Kronos Read online

  But before she could launch herself into action, a pair of strong arms reached under hers and then up and around the back of her head. The hands locked tight and held firm. She grunted and tried to free herself, but it was no use. When the man spoke, she was shocked to hear the voice of O’Shea. “I’ve got her.”

  “I don’t need your help,” Remus growled as he took a step forward.

  “There isn’t time!” O’Shea shouted. “I’ve seen the eyes of the devil, and it must be destroyed!”

  Remus apparently didn’t hear and continued forward, determined to finish her off. But Trevor’s light grip on his arm stopped him cold. “The good Father is right, Remus. There isn’t time.”

  Remus snarled at Andrea. “Later…”

  “To arms! To arms!” Trevor shouted, his excitement for the hunt returning.

  As Trevor and Remus returned to the controls, Andrea whispered to O’Shea, “You bastard.”

  “I had no choice,” O’Shea whispered back as he dragged her toward the door.

  “Liar.”

  “They would have killed you.”

  “You could have helped.”

  O’Shea sighed. “I promised Atticus I would get you off the Titan if things went wrong. And things are going very wrong.”

  Andrea’s insides twisted at the thought of Atticus. “What about Atticus?”

  “He strikes me as a man who can take care of himself.”

  Andrea knew he was right. There was nothing they could do to help Atticus. They were outnumbered and outgunned. Just getting off the Titan would be tricky.

  O’Shea’s hands slipped away from around her neck. A moment later she felt a hard object pressed against her back. A gun.

  “Get moving,” O’Shea said with authority, jabbing the gun into her back.

  “Hey,” she shouted angrily, then moved forward to the door. Her head suddenly yanked back, pulled by her hair. She shouted in pain.

  O’Shea filled his voice with anger. “Don’t try anything or—”

  “And where might you be off to?” Trevor asked, spinning around slowly with a smile.

  “The brig. She shouldn’t be here,” O’Shea said.

  “On the contrary,” Trevor said. “Her presence here serves to raise the emotional stakes. She must stay and watch. It will be a much more…well-rounded experience.” Trevor fixed his eyes on Andrea. “Don’t you think, my dear?”

  “Go to hell!” she shouted.

  “Ha!” Trevor threw his head back with the laugh. “I’m afraid the good priest has cleared me of that fate. Though I imagine after this day’s exploits, I may have need of his services in the morning.” Trevor moved his gaze to O’Shea. “Bring her to the window, where she has a good view.”

  After a quickly whispered “sorry,” O’Shea led Andrea to the bridge’s front window. Two decks below, she could see a large, gray gun rising out of the deck, its ominous fourteen-inch barrel at the ready.

  She looked back at the video display. Atticus and Kronos still sat silently, staring at each other. Move, Atti, move, Andrea willed him, but he remained fixated on Kronos. Whether it was the beast’s stare or shock over his daughter’s being alive that held him so still, Atticus failed to budge, locked in the path of a madman’s destructive fantasy.

  “The chopper is in the air,” Remus said. “The hedgehog is ready to deploy the depth charges.”

  “You’re going to get us all killed,” Andrea spat.

  Trevor smiled widely. “A coward turns away, but a brave man's choice is danger.”

  37

  Ray—Jeffery’s Ledge

  Gloom fell over the seafloor below Atticus and Kronos. Two hundred feet above, the Titan blocked out the midmorning sun. Kronos swirled into motion. It rose from the seafloor in a flurry, building speed, preparing to flee. But why? The Titan posed no threat to it.

  Then he saw them, caught in Ray’s lights. Yellow cylinders like oversized coffee cans tumbling toward the seafloor. Atticus spun in his seat. They were everywhere. “What…”

  Recognition slammed into Atticus a second before the first shock wave.

  Ray shook as the first depth charge exploded fifty feet to the rear. The metal shell of the submersible groaned as it pitched forward, burying its nose in the sand. The second explosion, ten feet closer, but to port, almost knocked Atticus from his seat. His mind whirled as he fought with the control stick, urging the sub to free itself from the sand.

