Devil's Gate

53

GAMAY TROUT STOOD beside her husband Paul in the operations center of the USS Truxton. The activity aboard it and the other ships in the battle group had increased to a frenetic pace over the past few hours.

The ship was being readied for battle, and it wasn’t alone. Helicopters had fanned out not only from the Truxton but from the group’s flagship, the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. Shortly after that, she heard the scream of jets launching and flying off in full afterburner. The sound was unmistakable even though the Lincoln was five miles away.

Until now she and Paul had not been officially updated, but she guessed they were about to find out what was going on.

The ship’s captain, Keith Louden, stepped forward. An average-sized man, with short gray hair and sharp hawklike eyes, he was in his early fifties, fit and trim.

“As I’m sure you’re aware,” Louden began, “we’re about to take action against a hostile enemy. An enemy that has already destroyed two of our satellites with some kind of weapon designed around a particle accelerator.”

Gamay took a deep breath. “Are we safe here?” she asked, remembering the bodies they’d seen in the Kinjara Maru, blackened and burned.

The captain nodded.

“According to the experts at the Pentagon, this weapon operates on a line-of-sight trajectory. That is, it fires in a straight line, something like a laser. Unlike a bullet or artillery shell, or even a ballistic missile warhead, it can’t hit anything around the curvature of the earth. So we should be out of harm’s way in our present position. But once a ship or plane pops up over the horizon, that’s a different story.”

The captain went on to explain the situation, relaying what was known about Sierra Leone, the threats Djemma Garand had made, and the military’s planned response.

As the captain spoke he walked them over to a touch-screen monitor. On it they saw the section of Sierra Leone’s coast where the weapon and the oil platforms were located. A curved line across the screen flashed in red.

“That’s the horizon,” the captain told them. “Anything that goes beyond that line, whether it’s a ship or plane or missile, is likely to be incinerated within seconds.”

Gamay studied the line, a circular arc at a range of approximately forty miles.

“I thought the horizon was sixteen miles,” she said.

The captain turned to her. “It depends where you stand. That’s one reason every soldier likes to grab the high ground, it allows you to see farther. In this case, Mrs. Trout, it depends where and how high they’re firing from.”

He tapped the screen and brought up a photo of one of the oil platforms.

“The main structure on those oil platforms rises about three hundred fifty feet from the surface. The particle accelerator ring has a diameter of fifteen miles. A blast from the forward platform, or the forward part of the accelerator ring, could reach a lot farther out into the Atlantic than the platform closest to the coast. In addition, the height lets them shoot downhill at us.”

“Like archers in a castle’s tower,” Paul said.

“Exactly,” the captain said. “The taller we are, the farther out they can strike us.”

“For instance?” Paul asked.

“We have a pretty low profile for a destroyer,” Louden said. “But we still poke up above the surface a tad over sixty feet. They could hit our superstructure at thirty miles, our radar masts at thirty-five.”

“And aircraft?” Gamay asked.

“They face the same kind of danger,” the captain said. “Flying on the deck still comes with some vertical component. And pilots who encounter problems are taught to pitch up immediately because that’s better than flying into the deck or the ocean. But out here, that would immediately expose them to direct fire. And for aircraft flying at altitude, like civilian airliners, the danger zone might extend three hundred miles or more.”

Gamay took a deep breath and looked over at Paul.

“Truth is,” the captain continued, “it’s something we’ve never dealt with before.”

“What are your options,” Paul asked.

“Normal procedure calls for airstrikes,” the captain said. “Beginning with cruise missiles. But both Tomahawks and Harpoons fly at subsonic speeds. F-18s max out around Mach 2, and not that fast down on the deck.”

He turned back to the screen and its red “Event Horizon” line.

“An accelerator like this one fires a particle stream that moves at almost the speed of light. That means our fastest missile will cover no more than one or two feet in the time it takes that beam to cover fifty miles.”

An image flashed into Gamay’s mind. She pictured soldiers in World War I going over trench walls in futile charges against enemies armed with machine guns. She was no war historian, but she understood why the carnage was so high and the battle lines never moved. Most of the men in those charges were cut down before they’d made it ten yards. This sounded like a similar situation.

“So if supersonic aircraft and missiles are too slow to attack this thing, how are you proposing to do it?” she asked.

