‘So, shall I send her for a swim?’
Ethan heard from behind the big man a ripple of agreement, saw a series of tiny red points of light bloom into life on his chest and Hannah alongside him as infrared sights lined up on his body.
‘No escape,’ the big man rumbled as he raised his pistol to point at Ethan, ‘and now I have three captives instead of two. Get down on the ground, lay flat. You move, I’ll blow your goddamned heads off!’
Ethan slowly began to raise his hands above his head, Hannah beside him doing the same as he prepared to get down on his knees.
‘They’ll blow the tunnel,’ Hannah whispered beneath her breath.
‘You grab Amy,’ Ethan whispered back, ‘just get her back to the base.’
Ethan got onto his knees, Hannah alongside him, and was about to lay flat when the cavern suddenly shuddered and a soaring moan erupted from the walls as the black water of the docks once again rippled in perfectly symmetrical eddies.
The moan soared louder and Ethan felt it once again reverberate through his chest as he almost toppled sideways, the vibrations shuddering through the dock beneath him as before him he saw the big man sway to one side.
‘Now,’ he whispered to himself, hoping against hope that Sully would time his detonation well.
Ethan squeezed his eyes shut and ducked his head as he moved his hands from his head to cover his ears, and a moment later a blinding flash seared his vision as behind the big man a blast thundered through the tunnel as the C4 charges were detonated.
Ethan scrambled to his feet with his eyes still shut and his hands over his ears in time to feel the shockwave from the blast hammer into him. He drove into it, opened his eyes and reached for his pistol as he saw the big man hit the dock face down before him and Amy spin away to one side and tumble to her knees on the icy dock.
Ethan lunged for her, reached out with one hand and grabbed her wrist as he yanked her to her feet and almost threw her at Hannah, who staggered upright and reached out for Amy’s hand.
Ethan ducked as a withering hail of fire erupted from the SEALs inside the base and plunged over his head into the mouth of the tunnel. A cacophony of screams and shouts of alarm roared from the tunnel as injured men regained consciousness enough to start screaming and others shouted commands and tried to get further back into the tunnel and out of sight.
Ethan saw Hannah and Amy running for the base as he turned and saw the big man dash out of sight into the blackness of the tunnel, firing blindly behind him as he went. Ethan whirled and sprinted down the dock, the whole cavern shaking as though it were about to tumble down around him, and he realized that the detonation of the C4 charge may have been the trigger necessary to finally bury them beneath billions of tons of ice.
The base door opened before him and he saw Hannah and Amy plunge through the opening as Del Toro appeared and aimed his rifle at Ethan. Ethan flinched as shots whizzed past, aimed not at him but at the tunnel behind to cover his escape, and moments later he plunged into the base as Del Toro retreated inside and slammed the door shut.
The rumbling and trembling began to subside as Ethan paused to catch his breath at the base of the stairwell.
‘You’re too lucky, Warner,’ Del Toro observed as he checked the magazine of his rifle. ‘Those quakes are getting more frequent.’
‘Yeah,’ Ethan gasped in reply, certain that without the unexpected tremor he and Hannah would have likely been hit.
Amy leaped across to Ethan and flung her arms about his neck. He could see that she was injured, blood trickling from her ears where the shockwave from the blast had hit her hard, but otherwise she appeared okay as he returned the embrace and then looked down at her.
‘His name’s Veer,’ she said. ‘Andrei Veer, and they’ll follow him wherever he goes. They don’t care about who lives and who dies, they’re being paid too much money. They executed one of my assistants right outside on the ice.’
Ethan nodded.
‘Mercenaries don’t care much for the lives of others,’ he replied, ‘these guys are in this for the money and Majestic Twelve sure has plenty of that.’
‘It’s only a matter of time before they launch an assault against the base and overrun us,’ Hannah pointed out, ‘especially now they’re under threat of being blasted into pieces inside that tunnel.’
Del Toro nodded and was about to speak when Doctor Chandler hurried down to meet them.
‘You need to see this, right now,’ he said.
The team followed the Doctor, who hurried up the stairwell and into the control center where Riggs and the rest of the team were keeping watch on the docks. Ethan helped Amy into a chair as he looked up expectantly at Riggs.
