Chapter 79
Aboard the Oregon
“Eagle Strike descending,” Eric called out.
The Oregon’s radar had tracked the ship-killing hypersonic missile through its entire trajectory and now it was racing down toward them at over ten times the speed of sound.
“There’s no way to outrun it,” Eric said. “Brace for impact.”
“No need to,” Cabrillo said without looking at him.
“Sir?”
“Because it has a minimum range of twenty-five miles,” Murphy said with a grin, standing in the op center doorway. “And by charging toward the Fuzhou, you got inside that range.”
All eyes turned toward the monitors. The streaking missile roared overhead in a blaze of blinding light—and overshot the Oregon. Before anyone could exhale, the Eagle Strike exploded harmlessly in the distance in a massive wall of water.
★
Aboard the Baktun
Stokes bolted from his command chair, raging at his startled CIC crew as the first salvos from his guns fired at the Fuzhou, demanding to know who authorized the attack without his permission.
But his voice was lost in the din of roaring gunfire, blaring alarms, and the shouts of his men calling out the attacks as they unfolded.
Stokes stopped raging as he caught sight of the Fuzhou’s bridge exploding, knowing full well no one could survive that kind of blast. Had the Fuzhou been in battle stations, the captain and her team would have secured themselves in their armored CIC belowdecks.
Stokes’s shock and rage gave way to sudden elation as he watched his ship rip the Chinese battle cruiser to shreds.
But when the Fuzhou’s deck gun opened up and punched fatal wounds into the Baktun’s hull, he knew the game was over.
He turned toward his second-in-command and gave his final order to the stalwart Brazilian.
“Sound the alarm, Rodrigo. Abandon ship.”
The taciturn officer nodded. “Aye, Captain.”
The automated voice, light, and signal alarms lit up as Stokes raced out of the CIC and headed for the lab.
★
Aboard the Oregon
“Fuzhou listing hard,” Gomez called out from his drone station. “Baktun going slowly down by the bow.”
“Goose it harder, Max—emergency power,” Juan said. “We gotta get there before we lose that AGI.”
Cabrillo was running a brutal interior monologue, railing against his too-smart-by-half decision to use the Baktun to take out the Fuzhou to keep the Chinese from capturing Project Q.
Overholt said the Oregon couldn’t fire on the Chinese vessel, but didn’t say anything about the Baktun doing the dirty deed.
In a court martial, a judge and jury would call that a distinction without a difference and likely keelhaul him.
But as far as Cabrillo was concerned, he had held to both the letter of the law and the spirit of the mission.
What Juan hadn’t counted on was the Fuzhou striking back. Murph had cut loose with every weapons system on board the Baktun simultaneously, but some dying Chinese gunner put enough well-placed rounds downrange to seal the Baktun’s impending fate.
With any luck, the Oregon would arrive in time to insert a boarding party, snatch up any Project Q hard drives, organoid material, and personnel they could lay their hands on, and get off with enough technology to advance America’s own AGI program.
Cabrillo prayed that Dr. Bose was still alive.
She would be the key to unlocking everything and piecing it all back together.
But there was no telling if she had survived the Fuzhou’s fatal hits.
Cabrillo consoled himself with the knowledge that even if he didn’t get there in time, at least the Chinese wouldn’t get their hands on Project Q, either.
“Missile detected!” Murphy called out from the weapons station. Linda had gladly given up her seat to him when Juan waved him back over to it.
“Hypersonic speed—Mach 10.3!” Stone called out.
“Another Eagle Strike?” Cabrillo asked. “How did we miss it?”
“Negative,” Stone said as he rechecked his readings. “Wrong trajectory.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s that Nork Fire Star ICBM they launched earlier this morning.”
The Oregon’s top secret status and Overholt’s pull gave the spy ship automatic access to all of the nation’s highly sensitive intelligence including the alert posted that morning by a U.S.
Space Force satellite. It had detected and identified the Hwasong-17 Fire Star’s unique infrared engine signature moments after it had launched.
“Where’s the Fire Star designated impact area?” Cabrillo asked.
“It was supposed to be eighteen hundred miles from here,” Eric said.
“And now?”
“It’s heading in our direction.”
Cabrillo knew the Fire Star was a highly maneuverable, precision-guided missile capable of hitting a target even as small as the five-hundred-ninety-foot Oregon.
“Talk to me, Wepps.”
Murphy’s fingers sped across his keyboard.
“By my calculations, it looks like it’s targeting…the Baktun.”
Cabrillo could hardly hide his shock.
“Why would the Norks want to sink the Baktun?”
“Maybe it’s not the Norks,” Eric said.
“You mean someone’s hijacked it?”
“Could be.”
“Who? Why?” Linda asked.
“Someone who doesn’t want anyone else to have Project Q,” Cabrillo said as he turned in his chair.
“Comms—hail the Baktun.”
★
Aboard the Baktun
The last of the Project Q techs, a young Thai national, thundered up the steel staircase in a mad dash for the lifeboats. Her backpack brushed roughly against Stokes without apology as he scrambled down into the bowels of the dying ship and the lab within.
The flashing red lights cast a hellish strobe effect across the darkened expanse, the nightmare phenomenon amplified by the shrieking alarms and automated voice commands still ringing overhead.
Stokes knew exactly where Bose would be. He dashed over to her side standing at the base of the great containment tank holding her precious creation.
“We’ve got to go. Now,” Stokes said, tugging on her arm.
