And I slept through it. This
bitch…” he walked over to Alkina’s bound and bloody form. “This
bitch tranked me.”

“Me too, don’t feel too bad,” replied Repeth.
She fished her trank pistol out of her cargo pocket, removed the
safety cap and put the muzzle against Alkina’s neck. The drug
hissed into her system with a quick pull. Jill began taping her up
again, this time fastening the seat straps first, wrapping the
silvery sticky stuff over the whole arrangement. She stopped for a
moment to remove a slim carbon fiber blade from Alkina’s boot. She
stared at the blood on it for a moment before tossing it to the
Colonel. “Someone got stabbed.”

He caught the blade deftly and looked at it.
“All right, you two sweep the ship. Find the others. They might be
wounded…or worse. We’ll stay here.” Nguyen nodded toward Bitzer,
whose hands remained glued to the submarine’s helm controls.