Atlantis: Bermuda Triangle

Chapter 17

The sub pens in Groton are capable of holding the largest underwater craft the US Navy deployed, the Ohio class ballistic missile submarine which is almost two football fields long. There were four main pens, not only long enough to hold the biggest sub, but wide enough to put five side-by-side. Just north of Groton, technically called the New London sub base, the pens were on the Thames River in eastern Connecticut.

In pen number 2, nestled between an Ohio Class and a Los Angeles Class attack submarine, the Scorpion was easily dwarfed. Security around the pen was heavy. The crew was quartered in barracks hewn out of the rock right next to the pen holding their ship as the powers-that-be in Washington tried to figure out how to explain their sudden reappearance after being proclaimed dead 31 years ago and the even more perplexing fact that not a man in the crew had aged more than a day in all those years.

While the crewmembers underwent intensive debriefings- which so far failed to yield any more information about what had happened to the ship in the Bermuda Triangle- teams of technicians were going through the ship, searching for any physical clues to solving the mystery.

They had already gone through the entire ship, excluding the nuclear reactor, and now they were preparing to go into that last off-limits area. Donning protective garb, a team of four nuclear specialists opened the thick door blocking the plant control compartment from the reactor itself.

Clad in their bright yellow suits, they walked through the tunnel separating the livable part of the ship from the deadly rear. And they finally found something out of the ordinary. Sitting on the floor of the main reactor chamber was a silver cylinder, three feet high, by two in diameter. Three beams of golden light came out of the cylinder and penetrated into the containment wall where the core resided.

The investigators were still staring at this in puzzlement when a beam of gold from the cylinder raked across their bodies, then continued to the rear of the ship and locked into the reactor’s core.

A split second later, the Scorpion’s reactor went critical.

The Scorpion, the subs tied up inside the pen, and the entire crew of the Scorpion along with the other navy personnel inside, were vaporized in the nuclear explosion.

Designed to withstand a close hit by a nuclear weapon, the top of the sub pen buckled, broke and collapsed, but managed to contain most of the explosion. The walls between pen 2 and 1 and 3 shattered, causing massive damage to the submarines in those other two pens.

Foreman was the calm in the center of a storm. Alarms were screeching, phones were ringing and orders shouted- the noise only partially absorbed by the sound panels on the sides and roof of the War Room.

The generals and admirals were reacting to the twin disasters in Puerto Rico and Groton, moving ships and planes and men to help minimize the after-effects and help the survivors.

To Foreman both those events were already in the past. And both were threats of things to come in the future. The tsunami just a taste of what might be coming out of the gates shortly. The nuclear explosion in Groton was more of a mystery to him.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Tilson strode up to Foreman and slammed a fist down on the top of the conference table. “We just lost as many sailors as we did at Pearl Harbor! I’m recommending to the President that we nuke the Bermuda gate.”

Foreman could see a vein bulging in Tilson’s forehead. “Sir that may be exactly what the Shadow wants us to do. We don’t have enough data yet-”

“Yet?” Tilson leaned forward. “You’ve been studying these goddamn things for fifty years and you don’t have enough data yet? Do you have more now? Do you?”

“I don’t think a nuke would do any good,” Foreman said. “The gates have strong electro-magnetic and radioactive properties. We believe the laws of physics inside the gates are different than ours.”

“Then get me something I can use to fight this,” Tilson said. “Because if you can’t, I’m going to go to the president and recommend we shut these goddamn things with the strongest weapon we have available and that’s a goddamn nuke-tipped cruise missile right smack into the center of these things.”

Tilson stalked off to rejoin the branch chiefs in the forward part of the War Room. Foreman leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a second, running recent events through his mind.

In all the excitement, the information he had been given by Conners about SOSUS had been shuffled to the bottom of his crisis reaction. Most of what was going on in the War Room was out of his hands now. He knew the most important thing was to be able to figure out not the what, but the why of recent events. He punched the direct line to the NSA.

The other end was answered immediately. “Conners.”

“Any changes?” he asked.

“Other than the tsunami and the nuke blast in Groton? We’re tracking fallout from the sub pen from our eyes in the sky. So far it doesn’t look too bad and the current winds are seaward which is lucky. The eastern tip of Long Island will get a little hot but we think the dosage won’t be fatal.

“We’ve down-linked to the relief agencies in Puerto Rico, giving them the latest sit-rep. It looks pretty bad there.

