by Joe Buff
"He has twice as many tubes," Bell said, "twice our rate of fire."
Jeffrey didn't need to be reminded. This was the problem he'd been agonizing over all along. Jeffrey could fire four torpedoes at a time before needing to let the repaired au-
toloader machinery push new units into the breaches of the tubes. Voortrekker could fire eight at a time. No matter how Jeffrey divided his fire between offense — fish aimed at Voortrekker — and defense — fish used to smash torpedoes ter Horst aimed at Challenger — the enemy would triumph. Ter
Horst could smash all Jeffrey's fish and still have four from that very first salvo to blow Challenger to smithereens.
"We have to change the rules of the game," Jeffrey said. "Somehow."
"Like use a decoy?" Bell suggested.
Jeffrey shook his head. "He'll be expecting decoys." "Then what?" Even Wilson seemed to be feeling the pressure now.
Jeffrey examined the tactical plot. He stared and stared, as if he were waiting for it to speak to him. Turn to port, or to starboard? Follow the mountain clockwise, or counterclockwise? He tried to forget what was really at stake and make it just a sport, like football or soccer.
Jeffrey gestured with his hands, and thought out loud. "If we go this way, he could catch us as we come round there. If we go that way, he could catch us here. With the sea mount blocking the line of sight till the very last minute, first contact will be at extremely short range. There'll only be time' for one salvo… "
"All of which we knew already," Wilson said.
Jeffrey gazed and gazed at the gravimeter. He had to find some way to redefine this tactical problem, to completely alter the parameters of the whole scenario… and do it fast.
Jeffrey knew he was good at thinking on his feet, with the clock ticking. He trusted his own capacity for leaps of intuition, that mysterious way in which his mind didn't have an idea he needed, and then suddenly the idea was simply there, and glaringly obvious.
Jeffrey hoped his own brain didn't let him down this time.
"Hah!" A broad grin came to Jeffrey's face. His stomach tingled brightly. "We don't go either way."
"You mean force Voortrekker to come to us?" Bell said. "We'll still be outgunned two to one," Wilson warned. "No, we won't… We'll outgun him two to one." "What?"
"Commodore, patience, please. XO, listen, here's the deal. I want to send our fish out and around ahead of us.
Launch them from just where we are, so Voortrekker won't hear them coming till too late. Program them to follow the side of the sea mount in a semicircle, and start their homing searches when they're well away from us: " Jeffrey also told Bell to have the weapons disarm before they could complete the circle and come back in Challenger's face.
"Understood, sir, but how does that improve the odds?"
Jeffrey snapped out firing orders in rapid succession. He sent four Mark 88s, deep-capable atomic torpedoes, around to the left. He told Bell to reload smartly. They armed the warheads and Jeffrey sent the next four around to the right — and reloaded again.
Jeffrey sent four more left, had Bell reload, then sent four more to the right again.
Now Challenger has sixteen weapons in the water, and ter Horst doesn't even know it yet.
"All units running normally," Kathy reported. The Mark 88 torpedoes attacked at seventy knots.
"Now that should keep him busy," Jeffrey said. Bell nodded and smiled. The whole mood in the control room lifted.
Commodore Wilson patted Jeffrey on the back. "Thinking outside the box. You never cease to amaze me, Captain."
"Thank you, Commodore… Now comes the tricky part. Helm, right ten degrees rudder."
Meltzer acknowledged. Challenger turned.
Almost half my ammo supply is irrevocably committed, and we're about to stir up a hornets' nest on the other side of this hill.
Jeffrey ordered Bell to reload, yet another salvo of weapons, but this time Jeffrey didn't fire. He did tell Bell to flood and equalize the tubes and open the outer doors.
"Helm:' Jeffrey ordered, "use left rudder as needed. Follow the sea mount, counterclockwise. Now it's time to put ourselves between Voortrekker and the Stennis."
THIRTY-FIVE
On Voortrekker
"It's only a matter of time now," ter Horst said. "I expect we'll hear him to starboard, not to port. He'll head northeast from the sinkhole to cut me off, bypassing the sea mount from counterclockwise."
Van Gelder knew now the spider, in ter Horst's story before, was supposed to be Jeffrey Fuller.