  “What the hell are you doing, Trevor?” Atticus’s eyes settled on the radiant, yet determined, face of his patron. Had Trevor gone insane?

  Atticus realized the truth. He had become expendable, a mere obstacle standing in the way of Trevor’s goal.

  Atticus pushed the throttle full ahead and pulled back on the control stick. Ray’s nose lifted out of the sand, pulling up a mound of the terrain with it. The extra weight made Ray unstable and sluggish. Two more explosions rocked the sub. A second to port and another dead ahead. The shock wave from the second, much closer explosion, lifted Ray’s nose toward the surface. The sand slid down the surface of the sleek, black sub, covering the lexan bubble. Visibility became totally obscured, but with the throttle still at full, Ray broke free from the seafloor and shot up toward the surface, shedding the sandy covering.

  Atticus looked up and saw the hull of the Titan high above—a black swath surrounded by sparkling blue sea. Motion to his right caught his attention. He caught his breath when he saw Kronos rising alongside him. The explosions that continued to pound the seafloor had startled the beast.

  Kronos’s movement through the water became erratic, undulating left and right as well as up and down. Atticus realized it was trying to bunch up, away from the explosions below. While he was 100 feet above the explosions and still rising, a large portion of Kronos’s 150-foot body still remained near the seafloor. The creature moved faster than anything Atticus had ever seen in the ocean, but its massive size made attaining that speed a lengthy process.

  As a large portion of Kronos’s body moved his way, Atticus rolled Ray over and around the bending body. For a few moments their movements were entwined, each rising and falling, moving in and around, like two synchronous fighter jets. A shallow explosion rocked Atticus to the side. Ray spun away from Kronos, and they ascended on two different paths—Kronos up and away from the Titan, and Atticus up and directly toward the Titan’s bow.

  The bursting depth charges shook the Ray as they detonated closer and closer to the surface. It was dumb luck that Atticus hadn’t been struck by one yet. He guessed the charges had been dropped in a radius, designed to force Kronos to the surface. Trevor knew the charges couldn’t kill it. But what did he have planned for it at the surface? What kind of weapons did the Titan have on board?

  A projectile shot across Atticus’s field of view in answer to that question; then four more. Atticus recognized them as MK-54 lightweight, high-yield torpedoes. But they moved like nothing Atticus had seen before. As they shot through the water, he could see a pocket of air blasting bubbles away from the nose of each projectile.

  They’re cavitating! Atticus thought.

  He’d seen failed tests of cavitating torpedoes on one of his post-SEAL, top-secret Navy projects. His job had been to assess the lethality of the weapons and gauge any environmental impacts the warheads might have. A cavitating torpedo pushes water away from the projectile, allowing it to move through a pocket of air, reducing friction and allowing it to move at incredibly fast speeds. An underwater missile. The ones Atticus had seen worked, but the high speeds made the trajectories erratic, sometimes veering off target. Until guidance technology caught up with the speed, they were unpredictable at best. But the consistency of these torpedoes made it clear that Trevor had overcome the technological hang-up.

  Kronos neared the surface and picked up speed, but the torpedoes closed the distance with ease. A wail tore through the ocean following the first explosion. Each torpedo found its target, and they were hurting the creature.
r />   Giona…

  Atticus focused his vision on the bow of the Titan. He had to put a stop to this. He had to save his girl. By the time he parked the sub and sprinted up countless decks, he’d be too tired to stop anyone, and the hunt would most likely have come to a conclusion by then. He knew Trevor was driven, but he’d also proven himself to be sensitive, or a very good actor. Still, he might negotiate.

  With the surface fifty feet above, Atticus saw only one chance to reach Trevor in time. He positioned Ray at a forty-five-degree angle, heading straight for the Titan’s bow. Then he crammed his thumb down on the yellow button, activating the sub’s auxiliary thrusters. If Ray was as aerodynamic as he thought, his plan might work. If not, he’d give the Titan’s side its first blemish on the otherwise pristine hull. As the sub’s speed built far beyond the rate at which it had gone the first time Atticus had pushed the button… for just a moment, he saw an explosion of bubbles burst from the sub’s nose.

  Ray could cavitate!

