Protocol 7

PUERTO WILLIAMS, CHILE

8:32 AM

The evening fog that filled Puerto Williams to the brim made it impossible to see more than ten feet in any direction. Which is not a bad thing, Simon told himself. There’s not a chance of being seen by anyone…or anything. They would each be able to approach the harbor without being noticed, and the frigid air was an eerie reminder that they were getting very close to the icy continent of Antarctica.

Close, Simon said to himself as he moved from one street to the next, following the route he had memorized hours before. So close. He knew the others were feeling more and more apprehensive—he couldn’t blame them—but Simon could feel no fear. His father was closer than ever, and the hope in him was almost overwhelming.

He knew that the others had their own reasons for being here: Hayden wanted his ship back; Andrew wanted to prove his tech; Sam was here to try and protect them all. But Simon had not forgotten the one and only reason he had set all of this into motion: to find his father. To save him. To bring him home safe.

Simon was the first to arrive at Doc A-67. The hollow sound of his boots on the wooden slats was far too loud to suit him; he felt like a giant tromping on a drum skin. His father’s journal was a constant weight against his heart. As he walked closer to the water’s edge, he noticed an old freighter looming out of the sea—a black-painted cargo vessel with two huge, dormant smokestacks, dark and silent since the vessel’s energy conversion. Until all this had begun, Simon had been unaware of how completely sea travel had changed in the last fifty years, with new propulsion systems and new fuel economies. Still, a seaworthy hull was a seaworthy hull, and every ship that could stay afloat was still working, one way or another, including this barnacle-encrusted behemoth buried in the fog. He strained to find its name and registry number painted on the bow, and almost gasped when he found it.

The S.S. Munro.

It was the ship they had been looking for—the one whose navigation system they had already hijacked, back when they were in Corsica.

Simon already knew how it was going to work out. It would not be pleasant for Donovan or his crew, but no one would die; if they were lucky, no one would even be hurt. That remained to be seen.

As he approached the large vessel he noticed a wide-bodied, broad-shouldered man in a seaman’s cap standing at the bottom of the gangway, smoking a twisted cheroot and staring into the fog. Simon recognized the iron-gray hair and the hands as gnarled and scarred as an old oak. Doug Donovan looked exactly like what Hayden had described: a once-retired ship’s captain who had spent most of his career at sea in the last century, and who had returned to the sea because it was where he belonged. A man who had managed to wrangle an incredibly important contract with the military and the UK because he was one of the best damn sailors still at sea, under any flag, and everyone knew it.

He turned and looked at Simon, his gray eyes glittering with amusement and curiosity.

“Well, hello mate,” he said, chewing on his cigar. He looked to one side and gave the choppy sea of Puerto Williams an assessing glare. “Almost didn’t make it, the southern seas are pretty rough. Swell was pounding the whole way through.”

Donovan pointed over Simon’s shoulder with his chin. “Look behind you.”

Simon turned to see almost his entire team walking down the dock toward them.

“Quite a group you got there,” Donovan allowed. “Though one did arrive a bit earlier—hours ago, in point of fact.” He chewed the cigar a bit more and squinted, deep in thought. “Quite a looker.”

“I hope you’re not referring to my buddy Max?”

Donovan pretended to scowl at him. “Don’t be cheeky, you know who I’m talkin’ about.” The team reached his side with Max slightly in the lead. “Permission to come aboard, Captain?” he said to Donovan, as if they were old friends. “Permission granted,” the captain said gruffly. “All’a you.”

They murmured greetings to Simon as they filed by, hefting their bags and crates of equipment as they went. Simon noticed how much more confident they all were, approaching and boarding the vessel as if they had done this before.

“Come on,” Donovan said, “Let’s get out of here, I have cargo that needs to be delivered.”

As Simon boarded the Munro and put his feet on the main deck for the first time, his eye tried to measure the breadth and depth of the boat. It didn’t seem nearly large enough to accommodate Spector VI.

