Crash - the Last Rendezvous Read online

  PROLOGUE

  Indian Ocean

  North Korean submarine DA BAK SOL

  A few weeks earlier …

  The DA BAK SOL was just below the surface, in waters that were thousands of miles and an entire continent away from its objective. If they had followed their original course, the crew and the ship would now be on the Tropic of Cancer. In the middle of an imaginary triangle the nearest inhabited points would be the Bermudas to the north west, the Azores to the north east and the Cape Verde Islands to the south east in an endless watery waste. At this point in the ocean the Mid-Atlantic Ridge would rise up to 1,242 miles below the surface and from there would flow out to both poles in opposite directions. But that was still quite a way off. A rendezvous with an Angolan freighter was supposed to take place at previously agreed coordinates in a few weeks time. To stock up on diesel and food and as a final breather before the attack. Whether the North Korean DA BAK SOL would make it to these coordinates was anybody's guess.

  The Sang-O class submarine, just under 131 feet long, was a toothless and clawless dinosaur in terms of its military technology. The crew, reduced from the usual nineteen to ten, normally operated only on home territory, at most on espionage assignments in the waters of the class enemy South Korea. Out here, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, with a couple of 10,000 feet of water underneath it, it looked like a nutshell in a gigantic swimming pool. Unable to dive very deep and equipped with a completely superannuated diesel-electric drive it was an easy target for any possible attackers. The four torpedo tubes, which contained three disarmed and almost totally rusted Russian type 53 torpedoes, did not work. Only the fourth shaft, which had been considerably lengthened and carried a VA-111 from the old Soviet days, would have been able to do any serious damage.

  The shkval - the name of the eight meter long weapon - was a supercavitating underwater missile with a nuclear warhead and a range of more than six miles. But no military expert in the world would have imagined that a projectile of this sort was on board the DA BAK SOL.

  The submarine had constantly changed course since setting out, so as not to leave any recognizable pattern of movement in the unlikely event that it was being followed. On the surface, all the crew needed to do was to put up red sails on the black painted steel hull, and the scene from Richard Wagner's Flying Dutchman would have been complete. The DA BAK SOL would have been a ghostly vision, like the phantom ship of a crew condemned to sail the seas for all eternity because of its Captain's quarrel with God. But the crew were not thinking of hoisting sails. They had very different concerns.

  "And are you sure the starting motor can be fixed again, Kol-yan?", Pak icily asked one of the engineers who was desperately trying to make sense of the bewildering electronics and mechanics of the lethal cargo. He made no reply and concentrated on his work. As far as he was concerned, it was better to keep quiet than to offer some reply that sounded anything but optimistic.

  Nam Chol Pak, the political officer, on the face of it a loyal and obedient representative of the subjugated North Korean people, rubbed the image of his Beloved Leader with his delicate hands, an impenetrable smile on his lips. In his plain olive-colored uniform, completely lacking in sartorial elegance, the thirty year-old Pak represented that obsequious dribbling representative of the communist stone-age government in Pyongyang, which lived up to the image of it held by the rest of the world.

  Pak was the representative of the glorified Party and was on board the DA BAK SOL to ensure moral and political control. His presence was an expression of the incarnate reality of the Orwellian nightmare. Day after day the Captain and crew were being examined for loyalty to the small fat Leader in North Korea. Every day everyone on board had to put up with ideological speeches and party slogans, followed by a paean of praise for the state apparatus and the dictator.

  So Pak's presence was in fact about as necessary as a hole in the head. Because, ultimately, every crew member knew that if he defected, his whole family would have to take the flak. Even given that the meteorite people were talking about would leave the planet in ashes and rubble, Pak did not waver for one second in swearing his allegiance to the party and the government. At least not when nine pairs of eyes were trained on him, expecting him to use the power that the Party had authorized him to use.

  In the quiet recesses of his 65 square feet cabin, however, things looked different with Pak's inner life. The desperate-looking attempts of the chief engineer to get one of the defective torpedo launchers working again left him curiously undisturbed. Here the world shrank to a microcosm, and Pak became the person he truly was. Here he made mental contact with his beloved wife Yang and was able to forget the Party and the crazy mission. His small diary had become a kind of floating confessional. After withdrawing to his narrow accommodation he took his pen in hand and wrote:

  I miss you so very much, my darling Yang. So much that I feel pain in my breast. We have been at sea now for almost three weeks, it's the twentieth day of our voyage. We have no idea what's going on in the world outside. Total radio silence. The announcement of the meteorite problem won't change that. We've got a mission to perform, and everything has to take second place.

  It is dark, and this has nothing to do with the meteorite, the outlines of which will block out the sun. It has become dark in my heart, because I miss you so much, my little flower. I miss you because I do not know whether you are safe and whether you and I will ever hold each other again. I am slowly beginning to think that the meteorite might hit earth after all. When we said goodbye, we were told that this would not happen, but I have a feeling inside that makes me wonder. Maybe it is just the sea, which is alien to me and makes me mistrustful.

