Protocol 7 at-1 Read online

  “It’ll work out okay, Simon,” he said. “Everyone will be fine.”

  Simon nodded. What was to come was certainly the worst part of their mission so far.

  He turned and told the others to finish the prep checklist and to double-check the full operational capabilities of the forward and aft cutting tools. Andrew and Hayden both nodded obligingly. “We’re going to talk with Donovan for a moment,” Simon told them. “Then…we’re off.”

  They came back to the floor of the hold and began to cross to the hatch at brisk pace. Simon had rehearsed the speech in his head a hundred times, but now the words were coming to him at a snail’s pace. Everything sounded slow and contrived. How could I have let it come to this? he asked himself.

  He brought his hand up to the keypad that would open the door to the corridor-

  — and the door slid open all by itself, revealing Dominic Donovan and his nameless lead engineer standing in the hatchway, looking inside, staring at the fully revealed Spector VI as if they were looking at the angel of death.

  Shit, Simon told himself silently. Shit! He and Max crowded out of the hold, physically pushing the captain and his lead engineer up the corridor, and keying shut the hold behind them.

  “Captain,” Simon said quickly. “You are not seeing this!”

  “What the hell is that thing?” Donovan asked, clearly shocked at the site of the massive submersible. He knew he was transporting some type of military machine, but what he was staring at was beyond his wildest imagination.

  “I’m telling you: you didn’t see it. It can only cause you a great deal of trouble for the rest of your life.”

  Donovan stared at him for a long moment…then nodded slowly. The lead engineer behind him seemed absolutely frozen.

  “Look,” Simon said, hating himself, “I’ve come to give you some bad news.”

  “Bad…news…” Donovan echoed, losing track of the conversation entirely.

  “There’s no easy way to say this. We need to get…the cargo…out of this vessel now.”

  “Impossible,” Donovan said, regaining at least some of his composure. “I’ve got a Category 4 storm outside, we can’t possibly operate the winches.”

  “I know that,” Simon said. “But the fact remains, we have to release the cargo now.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Donovan said, dismissing him. “If we don’t use the winches, you’d have to cut a hole the size of Texas in the bottom of this…”

  He stopped himself. He looked at Simon and put all the pieces together.

  “You’d have to scuttle this ship,” he said.

  “Yes,” Simon answered. “We would. We are.”

  “Like hell-”

  Max stepped forward, much harder, more aggressive. “Captain!” he barked, and pulled the older man up short. “There isn’t any choice. We’re inside; it’s programmed. And nine minutes from now our cutting lasers are going to peel open the hull of this boat to make a hole wide enough for us to escape, simple as that.”

  Donovan was absolutely stunned.

  “Get your crew to the lifeboats,” Simon said. “Now. You can activate the beacons-we will activate the beacons-as soon as we’re clear. We’re not far from patrolled territory; you should have a rescue plane homing on the GPS in no time and be home for dinner.”

  “Without my ship, you mean,” Donovan said, seething.

  “Yes,” Simon answered, calm and smooth as the ice itself. “Without your ship.” He looked at Donovan squarely in his face, “You know the protocol. You’ve sworn secrecy to her majesty’s military, and the last thing you and your crew can do is speak a word about this procedure.”

  Donovan opened his mouth-ready to argue, ready to threaten. Simon put up a hand, surprised at his own certainty and calm. “There’s no other way,” he said. “If you care about your life and future-if you care about all the people in there and out here-you won’t waste time fighting with me. You’ll just get everybody to the lifeboats. No one needs to get hurt. Everyone can be safe. But you have to move NOW!”

  “But-”

  “The damage is done. We will be cutting open the hull in-”

  He glanced at Max, who glanced at his chronometer. “Seven minutes now.”

  Donovan stared daggers at him for ten more seconds…then tore himself away. “Son of a bitch,” he said, and pushed his lead engineer down the corridor. “Go, go!”