Donovan knew what he was thinking. “It barely did the trick,” Donovan said, waving a gnarled hand at the huge doors set into the deck itself. “The whatever-it-is takes up the entire hull. Used the biggest damn crane I’ve ever seen, at a loading station no one’s ever seen before, just to get this bloody thing on board. Not nearly as heavy as I expected, but big, Simon. All of six feet clearance front and back, and a hair more than that left and right. Extremely tight fit.” He stopped at the base of a massive winch that was bolted directly to the superstructure of the boat with connectors as thick as his wrist. “My engineers tell me this here winching system will get that whatchamecallit out of here once it’s free from its wrapping—wherever or whenever that might be.” He scowled and almost bit his cheroot in half, then leaned forward and spoke in a mock-whisper, his rough voice dripping with sarcasm. “You can see, I assume, how much I enjoy being left in the dark.”

The Spector had been camouflaged in a sealed wrap when it was first placed into the vessel—Simon knew that much. No one had seen it “undressed” yet; not even Donovan had an idea of what it really looked like, nor was anyone supposed to. His orders had been simple: get it aboard, sail at best possible speed to a particular location, and wait. Nothing more, and don’t ask questions. Donovan hadn’t even been particularly surprised when the destination coordinates had changed completely and unexpectedly in mid-mission. That kind of evasive maneuver was fairly common during black ops; he’d been through it before. As far as Donovan was concerned, Simon and his team were military personnel—that’s what he’d been told. According to the coordinates and instructions he had received, the team was supposed to rendezvous here at Port Williams. And all had gone as instructed.

“I feel as if we’re the slaves who dragged that horse up to the gates of Troy,” Donovan said. “Some big damn piece of work, here for some big damn important reason.” He cocked an eye at Simon.

“One of these days,” he said, “Someone’s going to have to tell me what that thing is.”

“Oh, I think it’s better not to know too much sometimes,” Simon assured him. “But let’s just get to where we need to go and we’ll see.”

He looked at his watch as he spoke, and Donovan nodded in agreement. “I know. We have a three-hour window starting in about eight minutes. I need to get this thing moving.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Simon said.

“Don’t mention it. Your guys in the military pay me a good sum for this bloody job.”

They looked at each other for a moment, and then Simon turned away and asked for directions to the hull.

I wonder if you’d say that, he thought wordlessly as he moved below decks, if you knew what we were actually planning to do.





THE SOUTHERN SEA

S.S. Munro, 10:46 AM

As Simon entered the main cabin, he noticed the team gathered around the table waiting for him. He could sense the hesitation and fear but was glad to see that everyone was there on time. Max was the last to walk in. He looked at his watch and smiled at Simon.

“I think this is the first time you’ve beat me.” He dropped his bags at the door and said, “Okay, we need some coffee.”

Simon noticed Nastasia in the corner, chatting away with Samantha and Hayden. Ryan greeted him with two mugs of coffee—one for Simon and the other for Max.

“Here you go. Just poured.”

Hayden looked back at Simon and said, “Nastasia tells us there’s a storm approaching. We need to go downstairs and power up the Spector.”

Donovan paused at the door long enough to scrape the room with his eyes. “Lines are free,” he said. “We’ll be on our way in a moment.” His gaze held Simon’s for a moment. “Hope she’s intact,” he said referring to the cargo, and then he was gone.

Max turned to Simon with a look of stunned surprise. “What?”

“He knows, Max. I think he knows something.”

“Andrew could have guided the ship remotely from here on in. There was no reason—”

“He could, but why? We have one of the best captains working for us, and he’s willing to help. That’s far better than a remote handheld console, calibrated by Andrew.”

The vessel’s engines rumbled like an awakening beast as the Munro pulled gently away from the dock, and Donovan guided her massive bulk through a maze of other vessels almost as if the fog wasn’t there at all.

Closer, Simon told himself. Closer.

He stood silently for a long time deep in thought, until Max put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Come on, we have to go over the gear and exercise one more time.”

They had started doing drills with the extreme weather gear that Nastasia had provided Simon in Santiago, but practice was important for them all—important for survival. He turned to call to the rest of them when Donovan suddenly appeared at the door again.

“Look smart,” he said. “The Chilean Port Authority is coming alongside.”

Simon turned quickly and peered out one of the cabin’s portholes. A sleek Coast Guard vessel with blinding lights was heading toward them at high speed, even as Donovan used the ship speakers to order his crew to the fishing equipment. He barked an order to the bridge as well, and the Munro immediately slowed in the water.

