by Joe Buff
"Er . . . concur," Bell said. "He has to come through there eventually. Whether he's heading north or south at the time won't matter from our perspective."
"Exactly. The mobile mine field's our tactical trip wire." "Captain, four torpedoes doesn't make a very big mine field."
"I know."
Outside Challenger's hull, the sounds of rumbling and gurgling grew louder and louder. ONE HOUR LATER.
Deutschland rounded the north face of Middle, heading southwest.
"Contact on acoustic holography!" Haffner shouted. "Definite SSN hull, beam on to us, silhouetted against west face of Middle!"
Beck sat up straighter. "Confirmed! Clear picture of noise field near Middle is forming on port wide-aperture array. Challenger backlit against seismic rumbling from west face of central cone."
"Achtung, Einzvo," Eberhard said in triumph. "Snap shots, tubes one through four. On bearing to Challenger, los!"
"Torpedoes in the water!" Kathy shouted. "Two, three—four inbound torpedoes in the water!"
"It's too soon," Bell said. "The magma hasn't blown yet. Our weapons are out of position."
"Inbound torpedoes bearing three one seven," Kathy said. Northwest. "Range nine thousand yards, closing fast!"
"Pull our units back and use them as countershots?" Bell said.
"Inbound torpedoes are diverging," Kathy said. "Assess he's trying to get us in a pincers. Captain." "There's no point in using our eighty-eights defensively. Let his Sea Lions get closer. Oceanographer, how soon till that magma blows?"
"Any minute," Ilse said. "I think."
"Sir," Bell said, "advise we move away from the cone flank smartly."
"Not yet. Deutschland is probably beam on to us, using her wide-aperture arrays. Don't ask me how she found us, the point is that she did. . . . Sonar, go active on the bow sphere. Ping. Give Fire Control the target range and bearing. Tell me which way Deutschland's stern is facing."
There was a high-pitched eeeee. It fluctuated wildly in strength and frequency, to make it hard for the target to actively suppress.
Kathy waited for the echo. "Deutschland's course is one eight five." Eberhard's baffles pointed north.
"Okay. Okay. Fire Control, send our weapons at Deutschland in two pairs. The eightyeights furthest from her, go right at her bow at maximum attack speed now. Sneak the closer units in behind her stern in a stealth approach."
"What if Eberhard goes to flank speed?"
"He'll think he doesn't need to and it would put him at a tactical disadvantage. We might track his noise on passive without giving him pings to track us, and he has his own wires to protect."
"Understood." Bell went to work. "But what about the incoming torpedoes?"
"Hold your fire."
"We have nothing to fire."
"Eberhard doesn't know that."
"Two Mark eighty-eights inbound from directly ahead," Beck called out. Eberhard launched the Sea Lion in tube five as a defensive countershot. Beck reported the inbound weapons were diverging, closing in on Deutschland from her port and starboard bows.
"They're still under wire control?" Eberhard said. "Apparently, Captain."
"Then he hasn't reloaded either tube."
"Concur."
Eberhard launched another countershot, the Sea Lion in tube six. "Send one at each Mark eighty-eight." "Understood."
"Status of our salvo from tubes one through four?" "Good wires. All units approaching Challenger in a fan spread. Bypassing the lava lake now."
"Challenger's response?"
"None yet, Captain. Not since that ping."
"Well, he certainly knows where we are. Either he's-waiting for our units to get closer, or he's had a bad equipment casualty. Either way he's doomed. Keep tubes seven and eight in reserve, just in case."
"Understood."
"I want to check our baffles. Pilot, starboard twenty rudder." In Challenger's CACC, the noise of torpedo engines was drowned out by a double blast. Deutschland's two anti-torpedo torpedoes went off simultaneously, so that neither one would suffer warhead fratricide. Because of the
geometries involved, the concussions arrived at Challenger one half-second apart.
"Lost the wires," Bell shouted, "units from tubes one and three. Assess both units destroyed. Good wires, tubes five and seven, stealth approach in Deutschland's baffles."
"Update our firing solution. Sonar, go active."
There was another ping, with a different random pattern of strength and pitch.
"Aspect change on Deutschland. Deutschland turning to starboard."
"Send units from tubes five and seven at maximum attack speed."
"Captain," Bell said. "Four Sea Lions are inbound at us at maximum attack speed."