“As you can see from the data we’ve forwarded you, the Bermuda Triangle gate is now further south. Closer to the Milwaukee Depth. The other gates are beginning to show some activity, particularly those in the water.”

“What about the SOSUS infiltration?” Foreman asked.

“No change.”

“Can we shut SOSUS down?”

“Maybe that’s what the Shadow wants,” Conners said. “Maybe there’s a plan and they want you to react. We shut SOSUS down, we’re effectively going to be blind underwater.”

“We’ll still have the Can,” Foreman said.

“True, but what if they send the Wyoming back at us?”

“Christ,” Foreman muttered. Conners had been right before. “The Seawolf can cover the Bermuda Triangle gate if we shut SOSUS down.”

“Then I’d check to make sure everything’s OK with the Seawolf,” Conners said.

Foreman punched in a number on his SATPhone, accessing FLTSATCOM, the Navy’s communication system. After a brief burst of static, Captain McCallum’s voice answered the other end.

Foreman wasted no time on pleasantries. “Where is Bateman?”

“Down below,” McCallum responded.

“Get him.”

“Wait one.”

Foreman tapped a finger on the conference table top as the seconds dragged into a minute. Then two.

“Captain McCallum?” Foreman finally asked.

The voice on the other sounded harried. “Yes?”

“What’s going on?”

“Captain Bateman seems to have locked himself into our computer control center. We can’t get in there, nor can we raise the crewmen who were on duty in there.”

“You need-” Foreman began but he was interrupted by a yell from McCallum.

“What the hell! XO, abort dive. Abort!”

There was a few seconds of static, then McCallum’s voice shouting. “XO, what is going on?”

“Captain McCallum?” Foreman leaned forward. “Captain McCallum!”

The only reply was the hiss of static.

On board the Seawolf McCallum was dealing with a very unique situation, one that his training had not prepared him for. The nose of the submarine was already under as the submarine began to submerge. Except the Captain had not given the order, he had six crew men still on the top of the sail with him and the hatch below him was open.

He dropped the SATPhone as he yelled once more into the intercom. “XO, abort dive!”

Commander Barrington’s voice echoed out of the speaker with an answer McCallum didn’t want to hear. “We can’t, sir! Controls won’t respond!”

“Emergency override, blow all tanks,” McCallum yelled.

“We’ve tried, sir. No response.”

McCallum looked forward. The sea had covered the forward deck and was now around the base of the sail.

“Clear the bridge! Clear the bridge! Emergency dive!” McCallum yelled. The six man bridge crew reacted well.

The captain stood aside as the crewmembers on the bridge dashed past him and slid down the ladder to the operations center. Water began breaking over the top of the bridge as the last man went by him. McCallum jumped into the hatch, grabbing the side of the ladder with both hands and sliding down until his head was clear.

“Bridge clear, close hatch!” he yelled.

“It won’t close, sir!” A crewman was standing next to the ladder, slamming his palm against the large button that controlled the hydraulic arm which shut the four hundred pound hatch.

A wave of water splashed through the open hatch, inundating McCallum. He shook his head, getting salt water out of his eyes. He had less than five seconds before an unstoppable tunnel of water poured through the opening.

“Down! Close the bottom hatch!” McCallum ordered the two sailors just below him.

“Sir-” one of the men began to argue but McCallum had no time.

“Move it!” he screamed as he pulled out the manual crank arm.

They disappeared through the bottom sail hatch and the hatch swung shut, trapping him in the sail access tube. Another wave of water slammed McCallum against the ladder. He gasped in pain as three ribs broke from the impact.

The Seawolf was now almost completely under water except for the very top of the sail. McCallum desperately turned the crank and the top hatch slowly began to shut.

Another wave splashed through, blinding McCallum once more, but he had no time to clear his eyes. He blindly kept turning.

The top of the sail went under water and a torrent poured through the open hatch, battering Captain McCallum as he struggled with the crank. He felt water around his feet and knew that meant the sail access was already half-full of water.

Three more turns and the hatch was three-quarters closed but the water was around his chest and still rising. The Seawolf was completely submerged now, and McCallum knew alarms were ringing in the operations center below him because of the open hatch. He also knew this was never supposed to happen- the emergency computer system would not allow the crew to submerge the ship with the top hatch open. Either the system had failed or someone had over-ridden it.

The water reached his neck and McCallum pushed himself as high as he could in the compartment while still turning the handle. He took a deep breath as water lapped over his face. The handle stopped turning- the hatch was shut.