“You all stay here,” Max said to the rest of the team. They were standing together in the center of the room, looking wide-eyed and nervous. “Simon? Captain? Let’s see what this is about.”

As they moved down the corridor, Donovan noticed the pistol hidden behind Max’s back, held in an open holster and inches from his hand. “Hmph,” he said, catching the man’s attention. “Just so’s you know, there are a few more of those hereabouts. I’ll show you where I stash them.”

Max gave him a cold smirk.

The Coast Guard vessel closed the gap between them and pulled alongside. Donovan appeared topside just as the Guard’s spotlight cut through the lifting fog and illuminated a sharp-edged circle on the deck. At the same instant, the thin ribbons of a bright blue scanning laser blossomed from the Guard’s cutter and scanned the Munro’s hull, looking for data on the cargo as well as the identification tag embedded into the ship’s superstructure, along with its registration and shipping license—a mandatory series of serial numbers displayed for satellite and ocean-going recognition.

Simon stood out of sight, at the hatch that led below deck, and held his breath. He knew that the original ‘owners’ of the Munro and the Spector alike had prepared for this eventuality. There were scramblers, not unlike Andrew’s own, already mounted in the hold, set to broadcast false data about the cargo: all they would find were nets, trawling lines, and empty bins—the detritus of a fishing vessel that had just left port.

“Identify yourself,” said an almost mechanical voice from the cutter. It gave the same instruction in English, French, Portuguese, German, Chinese, until Donovan pushed the loudspeaker button on the ships console and said, “Fishing Vessel Kappa Alpha Theta Three One Niner Niner Four Alpha Sigma, designation Munro. Captain Dominic Donovan here.” As soon as he spoke English, the mechanical voice responded in kind. Simon had done his reading; he knew the code was a specific number given to certain ships, allowing them a short window of time to be in the open sea. The scarcity of sea bass and the decline of other species in the ocean had caused very strict regulations to be enforced, with precise limits on fishing times per vessel. And meanwhile, the Guard’s radar was being shown exactly what they expected to see: an empty hold with scattered fishing nets and gear.

“We have an eight-hour pass for commercial fishing,” Donovan said through the megaphone, trying to sound bored and slightly annoyed, just as a commercial fisherman stopped for inspection would sound.

“Noted,” the Guard voice said so quickly that Simon wondered if it was, in fact, an AI. Was the entire cutter being remotely guided? “Munro, your radar and navigational systems are shut down. Are you in need of assistance?”

“Damn it,” Simon muttered under his breath. The systems were down to avoid showing any electronic signature at all, even less than Andrew’s scrambler would show. They hadn’t considered that the absence of the signature during visual contact would make them more noticeable.

But Donovan was a quick thinker. “You notice the lousy catch hereabouts?” he said, letting some anger into his voice. “Soon as I have a decent haul, I’ll have the money to repair and upgrade all that fancy tech, but until then—this is what I got to work with.”

“Regulations strongly suggest electronic augmentation even on retrofitted—”

“I know what ‘regulations strongly suggest,’ thank you. I also know it’s not required, and I promise you I can navigate with a handheld and stick to the eight-hour window without assistance. We will be perfectly safe.” The captain took his finger off the loudspeaker button and Simon held his breath. The Guard could order them back to port for any damn thing they wanted. If the AI had any reservations…

“Window is reduced to six hours due to incoming inclement weather conditions,” the accent-less voice said.

“Fine,” Captain Donovan said, obviously anxious to end the conversation. “Six-hour window acknowledged. Clear to sail?”

Without another word the lights from the Port Authority cutter snapped off, and the boat roared to life and veered away into the disappearing fog at breakneck speed.

The captain watched it go for a moment, and then released a huge sigh of relief to match Simon’s own. Then he spun on his heel and bellowed, “Current heading, full speed ahead! Full throttle!”

The Munro boomed and surged into the open ocean, spray pouring over the bow as it crashed through the rising swell.

Simon backed down the stairs and Donovan joined him. “All right then,” he said, “we’re heading south toward Antarctica now. We’re already running silent, and we’ll be in international waters in four minutes or less. A set of slightly more precise coordinates would be appreciated.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Simon told him. “In the meantime…full speed ahead.”

