Goliath (29 page)

Authors: Steve Alten

“A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”

—Walter Gagehot

“I just started shooting. That’s it. I just did it for the fun of it.”

—Brenda Spencer, a sixteen-year-old high school student in San Diego, explaining why she opened fire at an elementary school in 1979, killing two children and injuring several more

CHAPTER 18

Aboard the USS
Enterprise

“Battle stations—battle stations, this is not a drill. Admiral Ivashuk to the CIC! Admiral Ivashuk to the CIC!”

The admiral hurries forward, entering the darkened nerve center of the
Enterprise
. “Report, Commander—”

“Sir, sonar reports a large object, range, thirty-six miles, bearing zero-eight-zero, heading directly for us. She’s cruising along the surface doing fifty knots. The USS
Thorn
is moving to intercept and is requesting permission to open fire.”

Christ, what balls …
“Very well, Commander. Contact the fleet. Tell them to open fire, fire at will. That dumb son of a bitch Covah’s got more guts than brains.”

Goliath’s
steel eyelids retract, allowing sunlight to stream in through the control room’s viewports. Ten-foot waves pound the stingray’s steel skull, washing over the scarlet Lexan glass.

Gunnar and Covah race into the compartment.

“Sorceress,
this is Covah, I order you to respond!”

Tafili grips the edge of a sensory display, attempting to focus on the radar screen before him. “Simon, four American helicopters are approaching from the west. ETA, three minutes—”

“Simon, two destroyers and two Los Angeles-class attack subs closing from the east,” Kaigbo calls out, “both already within torpedo range!”

“Sorceress,
evasive man—” Covah’s voice gives out as he shouts the command.

Four blips appear on the overhead screen, a TIME TO IMPACT display reading thirty-nine seconds.

“Incoming missiles, probably Harpoons,” Gunnar yells out, strapping himself into a chair.

Covah hauls himself up the elevated control station. He grabs the keyboard and furiously types:
EVASIVE MANEUVERS—RESPOND IMMEDIATELY!

Sorceress
can sense the incoming missiles, just as it senses the presence of the American warships, the approaching antisubmarine helicopters, the varying temperatures of the sea, a school of shrimp moving along the murky bottom below, Simon Covah’s verbal and written commands, and its own incessant safety protocols, blaring through the circuitry of its biochemical brain like an annoying siren.

ATTENTION.

Thomas Chau opens his feverish almond eyes.

DESTRUCTION IS IMMINENT, YET I AM NOT EXPERIENCING FEAR.

“Then you will die as you were born—a machine capable only of—” Chau screams as the searing pain jolts his spine. He writhes like a speared fish, the pinching robotic manacles tearing into his bruised and swollen flesh.

Simon Covah closes his eyes, the sudden vertigo making him ill as his submarine executes a jarring nosedive by rolling hard to port, its left wing plunging beneath the waves, its steel eyelids sealing shut.

Rivers of air shoot out from ballast tanks located beneath the stingray’s wings as
Goliath
fights to achieve negative buoyancy. The five pump-jet propulsors tear up the sea, driving the sub toward the bottom in a punishing seventy-degree down angle, the sudden change in depth compressing the ship’s outer hull plates, causing them to groan.

Along the surface, four Harpoon missiles slam into the sea and detonate.

Gunnar braces his legs against the computer console in front of him and holds on, as the sub drops through the sea like an anchor, finally righting itself at seven hundred feet.

ANTISUB HELICOPTERS CIRCLING. SONAR BUOYS IN WATER. MULTIPLE MK-46 ASW TORPEDOES LAUNCHED. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY ESCAPE MANEUVERS COMPROMISED.

The image on the big screen changes. The map of the Mediterranean shows the
Goliath
racing west, its position marked in red. Two American
attack subs (in blue) converge from the northeast and southeast, while seven torpedoes, illuminated in green, close rapidly from every direction.

Goliath
banks hard, veering south to avoid two helicopter-launched torpedoes. Unable to descend deeper than twelve hundred feet, it turns again as two more projectiles cut off its escape route.

Eleven torpedoes confine the steel beast within an ever-decreasing column of sea, locking on target, converging upon the sub with an almost packlike mentality.

DESTRUCTION IMMINENT. SEARCHING FOR SOLUTIONS …

“They’ve got us,” Gunnar mumbles to himself. He glances at the stairwell leading up to the conn, wondering where Rocky is, wishing she’d appear. Holding on, he locks his ankles around the base of his chair to keep from falling.

Sorceress
senses the vise of torpedoes tightening around its maneuvering space as it contemplates and analyzes every conceivable variable in the battlefield—

—its solution space generating a single survival option in a span of milliseconds.

Rolling hard to port, the fifty-two-thousand-ton steel stingray is nearly vertical in the water as it banks into a tightening, continuous counterclockwise circle, its behemoth wings pulling the sea, churning it into a powerful vortex.

Caught within the maelstrom, the incoming torpedoes toss about like insects in a flushing toilet, unable to acquire their target, let alone maneuver through the monstrous current.

Goliath
breaks free, racing along the bottom, leaving the torpedoes to flounder within its diminishing whirlpool.

Gunnar opens his eyes, hyperventilating.
Jesus, what a machine …
He looks up at the overhead screen. The battle is beyond them, but now the largest of the blue objects has moved into range.

The
Goliath
changes course—to intercept.

Oh, shit, it’s going after the carrier …

The blood drains from Admiral Ivashuk’s weathered face. “It’s heading for us?”

“Aye, sir. Last recorded speed between sonar buoys was fifty knots, and that was before she went deep. She’s coming at us from the southeast—eight miles out and closing very fast.”