  Before Atticus checked the sub’s speed, the air bubble at the sub’s nose, burped into the open air. As the ship rose higher and higher through the air, the white hull of the Titan loomed. Rising quickly, the airborne Ray shot toward the figurehead, a shouting Viking woman brandishing sword and shield. She threatened to put a quick end to Ray’s first flight, but merely managed to scratch the sub’s white underbelly.

  As the sub leveled out, Atticus got a clear view of the Titan. The first thing he saw was a massive cannon aiming out to sea. Where did that thing come from? He thought. Then his eyes widened as he saw the bridge come into view. Ray plummeted straight for it. Atticus quickly located his seat belt, yanked it tight, and waited for the head-on collision that would end his life and save his daughter’s.

  38

  The Titan

  After the depth-charge-spewing machine known as a hedgehog spat out its barrage of the underwater incendiaries, the group on the Titan’s bridge had turned their attention back to the viewscreens. The pictures provided by Ray’s several cameras provided a perfect view for what was about to transpire.

  Atticus and the beast had both become aware of the falling depth charges, but neither had reacted quickly enough to escape the thunder that followed. The water around Ray had become a cauldron of bubbles, pushed and shoved by the tumultuous force of the explosions. The group watched in rapt attention as Atticus steadied himself in his seat and managed to lift off the seafloor with the help of a nearby explosion that almost knocked the submersible on its back.

  Trevor clapped gleefully. “That’s it, Atticus old boy! Make a run for it! Show us what you’ve got!”

  And Atticus did.

  Trevor’s eyes remained fixed and unblinking, absorbing every detail of Atticus’s ascent, commingling with that of the beast. Mortal enemies locked in combat only moments before, now fled together, moving about each other like participants in a well-choreographed dance.

  Trevor realized that they were two of a kind. Top predators each. For a moment he felt sick to his stomach, wondering if attacking so abruptly had been prudent. Atticus remained a dangerous man, and it became quite evident he might survive the depth-charge assault. Would he understand the decision to attack? Perhaps from a military point of view. But with his daughter alive inside Kronos, Trevor doubted it. Then he remembered who he was and that it was his God-given right to do whatever the hell he pleased.

  His fear turned to excitement when he realized that for the first time in ages, he actually felt fear. A smile spread across his face, and he laughed as Atticus neared the surface and parted ways with the creature.

  Turning to Remus, he said, “Launch four torpedoes from the Titan at once and take aim with the cannon. I want you to take the first possible shot when Kronos breaches the surface.

  Remus relayed the command to fire torpedoes one through four, then sat behind a console featuring a targeting screen with a crosshair at its center. Gone were the days of entering coordinates to aim the cannon. Using the Sat-Optics Hawkeye system procured by Trevor, Remus could aim using the screen, zooming in up to 100x optically on a target to ensure accuracy. Or he could uplink to a satellite and select the target with the click of a mouse; like a video game if the target was in range, the cannon would adjust and fire. He was using the optic option at the moment, watching for some sign of Kronos’s body to swell out of the ocean.

  “Torpedoes away.” Trevor stood over Remus’s shoulder, watching the screen, waiting for the torpedoes to finish Kronos off. A rising mountain of water told him the first torpedo had found its target.

  Having heard the explosion near the surface, Andrea began struggling and shouting obscenities. But nothing could pull Trevor’s attention away from the task at hand.

  “Almost, my good Remus,” Trevor encouraged with a whisper. “The time to act will soon be at hand.”

  A second plume of water burst to the surface as another torpedo exploded. It was followed by a swell of water, forced up by a massive body rising from beneath. Remus steadied himself for the kill.

  “Holy shit! Is he insane?” O’Shea’s voice instantly caught Trevor’s attention and threw off Remus’s aim. He whirled around, found O’Shea’s eyes upon the video screens, and looked to them. Three of the four screens showed nothing but blue sky. The fourth revealed an image of the ocean, shrinking away. And the fifth showed Atticus, face set with a solid gaze, finger still gripping Ray’s booster trigger. The man had flown Ray right out of the ocean!

  Remus turned and looked at the screen. “What the hell?”

