Thunder In The Deep (02)

by Joe Buff

  "Good." Fog meant visibility would be poor. "We'll give the fog more time to thicken." Jeffrey was suspicious. Except for the Delta, and an unknown German warship distant and drawing away from Challenger, it was too quiet up there.

  "Sir," Kathy said. "New passive contact on the port wide-aperture array . . . Surface contact, in our baffles, contact held by echoes off the shore."

  "Where is it?" Jeffrey said.

  "Wait, please. . . . Best estimate bearing three eight

  five, range four thousand yards. Signal strength increasing."

  "She's awful close," Bell said.

  "Can you classify the contact?"

  "Wait, please," Kathy said, working frantically with her sonarmen. "MTU and MWM

  diesel engines now. Assess as a Class three-fifty-one minesweeper control ship, sir, and a triplet of Troika HL three-fifty-one remote-controlled minesweeping drones."

  "The drones have magnetic minesweep solenoids," Bell said. "Retrofitted with minehunting sonar, too. Also able to trail two antimine paravanes."

  "They're making sure the channel stays clear," Jeffrey said.

  "They must have left the occupied Danish coast after the Delta passed through."

  "Hmmm," Jeffrey said. "Are they following the Delta? Maybe they only trust the Russians so far."

  "No, sir," Bell said. "Fire control indicates contacts not pursuing Delta's track. They're coming in our direction, speed nine knots."

  They'll be on top of us in barely ten minutes. They can't possibly miss us. . . . Are they purposely trying to flush us?

  There was nowhere for Challenger to dodge aside here. She had to move forward, at least as fast as the minesweeper, which was faster than Jeffrey—submerged in such shallow water—really dared go. He prayed, then ordered Meltzer to speed up. The minesweeper didn't react.

  Two hours later, alone in her stateroom, Ilse stripped naked. She began to don her clothing for the raid: a fresh pair of panties and bra, South African manufacture. Thick wool socks and long underwear, top and bottom, U.S. Navy issue. Over that went her jet black dry suit, except for the SpecWar combat booties and flameproof gloves and thermal hood. She left the front of her dry suit partly unzipped. Cold as Ilse felt, she held off bundling up or she'd work up a sweat. Later, wet underwear could cost her her life.

  On second thought, Ilse pulled on the gloves—her hands were ice cubes. At least they weren't shaking, yet. She took one last long look at the photo of her family, taped to the bulkhead inside her rack. She wondered if there was an afterlife. Jeffrey sat at the command console, all suited up. Meltzer, relieved by the relief pilot, was in the captured minisub.

  Jeffrey knew he'd be finishing the startup checklists there, with the help of Challenger's chief Ger-ling—German language specialist. Clayton and Montgomery stood in the CACC aisle, hard to make out in their dry suits and face paint in the rig-for-black. From sonar and LMRS data, Jeffrey understood now why it had been so quiet thirty miles back. To port, the west, lay Denmark's huge Sjaelland Island. To starboard, east, loomed the continental land mass of Sweden. Between them waited the Sound, the path into the Baltic. The entrance to the Sound was barely six thousand yards wide. This choke point was heavily defended by both the Germans and the Swedes—which hadn't been in any Intel brief.

  Challenger sat in seventy-six feet of water, bottomed in the sand. She hid against a muddy shoal littered with wrecks both old and new, wooden-hulled and steel. The ship's propulsion was shut down, for both quiet and cooling, since there was nowhere she could run if found out anyway.

  Jeffrey sighed to himself. War-fighting is like a tournament with sudden-death elimination rules. One misstep and you're out—permanently. . . . Well, we're sure committed

  now.

  SIMULTANEOUSLY,

  AT TRONDHEIM IN NORWAY.

  Ernst Beck stood on Deutschland's quarterdeck. It was really just the rounded top of the hull behind the sail, with a nonskid coating, by the torpedo loading hatch. The naval brass band—hastily assembled when the zip announced, by undersea acoustic link, that she was coming in—paused for the moment. Captain Eberhard --ode down the brow and onto the concrete pier, as the strains of the martial tune echoed inside the giant _ underground space. He was off to make his demands of

  the yardmaster, for rushed repairs and a weapons reload. They had to get underway again very quickly: Challenger was coming.

