Deep Fire Rising Page 14

  “So you stumbled onto something new.”

  “Yet the consequences are the same.”

  “What consequences?”

  “For lack of a better way of putting it, we stopped time. The magnetic pressure, like gravity at a black hole, created a bubble around the test submarine. As the light within that bubble became trapped, the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle took over.”

  “So your experiment no longer had an observer?”

  “And in the quantum world when there is no observer, nothing happens. That tree in the forest is still standing until someone goes out to look at it.”

  “What did that do to your sub?”

  “In essence, for the submarine time stopped and the rest of the universe vanished. A couple of scientists on our team thought this could have happened. That’s why we took precautions. We installed a trigger device using quantum entwining that would cut the power to the magnetic sphere around the submarine and return the normal flow of time. In theory it would reappear in our world.”

  “Only you missed and it came back in Nevada. Why?”

  “ ‘Tide and time wait for no man,’ ” she quoted. “We didn’t miss at all. The earth rotates at more than a thousand miles an hour and travels around the sun even faster. Factor in our solar system’s rotation in the Milky Way and you can see we didn’t do half bad just returning the sub back to our own planet. It could have just as easily refocused in orbit or on the far side of the moon. We couldn’t bring it back in the ocean because we couldn’t guarantee that the sub could come back above its crush depth, so it was decided to trigger its return at a remote secure facility on land. Area 51 was the perfect location.”

  “DS-Two?”

  “Destination Site Two,” Ira said. “The primary return coordinates were the area the sub first vanished off Jacksonville, Florida, the hope being that if it did fade out it would only be for an instant.”

  Ira’s use of the word “fade” was what triggered the memory. It was one of the favorite stories told by UFO enthusiasts, conspiracy nuts and believers in the absurd.

  “You’re describing the Philadelphia Experiment,” Mercer said.

  “That story was what piqued my interest in physics,” Dr. Marie admitted.

  Though debunked by the very man who started the myth, the Philadelphia Experiment remained a popular topic in fringe Internet chat rooms. The legend centered around a navy vessel, the USS Eldridge. As the story goes, during World War Two a secret program, Project Rainbow, was initiated by Einstein and the famed inventor Nicola Tesla. They wanted to create a light-bending camouflage using enormous magnetic pressures to hide Allied ships from Nazi U-boats. A newly commissioned destroyer was outfitted with all sorts of scientific gear including massive electric generators. During the first experiments, everything seemed to go as planned. A green-blue fog grew around the vessel when the equipment was turned on and moments later the ship faded from view. It reappeared when the power was cut.

  The experiment was repeated several times until August 1943. Some adjustments were made to the ship and when the system was activated again it faded into a fog, only this time it reappeared an instant later in Norfolk, Virginia. A few moments later it returned to Philadelphia and emerged from the unnatural mist. If this tale wasn’t fantastic enough, a witness aboard a nearby cargo ship, the SS Andrew Furuseth, named Carlos Allende, reported seeing some members of her crew walking around in a daze, while others continued to fade in and out, as if they were ghosts. He claimed that still others were fused to the ship’s deck, grotesque mannequins caught in poses of unimaginable agony.

  “But that was bullshit!” Mercer exclaimed. “I remember reading that years later Allende himself admitted to making up the whole story. Besides which, it was proved the Eldridge was never in Philly and Einstein was busy working on the Manhattan Project.”

  Briana Marie smiled for the first time since Mercer had burst into the rec room. “Do you think the fact that it never really happened matters? Science is the melding of experimentation and inspiration. Where the ideas come from is irrelevant. There are countless examples of inventions being inspired by legends, myths, and science fiction. Dick Tracy’s wrist radio was just a fantasy in the 1930s, but you don’t question the cell phone. Jules Verne described an atomic-powered submarine almost a century before Admiral Rickover built the USS Nautilus, which he named after Verne’s creation. Science fiction preceded the laser, radar, sonar, space travel, cloning, and hundreds of other technologies. Don’t you think we scientists are influenced by what we read as children, thinking that someday we could make real what those authors only dreamed about?” She became heated.

