Crush Depth cjf-3

by Joe Buff

  For a long while, neither man spoke. Jeffrey just enjoyed the ride and the cigar, and savored the air and the sun and the view. It was remarkable how totally refreshed he felt.

  Then Jeffrey saw the bow of a freighter up ahead, coming around the curve in the cut from the opposite direction.

  “I think perhaps, Capitán, that soon you should go below.”

  Jeffrey nodded.

  Rodrigo sighed, and raised his cigar to the mountains. “To the fallen, to all those who made this great canal possible.”

  “Yes,” Jeffrey said, raising his cigar, “to the fallen.”

  “And to the fallen who fought to make my Cuba free.”

  “Cuba Libre,” Jeffrey said, then hoped it wasn’t in bad taste.

  Rodrigo looked at Jeffrey and his eyes were moist with joy and sorrow. “Thank you, my friend.” Rodrigo raised his cigar once more. “To success in your journey, wherever you are bound.”

  “Thank you, Rodrigo,” Jeffrey said from the heart. “Thank you.”

  Rodrigo paused. “And to the most recent fallen, Capitán, now in this latest fight we share to make the whole world free.”

  “Yes,” Jeffrey said, thinking of Ilse. “To the fallen.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  On Voortrekker

  Van Gelder had the conn. Voortrekker was back in the all-concealing bottom terrain of the Mid — Indian Ocean Ridge. She continued on her journey toward the Australia — New Zealand — Antarctic Gap and the wide Pacific beyond. As before, Voortrekker moved slowly, scouting ahead with an off-board probe. Van Gelder looked up from the imagery feed when a messenger came to his console.

  “The captain’s compliments, sir, and he requests your presence in his cabin.”

  “Very well… Navigator, take the conn.”

  Van Gelder stepped aft to ter Horst’s cabin.

  “Come in, Gunther, come in.” Ter Horst switched from Afrikaans — the Boer tongue — to German. “I believe you already know Commander Bauer.”

  Van Gelder nodded. Bauer was the head of the Kampfschwimmer team. He was tall and blond and handsome, slim-waisted, and seemed like a real tight-ass. Van Gelder disliked him on sight.

  “I enjoyed our little swim together, First Officer,” Bauer said. “It is good we rescued your crewman from the water, ja? It is not so good about the killed Australians.” Bauer shot ter Horst an almost dirty look, as if to say, Be glad my marksmanship is better than yours, mein Kapitan. Van Gelder was taken aback. Although Bauer outranked Van Gelder — a mere lieutenant commander — and was equal in rank to ter Horst — a full commander — it still was customary to show respect for a warship’s senior officers.

  Seated beside Bauer was one of the enlisted Kampfschwimmer, who didn’t say anything.

  Ter Horst waved dismissively. “We can’t worry about that now.” Van Gelder thought ter Horst still looked sad, shaken, aged a bit, by the intelligence Bauer had brought with him, that Ilse Reebeck had died in an accident in America. Van Gelder was surprised to see this human side of his captain. He realized ter Horst’s relationship with Ilse Reebeck had been complex.

  “Gunther, pull your chair over here, and let’s look at a chart.”

  Van Gelder and Bauer sat where ter Horst showed them. Ter Horst typed on his laptop. A nautical chart appeared on the flat-screen TV on the wall of ter Horst’s cabin. It showed the South Pacific.

  “This is the problem we face,” ter Horst said. “Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica. The so-called ANZA Gap… The waters north of Australia are much too shallow and constricted, butting up against Indonesia and New Guinea. That leaves us the Tasman Sea, between Australia and New Zealand, as one choice. The alternative is the part of the Southern Ocean between New Zealand and Antarctica.”

  This much was obvious, and Van Gelder had already been thinking about which route Voortrekker might take. He knew ter Horst was leading up to something… and maybe testing him. “Captain, I think the Tasman Sea is the poorer choice. The sea-floor terrain is nicely broken, but the Tasman route is much narrower than the Southern Ocean portion of the gap.”

  “Ja,” Bauer said. “Besides, the Tasman is flanked by hundreds of miles of enemy coast on both sides. Australia and New Zealand are strong with surface and airborne antisubmarine defenses.”

