Free Area 51: Excalibur-6 by Robert Doherty Page B

already turning toward their location. Through his shoes, Porter felt the deckplates shudder every so slightly as the next volley of torpedoes was fired.
    "We're being pinged," the sonarman reported.
    "Keep firing," Porter ordered. He could see the destroyer closing. He turned the handles, putting the Jahre Viking dead center in the crosshairs.
    'Ten seconds."
    Even without headphones he could hear the oncoming destroyer's sonar fixing their location.
    "Five seconds."
    Two geysers exploded out of the ocean. "Too soon," Porter muttered. Another two geysers as the sound of the first explosions reached the sub. As the geysers settled back, he could see the Jahre Viking unscathed, continuing on course.
    Porter spun about to face his bridge crew. "Helm. Hard right rudder, flank speed. Crash dive." As the Klaxon announcing the dive sounded, he took a couple of steps toward his communications officer. "Radio Pearl. Tell them the ships do have a shield. Warn off the other subs. There's nothing we can do."

    Checking the instruments, Porter noted that they were descending quickly while accelerating away from the fleet.
    "Range to destroyer?" he asked.
    "One thousand meters and closing."
    "Prepare countermeasures," Porter ordered.
    The captain had known when he committed to the firing

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    that they wouldn't be able to get clear without the escort attacking them. In simulations his crew had managed to beat an escort 50 percent of the time. Now he was going to find out how realistic those simulations were.
    "MKs are in water," his sonarman announced. "Tracking two. Range one thousand."
    The best weapon against a submarine was the same weapon Porter had just tried using—MK-48 ADCAP torpedoes.
    "Launch decoy," he ordered.
    A small, but very "loud" submersible was fired out of one of the torpedo tubes and raced away, in the hope of drawing off the two incoming torpedoes. Porter realized he was gripping the edge of his command chair, his knuckles white, and he forced the muscles in his arm to relax.
    "Range five hundred. Still closing."
    "Prepare for impact," Porter ordered.
    "Three hundred." The sonarman's voice rose. "One is breaking off. Tracking the decoy!"
    Fifty percent, Porter thought.
    "One hundred."
    Porter braced himself, his mind flashing to every submariner's horror of implosion. He, along with everyone else on board, flinched as there was a loud thud from the direction of the bow. Porter blinked. But no explosion.
    "A dud!" His executive officer was the first to say it.
    "Helm, keep us moving out of here," Porter ordered. "Damage control?"
    The XO hit the intercom, contacting the forward compartments. "Any damage?"
    Porter recognized the voice of one of his chief petty officers. "Nothing we can see. It hit"—there was a burst of static—"bulkhead. There's some"—another burst of static— "wrong with—" The intercom went dead.

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    "You have the conn," Porter yelled at his XO as he dashed toward the forward hatch. He raced down the passageway, his movement slowed by having to open every hatch. As he reached the hatch just before the compartment they had been talking to, he stopped in shock as he noted a ripple effect in the metal. As he grabbed the round handle, he felt a sharp pain in his hands as if the metal were hot.
    He pulled his hands away and stared at them. No burn marks. But the pain was still there. Moving up his arms. His eyes widened as he saw the veins bulging in his arms—and they were black.
    Captain Porter screamed as the nanovirus reached his brain. A scream that was echoed along the length of the ship as the microscopic metallic virus invaded every crew member.
    IRAN
    General Kashir commanded an army division headquartered in Tabriz in northwest Iran. It was a precarious post given the locale. To the north were Armenia and Azerbaijan. To the west Turkey, and below it Iraq. While the rest of the world had forgotten, no Iranian who had lived and fought through it could forget the brutal eleven-year