  “I’ve spent my professional life trying to realize the bullshit of the Philadelphia Experiment and you saw the goddamn proof.”

  “Okay,” Mercer retreated. “I’ll admit that I have read a little about quantum teleportation. But all that’s ever been achieved is a couple thousand atoms, basically a ball of gas that was shot from one side of a lab to another. You’re telling me you can move an entire submarine, composed of an incalculable number of atoms, and reassemble it exactly the way it was.”

  “This isn’t quantum teleportation.” She blew a breath. “That word again. This is something new. I call it a magnetic sink. We didn’t deconstruct the sub. We removed it from one of the four known dimensions—the three cardinal points and time. Remove any one dimension from an object and it ceases to be. A shadow is a perfect example. It is a two-dimensional facsimile of an object, but not the object itself. I proved that the same principle works with time. We took the sub out of our time and then brought it back.

  “And even you can’t be so naïve to think military research isn’t years ahead of what gets published in the scientific journals. The military had supersonic flight thirty years before Concorde and GPS tracking decades before it became commercially available. The ball of gas experiment you mentioned was ancient history to my project team.”

  “How long was it gone?” Mercer asked, trying to get the conversation back from the abstract.

  She looked at Ira, again seeking permission to divulge another secret.

  He answered for her. “Almost twelve months.”

  They’d had to wait for the earth to nearly circle the sun before they could return the boat to—Mercer didn’t know the right word—reality?

  “The orbital calculations had to be unbelievably precise,” Briana Marie added with pride. “We had to factor in longitude, latitude and altitude. Getting it to return to a secure location like Area 51 meant it would refocus deep underground. That is why we needed miners to tunnel an access shaft. A delay of even a few seconds would have seen the sub return outside of Bakersfield, California, at an altitude of eight thousand feet. A few seconds earlier and it would have come back eleven thousand feet under Lake Powell, Utah.”

  “Ah, how long ago did you bring it back?” Mercer asked, sensing he already knew.

  Ira’s cell phone rang. He pulled it from the inside pocket of his coat and pushed his rolling chair out of immediate earshot. Dr. Marie answered for him. “Four months ago.”

  Something happened out there, something not natural. It was Tisa’s voice Mercer heard in his head. He’d earlier dismissed her comments. Now they sounded like a warning. A bubble erupted in the earth, like a contained nuclear explosion that only lasted a second. Her group had detected the submarine reemerging from wherever it had drifted for the past year.

  A thought struck him. Why the hell would they care?

  They should have assumed the seismic jolt was just an earthquake. Surely other seismograph stations had recorded it and just as quickly discounted it. Central Nevada was a jigsaw of shallow fault lines. Why were they so focused on this single event? Focused enough to try to sabotage the tunneling operation. Was there a leak in Dr. Marie’s department, a whistleblower or a traitor who’d divulged the secret?

  Mercer’s head pounded from the shortened decompression stops he and Sykes had been for
ced to take. He’d seen the proof of Dr. Marie’s work even if he couldn’t grasp the science behind it. For now he’d put that out of his mind. The questions that needed answering were about Tisa Nguyen and her group. Mercer had deliberately withheld how she had rescued him from the Luxor Hotel, but he knew now he’d have to tell Ira. If Dr. Marie’s team had a leak, it had to be plugged.

  Ira had said little during his phone conversation. His expression was grim when he wheeled himself back to the table. “The navy just lost a ship in the Pacific, a cargo vessel. Preliminary search-and-rescue report no survivors. No debris either.”

  Wait, I can give you some evidence. Something unusual is about to happen in the Pacific Ocean. Something involving your group? Mercer had asked. Yes, Tisa had replied.

  Mercer lost all interest in what Dr. Marie had been telling him. “What happened?” His voice cracked in the sudden silence.

