by Joe Buff
"I concur," Bell said.
"Assistant Navigator, make a record," Jeffrey said. "Fire Control, get a nuclear Mark 88
loaded and enabled in tube seven."
"Aye aye," Bell said. "Tube seven, load an 88."
"Also prep the other three Mark 88s," Jeffrey said. "Use tubes one, three, and five. I've a feeling we may need them in a hurry."
"Make tube seven ready in all respects," Jeffrey said, "including opening outer door. Firing point procedures on tube seven, programmed area search."
"Solution ready," Bell said. "Ship ready. Weapon ready."
"Match generated bearings and shoot," Jeffrey said. "Tube seven fired electrically," Bell said. "Unit swimming out."
"Unit is running normally," Sessions said.
"Time to make some tracks," Jeffrey said, "and here comes the really dangerous part. Chief of the Watch, disengage shallow water valves and pumping hardware, line up abyssal suite."
"Line up abyssal pump and valve suite, aye," COB said.
"Helm, all stop," Jeffrey ordered. Meltzer acknowledged.
"Phone Talker," Jeffrey said, "relay to all hands. Now transiting the deep sound channel under combat conditions. Rig for superquiet." Jeffrey knew the deep sound channel was formed by sound wave bending, in the region where seawater stopped getting colder with depth and then hovered just above freezing. The deep sound channel acted like an acoustic superconductor,
and the slightest noise would propagate for countless miles.
Morse raised an eyebrow at Jeffrey. "Superquiet?"
"Aye, sir," Jeffrey said, abashed. "I'm making a lot of this up as we go along. . . . Chief of the Watch, give us five tons negative buoyancy and let us drift on down."
"Five tons of negative buoyancy, aye," COB said.
"The thing that makes me really nervous," Jeffrey whispered, "is that the upslope toward the continental margin will tend to focus sound energy right at their SOSUS nets."
"Too true," Morse whispered back. "With all the pinging going on up there, someone may get an echo despite your active masking."
Jeffrey glanced apprehensively at a depth gauge—passing through 6,000 feet. "With the beating Challenger's taken, the hull might start popping shallower than normal."
"They'll sound like shotgun blasts on enemy passive sonar," Morse said quietly. "Let's hope nobody's trailing a hydrophone down here."
"Keep your fingers crossed," Jeffrey mouthed.
"Still no sign of anything," Van Gelder said.
"We've got lots more ground to cover," ter Horst said. "Sir, I've been thinking."
"That can be dangerous in today's world, Gunther."
Van Gelder hesitated. "Understood, Captain. But hear me out, sir, with respect. I'm looking at what that Q-ship did to us in the Antarctic. If you adjust for warhead yield and range, I'm not sure how badly we hurt Challenger."
"Go on."
"She may have used the same tactic we did when those British planes came after us, staying well inside the limiting circle of possible egress distance covered."
"You mean you think we missed?"
"Sir!" the sonar chief called out. "New passive sonar contact on starboard wide-aperture array. Sounds like a mine-avoidance sonar but it's at our depth. . . . Incoming torpedo bearing one zero zero! Range three thousand meters, approach speed twenty knots!"
"Verdammt," ter Horst snapped. "Helm, ahead flank maximum revs!"
"Ahead flank maximum revs, aye aye," the helmsman said. "Turbine room answers steam throttles are wide open, sir."
"Range-gating active lock," the sonar chief said, "too close to cancel it, torpedo accelerating to end-game speed!"
"What type is it, Number One?" ter Horst said. "Closed-cycle liquid-metal fuel," Van Gelder said,
((geared turbine and pump-jet propulsor. An American
Mark 88, Captain."
"Torpedo gaining on us!" the chief shouted.
"Firing jammers and noisemakers now," Van Gelder said.
"No time to launch a decoy," ter Horst said, "and the things don't always work. Prepare to fire tube seven, deep-capable nuclear torpedo. Tube seven snap shot on course one zero zero, minimum yield, our depth."
Van Gelder reached for his special weapons key at the same time ter Horst pulled his own out. "Weapon enabled!" Van Gelder shouted.
"Open the door and shoot!"
"Tube seven fired!" Van Gelder said. "I have control of the weapon."
