by Joe Buff
Montgomery and Clayton helped Ilse strip down to her dry suit, then don her diving equipment. They had trouble getting the dive-mask strap around her wounded ear. llse tested her Draeger mouthpiece. The respirator's system was working fine, but she had trouble holding the mouthpiece between her teeth — the left side of her face was numb from the painkiller shot. Clayton and Montgomery suited up and grabbed other gear.
"GPS and inertial nav match closely!' the marine sergeant shouted. This far south, it was hard for the Axis to jam the Global Positioning Satellite signals the way they did in other battle zones. "We're almost there.. Get ready!' The sergeant steered closer to the edge of the ice shelf. The other American vehicle followed.
They slowed down only slightly.
Clayton popped the passenger door. "Ilse, you first?'
Oh God. Ilse aimed for a snowbank, and threw herself from the vehicle. She hit and slid and rolled. She saw her blood staining the snow. She tried to move, and thought no bones were broken. Clayton and Montgomery crawled to her fast. The two friendly Sno-Cats roared on into the distance.
"Down?' Clayton shouted.
Ilse dug into the buildup of snow and prayed her white camouflage getup would work.
Two German Sno-Cats roared by, barely yards away, pursuing the American ones. It's a good thing we weren't run over.
Clayton and Montgomery waited for the German engine sounds to fade. They hurried to rig rappelling lines at the very edge of the ice-shelf, down the two-hundred-foot-high cliff into the sea; they used their ice hammers to drive rope anchors firmly into the top of the shelf.
Ilse peeked over the edge. Now comes the really scary part.
Although the cliff face, facing north, was sheltered from the blizzard's screaming wind, the tide was still coming in and the surf was strong. Big waves crashed against the base of the cliff, throwing up spray and tossing sharp, broken pieces of ice. Other chunks of ice, some of them very big, banged against each other or against the base of the cliff.
This noise from left and right, stretching beyond the horizon, was like constant grinding rhunder.
The air temperature was dropping fast now — it was way below zero degrees Fahrenheit, even before the wind chill — and the driving snow made it harder to see. But to Ilse, the spots of open warer looked slushy, almost like oatmeal, as if the whole Ross Sea was starting to freeze. Farther out, Ilse saw the dorsal fins and upper bodies of killer whales, cutting between the ice blocks. The hungry orcas raised their ugly snouts out of the water, looking for prey on the floes. "You okay for this?" Clayton shouted.
"I have to be," Ilse said. "It's the only way back to Challenger."
Montgomery checked her diving rig one more time. He used six-foot lanyards to clip him and her and Clayton together. He connected the scaling ropes to the fittings on their belt harnesses. He threw all their excess equipment over the cliff, into the water, to get rid of ir. Ilse reminded herself the cliff face continued straight down far below the waves, all the way to a depth of eight hundred feet, maybe more.
The three of them started rappelling down the cliff.
The breaking waves roared loudly now, and drove high up the cliff as if groping for Ilse personally. The banging of the broken floes below was frightening. The threesome halted against the vertical cliff of the ice shelf, holding just above where the foaming waves were reaching. Ilse was glad for her dive mask, as painful as it was, because it protected her eyes from the freezing spray and from ice bits that flew like shrapnel here.
"We have to time this just right," Montgomery yelled above the noise. "Into the trough between two big ones, and between the big pieces of ice!"
Clayton and Ilse nodded. Ilse glanced below doubtfully; she knew those larger chunks of ice weighed many tons, but she'd be damned if she let Clayton and Montgomery see her scared.
"When I count to three," Montgomery shouted, "we let go and drop, together.
Understand?"
Clayton and llse said they did.
"If one of us hesitates, all three of us could be killed:'
A very big wave crashed, and water drove up the face of the cliff, drenching Ilse and the two SEALs. Ice fragments hit Ilse's body. Sea spray froze on her dive mask. She gripped her Draeger mouthpiece desperately in her teeth. She held her legs together, with her knees slightly bent. She looked up, away from the water, and pressed her mask firmly in place with one hand.
"One… two… three."