  “Unknown. A civilian research ship heard the mayday and is just reaching the last known position. Preliminary intel from Pacific Command reports the ship hit an iceberg, but they were in tropical waters. I’m betting she was rammed by a submarine coming to the surface or maybe a large cargo container that had washed off a freighter. Her last radio call said the ocean had caught fire. I think a container carrying volatile materials split open when the ship hit it and ignited somehow.”

  How do I convince you that the world is about to end? Again Mercer heard Tisa in his head. Obviously me just blurting it out won’t be enough, so I need to show you some kind of proof. And the only way to make that work is if I gain your trust through incremental steps. Are you with me so far?

  This had been late in their conversation. At the time, Mercer still wasn’t sure what to make of the beguiling woman. She seemed rational and totally illogical at the same time. He supposed many mentally ill people sounded the same way. She was trying to convince him, yes, but she didn’t sound as if her world revolved around convincing others of what she believed. Conspiracy addicts needed affirmation to keep themselves from thinking they were nuts. That’s why they fed off each other so much and why the Internet was full of chat rooms concerning the paranormal. But Tisa wasn’t like that. She wanted Mercer to believe her, not because she couldn’t bear him disagreeing. More, it was like she wanted his help and the only way to gain it was to draw him into her world.

  Tisa must have known this when she said something unusual was going to happen in the Pacific. By doling out information like breadcrumbs she could convince him to follow the trail to Santorini, where presumably he’d learn another truth, perhaps what she meant by “the world was about to end.” One thing was clear. He had to be involved with the search for the ship if he was to learn anything further.

  “There’s another possibility,” he said slowly, looking Ira in the eye. “I held back some information about my escape from the Luxor Hotel. Something rather critical.”

  It took fifteen minutes to fill in the details of how Tisa had rescued him, how she appeared to be on the run from her own organization and how she believed the end of the world was coming.

  “I’m just as skeptical as you, Ira,” Mercer concluded. “I wouldn’t have even brought this up if too many coincidences hadn’t already fallen into place.” He ticked them off with his fingers. “The cave-in that killed most of your first work crew, which I suspect was Donny Randall’s handiwork, considering his attempt on my life. The fact Tisa knew when the sub re—what was your word?—refocused at Area 51. The gunmen at my hotel. Tisa’s well-timed rescue. And now a navy ship sinks in the Pacific under unusual circumstances.

  “There are two ways to read this. Either someone on Dr. Marie’s staff leaked information about their experiment and it somehow fell into the hands of a group that wants to stop it for some reason . . .” Mercer trailed off.

  “Or?” Marie and Lasko said as one.

  “Or they detected the sub refocusing, knew the seismic disturbance wasn’t natural and sent a team to investigate. Judging by their organizational sophistication and logistical support, I don’t think this is a new group formed as a result of your work here. They’ve been around for a while, only we’ve never done anything that put us in their sights.”

  “Why should my experiment ‘put us in their sights,’ as you say?”

  Mercer leaned back in his chair. The wet suit was drying and his entire body itched. “I suspect the answer lies out there where the ship sank.”

  “And in Greece?” Ira asked.

  Mercer thought about it, considered the pattern Tisa had set out for him. “No, I think there I’m only going to find more questions.”

  “You’re still going.” Ira made it sound like an order.

  Mercer turned it into a bargaining chip. “Only if you get me to the Pacific to see for myself what happened to the navy’s ship.”

  Ira didn’t hesitate. This was exactly the kind of mission he’d expected Mercer to tackle as special science advisor. “I’ll make the arrangements.”

  “What happens here?” Mercer asked.

  “We’ll finish pumping out the mine so Dr. Marie’s people can get to the sub. I guess then they all head back to their drawing boards and the navy writes off a hundred million dollar mistake.”