McCallum opened his eyes. With the boat angled down there was a small air bubble, perhaps a foot deep by two feet wide in the upper rear of the compartment and he pushed against the ladder to reach it. His face pressed into the air and he took a deep breath, savoring the oxygen.

Even with just the second breath from the air bubble McCallum could tell the air was turning bad and he had less than a couple of minute’s good oxygen. Breathable air was something every submariner was an expert on. He also knew that his Barrington was in a bind- the optimum solution would be to blow air into the sail to clear it of water, but if the sub was in an uncontrolled dive, the XO had a hell of a lot more on his hands than clearing the sail. At least McCallum had shut the outside hatch, which gave the hull pressure integrity. The inner hatch was only designed for emergency use and was rated down to five hundred feet while the outer was rated to the sub’s maximum dive depth of three thousand feet.

McCallum took another breath, his hands gripping the ladder tightly. The air was laced with carbon dioxide. He figured he had another minute before he blacked out and slipped under the water. McCallum kept his mouth shut, trying to hold the air in his lungs as long as possible before letting it out. Slowly he exhaled and took another slow, deep breath, feeling the pain of his broken ribs, then clamping his mouth shut.

His ears hurt. McCallum blinked. The sail was pressurizing. The water level began going down and he quickly took several shallow breaths of the fresh oxygen being pumped into the sail.

Before the water was completely clear, the bottom hatch clanged open, letting a splash of water into the operations center. Barrington stuck his head in, but was knocked out of the way as McCallum slid down the ladder, ignoring the sting of pain from his broken ribs.

“Status?” McCallum demanded, still trying to get his oxygen level back up.

“We have no steerage, no dive control,” Barrington confirmed McCallum’s worst fears. “We’re in a steady dive at four hundred feet per minute. Current depth-” Barrington turned toward the Chief Petty Officer who was in charge of diving.

“Eight hundred feet and still steady down at four-oh-oh feet per minute,” the Chief reported.

“All controls have been overridden from the combat systems mainframe,” Barrington continued.

“Bateman’s gotten control of the CSM,” McCallum said.

Barrington nodded. “Appears so, sir. He’s nowhere else on the ship and we cannot gain access to the CSM room. No contact with the duty crew in there and the hatch is locked from the inside.”

“You blew the sail,” McCallum said. “You must have been able to override-”

Barrington was shaking his head, cutting the captain off. “We disconnected computer control and manually diverted emergency back-up from the tanks next to us. But we won’t be able to do all the tanks quickly enough to stop our dive. I’ve got men trying to manually get to all the tanks but they’ll never do it in time.

“What about the bow plane?” McCallum asked.

“Still trying to disconnect computer control,” Barrington reported. “Chief says it’ll take them another five minutes to disconnect and then a minute or two to reorient the planes manually. We don’t have the time, sir.”

“Sixteen hundred feet and still steady down at four-oh-oh feet per minute,” the Dive Chief announced.

McCallum knew that the Navy’s unclassified dive rating for the Seawolf was eight hundred feet but every naval expert knew that was a joke. Jane’s Fighting Ships, the standard handbook for ships, rated the boat at being able to dive to two thousand. The Electric Boat Division at Groton had assured the Navy that Seawolf could do three thousand feet safely. Nobody knew exactly how far the ship could go because no one dared test it beyond three thousand. McCallum had taken Seawolf down to two thousand, eight hundred during the shake-out cruise, the maximum safety regulations allowed him.

“Everything’s set to keep us diving?” McCallum asked.

“Yes, sir.”

McCallum ran options through his mind, one after the other. “He couldn’t have reprogrammed the entire system.”

“We can’t blow ballast and we can’t control the bow planes,” Barrington said. “That’s enough to put us through max depth in-” the XO checked the stopwatch that hung around his neck- “just under four minutes.”

“OK, we do what he won’t have planned for and adjusted the computer for.” McCallum stepped out of the puddle of water that had formed under his feet. “Is the combat systems compartment secure?”

“We can’t get in, sir,” Barrington said. “All hatches are secure. We could try to burn through but that would take a good half-hour.”

McCallum nodded. “All right. Dive Chief, flood the CSM compartment.”

A look of confusion, followed by comprehension crossed the Chief’s face. “Aye, aye, sir.”

Bateman looked up blankly as a spray of water burst out of a pipe in the ceiling, followed by several others that increased in flow until a torrent of water poured into the compartment.

He stared at the rising water, then pulled his gun out, put it against the side of his head directly over the small bump behind his right ear, and pulled the trigger. Brains and blood splattered across the room to be immediately washed away by the surging water.