Donovan snorted. “As if I had a choice.”

* * *

Simon’s team assembled in the hull of the ship—a surprisingly huge space from top to bottom and side to side, filled almost entirely by the bulbous, dead-black mass of the Spector VI, wrapped in a radar-invisible, non-metallic, sound-absorbing neo-fabric that defied scans of any kind. The inside of the ship looked nothing like its aged exterior. The hull itself was scrupulously cleaned and recently repainted; Donovan ran a tight ship, and there wasn’t an oil stain or a misplaced bolt anywhere in sight.

The sheer physical size of the space needed to transport the Spector impressed Simon all over again. The eight-inch-thick cloaking material made it even bigger, but still, the vessel was much larger than the loading hatch above it. At the moment, it crouched on the deck like a dangerous thundercloud being held captive.

The team was close behind him and completely cowed, looking at Spector VI with a mixture of awe and terror. The gigantic vessel looked nothing like what they had seen in the holographic image. In real life it was menacing—harsh, sleek, and mechanical. Donovan shouted from above deck. “Guys, looks like the storm will hit sooner than expected. We have to speed things up.” The roar of the Munro’s engine surged even higher—though Simon hadn’t thought that was possible—and the feeling of speed pulled at them more strongly than ever. The Spector VI, still in its cloak, swayed slightly in response.

“Time to unwrap our present,” Simon told them. “We’ll need everyone’s help.”

This was another process they had discussed and trained for. Each of them carefully moved into position to unlock the connectors that attached the sections of the fabric.

As Max started to open his section of the cover, he got his first good look at the reflective “smart skin” that covered the craft, and his eyes opened up in absolute amazement. Fascinating, he told himself. It was both translucent and metallic at the same time, and absolutely without temperature—not cold, not warm, not even cool. It exactly matched the temperature of the air in general, and of Max’s own fingertips, so it felt rather unusual. Even his time in Special Forces had not exposed him to anything like this.

Hayden grinned as he looked over at Simon, whose contribution to the surface materials used on the Spector was pivotal. Simon shrugged easily and gave him the “go ahead” gesture.

“What you are looking at is an intelligent surface,” Hayden said, “thanks to research that was originally done by Simon. Once we turn this baby on, you will not be able to see it. The surface is charged with super molecules that not only conceal and mimic the environment but they are also intelligent.”

“Intelligent?” asked Samantha.

“Yes,” Simon answered, “but to activate the surface molecules to their maximum potential, the mainframe of the Spector needs to be fully functional, and that means going inside and powering up.” He turned to Hayden and almost bowed to him. “Hayden?” he said. “Would you do the honors?”

Hayden reached into his pocket and took out a device the size of a small cellular phone. He moved his hand across it to reveal the remote console. He spoke into it: “Hayden Sebastian Paulson,” then wrapped the device’s wristband around his right forearm, close to the wrist.

“Hayden Sebastian Paulson acknowledged. Welcome.”

“Welcome to you, Spector VI. Open up, please.” He motioned everyone to step aside, and what felt like a long minute later, the vessel shifted its skin like a recoiling insect. Layers of the exterior shifted, revealing what seemed to be a hybrid of a submarine and a tank. The metallic blue material resembled molded steel but seemed different than that somehow—more like fabric in some places and ceramic in others. The name was etched on the side in letters that glowed slightly and seemed to stand away from the surface itself: Spector VI.

The vessel automatically opened its hatch doors and turned on its interior lights. Hayden climbed up the molded steps to the hatch and entered, barely pausing long enough to motion for everyone to follow. Max, with a look of absolute focus, motioned for everyone to get in. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve gone through this before. Bring only your life support gear and essentials.”

The Munro started to sway more vigorously than before. Many of the team lurched and grabbed for handholds for support, trying to balance themselves, but the message was clear.

“We need to get this thing out of here sooner rather than later,” Hayden said. “Or something very unpleasant is going to happen.”