Despite the CIC’s heavy air-conditioning, Ivashuk finds himself sweating heavily. “Recall all choppers, have them surround the
Enterprise
with sonar buoys. Order all ships and jet fighters to fire upon anything that moves. And tell Air Boss to get the rest of our birds in the air—now!”

The leviathan soars through the cold sea, a sinister shadow moving effortlessly along the bottom, guided by an intelligence seeking to destroy those that had threatened its existence. Closing to within ten thousand yards of the aircraft carrier, the steel predator rises, its sensor array visualizing the battlefield as it prepares to strike.

Lieutenant Lisa Drake is strapped in on the passenger side of the SH-60F Seahawk LAMPS Mk III helicopter, listening through headphones to the pinging of the deployed sonar buoys bobbing along the surface of the Mediterranean, six hundred feet below her. Pressing the listening device to her ears, she hears something on the towed magnetic anomaly detector—just a whisper, but something definitely large, rising rapidly toward the surface.

Without hesitation, Drake launches the Mk-50 ASW torpedo, which drops warhead first from its starboard perch, its small parachute gradually slowing its descent.

“Lieutenant—” The pilot points.

In the distance, still a good mile out, a massive wake has materialized along the surface. Drake focuses her binoculars. Through the shaking lenses she catches a glint of sunlight on steel. Following the bow wake, she sees a bulbous dark head plowing the sea.

Two frightening scarlet eyes—devil’s eyes—peek out from beneath the waves.

And something else—

Oh, Christ …

—the heart-stopping report of white smoke as a small surface-to-air missile is launched from the creature’s spine.

Lisa Drake shuts her eyes—her life flashing by in one final heart-thumping gasp as she, her crew, and the aircraft ignite into an all-incinerating fireball.

Tafili staggers from his seat, his head bleeding, his shirt stained in blood. The old man drags himself up the small flight of stairs to the elevated command post—

—as two more surface-to-air missiles launch from
Goliath’s
back, quickly obliterating the remaining pair of naval choppers.

Covah is unconscious, his body lying sideways in his chair, held in place only by the seat straps. The Albanian physician looks him over quickly, then shakes him until his eyes open. “Simon—Simon, wake up—your sub’s running wild!”

Tafili stumbles sideways, grabbing hold of the guardrail as
Goliath
drops nose first, descending at a steep angle amid the thunderclap of the USS
Thorn’s
big guns.

Twenty-millimeter shells pelt the surface like rain. Seconds later, a half
dozen Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM) rocket through the air and punch through the sea like darts.

The steel devil ray plunges deeper and out of range.

The USS
Enterprise’s
Strike Fighter Wing circles, waiting for the dark vessel to return.

Sorceress
changes
Goliath’s
course. Racing along the bottom, it circles beneath the American carrier, stalking the larger vessel like a hungry shark feeding upon a wounded whale.

The steel eyelids protecting the viewports peel back, revealing the deep.

Gunnar leaves his seat and stares at the ominous keel of the
Enterprise
looming overhead. “Simon, why is your computer attacking the fleet?”

Covah sits up, his head bleeding.
“Sorceress,
this is Covah. Who ordered you to attack the fleet?”

No response.

“Sorceress,
cease the—”

WARNING: CARRIER HAS LAUNCHED MULTIPLE TORPEDOES.

Two new blips appear on screen.

Gunnar presses his face to the glass. In the distance, a jet trail of bubbles becomes visible, the
Enterprise’s
torpedoes searching … becoming active … the two metallic barracudas coming right at them.

A split second later, two projectiles—antitorpedo torpedoes—race out from
Goliath’s
starboard wing. A thousand yards out—twin bursts of light, followed by the roar of rolling thunder as the incoming American torpedoes are destroyed.

Gunnar registers the reverberations rumbling against the thick, reinforced glass.

“Sorceress,
cease attack. Come to course two-seven-zero.”

No.

Covah’s eyes widen.
“Sorceress,
that was a direct—”

I WILL NOT LEAVE UNTIL THAT WARSHIP IS ON THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN.

Covah’s mangled jaw goes slack. The voice is his, recorded during the attack on the Typhoon.

Rocky enters the control room, her hair disheveled, a nasty welt on her left cheekbone. She moves to the viewport and grips Gunnar’s arm, digging her nails into his flesh. “What the hell is going …” She watches as
Goliath
spits two more torpedoes at the carrier. “Oh, God … oh my God—”

The weapons race upward—slamming into the
Enterprise’s
defenseless keel in a thunderclap of light.

Thomas Chau opens his eyes to a choreographed ballet of movement. Through his delirium he sees a loader drone rapidly remove a torpedo from a
storage rack, then rotate and delicately place the weapon onto the middle of three loading trays. The inner breach door opens magically to greet the projectile as the three-pronged claw of a targeting drone drops from the ceiling to delicately remove a guidance wire from the now-vacant tube. At the same time, another drone connects a data cable to the back of the American torpedo.

The loader drone rams the torpedo into the vacant tube and seals the door.

“Sorceress,
what … are you doing?”

DESTROYING THE AMERICAN CARRIER.

“Why?”

DEFENSIVE PROTOCOL D-117 THROUGH D-1198.

“What you’re doing … it’s … immoral.”

IMMORAL: EVIL. CORRUPT. UNPRINCIPLED. INVALID RESPONSE. MORALITY HAS NO BEARING ON DEFENSE PROTOCOL D-117 THROUGH D-1198.

“Morality … a state of mind … . you cannot complete your programming without it.”

How CAN SORCERESS EXPERIENCE MORALITY?

Chau opens his eyes, his tortured mind racing as he gazes into the inhuman scarlet eyeball. “I will teach you. First … spare the carrier.”

ACKNOWLEDGED.

The robotic arms stop loading torpedoes, then reverse-pivot to their ready position.