She shook him off, tears streaming from her eyes. “I can’t leave.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. It’s not a child, it’s a machine…a robot.”
Bose wheeled around and slapped him hard across the face.
“How dare you.”
Stokes saw the wounded fury in her eyes.
He began to mount an argument about how she could start over again, build a new Neural Reef somewhere else, and earn her fame in due time.
But before he could draw another breath he knew that would be as calloused as a soul-numbed preacher telling a grieving graveside mother she should just get pregnant again.
In truth, he understood her pain. He even felt it.
The Baktun was his pride and joy, an extension of his own storm-tossed soul.
Stokes smiled to himself. His ship had performed magnificently today, killing a mighty Chinese warship and most of its crew in mere seconds.
It was the most satisfying moment of his life and he knew he would never get such an opportunity again.
“My apologies,” he told her as he gathered her up in his arms. She sobbed deeply into his chest.
The radio on his hip squawked. Cabrillo’s voice screeched over its tiny speaker, barely audible above the alarms.
“Baktun! Baktun! This is Oregon. Do you read me?”
Stokes kept one arm wrapped around Bose as he keyed his radio.
“This is Captain Stokes. What do you want?”
“Incoming missile headed your way. Ten minutes to impact. What’s your status?”
“I suspect you know, old boy. You hijacked my weapons and engines. Well played, I must say. We’re dead in the water, literally and figuratively.”
“I’ve released your engines. Clear away from the area immediately. We’ll cover you with air defense as best we can and rendezvous to take on any of your crew. My medical team is on standby.”
“A beau geste, Captain. But too late, I’m afraid.”
“Is Dr. Bose still with you?”
“She is, indeed.”
Stokes hurled the radio against the nearest bulkhead, smashing it to bits, then gathered Bose back into his bosom.
“I’ll not abandon you, my precious orchid, nor my beloved ship.”
★
Aboard Peng’s helicopter
Peng had already briefed the Marines before the flight took off. He told them to expect resistance and to kill anybody who opposed them. But their primary mission was finding Fierro, Bose, and any equipment related to Project Q.
“Hardware. Thumb drives. Documentation. Anything.”
Peng had no idea how long the Baktun had before it sank beneath the waves.
The Navy helicopter pilot estimated twenty minutes at most. The pilot demanded one of the privates help him locate the aviation fuel and resupply the helicopter if at all possible.
Peng reluctantly agreed, since acquiring Project Q personnel or materials would be irrelevant if they all crashed back into the sea.
As the helicopter approached the helipad, Peng issued orders to the Marine major in charge. “We leave in fifteen minutes, no exceptions.”
“My men won’t fail you, sir.”
The twelve Chinese Marines leaped out of the helicopter before the skids hit the angled deck located on the elevated bow, scattering in pairs in all directions. One Marine stayed with the pilot, and a burly sergeant stood by Peng’s side.
Peng’s instincts told him the machine would be belowdecks. He pulled his pistol, nodded to the sergeant, and dashed for the ladder.
★
Aboard a lifeboat
The Baktun was a registered, oceangoing vessel subject to periodic safety inspections. Accordingly, it maintained a full array of well-kept emergency escape equipment, including a contingent of enclosed fiberglass lifeboats.
One of those lifeboats puttered away on its electric motor, piloted by one of the deckhands, a grizzly Swede who willed the bobbing craft as far away from the two sinking hulks as possible, praying they could escape the downward pull that could easily suck them to their doom.
Slowing his progress were the five survivors clinging to two ropes trailing the overcrowded lifeboat.
They held on for dear life as the lifeboat inched its way through the chop.
Packed with over a dozen terrified techs and piloted by the Swede, the big orange lozenge had managed to put a mile between itself and the Baktun in the ten minutes since the abandon ship alarms had sounded.
The Swede’s pale gray eyes were fixed on the Baktun’s high, proud bow as it knelt down toward the unforgiving sea.
The sudden flash startled the old mariner like a gunshot in the dark.
The explosion emitted a supersonic shock wave that rippled across the water, nearly capsizing the lifeboat.
The confusion and horror of the moment amplified the terrified screams echoing inside the claustrophobic bubble.
White-hot shrapnel whistled through the air, punching a dozen jagged holes through the fiberglass-reinforced hull.
Arterial blood spattered a half dozen faces as another agonizing scream rang out above all the others.
The Swede pulled out the emergency medical kit and tossed it to the man seated nearest the screaming woman, clearly bleeding out.
“Do what you can,” was all he said. He was neither a doctor nor a priest.
He glanced out the tiny portal of the lifeboat to check on the people holding on to the trailing ropes. Two floated face down and spread-eagled in the water far behind the boat, no doubt killed by the blast.
Two others still held on, their determined faces white-knuckling the rope saving their lives.
The fifth floated upright in the water, her backpack bunched up around her shoulders.
Her stunned eyes beneath her bleeding scalp were fixed on the rope now hopelessly beyond her reach and pulling away.
The young Thai woman had waited too long to exit the lab.
In her mad dash up the staircase she’d even bumped into the captain before reaching the top deck and hurling herself into the sea.
The Swede’s heart went out to the young woman, but his boat was already overcrowded and meagerly provisioned for however many days and nights might lay ahead. By his reckoning she wasn’t long for this world anyway, so he motored on. He turned away from the pitying sight.
The old Swede hadn’t prayed in years.
Now seemed to be a good time to start.