'Check. Okay, Major, get your element ready. And remember, the first rounds you send out there have to be accurate as hell, that's your job. If they turn those mortars and artillery pieces against our men, we'll be cut to ribbons.'
'Yes, sir, the corps won't let you down.'
'Well, it won't be me as much as the entire world, son. Good luck.'
'Sir, what about this dome structure? One stray round looks like it would do it in.'
Collins looked around him and didn't have an answer for the major.
'Let's look at it this way: if that happens, we win.'
As Collins moved off, the major mumbled to himself so that only Sarah caught his words: 'I was hoping for something a little more inspirational than that.'
Twelve thousand years before, the Black Sea was nothing more than a freshwater lake, a large lake to be sure, that supported a medium-size pre-Bronze Age civilization. This civilization of fishermen and hunter-gatherers was crushed by the Atlantean Wave when the waters of the Mediterranean rolled into the basin that is now the Black Sea. The beaches of pure white sand and the ruins of stone walls now lay at the bottom, over a thousand feet down. The Wave that had destroyed these long-dead people was rising again, this time from the very seafloor where they had once struggled to survive.
The next link in the chain was Russia. The attack was coming from the south, the closest the Coalition could get into that closed country. The fault line that the amplifiers lay over was one of the oldest in the world and had lain dormant since the last great quake of the area, in 1939. These were known to science as the most dangerous faults and plates in the entire world, capable of triggering earthquakes on other continents.
The amplifiers at the bottom of the sea started to vibrate and then the tone was sent out with the force of a nuclear weapon. The sound struck the first of the shallowest faults and started the chain reaction as that smaller fault led into a larger one and so on. The stresses involved and the cracking wide open of the faults started a continental shift of earth-changing dimensions.
The Black Sea lurched in its bed. When the waters retreated and then started their return, like a child dropping recklessly into a bathtub, the separated sea met in the middle and a plume of water shot straight up over a half a mile into the air. As the seabed continued to crack, a crazy zigzag pattern emerged outward from the sea toward Turkey and the Ukraine. The Urals actually started to crumble; their rocky strata were the first to succumb to the enormous movement.
The cities of Sevastopol and Odessa were the first to die. The mass populations were crushed in their homes without warning as the earth flew up six feet, moving as if a blanket had been shaken out. The next was the Romanian city of Bucharest. As one of the oldest cities in Europe, she didn't stand a chance; buildings shook once and then their foundations gave way after centuries of water rot. The rivers that flowed into and past the city changed course in a matter of moments and drowned those who had escaped the falling stone. The fires would burn out of control for two weeks due to a lack of water and men to fight them.
In Turkey's largest city, Istanbul, spires and ancient walls started to rock and fall. Two thousand people were lost in the first few minutes as they panicked and ran.
A thousand-mile-long strip of the richest soil in the Ukraine, the European breadbasket, split and rolled over to reveal a bloody-looking new landscape of molten rock as it was forced to the surface. It would leave a long and ugly scar for many thousands of years.
The last to feel the movement was Moscow. The cobbled roadways split and the air was filled with the smell of sulfur as long-dormant volcanoes erupted under the city. Mounds and vents that had been dead for a million years suddenly sprang to life as the forces of the Wave made for the paths of least resistance. Air-raid warnings sounded for the first time since the practiced drills in October 1963. Only this time it was no drill.
The president held on to his large desk as the Secret Service made to assist him out of the White House and into the underground shelter. He shrugged them off angrily. He knew there was no place to hide.
Niles closed his eyes and tried to think about the tectonic structure in Washington, but he found that for the first time in years, his mind was blank. The only thing he could think of was his request to allow Jack the time to end this, and that was what was hurting him.
'Sir, Moscow is being hit hard. The Ukraine is a ruin and Turkey is flying to pieces. The effects are now starting to be felt in the lake region outside of Beijing,' the national security Adviser said as he read from the latest NSA dispatch. 'The Black Sea was the focal point of the Wave. It's now gone!'
Suddenly the shaking stopped. They heard a picture fall off the wall not far from the office and a woman scream, then all was silent.
'What in the hell is happening, Niles?' the president asked, his body still shaking even though the room was still.
Niles picked up the phone in front of him and called the Event Center.
'Pollock.'
'Virginia, what are our people saying?'
'This is to be expected. We have maybe twenty minutes to a half hour. The initial forces have been spent, but, Niles, the worst is yet to come.'
The president was staring at the speaker box as if it were a person, until the chairman of the Joint Chiefs handed him a phone. 'The Russian president.'
'The buildup will continue with fresh materials from deeper in the earth that will replace those sent upward in the first forced strike. In laymen's terms, Niles, the earth is getting itself ready for a fight-ending punch and we don't know what's going to happen. We're still picking up the audio wave from the Long Island Sound, the navy is depth-charging the area in hopes of smashing their amplifiers, but our geology people are saying it may be too late.'
'Thank you. Keep monitoring.'
'Nothing from Jack and our ground team?' Virginia asked.
'Nothing.'
The president and Niles hung up their phones simultaneously and looked at the fifteen faces in the Oval Office.
'The Russian president has just informed me that they have an attack submarine in the Med and he has ordered her to assist us.'
'Inform the captain onboard the
After the long climb up the lava wall, Collins and his eight-man fire team reached the aqueduct without being see. The vantage point gave them a clear view of the entire area below. They set up two M-60 machine guns and the rest took up stations to fire down into the Coalition forces below.
Jack looked at his wristwatch. One minute. He raised his night-vision glasses and looked around. The marines were spread out and had made it to the assigned assault positions he had picked out for them, and he hoped that with a lot of luck, they wouldn't be noticed until it was too late. The darkness of the city hid them well. He shifted his view and saw Everett and his SEAL team right where they needed to be. Their outlines, due to their Nomex clothing, were far harder to see than were the marines.
Jack raised his radio. 'Thirty seconds,' he said softly. The transmission required no response.
Down below, he had assigned Mendenhall, Sarah, Ryan, and ten marines the job of stopping that centrifuge when the marines made their attack. He roamed the area where they were supposed to be but failed to pick them up. 'Damn,' he said under his breath. There was nothing he could do. If they had found difficulty in their route through the lava field to the center of the city, he knew he couldn't wait for them to do so.
'Sir, this position is starting to make me a little nervous,' a young lance corporal said. 'The shaking is getting stronger, and look at this,' he said as he pointed to his right.
Collins looked over and saw what the corporal was talking about. A small waterfall had developed in the last few minutes, meaning that the Crystal Dome above them had started to fracture somewhere above. The ancient aqueduct was starting to run with seawater.
He turned and looked at the nineteen-year-old and held out his hand. 'We don't have a lot of time here, so
