Atlantis (35 page)

“Where?”

Sin Fen focused. She briefly saw what Dane saw. “He’s on the
Scorpion
in the Bermuda Triangle!”

*****

“The
Scorpion
is still moving, sir,” Sills reported

“What’s the readings?” Rogers asked.

“Radiation is down. The Gate is closing in on itself, but both the
Scorpion
and the large contact are still inside.”

“Range to
Scorpion
?” Rogers asked.

“Two kilometers and closing.”

“Can we talk to them?”

Sills ran a hand though his hair. “In ‘68 their radios were much different than what we use. They--”

“Can we talk to them?”

“I’ll try, sir.”

*****

“You’ll be all right,” Dane told Freed as he started to follow the sailor forward. He checked the improvised tourniquet he had put on the man’s arm. “I’ll get the ship’s doctor.”

The sailor was still staring, not so much at them, but at the huge severed snake’s head that was oozing black blood. “Who are you?”

“Take me to your captain,” Dane placed a hand on the man’s shoulder and pressed with his mind into the other’s.

“Aye-aye, sir.”

The sailor turned and went through the hatch, Dane following. The next compartment was the galley and they passed a couple of sailors, then they were in the sub’s control room.

Men were working furiously, commands were being yelled.

A man in his mid-30s stood in the center, next to the periscope. He had the eagle of a Navy Captain on his collar. He saw Dane and paused in mid-command.

“Who are you?”

“Sir, there’s no time,” Dane said. “We have to get out of here!”

“What is going on?” Captain Bateman. “My reactor went off-line and we’ve lost all contact with our surface--”

“Sir!” a man called out. “I have radio contact with a submarine calling itself the
USS Wyoming
.”

“There is no
USS Wyoming,
” Captain Bateman. “Put it on the speaker.”

There was a crackle, then a voice came out of the speaker. “This is Captain Rogers of the
USS Wyoming
. You must take a heading of 270 degrees immediately at the fastest speed possible. You are in grave danger.”

“Identify yourself,” Captain Bateman demanded. “I’ve never heard of your ship.”

“We don’t have time,” Rogers replied. “You’ve been missing for forty years and if you don’t start moving you are going to be missing again!”

Bateman turned toward Dane and stared at him in shock.

“It’s true,” Dane said. “You’ve been gone for over forty years.”

“It can’t be,” Bateman shook his head. “It’s 1968.”

“You entered a Gate,” Dane said. “You know that. You were working for Foreman and you entered something very strange.” Dane stepped forward and grabbed Bateman on the shoulders. “Captain, you have to save your ship. A heading of 270 degrees. Now!”

Bateman shook his head, but he yelled to the helmsman. “Two-Seven-Zero degrees. Flank speed.”

*****

“Torpedoes are tracking,” Sills was looking a computer screen that relayed the firing data. “Torpedoes at impact.”

Rogers waited as his ship closed on the
Scorpion
. He knew how long it would take for the sound of the explosion to travel through the water. The seconds passed by. He raised an eyebrow at Sills.

“We’re passed time, sir. They all must have missed.”

“How could we have missed something six times bigger than a Typhoon?” Rogers demanded.

***

“What happened to us?” Bateman demanded.

Dane was the focus of every man in the control room.

“I don’t know,” Dane answered. “We have to get out of here and then we can try to figure it out.”

***

“Object is less than a klick away.”

“How far to the
Scorpion
?”

“Eight hundred meters. The
Scorpion
is underway. Heading, 270 degrees.”

“Slow to one third,” Rogers ordered. “Bring us about, hard to port.” Rogers was watching the symbol representing the
Scorpion
on his screen and picturing the relative positions of his sub and the other one in his mind.

“Contact is closing on
Scorpion
again.”

“Sir!” the radio man held up a handset.

Rogers took it. “Yes?”

“This is Foreman. You must save the
Scorpion
at all costs. Is that clear?”

“Clear.” Rogers handed the set back. “Great.” He turned to Sills. “How long before the
Scorpion
is clear of the Bermuda Triangle Gate at the rate she’s moving?”

Sills punched into his keyboard. “A minute and twenty seconds.”

“And until the large contact closes on her?”

Sills had that number ready. “Forty-five seconds.”

“Put us between the two.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

“How long will that take?”

“Thirty seconds.”

Rogers glanced to his side. “Chaplain, I’m afraid you need to pray faster.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The
Wyoming
slid between the
Scorpion
and the large contact it had on its screens. The contact was a gigantic sphere, over a mile and a half wide, the surface a dull black, but obviously made of some sort of metal. In the front center, a huge doorway spiraled open, over a hundred meters wide.

The sphere was on course for the
Scorpion,
but the
Wyoming
was directly in the way. The sphere slowed as the
Wyoming
slid into the opening.

***

“The
Scorpion
is appearing on SOSUS,” Foreman was listening in to the report from Naval Headquarters. “It’s clear of the Gate! Surfacing!”

Foreman picked up the phone. “Conners, what’s the latest on the Bermuda Triangle Gate?”

“It’s still shrinking,” she reported. “At an even faster rate.”

“Angkor Gate?” he asked.

“It’s down to a small area, about six kilometers wide and getting smaller.”

*****

Captain Bateman shoved the hatch aside and climbed, Dane right behind him. Dane blinked in the bright sunlight. He looked about. To the rear of the
Scorpion
he could see the mist, but it was getting further away with every passing second, the storm closing in on itself.

Carpenter, Beasley, Freed and Ariana joined him. They looked in the same direction.

“Are we safe?” Freed asked.

Dane nodded. “For now.”

Foreman’s elation was dampened by the next report from naval headquarters. “The
Wyoming
is gone, sir.”

EPILOGUE

“The last time we met, you were pointing a gun at me,” Foreman said.

