Warhead (37 page)

Carter glanced around from the rolling dark sea ahead of him. Foam smashed against the windscreen. ‘Yeah, my Browning is like a brother, a trusted friend. Unlike a lot of men I’ve known, this piece of metal has never let me down. It’s like an extension of my own body—and of my soul.’

‘It just a gun, Carter.’

‘No, it’s more than that. Mongrel, the only emotional attachments you’ve ever made were with that one-legged whore in Jakarta, and with the large yellow v-bin outside the kebab shop on Portobello Road. You could never truly understand my sentiments.’

‘Ha? Crazy talk! Just drive, Carter. Just drive.’

‘This ain’t a Ford Cortina, Mongrel.’

‘You far too sarcastic for a man on a mission.’

Carter grinned in the gloom, eyes black and face lit by the glow of the boat’s control panel. ‘Sometimes our fucked-up squaddie humour is all that we’ve got to keep us sane.’

‘I raise glass to that, my old
drook
.’

They had killed the lights ten minutes earlier, switching to stealth mode and slowing their speed drastically. Now they cruised across the rolling, heaving black sea. The rain still hammered down, crashing against the Viper’s roof panels, and the storm looked like it had no intention of relenting. Carter and Mongrel pulled on wetsuits and checked all their weapons for a third and final time. They did not intend to actually swim but they were unsure what they would find deep down under the sea in the Submarine Graveyard, and wanted to be prepared for anything.

Finally, Mongrel called a halt. His ECube glowed briefly and Mongrel nodded to himself, muttering a mixture of some Slavic language and, apparently, German—a rapid-fire string of expletives that Carter could not follow.

‘We ready?’ asked Carter. The Viper ZX, using a digital engine-anchor, was rolling on the surging waves of the dark sea.

Mongrel glanced up. He took a deep breath and gave a single nod.

‘Game on,’ he said.

The Viper dived. Carter and Mongrel left the storm behind, and a new darkness flooded their world as silence enveloped them. The only sound was the steady crooning
thrum
of the engines, and Carter eased the Viper around in a gentle arc in its sixty-degree descent as Mongrel navigated, using the instrument displays illuminated by the eerie blue glow of his unfolded alloy ECube.

‘You ever been down here before?’ asked Mongrel, his voice barely more than a whisper.

Carter shook his head. ‘No. But I’ve seen the vid footage—from before the time when the Nex took over the complex. It looked awesome.’

‘I, too, seen those images. If Sub Graveyard as big as I think, then finding Justus will be like looking for needle in haystack.’

‘Yeah, but Justus is our man—he’s Spiral. We have his data encoded: if he is aboard the prison, the torture cell—call it what you will—then the ECube should be able to pinpoint him.’

‘If our tech work in the Nex environment.’

Carter grinned savagely. ‘Yeah, that as well.’

They moved through the dark depths and to Carter’s mind it seemed like travelling in space. They could quite easily have been piloting a spacecraft through the cold vacuum of some unchartered galaxy.

As they began their final approach Carter slowed the Viper once more. Its engines hissed into silence and the advanced Kawasaki De-Vib Shock Nulls rattled softly as they neutralised any vibrations that the Viper might otherwise have sent out in its passage through the sea.

‘I hope we got right place,’ muttered Mongrel.

‘Yeah, or it’s goodbye, world.’

A distant light came into view. A yellow globe, it was soon joined by others as the Viper crept down and down towards the underwater world of the Submarine Graveyard. Slowly the undersea prison base—once the creation of Spiral and used to house the most dangerous criminals, usually for interrogation purposes—crept into view. The Submarine Graveyard was, as its name suggested, a dumping ground for decommissioned submarines. Originally, the premises for its construction had been a simple one: drop a titanic anchor-weight to the seabed with a cable five metres wide attached which led straight up to the designated anchor point on the surface. To this central pivot could be moored any number of old and crumbling submarines, a natural resting place for them.