Ilse released her climbing-rope fitting. She and Clayton and Montgomery, all tethered together, dropped like stones. Ilse watched as the top of the cliff seemed to recede into space. Then she hit the water and plunged deep.
The grip of the cold was a shock to her body. She fought to steady her breathing. Her face mask flooded at once. She tasted salt, where water had forced its way past her mouthpiece. Now her face was frozen numb and she could barely see.
She felt the crystal-clear and indigo-colored water surge as the next big wave came in.
She and Clayton and Montgomery swam deeper, fighting for sheer survival, trying to not be smashed against the rock-hard face of the cliff.
Ilse was tumbled and buffeted by the power of the breaking wave. She heard irs noise through the water. She felt both lanyards jerk at her waist, as the force of the water tried to tear her and Clayton and Montgomery apart. She made herself keep breathing evenly.
If she held her breath, or inhaled at the wrong moment, an upward heave by the water could burst her lungs.
At last they got deep enough for comparative safety from the waves, but now they were so deep their pure-oxygen Draegers could give them convulsions. It was darker at fifty feer, though streaks of Antarctic sunlight did come down between the floes. In a race against time and against their own bodies' physical limits, they swam and used the undertow to carry them farther out to sea.
Montgomery activated a low-power sonar transponder. In a few minutes, as Ilse froze and tried hard not to drown, a big dark shape loomed below. It was the ASDS minisub from Challenger, holding as steady as it could.
Then Ilse saw other big, dark shapes in the water. Killer whales. Drawn by us flailing around.
The orcas moved to attack. Ilse made urgent hand signals to Clayton and Montgomery. They swam down under the minisub as the killer whales closed in. They made it through the bottom hatch just in time. Clayton slammed the hatch shut and dogged it tight. Water sloshed in the lockout chamber, and Ilse's eardrums hurt: the waves were so high, it had been hard for the minisub crew to keep the air pressure in the chamber properly equalized to the outside sea.
The ASDS crew followed the next step of diver recovery: the air pressure dropped gradually, for adequate decompression from their brief dive to sixty feet. The pressure reached one atmosphere, normal. Ilse, chilled to the bone, shivered uncontrollably, afraid now she was going into shock from her wound. Clayton and Montgomery hugged her to share their body warmth.
The hatch to the control compartment was opened from the other side. Ensign Harrison peered in, looking clean and dry and bright and cheery — then Ilse noticed Harrison wore Ileutenant (j.g.) collar bars.
Harrison looked at the soaked, bruised, exhausted, bandaged threesome huddled in the lockout trunk.
"And how is everybody?" Harrison said.
FORTY-THREE
On Challenger, approaching the Aoss ice Shelf
USS Challenger was at battle stations, rigged for ultra-quiet. Jeffrey sat at the command console, shoulder to shoulder with his executive officer, Bell. Commodore Wilson was gone, working now from the boomer sub according to CINCPACFLT's plan, and Ilse and the SEALs were back aboard.
Ilse sat at a sonar console next to Kathy Milgrom, Ilse's regular place at battle stations, only feet from Jeffrey. After getting as much sleep as they could on the demanding journey south, COB and Meltzer manned the ship-control station again. Harrison — finished driving the minisub — was Challenger's relief pilot. Lieutenant Sessions, no longer the commodore's part-time
executive assistant, was once more Jeffrey's full-time navigator.
The medical corpsman sewed Ilse's ear and changed the dressing. He gave her antibiotics and a painkiller shot — now she wore her sonar headphones with the left earcup over her cheek, so it wouldn't bother the wound. On Jeffrey's orders, the corpsman gave Jeffrey and Ilse, as well as Kathy, Sessions, and Bell, special medical stimulants. The stimulants would keep them wide awake for the next oh-so-crucial twenty-four hours. After that, they'd crash, but by then, Jeffrey knew, it wouldn't matter; Lieutenant Willey the engineer, or the weapons officer, could take the conn — if anyone on Challenger was even still alive.
