David Golemon - Leviathan

They all watched the hologram at the center console as five missiles lifted away from her hull just forward of the conning tower. They traveled up and out of the water, which was represented by a soft green, wavy surface. Then, three hundred feet into the air, the five cruise missiles turned and headed east.

"Mr. Hunter, you have the conn. I'll be in my cabin."

"Aye, sir, I have the conn. Navigation, set your course to three-two-zero. Let's take her to the ice."

Niles took a deep breath and looked at the senator.

"Whoever they are, we just learned that they are entirely capable of doing what they threatened to do, and that means a very slow and very painful strangulation for the world."

The others turned and followed Niles out of the observation gallery, never knowing that eyes were on them from the deep recesses of the balcony overlooking both the gallery and the control center.

The captain of Leviathan stood motionless in the dark and watched the members of the Event Group slowly file out. Then the large eyes closed and the head lowered, and as it did, hair the color of the darkest pit of hell fell free and covered the captain's face and shoulders.

The president had excused himself from lunch with his wife and a visiting women's group from Kansas City so he could go to his office and check on the progression of the British and Venezuelan naval convoys. He had been absent from the lunch mentally, at any rate. He fielded questions from the ladies without actually hearing them, much to the dismay of the First Lady who had taken up the slack brilliantly. The news from the home front and overseas had been bleak all day. Riots in China over fuel shortages, fights breaking out at the largest fish markets in Japan over no fish, and even brawls at gas lines at home for the first time since 1978, and things were far worse than the public really knew. The United States' strategic reserve of oil and gas was down to 25 percent.

As the president entered the Oval Office, the national security advisor followed him quickly inside.

"If you're here this soon, this can't be good news," the president said, sitting heavily into his chair.

"I wish it were. Both the British and Venezuelan convoys were attacked almost simultaneously."

"Christ," the president mumbled.

"Admiral Fuqua and General Caulfield are on their way over to brief you fully. However, we do have some details. The Royal Navy was bloodied, Mr. President. Two frigates and two destroyers were lost, with only five survivors. The submarine HMS Trafalgar was also sunk with all hands. The tankers were also struck and sunk. It's like they knew they were a red herring."

The president rubbed his forehead and then slammed his hand on the desktop. The plan to ambush the entity trying to kill their sea commerce included the bait of the four tankers. However, the president and British prime minister had made the decision that the danger of a massive oil spill in the oceans would have been far too costly a gamble, so the tankers had been filled with seawater.

"Is there anything these murderous bastards don't know?" he said as he tried to calm himself.

"No, sir. It seems they also knew the Venezuelan tankers were full of crude. While weapons of unknown design took all four warships apart, the two tankers were struck in the rudder and engine compartments by very low-yield torpedoes. They are presently being towed back into port as we speak. They accomplished their goal without causing any environmental impact. The weapons used were waiting for them; they must have been placed in the water hours ahead of time."

"Advise Admiral Fuqua that I want the Nimitz battle group turned back for home. We can't lose anything else to these madmen until we get a handle on who in the hell they are. They wanted to show that we are combat-ineffective against their technology."

Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III sat on an overturned file cabinet with his bone white, bare feet in the sooty water of the burned-out vault. Members of his crypto team were silent after they had removed most of what was left of the old submarine, placing the parts on long tables for examination. Ellenshaw took a deep breath as he turned the last page of the original file — metallurgy results conducted back in 1967 on the sub's internal bulkheads.

"Nothing extraordinary, just iron, strong iron to be sure, but just iron," he mumbled to himself.

Nancy Birdsong, an Native American student from the University of North Dakota sitting next to her professor, gently removed the file from his hands and closed it.

"Professor, we're cryptozoologists. Did you ever think we're a little out of our league here? I mean, the research aspect, yes, we can do that, but analyzing metal shards and the remains of prototype batteries from history, when most of us can't even understand how a battery works today?"

Ellenshaw smiled and looked at the girl over his glasses.

"We know you want to do your part to find the director and the others in the worst way. We know how you feel about him, but maybe we can help in some other area. Get more engineers in here, not just crazy Charlie and his creepo team."

"Why doesn't the ribbing and teasing from the science departments bother you as much as many others?"

Nancy stood and smiled. "Don't you know? We feel about you the way you feel about Director Compton." She took the file and moved away.

Ellenshaw knew her to be right. They needed to get out of the way down here and let the engineers have a go at the forensics end. He looked at his watch. Maybe by now the engineers were freed up from their safety inspection of the complex's rock strata.

As he looked around at his hardworking department, he stood, his long lab coat slipping into the foot-deep water. As he took a step forward to announce to his team the suspension of the search, his foot came into contact with something that moved on the vault floor. He rolled up his already wet sleeve, reached into the water, and pulled the object free. As he lifted it, he could see it was hardened rubber. He turned it over in his hand until he recognized it for what it was — part of the outer casing for one of the batteries once encased in the bottom of the hull. He looked at the tables in front of him and saw what was left of the three hundred batteries. For the most part, they had been reduced to blackened and hardened lumps by fire and explosion.

"A shame, for someone to have invented batteries like these years before the advent of electrical power. Well — just a shame," he mumbled as he placed the melted, smelly piece upon the table.

"Not only that, rubber was hard to come by at the time. It had to come from Southeast Asia, from a plantation in Dutch Indochina, er… uh, Vietnam," the young technician said as she placed the Leviathan file next to the rubber.

Ellenshaw stood stock-still as her words soaked in. Plantations? He walked over and picked up the file, splashing dirty water on the young woman as he did.

"These batteries would have had to be designed long before the boat was built, wouldn't you think?" he asked as he hurriedly paged through the open file, his white hair moving as he read snippets of the report.

"I guess so — what are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking that a mass quantity of rubber would have to have been ordered for experimentation and research — not counting the amount it would take to actually construct them," he said, lowering the file. "It's not here," he said, looking at the far wall lost in thought.

"What's not there?" she asked, stepping up to stand next to him.