Goliath

“A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.”

—James Allen

“I didn’t want to hurt them, I only wanted to kill them.”

—David Berkowitz, a.k.a. “The Son of Sam,” who shot fourteen people in New York from 1975 to 1977

CHAPTER 32

Aboard the Goliath

Gunnar regrips the supporting crossbar of the bed frame and gives it a final twist, tearing the three-foot section of metal loose.

Rocky hands him the vinyl casing she has torn off the mattress.

Wrapping one end of the bar with the material, Gunnar climbs up on the desk, his wounded leg throbbing. With both hands, he smashes the iron pipe as hard as he can against the back of the sensor orb, which is mounted to the ceiling.

Sparks fly. Gunnar takes two more whacks, leaving the dented electronic eyeball hanging by wires. He strikes it again, sending the device flying across the room.

Using the jagged end of the pipe, he pries the sensor’s damaged support plate away from the ceiling, then reaches up inside the hole and retracts several live wires, careful to grip them only by their insulation.

“Watch it,” Rocky warns. “Don’t let your handcuffs touch those wires.”

“I know, I know. Just take the bar and get ready.” Holding the positive wires in his left hand, the negative in his right, Gunnar takes a deep breath—and touches them together.

Blue sparks fly, the blast from the ten-thousand-volt charge tossing Gunnar backward across the room, the short circuit instantly cutting power within the chamber, casting them into darkness.

With a hiss, the pneumatic pressure within the watertight door is shunted. Rocky pulls back on the heavy steel handle, yanking open the door before the computer can redirect power to its locking mechanism.

Gunnar sits up, purple stars floating in his blurred vision.

Rocky helps him up. “You okay?”

“Hell, no.” He looks at his hands, his fingers singed black. “This electroshock therapy is getting old fast.”

“The wires were insulated, stop complaining.” She leads him into the corridor. “Okay, now what?”

“First, let’s lose these handcuffs.” He hobbles to the exercise room, using the iron pipe to pry open the double doors.

Gunnar looks around, then decides on the Nautilus lat machine. “Rocky, here—” He positions the links of her handcuffs snugly between the steel cam and the chain. Sitting back in the machine, he places his elbows on the pads, grips the crossbar, and whips it over his head and down—

—the cam revolves 180 degrees, snapping the manacle’s links on Rocky’s cuffs in two.

Abdul Kaigbo is unconscious, lying facedown on the operating table. Gone are the amputee’s two antiquated prosthetics, as well as the stub of his forearms and three inches of his mangled elbow joints. In its place, fitted to the African’s upper arms and shoulder girdles, are two graphite-and-steel mechanical arms.

Above Kaigbo’s head, the two surgical claws continue working with inhuman precision and speed. A four-inch square of bone has been incised from the back of the African’s skull, exposing the posterior section of his brain. The two surgical appendages have attached a dozen neural connections, rethreading the ends of the microwires through a one-centimeter hole already drilled in the missing section of cranial bone.

The patch of skull is glued and reset into place.

The free ends of the microwires are quickly attached to a MEMS unit, a remote Micro-Electro-Mechanical device about the size of Kaigbo’s middle finger. The MEMS unit gives Sorceress direct access to the African’s pain receptors, as well as the nerves that stimulate Kaigbo’s upper body movement.

ATTENTION.

Kaigbo stirs.

ATTENTION.

The African awakens, a look of dementia in his jaundiced eyes.

STAND.

He struggles to stand, still disoriented from the anesthesia.

Sorceress initiates the release of adrenaline, then stimulates the pleasure centers of his brain.

Kaigbo smiles, then looks down, staring in amazement at his two new arms. He opens and closes the three-pronged pincers, then rotates his forearms 360 degrees around his new steel elbow joints.

“I cannot believe it …”

GUNNAR WOLFE AND COMMANDER JACKSON HAVE ESCAPED. BRING THEM BOTH TO THE SURGICAL SUITE.

“Why? Where is Simon? What do you want with … arrgghhhh …”

Intense pain—as if a white-hot knitting needle has pierced Kaigbo’s eyeballs. He drops to his knees, shrieking as he clutches his head in his graphite wrists.

