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Robert Williams: Ice Fortress

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Robert Williams Ice Fortress

Ice Fortress: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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An explosive new release from Amazon bestselling author Robert B. Williams A high-octane, fast-paced, action-packed Jack Coulson thriller with edge-of-your-seat suspense and an ending that will blow you away. For over 70 years Hitler’s most chilling, top secret weapon or Wunderwaffe has been buried inside an icy fortress in one of the most inhospitable and unforgiving places on earth — the Antarctic. Even today, this weapon could change the outcome of the Second World War. When oceanographer Leah Anderson discovers a secret WWII German submarine base hidden deep under the Antarctic ice shelf, she sparks a desperate race to acquire the weapon. While Russian and American submarines clash deep below the ice pack, a sinister force launches a ruthless assault on the ice to secure the weapon they have been searching for since 1945. Enigmatic covert ops soldier Jack Coulson has already been to hell and back, but if he’s going to stop the rise of the Thousand Year Reich, then he must enter the gates of hell one more time. The Second World War is over. What no one knows is that the Third Reich has not given up — the battle has just begun… For fans of James Rollins, Matthew Reilly, Michael Grumley, A.G. Riddle, Rob Jones, Jay J. Falconer, James D. Prescott, Brad Thor and Douglas E. Richards.

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Civilian oceanographer, Leah Anderson was the team leader of the small but dedicated group who had first proposed using an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle or AUV to fire sonar pings from below to survey the ice shelf, using military grade high frequency sonar originally designed to hunt enemy submarines. The anechoic or sonar absorbent skin covering the Barracuda’s hull prevented the sub, which was the length of a football field, echoing and distorting the pings fired from the small unmanned submersible.

It was a revolutionary concept and one that overcame the inaccuracies of satellite survey methods and the inherent limitations and dangers of drilling ice cores on the surface of the ever shifting ice. Leah and her team had even designed the one-of-a-kind AUV. The bright yellow craft with its black and white tail fin had been christened ‘Nellie’ by Dave after he won the rock, paper, scissors contest for naming rights. As a James Bond fan, Dave claimed the revolutionary craft looked much like Bond’s gyrocopter, ‘Little Nellie’ in You Only Live Twice and had to name her in accordingly. Nellie could operate as an autonomous robotic vessel when conducting surveys or it could be tethered to the host vessel via a fiber optic cable allowing it to feed live data and video streams to the team. Even the operating software of the submersible had been developed in-house by Juan but was highly classified at the request of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) who had funded the development of the small craft and its self-learning software at considerable cost to the U.S. taxpayers.

“Juan, Dave? Are you ready to let our little baby out of the nest?” Leah asked the anxious techs.

Wiping his sweaty palms down the front of his slightly paunchy ‘Beam Me Up, Scotty’ T-shirt, Juan took hold of the joystick control with one hand and gave Leah the thumbs up with the other before flipping back the switch cover, exposing the release button. “Ready to release the docking clamps on your command.”

* * *

Four hours later, the torpedo shaped Nellie returned to the sub where its hydrojet propulsion system guided it effortlessly to the docking collar. Two red lights above Juan’s forest of monitors turned green one after the other. The first showed the AUV had docked and the second confirmed that the seal was watertight. Nellie once again rode on the back of the Barracuda, like a Remora on the back of a giant Orca.

“Hard dock confirmed. Seal is good. Pressure is holding steady,” Juan stated needlessly. They’d all fixed their eyes on the green status lights. Opening a hatch at this depth without a proper seal would be disastrous. It would be impossible to close the hatch with the incredible pressure it would be subjected to.

Only now could they access the AUV to swap out the battery packs and plug in to the solid state data storage arrays containing the results from its first solo voyage. Operating in pre-programmed autonomous mode meant they couldn’t stream the data live because there was no tether connecting it to the sub. Instead, they had to wait for their baby to complete the programmed grid and return to the nest before they could upload the sonar data to their systems.

“OK, Dave, you’re the skinniest, you can have the honor of climbing into the docking chamber and refreshing the battery packs. But first, I want those data packs connected to our network so Juan can start downloading. There’s terabytes of data there and I want to see it ASAP.”

Dave didn’t move. He looked from Juan’s rotund belly to his own slight frame and realized that his genetics and healthy eating habits had made him the ideal candidate to open a hull hatch 660 feet underwater. Tonight he was having a double helping of apple pie and cream, for sure.

“I meant today, Dave.” Leah barked more sharply than she had intended.

“Aye, aye Doctor.” Dave gave a mock salute and removed his headset. Even Juan raised a brow. She’d never snapped at them before. Of course, they both knew her career and any future funding from DARPA depended on this first field test. In fact, the careers of all three of them were riding on the success of this project. Big time.

* * *

“This isn’t right,” sighed Dave Sutton as he tried to make sense of the graphics on the huge flat screen. “Dude, your software isn’t calibrated right. None of these interpretations are anywhere near accurate.”

“Hey man, before you start blaming my software, maybe we need to take a closer look at your sonar hardware. You know, dude, the computers are only as good as the data they’re fed, right?” Juan looked to Leah for some backup.

“Man? Dude? Are you two hipsters back in college now? Honestly, if you two kids are going to start bickering like a pair of school girls, I’ll throw you off this ship myself. Now Dave, tell me what you’re seeing that’s got your shorts all bunched up.” Leah who’d been watching the display over their shoulders leaned in for a closer look.

“Boat,” Dave whispered under his breath.

“He’s right,” Juan joined in, “historically a submarine is called a boat, not a ship.”

They both looked across to the conn, where the captain did his best to look like he was studying his charts. But like the others, he was curious about seeing a part of the ocean depths not previously explored. He nodded in agreement. “Boat,” he confirmed.

“Lord, give me strength,” Leah muttered, punching each of them gently on the arm. “Explain before I punch you for real.”

“Okay, these are the initial sonar scans when Nellie first started pinging the ice shelf. The blue is the water, obviously, and the green above it shows the ice shelf, from which we can deduce the thickness. See here,” he froze the scrolling display, “the depth of water between Nellie and the base of the ice shelf — 580 feet.”

“So we would assume that was correct given that we’ve programmed her to follow the contours of the shelf and cruise at that depth,” Leah said.

“Correct. We would also assume that this green section here,” again he pointed to the paused graphic, “is also correct at a shelf thickness of 50 feet as that finding is supported by estimates based on satellite and seismic surveys in this area.”

Dave hit the mouse to resume the scrolling display and then paused it again.

“What on earth is that?” Leah gasped. Something in her tone piqued the captain’s interest, too and he looked up from his chart display.

“That’s what I’m saying. It’s just not possible. What we’re seeing can’t be there. That structure simply can’t exist and there’s no suggestion of anything like it in the Arctic, either. It’s an anomaly and I’m convinced it’s a software glitch. It’s misinterpreting that data somehow.”

Juan didn’t respond. He was too busy tapping furiously at his keyboard, debugging code and trying to find an explanation, even though the code cutter in him knew his code was good. They’d given it every test possible before releasing it. But he needed to be sure.

“Conn, sonar,” yelled the lieutenant stationed at the Barracuda’s sonar console, “we have fish in the water.”

“Repeat that, sonar,” responded the captain his tone plainly conveying his disbelief.

“Fish in the water. Two torpedoes bearing two-eight-zero closing at 35 knots. Range 2,000 yards.”

Years of training, countless drills and many naval exercises, kicked in all at once, despite his youthful appearance. In a split second, Frank Jameson the geek squad babysitter became Captain Jameson, the attack sub commander. He quickly began shouting orders.

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