Jeffrey had Clayton and Montgomery working damage control in the forward parts of the ship. The SEALs' great upper-body strength, and their steady nerves under fire, would help reinforce and stiffen all those younger men in Challenger's crew — some of them still so inexperienced — who'd have to fight the fires and flooding. Jeffrey was sure that in the battle to come, Bell's damage-control parties would be busy. Jeffrey was' grateful that the dozen civilian contractors on board since New London all had volunteered to stay, instead of leaving with Wilson, to also help as needed on emergency repairs.
Jeffrey pondered the awful responsibility he now bore. He thought back on all the military history he'd devoured since he was a kid. Jeffrey knew history would be the ultimate judge of the fateful decisions and actions happening now around the world. He dearly hoped the future world would be one that was free, not one controlled by the Axis.
Jeffrey also hoped he wouldn't be recorded on the pages of history as a failure today.
Jeffrey remembered the last thing Commodore Wilson had said before he climbed into the minisub. "I've told you everything I know, and taught you everything I can. It's all on your shoulders now, Captain, and I do believe you like things that way. If you succeed, I'll give heartfelt thanks for your safe return. If you do not succeed, I assure you the boomers will launch. Then God help every one of us, and maybe I'll see you in hell."
Wilson shook Jeffrey's hand. Jeffrey knew that Wilson was a loving husband and caring dad, but to his naval subordinates he always showed reserve. Wilson wasn't into touching or glib handshakes, so the gesture on parting, that firm, warm grasp of Wilson's hand in Jeffrey's own, reemphasized the somberness and importance of the moment.
Jeffrey still felt the afterglow of Wilson's strong, determined grip, and knew it was his best way, as both a man and an undersea-battle-group commander, of wishing Jeffrey good hunting. Wilson had to be very worried what would happen to his wife and children if things turned bad. Jeffrey knew how worried he felt for his own parents, and for his two older sisters and their spouses and their kids — all back in America's homeland, maybe targeted right now by Russian or Chinese ICBMs.
Wilson left it to Jeffrey whether or not to tell his crew about Washington's decision, and the reasons for it. Jeffrey mulled this over. As the outer edge of the ice shelf came up fast, he decided to do what he'd always done: share everything, and keep his crew fully informed. Jeffrey addressed the control room; phone talkers relayed his words throughout the ship.
"You all need to know exactly what's happening, and why. Listen carefully. Above all, don't react until I'm done, because I'm going to tell you how to react. I expect each and every one of you to follow my lead in this, with as much self-discipline as you've ever shown obeying any order in your life." Jeffrey summarized the deteriorating global military and political situation since Chatham Island had been destroyed by an Axis tritium-boosted weapon. In spite of themselves people gasped or grimaced when Jeffrey told of Japan setting off an atom-bomb test, and of Argentina and Brazil on the verge of going to war.
Jeffrey explained the president's decision, that Voortrekker simply could not be permitted to reach the Pacific. He tried to justify as best he could Washington's choice, that in extremis a demonstration of massive force would have to speak for the U.S. and her allies now that diplomacy had fizzled and the world was already half mad.
Jeffrey described the boomers' fateful rules of engagement, and Challenger's time limit to destroy Voortrekker and get the word out. He paused to let it all sink in, then reminded the crew what was truly at stake — for Challenger, for the war effort, for world peace, and for the environment.
"The way to react, people, is to do what I shall do. Focus on your sense of duty, and on your love of your families and of your country and your ship. Pray if you think it helps, when you have time. Put in a prayer for me too, 'cause I think I'll be too busy." That brought a few chuckles, or sober nods. "Then put aside any thoughts of future or past. Forget about the outside world as we together go under the shelf. Forget all except the immediate battle when we engage the enemy. Rely on your shipmates as you always do, and perform your work to the best of your abilities, and concentrate on nothing but the task at hand."
Challenger, twenty minutes later
In the control room, Jeffrey and Bell intently watched their displays. Kathy and Ilse busily overviewed the incoming data. Around them sixteen other crowded people concentrated on their jobs. Challenger used every sensor she had — short 'of pinging on the bow sphere or trailing a towed array — to feel her way forward and locate the enemy.
The outer edge of the Ross Ice Shelf lay dead ahead.
