Atlantis: Bermuda Triangle a-2 Read online

  Since their abrupt departure from their home base in Groton, Connecticut, earlier in the day, the entire crew had been wondering what was up. The sub was sailing due south at flank speed. There was also the factor of a strange man being brought on board and kept isolated in the captain’s stateroom since sailing.

  “At ease,” McCallum called out as he squeezed into the officers’ wardroom. The captain sat at the end of table, placing a file folder with a Top Secret cover in front of him.

  “Gentlemen, we’re currently operating under direct orders from the National Command Authority. You can read into that the President himself has authorized this mission. Our mission is to proceed with all speed to designated grid coordinates north of Puerto Rico and remain on-station until further orders. Our task is to destroy the USS Wyoming, which is currently missing, if it reappears with hostile intentions, before it can launch any of its ballistic missiles.”

  “Sir-” his executive officer, Commander Barrington began to protest but McCallum cut him off.

  “Before disappearing, the Wyoming’s crew received a fatal dose of radiation. If it reappears, you can be assured that it would not be manned by our fellow sailors.”

  McCallum could see the shock on his officers’ faces. He knew it was best to hammer home the situation and let them sort it out afterwards.

  “Gentlemen, there is a strong possibility that the Wyoming might reappear with people other than the crew on board. In the 70’s a Russian submarine that disappeared into the Devil’s Sea gate reappeared a week later. The Russians sunk it. When our people tried to recover the wreckage they pulled up a section that had bodies of men who were not part of the crew on board. The nuclear warheads had been worked on and some are still missing as far as we know. No one knows how these non-crew members got on the ship, but the fact is they were there.

  “And, as you all know, a Trident- which had to have come from the Wyoming- was fired out of the Bermuda Triangle gate yesterday and nuclear warheads were detonated in the Atlantic Ocean. That leaves twenty-three Tridents unaccounted for.

  “And something else tells us subs can come back out of this gate, sometimes long after they’ve disappeared.”

  McCallum reached to his side and opened the door. Another officer wearing the same rank stepped in- the only difference was that this officer’s uniform was outdated, not worn since the Navy upgraded in 1975.

  “Gentlemen, this is Captain Bateman of the USS Scorpion.”

  Given that the Scorpion had disappeared in 1968 the appearance of the ship’s captain- and his relatively youthful appearance belying thirty years- the officers of the Seawolf forgot even military formality for a few seconds, before belatedly springing to their feet, as required when the captain of a ship entered the room.

  “At ease, gentlemen,” Bateman said.

  As the officers retook their seats, Captain McCallum opened the file folder and pulled out some pictures. He passed them around the table. “This is the Scorpion. It is currently being held under cover in the pens at Groton. As you can see, it appears as it did on the day it disappeared over thirty years ago.” McCallum pointed to his right. “As you can also see, so does Captain Bateman. Gentlemen, he doesn’t know why any of this happened or even how, but because he is sitting here in front of you, we have to accept it has happened. Captain Bateman is here to assist in whatever way he can as we patrol near the anomaly known as the Bermuda Triangle gate.

  “We know little about this area- which you can see on the satellite imagery defined by the black triangle. Captain Bateman’s ship was part of an experiment in 1968 to learn more about it. While a SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance plane entered a similar area over Cambodia called the Angkor gate, the Scorpion entered the Bermuda Triangle gate to attempt to make radio communications with the Blackbird. This would prove that there was a link between the two sites. I’ll let Captain Bateman tell you what happened.”

  Bateman was a short, balding man, his face pale. His eyes held a distance to them and as he spoke he kept them on the table, not making contact with anyone. His left hand had a tremor to it and he gripped the edge of his chair to keep it still.

  “We entered the area. We didn’t have much information about what we were doing, other than crossing into a certain area and attempting to make communications via a surface buoy. We were on a heading of nine-zero degrees at a depth of two hundred feet. Our location was about sixty miles north of the northwest end of Puerto Rico.