ANTARCTICA

Ross Ice Shelf

Blackburn’s chopper descended in the pitch-black darkness of the early morning sky, completely undetected by radar as it approached the giant iceberg off the coast of Antarctica. The special landing pad floating on the ocean less than two hundred feet from the ice made it especially dangerous for the pilot to navigate the descent. Blackburn knew that this would be his last chance. It would take him eight hours to reach the asset, and if this time he was unsuccessful, he would not have another opportunity. As the chopper descended, he and his team geared up into the special suits that would shield them from radar and satellite detection. They were used to this procedure, and it was necessary for the secrecy of the mission. The chopper contacted the launch pad, magnetically connecting to the moving structure, and they felt the violent surge of the ocean as they exited. Twenty-five seconds later, the four men entered into the launch pad through a special hatch underneath the aircraft. As the door closed behind them, compressing the air to create a watertight seal, the chopper detached, disappearing silently like a ghost. Then, with a deafening hiss, the launch pad submerged into the icy waters in less than a minute.





THE SOUTHERN SEA

Spector VI Boarding

The Spector had been fully provisioned for a six-week test cruise before it had been concealed in the Munro’s hold. The first thing Samantha and Ryan did was check to make sure the rations—stored in the same space that had been designed to be taken up by military gear—was filled and secure, and that the oxygen tanks were topped off and ready. They were. Then they moved to their second set of objectives even as the rest of the team made their way inside.

Andrew helped Nastasia climb aboard. She was carrying a small satchel. As she entered the first alcove, the satchel she was clutching onto fell from her hands. It hit the deck with a soft exploding sound, and the contents skittered across the floor.

Embarrassed and slightly annoyed, she moved quickly to gather the scattered belongings. Andrew bent to pick up a small white inhaler that had shot halfway across the alcove.

“Give me that!” she said frantically.

He looked up surprised and handed it over immediately. It was a standard, flat white inhaler used by people with asthma or other lung disorders. In fact, a lot of drugs were delivered as aerosols these days; it was simple, cheap, and sanitary.

“Sorry,” he said briefly. “Just trying to help.”

Nastasia colored for an instant, then composed herself. She took the inhaler from him as if she was receiving an offering. “I apologize,” she said, her Russian accent thicker than normal. “I am slightly embarrassed by my…condition.”

“No need to be,” he said. “I—”

“Come on, people,” Simon said sharply. “Let’s get moving!”

All the team members—now the crew—had assigned tasks, and they got to them now with a sense of renewed urgency. There was little conversation and no time for small talk. The pressure was mounting.

It took less time than they had anticipated to convert the experiment monitoring consoles that lined the bridge into actual work stations for team members who were taking over for the sidelined AIs. In less than an hour, Andrew and Ryan had rigged an eighty-inch holo-screen just in front and above the captain’s chair to deliver a direct feed of the visual data that the wireless cameras were receiving from outside the ship—a virtual picture window of the forward view, eighty degrees wide, just as Max had insisted on. He could even pan left and right an additional fifteen degrees each way, for a full one-hundred-twenty degree arc.

“That’s more like it,” he muttered as he ran his forward-facing holo-screen through its paces.

Barely more than an hour after boarding, the new crew of Spector was released to explore their tiny quarters and prepare for entry into the frigid Southern Sea. Simon, Max, Hayden, and Andrew found themselves alone on the bridge.

“Do you think we should tell the crew before we do it?” Andrew asked Simon.

Simon had thought it through. “No. There’s nothing they can do but worry.”

It was time to activate the power source—the incredibly powerful, dangerous energy system that had caused the military and the British government to make the decision to send the Spector halfway around the world for its initial test.

It truly was black-and-white decision, Simon knew. The power plant would either work as planned, or a fraction of a second after activation it would vaporize everything within a quarter-mile sphere of the source-point, leaving absolutely nothing behind—not even hard radiation.

Simon glared at the panel that would do the work. “So?” he said. “Turn it on.”

Hayden looked up at him from the console and said, “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” he said grimly.

“You’re positive?”

“Hayden, for god’s sake, just do it.”

Hayden smirked. “I activated the damn thing two minutes ago. We’re fine.”

For one instant everyone froze. Then Andrew burst into laughter, and everyone else joined in.

Everyone but Simon. There was nothing to laugh about—not yet. And one ugly task still lay ahead.

