LITMIR.BIZ

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it wise to be safe instead of sorry.”

       “Fair enough,” Taylor said, pushing back her cap. “Status, please, chief.”

       “We’re traveling the exact same route we took going down to South Africa,” Chief Michelson replied crisply, his gaze locked on a glowing sonar screen. “We know every hill and rock under these waters, and there’s something new below. Something big.”

       “A dead whale?” Jones asked curiously. He had followed the captain inside.

       “No, much larger than that, sir. Sonar says irregular shapes, mounds of it. Could be a wrecked ship.”

       “Damn. Have there been any storms in the vicinity, or known pirate attacks?” Taylor asked. “If a commercial vessel sank in these shallow waters, there could be survivors about. What about it, Ears?”

       “Possibly a civilian wreck, Captain,” the sonar operator replied. Eyes tightly closed, he held the earphones in place with both hands. “But it would have to have been a small ship, maybe a fishing boat or pleasure craft. I’m not hearing any metal below, just lots of wood and plastic.”

       “Sounds like a speedboat to me,” James stated, crossing his arms. No metal meant there was no threat to the convoy. “Ears, what’s the depth?”

       “Five hundred meters, and rising,” the sonar operator called out briskly, hunched before the glowing computer screen.

       “Lieutenant, send out a couple of hovercraft… No, belay that,” Taylor said with a grimace. “Uncork a Lynx helicopter and do a sweep for any survivors. Hundred meters, three hundred and five. Move quick now.”

       “Debris spotted in the starboard water, sir!” an ensign interrupted, touching his headphones. “Multiple lifejackets, broken wood and general flotsam!”

       “Get that Lynx flying, Lieutenant,” Taylor snapped, sitting in the command chair. All around her banks of video monitors strobed into life, showing every aspect of the colossal vessel. “Helm, increase speed to maximum. Chief, have one of the frigates stay behind and conduct a full S and R op.”

       “Search and rescue, aye, aye, ma’am,” he said with a brisk salute. “But may I suggest—”

       Just then, the entire destroyer rocked from the force of a powerful explosion.

       “What the bleeding hell just happened to my ship?” the captain demanded, glancing at the overhead monitors. A forward compartment was taking on water—not much, but steadily. A port side depth charge launcher had gone off-line, and two of the crew had vanished, last seen near the anchor chain winch.

       “Unknown, ma’am!” the sonar operator reported crisply. “Sonar is clean. There is no hot noise in the water! Repeat, no hot noise!”

       “Thank God for that. What about radar?” Taylor demanded, twisting her head.

       “Clean and clear, Skip,” the ensign replied. “Five by five. Whatever is happening is coming from below.”

       “The water is clear,” Ears repeated sternly.

       “Well, something just hammered us like a Christmas bell!” Jones snarled, just before a second explosion shook the vessel, closely followed by another, then six more in rapid succession.

       Reaching up, the captain grabbed a hand mike from an overhead stanchion. “All hands hear this, all hands hear this, battle stations! I repeat, battle stations!” she snapped. “This is not a drill. We are under attack!”

       Instantly, Klaxons and horns began to hoot all over the destroyer, and swarms of sailors poured out of hatchways to surge across the tilting deck and take their assigned positions at the weapons stations.

       “How could you possibly know this is an attack, and not a catastrophic mechanical failure?” Jones demanded, grabbing on to a stanchion as the ship shook again, even harder this time.

       “That wreckage on the ocean floor,” Taylor growled in reply. “It had to be a trick to make us stop!”

       The ship rocked again as a water plume rose off the starboard side.

       “But we accelerated!”

       “Then let’s hope we escape!”

       By now, the overhead monitors showed several breaks in the primary hull, with multiple compartments taking on water faster than the gauges could read. One engine was already dead, and screaming was coming from the galley.

       “Helm, evasive tactics!” Taylor said calmly, her heart wildly pounding. “Sparks, call Gibraltar for rescue! Engine Room, all pumps to maximum!”

       Just then, there came a deafening explosion, and one of the escort frigates rose from the ocean on a boiling column of steam and flame. As the stunned bridge crew of the Reliant watched, the frigate broke in two, spilling crew and machinery into the water.

       “Are we being nuked?” Jones demanded, blood flowing from the palm of his clenched fist. “Did we hit a ruddy volcano?”

       “I have no idea,” Taylor said honestly, her hands pressed firmly to the cushioned arms of her chair.

       Another powerful explosion shook their vessel, and a sailor yelled as he went over the side. Several water columns appeared alongside another frigate, and the armored hull ripped open wide to show the burning decks inside, broken human bodies flying away in chunks. Diesel fuel and oil spread across the choppy waves like thick blood. The second frigate was listing badly to the side, while the third was already nose deep in the water and quickly sinking.

       “Ma’am, the Cardiff is gone,” the radar operator said in an emotionless voice, his face deathly pale.

       “What in the… Captain, sonar is dead!” Ears called out, staring in horror at the screen. It was glowing a solid, featureless green, every attempt by the onboard computers completely overwhelmed.

       “Well, fix it!” Captain Taylor bellowed, as the destroyer rocked again and a water plume rose high on their port side. Honest to Jesus, if she didn’t know any better she would have sworn that was an underwater mine!

       Ears held out his hands, his fingers hovering inches away from the complex controls. “But I don’t even know what’s wrong, Skip! This…this is impossible!”

       “Fix it anyway!” Jones demanded, as yet another explosion shook the warship.

       “Forget target acquisitions! Every station fire blind into the water!” Taylor shouted into the hand mike. “Weapons Officer, set depth charges for—” That was when she saw a dozen metallic spheres rise to the surface of the ocean surrounding the convoy. They were covered with short, dull spikes and…

       Mines! The convoy was being attacked by bleeding underwater mines! she realized in shock. But any British navy ship could withstand the concentrated attack of a dozen conventional mines, maybe twice that number!

       Except that as she watched, more and more of the dark spheres appeared on the waves, dozens upon dozens of them, until they made the sea look like a cobblestone street. Taylor could barely believe the sight. It was a nightmare come true. There had to be thousands of them! There wasn’t a ship in the world that could withstand that sort of mass attack. But how had the things gotten so close? Had the sonar been sabotaged? That was the only logical answer, because otherwise it would mean that—

       The entire ocean seemed to erupt into a solid sheet of flame as the jostling mines clanged into one another to start a hellish chain reaction, a nonstop series of bone-jarring blasts that filled the universe. Briefly, men and women screamed as there arose the terrible keening of tortured metal being twisted out of shape. But even as Captain Taylor dived for the self-destruct button that would destroy the communications code in the main computer, she felt the ship heave upward, and for an unknowable length of time there was only pain and chaos.

      FIGHTING HER WAY back to consciousness, Captain Taylor found herself waist deep in water, with the strange sensation of being

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