Andy McDermott - The Tomb Of Hercules

“What the hell was that?” Nina cried.

“We lost a fin!” The steering yoke bucked in Trulli’s hands. “I’m gonna have to risk backwash braking-whatever you do, don’t let go!”

She had no idea what he meant, but his voice warned her that it was almost as dangerous as letting the shock wave collapse. She hugged herself against the seat as Trulli shoved a lever-

The louvres on the seawater intakes slammed closed.

For a moment, the shriek of the engines dropped almost to nothing as the flow of water to the red-hot heating elements was cut off. The last of the superheated steam was blown out of the engine nozzles-then a surge of frothing bubbles from within the shock wave was sucked into the nozzles as the pressure inside them plummeted.

Without water to carry away the excess heat, the temperature of the steam elements had already shot up. The froth hit the searing metal, instantly exploding into superheated vapor-

Trulli pulled the lever again.

The intake louvres snapped open just as the expanding steam erupted through them, blasting twin jets through the supercavitation wave created by the submarine’s blunt nose. The disrupted shock wave instantly collapsed, but the Wobblebug plowed through it into the swirling mass of turbulence beyond, a buffer zone slowing the vessel rather than smashing it to an abrupt halt.

But it passed through the zone in barely a second…

Even with his seat belt fastened, Trulli was slammed against the steering yoke as the sub hit dense seawater. If Nina hadn’t been clinging to his seat with the strength of every sinew in her arms she would have been flung headfirst against the forward bulkhead. Something on the cabin wall broke loose and smashed into the instrument panel. The lights flickered, broken metal beating at the hull…

The submarine slowed.

Trulli gasped in pain as he tried to lift his hand to the throttle control. “Ah, shit!” he wheezed. “Nina, help me, quick!”

Arms aching, Nina dragged herself upright. “What’s wrong?”

The Australian’s face contorted. “I think I’ve busted a rib! I can’t reach the throttle-pull it back, shut off the elements!”

She hurriedly did as she was told. The hissing of steam from the engines died away, as did the last vibrations. The Wobblebug fell silent.

“Thanks,” Trulli gasped. “Well, we stopped, and we’re still in one piece, more or less. Guess that’s something.” He examined the damaged instruments through pain-narrowed eyes. “Don’t think the sub’s going to be going much farther, though. Both the intakes are wrecked, and we’re almost out of power.”

“How badly are you hurt?” Nina asked.

He grimaced. “Won’t be playing tennis for a while. I need to check where we are, get a GPS fix. See that lever up there?” He pointed at a particular lever on the cabin ceiling. Nina nodded. “Pull it. It’ll blow the ballast tanks, take us to the surface.”

She steadied herself, then pulled it. The submarine shuddered as water was forced out of the tanks by compressed air. Within a minute, a different kind of rocking motion took over-the swell of Atlantic waves against the hull.

Trulli tapped clumsily at the keyboard with one hand, the pain from his chest preventing him from moving his other arm. “Okay, GPS signal is coming in… got it. Wow, we’re not too far off.”

Nina looked at the screen as a map appeared. “Where are we?”

“Off the coast of Maryland. About two hundred and ninety kilometers from New York.”

Nina instantly made the conversion to imperial measurements: a hundred and eighty miles. “Where’s the Ocean Emperor?”

“Give me a sec to see if I can get a satellite connection. It’s not exactly like we’ve got Wi-Fi access out here…”

She waited anxiously first for the computer to link up to Corvus’s network, then for Trulli to log in. Compared to the system in his office, the satellite link was excruciatingly slow.

“Gotcha!” Trulli said at last. A yellow triangle indicating the Ocean Emperor ’s position appeared on the screen. “It’s about four kays behind us, a bit farther offshore. Same course as it was on before, still doing twenty-three knots.”

“Can we catch it?”

“If the pump-jets haven’t been completely screwed, then yeah. If we’re quick.” He indicated one particular gauge. “The batteries are almost drained. We’ve got maybe ten minutes of power left. But I’ll need your help to pilot the sub. I can’t do it with only one arm.”

Nina stared at the triangle on the map, so close to the icon marking their own position. Eddie …

She set her jaw in determination. “What do you need me to do?”

Sophia stood on the Ocean Emperor’s bridge, regarding the view ahead. The lights in the room had been dimmed for nighttime operations, but even so there was little to see. The ship was almost thirty miles from shore, and there was nothing in sight but the ink-black sweep of the Atlantic and the starry dome above it.

She turned to the man beside her, Captain Lenard. The Ocean Emperor ’s normal complement of forty had been reduced to a skeleton crew of just five for its final voyage, all of whom would be evacuated in the tilt-rotor parked on the helipad behind the bridge shortly before the ship reached Manhattan. “And it hasn’t reappeared?”

“No, ma’am,” said Lenard, a flint-eyed Frenchman. “Whatever it was, it seems to have gone.”

Sophia looked suspiciously at the radar screens, then back out of the wide windows. Something had shown up on the Ocean Emperor ’s radar almost directly ahead a few minutes earlier, then vanished again. It had been too large to be some piece of random flotsam, and considering the yacht’s objective anything out of the ordinary had to be considered a possible threat.

But if it were a boat, it would still be visible on radar, and Lenard had already ruled out the possibility of its being the periscope of a submarine…

“Keep looking,” she finally ordered. “If it reappears, call me at once. I’ll be in my stateroom.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Lenard gave Komosa, lurking at the back of the bridge, a somewhat jealous look as Sophia gestured for the giant to follow her, then turned back to the radar.

The object the Ocean Emperor had detected was now much closer than its captain would believe. With Nina’s help, Trulli had submerged the Wobblebug to a depth of just six feet, bringing it on a course to intercept the yacht. With two people working the controls, the confined space of the cabin was even more claustrophobic.

“Sorry,” Nina said again as she accidentally nudged Trulli with her elbow.

“No worries. At least you missed my ribs this time.” Trulli checked the monitor screen. At such a shallow depth, the computer was able to receive intermittent GPS signals, and the map showed that the Wobblebug and the Ocean Emperor were now less than two hundred yards apart. The submarine was almost directly in the huge cruiser’s path, heading in the same direction but quickly being overtaken. “Okay, she’s nearly on us. I’ll move us along her port side and then surface and try to match speeds.”

“How much time will we have?”

“Not much. Subs go slower on the surface, and I’ll have to redline the pump-jets just to keep up. Even if they don’t burn out, they’ll still run out of juice real fast. And there’s something else.”

“Figures,” groaned Nina. “What is it?”

“With the bow wave that thing’ll be kicking up at twenty-three knots, water’s going to come in through the top hatch. A lot of water.”