"Helm," ter Horst said, "port thirty rudder smartly, make a knuckle, minimize our profile."
"Port thirty rudder smartly, aye aye, no course specified, sir."
"Get that incoming torpedo, Number One," ter Horst said between clenched teeth. " Intercept and smash it."
Van Gelder read his screens, then checked the trigonometry. "Detonation in three seconds."
He flipped up the plastic cover and pressed ARM. The light went green. He held his breath and then pressed
FIRE. The status screen said DETONATED.
Jeffrey, Ilse, Morse, and the assistant navigator were still gathered round the digital nav display. Challenger was right over the bottom at 7,800 feet, and Jeffrey considered it okay to talk in normal tones again. Apparently they'd made the trip down through the deep sound channel safely, given the lack of enemy fire. The hardest part right now was restoring neutral buoyancy, since COB had to pump those five tons from the negative tank against the outside pressure, plus an extra gallon of water for each ten feet of depth they'd added simply to adjust for hull compression—and he had to do it quietly. There was a sudden roar in the distance, building into an ear-splitting crescendo that died off slowly, seeming to spasm as surface and bottom reflections hit.
"What was that, XO?" Jeffrey said.
"Captain," Bell said, "unit from tube seven has detonated."
"Weapon effect?" Jeffrey said.
"Impossible to tell."
A half second after the signal came back through the fiber-optic wire, a gigantic kaboom kicked Voortrekker in the stern, jarring Van Gelder forcefully against his seat back, rolling the boat to port, and surrounding him in sound that was more felt than heard, a physical sensation of ungodly Armageddon that made him want to curl up in a ball. Instead Van Gelder gripped his console with both hands, watching the damage control enunciators,
dreading what he'd see. The blast was simply too powerful—the enemy warhead must have gone off an instant before the weapon did, subjecting the boat to both A-bombs at once.
"Very well, Fire Control," Jeffrey said. "Assistant Navigator, give me the 30-by-30degree square centered at 40 south, 25 east." The senior chief brought the large-scale chart onto the screen.
"At this point," Jeffrey said, "I think discretion is the better part of valor. If we try a battle damage assessment on Voortrekker and they're still alive, they'll pull the same trick we just used."
"I concur, sir," Bell said. "Conditions are poor now for a reattack. We're low on ammo and there's too much ground for us to cover. The priority should be our egress." Jeffrey nodded. "Now we've disengaged from enemy forces, it's time to make our getaway."
"I agree," Morse said. "Remember our objectives. At this stage survival equals mission success, a strategic win for us."
"We have this whole area to get through, people," Jeffrey said, gesturing at the map, "this whole area for hide-and-seek inside Axis territory"
"Where do you want to aim for?" Morse said.
"Hmm," Jeffrey said, studying the chart. "Our best bet is to insert somewhere in the MidOcean Ridge. I'm guessing that's what Captain Wilson and Monaghan planned. Hundreds of miles of rifts and faults on both sides of the endless central spreading valley. No one would ever find us till we wanted to be found."
"That's what I'd do too," Morse said.
"So just how do we get there?" Jeffrey said.
"Hmmmm. . . . We need to bypass areas that are too deep for us. We'd stand out much too well against the bottom. Assistant Navigator, shade in red everything below our
crush depth."
"Which estimate of our crush depth do you want to use, sir?"
"NAVSEA's latest work's the most refined I know about," Jeffrey said. "Based on their tests and calculations, let's go with fifteen thousand feet."
The assistant navigator hit some keys. Large areas of the map turned red.
"Okay," Jeffrey said. "We also need to stay down low, not just for stealthy nap-ofseafloor routing away from the shallows but also to avoid the deep sound channel. It's our glass ceiling, folks—we break it we get cut. Assistant Navigator, shade everything less than seven thousand feet in blue."
The assistant navigator hit more keys.
"What we see is what we get," Jeffrey said. "We need to avoid the continental shelf off Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, and the huge Agulhas Basin south of that is way too deep, well over twenty thousand feet."