Sparks flew as the salt water entered the mainframe computer and shorted out the workings.

Lights flashed in the operations center, then the emergency back-up power came on, bathing the room in a red glow.

“All systems controlled by the computer are down,” Barrington reported.

“Do we have manual control?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Twenty-eight hundred feet and still steady down at four-oh-oh feet per minute,” the Dive Chief announced.

McCallum barked out orders. “Chief dive planes full up. Blow all ballast manually. Engine room full reverse.”

McCallum didn’t need the dive chief’s verbal report. He could clearly see the red digital display that showed the submarine’s current depth. They clicked through 3,000 as the crew raced to do manually what they normally used their computer assisted controls. In the forward part of the ship, the computer control on the dive planes had released and men struggled to turn the large fins via a crankshaft.

“Gentlemen, we have a new dive record for the Seawolf class submarine,” McCallum announced.

“Thirty-one hundred feet and dive rate slowing through three-oh-oh feet per minute,” the Dive Chief reported.

McCallum looked over his executive officer. “Let’s hope the boys at the Electric Boat Company weren’t sleeping on the job.”

“Thirty-two hundred and dive rate slowing through one-five-oh feet per minute.”

Barrington nodded. “We’re going to-”

The entire ship suddenly vibrated like a guitar string pulled too tight, cutting off whatever the XO was going to say.

McCallum’s eyes were riveted on the dive meter. The numbers were moving less slowly, but the submarine was still going down. Thirty-three hundred feet and the sound was getting louder. McCallum could feel the fear coming off everyone in the operations center like a wave of penetrating cold air that settled in the spine and wrapped around the stomach. It was a moment every submariner had had nightmares about and prayed they’d never face.

“Trim?” McCallum asked.

“Nose down six degrees and leveling,” Barrington answered. “We’re having to adjust for the flooded CSM.”

Given that the Seawolf was 353 feet long, that meant the nose was a bit deeper than the rest of the ship. McCallum’s eyes shifted forward to the hatch in the front of the operations center.

He knew if anything gave, it should come from that direction. And if anything gave, everything inside would give. The interior hatches would pop like paper against a compression jack all the way through the ship. It would all be over in a couple of seconds.

“Level,” the Dive Chief announced to a hushed audience. “Dive rate zero.”

McCallum looked at the gauge. 3,563.

“Take her up,” McCallum ordered. “Slowly. Dive Chief, please note depth for the record.”

Dane, Sin Fen, Ariana and DeAngelo listened to the report from Foreman inside the communications sphere. A tsunami hitting Puerto Rico, the nuclear explosion at Groton and the near-sinking of the Seawolf, the infiltration of the SOSUS system and the increase in size of the gates- the litany was shocking.

Dane leaned back, the only noise in the sphere after Foreman’s fell silent, the sound of the heater blowing hot air. He felt tired and confused. The images from Sin Fen’s mind disturbed him as much as the news Foreman had relayed.

“The Shadow is paving the way for an all out attack,” Sin Fen broke the silence.

“That’s what Conners at the NSA thinks and it certainly appears that way,” Foreman agreed. “Groton and the Seawolf were both attempts to cripple our underwater warfare capability. The tsunami was simply a side-effect.”

Dane stirred. “‘Side-effect?’ Thousands dead and you call it a side-effect.”

“Hundreds are dead at Groton,” Foreman snapped. “Six nuclear submarines worth over a two and a half billion dollars destroyed. We’re still trying to figure out how much radiation escaped the pen and how many people will be affected by the fallout. That’s on top of the radiation from the nuke strikes in the Atlantic. I’m calling the tsunami a side-effect because it was a result of the force that came out of the triangle and attempted to destroy you. Save your pontificating for someone else.”

“I’m not pontificating,” Dane shot back. “I’m just trying to keep some perspective on the stakes involved rather than the cost. There’s a difference you know!”

For a few seconds only the sound of the heater-blower filled the communications sphere.

“And SOSUS?” Ariana asked. “Is it just a ploy or is the Shadow trying to do underwater what we stopped them from doing through the atmosphere?”

“There’s no radioactivity detected yet,” Foreman said. “Just some electro-magnetic abnormalities. Hell, they might even be using SOSUS like we are- to keep track of what’s going on underwater.”

“What are you going to do?” Dane asked.

“The prudent thing would be to shut SOSUS down,” Foreman said, “but I think Conners is right- we should hold off on that and keep an eye on the gates.”

