Moon Mask (78 page)

Silence hung in the plane for a moment as all five men caught their breath and thanked their gods. Above them, beyond the behemoth mass of the
Eldridge’s
hull, the aerial battle still raged, but, for now, their attentions were focussed on something closer at hand.

It was Raine who broke the silence with an adrenaline-fuelled
whoop
of relief.

“Let’s do that again!”

58:

Eldridge

USS Eldridge,

Pacific Ocean

Having
cast the Black Cat adrift upon the storm-tossed ocean, Benjamin King followed Raine and Langley up the access ladder bolted to the side of the
Eldridge.
The metal rungs were slippery and his cold, wet hands numb as he scrambled up behind them, Bill and Godfrey bringing up the rear.

They paused for a second as Langley reached the top of the ladder and swung onto the main deck. King glanced behind him at the ocean. Despite being lit by the flashes of fire from the battle raging overhead and the lightning streaking through the clouds, the Black Cat had almost completely vanished into the darkness of night. Raine had explained that they couldn’t tether it to the
Eldridge
as the waves would crash her into the much larger vessel. They would just have to swim for her once the mission was completed.

But Benjamin King had no intention of getting off this ship.

Not in any conventional way at least.

In fact, if things worked out as he planned, he would make it so that he never set foot upon her in the first place.

“Benny, come on!” Raine hissed down to him. He too was now on the main deck, leaning back over to break into his reverie.

“Move it, King,” Bill spat angrily from beneath.

King pushed himself into motion, scrambled the rest of the way up the ladder and allowed Raine and Langley to help him over the safety barrier and onto the deck.

“You okay?” Raine asked worriedly. Langley, no longer the grandfatherly old U.N. Ambassador but a highly trained Special Forces soldier, knelt before them, scanning the eerily featureless deck of the ship. The only thing that broke the barren metal landscape was the command superstructure in the middle. There, King knew, was where the running of the ship was handled. The bridge, he assumed, was at the top, with other critical sections on the decks beneath, right down to the one upon which he now stood. Below him though, he knew, except for a single control room at the rear, the hull was little more than a hollow tube. A particle accelerator built into the heart of a U.S. Navy warship!

“I’m fine,” he answered Raine’s question.

Bill scrambled stealthily onto the deck. “I told you we should have left him on the plane,” he hissed angrily at Langley, indicating King. “He’s gonna get us all killed.”

Langley glanced at him. “As I recall, he managed to survive, and escape from, you,” he replied. “He’ll be fine.”

As Godfrey joined them on the deck, they spread out, creeping along the barrier towards the superstructure.

“Stay close to me,” Raine whispered to King.

But Benjamin King had no intention of doing so.

USS George Washington,

Pacific Ocean

Admiral
Donald S. Harriman sat on the bridge of the enormous aircraft carrier, listening to the reports coming in from the aerial battle and forcing himself not to display any of the astonishment he felt.

In almost thirty years of service, Harriman had never witnessed such astonishing events. Indeed, he felt certain that the aerial battle raging above was to be the first of a war between China and the United States. A war into which the rest of the world would inevitably be drawn.

And yet the situation was all very peculiar.

As a commander of a Carrier Strike Group, Harriman had of course been kept apprised of the deteriorating relations with China over the last days. But instead of being ordered to patrol the coast off China, or to return to the West Coast of the States as he might have expected, he had been ordered to play bodyguard to an experimental ship which he knew nothing about. A ship for which, without any of the usual political deliberation that he would expect, he had been ordered to fire upon and destroy any and all intruders into their designated area to protect. He couldn’t believe that such orders could be sanctioned, yet the President had personally spoken to him via a live satellite feed.

None of it made any sense.

A sudden flurry of activity dragged Harriman out of his thoughts.

“Admiral, sir,” a voice snapped from one of the bridge consoles. “I have a new radar contact. Two planes, coming in fast from the north. They’re incredibly low over the water, sir, only about two meters above-” The radar operator cut himself off. “I’ve lost them sir!”