"Sit tight, XO. We can't move till we break all Eberhard's weapon wires."
"What's Fuller doing now?"
"Nothing, sir," Beck said. It didn't make sense.
"He's panicked, or they're arguing what to do. Crew discipline's collapsed on Challenger. It's beautiful, mental torture before they die."
"Torpedoes in the water in our baffles!" Haffner screamed. "They're close! Near-field effects!"
"Flank speed ahead," Eberhard bellowed. "Snap shot, tube seven, minimum yield, into our baffles. Los!" Deutschland picked up speed.
"Damn him," Eberhard said.
Beck stared at his tactical screen. "It's impossible, sir. Challenger's just sitting there."
"Has Fuller lost his mind? He used all four tubes at us. Our Sea Lions are so close he'll never intercept them now, even if he launched more units."
Deutschland hit twenty knots.
"Inbound torpedoes diverging," Beck said., –
"Snap snot, tube eight, minimum yield, into our baffles, los!" Deutschland fishtailed, hitting thirty knots.
"Inbound torpedoes still closing, sir." They were much too deep for noisemakers or decoys.
"That madman. He's committed suicide, just to get at me.
"Captain," Beck said. "Challenger's weapons are too close. With their maximum yield, or our minimum yield, we'll take heavy damage either way." He's clever, this Fuller. The two weapons off our bow were ones he meant for us to see. They were a ploy, to lull us, while he snuck two more behind our stern. It worked: We were blindsided.
"Pilot, stern-planes on full rise! Emergency blow on hydrazine!" The bow nosed for the surface. The hydrazine roared as it forced seawater from the main ballast tanks.
"Lost the wires, tubes one through four!" Beck watched Deutschland's depth decreasing rapidly—but the American 88's still overtook. If Eberhard ordered the last two Sea Lions detonated now, Deutschland would destroy herself. The ship hit forty knots.
"Cavitating!" Haffner shouted. The pump jet was making noise, even this deep, because of dissolved volcanic gases in the water.
Fuller's weapons began to ping in range-gate mode. Sonar conditions were disturbed, but sound rays took the same path coming and going. The inbound torpedoes would follow the twisting path of each ping's echo, right up Deutschland's stern. Yes, this Fuller is a clever one.
By rote Beck called out the ever-closing distance to the two weapons. The ship hit fifty knots. Coomans kept reporting Deutschland's depth. The climb from three kilometers down was taking an eternity. The 88's would be in lethal radius long before Deutschland reached the surface.
Jeffrey watched the data feeds. "I think we have him, XO." "Sir, unless you do something, Deutschland has us, too."
"Helm, ahead two thirds. Left standard rudder, make your course due east." Meltzer acknowledged.
"Captain," Bell said, "that takes us right at the live volcano. Inbound torpedoes' range is four thousand yards, overtaking us by fifty knots!"
"Helm, thirty degrees up-bubble. Take us through Middle's central crater plume."
"Sir," Bell said, "do you know what you're saying?" "The lava lake was a dress rehearsal." Ilse heard more distant blasts.
"Units from tubes five and seven have detonated!"
Bell said. "Solid hits on Deutschland!" The blast force of the 88's reached Challenger. The inbound Sea Lions pinged.
"Helm, ahead flank!"
"Sea Lions in lethal range at one KT any moment!" Challenger entered the volcano plume.
In a flash, Ilse realized what Jeffrey was doing. The rising, dispersing heat and chemicals of the plume created a giant acoustic diffuser. The vertical sound-speed profile would refract all sound rays up, far more sharply even than normal in the bottom isothermal zone. The plume would also cause the sound rays to diverge—to spread and weaken—in the horizontal direction, because sound speed was highest at the central axis of the plume. When Challenger was well into the plume, the Sea Lion pings would weaken drastically, and the weak echoes would diffuse even more while bouncing back. The Sea Lions, their wires snapped, would seem to lose the contact. Their blue-green laser target discriminators wouldn't sense a noisemaker or decoy. They'd assume the target had put on a burst of amazing speed and escaped, or turned hard out of their search cone, or that the weapons themselves had suffered a hardware or logic flaw. They'
d either rush off in a different direction, to try to'
regain contact, or detonate, in a last-ditch try to kill their receding target. When they detonated—outside the immediate zones of the fireballs—the shock wave would act like sound: It was sound. It, too, would be bent up and diffused, as it passed through the plume, and with luck would deflect harmlessly above Challenger; the extent of ray refraction was independent of sound intensity.