"Northeast of us," Ilse said, "we'd hit the Mozambique Plateau and then the Almirante Leite Bank, also too constricted and too shallow"
Jeffrey stared at the map. "That leaves southeast, this neck of less-deep ground between the south edge of the Mozambique Basin and the northeast edge of the Agulhas Basin, a kind of hump where the bottom's at our crush depth. That route would take us straight to the Prince Edward Fracture, the closest point of insertion to the ideal topography along the spreading ridges. The final approach has lots of seamounts too, good hiding places that cut off long-range sonars."
"The seamount flanks are moonscapes," Ilse said. "There's no erosion underwater." Jeffrey nodded. "The deep bowls of the basins on either side of this hump-neck make me really nervous, though. They're too wide open and we'd be too far off the bottom. Enemy ships could easily drop temporary ambient-look-up SOSUS grids, then make short work of us with twenty-KT depth bombs."
"And what about the Axis air groups based on the Prince Edward Islands?" Morse said. " They'll be right in our face as we get to the fracture."
"If we stay deep and run quiet," Jeffrey said, "we give them a huge area to search under adverse terrain and acoustic conditions, except for right at the choke point at the hump between the basins. It's also the route they may think we'd be least likely to follow for exactly that reason, Commodore, their heavy air support."
"Go where we hope they don't expect us?" Morse said. "That's basic doctrine, sir," Jeffrey said.
"I'm not disagreeing," Morse said.
"Ilse," Jeffrey said, "what kind of bottom would we find along this hump?"
"Well," Ilse said, "it's part of a divergent boundary between lithospheric plates. The hump itself is caused by molten rock upwellings deep within the mantle, called diapirs, that lead to magma chambers."
"What's that mean in English?" Jeffrey said. He smiled.
"Sorry," Ilse said. "It means the bottom is bare rock and uneven. There are some shield volcanoes, the low-lying multiterraced kind."
"We're trained to usually avoid such areas," Jeffrey said. "How live are these volcanoes?"
"Sometimes very," Ilse said. "The hump-neck at the Prince Edward choke point does have active hydrothermal vents."
"Okay," Jeffrey said. "One more reason they won't think to look for us right there."
"There's another item we need to cover," Morse interjected. "What will Voortrekker do if they're still alive?" "Aye," Jeffrey said, "that's the puzzlement."
"No it's not," Ilse said. "They'll try again to sink us."
"Concur with that," Jeffrey said. "Hmmmm. . . . Well. . . I think if I were them I'd think this through the same way we just did, and aim for the same place. The choke point's like a gateway to the Fracture Zone. It's only forty nautical miles from side to side, eighty thousand yards, very easy for one SSN to set up a barrier patrol."
"Sure you don't want to use a different route, then," Morse asked, "on further consideration?"
"No," Jeffrey said. "I'd rather take on ter Horst there, on sort-of-equal terms, deep down and one-on-one, even if his boat is faster and quieter than us, as it ap-pears to be. We lose contact with Voortrekker at this point, God knows how many ships and lives will be destroyed. My every instinct, banged up as we are, is to get this damn thing over with now."
"Good," Morse said. "That was a trick question. I was testing you."
"Jan will feel exactly the same way," Ilse said. "Get this damned thing over with. . . . If he's still alive."
"Very well," Jeffrey said. "Helm and Chief of the Watch, make your base course one six five, commence nap-of-seafloor cruising mode. Ahead two thirds, make turns for twentysix knots." Meltzer and COB acknowledged.
"We'll try to stay above twelve thousand feet when possible," Jeffrey said. "Less strain on the hull and sea pipes."
"Understood," COB and Meltzer said.
"Fire Control and Sonar," Jeffrey said, "we'll stop occasionally to keep our ears peeled, especially in our baffles."
"Understood," Bell and Sessions said.
"Good plan," Morse said. "Ter Horst could be waiting out there anywhere. . . . The pressing question is, how do we find him before he finds us?"
"I don't know," Jeffrey said, "and we don't have very long to think about it. The quiet transit to the choke point should take just about a day."
Van Gelder watched his screens in disbelief. Was this true death, entering a fantasy where life went on impossibly? Was this the hell he'd earned?
Someone farted, probably from fear. Van Gelder had to bite his cheek to keep from giggling madly. That detail wasn't fake—he was alive.
Van Gelder read his data. The incoming torpedo had gone off barely outside lethal range. Maybe it mistook Voortrekker's weapon, rushing to make the intercept, for Voortrekker herself.
