Leviathan egt-4

  Leviathan

  ( Event Group Thriller - 4 )

  David L. Golemon

  The ships of the world are under attack, attacks so sudden and vicious that many ships are lost without a single distress call. The navies of the world start a frenzied search, but even these ships disappear without a trace. Enter the Event Group, the most secret organization in U.S. history. Armed with proof that history is repeating itself, the Group finds themselves in the grasp of an insane genius straight out of the pages of Jules Verne. They are up against the descendent of the man who was the inspiration for the captain of a vessel known to the world as Nautilus. Legend comes to life in the form of Leviathan, the most advanced undersea vessel in history. She will stop at nothing to save the seas and to render justice to humankind for a world that has long been dying, a world Leviathan plans to alter forever, unless the Event Group can stop her!

  David L. Golemon

  Leviathan

  For Jules Verne and all of the other dreamers that followed.

  For Brandon, Katie, Shaune, and Tram — the children who supply my energy.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To the United States Navy — the cooperation received from some nameless individuals was invaluable.

  To the kind folks at General Dynamics — without their valuable insight into the future of submarines, this book could not have been written.

  For Nicole Verdone and many, many others who keep this author grounded in reality.

  The sea is everything. It covers seventenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.

  — Jules Vern, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

  PROLOGUE

  CHATEAU D'IF, FRANCE

  1802

  Three years in darkness. Since Napoleon's coup in 1799, Roderick Deveroux had been imprisoned at Chateau d'If for refusing to reveal the secrets of his magical and mysterious designs for seagoing warfare. Without a trial — without so much as a word from his captors or his jailers — he was cast into the old castle's dungeons with the other supposed enemies of France. The fates of his young wife and father were as bleak to him as his own future.

  Three years ago the new emperor himself had begged Deveroux for the designs, drawings, and mathematical calculations for his newest ships. The emperor had asked for them, then pleaded, and then finally threatened, but still Deveroux had refused to give the brutish little man what he desired: the design for an oil-fired ship that could drive the implacable British navy — the most powerful force in the world — from the surface of the seas.

  As Deveroux lay against the cold wall of his cell, he could hear the sea far below crashing against the rocks of the small island. Roderick Deveroux knew his prison walls were coming very close to driving him insane.

  The small door at the base of his cell opened, and his daily ration of meat and bread was pushed through atop a rusty plate. The meat was good, rich, and ripe, as Napoleon would not be pleased if his great prize died of malnutrition before he received the gift that would secure his place as master of the world.

  The meal delivery was the same routine as always — he waited for the prison guard to close the trap before he allowed himself to move. This time however, the door remained open. Deveroux allowed his eyes to move toward the door and the still shadow beyond.

  "Doctor, there is news from the outside. Perhaps after you hear it you will finally deliver to the emperor that which he desires."

  Deveroux didn't move from the damp, moss-covered corner of the cell. He watched and waited.

  "Your father has been executed for his monarchist leanings. It was done publicly in Paris."

  Deveroux lowered his head and tried to bring to mind the face of his father, but found his memory failed him. His throat refused to work as he tried to swallow. His eyes filled with tears and he raised a hand to his bearded face and covered his mouth, biting his lip to keep the guards from hearing his anguish. The thought came suddenly to his mind and the question was out before he could stop it.

  "My… my wife… is she—" He croaked the first words he had spoken in more than six months.

  "Your wife? You fool, she committed suicide last year because she could not face the humiliation of your treason."

  Deveroux wanted to scream but would not give them the satisfaction of seeing him break. Instead, he again bit his lower lip until blood oozed from his mouth, and then he buried his face in his hands. He remembered—they told me she was dead with my unborn child in her womb.

  His decision was now an easy one. He would rather die than continue on in life without his family. As his tears dried, his eyes seemed to burn. He grunted to let the guard know he was there and listening. Then he rolled to one side, and slowly and cautiously slid the plate of beef toward him. He swatted the meat and bread from the plate and then harshly felt the edge of the thick tin in the darkness. He was afraid he wouldn't find what he was seeking, and then his trembling fingers found it — the outer lip of the plate had been worn to a sharp edge.

  "The new emperor seeks my knowledge… still?" he asked.

  "Seeks? He demands it, fool," the voice said from the far side of the cell door.

  With shaking hands he slid his finger across the sharp edge of the plate once more, bringing the sensation he was looking for — the cutting of flesh.

  Deveroux drew closer to the iron door, then he raised the plate and sliced the one area that would supply enough blood to be convincing to the captain of the guard — his head. He sliced deep and long through the ragged growth of hair, wincing as the plate's edge dug a deep furrow through his scalp. Soon he felt the satisfying flow of blood coursing down his forehead, and still he dug the sharpened edge deeper. There had to be enough blood to convince the keepers that Napoleon's prized prisoner was attempting to do the unthinkable.