The gravimeter mapped the sea floor on the shallow Antarctic continental shelf. At short range, the image from the gravimeter was very sharp. But the gravimeter wasn't useful for looking up — it couldn't distinguish seawater from ice, because the density difference was small.
Challenger instead looked upward using her hull-mounted photonics sensors, in passive low-light TV mode, with maximum image intensification. Other imaging sensors looked down or to the sides. Challenger also used her tight-beam, low-power, active under-ice sonar, mounted in the sail tower. Emitting on sonar at all was risky but necessary.
The ship hugged the sea floor at sixteen hundred feet. The bottom of the massive ice shelf often came down almost that deep — Challenger measured sixty-five feet from the bottom of her keel to the top of her sail, and the clearance in some places would be tight.
Jeffrey saw the outer edge of the shelf, hard and dark and unforgiving, looming just ahead of him. He ordered a status message sent by the covert acoustic link, telling Wilson the hunt for Voortrekker was on. Soon Wilson's acknowledgment came back.
Jeffrey ordered a timer readout windowed on a control-room main display screen, in large red numerals. It said 24:00:00, and then the seconds started counting down. Jeffrey knew he actually had maybe five minutes less than that to get Wilson the all-clear code.
The forty-eight missiles would launch — taking short, flat trajectories — timed so every H-bomb blew when the timer read 00:00:00.
Jeffrey watched the various images windowed on his console, as Ilse and Kathy gave a running commentary. When Challenger went under the shelf, the cold-water anemones and starfish on the bottom petered out. Soon the strange Antarctic fish, with black fins and white antifreeze for blood, grew fewer and fewer. Going in further, even the phytoplankton petered out — no sunlight could penetrate the many hundreds of feet of opaque ice, laced as it was with tiny air pockets, plus algae and lichens and bits of soil and rock all scoured from the land by ancient glaciers.
The water became clean and clear. There were no seals or penguins or orcas here. With no open water close enough to let them reach the surface to breathe, marine mammals that ventured too far under the shelf would drown.
There wasn't even bioluminescence now. The underside of the Ross Ice Shelf was a desert. The noise of crashing waves and smashing floes died off into the distance, back behind Challenger's stern.
Jeffrey ordered the photonics sensors switched to active line scan. The laser scanning beams might be picked up by the enemy, but with the lack of any outside lighting to am-plify, the risk in using the blue-green lasers had to be taken. The pictures turned from color to black and white, but were very crisp and detailed.
Jeffrey saw it on the gravimeter.
"Volcanic bombs," Ilse said, doing her job as combat oceanographer. "Thrown here ages ago, when the shelf was smaller?'
"Very well, Oceanographer. Helm, evade."
Meltzer turned the ship to avoid the boulders. As Challenger passed, Jeffrey could see the lava bombs on the line-scan pictures. Some were shaped like giant teardrops, blobs of magma that had solidified as they flew through the air and hit the sea. Others were jagged, the size of cars or cottages, granite and basalt heaved in a violent eruption out of some Antarctic volcano crater long before the start of recorded history.
The undersurface of the ice shelf was more jagged than Jeffrey expected. Big stalactites hung down, like ones of rock would from the ceiling in a limestone cavern. There were cracks and crevasses in the bottom of the ice shelf too, and also bummocks — pressure ridges — projecting downward toward the Ross Sea floor.
"What causes that?" Jeffrey said.
"The main body of an iceberg is freshwater, you know," Ilse said. "Here as well, when new ice forms by freezing onto the bottom of the shelf, the salt gradually leaches out.
The process forms these stalactites. They're hollow: ice outside, extra-salty brine in the middle."
"Would hitting them damage us?"
"I doubt it, they're fragile, but there'd be noise, like breaking glass."
Jeffrey grunted — one more way to make a datum for ter Horst.
"The pressure ridges," Ilse went on. "I wasn't expecting them to be so extensive either. I think that's from the conflict of such extreme forces. The glaciers and prevailing surface winds push from the south, against the tides and waves and occasional strong gales shoving from the north… And come to think of it, a lot of this ice started on the shoreline ages ago. Where the glaciers cross the coast they're a broken jumble of angular shapes and ragged edges."