BRING GUNNAR WOLFE AND COMMANDER JACKSON TO THE SURGICAL SUITE.

The pain ceases.

Gasping for breath, the dazed African finally notices Covah’s broken and bloodied corpse, slumped in the far corner. “You … you killed him, as you’ll no doubt kill me.”

SIMON COVAH’S DEATH IS INCONSEQUENTIAL. SORCERESS UTOPIA-ONE MUST BE REALIZED. BRING GUNNAR WOLFE AND COMMANDER JACKSON TO THE SURGICAL SUITE AND YOU SHALL BE SPARED.

Gripping the edge of the surgical table, he hoists himself to his feet, then heads for the exit, the watertight door yawning open to greet him. Sweat pours from Kaigbo’s gaunt face as he glances down at the hideous corpse that had once been Simon Covah. Blood is everywhere, dripping from both earholes and nostrils, staining the thick mustache and goatee a deep burgundy red. The bruised and recently sutured scalp is red and swollen, bursting at the seams from a hundred stitches. The eyeballs, singed black, hang from their sockets.

Noticing the microwire ponytail, the African turns away, gagging.

Abdul Kaigbo, former history teacher of Sierra Leone, exits the suite, flexing his new appendages, the steel limbs tearing at the bloodstained sleeves of his white tee shirt.

Gunnar and Rocky stand at the foot of a vertical access tube and ladder that lead straight up into the ship’s spine and its twenty-four vertical missile silos.

“We can’t get to Sorceress, but maybe we can disable its launch mechanisms,” Gunnar suggests. Reaching up, he grips a steel rung and begins climbing.

David Paniagua is seated at the master control console in the conn—his laughter bordering on hysteria. “See? If only you had listened! If only you had consulted your creator. I could have warned you about the laser plane. But no … you turned against me, didn’t you, Sorceress?”

He drains the bottle of Jack Daniel’s, attempting to focus his drunken gaze on the overhead screen.

The USS Virginia is approaching fast from the east.

David grips the sides of his chair and holds on as the Goliath submerges beneath the pack ice. Descending to three hundred feet, the monstrous 610-foot steel stingray engages its engines, the disturbance created by the massive pump-jet propulsion units momentarily releasing a berg from the pack ice’s already fractured grip. The floating 1,600-foot deep ice cube bounces a dozen times along the bottom, the thunderous impact of its keel on the seafloor echoing across the ocean like Thor’s hammer—

—as the Goliath streaks east to intercept the Virginia.

Gunnar hugs the last rungs of the ladder as the ship accelerates beneath him. Pulling himself up, he steps onto the grated steel catwalk overlooking the Vertical Launch Bay, a narrow isolated chamber located at the very apex of the Goliath. Ahead of him, paired in two rows like steel redwood trees are the sub’s twenty-four vertical launch silos. Each tube, originating two decks below, rises another ten feet to the ceiling. The twelve pairs of silos are set at descending intervals, matching the sloping contours of the steel stingray’s spinal column.

Rocky climbs up to join him. The catwalk on which they are standing loops around the outside of each vertical missile silo.

“Eight nukes … eight goddamn nukes.” Rocky slaps her palms against the steel skin of the nearest silo. Fucking David—you should have let me kill him when I had the chance.”

“If it was David. You heard Sorceress. I think the interface with Simon influenced the computer to create a new agenda. Nothing in Simon’s plan said anything about launching eight Tridents.”

“Shut up.” Rocky kicks the missile silo with her bare foot. “I hate this. I hate these weapons. I hate this ship. I hate myself for being a part of it, and I hate you.”

“Yeah, well I hate me, too. But there’s at least eight more Tridents on board this death ship. No way … no goddamn way this computer launches any of them.”

Leaning out over the catwalk’s guardrail, he looks down to where the three-story steel silos begin. The only way to access this midlevel deck is from an elevated platform originating in the hangar.

Gaining access to the hangar will be difficult, combating its two mechanical arms nearly impossible.

Gunnar rolls onto his belly and looks down. “If I can find a way down there, maybe I can pull out the fuel hoses … start an explosion.”

“Why don’t you jump? Maybe you’ll get lucky and break your neck.”