‘How’s the sub’?’ he asked.
‘It’ll hold water and the batteries are on charge,’ Riggs replied, ‘which is why you need to hear this.’
Riggs looked at Chandler, who gestured to the map of the base pinned to the far wall that Ethan had found.
‘I’ve had a chance to study this schematic,’ Chandler said, ‘and I’m afraid that it does not bode well for us.’
‘We kinda figured we were up the creek without a paddle already, genius,’ Hannah uttered in reply. ‘Get to the point.’
Ethan suppressed a smile. It was almost like having Lopez alongside him.
‘The chamber was indeed supplied with energy by a series of turbines, which had been inserted into deep water channels upstream from the main base where we now stand,’ Chandler explained. ‘The glacier’s weight, along with the force of water reaching us from Lake Vostok and other subterranean bodies of water, mean that the flow is under extremely high pressure. This was an advantage for the Nazis, who were able to harness that pressure to ensure a good flow of electrical energy to this facility. However, decades of being abandoned have weakened the structures they put in place to protect the turbines and now they’re all on the verge of failure.’
‘Which means what?’ Ethan asked.
‘The turbines are mostly locked in position at this time as a result of rust and seizures,’ Chandler explained, ‘which means that instead of turning with the flow of water and generating power they’re effectively acting like dams, holding the flow back. Because the water is no longer flowing it loses what little heat it has and freezes, blocking the channels. The cavitation in the water of the docks and the low frequency emissions we’re hearing are not the sounds of some gigantic beast as we first feared, but of the entire base coming under increasing pressure from the build-up of high pressure water behind the blockages.’
‘I think I know where this is going,’ Ethan murmured as he looked at the map.
‘It’s why the entire cavern system periodically floods,’ Chandler explained. ‘The turbines fail and are crushed beneath the pressure, and the water flows past once more and rushes into the cavern and docks, flooding it until the pressure equalizes once more and the excess flow drains away out of the tunnel we used to enter the base.’
Hannah leaned against a wall.
‘How long?’ she asked. ‘Before it happens again?’
Chandler’s features had paled slightly.
‘It could happen next week or in the next two minutes, but it’s imminent.’
‘Any other ways out?’ Ethan asked Riggs, already knowing the answer.
‘Nope,’ Riggs replied, ‘and that submarine only has two seats. Truth time, people – we’re not getting out of this base alive.’
***
XXXVII
‘This is
not
a good idea.’
Hannah Ford stood on the dock beside the
Seehund
midget submarine as Lieutenant Riggs and his SEALs hurriedly prepared her for diving. The U-Boat was an ugly black vessel emblazoned with the red stencil numbering of the Nazi fleet, the
Kriegsmarine
.
‘If this is your plan,’ Riggs added as he worked, ‘then your plan sucks.’
Ethan shared their concerns but he knew that there was no option but to use the tiny submarine to get below the surface and recover Black Knight. What he could not be sure of was what they were going to encounter beneath the waves. Not only would they have to contend with the frigid Antarctic waters, the danger of glacial collapses, the limited energy supply of the submarine and its antiquated controls, but they would also have to be ready to encounter something that was not of this world.
‘We’ll just go down, grab it, and bring it back to the surface,’ Ethan assured her.
‘Sounds easy if you say it quickly enough,’ Hannah mumbled in reply.
Lieutenant Riggs jumped down from the sub’s hull and looked her over one last time.
‘She’s good to go. The hull is secure, no leaks that I can find, so she’s in good shape considering how long she’s been here and you’re lucky – most
Seehunds
didn’t have ballast tanks but this one has been modified to carry them. My men are trained for this sort of thing and should be the ones going down there, and your experience is only barely enough to control the
Seehund
. Are you sure you want to go through with this?’
Ethan shook his head.
‘Hell no, I want to be at home with a beer watching the damned game but we’re here so we might as well get on with it. You’re going to need all the firepower you can get up there on the docks, so it makes sense to send somebody else. Get the hell out of here and get on with it.’
Riggs nodded and looked across at Doctor Chandler, who was standing nearby with his hands shoved in the pockets of his Arctic coat, his head almost completely concealed beneath his hood.
‘Are you all hooked up and ready to go?’ Riggs asked him.
