Catalyst (Breakthrough Book 3)(5)

Wil Borger approached his desk, with a screen that was three monitors wide. Clay closed the door behind them.

With a loud squeak from his chair, Borger sat down and reached out to pull another forward for Clay. “Have a seat.”

“I could use the stretch.”

Borger nodded and spun back around to the monitors. “I need to show you something. Something I haven’t told anyone yet.”

Clay watched him open a new window on the screen and begin typing. A moment later a map filled the center screen. He raised his hand and briefly tapped a large hard drive resting below the same monitor.

“This is the hard drive I had on the Bowditch. Fortunately, I had it in my backpack when we were ordered to abandon ship.”

Clay peered at Borger. “The one with the video footage?”

“Correct.” He motioned to the map and reached for his mouse. It was a map of South America, with Guyana centered on the screen. Borger then double-clicked several times, zooming in on the area around Georgetown. “When we got back, I wanted to see what really happened to the Bowditch. So I downloaded the video from the ARGUS satellite before and after the impact.”

Clay was leaning over his shoulder when Borger stopped zooming and let the image crystalize. A moment later, they could both clearly see the U.S.S. Bowditch from an aerial view.

“There she is,” he said, under his breath.

The image was frozen, but the white wake behind the stern was clearly visible and showed the ship traveling full speed toward Georgetown’s small harbor. It was heading directly at the Chinese warship, which was trying to leave.

Borger then zoomed back out slightly, doubling the viewing area. Both ships were now smaller, but a barely identifiable wake could be seen several hundred yards behind the Bowditch.

A torpedo.

Borger hit a button on his keyboard and the overhead images began to play as a video. He moved out of the way, giving Clay a clear view. It was only moments later when the bow of the ship could be seen beginning to move. Clay knew it was the moment Captain Krogstad had given the order to do the unthinkable. To bring the ship around.

“Geez,” Clay muttered.

“It’s hard to watch.”

“It is.”

Over the next few minutes, they watched in silence at the agonizingly slow turn of the ship, finally coming about just moments before the torpedo’s impact.

The Bowditch was a science vessel, which meant it had no real weapons to speak of –– certainly nothing with which to fight off a torpedo attack. The only offensive capability lay in the Oceanhawk helicopter housed on the main deck. In the video, they watched the rotors of the chopper gaining speed, desperately trying to lift off in time. But the torpedo struck first. Even in the video, the explosion against the port side of the bow was breathtaking. Most of the forward deck was destroyed instantly. On what deck remained, the Oceanhawk’s desperate attempt to escape came to an end. Clay and Borger watched in eerie silence as the blast caused the helicopter to roll and slice its spinning rotors into the deck’s twisted metal. The fragments burst into dozens of giant pieces of shrapnel just seconds before the Oceanhawk fell over the side, engulfed in an orange ball of flame.

The rest of the video played out exactly as the two men remembered it. They could see everyone, including themselves, huddled on the stern of the ship where Krogstad had ordered them. If he couldn’t outrun the torpedo, his only other option would be to save as many as he could. On the stern, survivors had the best chance of deploying the lifeboats. The rest of the ship was sacrificed to take as much of the blow as possible.

When it was over, Borger stopped the video and leaned back. “That’s only the second time I’ve seen it.”

Clay nodded, his eyes still on the screen. “I can see why.”

With a deep breath, Borger turned back to him. “There’s something else I wanted to show you.”

Clay raised his eyebrows and waited.

Borger clasped his hands in front of his protruding stomach. “So, I’ve been picking through the rest of the satellite video. I’m not sure if you know this, but the attack was big enough that most commercial aircraft in the area were immediately grounded, even as far away as Venezuela.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yep. Everything. Down. Kaput.” Borger then began to grin. It was a look John Clay had come to know well.

“You found something.”

“All aircraft were grounded,” he repeated. “All commercial aircraft.”

Clay raised an eyebrow. “But not…”

“But not military aircraft.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning…,” Borger replied, “military flights were not grounded. Or should I say…the only military flight.” He began typing again in a new window, which brought up a second map. The second map was fixed on Georgetown. Borger pointed to one frame, then to the other. “This one is the international airport in Guyana. Note the timestamp on both screens.”