  Simon and Max turned away; Max keyed open the door to the hold and Simon stepped in first. Max didn’t like the look on Donovan’s face; he had dealt with too many people in situations like this-situations of life and death that caused people to do irrational things. He was definitely worried.

  The instant he was through, Max touched the control again and paused the action. “Simon?” he said. “Get back on board. I’ll join you in two.”

  Simon spun around, astonished. “What?”

  “I have to get something from up top-something important.”

  “What?”

  “It doesn’t matter, just go. I’ll be back in two minutes.”

  Simon stared at him for a moment, deciding whether to argue or not…then turned on his heel and sped toward the Spector. He was up the gangway and inside the vehicle in seconds. Max waited until the hatch behind him was secure.

  Then he turned back and touched the intercom pad embedded in the bulkhead. “Captain Donovan?” he said. “This is Max. You and your lead engineer need to meet me in the hold, now. Just you two. There…there may be a way out of this.”

  He didn’t have to wait long. He knew they would come. By his own internal clock, it was less than sixty seconds later that they stepped through the hatch and entered the hold. Max closed the hatch behind them with the single touch of a button.

  “Thank god you came to your senses,” Donovan said. “I’m sure there’s something we can do to-”

  Before Donovan could say another word, the bullet from Max’s pistol penetrated his skull. He tumbled to the deck, dead before he hit. A moment later, a second shot and his executive officer’s body fell on top of him with a heavy thud.

  Max knew that the sound of his silencer would never be heard, especially in the noise of the thunder outside and the thick walls of the Spector.

  He made it up the gangway, opened the aft hatch of the Spector, entered and sealed it behind him in less than a minute. He didn’t have a speck of blood on him.

  Except on my hands, he told himself as he double-checked the seal on the aft hatch. For a second, he thought about what he had done, but just for a second. He knew the best thing for everyone was that Donovan was not interrogated or possibly tortured for answers.

  He told himself it was the more humane thing to do.

  * * *

  The rest of the team was well aware of the audacious plan that would sink the Munro and send them on their way; they just thought that Donovan and his crew had been in on it as well. When Max re-entered the bridge, they were all in their places and strapped in. The main entrance hatch hissed as it compressed the air inside the vessel and locked the outside air, within its nine-inch impervious skin.

  Max settled into the pilot’s chair. Simon sat beside him; Andrew was in the navigator’s chair and Hayden was conning the engineering station. Max looked around him as he pulled the canopy at the back of his seat’s headrest forward a bit. It slid out in a cupped arch, casting a golden glow on the crown of his head. No electrodes were necessary; no probes needed to be set. The interface was entirely wireless.

  “Okay,” he said. “AI separation complete?”

  “Complete,” Ryan said. “Nothing’s getting through.”

  “Camouflage and chameleon circuitry operational?”

  “Ten by ten,” Andrew reported.

  “Power and Engineering?”

  “I’m going to say…it’s fine.”

  Max flicked a cautionary eye at Hayden, who lifted his hands in surrender.

  “All right then, go.”

  “Medical and Li
fe Support?”

  “Ready,” Samantha chimed in.

  “Navigation?”

  “Go.”

  “And Simon? Focus the lasers.”

  “Focused,” Simon said a moment later. The crosshairs of the cutting lasers were showing on his console, and a blue dot flared on the hull of the ship itself, visible in the forward-facing flat-screen.

  “Then let’s do it.”

  Simon depressed the luminous switch. A visible beam, so intensely blue it hurt to look at, lanced out of the gimbaled projectors to the left and right sides of the hull and began to cut along a pre-set course: up and over, down and back.

  Water began to gush through the cut, so fast and hard it looked like a beam of white steel. They could all hear it thudding against the hull of the Spector like a battering ram.

  The cutting continued. The thin line of water became a torrent, and the steel plating of the ship’s hull began to peel back like the skin of an orange, driven open by the force of the in-rushing water.