“What do you mean ‘you lost them’?” Harriman demanded, rising to his feet and coming up behind the young sailor.

“They just hit the water, sir . . .” The young man turned and looked at him, face pale. “They’re gone.”

Beneath the Pacific Ocean

The
two MR-18 Ushakovs ploughed beneath the surge of the Pacific.

The impact was shockingly hard and Nadia Yashina struggled not to cry out as her X-shaped restraints dug into her breast. In the seat in front of her, her pilot worked the controls which switched the dart-shaped vessel’s jet engines from their conventional configuration to water-jets. The intense heat instantly vaporised the water, working to both cool the engines while using the jettisoned steam to propel it through the water.

Named for Boris Ushakov who had headed the engineering project of a ‘flying-submarine’ during World War Two, the MR-18 was the final realisation of that dream, seventy years in the making. It was also one of the few modern day triumphs for Russia to have finalised a working craft while the U.S. still struggled to get their own design off the drawing board.

This was their first operational test.

Streams of air bubbles flew up over the sharp nose of the submerged aircraft and rather than the thunderous roar of jet engines that had deafened her moments ago, she was now submerged in the womb-like silence beneath the stormy seas.

She looked ahead, through the thick glass of the cockpit and the dark swirling waters of the Pacific towards her destination. Her redemption. Her salvation.

She had told Nathan Raine no lie when she had told him about the night the soldiers had come to her home, killed her family, raped and tortured her. The scars adorning her body were genuine. The attack had been all too real. All too frightening.

She had, however, omitted her shame.

Her father was a traitor.

She was the daughter of a traitor.

The punishment was justified. The scars served as a reminder of the shame her father had brought upon her family.

During her tenure at Moscow University, her genius level IQ came to the attention of those in power. She had been recruited into a top-secret program, designed to breed a new generation of what were described to her as ‘warrior-scientists’. The face of war had changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Brute force and nuclear deterrents weren’t going to keep the Motherland safe in the ‘Digital-Age’.

Alongside earning her degree, Nadia also underwent intensive training by Spetsnaz soldiers. She had been deployed on a handful of missions under the ‘guise’ of a gap-year following her studies, but her superiors’ main interest lay in the work her father was doing on tachyons. Tachyon-energy, she had told them, could be used for so much more than creating a near inexhaustible energy supply for Russia. It could be used for so much more than even developing a bomb of awesome destructive power.

Tachyons were the key to unlocking
time
itself.

But her father would not share this knowledge with Russia. Instead, when they tried to take it by force, the ignorant pig had destroyed all his research.

That night, the soldiers had come. Days later, Nadia had fled the wrath of Russia and sought political asylum in the arms of her enemy, Great Britain. There, she had rebuilt her life, knowing that she could never again step foot on Russian soil. An exile until the day she died. All because of her father’s misguided sense of pride and honour.

But that had all changed in her lab on the summit of Sarisariñama when she had detected tachyons being emitted from the Moon Mask. It was her key to redemption.

She had contacted her former Spetsnaz handler and negotiated a deal, signed by the President and the Prime Minister themselves. If she could get them the power of the tachyon, they would grant her a full pardon. She could return home, and return to active duty, serving her homeland.

The SOG idiot, West, had been easy to manipulate. While still in New York, preparing for the mission, he had been approached and seduced by a Russian agent. Men were so easy to play. A ‘chance’ meeting at a bar, a torrid, heated encounter in a cheap motel then the promise of millions of dollars and he was on board. He knew nothing of Nadia’s involvement of course but he served to be the exact decoy she had needed. When her encrypted communiqués to Moscow had been picked up, she had shifted the blame to him, allowing her to work freely until all the pieces of the mask were discovered.

But she had discovered something more. Something so much more.