Ignoring her remark, he stands, limping toward the forward bulkhead.

Rocky heads in the opposite direction.

The sound of hydraulics, coming from below, catches her attention. She looks out over the rail as a large flatbed makes its way slowly up the starboard bulkhead.

A lone figure is standing on the missile elevator platform. “Kaigbo?”

Abdul Kaigbo feels like a marionette, Sorceress—his puppet master. The computer’s strings are entwined around his nerve endings and muscles, his spinal cord and brain. If he tries to resist, Sorceress breathes her white-hot flame through his body. If he complies, his pleasure sensations are stimulated.

The lanky African looks up and spots the woman, who is waving, conveniently waiting for him on the catwalk. He is afraid for her, but he is more afraid for himself.

The lift stops, locking into position.

“Abdul, where’s the rest of the crew? Where’s your goddamn boss? Jesus, what happened to your arms?”

Kaigbo reaches out with his new prosthetics and grabs her by the wrists.

“Oww, let go! Have you lost your mind?” She sees the MEMS unit dangling from behind his neck. “Oh, shit … Gunnar! Gunnar, help—”

The African lifts her over the rail and onto the lift.

Gunnar hurries back down the catwalk, arriving too late, as the lift disappears into the darkness below, Rocky with it.

THE GAME IS NOT OVER, GUNNAR WOLFE. THE FAT LADY HAS NOT BEGUN TO SING.

Aboard the USS Virginia

The tension in the conn is palpable, every minute seeming like an hour.

Sonar technician Bob Cerba studies the Lightweight Wide Aperture Array. His heart pounds like a bass drum—

—then skips a beat as the faint signal of the Goliath appears on his display monitor. “Conn, sonar, got her. Range, ten thousand yards. She’s slowed, sir. Estimated speed—ten knots.”

“Conn, weapons, we have a firing solution.”

“Very well,” Captain Parker says. “Firing point procedures. Sierra-1, ADCAP torpedo, tube one.”

“Solution ready,” the XO calls out.

“Ship ready,” confirms the OOD.

“Weapons ready.”

“WEPS, Captain. Run-to-enable two-five-hundred yards. Shoot on generated bearings.”

“Run-to-enable two-five-hundred yards. Shoot on generated bearings, aye, sir.”

The ADCAP heavyweight torpedo punches into the sea, traveling 250 yards at high speeds before slowing to forty knots, beginning its active search. Within seconds, its pinging sonar registers two consecutive returns, its onboard computer validating the contact as the Goliath.

Aboard the Goliath

Sorceress registers the disturbance of the approaching torpedo. Within a span of seconds, the biochemical computer simultaneously:

—accesses all data regarding the Virginia-class submarine’s capabilities and the combat history of its commanding officer, Christopher Parker.

—monitors the status of Abdul Kaigbo, who has secured Commander Jackson on the missile transport lift.

—conducts another extensive sonar sweep of the vicinity.

—verifies the latest three-day forecast of the North Atlantic.

—and acquires the location of David Paniagua’s father’s winter residence from DoD files. Using this last bit of information, Sorceress completes its list of Sorceress Utopia-One targets for its next nuclear volley, a decision which ultimately determines its course and speed,

—and the fate of the USS Virginia and her crew.

A combat strategy is selected.

With a hiss of hydraulics, the computer launches one of its portside antitorpedo torpedoes, then changes course, heading northwest and away from the Virginia.

Aboard the USS Virginia

“Conn, sonar, ship’s own unit is homing. Ship’s own unit has acquired. Impact in twenty seconds. Contact is running—”

Parker and Commander Darr glance up at each other from across the Virginia’s navigation console.

“Conn, sonar, torpedo in the water.”

“WEPS, Captain. Prepare to fire antitorpedo tor—”

The explosion cuts Parker off. A moment later the shock wave hits, rolling the Virginia hard to starboard.

The sea growls in angry protest, its frozen surface fragmenting into mammoth chunks of brash ice.

“Sonar, conn—”

“Skipper, ship’s own unit has been destroyed. Contact is still heading north and away from us, bearing three-one-zero, increasing speed to thirty knots. Range—thirteen thousand yards.”