  Ah, my darling Yang, if only I could be with you. Perhaps it was a mistake that your father got me this job via the Party for us both. Every day I do my best to keep up the morale of the crew on board our little submarine. I drill the men with all these words and see how, deep inside, they are afraid of something quite different from the long arm of Pyongyang. They are afraid of what is up there in the air, what might come down on us and destroy all our dreams. And they are afraid that our torpedo on board will explode instead of being propelled out of its tube and damaging the enemy. But nobody here has any idea that we are supposed to sink an American cruise ship. A concealed attack, revenge for the sanctions and trade embargo that were once again proving such a hardship for our people.

  Only the Captain has been briefed. In a fit of disobedience he described the mission to me as a suicide mission. He means it's like a Japanese harakiri to go up against the biggest and technologically best equipped army in the world, which will locate us in hours and punish us. He says our submarine is too slow, too unreliable and in no way comparable with the enemy's weapons.

  I believe he thinks our Leader is slowly going mad. And, quite honestly ...

  My beloved Yang, this is all I will say for today. I am with you in my thoughts and hope that you will never read these lines. If I should survive this mission and return home the conquering hero, these letters will in any case have been destroyed. But I need to write them every day so that I can become closer to you.

  I kiss you, my darling Yang. Put your hand on your belly and stroke our baby.

  Your husband that worships you.

  CHAPTER 1

  Apogeum, International Space Station ISS

  24th December

  Two hundred and fifty four miles over the Indian Ocean, with a relative velocity of 18,000 miles an hour, in a position that corresponded to the furthest distance from Earth - the so-called Apogee - the largest object ever launched into space by human beings, the International Space Station, t
he ISS, was orbiting.

  Like an enormous finely structured insect the space station, manned by six scientists, made its way noiselessly through the zone of eternal silence. Eight solar panels, which gleamed in the reflecting light of the sun like the oversized wings of a dragonfly, supplied the three hundred ton construction with the energy necessary to enable the crew on the modules to live and work.

  Since being commissioned the ISS had covered the incredible distance of more than 1,2 billion miles, which meant a complete circumnavigation of the earth every ninety two minutes for all the crews it had had. Every crew member found the view of Earth simply breath-taking …

  … but not as breath-taking as the view of the planet that opened on 24th December, 2019. A view that conjured up an image of the Four Horsemen in the Book of Revelation, each one riding out as the first four of the seven seals were opened.

  The gigantic meteorite was racing towards the middle of Antarctica, and from there it sealed the fate of humanity. Between entering the atmosphere and exploding on Earth just two seconds elapsed. With the release of one hundred million megatons of energy the monster cracked its way through the ice crust and set off an inferno-like chain reaction. Vast areas of water shot several miles into the air and ran in concentric circles in all directions.

  "Oh my God," groaned Commander Patrick Kennedy aloud. Tears ran down the cheeks of the greying handsome Texan. At that moment he could not help thinking about his wife and children at home in Houston, only hours away from certain death. There was no escape, no way out. The flood would crush everything beneath it like the fist of God, driving buildings and entire residential areas before it. People would have no chance, regardless of whether they were in underground shelters or on high ground. The primeval force unleashed would transmit its energy to the water, trigger tsunamis and wash away and flatten everything in its way. Vaporized stone would shoot up into the atmosphere, condense and fall back to earth in the form of heated high velocity particles and raise the temperature to 300° C. Combined with the energy of the impact this heat caused all the ice in the South Pole to melt and the water level to rise dramatically. Anyone who had not been drowned, struck dead or burned after two days at the latest would be fighting for breath in a several yards high pile of ashes and then die a painful death of asphyxia. The few survivors in bunkers and caves might then find themselves back in a new Middle Ages, in which the sun had no chance to let its light pierce the thick clouds of smoke.

  Together with his crew Kennedy watched the final dramatic footage of CNN and the other news channels. Gradually the images began to disappear because the transmitting stations on Earth were being destroyed in a domino effect. The morbid spectacle of death lasted hours, accompanied by horrific images and screams of panic. New York, London, Moscow, Tokyo, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Sidney, Berlin, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Dubai, Santiago de Chile, Auckland … all the cities of the world were leveled and disappeared in the roaring masses of water or the brutally berserk waves of fire. The message from the depths of the universe had bombed humanity back into the stone age. Even worse, it had almost completely eradicated the human race.

  The only people who were initially spared the fate of certain death were those who lived in the last outpost. The food and oxygen supplies on board the ISS would last for just under a year. Then the lights would go out here too and the chapter Mankind would fall into eternal oblivion.

  The astronauts held each other sighing and united in silent prayer, while Bing Crosby could be heard quietly in the background singing White Christmas on an MP3 player. Then the chip in the MP3 player was silenced by the electromagnetic impulse.

  The only thing left for the three men and women was the implacable passage of time. And the sight of a dark and endless waste of fire and water.