Over the years upwards of two hundred subs had been ‘retired’ to this distant stretch of water where the Labrador Sea and the Atlantic Ocean met. The anchor stone had been dropped and had lodged against the Greenland Shield, an undersea shelf of ancient rock that connected Greenland to Canada. The submarines had duly been moored, a twisting spiral of dark and rotting hulks drifting up out of the gloomy depths, each with its own trailing lead connecting it to the core of the anchor cable.

Searching for a discreet interrogation centre away from the prying eyes of the military and from interfering national governments, Spiral had, masquerading as one of its major front organisations, signed certain deals with various navies. It had effectively purchased the graveyard and then dropped its own highly advanced core, an inhabitable Titanium II alloy column, a circular tower block which was towed by freight tugs and then made a controlled descent into the cold deep waters.

Next the Sub-Core was linked to many of the ancient submarines by coiled tubes large enough for men and women to be transferred through. The submarines themselves had become cells for certain dangerous individuals. The Submarine Graveyard was born: a prison-tomb for the dangerous and insane. Now under Nex control, it was a control and torture centre that had long since dropped out of Spiral jurisdiction. Carter and Mongrel had little idea what to expect, little notion of what they would really find. They only knew that Justus was being held there. And they had to get him out.

Carter’s eyes focused on the dim silver Sub-Core, a huge upright tube glittering with thousands of tiny portholes. From this central structure spun many drifting umbilicals, twisting away into the darkness and connecting the ‘trunk’ of the undersea base to its dead-submarine ‘branches’.

Everything was moving: the tube walkways, the distant submarines still linked by huge black chains to their original ancient anchor cable. The Sub-Core itself swayed, only a subtle movement in the undersea currents but it played tricks with Carter’s mind as he sat there, attempting to take in the enormity of what lay before him.

‘I not realise it so
big,’
said Mongrel at last.

‘It’s fucking
huge.
You’re right. Needle in a haystack, mate. A microscopic needle and a titanic haystack.’

And then eerie sounds drifted to the two Spiral agents through the water. A distant groaning, metal against metal: the long-drawn-out moans of slowly rotting, settling submarines as they jerked and tugged at their barnacle-crusted chain leashes, then relaxed again and let those chains clank and fold down in huge dark loops before dragging them taut once more.

The Viper cruised on, its speed shaved now by an apprehensive Carter. The sounds grew louder and Carter felt goose bumps creeping up his arms and spine.

‘They sound like they in pain,’ muttered Mongrel.

‘They sound like they’re dying,’ agreed Carter.

‘This remind me too much of damned Kamus.’

The Kamus was an old Spiral base in the Austrian Alps: a maze of tunnels and redoubts that led deep down under the mountains themselves. This mountain fortress had been the scene of a series of bizarre murders and had become something of a dark legend: a deserted Spiral stronghold where evil had invaded, seeping from the mountains themselves to take a hold on the minds of the people working within. In total, forty-six people had died—men, women, children. It was said that the Kamus was cursed and, even now—decades after it had been abandoned—haunted, some versions of the story told of the denizens of Hell walking the deep dark corridors. One version said that Spiral had intruded on an ancient lair of the Devil himself.

Mongrel nodded. ‘It definitely remind me of Kamus.’

‘In what way?’

‘Same creepy feeling. Like you know something bad going to happen.’

Carter smiled grimly. ‘Something bad
is
going to happen. I’ve just fucking arrived.’

Mongrel stared hard at Carter. ‘What your thoughts on infiltration?’

Carter considered this. He had, of course, been giving it a lot of thought. Removing his own battered black alloy ECube, he spun it in his hand as he stroked out several patterns. It reconstructed itself in his palm, and a tiny red-laser projection appeared in the air above it, spinning as Carter spoke, linked to his words and tagging his meanings by the use of simple RI algorithms. ‘Stealth is an option, but there are many fail-safes built into the Submarine Graveyard. After all, it was developed as a prison, and because the cells are actual submarines that are situated away from the main Sub-Core, they present easy targets for anybody with their mind set on a prison break.’