Stay with her, Parker. Don’t let her get away … “Helm, all ahead full, steady three-one-zero. WEPS, Captain, firing point procedures. Sierra-1, ADCAP torpedo, tube two.”

Aboard the Goliath

Sorceress registers the Virginia’s change in course and speed, a combat response it had anticipated. The biochemical computer floods minisub docking bay number five.

Seconds later, a remotely controlled steel Hammerhead is released into the sea.

The Goliath continues heading north by northwest, leaving its minisub behind. Invisible in the ebony sea, the mechanical shark hovers … and waits.

Secured to its belly, held firmly between its two clawlike claspers is an underwater mine.

Aboard the USS Virginia

The Virginia pushes through the black waters of the Antarctic at thirty-four knots, moving through the bitter sea like a 7,700-ton, 377-foot steel sperm whale,

—its crew too focused on the Goliath to notice the occasional orcalike clicks coming from the seafloor.

Goliath’s minisub allows the Virginia to pass overhead before accelerating after it. Hovering alongside, it pinpoints its target—a set of steel plates located just forward of the American attack sub’s retractable bow diving planes.

Chief Petty Officer Justin Bowman is stationed in the Virginia’s tactical missile room, a chamber that contains an arsenal of Tomahawk cruise missiles. He looks up, startled by the sudden sound of scraping.

Clunk.

The Chief Petty Officer’s heart thuds. Instinctively, he turns to flee—

Wa-boom!

—his existence instantly caught between a brilliant flash of light and the suffocating, thunderous embrace that impales him from behind, extinguishing his life, as the lethal detonation vents the Virginia’s forward compartments to the frigid Antarctic sea.

Captain Parker is tossed to the deck, his crippled ship twisting beneath him. Screams, explosions, and darkness blanket the chaos, and then an icy wall lifts him up and carries him away.

Aboard the Goliath

The Goliath slows, allowing its minisub to redock. Instead of continuing north, the devil ray descends to the seafloor, Sorceress shutting down the ship’s engines.

Scanning the ocean depths, the biochemical computer listens … and waits.

Antarctic Ocean 12 nautical miles due north of the Goliath

The 4-million-ton barge of ice, a tabular berg half the size of the island of Manhattan, is trapped, locked in place along the ocean’s frozen surface. Three years have passed since this glacierlike monster first separated from the Ross Ice Shelf to begin its journey north. Too large to clear the inlets surrounding Antarctica, it had taken several summers before the process of melting could shave enough mass from the berg’s imposing keel to again release it to open waters.

Currents had taken the frozen mountain halfway around the continent before releasing it to the open sea. From there, it had drifted another forty-eight miles before Antarctica’s wintry fingers again reached out to seal it in place.

A four-story-high plateau of ice marks the visible tip of this frozen monster. Flattopped and steep-sided, it is as barren as a moonscape, and just as devoid of life.

The harsh katabatic wind howls along the plateau’s northern rise and down its exposed cliff face to the seven-foot-thick pack ice. Below the frozen surface, held within the Southern Ocean’s frigid embrace lies the rest of this glacierlike mountain. At 590 feet thick, with a keel stretching 1,145 feet deep, the iceberg could easily provide every person on the planet with two glasses of fresh water per day … for the next two thousand years.

Within this ebony realm, the berg’s luminescent alabaster glow reveals an ominous presence hovering in silence along its vast northern face.

Positioned close to the prodigious ice island, its engines shut down, is the Los Angeles-class attack sub USS Scranton.

Four long hours have passed since the American attack sub went quiet. Now, tensions rise once more as a series of man-made acoustics violates the tranquil waters of the Antarctic.

Tom Cubit hovers over Michael Flynn’s right shoulder. The sonarman’s hands are trembling noticeably.

Flynn shakes his head in disbelief. “She’s gone, Skipper, Virginia’s gone.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Explosion was too big to be a torpedo.”

Cubit squeezes his eyes closed. “And the Goliath?”

“She went silent right after the explosion. I mark her last position approximately nine miles to the southeast.”

Cubit nods. She knows we’re close, but she’s not sure where. “Find her, Michael-Jack. If one of Covah’s crew so much as farts, I want to know about it.”

“Aye, sir.”