  “We began transmitting on high frequency radio. We made contact with the Blackbird, even though it was over Cambodia- which was not possibly unless the signal was traveling through the anomaly we were in directly to the anomaly the aircraft was in.

  “The Blackbird began reporting system’s trouble,” Bateman’s voice was almost a monotone. “We were ordered to abort. I told the helm to come hard about. Then we got pinged.”

  “Sonar?” McCallum asked.

  “It was like someone was using sonar on us, but the tone was slightly different. I didn’t have much time to dwell on that because we then had a problem in the reactor. Instruments indicated a coolant line failure. I ordered the reactor off-line.

  “Then we picked up something very big coming in our direction on radar. Very big.” Bateman looked up from the table for the first time. “I’d never seen anything other than a land mass that large on the radar screen except this object was moving. I ordered us to emergency surface.”

  Bateman fell silent.

  “And then?” McCallum prompted.

  “And then nothing,” Bateman said. “I blacked out. Everyone on the crew did. When we came to, we were cruising at two hundred feet in the same general area we had been in before. Except it was over thirty years later, the reactor was fine, and we had people on board who had come through what you call the Angkor gate. That’s all I know.”

  “Our concern is to stop anything coming out of the gate,” McCallum said. “There are no plans to go into it. We are to stand off at a safe distance and be ready to engage targets.”

  “What if the large contact my ship picked up comes out?” Bateman asked.

  “We will engage and destroy it,” McCallum said.

  “I think you need to be prepared for system failures,” Bateman said. “I didn’t have time to even think about combat when we were attacked. This boat is very nice and you have very sophisticated devices, but I recommend you come up with a plan to fight if you lose all your sensors and targeting equipment.”

  “Our master computer has a back-up,” McCallum said to Bateman. “It’s also shielded to survive the electro-magnetic pulse generated by a nuclear explosion.”

  The captain turned to his officer. “You have your orders,” McCallum said, ending the meeting. The officers filed out of the stateroom.

  McCallum went to his stateroom. Built into the wall, next to his small desk, was a safe. It held the key that allowed the captain of the Seawolf to launch nuclear weapons. It also held sealed orders McCallum had been handed by a CIA man just prior to sailing.

  McCallum opened the safe and retrieved the envelope holding the orders. He cut through the seal and slid the piece of paper out. He read through twice then ran the paper through his shredder. He picked up the phone on his desk and ordered the officer in charge of navigation to make a slight change to their course and destination.

  Chapter 6

  THE PAST

  999 AD

  Ragnarok turned the rudder over to Bjarni, and sat down on the rearmost bench. He peeled back his tunic to check the wound on his shoulder.

  “You must clean it out,” Tam Nok said. “The wounds of these creatures can be poisonous.”

  Her comment irritated Ragnarok, as if he had never been wounded before. Every weapon could cause poison to grow in the body. The skin had been sliced smoothly. Ragnarok squeezed around the edges, forcing more blood to flow out. He called out for Askell the Healer. The old man, bent from years behind an oar, made his way down the ship and peered at the woun
d with sad gray eyes.

  He checked Ragnorak’s chest. “A burn. It is already clean. It will heal,” was the brief summation. “I will work on your shoulder.”

  He reached into the large pouch hanging out his side and brought out what he would need. As Askell pressed a poultice onto the opening, Ragnarok considered his situation. They were holding course away from land. Bjarni-the-Farsighted was excellent at being able to keep the ship moving in a straight line without benefit of landmarks. Ragnarok wasn’t quite sure how he did it, but the skill had been proven over and over again during the years they had sailed together that he had an implicit faith in the helmsman. Fog still surrounded them, although the wind had died somewhat. Nothing was visible in any direction except dark gray. Most men dared not sail out of sight of land, for fear of becoming lost on the open sea, but Ragnarok knew once the sun rose, they could always reverse course and sail in the direction the sun came from to find land once more. He had sailed up and down the coast of Norway many times, although never this far north.