"Understood, sir," Van Gelder said. Voortrekker waited quietly on the north side of the first sea mount, to ambush Challenger from the rear as Fuller raced to save the American carrier.
"He thought he'd use the Stennis as flypaper to draw and hold me, to lure me straight on toward Challenger. Instead I've done an end-around and turned the game on its head.
That Collins boat, Gunther, the datum we made by sinking her, they're our flypaper for Challenger."
Van Gelder nodded. He might dislike ter Horst's politics, and might despise the man's twisted sense of honor and ethics, but Van Gelder couldn't deny his captain's impressive natural tactical skill.
Van Gelder eyed a chronometer — the bomb on Chatham Island should explode soon.
Something flashed on his screen, and the sonarmen reacted like they'd been hit by cattle prods. Van Gelder thought the bomb had gone off prematurely.
"Hydrophone effects," the sonar chief shouted. "Near field! Four torpedoes in the water!
Mean bearing two seven zero!" To port, not to starboard, coming around the mountain clockwise, from the west.
"Return fire, Number One:' ter Horst ordered. "Destroy them all, then send four more of ours in that direction. They'll find Challenger by active search."
Van Gelder rushed to issue commands. The weapons dashed from the tubes. Now all eight tubes were empty.
"Four more torpedoes in the water! Inbound, bearing zero six zero!" Coming around the sea mount from the other way — from starboard, east. Torpedoes began pinging everywhere now.
"He can't be two places at once!" ter Horst shouted. 'We're caught in the middle!"
"We need time to reload and arm," Van Gelder warned. "Helm," ter Horst snapped, "left full rudder. Flank speed ahead."
"Torpedoes at zero six zero are gaining fast."
"Launch noisemakers and jammers!"
Voortrekker's first wire-guided torpedoes intercepted the first incoming group, to the west. Van Gelder pressed the firing buttons; the four warheads exploded, barely outside lethal range of his own ship. Even set on their lowest yield, one-tenth kiloton for self-defense, Voortrekker rocked and shimmied. Everything in the control room shook.
Loose objects went flying. Van Gelder was tossed like a rag doll against his seat belt. His eardrums rang as if his skull would crack.
Blast waves bounced off the sea-mount face, and caught Voortrekker viciously in the stern. The ship veered more and more leftward, aimed straight at the sea mount, a solid mass of basalt. The danger showed all too vividly on the gravimeter — Voortrekker was still accelerating to flank speed, and she'd built up huge momentum.
"Hard right rudder!"
The helmsman complied. Challenger's second four torpedoes detonated against the noisemakers and jammers back behind Voortrekker's stem. Again Voortrekker was hammered. Between the latest tight turn at high speed, and the new shock waves from starboard, Voortrekker went into a snap roll. She banked wildly and dived out of control, aimed at the sea floor. The gravimeter faithfully showed the hard volcanic bottom coming at Van Gelder fast. The helmsman and chief of the watch struggled to save the ship from a fatal collision with terrain.
"Four more torpedoes in the water!" the sonar chief shouted. "Four more torpedoes closing in to port!"
"Snap shots, tubes one through four!" ter Horst ordered. _ "They're too close!" Van Gelder yelled.
"Do it!"
The weapons leaped from the tubes. Van Gel
der saw on his tactical plot that they might never intercept in time.
Amid the maelstrom of throbbing nuclear fireballs and roiling bubble clouds all around, Challenger's weapons tried to home on Voortrekker rather than spots of tortured water.
Van Gelder's fire-controlmen tried to home on the inbound weapons.
It was chaos. Detonations shattered the sea, and almost shattered Voortrekker. Gaps appeared in the sea-mount wall as the blast forces started big avalanches. Rubble pounded Voortrekker's hull.
"We need to get out of here," Van Gelder shouted above the noise. "The whole mountainside could bury us alive!"
"Helm, steer two one zero!" Southwest. "Maintain flank speed!" But one hard turn after another had slowed the ship, because the rudder acted like a speed brake.
"Hydrophone effects!" the sonar chief shouted once more. "Four more torpedoes, bearing zero five zero." From counterclockwise again. "Torpedoes closing fast!"