  CHAPTER 2

  Atlantic Ocean

  American submarine USS George W. Bush

  25th December

  It was Christmas, and nobody was celebrating. This time everything had literally fallen through. Petty Officer Second Class Ted O’Brian, a tall man in his mid-thirties with the first streaks of grey in his thick black hair, stared motionlessly at his writing pad, which he had turned into a diary two weeks ago. Writing helped O`Brian to put his thoughts in order about the dramatic events that had just taken place. He was able to completely block out what was going on around him. Even though there was enough to do: None of his shipmates or any of the officers grudged the mostly taciturn New Yorker, who had been in the Navy for eight years, his writing break. The events of the day before had ensured that, even though the chain of command was still intact, the Chief Officer would turn a blind eye to certain irregularities. Secretly, everyone on board was just glad to be alive.

  "Mariam, you're the only person that really means anything to me. But, as things are at the moment, we may never see each other again. I have no idea where you are now, in heaven or in a bunker. It's a nightmare. It's tearing me apart. Not knowing how you and the baby are is driving me crazy.

  If I'd known when I left that the meteorite was really going to strike, I'd have done everything to stay with you. But that's what you get for trusting politicians, the media, scientists.

  All the things they said … The meteorite would bypass Earth. Nothing was going to happen to us. We could blow the thing away with rockets. The chances of a collision were less than one in a hundred thousand. It would just miss us and zoom off into eternity. The sharp angle would cause the meteorite to bounce off the atmosphere. And so on and so on ...

  But we're alive. And that's a fact. When the meteorite struck, it almost ripped through us. But 140 men and a handful of women now have the doubtful privilege of breathing, speaking, eating and seeing with their own eyes what the meteorite has left of Earth: a monotonous world of water. And ash fall, mist, and storms of fire and ions.

  There's not a sign of life anywhere. We're drifting in the Atlantic, thousands of miles from where we started and where our homes were still standing yesterday.

  We were working outside all dockyard guarantees when the catastrophe hit us. Now our boat is our fate. With twenty four atomic missiles we are wandering aimlessly without any clear mission. But we think that there are still a couple of our submarines that have made it. Or I should say, we hope so. Maybe the odd Russian or Chinese. Nobody knows if we are going back to Norfolk or another base. At least I don't know, because there are no clear orders from above. The only thing I know is that the whole of the Second Fleet seems to be history. As well as our crews in the Pacific, the Caribbean and the Near East. There is no contact, no return signals from the Iwo Jima.

  Whatever. The meteorite hit the ice crust of the Antarctic, and those bits of the ice that have not been converted into steam have raised the water level by hundreds of feet. The tsunamis might have taken on unimaginable dimensions. Waves as high as skyscrapers with the power of millions of tons of TNT. I can't visualize it. I can't even imagine where you were when it struck. But the last TV pictures transmitted via satellite were horrific. I saw them a few hours ago. I just want to put a bullet through my head. The idea that you might not have made it …

  O`Brian put his pen to one side. As if the collapse of the world and personal loss were not bad enough, the radio - and with it the last vague hope of clarity - was beginning to go haywire. The men were working feverishly to fix it so that it could receive and transmit, but at the moment only the sonar was still in halfway working condition. With its lonely and monotonous 'ping', it was playing a melancholy tune to accompany the final submersion of the last survivors.

  With a horrible 'krrkkkrkrrrr' and an accompanying shower of sparks from the instrument panel the ubiquitous noise made by the sonar came to a dead stop. The men and women of the USS George W. Bush were now not only deaf and dumb, but blind. The batlike high-frequency tone that had been transmitted at regular intervals stopped. The familiar echo of reflecting objects, such as for example rocks or submarines, was now only a ghostlike memory in the m
inds of the crew. All graphic patterns of the immediate surroundings disappeared from the screens.

  "Sorry Ted! There's been a short circuit in the main distributor. The sonar's dead," Jason Miller said.

  Miller, who was one stripe above O`Brian but was under no illusion that he would be rising rapidly up the career ladder, in spite of his quick move up the career ladder in the Navy, was a head lower than O`Brian, had short cropped blond hair and had a perfectly trained body. His alert blue eyes kept wandering unceasingly around, as if he were scanning the surroundings. As he made eye contact with O`Brian, it was clear that they understood each other. Each one was involved in the other's fate, and there was really not much to say.

  There was a bond between the two men from operation and maneuvers at sea together. They had not become close friends, but when the chips were down, they could count on each other. Last summer they had gone sailing together out of Newport, and Mariam had become really good friends with Miller's wife, Jenny. The men had both been amused by the endless chattering of the two women and they themselves were content to enjoy the sea, the cold beer and their time together at the helm, without feeling the need to talk too much.

  O’Brian's brow became knitted. He took a deep breath and started to say something. But Miller, who was normally always good-humored, couldn't wait and said, "But it's even worse. Our sound detectors have also been affected. Now we have to surface or use the periscope to get any kind of orientation."

  O`Brian was secretly grateful to have to deal with a new task. After all, it was better to have something to do than mope around, trying to hide behind romantic misty-eyed memories. Still he couldn't help swearing gently,

  "Damn! That's all we needed. How are we supposed to find out if there's anyone still outside? Jason, how could this have happened? "