Protocol 15 (eBook)

A Thriller

Nathan Goodman (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
300 Seiten
Thought Reach Press (Verlag)
978-0-00-010279-9 (ISBN)

Infos

What do you see when the demons come?
For Special Agent Jana Baker, fear has a face.
Terrorist Waseem Jarrah steals a nuclear weapon, and Jana's swirling nightmare begins again. He's got the United States in his crosshairs, and Baker might be the only asset that can stop him. But Jarrah is way ahead in the game, and Jana's terrifying flashbacks begin to scratch at her psyche. If she doesn't gain control of them, the next scream she hears may be her own.
Protocol 15 can be read stand-alone, but is the second book in the Special Agent Jana Baker spy-thriller series. If you like the heart-pounding action of Brad Thor, the steel-riveting pace of Tom Clancy, and the jaw dropping suspense of Dean Koontz, then you'll love a series that combines all of their best traits in a fast-paced, captivating, and emotion-filled thriller into the world of international terrorism.

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14

SOUND COLLISION

Submarine USS Colorado. October 16, 1:51 a.m. local time. The Persian Gulf (Oct. 15, 4:51 p.m. EST).

 

The geologist, Branson, and the executive officer wove their way through the internals of the sub, toward the lowermost deck.

In the control room, the captain said, “Quartermaster, what’s the current sounding?”

“Ocean floor is at seven hundred and seventeen feet, Captain.”

“Roger that.” He turned toward the dive control officer. “Dive control, make your depth six hundred feet. Five degree down bubble. All ahead one-third. Let’s slow the old girl down. Chief of the Boat?”

“Aye, sir,” chirped a reply from the COB, the senior-most enlisted man.

“Radio, conn. Deploy the Deep Siren communications buoy to the surface. We’re going to be sending a coded transmission back to Fifth Fleet.”

“Conn, radio, aye. Prepare for an encoded transmission to Fifth Fleet.”

A young ensign on his first deployment asked the chief, “COB, what’s a Deep Siren?”

“It’s a special buoy made by Raytheon. At the moment, we don’t want to leave our current depth and go close enough to the surface to raise our antenna to radio back to Fleet. And since we can’t send radio transmissions when we’re at this depth, we release a buoy which floats up to the surface. It’s a satellite communications device. We’ll use it to communicate to the Fifth Fleet.”

“How do we retrieve the buoy when we’re done?”

“We don’t.” The chief looked at the captain. “Captain? What’s the message we want to transmit, sir?”

“Just handed it to the radio operator. He’s keying it into the system now. That buoy is rated to float upwards at a rate of about a hundred and fifty feet per minute. Let’s see, if we’re at six hundred feet of depth, that’ll take four minutes to rise to the surface before we can talk with Fifth Fleet. The admiral is never going to believe this. Good Christ, we could be looking at anything from an accident to a deliberate act of war. At any rate, if anyone is alive on that downed boat, a rescue effort has to be launched, and right-the-hell now.”

“Aye, sir,” the COB said. “Sir? Something has been bothering me.”

“Just one thing? What is it COB?”

“It’s just, sir, it feels like we’re smack dab in the middle of someone else’s dogfight. I’d hate to get caught at the scene of the crime, sir.”

The captain stared back at him. “I hear you, COB. That’s part of the reason we need to get this message back to command. I don’t want to get caught down here and have it look like we’re the ones who sank this Russian boat either.” The captain’s banging on the keyboard sounded like an old ticker tape machine gone haywire. He prepared the message describing what they had found, their plans to try to get a look at the sub using the advanced ultrasound mapping equipment, and the list of all other contacts currently on sonar.

“Sonar, conn. Any new contacts, Thomas?”

“Conn, sonar. No, sir. No new contacts.”

“What is the target solution on that DSV mini-sub?” the captain said.

“Conn, sonar. Sierra Two, the DSV mini-sub is proceeding on its original course sir, bearing 029. She’s lugging slowly east, toward Pakistan. She’ll be out of range in about seven minutes, sir.”

“Sonar, Conn, aye. Any sounds of life coming from Sierra One?”

“Conn, sonar. Just the turning of the screws and the same grinding sound. Sounds like metal grinding against sand. Some sounds of air escaping. But, no sir, no sounds that indicate signs of life.”

“Shit.” The captain plucked a sound-powered telephone from above his head to call the executive officer.

LCDR Omansky picked up the phone from the geology workstation in the sub’s lowermost compartment. “XO.”

“XO, get me an update on the ultrasound equipment. Are we ready to deploy the cable? We’re about four hundred yards out from the downed boat.”

“Aye, sir” the XO replied. “The geologist, Mr. Branson, is ready, sir. Permission to start streaming the ultrasound cable?”