Sometimes, Ilse had to admit, Jeffrey amazed her. The one big question was, would it work?
Then there was the wild card: the magma outburst, now overdue.
ON DEUTSCHLAND
Deutschland was dying even as she drove for the surface. All the hours of chase and searching, all the plans and strategy, had given way to these last few savage seconds of guessing and outguessing—and Deutschland had lost. Beck manned his station grimly. Along both sides of the Zentrale men sat broken-necked or stunned; only Beck's headrest, as he faced forward, prevented whiplash from the Mark 88 A-bomb blasts astern.
Damage reports came in from all over the ship. There was bad flooding in Engineering and in the torpedo room. There was a bad electrical fire in equipment near the enlisted mess. Eberhard ordered Coomans aft, to take charge at the fire. The Leutnant zur See copilot took over the helm; the relief pilot was dead.
"Sir," Beck said. "We're losing positive buoyancy. We're losing the ship." They were sinking, still far below the surface, despite the completed emergency main ballast blow. Eberhard ran to the copilot's station. He worked the controls for the conformal hangar.
"Einzvo, use the minisub. Save as many men as you
can.”
"Captain?"
"Verdammt, you have a family. Go, there isn't time."
Beck eyed a pressure gauge as smoke filled the Zentrale. Deutschland peaked out at four hundred meters depth, then started to go back down.
There was an internal explosion somewhere aft—the pressure of the blast burst Beck's eardrums.
"Captain!" Beck shouted. He saw Eberhard juggling the ballast controls. The captain picked up a sound-powered phone and yelled into the mike, but Beck couldn't hear. Eberhard turned to Beck. "For God's sake, go!" Beck read his lips. Werner Haffner moved in his seat. Beck unbuckled Haffner and slapped him and he rallied. "Sonar, come."
Beck and Haffner ran aft, choking on the smoke, gathering crewmen as they could. They had to use a ladder to bypass the fire. Beck saw Jakob Coomans lying on the deck, unconscious. Beck lifted him in a fireman's carry, and struggled toward the conformal hangar lock-out trunk.
"Abandon ship!" he shouted to the damage control parties, and to anyone else he saw. " Follow me!" More crewmen followed.
Beck's hearing began to come back. Coomans revived and moaned. He coughed, then vomited blood. Beck could feel Coomans's abdomen growing rigid and distended. Severe internal injuries.
Beck slipped on blood and vomit and fire-fighting foam. He slid downhill, aft. Deutschland was sinking by the stern.
He reached the lock-out trunk. Men helped him carry Coomans up the ladder, into the minisub. Beck ran into the control compartment and powered up the systems. Men kept climbing the ladder into the central sphere, then clambered in back. Smoke came up through the bottom hatch. More men came and filled the hyperbaric sphere around the hatch.
Beck eyed the mini's instruments. Eberhard had flooded and equalized the hangar, and the doors were fully
open. Deutschland's depth was seven hundred meters. That meant the mini's was seven hundred, too. At eight hundred the mini would implode with the hangar equalized, and Deutschland was dragging her down.
There was a deep thud from below, from aft. The ship's rate of descent increased sharply. Something must have given way, increasing the rate of flooding. The minisub's hull creaked.
"That's it," Beck shouted. "Close the bottom hatch." The moment the mini's board went, straight and green Beck released the hold-down clamps. The mini was free. He drove for shallower depth. He dared not surface with the mushroom clouds above. The minisub was sluggish with the weight of all the men. He activated the sonar speakers. Above the other noise he heard a terrible whistling: Deutschland, flooded, plunging for the ocean floor at over one hundred knots. There was a thunderous crack, the ship impacting the basalt bottom. Beck knew Deutschland would have smashed into a million pieces.
Beck let a surviving crewman, qualified in the mini, take control. Beck went aft and did a head count. Including himself, there were eighteen men aboard. Eighteen saved out of ten dozen.
But Jakob Coomans lay flat on the deck. Haffner looked at Beck and shook his head. "I'
m sorry, sir."