Ethan had arranged for the doctor to provide a digital communications link to the dock, so that if they encountered anything that they could not overcome they could fall back on the scientist’s knowledge to help them through.
‘The data link is in place, and communications should be possible to some extent through the water,’ Chandler confirmed. ‘However, there is a common phenomenon in deep water known as thermal layering, whereby denser cold water can move below warmer water and create a barrier to communications. Given what we know about the flow from Lake Vostok beneath the glacier, you may find that at times we cannot communicate.’
‘Perfect,’ Hannah replied. ‘Anything else we might need to know about?’
Riggs gestured to the torpedo clamps on the submarine’s hull, and at the bow section.
‘The clamps are definitely strong enough to lift whatever’s down there, given what we know about its size and mass, but when you resurface you’ll have to come up real careful or you’ll smash the artifact against the dock wall. Do that and you might compromise the hull, which will likely sink you.’
‘Smashing,’ Hannah uttered.
‘There’s a a watertight section of the bow that used to contain a depth charge device that might help you to hook onto whatever’s down there, but you’ll probably have to improvise once you get a look at this thing.’
Ethan was about to grab Hannah’s arm and guide her as gently as possible aboard the submarine before she finally lost her nerve when Amy appeared at the dock hatch and hurried down toward them.
‘Wait for me!’ She hurried across and pointed at the submarine. ‘You need me on this one.’
Ethan shook his head. ‘This is too dangerous.’
Amy shot Ethan an accusing glare. ‘Yeah, right, and being in an unstable Second World War secret Nazi base beneath a moving glacier while under attack from gunmen is the safe option, right?’
‘This submarine might not make it back to the surface and we don’t know what we’ll find down there,’ Ethan replied. ‘It’s not your risk to take.’
‘It’s every bit my risk to take,’ Amy insisted. ‘You can’t take Doctor Chandler, you don’t have any experience in sub-aquatic Arctic environments and Hannah is clearly scared out of her wits!’
‘Hey!’ Hannah protested. ‘I’m just a little concerned about being dunked in a rusting tin can under ten billion tons of ice is all. Cut me a break!’
‘I’m not concerned,’ Amy insisted to Ethan. ‘This is
my
specialty - it’s why I’m here. You need me down there and they need Hannah up here. She can shoot, I can’t. It makes sense and you damned well know it.’
Ethan bit his lip and glanced at Riggs, who shrugged.
‘Don’t argue with a woman,’ was all that he could say.
‘Damn it,’ Ethan uttered as he released Hannah’s arm. ‘Okay, you’re up.’
Amy’s face beamed with delight as she clambered gamely up the submarine’s hull, a chunky digital camera dangling on a strap about her neck as she called back to Chandler.
‘Use the sonar buoy to increase the communications signal beneath the ice! It might help to burn through any thermal layers we encounter.’
Chandler’s features lit up and he called back. ‘Good idea!’
Hannah looked at Ethan. ‘Looks like you’re in good hands.’
Ethan smiled with a confidence he did not feel. ‘Cover our asses,’ he replied. ‘I don’t want to come back with Black Knight and have to hand it over to Veer and his men.’
‘Over my dead body, literally,’ Hannah assured him. ‘Be careful.’
‘You too.’
Amy’s voice called to him from the submarine’s entrance hatch, where she had attached a small digital video camera attached by a lead to a laptop computer that was tucked under her arm.
‘Are you getting on board or what?!’
Ethan took a deep breath and then clambered up the hull of the U-Boat and climbed carefully into the narrow confines of the tower. He reached over and took one last look at the dock before he pulled the clear dome hatch over his head and closed it, sealing it shut.
The interior of the submarine was cramped and dark, Amy moving into the engineer’s position at the front while Ethan took the commander’s position right behind her. His seat was provided with a periscope and a view through the clear acrylic dome for navigational purposes which could survive depths of almost a hundred and fifty feet, and he familiarized himself with his surroundings as he prepared to dive the vessel. The batteries were in the keel of the pressure hull, while a twenty two horsepower diesel engine was fitted for surface use, which Riggs had figured would give a maximum speed of around five knots. Below the surface, a twenty five horsepower electric motor provided a submerged maximum speed of seven knots.