  “Now we come to the Southern Ocean route,” ter Horst said. “Antarctica is nonmilitarized, by international treaty. That’s good for us. The weather there will be more severe than the Tasman Sea, which is bad for Allied antisubmarine ships and aircraft. The bottom terrain there also is good for us. Lots of fracture zones in which to hide.”

  Ter Horst obviously wasn’t finished, so Van Gelder nodded. Van Gelder was starting to think, by the barely repressed smug grin on Bauer’s face, that Bauer knew more than Van Gelder did.

  Ter Horst stood and touched the nautical chart. “One thing to bear in mind is that the waters south of New Zealand are protected by this chain of islands running northeast, the same direction we want to go.” Ter Horst reeled them off on his fingers. “Macquarie Island, Campbell Island, Antipodes Island, Bounty Island. The last of them is the little Chatham Island group, some five hundred nautical miles due east of New Zealand…. Now, south of them hereon the chart, in the Southwest Pacific Basin, the water is close to six thousand meters deep.”

  “That’s deeper than our crush depth,” Van Gelder said.

  “It is,” ter Horst said. Bauer smirked.

  “The Allies aren’t dumb,” ter Horst went on. “See these red arcs marked on the map? These are their bottom-moored hydrophone lines, part of their vaunted worldwide SOSUS system. The Southwest Pacific Basin is wired for sound, and most of the hydrophones are down in water much too deep for Voortrekker to get at them.”

  “And in such deep water,” Van Gelder said, “the deep sound channel will function perfectly.”

  “Yes,” ter Horst said. “We’d need to pass right over three of the hydrophone lines to get fully through the gap.”

  Van Gelder glanced at Bauer, then said, “I suppose we can’t just nuke a segment of the SOSUS here, like the Germans did in the North Atlantic right at the start of the war.” Bauer blinked.

  “That’s quite true, Gunther. With such ideal sound propagation, quiet as we are, they’d hear us coming before one of our torpedoes could be in range of the hydrophones. The detonation of the warhead would reveal Voortrekker’s presence, within a circle much too tight for comfort.”

  Van Gelder remembered the plastering the Ronald Reagan gave Voortrekker after Diego Garcia — running repairs were still going on in many parts of the ship. “So what do we do, Captain?”

  Ter Horst turned to Bauer. Bauer turned to his enlisted man. “Stand up. Take off your shirt. Turn around.”

  Van Gelder was surprised to see two white plugs embedded in the skin in the small of the Kampfschwimmer’s back. Each had a small valve, now sealed off.

  “What are they?” Van Gelder said. “Gills?” He was half joking.

  “Look more closely, please,” Bauer said.

  Van Gelder realized the plugs were intravenous ports — the things used in hospitals for chronically ill patients who needed repeated blood transfusions or constant chemotherapy drips.

  “What are they for?”

  “With these,” Bauer said, “a man may dive to six thousand meters or more.” Twenty thousand feet.

  “You can’t be serious. Not even mixed gases work below about six hundred meters. Six thousand? The pressure alone so deep…”

  “We are not speaking of gases. We are speaking of breathing oxygenated saline solution, directly into the lungs, a fluid which self-equalizes to the metric tons of outside pressure.”

  “I’ve heard of that idea,” Van Gelder said. “It’s an old idea. Getting the oxygen in was never the problem. The problem was getting the carbon dioxide out. Once the carbon dioxide level in the blood builds up, the person dies!”

  “Yes, they die. They die if the carbon dioxide level builds up in th
e diver’s blood. We do not let the carbon dioxide build up.”

  Van Gelder hesitated. “That’s what these implants are for?”

  “Ja. The diver wears a backpack, which hooks up to the ports. Instead of tanks of gas, the backpack contains dialysis apparatus. There is, of course, also a form of rebreather oxygen supply. But the key, the great breakthrough by German science, is the perfection of the carbon dioxide dialysis process.”

  Van Gelder turned to the enlisted man. “Have you really done this? In actual field trials, at such great depths?”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “And how many others have died so far, doing this?”

  The enlisted man looked at the floor.

  “Decompression takes many, many hours,” Bauer continued firmly. “That is why we brought our portable one-man pressure chambers.”

  “Those coffin-shaped crates?”