  As he lifted the plate from his head, Deveroux saw that blood was not only flowing but had begun to spurt, as he had dragged the tin plate through a small vein. He held on to the plate, moving the sharpened edge opposite his grip, and then lay down next to the food portal. He allowed his blood to splatter the iron of the door, and then he sighed and made gasping sounds. He reached up with his free hand and slapped at the growing puddle of blood, making sure it splashed into the corridor beyond.

  "What—?"

  "It is blood, Captain, the fool has slit his own throat."

  The captain of the guard did exactly what Deveroux had hoped: He panicked at the thought of losing him to suicide. He could never explain that to the emperor. He heard the other man as he pulled keys in an attempt to get the door open. So, this was it, the moment of his death.

  He never had any plans to escape, but neither did he have the courage for ending his own life, so he would force them to do it for him. A self-satisfied smile etched his wretched features.

  "Hurry, you bumbling fool, he'll bleed to death!"

  Finally, Deveroux heard the key slide home into the rusty lock. Then he heard the scraping sound as it turned, and then the hasp of the lock was thrown back, and then came the sound of a man straining to get the door open. He felt and smelled the first fresh air in over two years as it hit his face and he breathed it in, preparing himself, gathering what strength he could for the next few seconds — the last seconds of his life. He let his eyes flutter open and his eyes instantly felt the jab of pain from the candlelit corridor beyond.

  He felt hands roll him roughly onto his back, and before the guard could react he swung the tin plate as hard as his atrophied muscles would allow. The sharpened edge came into contact with the man's neck.

  The captain gasped as he watched the guard take a blow to his throat just as he turned the
prisoner over. He straightened and started to shout for others, but Deveroux lashed out with his bare feet and caught the young captain in his left knee, bringing him down to the rough stone floor. Before the captain could fully react to the assault, the prisoner Deveroux had leaped blindly to his back and brought the tin plate solidly down onto the back of the man's head, imbedding the sharpened edge deeply into his skull.

  Deveroux was crying as he rolled off the captain and lay still, listening for the footsteps that would signal his death. As he tried to bring his breathing under control, he opened his eyes to the glare of the candles. The pain in his eyes slowly subsided as he tried to focus on the darkened far wall. He swallowed and tried to stop his tears but found his control was lost. His hand tried to reach out and feel the chill stone beneath him for reassurance that the world was real; instead his hand hit the keys that had fallen from the guard, who was just at that moment taking his last, rattling breath.

  He clutched the large set of keys with both hands and brought them to his chest. As his eyes looked about he saw the other cells neighboring his own. He wondered if each was filled with the cruelness and brutality he had endured the past three years. Was there a man behind each door who had been subjected to the same horrific treatment that he had endured? His mind refused to answer as he rolled onto his knees. The pool of blood from the captain had spread thickly on the blocks of stone that made up the floor of the corridor. He stumbled as he tried to rise, using the wall for leverage. He became light-headed, and then he felt his stomach lurch and he spewed bile as a geyser would let loose water. Still, he stumbled and fell, stood and slid down the wall until he found steps leading upward.

  Deveroux made his way slowly up the stone steps, constantly aware that his dealings with the guards would soon be discovered from another, unknown direction he wasn't aware of. He kept climbing, still holding the keys to his chest as if they were his wife's crucifix.

  He stopped when he heard sound. A door, iron by the sound, had opened. As he tried to see in the darkness forward of his position, he made out a dim hallway that curved off to the right on the next level. He heard the sound of men from what he believed were two levels above him. Not fearing death, Deveroux moved to the next level. Then he smelled it. The only thing that had kept him alive the past two years had been that smell. It was the sea. He could now hear the crashing of the breakers far better than he had ever heard them before. He moved forward once the landing of the next level was reached. Then he heard shouts as he had been spied from above.

  "Stop!"

  Deveroux heard the command and the running of more than one guard as he stumbled toward the sound and smell. He fell, cried, and found his legs would not work. Finally he spied the door through his flowing tears. This one was wooden, not iron. With the footfalls sounding louder, now on his level of the fortress, he stood and pulled down on the latch. As he did, the door swung open and he was blinded by bright sunlight from the setting orb that seemed to blaze just beyond the open window.

  Several women gasped and one screamed as he fell blindly through the doorway and into the kitchen. The smells of cooking meat, fish, and garlic now rode roughshod over the smell of the sea. He erratically made his way toward the fresh air streaming through the open window. More screams, and then the sound of the door opening and men running inside.

  With a burst of strength he didn't know he could muster, Deveroux ran for the open window. Through his hurting and failing eyes he saw the sea far below. The men would not stop him from sending himself down into that sea and its waiting embrace of death. As a hand grabbed a piece of his rotted shirt, Deveroux leaped.

  The guard ran to the wide window as a woman screamed. He saw the thin man plunge a hundred and fifty feet to the rocks and the crashing sea far below.

  * * *

  Napoleon's prisoner was content to let the blue ocean take his body. The smashing caress of the water stunned him when he hit from such a dizzying height. He opened his eyes against the sting of salt and saw that breakers were pushing him toward the jagged rocks that made up the bulk of the island that Chateau d'If sat upon. To drown, or to be smashed upon the rocks? The equation didn't concern him; what did was the horrible thought of being pulled from his death by guards who were surely on their way down to recover his body.