  This installation Deutschland visited was constructed by the Norwegian Navy, during the arms race after the war scare in Asia five years before. It was completed just in time to be grabbed by the Kaiserliche Marine—the Imperial German Navy—at the start of the real war in Europe. Built into the side of a granite mountain, thirty sea miles up a fjord, this was far more than a hardened dry dock. It was an entire subterranean submarine base. Norway had been an active part of NATO; some pens were large enough for the U. S. Navy's Seawolfclass. These accommodated Deutschland comfortably, too. Ernst Beck watched as several of his wounded men were helped up the inclined ladder through the open loading hatch. He and Jakob Coomans gave them a hand. These, the ambulatory cases, made it down the brow on their own, to be met by nurses and orderlies. They were taken away in a battery-powered jitney, to the base hospital on the upper level. Next were the stretcher cases. An ambulance took them away. The band struck up again, this time a funeral dirge.

  Beck glanced at the Class 212 in the next pen. Her crew, two dozen officers and men, stood on the pier at attention now. They looked clean, well rested, excited—their first mission? Men from Deutschland's crew, some wearing beards, now began to bring up the body bags. Beck watched the proceedings silently. His jaw and throat ached from grief. It was hard to hold back tears. He saw dignitaries at the edge of the dock surreptitiously wipe their eyes.

  "Look at them," Coomans said under his breath. He pointed with his gaze to the 212's crew. They were tall, and slim, and most of them blond. Handsome, Beck told himself, almost beautiful in dress uniform. Each time another

  body emerged from Deutschland's hull, they snapped a salute and held it till the corpse was off the brow.

  "They look eager enough, and proud," Beck said.

  "Fools. That captain is young enough to be my son. What does he know, what do any of them know, of mortality and death?"

  "They see the bodies."

  "They see glory and honor. They don't see cause and effect."

  "They're ready to rack up some tons, after the fine example we set. It's their duty."

  "Do they have any idea how many people we've killed, murdered, to score those tons?

  Have they any idea the odds they'll ever make it back in that suicide machine?" The 212 did seem tiny next to Deutschland.

  Beck watched as the fourth body bag came up the ladder. He knew it was the man he had cut free in the torpedo room. "Twenty percent," Beck said. "Last brew-up, their great-grandfathers' time, the survival odds were twenty percent."

  "Look at them," Coomans said. "They're bloody children." Soon the grim ceremony on Deutschland was complete. The deck hands went back to work.

  The band began to play again. This time it was a celebratory, triumphal march—a tune premiered at Wilhelm IV's coronation.

  "They change gears just like that," Coomans said. "It's all sheet music to them, I suppose."

  "They huff and puff and work their fingers. They go home and sleep in a safe, warm bed, probably not alone. Look at them, the Kaiser's tootlers, how chubby they are, how soft their faces! They wouldn't last one day on patrol. It's an insult for them to be here." On a signal from her captain, the 212's crew rushed aboard her with military precision. Most of the men went below. Others took up the lines. Quickly the 212 started to move. The traction engines were towing her to the blast door interlocking. Once there she'd submerge, then transit through the deep fjord underwater. She'd come out in the Norwegian Trough, the same way Deutschland came in.

  Beck made eye contact with her captain on the 212's bridge. He threw the man a salute. " Where
are you headed?" he shouted.

  "Nash England!" To England.

  "Good luck!"

  "And to you, Herr Korvettenkapitan! Again, congratulations on your new record!" Beck turned away to get to work. As the 212 drew past Deutschland's stern, he glanced at the back of the captain's head.

  The man sounded confident enough, Beck told himself. But then, heading out, they always did.

  And the band played on.

  FIVE MINUTES LATER.

  AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE SOUND,

  IN THE CAPTURED GERMAN MINISUB

  Ilse stood behind Chief Montgomery as he piloted the mini. Outside the hull, small warships' screw-props swished, turbines sang, piston engines pounded, and active sonars whistled and chirped. Ilse's hair brushed the overhead; like Challenger's ASDS, the German minisub was barely eight feet high on the outside.

  The control compartment was rigged for red. Lieutenant Meltzer, in the right seat, served as copilot: off watch, the last few days, he'd drilled to learn the German vessel's systems. Switches and knobs were labeled or tagged in English for him. Ilse glanced to her right. Jeffrey squeezed

  in next to her, half-standing behind Meltzer. Clayton and the enlisted SEALs and gear were in the transport compartment aft.