  “Ja. A good disguise for the chambers, don’t you agree? To ship them through Sri Lanka, and load them on the Trincomalee Tiger, crated to look like coffins?”

  Coffins is right, Van Gelder thought.

  Ter Horst smiled. “Now you see our plan, Gunther.”

  Van Gelder thought for a moment. “I do, and I don’t, Captain. If one of these divers goes down and cuts the SOSUS fiber optic with a pair of scissors instead of an atom bomb, the Allies will still know right away there’s a break in the line. Their equipment will tell them where. They’ll investigate. We’ll be found out.”

  “Who said anything about a break?” Bauer interrupted. “A diver is useless unless he performs useful work. Four of my men, in total, bear these port implants. They work in teams of two.”

  “They work in teams doing what?”

  Ter Horst leaned over and touched Van Gelder on the knee. “This is the beautiful part.”

  “We have a device which taps into the fiber-optic line,” Bauer said.

  “I thought fiber optics can’t be tapped without detection.”

  “No, they can. Even the Allies have been doing this for several years. But what good would it do your ship to listen on the Allied sound surveillance grid?”

  “None! We don’t want the SOSUS to listen to us.”

  “Ha!” Bauer was obviously very pleased with himself. “Our device does not listen. It replaces. It penetrates and intercepts the optic signals, and cancels them and substitutes signals we supply, from the device, using microlasers and a built-in high-speed computer. All without breaking the cable or interrupting the signal for even one moment.”

  “But—”

  “Yes, it involves extremely fine work, which is why men must be down there on site and use their hands…. And incase you’re concerned about the cold at six thousand meters, the men wear special dry suits lined with shielded plutonium. This gives a diver the manual dexterity of a brain surgeon, even spending hours in seawater near the freezing point.”

  “You’re not serious. Plutonium?”

  “The idea was tried by the Americans in the 1950s, you should know. Plutonium gives off constant heat, and keeps the divers toasty warm without an external power source that might be drained prematurely. The Americans abandoned the idea because they were afraid of nuclear-waste pollution.” Bauer laughed sarcastically. “We’re giving them plenty of such pollution every day, now, are we not?”

  Van Gelder sensed that even ter Horst found Bauer overbearing.

  Ter Horst cleared his throat. “So, Gunther, that’s how we’ll get through…. Terrific, don’t you think?”

  “It’s amazing, Captain.”

  “We send the Kampfschwimmer team ahead of us in our minisub. It’s small enough and quiet enough to escape detection, and also has plenty of range. In fact, Gunther, I would like you to go as copilot on the minisub, to monitor their efforts.”

  That sounded interesting, and frightening. “Yes, Captain.”

  “The divers leave the steel-hulled mini, with its shallow crush depth,” ter Horst said. “They descend on a lengthy cable, bringing with them a low-light camera with feed up to the minisub, so you can watch as the divers work. The device they attach to the hydrophone line overlays a false signal, background ocean noise and such, while we sneak past.”

  “For years,” Bauer said, “the Americans have depended too much on the SOSUS to track other submarines. When we defeat their system this way, it will deal them quite a shock.”

  “But eventually the enemy will suspect their incoming data is bad, Captain.”

  “By then we’ll be long gone, sinking their tankers and carriers right and left…. Isn’t science a wonderful thing?”

  TWENTY-TWO

  On Challenger

  THE PRIMA LATINA was supposed to stop in Balboa harbor, at the Pacific Ocean end of the Panama Canal, to let the canal pilot off. By strange coincidence, just then, the Prima Latina’s throttles jammed at full power. Rodrigo, sent below by the master to shut the main fuel-cutoff valves, took forever as he pretended to fumble all around the engine room in search of the proper controls. While harbor-traffic authorities warned other shipping by radio to stay clear, Prima Latina ran at full speed the whole length of the Gulf of Panama. The launch meant to pick up the harbor pilot had no choice but to chase in the freighter’s wake.

  At last, at the very outlet of the gulf, the throttles were forced shut. The Prima Latina came to a halt. The pilot departed, cursing, swearing he would have the ship’s canal toll doubled for wasting so much of his valuable time.