  As all eyes were locked on the strange spectacle of Atticus flying through the air, each pair widened as the front view from Ray leveled out, and they saw the bridge of the Titan. Trevor whirled around and saw for himself that it was true. Atticus had not only taken Ray airborne, but he’d also aimed it straight for the bridge. It seemed the man was so angry about Trevor’s disregard for his and his daughter’s lives, that Atticus embraced the way of the kamikaze.

  As Trevor shifted his weight, about to break for the exit, he noticed the targeting screen for the cannon. Rising out of the water was a large hump of sleek, dark flesh. Kronos had risen. “Fire, Remus! Fire!” he screamed.

  It only took a fraction of a second for Remus to look at the screen, see that his aim was true, and fire the big gun. The shock wave of the cannon rocked the bridge and sent hands to ears. The projectile exploded faster than the eye could follow, passing just beneath the flying submersible’s belly. The only evidence Trevor had that something had issued from the cannon was a brilliant splash of red in the distance.

  Blood.

  Success!

  Remembering his own dire predicament, Trevor moved his eyes from the screen to the view outside the bridge window. Expecting a sudden death, he was pleased to see the curvature of Ray’s design and the wind pushing against it, direct the sub in a downward motion. With a thunderous boom that shook the bridge, Ray careened into the deck below the bridge and behind the cannon.

  Trevor returned his eyes to the cannon’s viewscreen. He saw a pool of red where Kronos’s body had once been. They’d hit the creature and pierced its armor. Twin explosions sent water skyward as the second and third torpedoes found their mark. Trevor waited with great anticipation for Kronos to rise again. He longed to take a second chunk of flesh from the beast’s hide.

  But the beast remained below the surface.

  “It’s moving away,” Remus said as he watched the sonar screen displaying the creature as it was tracked by the network of sonar buoys they’d laid down. “But not fast.” He met Trevor’s eyes. “It’s hurt”

  Trevor was about to order the helicopter in pursuit, four more torpedoes fired, and the hedgehog reloaded with a fresh volley of depth charges, but a series of small explosions gave him pause.

  Someone was firing a gun.

  Atticus.

  The explosion from the cannon as Ray soared above it snapped Atticus’s jaw shut so fast that one of his molars cracked and fel
l apart into his mouth. But there wasn’t time to give the shattered tooth a second thought as the sub’s nose pitched forward, partly in response to the shock wave emitted from the cannon, and dived toward the deck just below the bridge.

  Atticus braced himself just before the submersible made contact with the Titan’s hull. The impact wasn’t what Atticus thought it would be, and though the jolt was severe, he managed to stay conscious. As Ray slid across the deck, he realized that the sub’s forward momentum was much greater than its downward, so when it hit the deck, the energy was expelled through a grinding, screeching halt that was sure to sully Trevor’s immaculate deck permanently.

  With a final jerk, the sub lurched to a stop. Wasting no time, Atticus jumped down from the chair and unlatched the lower hatch. He shoved down, but it was stuck tight, wedged by the weight of Ray upon the deck.

  He was trapped.

  Atticus growled in frustration and began pacing the small craft like a desperate lion in a cage. His eyes fell on the lexan bubbles that provided Ray’s eyes and pilot viewing ports. Simultaneously, his hand fell to his hip, clutching the .357 magnum.

  Drawing the weapon, Atticus moved beneath one of the windows. He knew the polycarbonate resin used to make the windows would withstand the bullets, even those sent screaming from the magnum. His hope was that the braces used to attach the window were more suited to withstand the massive pressures of the ocean out than the striking force of a hand cannon’s projectiles trying to get out.

  The true danger lay in one of the bullets ricocheting off the window and striking Atticus, but the only other choice he had was to wait for Trevor to free him. That wouldn’t be until after Kronos had been killed, which was precisely the enterprise Atticus intended to disrupt.

  Atticus hid behind a seat, reached around with the .357, and took aim. He pulled the trigger six times in rapid succession. When he was done, his ears rang from the booming reports. Shaking his head free of the disorienting effects, he stood and looked to see the lexan window still in place.