  He had come along the coast looking for arable land, a valuable commodity in this part of the world. All he had found were steeper hills, worse weather, the burning mountain and fog and subsequently the encounter the previous evening.

  There were rumors going around the Viking world of strange things happening. Traders from the south talked of earthquakes that killed many. The religion of the Christians had taken over much of the world south of the Vikings and even now was claiming many a Norseman converted. And there were many Christian monks who were warning of the coming of the millennium since the birth of one they called God. That there was to be a second coming after much devastation.

  Ragnarok didn’t believe in the Christian god. They claimed they had only one, yet they spoke of three, which he didn’t understand. And while some of the priests of this religion claimed pending doom, others said nothing of it. He had participated in raids on several monasteries in England and Eire Land and while he didn’t accept their religion, he did respect the fortitude of the monks he encountered who wavered not the slightest in their steadfast belief in their god, even as they died on the sword.

  Ragnarok believed in the Norse gods of his mother, but they were not the most important thing in his life. The ship that swayed under his feet was the center of his life and had been for years.

  The longship was over eighty feet long and fifteen feet wide at the center beam, a large but not overly big longship. Ragnarok had heard that King Olaf Tryggvason in Norway had had a ship built the previous year over 160 feet long, twice the size of his ship. Ragnarok wished he could see such a massive ship, but he also knew that if he ever came across the King’s ship on the water, it would be the last thing he would ever see unless he could outrun it.

  The keel of Ragnarok’s boat was hewn from a single large oak tree and curved using the strength of many men. The keel beam was carved in a T-shape, the thinner end of which extended into the water. Long experience at sea had taught the Vikings that this shape aided in steering a true course.

  The ship’s ribs were also of solid oak to give strength and stability. The outside of the ship was constructed using inch thick sections of overlapping oak planking called strakes. The strakes were nailed to the ribs and also tied with spruce-root bindings. The total effect was a very strong, yet flexible ship, able to take on the batterings of an open ocean sailing yet drawing such little water that it could easily be pulled up on a beach and then pushed back into the water.

  The mast was actually not very tall for such a long ship, only twenty-five feet high, hewn from a single tree. What the sail lacked in height it made up for in width, being over forty feet wide. That unique design allowed it to be raised or lowered quickly. It was made of a double layer of coarse wool, a dusky gray color except where a large blood red hand silhouette had been painstakingly dyed into the cloth.

  Supplies were carried under floorboards that gave access to the low lying space beneath them and the keel. Just behind the mast, an iron pot was hung over a large hearth stone where, when the sea was totally calm and conditions favorable, a fire could be used to cook meals. Those conditions were few and far between and the crew usually subsisted on dried meat and stale bread while they were at sea. Caskets and barrels where lashed here and there, containing other supplies and, most importantly, drinking water.

  The crew was totally exposed to the sea at all times, the only shelter coming when they slept under the nominal cover of the rowing seats, three feet wide, that stretched across the width of the ship. There were fifteen seats, accommodating thirty rowers. Over each row station shields hung on hooks. At the prow of the boat, a dragon head had been carved, the beast’s eyes searching the sea ahead.

  The rudder was also a uniquely Viking invention, fixed to a large block on the right side of the rear of the boat. Bjarni steered the boat using a tiller bar. On the opposite side of the tiller, two vertical wood poles were set into the top of the hull, which the men held onto, rears sticking over the sea, in order to void their bowels.

  The ship was all Ragnarok had and he had helped build it over the course of three years as a young man. He had sailed it for the past ten years and it had been his only home for the past four.

  A voice came from the front of the boat. “We’re clear of the fog!”

  Ragnarok looked up and the front of the boat was bathed in the early morning light. They slid out of the fog. Ragnarok looked back. The fog was like a wall behind them, the gray surface covering the horrors they had experienced.