  All this Jeffrey knew because Rodrigo told him about it with a chuckle once the canal pilot was gone. The mechanical failure was faked, all part of the CIA’s plan — to get Challenger through the shallow gulf much faster, and then let the Prima Latina stop at sea without suspicion. Conveniently, the Gulf of Panama became the Pacific proper right at the edge of Central America’s continental shelf.

  Standing on Challenger’s hull, inside the Prima Latina, Rodrigo gave Jeffrey a farewell gift packed with fresh fruit, Havana cigars, and several up-to-the-minute intelligence data disks. The two men made their warm good-byes, and Rodrigo took the crawl space out of the submarine hold. Soon the secret bottom hold doors swung open.

  The continental-shelf edge here was steep. Challenger immediately dived. She was on her way, following the bottom in water ten thousand feet deep. The Prima Latina started up again, on course for her destination in Peru, her throttles restored by her engine-room crew to proper working order.

  Jeffrey wondered if he would ever meet Rodrigo again, during or after the war. He was a very likable man, and Jeffrey found his sincerity rather touching.

  Several hours later

  Jeffrey had the conn. The ship was at battle stations. The control room was hushed. Bell, as fire-control coordinator, sat right next to Jeffrey. Kathy Milgrom’s technicians worked their sonar consoles, as she and her senior chief spoke. Lieutenant Sessions and Commodore Wilson stood at the navigation plot. COB and Meltzer manned the ship-control station; Harrison had the relief pilot’s seat. Every position in the control room was occupied, and other men stood in the aisles, to help or to watch and learn.

  Challenger made flank speed again. The deck vibrated, consoles squeaked, and spring-loaded light fixtures jiggled.

  Deep underwater, the volcanic rise of the Coiba Ridge loomed just to Challenger’s starboard. The mass of the Malpelo Ridge lay just to port. Challenger was about to exit the valley between the two ridges, into the flat, wide-open depths of the Panama Basin. Crossing the basin would be risky — it was like a vast undersea plain, or a drowned plateau; there were no terrain features there to mask the ship. Even moving slowly for stealth, Jeffrey’s vessel would be very exposed, almost naked.

  But Jeffrey had no choice. The basin was the only possible route to the next long, rugged tectonic feature on the ocean floor, the Colon Ridge. The comfortably wide and jagged Colon Ridge ran southwest for a thousand miles, right into the all-concealing Galapagos Fracture Zone.

  “Helm,” Jeffrey ordered, “slow to ahead
one-third, make turns for four knots.”

  Meltzer acknowledged. Jeffrey wanted to do a thorough sound search before they left the safe ridge valley to venture into the dangerous basin plain. Jeffrey’s immediate tactical problem was crossing the Panama Basin unnoticed but quickly. Using the Panama Canal might have cut several crucial days from his trip to the South Pacific, but there still was a long way to go.

  The passive sonar search began. More cargo shipping quickly appeared on the plot.

  “New passive sonar contact,” one of Kathy’s people announced. “Contact is submerged.”

  A submarine. Is it one of ours? Is it hostile, and waiting for us?

  “Contact classification?” Jeffrey demanded.

  “A diesel running on batteries, Captain,” Kathy said. “Multiple screws, heavy cavitation and blade-rate effects.”

  Jeffrey relaxed. He told Kathy to put the contact on the speakers. New sound filled the control room, a rhythmic churning with an underlying constant hiss.

  Bell listened, then turned to Jeffrey. “It sure isn’t trying to hide, sir. Not making that kind of noise.”

  This diesel boat was an old one. It was running so shallow that the suction of its screws created tiny vacuum bubbles which popped as they collapsed — cavitation hiss. The revolving screws were swishing distinctly as each blade cut through the wake turbulence from the diesel sub’s rudder and sternplanes. This caused a steady, throbbing, syncopated beat — blade rate.

  “Can you identify it?” Jeffrey said.

  “Contact appears to be a Peruvian Foxtrot,” Kathy said.

  “No threat,” Bell said. “A thirdhand, third-rate, Third World neutral vessel. Obsolete sonars and fire control.”

  “Obsolete is the word for it,” Jeffrey said. Foxtrot was the old NATO code name for a class of Russian diesel sub. A handful still traded on the global arms market. “Maybe it’s here on a training cruise.”