‘If you have right undersea equipment.’

‘Yes. And if you can actually
find
the damned place. Consequently, there are automated defences—Sonic Cannons, mounted Granite Lasers and NeedleHarpoon emplacements—mainly situated in and around the Sub-Core but with the ability to scan, fire on and destroy any of the submarines in the locality—or any approaching craft.’

‘That make it tricky.’ Mongrel rubbed at his stubble. ‘Did Priest have any ideas when he send us on this mad-fool errand?’

‘Yes, but I won’t repeat them,’ said Carter darkly. ‘They mainly involved the central premise of protection—by God, of course—and putting our complete faith in Him. Not exactly what I would describe as
guaranteed entry strategies.
Anyway, for us to get the Viper in close enough, even to a submarine—that’s assuming Justus is being kept in a submarine and not in the Sub-Core itself-we would have to pass before the all-seeing eyes of the defence systems. Not good.’

‘Alternatives?’

Carter smiled. ‘The Sub-Core drains a lot of power. Enough to power a huge city, in fact. Where does it get its power from?’

Mongrel frowned, staring at the red-laser image. ‘The sun?’

‘That would need cables connecting the Sub-Core to the surface and easy-to-spot solar panels. What’s the point of a secret undersea base when you’ve got big silver panels floating on the surface of the Atlantic? No, there’s a main sunken cable that runs across the Greenland Shield all the fucking way to Canada.’

Mongrel nodded. ‘And?’

‘I think it’s time we set a trap.’

The Viper ejected a tiny PopBot, a small floating alloy sphere about the size of a football, and then dropped away into the darkness, deep down and away from the Submarine Graveyard. Slowly, the echoing, haunting sounds of distressed metal and dying subs faded until only water and a soothing silence surrounded the Viper. Carter dipped its nose and pushed it into a more rapid descent. Mongrel worked the scanners, and images flickered onto a screen—relayed digitally from the PopBot.

It took them a while to locate the main supply line, a twelve-inch-thick cable swaying gently and covered with dark tangled seaweed. The line described an arc through the waters and disappeared into the unfathomable depths. Carter halted the Viper, then armed the machine’s Greeneye laser.

‘Is this going to be messy?’ asked Mongrel.

‘I hope so.’ The green beam flashed out, slicing into the supply cable and Carter guided it through the thick insulation. The cable thrashed wildly, and Carter glanced at the digital feed relaying images of the Submarine Graveyard. The Sub-Core’s lights flickered intermittently, then glowed bright as emergency power kicked in.

Carter cut the Greeneye, and the cable sagged against its emergency retaining loops which were there in case of improbable cable severance. Picking up the pieces from the bottom of the Atlantic would not be an easy process.

‘How long, you think?’ asked Mongrel.

Carter sat back, stretching and pulling free a cigarette. He lit the weed, took a long drag, and through a haze of smoke which made Mongrel cough said, ‘Shouldn’t be long. A place that size fucking
eats
power. They will need to re-establish a connection—and quick.’

Mongrel pulled free a canteen and took a hefty pull. He grinned at Carter. ‘Want some?’

‘What, some of your scabby water?’

‘Is rum.’

‘What have I told you about drinking on ops?’

‘Is only little sip. And we
at sea.
After all, they once dish out rum to sailors in navy. It settles stomach, so I told, and—aye aye, me hearties—so it does.’ Mongrel twitched, squinting with one eye in an attempt to impersonate a pirate king.

‘Mongrel?’

‘Yes, Carter?’

‘Please, please stop.’

‘Yes, Uncle Carter.’

They watched the PopBot vid feed. Within ten minutes a hatch opened and released a long sleek submarine—much smaller than a naval war vessel, but nevertheless a serious subaquatic device capable of low-level undersea warfare. ‘They not taking any chances.’

‘I can see that.’

Carter started the engines, whirled the Viper around and headed out into the darkness, settling it once again and killing the power when they had travelled for a kilometre. The Viper’s cloaking devices buzzed softly, disguising their underwater presence.