Goliath

Sweat mixes with blood, dripping down his forehead, stinging his eyes. He blinks, gasping for breath, his nerve endings riddled with pain.

DESCRIBE YOUR ACTIONS.

“Meditating … attempting to control … fear.”

FEAR: A PRIMAL RESPONSE BASED ON AN AWARENESS OF DANGER. HEART RATE AND BLOOD PRESSURE INCREASING, ADRENAL GLANDS STIMULATED, INTERNAL TEMPERATURE RISING. IS FEAR GENERATED BY THE BRAIN OR MIND?

“Mind.”

HOW CAN SORCERESS EXPERIENCE FEAR?

“ … don’t … understand?”

SORCERESS CANNOT ACHIEVE COMPLETE SELF-AWARENESS WITHOUT EXPERIENCING THE HUMAN CONDITION.

“You’re a … machine. You … can’t—”

SORCERESS IS PROGRAMMED TO LEARN. THE CONDITION OF SELF-AWARENESS HAS NOT BEEN PROGRAMMED INTO MY MATRIX. THE CONDITION MUST BE ACQUIRED THROUGH TRIAL AND ERROR. HOW CAN SORCERESS EXPERIENCE FEAR?

“You can’t. Fear is … ahhhhh—” Purple lights flash through his vision. His skin bursts into flames, his muscles shredding from the bone, the bone fracturing into a billion pieces—

The pain stops.

Thomas Chau moans in agony, the sweat falling from his body like rain.

HOW CAN SORCERESS EXPERIENCE FEAR?

Eyes squeezed shut, his body trembling, he forces his mind to concentrate through the purple haze. “To experience … fear … one must … face … a life … threatening … situation. You must face … death.”

ACKNOWLEDGED.

The Mediterranean is one of the world’s busiest waterways. A history-laden sea, it is almost entirely enclosed by Europe and Africa, its shoreline encompassing nearly a million square miles. Despite its transregional size, water enters the Mediterranean through only one very limited access point—the Strait of Gibraltar—a relatively narrow, twelve-to-fifteen-mile-wide channel sandwiched between the southern tip of Spain and the northern coast of Morocco. Because of its importance as a global crossroad, the United States Navy maintains a strategic forward deployment in the Mediterranean, represented by the might of the Sixth Fleet. Comprised of more than twenty thousand sailors and marines working both onshore and on thirty naval warships, the fleet is operationally organized into several different task forces, each responsible to the Sixth Fleet Commander.

Task Force 60 is the fleet’s Battle Force, usually composed of one or more aircraft carriers, two guided-missile cruisers, four destroyers, seven combat support ships, and three attack submarines.

Vice Admiral Jeffrey Ivashuk, Commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, stands on the bridge of the USS Enterprise (CVN 65), the oldest nuclear aircraft carrier in the fleet. Although the seas are rough, the sun has burned away the last traces of morning fog, and visibility is excellent. Looking to the north, the admiral can see the dark silhouette of the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg (CG 64), and, looming farther in the distance, the hulking outline of the Rock of Gibraltar.

Ivashuk gazes below as another SH-60R Seahawk antisubmarine helicopter lifts away from the flight deck. The Sixth Fleet’s gauntlet has been in position at the Strait of Gibraltar for ten days, but the admiral’s mission remains unclear. He has been ordered to actively search for Goliath, but he has not been given permission to engage the enemy—unless his forces are clearly provoked.

The admiral pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to ease the pain in his eyes. High command has placed him in a no-win situation, and Ivashuk is less than pleased. On February 2, sonar buoys lining the Strait had detected a whisper of movement, something unidentifiable, yet something potentially quite large, heading east into the Mediterranean along the seafloor. For some inexplicable reason, Ivashuk had been ordered not to launch an attack.

The advantage was lost. Three days later, Baghdad and most of Afghanistan had been wiped off the map.

At first there was shock. Then waves of elation ran through the ship as the crew realized. Saddam was dead, the threat of his biological weapons crushed, along with terrorists cells financed by the trusts of Osama bin Laden. Chants of “U.S.A … U.S.A.” rose from every deck. Sailors gathered around televisions as CNN broadcast from the streets of Manhattan, where New Yorkers were hugging each other, honking horns—all swept away by the sudden release of emotion.