“Let me ask you something,” Dane said. “You’re talking about the possibility you could be getting set up on the SOSUS network. We’re at this spot because of the map etched on the Scorpion’s sail. Now it looks like the sub was booby-trapped by the Shadow. Maybe this was a trap? Like the Greeks putting a sign on the Trojan Horse? Not only did we take the Horse in, we followed the directions on the side of it.”

“I don’t think so,” Sin Fen said. “I do not believe the writing and map on the submarine was from the Shadow. Remember there are two sides inside the Triangle. Both could have used the Scorpion.”

Dane laughed at the absurdity as he had a moment of clarity. “The Seawolf was keeping tabs on us too, wasn’t it, Foreman? If this was some sort of trap or double-cross you were ready to blow us out of the water.” Dane didn’t need an answer. He knew it was true. But he also knew’ that what Sin Fen said was true- the writing on the side of the Scorpion had not been a trap. A human hand, a free human hand, had written that.

“You said Captain Bateman from the Scorpion was the person who tried to sink the Seawolf,” Dane said. “What about the rest of the crew of the Scorpion?”

“They all died in the explosion at Groton,” Foreman said. “Bateman died on board the Seawolf.”

“But that means the Shadow can manipulate people,” Dane noted. “That’s something new.”

“Something new as far as we know,” Foreman agreed.

“Why does it seem like every time we find out something new about the gates and the Shadow, we learn how little we actually know?” Dane asked.

“How did the Shadow get the Scorpion’s reactor to go critical?” Ariana asked.

“Before the explosion the video feed from the team that went into the Scorpion’s reactor showed a cylindrical object with golden beams emanating out of it,” Foreman said.

“Like the beam that went into the mainframe computer on board our plane in Cambodia?” Ariana asked.

“Right,” Foreman said. “The military is calling what’s just happened a reconnaissance in force- the Shadow is checking out the opposition before making its main strike. And because the Shadow focused on our underwater capability, particularly near the Bermuda Triangle, and because that gate is the only one that has increased in size, we have to assume that’s where the attack is coming from.”

“Or directed,” Ariana said.

“There’s no target of strategic significance in that area,” Foreman said.

“I’m not talking about a target here,” Ariana clarified. “I’m talking about the attack. Look what happened to Puerto Rico as the result of the tsunami. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is not too far away from here. If the Shadow focuses energy into that rift between the tectonic plates, God knows what havoc they could reek. It would make the wave that hit Puerto Rico look like a splash in a puddle. They could easily take out the eastern seaboard of the United States and a large part of Europe. And if they’re coordinating this attack through other gates as appears to be-” Ariana paused, letting the other’s figure it out for themselves.

“The whiz kids here have done projections on the most advanced computers they have,” Foreman said. “Wargaming what could happen if the Shadow fires all twenty-three of the Tridents left from the Wyoming. Given that the Trident’s range is about four thousand miles, they can cover a large part of the Atlantic along the mid-ocean ridge.

“There’s a lot of variables- ocean depth, crust depth over the magna between the tectonic plates- but with each warhead exploding at about a hundred and twenty kilotons, the computer says that at the very least the effect will be numerous volcanoes boiling up along with earthquakes on a magnitude we have never experienced in modern history. As you’ve noted, the resulting tsunamis will devastate the east coast of the United States and most of western Europe.

“That’s at a minimum,” Foreman continued. “There is also the possibility that there could be a crustal displacement of the tectonic plates. Since we’re not even sure exactly how the tectonic plates are moved, we’re not sure of the forces involved, but if those forces from inside the earth are channeled by the explosions, God knows what could happen.”

“And what if they use the other nuclear weapons they’ve accumulated over the years?” Ariana asked. “What if they also launch assaults along the Pacific Rim out of the Devil’s Sea gate? The Mediterranean from a nearby gate? The Red Sea?”

“I’m having them wargame that worst-case scenario,” Foreman said.

“We don’t need a computer simulation,” Sin Fen said. “If the Shadow launches such an assault, you can be assured they know what they are doing. It will be the end of mankind. The entire surface of the planet will change. Continents will be moved much as Antarctica which most likely was Atlantis, was moved from the middle of the Atlantic to the South Pole.”

Dane broke the silence that followed that statement. “So we’re back to where we’re at the start of this. We need to find out what’s below us. I think the gate coming this way lets us know it’s important.” He stood up. “We’re wasting time sitting around talking about it. Let’s get going.”