  The hold was filling quickly as the lasers continued to cut. Plates of steel as large as garage doors began to fall away, swirling into the black depths of the ocean beyond.

  “Engaging engines,” Max announced. The controls were set out in a colorful array in front of him, three arcs of holographic symbols and hues, like the multi-tiered keyboards of a high-tech musical instrument. A floating cloud of spheres-the isolated and dormant AI icons-floated off to one side like slumbering attendants waiting for their wake-up call.

  The roaring of the water became muted as the levels rose. Max nudged the Spector forward just a fraction, and suddenly the vessel lifted from the buckling floor of the Munro’s hold.

  The few objects in the hold that were not secured or welded to the bulkheads floated in the turbulent water that boiled up around them. Max looked away from his holo-display and up at his front-facing flat screen for a moment-then cut the feed, moving it to his own console so no one else could see.

  The corpse of Dominic Donovan, arms spread and legs swaying, was floating past the bow camera. A then red ribbon of blood leaked from the bullet hole in his forehead.

  The vessel that had carried him for the last month had become his coffin.

  “Problems?” Simon asked, looking up to see the holo-display blank.

  “Nope,” Max said smoothly, “just checking something out.”

  A moment later the turbulent water had pushed the body away to one side behind the ship. Max breathed a sigh of relief and returned the view to the main screen.

  “Here we go,” he said and put his mind to moving the vessel forward-smooth and fast, he told himself. Smooth and-

  — the submersible shot out of the gaping hole in the bow of the sinking ship, floating free and under its own power for the first time in its existence. Free.

  Simon took a moment to imagine the chaos he assumed was taking place a few hundred feet above them: the tilting hull of the Munro moving aggressively against the swell as the storm’s strength intensified, the life boats dropping into the angry sea. He was sure they would hear the loud creaking noise followed by a rumble as their vessel began its final descent to the ocean floor. Donovan and his crew would survive in their sealed life pods, he knew, though it would be an ordeal, bobbing and turning in the stormy water, in waves made even rougher by the sinking of the Munro itself.

  He knew nothing of Donovan’s corpse floating in the hold of the doomed freighter. He never would.

  “Ryan?” he asked. “The distress beacons are working?”

  “Every one of them,” Ryan confirmed. “I’ll keep an eye on them and monitor radio traffic passively until they’re all safe.” He frowned at his console. “Sorry, guys,” he whispered, so no one but Simon could hear him.

  Seconds after the Spector had detached entirely from the Munro, the team felt the thundering vibration of the submersible’s thrusters push the vessel down toward the blackness below. The immediate effect was so powerful that Samantha-standing to check a readout that was too high to see while sitting-was thrown off her feet. She landed poorly, banged her elbow and cursed under her breath at her bad judgment and worse luck…but she got to her feet and back to her console without complaint.

  “How are we doing?” Simon asked.

  “So far so good,” Max said.

  Then the lights went out.

  * * *

  Max had absolutely no idea what was going on.

  No, he thought as the console flickered back to life and the front-facing holo-display rolled and fluttered again. Check that. I just don’t know nearly enough.

  Sophisticated artificial intelligences grown for these specific tasks were supposed to be handling ninety percent of this craft’s operation. Instead, the cut-off and dumbed-down versions-the only parts that Hayden and Andrew agreed could be trusted without sending signals to the British military-were running about thirty percent of it. And not the important thirty percent, Max thought. Not the part that’s going to get us out of this alive.

  He was struggling to make sense of the makeshift digital modules that Hayden had prepared. Some of them seemed to be working wonderfully; others didn’t make a damn bit of sense. He just hoped that Sam on life support and Hayden on the power plant were doing marginally better than he was.

  Worst of all, he was sailing blind. Well, not quite blind, he corrected himself. That jerry-rigged front-facing flat screen did give him a trustworthy eyes-up view of what was dead ahead. But there was nothing else-no radar, no sonar, no active or passive sensor of any kind, short of some super-luminal spotlights that made the endless ocean ahead of them glow like a cloud of phosphorous. What was going on above and below him, to the left and right sides, even to the rear was a complete mystery.