The shark attack had been unexpected and terrifying, but she was a master of manipulating events in her favour. The attack had given her the opportunity she had needed to return to the boat without suspicion, contact the Spetsnaz team that had never been far away, and escape with her life. Sid’s death had been unfortunate and she hated herself for it. Likewise, slipping her bloody glove into Raine’s equipment had been regrettable but again necessary.

The Spetsnaz team had rendezvoused with the Ushakovs in the Kuril Islands where the other equipment Nadia had requested had also been waiting. The Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, had received information from within the States detailing the exact position of the
Eldridge.
Of course, the SVR and their predecessor, the KGB, had known all about America’s own tachyon experiments and Project Phoenix but no one, not even Nadia herself, had been able to create more than a single tachyon particle until the Moon Mask had been discovered.

It was the endgame at last. The cold war which had never truly ended between east and west was finally coming to a head. And Russia would emerge the victor.

Thanks to Nadia Yashina.

The pilot worked the Ushakov’s controls and brought the ‘flying submarine’ about. Narrow and cramped, the plane was in no way luxurious but with no time to commit the forces that China had to attacking the U.S. fleet, the two experimental planes had been the best option. Designed to fly low at near super-sonic speeds, they had covered the distance from the Kuril Islands in no time and evaded detection until late. As the American and Chinese planes fought their dogfights above, the two pilots had loaded the command into the on-board computers. Both planes had slowed almost to stalling point. Their wing flaps had redirected their noses towards the waves before the wings themselves had retracted back and locked into position on the fuselage. Then, like kingfishers diving in for the kill, they had torn into the storm-tossed sea.

Now, hydraulics in the locked-back wings caused them to move to the pilots’ commands and they were steered beneath the aerial battle, streaming through the gloom towards the GPS coordinates of the
Eldridge.

When she saw the barnacled hull of the ship beneath the water, her heart skipped a beat.

She was close.

So close.

As her pilot steered the submerged vessel into position, she clutched the hard, lead-lined rucksack containing the fake Moon Mask even tighter.

Her time had come.

USS Eldridge,

Pacific Ocean

The
first shot slammed into the bulkhead behind Nathan Raine’s head.

His reactions were fast and he dropped to the deck, swinging his P-90 up. He pulled the trigger and his bullet slammed into the U.S. Marine’s shoulder, spinning him around. It wasn’t fatal, but it would keep him-

A second bullet exploded out the back of the young man’s skull, splattering brains and gore over the bulkhead behind him.

Raine spun to Langley. “What the hell are doing?!” he demanded. “He’s American!”

“He’s the enemy,” Langley replied, eyes hard.

Three more marines hurried forward and opened fire. Automatic weapons fire strafed the walls, spitting up sparks. The invading team scattered, hurrying for cover.

They were inside the superstructure, having made it across the deck undetected. The dull grey corridor was pocked by several doors but the team had ignored them, heading straight for the central stairs which zig-zagged their way up to the bridge. There, they would find their objective. An auto-destruct sequence programmed into a designated computer. A fail safe. Should the
Eldridge’s
commander decide that the experiment below had gone awry, his orders were to activate the destruct sequence. Explosives set at structural points around the ship would detonate. Water would rush into the carcass and drag the vessel beneath the waves. Eventually, she would sink into the deepest place on earth, the Mariana Trench, from where any possible tachyon detonation would be cushioned by billions of gallons of seawater and crushing pressure.

Langley’s plan was simple. Get to the bridge. Active the self-destruct and get the hell off the ship before it, and the Moon Mask, were lost forever.

The fire intensified as yet more marines converged on their position. The ship was lightly crewed for fear of a repeat of the Philadelphia Experiment’s grotesque outcome but the files Langley and Rasta-Man had downloaded indicated that there was still a team of twenty marines on board, undoubtedly alongside Gibbs and the SOG team. Raine had already made certain that Langley and his team knew that Rudy O’Rourke had saved him and King and was not to be harmed. Yet, killing any US Marine felt inherently wrong to him. They were soldiers, simply following orders.