Dane stared at the old man on the other side of the conference table noting the changes the years had etched. Foreman had aged well, except that his once-thick snow-white hair was thinner than Dane remembered. “You were lying to me then,” Dane continued, reaching down to his left and rubbing Chelsea’s left ear. The golden retriever cocked her head and pressed against his hand.

“Withholding information,” Foreman clarified. “Lying is too strong a word to be used for the situation.”

They were seated in a conference room inside CIA headquarters at Langley. Sin Fen sat next to Foreman. Foreman would be leaving shortly for a high level meeting in Washington with the president and the National Security Council to discuss what had just occurred both in the Angkor Gate in Cambodia and the other Gates.

The shocking sudden reappearance of the submarine
Scorpion
--listed as lost in US Navy logs in 1968--was being kept under wraps, but Dane knew it could not last much longer. They could not explain the fact that not a man in the crew seemed to have aged a day in forty years. Nor could the crew explain it. As far as they were concerned, just minutes had passed between the time they last radioed Foreman in 1968 that the reactor was going off-line as they entered the Bermuda Triangle to the moment Dane appeared on the ship’s bridge two days ago.

“Why do you still need me?” Dane asked.

“Because that mission you started on forty years ago never ended,” Foreman said. “Because you stopped the invasion through the Angkor Gate.”

“For the moment,” Sin Fen added.

Foreman nodded. “That’s why I need you.”

Dane glanced at Sin Fen. Her mind was a black wall to him. Then back at Foreman. There, he could tell more, but not as much as he would have liked. He knew the old man was telling the truth, but he also sensed there was so much Foreman didn’t know or was holding back. Based on his experiences with the CIA man, Dane knew it was likely a combination of both.

“I put everything in my report,” Dane said.

“Also,” Foreman continued as if he had not heard, “we lost the
Wyoming
, inside the Bermuda Triangle Gate.”

“Other submarines have been lost in the Gates,” Dane said.

Foreman steepled his fingers. “Not one with twenty-four Trident ICBMs on board. With each missile carrying eight Mk 4 nuclear warheads rated at a hun
d
red kilotons each. That’s 192 nuclear warheads. And our friends on the other side, whoever or whatever they are--the Shadow as your man Flaherty called them--seem to have a penchant for radioactive things. We defeated
their
weapons in this first assault, but we might not do so good against
our
weapons that they’ve captured.”

“Great,” Dane said. “We get the
Scorpion
back, the Shadow get the
Wyoming
and its nukes
.
”

“We got you,” Foreman said. “You have some sort of power, some sort of attachment to these Gates. You made it into the Angkor Gate and out again. Two times. That’s once more than anyone else has ever done.”

Dane simply stared at the CIA representative. He felt as if he were in a whirlpool being sucked in against his will into a dark and dangerous center. And to be honest, he wasn’t sure how hard he should swim against the power drawing him in; if he was even capable of resisting.

Foreman slid several photos across the table. “The top one is the Angkor Kol Ker Gate. Then the Bermuda Triangle and other Gates around the world.”

Dane looked at the first photo. It was a satellite image of Cambodia. There was a solid black triangle in the center, about six miles long on each side. It was located in the north-central part of the country, in deep, nearly impenetrable jungle.

“Each Gate is now shaped the same and stable at that size,” Foreman said. “That solid black is something new and we don’t know what it means. It’s never been reported as long as we have recorded history. No form of imaging can penetrate it. Ground surveillance from those visually watching the Gates over land say the fog has coalesced into solid black. Remote sensors sent on remotely piloted vehicles, whether sent via ground, air or sea, simply go into the black and cease transmitting. And they never come back out, even if they are programmed to return.

“The Russians--and this is classified as is everything else we discuss--sent a team into one of the Gates on their territory near Tunguska two days ago. The team hasn’t come back and is presumed dead.

“I’m afraid that although we stopped the propagation it went on long enough to allow this thing, whatever it is, to gain a solid foothold on our planet at each of the Gate sites. That’s something that never happened before.”

“That we know of,” Sin Fen added.

“It means they’re waiting,” Dane said.

“They?” Foreman asked.

“The Shadow.”

“For what?” Sin Fen asked.

“To attack again,” Dane said.

THE END

ALSO FROM BOB MAYER

THE AREA 51 SERIES

EXCERPT FROM BOOK ONE

Prologue

It came alive into darkness, wondering what had caused it to wake and aware at the same time that it was much weaker than ever before. The first priority was time. How long had it been asleep? The weakness gave the answer. Dividing half-lives of its power source, it calculated that almost fifty revolutions of this planet around the system star had passed since last it had been conscious.

The data from sensors was examined and found to be indeterminate. Whatever signal had tripped the alarms and kicked in the emergency power had to have been strong and vital but was now gone. Its sleep level had been so deep that all the recorded data showed was that there had been a signal. The nature of the signal, the source of the signal, both had been lost.

The Makers had not anticipated such a long time before resupply of the power source. It knew there was not much time left to its already very long life before the power supply slipped below the absolute minimum to keep it functioning even in hibernation.

A decision needed to be made. Should it divert power to sensors in case the signal were repeated, or should it go back to deep sleep, conserving power for time? But if the signal had been vital, and the sensor log said it was indeed so, then there might not be much time left.

The decision was made as quickly as the question had been posed. Power was allocated. The sensors were given more power to stay at a higher alert status in order to catch a repeat of the signal. A time limit of one planetary orbit about the system star was put on the sensors, at which time they would automatically awaken it and the decision could be reconsidered.

It went back to a lighter sleep, knowing that the decision to divert power to sensors for an orbit would cost it almost ten orbits of sleep when the power got lower, but it accepted that. That was its job.

Chapter One

Nashville, Tennessee

T-147 Hours