  But he knew one thing for certain: there were eyes in the sky, far above the surface of the sea, that could penetrate to more than three hundred feet-and those were just the ones he knew of. According to his old-fashioned compass and his trust passive GPS-thank god that was all right to use-they were dead on course for Antarctica, but they were still running far too high in the water. One good deep sonar scan of the region by UNED and they could be detected.

  They had to go deeper. Now.

  Max eased forward on the luminous controls that would take them down-down to a thousand feet, down into the cold blackness of the Southern Sea, where no one would ever find them.

  Ever.

  ANTARCTICA

  The Command Center

  Blackburn wasn’t quite as alone as he preferred to be. He could hear the buzz of activity in adjacent rooms, the occasional and unwelcome sigh of a footfall nearby.

  This was not like the room of ice where he preferred to work. There was a desk here and a full communications system that linked him with the rest of the world. A great advantage in some ways; a curse as often as not.

  A soft female voice whispered in his ear: Takara, reporting in on her way to Corsica.

  “I’ve lost them,” she said.

  “Damn. The tracker?”

  “We’re scanning, but…they may have found it.”

  “May have?” This wasn’t what he wanted to hear, Simon Fitzpatrick and a handful of his compatriots, completely off the charts.

  “Shall I get back to London?” Takara asked.

  “No,” he said. “You have your mission on the island. That’s where you’re needed.” He cut the connection with a sharp gesture and not a single word.

  They’re afraid, he told himself. Terrified. Simon’s oldest friend, murdered by an unseen hand. All of them chased by some shadowy government agency, and they don’t even know why. They’ve run to ground. They’re hiding. Cowering.

  Whether that was true or not, it didn’t matter. He turned away from the annoying little episode and put his mind elsewhere.

  He had far greater matters to deal with.

  THE SOUTHERN SEA

  Fifty Miles from Antarctica

  The Spector cut through the blackness of the ocean
at blazing speed. Simon sat staring wordlessly at the holo-screen and engulfed in deep thoughts.

  I wonder if we’ll find him? he asked himself. What if he isn’t there at all? How will I explain all this-justify it? What if the entire mission was for nothing? He played the worst possible scenarios over and over in his head, accompanied by the discordant rummmmble of the Spector’s engines.

  The coordinates scrawled on the back of the envelope still haunted him. They persisted in his mind’s eye as if he had looked at them mere moments before, rather than a week in the past and thousands of miles away. He had not shared the last number in the coordinate sequence with anyone; he knew the last of the coordinates signifying the depth would startle the team. It made no sense. He wondered if it was a mistake. How could the last coordinate be over a thousand feet below the ice? And how did Leon know?

  The rest of his team sat in silence as well, each submerged in their own grim worlds. Simon watched as Andrew twiddled idly with the sensor controls and Samantha dozed. Nastasia, both nervous and bored, dug into her satchel and pulled out what seemed to be an asthmatic inhaler. Absent-mindedly, she flipped the mouthpiece’s cover open and closed.

  “Oh, wonderful,” Ryan said from his station. “Just wonderful.”

  Simon roused himself from his bitter reverie. “What’s up?”

  Ryan signed bitterly. “Icebergs ahead,” he said. “Lots of them.”

  “What?”

  “Blame global warming,” Max said from the console. “The glaciers and permafrost on the continental masses have been calving icebergs at a huge rate; both poles have a ring of icebergs floating around them just offshore. Huge navigational hazard.”

  Simon seethed. “And you didn’t think to mention it until now?”

  “Well,” Max replied acidly, still not taking his hands from the holographic controls or his eyes from the visual and sensor display, “I’ve been a little busy recently, and I was rather hoping that she would be a bit easier to steer so it wouldn’t be such a task.”