Beck knelt and cradled Coomans in his lap. He tried to smooth Coomans's hair, and wipe the blood from his lips and nose. Coomans, cynical but shrewd, always knowing just what to say, to lighten Beck's mood or restore his perspective. Coomans, a good man by any measure, and the closest thing to a friend Beck had had on Deutschland. Jakob Coomans was dead. Beck's captain, Kurt Eberhard, was dead—to the very end, Beck had never understood the man. Deutschland, Beck's ship, his home at sea, was dead. Beck sat there, tears streaming. Such a horrible, horrible waste.
"Sir," Haffner interrupted. "What do we do now?"
"What?"
"What should we do, sir? Head to Iceland and internment?"
"No." Beck pulled himself together. "Let me look at the charts." He went into the control compartment. He studied the data: fuel supply, drinking water, battery levels, air. He measured distances, and eyed the prevailing currents. He thought of the ceramic-hulled SSGN, almost ready to put to sea. She'd need battle-hardened men, and a good XO and sonar officer. Beck had a duty, to try to continue the fight. He thought of his wife and young twin sons. He had a duty to them, to get back, and to protect them. Beck turned to the pilot. "Make four knots, steer zero three zero."
"Jawohl. Our destination, sir?"
"Spitsbergen. We'll drift as much as we can, ration our emergency supplies. . . . Seven hundred sea miles. . . . It should take about a week. We'll make contact with our forces there." Challenger may or may not have survived—Beck didn't know, but Intel would find out eventually.
Haffner stuck his head in the control compartment. "Sir, what should . . . What should we do with Chief Coomans?"
"When it's safe, we'll go shallow, and equalize the sphere. We'll bury him at sea." SIMULTANEOUSLY, ON CHALLENGER.
Ilse yanked her seat belt tighter as Challenger fought the worst turbulence she'd ever experienced. On the bird's-eye view gravimeter mode, Ilse saw they were right above the volcano's central crater cauldron.
"Contact with inbound torpedoes fading," Kathy said. "Engineer reports we're going into vapor lock!" the phone talker said.
"Helm, maintain flank speed."
Ilse watched her speed log. Flank speed could only give thirty knots. Behind Challenger, a Sea Lion exploded, ins
ide what should've been lethal range. The blast was muffled, but still it jarred the ship. Another Sea Lion blew. The shock lifted Challenger's stern. Meltzer fought his controls.
"Switch all batteries to propulsion," Jeffrey ordered.
Another Sea Lion blew. Challenger was making barely twenty knots, going more on momentum than on her pump-jet. She drifted deeper in the crater. The CACC air grew warm. Jeffrey ordered the fans turned on again. Still the air grew warm.
"Hull popping!" Kathy said. "It's expansion noise." "We're being cooked!" Bell shouted.
"At least it'll help us float." A bigger hull should mean more buoyancy, but it wasn't enough. The ship kept sinking.
The final Sea Lion blew. Once more Challenger plunged and bucked. Ilse stared at the gravimeter. The ship was down inside the crater now, lower than the lip of the wall. They were trapped, and churning lava beckoned.
There was another gigantic eruption astern—the magma outburst, at last. It was more powerful than all four Sea Lions combined. Challenger's stern reared up even more, and everything in the CACC shook violently; the ship was heading down, closer and closer to the lava.
"The gravimeter!" Ilse said. "Look!" Before her eyes the rim of the crater gave way. "An avalanche!"
"Captain," Bell shouted, pointing, "head through there!" "Helm," Jeffrey ordered, "steer for that gap in the wall!"
On her photonics screen, Ilse watched as Challenger barely fit through. The ship continued sinking, plunging for the rock-hard seafloor three thousand feet below, carried by a seismic seawave, pacing the gigantic boulders tumbling down the seamount's slope. It's turning into a double-kill after all, us and Deutschland both.
"Chief of the Watch, give us buoyancy! Blow the sail trunk. Blow the safety tank. Blow everything you can!" Jeffrey grabbed the mike for Maneuvering. "Enj, get our power back or we've had it!"
The roar of the avalanche made it hard for Ilse to hear. Two thousand feet to unforgiving impact with the bottom. One thousand. Five hundred. Two hundred.
And then, as Challenger entered colder, denser water, she regained positive buoyancy and propulsion power came back. Almost miraculously, Challenger hurried away.