Chapter 14 - Cold Extraction
Thirty fathoms beneath the surface of the Philippine Sea, *Sector Four Outpost: Tartarus* was drowning.
The blast doors of the auxiliary cooling chamber had been shredded by two pounds of military-grade breaching putty. Erin stepped over the smoking debris, her rifle leveled at the darkness ahead, the green glow of her night-vision optics illuminating the ruined nerve center of the installation.
The central server racks were burning. Bundles of fiber-optic cabling hung from the ceiling like severed arteries, spitting blue electrical sparks into the three inches of seawater covering the deck.
In the far corner, barricaded behind a collapsed server cabinet, three figures huddled in combat gear.
One of them raised a blood-streaked pistol.
"Hold fire!" Erin’s voice sliced through the hum of dying machinery like a whip. "Hound, stand down. It’s Ghost Actual."
The pistol wavered, then slowly lowered.
Lieutenant Commander Daniel "Hound" Miller dragged himself out from behind the steel barrier. His left arm hung limp at his side, bound tightly with a combat tourniquet, and his tactical vest was shredded by fragmentation. But the scarred, stubborn grin on his face was unmistakable.
"You took your sweet time, Admiral," Hound coughed, spitting a mouthful of bloody saltwater onto the deck. "We were starting to think you were still stuck at that fancy parade in Norfolk."
"I don't miss parties, Miller," Erin said, stepping up to him. She quickly checked the tourniquet on his arm, her hands moving with practiced, clinical efficiency. "What's the status of the hard drives?"
"Wiped," Hound rasped, nodding toward the smoldering ruins of the primary data core. "Ramirez bought us four minutes. We dumped the cryptographic matrix and fried the quantum encryption cores with thermite. They didn't get a single byte of fleet operational code."
"And the hostile element?"
"Their main strike team is dead," Hound said. "Eight bodies in the corridor. But the mercenary commander took three technicians hostage and retreated toward the sub-dock at the southern ballast tank. He’s trying to hijack the dry-combat submersible and punch through to their surface tenders."
As if on cue, a deep, shuddering detonation shook the floor plates beneath their boots.
The overhead emergency sirens shifted from an amber pulse to a screaming, high-pitched red.
"Warning," an automated female voice crackled through the distorted PA system. "Hull breach detected in Sub-Dock B. Ballast integrity compromised. Catastrophic implosion threshold: eight minutes."
Holloway appeared at Erin’s shoulder, his HK416 reloaded with a fresh magazine. "Admiral, the mercenary commander is trying to scuttle the dock behind him to drown us while he escapes with the surviving techs."
Erin didn't hesitate. She turned to two of her operators. "Get Hound and the wounded out through the primary airlock. Prep the emergency ascent buoys. Holloway, you and Two are with me."
"Ma'am, the dock is already flooding," Holloway warned. "If that bulkhead gives, sixty tons of water will compress that compartment in under four seconds."
"Then we have four minutes to kill him and get our people back," Erin said, her eyes burning with lethal clarity behind her goggles. "Move!"
They tore through the lower service catwalk, water spraying from ruptured overhead conduits like driving rain. The air pressure was rising rapidly, popping their ears as the ocean pushed its way through the cracked seals of the docking bay.
Erin hit the heavy hydraulic hatch of Sub-Dock B, sliding sideways through the narrow opening.
The docking bay was a cavernous, two-story steel chamber centered around a rectangular moon pool. Half-submerged in the pool was an eight-man dry combat sub, its boarding hatch wide open.
Standing on the narrow gantry beside the sub was a massive man wearing maritime tactical body armor, his face covered by a Kevlar ballistic mask. He held a young female petty officer by the collar of her flight suit, his combat knife pressed flush against her throat.
Two other technicians lay dead on the steel grating behind him, shot execution-style.
"Stay right there, Yankee!" the mercenary commander roared over the thunder of rushing water. He spoke with a heavy Eastern European accent, his eyes wild with desperation. "Drop the rifles, or I open her throat and drop her into the pool!"
Water was already spilling over the edges of the moon pool, swirling around their ankles like an icy snake.
Erin didn't drop her weapon. She kept the rifle stock pinned to her cheek, her sight alignment locked dead onto the center of the man's forehead.
"You're working for the Guandong Maritime Consortium," Erin said, her voice completely flat, completely unhurried, as if she were reading a weather report. "Contracted through a shell bank in Macau. Twelve million dollars to retrieve the acoustic signatures of our Virginia-class subs."
The mercenary's eyes narrowed behind his mask. "You know too much to leave this room alive."
"You were promised extraction by the Chinese destroyer sitting outside the twelve-mile limit," Erin continued, taking a slow, calculated step forward. "Let me tell you what your employer hasn't told you."
She took another step. The water was at her shins now.
"That Chinese destroyer turned around twenty minutes ago. A carrier strike group just transited the Luzon Strait. You aren't being extracted, mercenary. You were sent here to die, so there wouldn't be any loose ends connecting Beijing to an act of war."
The man's grip on the hostage faltered for a fraction of a second. His eyes darted toward the flooding moon pool, the realization hitting him like a physical blow.
In special operations, a fraction of a second is an eternity.
Erin didn't aim for the head—the hostage's skull blocked the angle.
She shifted her point of aim six inches lower and fired three rounds into the mercenary’s exposed right knee.
The man screamed, his leg collapsing beneath him. As he fell, his knife tore away from the petty officer's throat.
Before he could hit the grating, Erin sprinted forward across the slick steel platform. She caught the female technician by the collar with her left hand, violently slinging her behind the cover of a steel stanchion.
The mercenary rolled onto his back, raising a machine pistol with a roar of blind rage.
Erin stepped into his line of fire.
She didn't duck. She didn't seek cover.
She drew her sidearm—a customized SIG Sauer P226—and fired four rounds directly through the center of his Kevlar mask.
The mercenary’s head snapped back. He went limp, his body sliding off the edge of the gantry and disappearing into the churning black water of the moon pool.
"Bulkhead failure in sixty seconds," the automated voice blared.
Erin grabbed the shivering young technician by her harness. "Can you swim?"
"Y-yes, ma'am!" the girl stammered, sobbing.
"Hold on to Master Chief," Erin ordered, pushing her into Holloway’s arms. "Holloway, get them to the ascent tube! Now!"
They raced back through the service corridor as the structural steel around them began to shriek, twisting under the immense hydrostatic weight of the Pacific Ocean.
They reached the primary escape trunk just as the lower docking bay gave way with a deafening, metallic roar that shook the very core of the reef. A wall of pressurized seawater blasted down the corridor behind them like an oncoming freight train.
Erin dove into the escape trunk last, slamming the heavy titanium pressure hatch shut with both hands and throwing the manual dogging wheel.
The water hit the other side of the door with the force of an artillery shell, buckling the steel an inch inward, but the seals held.
Inside the cramped ascent chamber, Hound, Holloway, and the surviving tech were already clipped into the high-speed buoyancy ascent rigs.
Erin clipped her harness to the central cable. She looked at Hound, who was leaning against the wall, pale but breathing.
"Ready to go home, Hound?" she asked softly.
Hound smiled weakly through his grime. "Only if home isn't Virginia, ma'am."
Erin reached up and pulled the emergency ascent release lever.
May you like
The hatch above them blew open, and the pressurized air tanks blasted them upward, launching Task Force Ghost out of the dying tomb of Tartarus and rocketing them toward the surface, three hundred feet above.
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