  With this thought in mind, Deveroux knew what he had to do. He opened his mouth to take in as much of the salt-laden sea as he could, so as to cheat Napoleon of his destiny. As his suicidal moment came, he felt a sharp nudge on the left side of his body and felt the skin of an animal, a shark possibly, push against him. Then another, and then still another. As he opened his eyes he saw he was in the middle of a family of dolphins that were playing with him, pushing him first one way and then the other. Suddenly he found himself being pushed toward the one place he didn't want to be, the surface. He kicked and kicked, trying to get the playful animals to let him die in peace, but they still nudged him toward daylight with their hard noses.

  "Damn you," he whispered as water flooded his mouth. His imagination and hallucinations then brought his end into perspective — he felt small, soft, almost gelatinlike hands grab at his tattered clothing, keeping him afloat as the dolphins chattered around him.

  Deveroux gasped for air as a breaker smashed over his head. He was then pushed back to the surface by the strange, dreamlike hands of angels, with fine hair and silken soft bodies. Were these mermaids of the old tales he had listened to as a boy?

  When he managed to open his eyes he saw that he had been pushed almost a mile from the point where he had struck the sea around Chateau d'If. As he weakly treaded water he saw men at the base of the fortress searching the area where he had struck the sea. He laughed for the first time in two years, a hoarse, very desperate-sounding thing. The dolphins joined in with their strange chatter and swam about him as if they were a part of the warped and twisted joke. Of the soft-handed, strangely glowing mermaids, or angels, he saw none.

  The tide was taking him farther from land; he could no longer see the coastline. Even the dreaded and cursed fortress was now but a small speck on the horizon.

  Floating contentedly, awaiting his new fate, he felt a sharp pain as something hit him from the side once more. As he rolled his thin body over, expecting his playful saviors, he came face-to-face with a large tree trunk, detritus of the ocean. Several of the dolphins had pushed the tree toward him. He decided he would wait for the friendly creatures to leave and then he would allow the sea to do its best. For reasons he did not fathom, the smartest animals in the ocean wanted him to live.

  As he floated for hours on end, Deveroux thought about why God was sparing him. He had sent his marvelous creatures, and what Deveroux thought of as angels, to delay the death of this poor man of science for a purpose. The thoughts and memories of his family swirled in his mind as darkness came. He was being swept farther out to sea as the moon rose and set, and then dawn was upon him once more.

  The sound of breakers and the coldness of the waters awoke the delirious Deveroux from a nightmare-filled sleep. He had been dreaming not of the murders of his wife or father, but of the evil men who had taken them from him. The dream seethed with hate and a desire for vengeance upon these men and their master. The force of the nightmares had kept his heart beating throughout that cold night and into the hazy morning following. Two days and two nights he floated on the gentle currents of escape.

  Now, the sound of normalcy returned to replace the cries of his unjust treatment. The cawing of seabirds strangely mimicked the cries of his dream wife and father as they swooped low to investigate the floating tree trunk. The chatter of his constant companions, the dolphins, made him turn toward their sound. There, a hundred meters away, was a small island. Scanty trees broke up the outline of its rock-strewn shore and made him think for a terrifying moment that he was floating right back into the arms of Chateau d'If.

  A large breaker caught his floating tree and pushed him toward what he now knew would be his fina
l moment; the jagged rocks lining the shore came at him at a breakneck pace. However, something strange was afoot; the dolphins were taking the wave with him, jumping and chattering as they rode the wave in. As the waters crested he lost his grip on the tree and found himself being sucked through the rocks and into a cave opening revealed at the low tide of the morning hours. He hadn't seen it from his position behind the breakwater, but as soon as he was swept inside, it was cold and dank, almost as lightless as his onetime prison cell. The dolphins pushed him to a small sandy beach, chattered, then swam away, as if content they had accomplished what they set out to do. Deveroux rolled over, feeling the blessed earth beneath his tattered clothing. He collapsed and allowed a dreamless sleep to overtake him.

  When Deveroux awoke, he tried to sit up. The sun outside the cave opening was setting, but in its waning death it allowed light to be cast into the interior. The former prisoner of Napoleon stood on shaky feet but collapsed. Then, more slowly, he rose, braced himself, and looked around.

  He tilted his head as he saw something recognizable to his salt-encrusted eyes. Lining the interior walls were torches. He stumbled, righted himself, and approached. They were old — very old. He removed one from the hole that had been carved into the wall and hefted it. He sniffed the burned, dead end and smelled the aroma of grease — old and dry, but grease nonetheless. As he turned to look back at the cave's opening, his bare foot struck something sharp. He reached down and felt the dry sand, running his fingers though it. He hit upon an object and brought it up into the diffused sunlight. It was flint, used at one time to ignite these very torches lining the wall. With flint in hand, he brushed up the cloth-and grease-covered tip of the torch, then he knelt and started striking the flint against the stone wall.