The captain pointed to the circular ring.

“They obviously chose to build this system beneath the surface in order to keep anyone from spotting it. That’s left them with one vulnerability: they can be attacked beneath the surface, where the water density prevents a particle beam from being an effective weapon.”

“Do you have submarines standing by?” Paul asked.

The captain nodded.

“Every carrier battle group brings along a couple of unseen friends. We have two Los Angeles — class attack subs. The Memphis and the Providence. Our intention is to send them on the offensive.

“We’ve had the Memphis creep up to a position fifteen miles from the target zone. Their sonar is picking up a whole bundle of signals matching the signature your team recorded.”

“A whole bunch?” Gamay said.

The captain nodded. “They have at least a dozen of these small submarines patrolling the mouth of this zone. If they’re all armed, even with a couple of torpedoes each, that’s a big issue.”

“Surely two Los Angeles — class subs can deal with them,” Paul said.

“We can get in there and mix it up,” the captain said, “but our subs are designed to hunt large Russian and Chinese subs in the deep dark parts of the sea. This weapon is situated on a shallow stretch of the continental shelf. The depth at the Quadrangle site averages no more than sixty feet. At two miles, it drops a little, and you even get this tiny cut of a canyon here…”

He pointed to a thin line that widened and deepened into a gash in the ocean floor as it moved away from the target zone.

“… But aside from that ravine, the depth never exceeds two hundred feet until you’ve passed beyond ten miles. That limits the maneuverability of our boats, and it gives them the advantage.”

The captain stood back and took a breath, pulled his hat off, smoothed his short hair, and tucked the hat snugly back on his head.

“Part of a commander’s job is not to commit his units to indefensible ground or to send them into battle on missions they are not suited for. The other part is to know when he has to violate that principle. If these guys have some way — any way — to threaten the U.S. mainland, then we have no choice but to take the risk here.”

“I get the sense you’re telling us this for a reason,” Gamay said.

The captain nodded. “We may need your help.”

Her eyes grew wide. “Our help?”

Paul seemed just as surprised. “What can we do that the U.S. Navy can’t?” he asked.

“With your small submersible, you can get deep into that canyon — it runs to four thousand feet — and you can sneak up on them from the blind side.”

Gamay had to fight not to lose it. Her head swam dizzily. Her stomach felt sick.

Paul spoke up for her. “Why can’t you get one of the attack submarines into the canyon?”

“It’s too tight,” the captain said. “Near the top it’s just a fissure, no more than twenty feet wide. Even deeper down there are sections no large submarine could maneuver through.”

Paul looked at Gamay. She was trembling and shaking her head “no.” She and Paul were only here to listen to tapes; they were civilians.

“I can’t order you,” Louden said. “But I’m asking. None of my men are rated to pilot that submersible, and even if they could be trained on the quick the real key is your Rapunzel.”

Paul shook his head. He was the man she loved. Her protector.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” he said. “I’m sure you know what we just went through. I promised my wife when we agreed to come aboard that we wouldn’t be at any risk if we joined you. Honestly, I couldn’t have imagined these circumstances, but, as my old man used to say, ‘You don’t give your word if you’re not going to keep it.’”

The captain looked disappointed.

“I understand why you’re asking us,” Paul continued. “But, I’m sorry, I won’t break my vow to her.”

The captain took a breath, looking pained, but he seemed to understand.

“Then I’ll inform the—”

“Wait,” Gamay said.

The captain looked her way.

“How many men are on those submarines?” she asked.

“Two hundred sixty-one.”

Two hundred sixty-one men, she thought. She wondered how many had families. Wives or husbands or children. If they were going to risk everything, how could she not? It was her country too.

She looked at Paul. He knew what she was thinking. He nodded. “What would we have to do?” he asked.

“While we try to draw their fire,” the captain began, “you maneuver through the fissure and release your robot. We’re going to attach two hundred fifty pounds of high explosives to her frame. You guide her along the accelerator ring and look for a weak spot, anywhere that power might be delivered or where the tunnel slopes up toward the surface, as it must in order to fire. You cozy her up to it and hit the detonator.”

“And then?” Gamay asked.

“We’ll take it from there,” the captain said.

Gamay took a deep breath. She couldn’t imagine getting back into a submersible. It literally made her weak in the knees. But she would do it because it had to be done.