He forced a thin smile and said, “Max? We’d better get this done.” Then he turned away and drew Max to a far corner of the bridge while Hayden and Andrew double-checked the power curves.

“You’re sure there’s no other way to do this?” Simon asked his old friend.

“I’ve been over it and over it,” Max said. “And no—there’s not. Look, Donovan seems like a good man; I’m as sorry as you are. But even if the weather were better—and it’s not going to get better, Nastasia says, not for at least a week—we can’t have the Munro operating that winch and powering up those systems in broad daylight, or even in the dead of night.” He put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“It’ll work out okay, Simon,” he said. “Everyone will be fine.”

Simon nodded. What was to come was certainly the worst part of their mission so far.

He turned and told the others to finish the prep checklist and to double-check the full operational capabilities of the forward and aft cutting tools. Andrew and Hayden both nodded obligingly. “We’re going to talk with Donovan for a moment,” Simon told them. “Then…we’re off.”

They came back to the floor of the hold and began to cross to the hatch at brisk pace. Simon had rehearsed the speech in his head a hundred times, but now the words were coming to him at a snail’s pace. Everything sounded slow and contrived. How could I have let it come to this? he asked himself.

He brought his hand up to the keypad that would open the door to the corridor—

—and the door slid open all by itself, revealing Dominic Donovan and his nameless lead engineer standing in the hatchway, looking inside, staring at the fully revealed Spector VI as if they were looking at the angel of death.

Shit, Simon told himself silently. Shit! He and Max crowded out of the hold, physically pushing the captain and his lead engineer up the corridor, and keying shut the hold behind them.

“Captain,” Simon said quickly. “You are not seeing this!”

“What the hell is that thing?” Donovan asked, clearly shocked at the site of the massive submersible. He knew he was transporting some type of military machine, but what he was staring at was beyond his wildest imagination.

“I’m telling you: you didn’t see it. It can only cause you a great deal of trouble for the rest of your life.”

Donovan stared at him for a long moment…then nodded slowly. The lead engineer behind him seemed absolutely frozen.

“Look,” Simon said, hating himself, “I’ve come to give you some bad news.”

“Bad…news…” Donovan echoed, losing track of the conversation entirely.

“There’s no easy way to say this. We need to get…the cargo…out of this vessel now.”

“Impossible,” Donovan said, regaining at least some of his composure. “I’ve got a Category 4 storm outside, we can’t possibly operate the winches.”

“I know that,” Simon said. “But the fact remains, we have to release the cargo now.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Donovan said, dismissing him. “If we don’t use the winches, you’d have to cut a hole the size of Texas in the bottom of this…”

He stopped himself. He looked at Simon and put all the pieces together.

“You’d have to scuttle this ship,” he said.

“Yes,” Simon answered. “We would. We are.”

“Like hell—”

Max stepped forward, much harder, more aggressive. “Captain!” he barked, and pulled the older man up short. “There isn’t any choice. We’re inside; it’s programmed. And nine minutes from now our cutting lasers are going to peel open the hull of this boat to make a hole wide enough for us to escape, simple as that.”

Donovan was absolutely stunned.

“Get your crew to the lifeboats,” Simon said. “Now. You can activate the beacons—we will activate the beacons—as soon as we’re clear. We’re not far from patrolled territory; you should have a rescue plane homing on the GPS in no time and be home for dinner.”

“Without my ship, you mean,” Donovan said, seething.

“Yes,” Simon answered, calm and smooth as the ice itself. “Without your ship.” He looked at Donovan squarely in his face, “You know the protocol. You’ve sworn secrecy to her majesty’s military, and the last thing you and your crew can do is speak a word about this procedure.”

Donovan opened his mouth—ready to argue, ready to threaten. Simon put up a hand, surprised at his own certainty and calm. “There’s no other way,” he said. “If you care about your life and future—if you care about all the people in there and out here—you won’t waste time fighting with me. You’ll just get everybody to the lifeboats. No one needs to get hurt. Everyone can be safe. But you have to move NOW!”

“But—”

“The damage is done. We will be cutting open the hull in—”

He glanced at Max, who glanced at his chronometer. “Seven minutes now.”

Donovan stared daggers at him for ten more seconds…then tore himself away. “Son of a bitch,” he said, and pushed his lead engineer down the corridor. “Go, go!”