"Where are they all coming from? Number One, noisemakers! Jammers! God damn that Fuller! Push the reactor to a hundred twenty percent!"
Ilse knew enough from past experience how to interpret the raw signals showing on her console screen from the SOSUS. Those were torpedo-engine noises. She recognized the distinctive tonals of Voortrekker's Sea Lion weapons and Challenger's Mark 88 fish.
Torpedoes began to detonate. All went off very deep. It was so fast paced and confusing she had no idea who was winning or who'd been sunk. Then she caught a glimpse of data that looked like Voortrekker moving southwest, her reactor systems and pump-jet propulsor straining at fifty knots.
Four more torpedoes were in the water suddenly, on the near side of massive bubble clouds impenetrable to the SOSUS hydrophones. These new torpedoes belonged to Voortrekker. As Ilse watched they spread out, doing seventy-five knots each. On her console their signal strengths just grew and grew. When they were right on top of the SOSUS line they exploded. The signal went completely dead. Ter Horst had nuked the SOSUS.
Most of the fallout that breaks the surface will disperse and settle and age before it reaches South America. But the local ecological catastrophe has begun.
Challenger warily circled the first sea mount twice, through the lingering reverb and bubble clouds, then steered slowly southwest.
"Where is he?" Wilson said. "I have trouble believing he simply ran back the way he came:'
Jeffrey looked at all the sensor readings. There was no sign of Voortrekker anywhere.
Viking planes from the Stennis, and P-3C Orion land-based maritime patrol planes that were finally able to take off from New Zealand, had peppered the entire area with active sonobuoys. These special sonobuoys could operate down to Voortrekker's crush depth — the terrain around the sea mounts was covered like a carpet. The three nuclear subs that were escorts for the Stennis, though many knots slower than Challenger, were converging on the area in a wide sweep from the northeast and east. The three surviving Collins boats, after snorkeling to recharge their batteries, were pinging aggressively and moving down from the north.
"Captain," Kathy Milgrom called. "An Orion dropped a signal sonobuoy… I think it's for us."
"Put it on speakers."
Above the churning water and roaring echoes of the recent nuclear battle, Jeffrey heard a series of siren tones, varying in length and pitch. After a pause, the signal repeated.
Bell looked up the signal code in his digital database.
"It says to come to periscope depth and copy satellite message traffic."
Jeffrey sighed. He really hated exposing himself in a war zone. But he remembered what Wilson had said, about being a true team player and grasping the bigger picture.
Periscope depth it is. Jeffrey was about to give the orders to Meltzer and COB when he glanced at a chronometer.
"Commodore, I suggest we wait for the Chatham Island bomb to go off first. It won't be long."
Simultaneously, on Chatham Island
Ilse sat staring at her useless console. She was in radio contact with Sydney, but that was all. No new data came in from the SOSUS, and Challenger was much too far away for her to reach on the separate acoustic link.
Ilse wasn't even sure if Challenger had survived that raging undersea melee. Sydney's supercomputers were trying to make detailed sense out of the raw data received before the line was cut. But the navy captain in charge of the processing center said this could take hours. The Axis bomb, only a hundred yards away from Ilse and the pair of Ospreys, would go off in minutes. Shajo Clayton had already packed his gear and was sitting in the Osprey's cabin next to Ilse and Chief Montgomery.
Everyone had their gas masks ready, in case the radiation count should start to rise. But the atomic sub-on-sub battle had been a hundred miles away, and Chatham Island was safely upwind. Tactical fission weapons, especially ones set off deep underwater, produced far less surface carcinogens and radiation than hydrogen bombs in the air. The tritium-boosted Axis weapon about to explode at ground level was infinitely more worrisome.
Ilse saw crewmen leave the other Osprey. They used hoses and a portable pump to transfer fuel from its tanks into Ilse's Osprey. Through the open cabin door she asked them what was going on. "Orders."
Ilse glanced at Clayton and Montgomery. They shrugged.
After a while the pilot of Ilse's Osprey slid open the cockpit's side window. "That's it!
We're full!" The other men rolled up the hoses and dumped them on the ground.