  Ilse had a bad feeling. She wondered if she'd have to watch Jeffrey die, or one of the others. She wondered if the human soul is real, and whether it would have time to leave her body in that millionth of a second if she needed to set off an atom bomb in her lap. . .

  . She tried to shake her sense of foreboding.

  Everyone studied the data on the mini's wide-screen displays. The mini sat on the bottom, in front of the choke point into the Sound. Threat icons littered the tactical plot and the nay chart.

  "Mines, nets, wrecks, patrols," Jeffrey said. "German or Swedish, take your pick."

  "We're a German mini," Meltzer said. "Maybe we should go through on the occupied Danish side." If Meltzer was nervous, it didn't show, except that his Bronx, accent was thicker.

  "Problem with that," Montgomery told him, "is we'll be challenged. We don't have the current recognition codes for here."

  "What about down the middle?" Ilse said. "It's the deepest part, and the seam between the two countries' forces, right?" She liked the tight-knit feeling of this foursome, heading into danger together, improvising as they went. Bonding.

  "We could draw fire from both sides," Jeffrey said. "Which leaves Swedish waters," Ilse retorted. "You really think that's a better choice?"

  "It's the least bad of the three. These minis were sold to the Axis by Sweden. Maybe they'll leave us alone." "I dunno, Skipper," Montgomery said.

  "Look," Jeffrey said. "In fourteen hours, tops, ARBOR's computer worm at the lab goes dormant again, assuming internal security doesn't find it first. After that, there's no way we'll ever get inside."

  Montgomery picked up the mike to the transport cornpartment. He asked one of the enlisted SEALs to come forward. Montgomery turned to Jeffrey. "He speaks a little Swedish."

  Meltzer stiffened. "Hydrophone line dead ahead."

  "I see it," Montgomery whispered.

  Jeffrey watched that screen, slaved to the mini's chin-mounted photonics sensor. The moored Swedish hydro-phone heads showed all too clearly on the bottom, swaying gently in the image-intensified moonlight.

  "Dense mine field to port," Meltzer said. "Big wreck right to starboard. We can't maneuver to avoid."

  "Think they can hear us?" Montgomery said. He tapped the screen, one of the hydrophones.

  "If we're close enough to see them through this turbidity," Ilse said, "they're close enough to pick something up from the mini. Main screw blade-rate, side thruster flow noise, machinery hum, something."

  "Pull back?" Montgomery said. "Try again from more in-shore?"

  "No," Jeffrey said. "Keep going or they'll be suspicious." Montgomery worked his control joystick and the throttle.

  Jeffrey watched the hydrophones disappear under the mini.

  A light on Meltzer's console started blinking. "Incoming message. Undersea acoustic link." He brought it up on another screen. "Digital, but not encrypted. It's Swedish, sir, I think."

  The enlisted SEAL, squashed between Jeffrey and Ilse, craned to read the message.

  "It says, Identify yourselves."

  "Ignore it," Jeffrey said. "Keep going. Pilot, increase speed to six knots."

  "Aye, aye," Montgomery said. The light stopped blinking.

  "I doubt the local troops have authority to shoot," Jeffrey said. "They'll need to follow ROEs, chains of command, just like us."

  The mini kept moving south, toward the Baltic.

  "So far so good," Ilse said a minute later. "The Sound gets much wider soon." She pointed to the updated tactical plot. "Our passive sonars say there are fewer ships patrolling ahead." Suddenly Jeffrey heard a roaring, tearing noise, then a shattering explosion off the starboard bow. The minisub shivered and pitched—they'd been fired at by a shore-based naval gun.

  The message light blinked again.

  "It says, You are intruding in Swedish territorial waters. Surface and heave to for boarding or we will sink you."

  "Now what?" Montgomery said. "We're boarded, we're finished." Jeffrey ran his hand over his face. He worked his jaw back and forth. It was hard to think straight, amidst the reverb of the explosion and the vibrations from the shock. The others looked at him expectantly.

  "Answer in German," Jeffrey said. "Say we're on a training run. . . . Say we thought this was Rugen Island." Rugen was a. German island that formed one side of Greifswald Bay. Montgomery typed. The answer was in German. "They say we're not even close. . . . Surface and leave our waters at once."