Simon and Max turned away; Max keyed open the door to the hold and Simon stepped in first. Max didn’t like the look on Donovan’s face; he had dealt with too many people in situations like this—situations of life and death that caused people to do irrational things. He was definitely worried.

The instant he was through, Max touched the control again and paused the action. “Simon?” he said. “Get back on board. I’ll join you in two.”

Simon spun around, astonished. “What?”

“I have to get something from up top—something important.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter, just go. I’ll be back in two minutes.”

Simon stared at him for a moment, deciding whether to argue or not…then turned on his heel and sped toward the Spector. He was up the gangway and inside the vehicle in seconds. Max waited until the hatch behind him was secure.

Then he turned back and touched the intercom pad embedded in the bulkhead. “Captain Donovan?” he said. “This is Max. You and your lead engineer need to meet me in the hold, now. Just you two. There…there may be a way out of this.”

He didn’t have to wait long. He knew they would come. By his own internal clock, it was less than sixty seconds later that they stepped through the hatch and entered the hold. Max closed the hatch behind them with the single touch of a button.

“Thank god you came to your senses,” Donovan said. “I’m sure there’s something we can do to—”

Before Donovan could say another word, the bullet from Max’s pistol penetrated his skull. He tumbled to the deck, dead before he hit. A moment later, a second shot and his executive officer’s body fell on top of him with a heavy thud.

Max knew that the sound of his silencer would never be heard, especially in the noise of the thunder outside and the thick walls of the Spector.

He made it up the gangway, opened the aft hatch of the Spector, entered and sealed it behind him in less than a minute. He didn’t have a speck of blood on him.

Except on my hands, he told himself as he double-checked the seal on the aft hatch. For a second, he thought about what he had done, but just for a second. He knew the best thing for everyone was that Donovan was not interrogated or possibly tortured for answers.

He told himself it was the more humane thing to do.

* * *

The rest of the team was well aware of the audacious plan that would sink the Munro and send them on their way; they just thought that Donovan and his crew had been in on it as well. When Max re-entered the bridge, they were all in their places and strapped in. The main entrance hatch hissed as it compressed the air inside the vessel and locked the outside air, within its nine-inch impervious skin.

Max settled into the pilot’s chair. Simon sat beside him; Andrew was in the navigator’s chair and Hayden was conning the engineering station. Max looked around him as he pulled the canopy at the back of his seat’s headrest forward a bit. It slid out in a cupped arch, casting a golden glow on the crown of his head. No electrodes were necessary; no probes needed to be set. The interface was entirely wireless.

“Okay,” he said. “AI separation complete?”

“Complete,” Ryan said. “Nothing’s getting through.”

“Camouflage and chameleon circuitry operational?”

“Ten by ten,” Andrew reported.

“Power and Engineering?”

“I’m going to say…it’s fine.”

Max flicked a cautionary eye at Hayden, who lifted his hands in surrender.

“All right then, go.”

“Medical and Life Support?”

“Ready,” Samantha chimed in.

“Navigation?”

“Go.”

“And Simon? Focus the lasers.”

“Focused,” Simon said a moment later. The crosshairs of the cutting lasers were showing on his console, and a blue dot flared on the hull of the ship itself, visible in the forward-facing flat-screen.

“Then let’s do it.”

Simon depressed the luminous switch. A visible beam, so intensely blue it hurt to look at, lanced out of the gimbaled projectors to the left and right sides of the hull and began to cut along a pre-set course: up and over, down and back.

Water began to gush through the cut, so fast and hard it looked like a beam of white steel. They could all hear it thudding against the hull of the Spector like a battering ram.

The cutting continued. The thin line of water became a torrent, and the steel plating of the ship’s hull began to peel back like the skin of an orange, driven open by the force of the in-rushing water.

The hold was filling quickly as the lasers continued to cut. Plates of steel as large as garage doors began to fall away, swirling into the black depths of the ocean beyond.

“Engaging engines,” Max announced. The controls were set out in a colorful array in front of him, three arcs of holographic symbols and hues, like the multi-tiered keyboards of a high-tech musical instrument. A floating cloud of spheres—the isolated and dormant AI icons—floated off to one side like slumbering attendants waiting for their wake-up call.