  “We’re safe now,” Tam Nok said.

  Of more interest to Ragnarok than his wound was his passenger. The one who called herself a Disir, an emissary of the Gods, sent to Earth to help man. At least that was the role of Disir in the stories his mother had told him. Other than deflecting the golden beam from the Valkyrie, she had done little to show her powers. That there were Gods and that those Gods sent their minions to Earth to interfere in the affairs of men, Ragnarok had no doubt. There were too many unexplained things, too many wonders and horrors for it all simply to be a matter of chance. The Norse believed the Gods had made man, and thus they could play with him as they willed. Man could fight the Gods to the best of his abilities and sometimes even win if one was brave and true enough.

  And if one lost fighting the Gods, the gate to Valhalla would certainly open. For a Viking there was no greater honor than dying bravely in battle, weapon in hand. A man who lived to an old age and died in his bed was viewed with disdain, a drain on the resources of his village. A coward who had simply not sought out that last fight that brought honorable death.

  Valhalla was the hall of chosen slain where men dined and drank deeply at the table of the Gods. Every evening the warriors fought each other to the death and then their wounds and bodies were healed so they could repeat the same the following day. It was the kind of after-life existence that every Viking warrior dreamed of.

  Ragnarok’s mother had been a story-teller, one who knew all the tales and on the long winter days and nights, the entire village used to gather around her to hear her voice. Thus Ragnarok knew of the Disir and the Valkyries- unnatural women who meddled in the affairs of men. Even the monsters he had caught glimpses of in the fjord had not shocked him. He had seen strange things on and in the ocean during his journeys and heard tales from men he believed of even stranger creatures. Now he had his own tale to tell, although he knew he never would- because he had left the enemy standing on the battlefield.

  Like many in this part of the world, Ragnarok knew the world was a much larger place than what he saw and experienced. There was always more water and lands beyond over the horizon and he had a burning desire to see as much of it as he could before his end came in battle.

  Despite all that, he had never had someone who claimed to come from the Gods on his boat. The Disir who called herself Tam Nok- a strange name indeed- was seated on the same bench, on the other side of the longship, five feet away.

  “Wh
ere are you from?” Ragnarok asked.

  Tam Nok pointed in the direction of the rising sun. “A long way, a very long way in that direction.”

  “Rome?” Ragnarok had met a man in Denmark once who claimed to be from that land of legend. Where it was supposed to be warm almost all the year and the sun was always high at noon. An ancient kingdom which had once conquered all of Gaul and Germany and most of England. The man had had several gold coins that he claimed were Roman and Ragnarok had never seen the like before.

  “Beyond Rome. Beyond Persia. Beyond India.”

  Ragnarok could only stare at the woman. Other than the white hair she looked much too young to be speaking of traversing lands he knew of only in legend. She reached into her cloak and pulled out a long tube of a wood he had never seen.

  “Bamboo,” Tam Nok said, catching his questioning look.

  “Bamboo?” Ragnarok repeated.

  She tapped the wood. “This is bamboo. It grows where I came from. Tall. As tall as your tallest trees. It is hollow but very strong.”

  Ragnarok glanced across the woman at Hrolf, who shrugged. They had heard many tall tales, some true, some made up by braggarts- except she had the wood in her hand and he saw no reason why she would lie about such a thing.

  She removed a plug in the end and carefully pulled out a piece of parchment out of the wood. She unrolled it on the bench between her and Ragnarok.

  “What is this?” Ragnarok was staring at the lines drawn on the paper.

  “A map.”

  “Of?” Ragnarok was trying to locate some place he knew but the scale was strange.

  “The world. Most of the world.” She tapped the map with a long, thin finger. “We are here.”

  Ragnarok focused on that point, then expanded his view. He recognized the coast of Norway, the inlets, but if that small part was Norway, this map covered so much more. He felt excitement such as he had never known before, different than a battle rage, a yearning to know what lands and seas those lines represented.