“Permission granted. And XO, be sure Mr. Branson records everything, and be sure he understand the gravity of the situation. He’s a civilian, and as much as I love civilians, I’d hate to have to flush him out one of the torpedo tubes if he screws this up.”

“I heard that,” Branson said.

“Aye, sir,” the executive officer said.

“Captain?” the chief of the boat said. “The buoy is away, sir.”

As the Deep Siren communications buoy floated toward the ocean’s surface with its encrypted message in tow, the captain tried to think through all possible scenarios. If the downed submarine was intact, then it was possible that sailors were trapped inside. And in the submarine community, the unwritten code among sailors is that if submariners are trapped, no matter who they are, you do anything you can to help them. Aside from coordinating a rescue effort, the Colorado itself had no means of directly connecting to the downed boat to pull sailors out.

The other conundrum revolved around the fact that this boat was the Simbirsk, a Russian-made ballistic-missile submarine that had reportedly been scrapped years earlier. The captain was disturbed at the very thought of it. If the Russians reported to NATO that they had scrapped the Simbirsk, yet had illegally sold her, what else had they sold, and to whom? There’s no way they’d sell her with warheads aboard, thought the captain, there’s no way.

“Chief of the Boat,” the captain said, “give me a rundown of all systems.”

“Aye, sir,” the chief replied. “We’re at battle stations, torpedo tubes one and four are loaded, tubes are flooded, and outer doors are closed. Depth, six hundred feet. Speed, ahead one-third. The Deep Siren communications buoy is deployed to the surface and still within tactical range. Awaiting further orders from Fifth Fleet. Ultrasound equipment is deployed and is scanning the ocean floor below. The cable is extended to seventy-five yards. Sonar operator listening for any signs of life aboard Sierra One. Sonar also just reported a single surface contact, Sierra Three, an Iranian fishing trawler.”

A young communications officer spoke out. “Sir, incoming message traffic from Fifth Fleet. Received by the buoy, sir.”

A paper printout pushed from a digital printer next to the communications officer. The captain tore it off and read.

“All right, no surprise there. We are to investigate the wreckage with all due priority. No shit.” The captain pulled a phone from the overhead. “XO, how much more time does Mr. Branson need to finish the ultrasound survey? I’m getting nervous hovering over a downed nuclear submarine. Somebody might get the wrong idea. Know what I mean?”

“Aye, sir,” the XO said. “Mr. Branson says his scan will be done within thirty minutes. We’ll be back in the control room after that and can pull up the scans from there. For all his joking around down here, he actually knows what the hell he’s doing.”

“Thirty minutes, huh? Just in time to hit the mess deck,” the captain said.

“Aye, sir. Apparently geologists just love chicken-fried steak and canned oranges. Sir, it will take a good thirty minutes after the ultrasound is completed for the computer to finish crunching the data it gathers. After that, we can look at the high-res images.”

“Conn, aye,” the captain said. “Tell Mr. Branson no steak for him until he’s done.”

The level of tension in the control room was palpable. Most of the sailors had never been under a real battle-stations alert. Sailors on other parts of the USS Colorado began to hear the scuttlebutt that a downed Russian-made submarine was on the ocean floor just below them. It was a sobering thought. Each sailor knew the dangers of their assignments, but none of them actually thought they’d be in a situation like this. The Russian-made sub had sunk, and sunk for a reason. It could have been hit by a torpedo, depth charge, mine, or had some type of internal catastrophe. But with no sounds of life coming from the hull, the full complement of submariners were likely dead.

The executive officer and the geologist walked into the control room. “Captain?” LCDR Omansky said. “The ultrasound scan is completed.”

“We’ll be able to see the first images in the next twenty-five minutes,” Mr. Branson said.

“Thank God. I want to get to the bottom of this, no pun intended, and relay what we find back to fleet. In the meantime, we’ll hold our position until we see what’s down—”

“Conn! Sonar! New contact, designate Sierra Four, bearing 041. It sounds like it’s submerging. I’d say we’ve got a fast-attack boat headed right for us, sir!”

“Range?” the captain yelled.

“About twenty thousand yards. She’s increasing speed. Now that she’s submerged, I’d say she’s doing at least twenty knots.”

“Goddammit. Helm, all ahead standard. Bring us up to speed slowly, son. He may not know we’re here. I want to keep it quiet. Fire control, make torpedo tubes one and four ready in all respects. Sonar, conn. Got an ID on that fast mover?”

“Conn, sonar. Computer’s making its ID now, sir . . . computer IDs Sierra Four as the PNS Hamza. An Agosta-class, Pakistani navy attack submarine.”

Standing in between the sonar station and the control room,...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 30.5.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-10: 0-00-010279-2 / 0000102792
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-010279-9 / 9780000102799