The roaring of the water became muted as the levels rose. Max nudged the Spector forward just a fraction, and suddenly the vessel lifted from the buckling floor of the Munro’s hold.

The few objects in the hold that were not secured or welded to the bulkheads floated in the turbulent water that boiled up around them. Max looked away from his holo-display and up at his front-facing flat screen for a moment—then cut the feed, moving it to his own console so no one else could see.

The corpse of Dominic Donovan, arms spread and legs swaying, was floating past the bow camera. A then red ribbon of blood leaked from the bullet hole in his forehead.

The vessel that had carried him for the last month had become his coffin.

“Problems?” Simon asked, looking up to see the holo-display blank.

“Nope,” Max said smoothly, “just checking something out.”

A moment later the turbulent water had pushed the body away to one side behind the ship. Max breathed a sigh of relief and returned the view to the main screen.

“Here we go,” he said and put his mind to moving the vessel forward—smooth and fast, he told himself. Smooth and—

—the submersible shot out of the gaping hole in the bow of the sinking ship, floating free and under its own power for the first time in its existence. Free.

Simon took a moment to imagine the chaos he assumed was taking place a few hundred feet above them: the tilting hull of the Munro moving aggressively against the swell as the storm’s strength intensified, the life boats dropping into the angry sea. He was sure they would hear the loud creaking noise followed by a rumble as their vessel began its final descent to the ocean floor. Donovan and his crew would survive in their sealed life pods, he knew, though it would be an ordeal, bobbing and turning in the stormy water, in waves made even rougher by the sinking of the Munro itself.

He knew nothing of Donovan’s corpse floating in the hold of the doomed freighter. He never would.

“Ryan?” he asked. “The distress beacons are working?”

“Every one of them,” Ryan confirmed. “I’ll keep an eye on them and monitor radio traffic passively until they’re all safe.” He frowned at his console. “Sorry, guys,” he whispered, so no one but Simon could hear him.

Seconds after the Spector had detached entirely from the Munro, the team felt the thundering vibration of the submersible’s thrusters push the vessel down toward the blackness below. The immediate effect was so powerful that Samantha—standing to check a readout that was too high to see while sitting—was thrown off her feet. She landed poorly, banged her elbow and cursed under her breath at her bad judgment and worse luck…but she got to her feet and back to her console without complaint.

“How are we doing?” Simon asked.

“So far so good,” Max said.

Then the lights went out.

* * *

Max had absolutely no idea what was going on.

No, he thought as the console flickered back to life and the front-facing holo-display rolled and fluttered again. Check that. I just don’t know nearly enough.

Sophisticated artificial intelligences grown for these specific tasks were supposed to be handling ninety percent of this craft’s operation. Instead, the cut-off and dumbed-down versions—the only parts that Hayden and Andrew agreed could be trusted without sending signals to the British military—were running about thirty percent of it. And not the important thirty percent, Max thought. Not the part that’s going to get us out of this alive.

He was struggling to make sense of the makeshift digital modules that Hayden had prepared. Some of them seemed to be working wonderfully; others didn’t make a damn bit of sense. He just hoped that Sam on life support and Hayden on the power plant were doing marginally better than he was.

Worst of all, he was sailing blind. Well, not quite blind, he corrected himself. That jerry-rigged front-facing flat screen did give him a trustworthy eyes-up view of what was dead ahead. But there was nothing else—no radar, no sonar, no active or passive sensor of any kind, short of some super-luminal spotlights that made the endless ocean ahead of them glow like a cloud of phosphorous. What was going on above and below him, to the left and right sides, even to the rear was a complete mystery.

But he knew one thing for certain: there were eyes in the sky, far above the surface of the sea, that could penetrate to more than three hundred feet—and those were just the ones he knew of. According to his old-fashioned compass and his trust passive GPS—thank god that was all right to use—they were dead on course for Antarctica, but they were still running far too high in the water. One good deep sonar scan of the region by UNED and they could be detected.

They had to go deeper. Now.

Max eased forward on the luminous controls that would take them down—down to a thousand feet, down into the cold blackness of the Southern Sea, where no one would ever find them.

Ever.