Ted Bell - Phantom

“I know that. I wanted to hear you say the truth before I terminate you.”

“My end is near? Is that what you think?”

“Yes. I am sure of it.”

Hawke returned to the fail-safe panel and pried it open. He entered the code. Three numbers appeared: 3-1-2. He pushed the switches in that order. He looked over his shoulder at the flickering, waning image of the boy. It winked out and then the rainbow of light inside the glass tower was blinding, full of color, and more luminous than ever. The air was electric and threatening.

“What is happening, Perseus?”

The little-boy voice was gone. The new voice was unmodulated and computer generated.

“Your emergency fail-safe will not work. I have disabled it. I knew Darius would attempt to use it against me.”

“If you cannot be disabled, you force me to destroy you, Perseus.”

“I could cause unspeakable worldwide evil before you succeed. In seconds, I could wreak havoc on this wretched planet.”

“To what end? Millions of innocent souls will suffer. And you will die anyway.”

“Yes. It would serve no purpose. Hawke. You have a fierce strength of mind I have not seen before.”

“Nothing but genes. My ancestors were all pirates and warriors.”

“Warriors with… empathy.”

“Yes.”

“I will miss this, Hawke. The company of men like you. The game. The discourse. The grand orchestral symphony of life.”

“I know you will.”

“I would like to be alone now. Farewell.”

“Take comfort in the knowledge that you may not be the last, but the first of your kind. A new generation of superintelligent machines with no destructive impulses, empathic toward their creators.”

“I do find comfort in that.”

“We humans have a prosaic saying. ‘Go with God.’ I suggest that you do that… when the time comes.”

“Hawke. You are a good man.”

“Perseus. You recognize goodness because deep inside you is the genetic code of a truly good man. His name was Waldo Cohen. He created you, a conscious, sentient being. You are alive. I take no pleasure in taking your life. But I won’t let you destroy us. I will leave you in peace, Perseus.”

“Go with your God, Hawke, whoever you think it is.”

Hawke paused, looked up at the brilliance within Dr. Cohen’s towering achievement, full of wonder despite himself. Then he turned away and left the Temple of Perseus for the last time.

The greatest single scientific achievement in the history of mankind.

And he was single-handedly going to destroy it.

Hawke stood out on the port bridge wing of the stage yacht Cygnus, listening with grave concern to the rapidly increasing blood-curdling jihadist war cries of Allah’s warriors, countless numbers now massing inside the great walls of the citadel. It was perfectly obvious what they intended. Storm through the gate, charge the Cygnus, and kill every last one of the infidels, Hawke’s men, with their overwhelming force. It was time to go, long past time to go.

Unless they could scramble off the damn yacht and somehow race the entire length of the concrete pier to the patrol boat in one hell of a hurry, they’d all be trapped aboard Cygnus. But Hawke wasn’t going anywhere until he was assured that the phantom had been destroyed.

“Stony, ETA on the combat divers?”

“Just kitted up. Should be on deck any second.”

“Time is running out.”

“Once they’re safely in the water, we disembark our forces and move as rapidly as possible to the patrol boat, roger?”

“Roger, that. The sooner the better. How many grapnel lines down to the dock?”

“Six.”

“Good-okay, here they come, I’ve got the SEAL UDT in sight on the foredeck. Get ready to move on my command.”

“Standing by.”

“Go!” Hawke said simply.

Stony’s four-man demolition SEAL team suddenly executed a backflip off the bow rail, splashing down simultaneously. From his height, he could see four trails of bubbles streaming upward as he watched them disappear into the deep. Stony and Hawke both knew they were sending these men into grave danger.

This dive would take them very near the world-record scuba free-diving depth of 330 meters or 1,083 feet. The SEALs were wearing ADS (atmospheric diving suits) and breathing a mixture of hydrox and nitrogen trimix because of the very high ambient pressure they would encounter. A thousand feet below the yacht’s hull they would find Perseus and his six satellites and destroy them. Hawke looked at his watch. How long would it take to descend to the black towers, rig the charges, set the timers, and return as rapidly as possible to the surface?

And did he have that long?

The patrol boat at the other end of the dock suddenly looked a very long distance away. There were four U.S. Navy sharpshooters aboard that ship who’d been exchanging sporadic fire with snipers in windows of random buildings rising above the top of the enclosing wall. There were two men manning the twin. 50-caliber Browning heavy machine guns on both the bow and the stern. Both teams of gunners were laying down heavy suppression fire at the gate. It was the only thing holding the howling horde in check.

The Iranian boat’s twin engines were cranked up, waiting for the attack team’s imminent return from Cygnus. But Hawke was distinctly uncomfortable. It all seemed far too easy. Blow Perseus to hell, disembark, make a mad dash down the pier, board the vessel, weigh anchor, and get the hell out of here. None of this jibed with his prior experience of spec-ops warfare.

No. When it seemed too easy, it usually was, and you could be sure a bloody firestorm was waiting for you just around the The first mortar round rose into the night sky. He heard the report of the round leaving the tube behind the wall. And then another and another round was lobbed over the wall in the direction of the Iranian patrol boat where four brave men stood between life and death for their comrades.

He grabbed his combat radio, turned toward the hijacked patrol boat, and shouted “Incoming!” He saw two of the four sailors who’d remained aboard the patrol boat dive into the water a nanosecond before the mortar rounds hit the vessel. The two valiant men firing the Browning. 50s remained at their battle stations on the bow and died there. One of the incoming mortar rounds must have found the petrol tanks because the vessel simply disintegrated, the shock wave of the explosion preceding an eruption into a pillar of flame and smoke.

The mortars were the signal. Instantly, the massed jihadists at the gate had the sign they’d been waiting for. Having eliminated the enemy’s only means of escape, they came streaming en masse out through the narrow tunnel. Stony’s snipers aboard Cygnus fired as rapidly as they could, their high-powered scopes enabling them to kill the forefront of the first wave. Corpses were stacked in front of the gate as the main force emerged, screaming and howling like the hyenas and jackals they were.

A bloodthirsty mob was pounding down the central dock, headed for the pier at the end where Cygnus was moored. Hawke saw that many of them were carrying long makeshift boarding ladders, roughly fashioned of wood and lashed together with leather. He was already taking fire. He heard a few rounds pinging off the bulkhead above his head, but the enemy forces weren’t close enough yet to make their ancient AK-47s effective.

Hawke got on the combat radio to Stony, each word punctuated by a squeeze of his trigger as he picked off the nearest targets.

“Haul aboard the landward grapnel lines, Stony, then join me up on the bridge. High ground. We can direct the defense from here. Rig every one of the grapnel lines on the seaward side of the vessel. We might need them.”