Some boxes on Van Gelder's damage control panel showed yellow and others red, but nothing that couldn't be dealt with, nothing that would slow the vessel or hurt her battleworthiness. Yet this punishment must have taken years off the hull's service life—
dry-dock tests would show.
"Son of a blery kaffir," ter Horst said, his cursing another reminder that Van Gelder was alive. "They actually got a shot off at us!"
"Yes, sir," Van Gelder said.
"What does it take to kill these bloody people?"
Jeffrey got up from the command workstation and stretched. He craved sleep very badly, but that was out of the question for now. He glanced around the control room for the umpteenth time in the last half hour. Imagery flickered on all the consoles, watched intently by Challenger's crew. His crew, he reminded himself, at least till they were out of immediate danger, or captured or dead.
This was supposed to be every XO's dream: his first independent command. Why did it have to come in the form of such a nightmare?
Jeffrey sighed. Ilse heard him and turned and made eye contact. She smiled, and this helped him feel better.
"Ilse," he said, "you've done so much already, do you want to grab some rack time maybe?"
"No," she said, "I better stay here in the CACC. You might need me."
"Good, thanks," Jeffrey said, stifling a yawn. "Sorry, it's the hour, not the company."
"That's okay," Ilse said. "How's your leg doing?"
"I can hardly bend it now, hurts like hell, but I feel fine otherwise. I think I bruised the kneecap when that first torpedo hit, back in the minefield."
"Call the corpsman?" Ilse said.
"He has more important things to do," Jeffrey said. "That's why we can't just sit still near the bottom for a month and wait for the Boers to forget about us and go away. We need to get the badly injured to hospitals ASAP, Monaghan and the others."
"Sure you don't have any symptoms of the bends yourself ?" Ilse said, standing and looking at Jeffrey from up close. "Brain stroke, lungs exploding, incoherent drooling?"
"Very funny," Jeffrey said. He saw two crewmen glance at him and Ilse, then give each other meaningful looks.
"I'm heading aft for a sec," Ilse said. "Let me at least get you some Advil or something."
"Okay," Jeffrey said. "And, Messenger of the W
atch, put up a fresh pot of coffee, please. Ask the mess management chief to send around some sandwiches and hot oatmeal. We'll do crew breakfast at modified condition
ZEBRA. I don't know about you, Ilse, but suddenly I'm starving." Ter Horst looked up from the navigation plotting table and sighed. "Much as it pains me to admit it, Gunther, we can't be everywhere."
"Concur, sir," Van Gelder said. "If I were the Americans, I think I'd head for the Prince Edward Fracture."
"Indeed. Why?"
"Whatever their primary mission, they know we're now at maximum alert. They may have local stealthiness, but their presence has been made known. They've lost the initiative, and sooner or later they have to try to escape from our home waters. It seems to me the best way is to get to the tectonic spreading seam as fast as they can, avoid our ASW forces as much as possible. But from what we've seen so far, sir, Challenger is clever and aggressive. The Prince Edward Islands won't deter them. If anything, they'd head there as a double bluff."
"I said to leave the puns to me, Number One. But I concur. I just wanted to hear you say it all out loud."
"Yes, sir," Van Gelder said.
"Very well," ter Horst said, "prepare another radio buoy, Flash Double Zed priority once more."
Van Gelder took a message pad and pen. He'd tidy up the wording and then supervise encryption in the radio room.
Ter Horst cleared his throat. "Message reads, `Continuing pursuit USS Challenger. Voortrekker will transit to choke point at north end Prince Edward Fracture. Prince Edward Island forces stand by in support but do not, repeat do not, engage submerged contacts unless requested specifically this vessel. Ter Horst sends' . . . Got all that, Number One?"
"Yes, Captain."
"Pretoria can hardly disagree with us—they've no good way to communicate. They'd be foolish if they tried, and more the fools if they ignore me."
"Concur strongly, Captain."
"Very well. We'll do an end-around past Challenger, try to cut her off. Helm, steer one six five."
"Steer one six five, aye aye, sir," the helmsman said. "Make your depth twenty-two hundred meters." "Make my depth twenty-two hundred meters, aye aye, sir."
"Engage terrain-following cruise mode."