  Jeffrey heard another shell tear overhead and detonate in the water. He gripped the back of Montgomery's chair to steady himself. His ears hurt.

  "They say that one went off due west of us. Head due west now or the next shell won't miss."

  "You heard the man," Jeffrey said. "Raise the photonics mast and use image intensification. Don't surface."

  Meltzer flicked a switch and the mast came up. He activated another screen to show the picture. The fog topside had cleared, but it was overcast. Jeffrey could see tall mountains on the Swedish coast, snowcapped.

  Montgomery steered the mini due west. Meltzer adjusted the ballast and trim for the halocline—the variation in salt content which affected buoyancy.

  "So much for stealth," Ilse said. "That shore battery woke up the whole neighborhood." The message light blinked.

  "Source this time is bearing two nine five," Meltzer said. From the direction of Denmark, not Sweden.

  "Put the 'scope on two nine five," Jeffrey said.

  Meltzer reached and turned a knob. "That's a German patrol craft, Captain, approaching fast." They were cornered.

  The patrol craft was barely two thousand yards off, coming straight at them on the screen. Jeffrey saw a big radar dome on a pylon over her bridge, and a big gun on her foredeck. He glanced at Ilse; she looked stoic, resigned. He saw her finger the pistol on her belt.

  Montgomery said the acoustic message was in code. He couldn't decrypt it.

  "Mechanical transient bearing two nine five!" Meltzer said. Jeffrey saw it on the broadband waterfall. "Replay on speakers." The control compartment filled with a clanking, a harsh electrical whine, then a thunk. There was awful finality to that thunk.

  "That's a deck gun loading and -training," Jeffrey said. On the screen the patrol craft's gun barrel seemed aimed right between his eyes.

  "That thunk was the breach block closing, wasn't it?" Ilse said. "What do we do?" Jeffrey could see she was panicking. He forced himself

  to stay levelheaded, which wasn't easy. He had an idea. "Chief, answer them on digital using plain text. Say it's our first day." The western Baltic was a German Navy training area.

  Montgomery grinned, and typed.

  The warship answered. "They want the recognition password." Uh-oh. "Tell them, tell
them you can't remember. In training they said to never write it down. That gun aimed down your throat is making you nervous. . . . Write with a lot of typos so they think you're flustered."

  Montgomery took a deep breath. He typed.

  There was a long, nerve-racking pause. Jeffrey waited for the gun to open fire. He'd see the flash, then hear it, then feel it, then feel nothing.

  Montgomery frowned. "They say to stop where we

  are.”

  Ilse pulled the pistol from her belt. Jeffrey put out his hand to stay her. Jeffrey almost jumped when he saw flashes on the screen—but they were much too fast for a three-inch gun. A signal lamp, aimed at the minisub's periscope.

  "Morse code, plain text," Montgomery said.. "They're sending a minesweeper to escort us to the Baltic."

  Jeffrey took the pistol from Ilse and safed it and put it back in her holster. "For the last time," he told her. "This is about the mission, not about you." More lights flashed from the patrol craft, and another ship hove into view. That ship signaled.

  "She's the Konstanz," Montgomery said. "One of those Type three-fifty-one minesweeping-drone control ships. She says to fall in behind her, she'll send her drones out in front."

  "Does this periscope have-a signal light built in?" "Yes."

  "Then tell them thanks."

  Montgomery keyed the message.

  "They say they were going to make a routine sweep

  soon anyway. You never know when an Allied unmanned aerial vehicle might sneak through and drop a mine. . . . They also say, based on our performance the last few minutes, we might want to reconsider our career choice .. . like maybe the Army." Ilse held on as the minisub pulled into the minesweeper's wake. The mini began to roll heavily. Ilse was glad she had taken a seasick pill before leaving Challenger.

  "Try to keep the periscope aimed at their stern," Jeffrey said.

  "Aye, aye," Montgomery said.

  Ilse studied the picture. She could see boat davits on the Konstanz's afterdeck. Then came the superstructure, with a single mast. A yellow light blinked on the masthead.

  "What's that for?" Jeffrey said.

  Montgomery riffled through the mini's on-line database. "I am escorting a friendly submarine."