A large helicopter appeared from the north. It set down quickly, and the crew from the other Osprey trotted over. The passenger compartment door popped open, and the crewmen from the Osprey climbed inside. Through the helicopter's portholes, Ilse could see many dogs pressing their noses to the glass. The helicopter took off. It headed northeast, toward the very distant Stennis.
Ilse looked at the abandoned Osprey. "They're just leaving it here?"
"Guess so: " Montgomery said. "I think we took all its fuel."
"Why didn't they come with us instead? The crew?" "Dunno."
The crew chief told Ilse to disconnect her console. She unplugged the coaxial cables and fiber-optic lines and handed them out the door. The crew chief coiled them and tossed them a safe distance from the aircraft, so they wouldn't be sucked into the engine intakes.
Then he pulled out flotation vests — life jackets — and passed them around. He showed Ilse how to put hers on. He pointed to the tabs that would activate the compressed-gas bottles to inflate her vest if needed.
The pilot and copilot ran through their takeoff checklists. The engines started. They warmed up, grew much noisier, and the Osprey jumped into the air.
Using the setting sun and the island as reference points, Ilse could see the aircraft was heading south.
"We're going the wrong way," she shouted above the engine noise.
"Orders," the crew chief said.
Ilse glanced at her watch. This is really cutting things close.
As the plane fought for altitude, the aircrew cycled the engine nacelles to horizontal. The engines strained powerfully and the aircraft quickly gained speed, heading away from the island as fast as it could. The crew chief handed out dark goggles.
"When I say so, keep your heads down. After the flash, count to ten before you look so you won't be blinded. The metal of our fuselage should stop most of the gamma rays.
Our inside's lined with boron shielding, to absorb the neutrons:"
"Is that just to make us feel better?" Montgomery asked.
The crew chief shrugged. "If you get leukemia in ten years, you'll know why."
"Terrific?'
Clayton gave Ilse the leaded apron he'd worn while he studied the bomb.
"Drape it over your torso. It'll, you know, help protect your reproductive organs."
Ilse nodded. "Thanks." She did want children someday.
Ilse glanced out a porthole. The red-orange sun was touching the horizon, half masked by a solid barrier of thick, dark clouds that were bearing down on the i
sland from the west.
She realized this was the leading edge of the tropical storm from New Zealand.
She glanced outside in the other direction. By craning her neck, she could barely see Chatham Island shrinking behind them. The island was shrouded in dusk, but the yellow glare of fires was easy to see, enveloping the whole area of Owenga. There was another fire in the middle of the island, near the airstrip. Ilse could also just barely make out the flashing navigation lights of that final helicopter, far away, well past the far end of the island.
"Goggles," the crew chief shouted.
Ilse put hers on, put her head in her lap, and covered her head with her arms; the lead apron was folded between her thighs and her abdomen. She heard Chief Montgomery, his voice muffled, say, "My mother always told me it would've been safer to join the army." Clayton chuckled, and Ilse felt herself on the verge of giggling hysteria.
The aircraft went into a steep dive, and leveled out right above the water. Ilse guessed this was to put the horizon, the bulge of the earth, between them and the initial weapon burst.
"Any second now," the crew chief shouted.
The whole world turned blindingly white, despite Ilse's goggles and the shield of her arms and thighs. The suddenness of it was so shocking Ilse forgot to count to ten. The aircraft began a steep, aggressive fight to regain altitude. Ilse turned to look out the window.,
Even at this distance she could feel the radiant heat. She had to squint against the glare.
Light came through the ad-craft portholes and cast harsh black-and-white shadows inside. She realized the internal lighting had failed from the electromagnetic pulse. At least the Osprey, with its avionics shielded, still flew.
A giant dome of mist and molecular plasma blossomed over Chatham Island. It dissipated and the broiling fireball revealed itself. Ilse could see the airborne shock wave spreading, a leading edge of moisture condensation moving at the speed of sound. The surface of the ocean roiled an angry white, foaming from the blast force that passed through the ground into the sea. The shock front moved through the water much faster than through the air. Ilse watched its expanding disk pass underneath the Osprey. Closer to the island, illuminated by the swelling fireball, a local tsunami expanded outward fast.