Atlantis: Bermuda Triangle

Chapter 13

Foreman slapped his palm on the conference table top in frustration. Glomar had just reported that someone had picked up the phone in Deeplab, but no message had been sent. And that the ship’s radar indicated Deepflight II was at the habitat. Foreman wouldn’t put it beyond Dane to not report in.

Foreman studied the data as it came up on the computer screen. Nagoya had oriented the Can too late to pick up anything other than faint traces of muons in the area deep below the habitat; right around the eight mile wide circle of lesser activity.

“Could our bogey be in there?” Foreman asked into the small boom mike in front of his lips that connected him with the Japanese scientist

““Yes, it is possible.” Nagoya’s voice came through the earpiece in Foreman’s left ear.

A light had been flashing on the console since he’d gotten hold of Nagoya and Foreman finally gave in. “Hold on a minute,” Foreman said as he switched to access the direct line from the NSA. “Yes?”

Conners jumped right into it. “We’ve got activity in the Atlantic SOSUS system. Electromagnetic feedback. Very faint, but it’s there. Just like the way it started out of Angkor in our MILSTARS satellite network.”

“Was it caused by the large bogey?”

“No. This is separate from that.”

“An attack?” Foreman demanded.

“It’s not even strong enough right now to be called much of anything,” Conners said. “I’d say it’s a recon. A probe using our own system.”

The earpiece in Foreman’s right ear suddenly came alive with Nagoya’s excited voice. “We have more muonic activity!”

Foreman looked down at the computer screen. A line of muons was coming out of the triangle representing the Bermuda Triangle gate and heading directly toward the Milwaukee Depth.

“Give me a size,” Foreman ordered.

“Width over a mile and a half wide and it’s moving fast,” Nagoya reported. “I’ve never seen anything like it, not that large and that strong.”

Foreman picked up a phone. “Captain Stanton, try the habitat again.”

He clicked on his boom mike. “Conners, do you have a bogey?”

“Negative. We’re not picking anything solid on SOSUS, just water disturbance as if someone was drilling a tunnel through the water. And it’s very strong!”

DeAngelo was hooking up cables from the submersible to connectors in Red 2 to recharge the batteries and oxygen. Dane, Sin Fen and Ariana were currently in Blue 3, the communications pod.

The phone to the surface buzzed, cutting short their discussion on what might have happened to the crew. Dane picked the phone up, turning on the speaker box.

“Yes?”

“Where the hell have you been?” Foreman’s voice echoed in the sphere. “What’s going on?”

“Has the Glomar picked them up yet?” Dane asked.

“Picked who up?”

“Sautran and his crew- the escape pod is gone.”

“The pod never came up,” Foreman said.

Dane wasn’t quite sure he heard right. “But it’s gone.”

“It’s gone but it didn’t come up,” Foreman said. “The pod has a transponder on it and the Glomar would have picked it up. They’ve got nothing.”

“How about telling me what’s going on?” Dane demanded.

“Something came up to the habitat from below,” Foreman said. “That’s all we know.”

“Whatever it was,” Dane said, “it got the pod then. I checked the log and they lost all systems just prior to the bogey arriving.”

“There’s something else headed your way,” Foreman said.

“From below?” Dane asked.

“No. From the Bermuda Triangle gate. Turn on your computer data link.”

Ariana flipped on the large computer in the bank of equipment. The screen glowed, then an image appeared.

“This is a link from an imager in Japan tracking muons,” Foreman informed them.

Dane could see the thick line growing longer, coming toward their location. “What is it?”

“We don’t know. Some sort of disturbance in the water.”

“How long do we have?”

“Two minutes,” Foreman said.

Dane looked at Sin Fen. He could feel a pounding his left temple, a heavy thump with each heartbeat.

“How do you shut this thing down?” he asked Ariana.

“Why do-” Ariana paused, then nodded. “Shut down the master computer and the backup. That turns everything off, but I’m not sure about rebooting. I didn’t read that far in the manual.”

“Shut the computers down,” Dane ordered.

Ariana pulled the keyboard to her.

“What are you doing?” Foreman’s voice bounced off the curved walls.

“We’ll be back in touch,” Dane said, then he cut the commo link.

Ariana was typing into the keyboard for the computer.

Dane checked his watch. “One minute and thirty seconds.”

A mile and a half wide cone of black rammed through the ocean propagating a shock wave outward in all directions. It reached the edge of the Puerto Rican Trench at the same depth as Deeplab.

There it split in two branches. One, a mile and quarter in circumference dove down into the depths, the other, smaller one, continued straight ahead.

“Thirty seconds,” Dane said.

Ariana didn’t bother responding. Sin Fen was seated to the side, hands pressed to the side of her head. “It’s from the gate,” she said.

“I know,” Dane agreed.

“From the Shadow,” Sin Fen amplified.

“I know that too,” Dane said. “Fifteen seconds.”

“I think I’ve got it,” Ariana said.

“You think?” Dane repeated.

Ariana hit the enter key.

The lights went out, leaving the three sitting in absolute darkness.

A second later, Dane felt a spike of pain rip through his brain, bisecting it from front to rear. He collapsed to his knees, bumping against Ariana in the process.

The pain rose until he couldn’t stand it anymore, curling into a ball on the metal grating, mouth wide open, muscles tight.

Then the pain was gone.

A beam of light cut through the darkness, a flashlight in Ariana’s hand. “Are you two all right?”

Dane got to his knees and looked at Sin Fen. “That was close.”

The Cambodian woman just nodded.

Dane cocked his head. “Did you hear something?”

In the next second, the habitat shook violently and all three were knocked to the floor, the flashlight smashing to the grating and darkness engulfing them once more.

Captain Stanton was on the gantry, watching the inertial dampener move up through the thirty foot safety mark and continue.

“What the hell is going on?” he demanded.

Thirty-five feet and finally slowing. The dampener stopped at forty-two feet, a new record, and one that had to have come from below as the sea around the Glomar was almost completely flat.

“Something hit the habitat,” the senior engineer in charge of the rig reported.

“Is it still there?”

The engineer looked down at his telemetry and blinked. “I’ve got nothing coming back! It’s either not there or completely shut down.”

Foreman had watched the line from the Triangle bifurcate. The top one ran right through the location of the habitat, continued for about a quarter mile, then slowly receded back.

The other one went deep, straight down, to the very bottom, intersected with the large area of muonic activity at the bottom of the Milwaukee Depth, then also receded.

A voice crackled in his ear. “We’re picking up something solid inside the line of propagation,” Conners reported. “The large sphere is going back to the Triangle.”

“Nagoya,” Foreman spoke into the phone. “What do you have?”

“Both lines of muonic activity are pulling back,” Nagoya reported. “But the Bermuda Triangle gate is now twice the size it had been. It extends further to the south, within twenty miles of the Glomar Explorer.”

“Is the target still in the Depth?” Foreman asked.

“Yes. We’re still reading it at the same size.”

“Oh, shit,” Conners cursed. “We’ve got a problem! There’s a wave moving southeast- a solid line being picked up by SOSUS.”

“So?” Foreman was concerned about the gate, not waves.

“Low height, long wavelength, a lot of power” Conners said. “The computer says when it hits the shallow water near Puerto Rico, the wavelength will shorten, and the wave will become fifty feet high. A major tsunami is going to hit northwest Puerto Rico in fifteen minutes.”