  ABOARD THE SEA SURVEYOR II THE PACIFIC

  In the twenty hours since his conversation with Ira, Mercer bounced from Area 51 to Vegas for a commercial flight to Hawaii. From there he hitched a ride on an air force cargo plane headed to Guam. He was met there by navy aircraft carrying crew and mail to the carrier USS Ronald Reagan. An aged Sea King helicopter finished the last leg of his journey to the research vessel. Lasko’s name and position carried considerable weight with the military and the transfers had gone off without a hitch.

  From the air, the Sea Surveyor looked like any other scientific vessel, with her superstructure hunched over her bows, a long open deck at the rear and an A-frame derrick hanging from her stern. Two boxes the size of shipping containers ate some of her deck space. Mercer figured these housed science labs and the topside support facilities for the bright yellow submersible that sat below the crane. The ship’s helipad jutted awkwardly from the back of the superstructure two levels above the main deck and required all the pilot’s concentration to land. He held the chopper just long enough for Mercer to dodge out of the aircraft and catch his bag and some other gear from a crewman.

  Gale-force rotor wash whipped Mercer as the long-range chopper eased away from the pad and thundered off to rejoin the Reagan. A moment later a man in his late forties appeared from a nearby door. He wore a white tropical-weight uniform with short sleeves and gold epaulets at the shoulder. He had a slender build and wasn’t more than five feet seven, but his graying hair and the steadiness of his gaze gave him a strong physical presence.

  “Philip Mercer?” he called a bit suspiciously, as if he was expecting someone else choppering out to the middle of the ocean. “I’m Jon Carlyle, third officer. Welcome aboard.”

  “Thank you.” They shook hands and Carlyle led him into the superstructure. The air-conditioning beat back the humidity and heat.

  “We were startled by the radio message this morning from the navy that they were flying you out. I’m sorry, but I wasn’t expecting a civilian. You are a civilian, right?”

  Mercer was still getting comfortable with using his title and the startled looks it invoked, but he needed to establish his credentials early. “Actually, I’m special science advisor to the president.”

  “Of the United States?” Carlyle was suitably impressed.

  “That’s the man. I’m here under the authority of Admiral Ira Lasko, the deputy national security advisor. Not only were you at the right place and time to monitor the sinking of the USS Smithback, but until the navy can get a salvage ship from San Diego, you’re also the only one with the proper equipment to investigate the wreckage.”

  “Ah, we weren’t told you’d commandeer our sub for a survey.”

  “Your captain—Jacobi, I think his name i
s—should be on the ship-to-shore right now getting orders to assist me in any way. And in case you’re wondering, the government’s picking up the tab.”

  “What exactly are we supposed to do?”

  “You know the circumstances surrounding the Smithback’s sinking?”

  “I was on watch when her distress call came through,” Carlyle replied. “She said she hit an iceberg. At first I thought it was a crank, but now, well, I have a theory.”

  Mercer waited.

  “It was the last words, about the sea catching fire. I think she hit a container that fell off a freighter and whatever was in it caused the blaze.”

  “That’s our assumption too.” Mercer had decided not to mention anything about Tisa Nguyen and her predictions and would have proposed the container theory had the third officer not thought of it already. He’d also created a plausible cover for the urgency of his mission. “However, the navy needs confirmation. There have been unspecified terrorist threats against our ships in the Pacific, and if this turns out to be something other than an accident . . .”

  “They have to know right away so they can take appropriate steps,” Carlyle finished for him. “I was in the navy for twenty-one years. I know how it goes and personally I’m glad we’re here to help.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Carlyle.”

  “Jon.”

  “Jon. People just call me Mercer.”

  “Let’s get you settled, Mercer, and come up with a plan to survey the wreck.”

  Mercer stowed his meager luggage in the cabin assigned to him and took a brief shower. He stepped from the tiny bathroom wearing only a towel and was about to toss that on the bed when he saw a raven-haired woman standing in his doorway. He recalled closing the door minutes earlier. She wore sandals, tight shorts, and a T-shirt that sweat kept plastered to her skin. It was obvious that she wasn’t wearing a bra. She radiated an earthy sexuality that Mercer imagined would captivate most men.