Crush Depth

by Joe Buff

  “Visual targets!” someone screamed, pointing at the periscope pictures. “Multiple inbound aircraft!”

  Van Gelder stared. The planes were converging on Voortrekker from every point of the compass, using the mushroom cloud nearby as their aiming point. The enemy was coordinating skillfully, and Voortrekker couldn’t possibly knock them all down with torpedoes. Van Gelder saw sonobuoys rain from some of the planes.

  “Lower all masts and antennas!” ter Horst ordered. “Helm, flank speed ahead! Take her deep!” The bow nosed steeply down.

  “Captain,” Van Gelder said, “that won’t help.” Voortrekker had been localized, to well within the kill radius of a big atomic depth charge. Enemy active sonobuoys began to ping from all around.

  “Snap shots, tubes two, three, and four, onto courses due north, south, and west. Maximum yield, no depth ceiling, stand by to detonate at minimum safe range!”

  Van Gelder relayed the commands. Three torpedoes will not save us. Our ceramic composite hull, our crush depth of five thousand meters will not save us either.

  “Number One, run the torpedoes deep and then drive them for the surface. Detonate when they leap into the air.”

  Van Gelder studied his data readouts. At the right moment he fired all three torpedo warheads simultaneously. Set off low in the atmosphere, he realized, they’d together make a big electromagnetic pulse, and throw a powerful shock wave through the air. Ter Horst is clever.

  The force of the detonations was more muted this time as Voortrekker dived—air bursts didn’t pass much energy into the sea.

  Everyone stared at the overhead, praying or swearing, as Voortrekker accelerated, still aiming steeply down. Her depth urgently mounted to hundreds, then thousands of meters. Ter Horst snapped out course changes to confuse the Allied aircrews, their avionics now scrambled and their weapon-arming circuits hopefully fried. But Allied aircraft were shielded against an atomic electromagnetic pulse. How badly had the planes been hurt?

  An underwater detonation pounded Van Gelder fiendishly, shaking his skull against his spine; his teeth rattled and he almost bit through his tongue. Crewmen shouted in pain or fear. Light fixtures shattered and broken glass went flying, and another console screen caught fire. Everyone rushed to don their emergency air-breather masks.

  Another nuclear depth charge blew. A compressed-air manifold cracked somewhere and high-pressure air blew paper around the control room like a tornado. A cooling-water pipe exploded and freezing freshwater sprayed from the overhead.

  More air-dropped sonobuoys began to ping above the din.

  “Snap shots, tubes five through eight, maximum warhead yields, courses due north, south, east, and west! Shoot!”

  Van Gelder forced himself to concentrate, to keep his men under control, to get the weapons programmed and launched.

  “Detonate all weapons at maximum depth, at minimum safe range!”

  “Captain, recommend an additional safety distance, with four simultaneous blasts in every quadrant around the ship.”

  “Negative,” ter Horst yelled through his breather mask. “There’s no time!” The constant pinging outside seemed to emphasize his point.

  Van Gelder waited for the moment to fire. When it came, he dreaded triggering the weapons, because of what he knew they’d do to Voortrekker.

  The feedback through the torpedo guidance wires showed all four warheads detonated. Seconds later the shock waves pummeled Voortrekker from all sides. TV monitors mounted on the bulkheads tore loose, fell to the deck, and smashed. Standing crewmen were knocked from their feet. A stanchion in the forward passageway snapped off from the overhead, severing a power cable. Both ends of the cable danced on the deck, throwing hot blue sparks. One end touched a crewman and his body jerked and spasmed and his hair burned and his eyes burst and his face began to steam.

  “Noisemakers, Gunther,” ter Horst shouted above the ungodly racket. “I just used my own torpedoes as gigantic noisemakers! Let’s hope they hide us well enough!”

  Van Gelder nodded numbly, then went back to his instruments.

  Another enemy depth charge detonated somewhere close. Emergency battle-lantern lenses shattered and their lightbulbs smashed; the remaining overhead lighting dimmed as one auxiliary turbogenerator back in engineering shorted out; all intercom circuits failed. The control room phone talker said there was a bad electrical fire in engineering; he could barely pitch his voice above the reverb and the aftershocks.

  “Helm,” ter Horst shouted, “take her to the bottom smartly! Steer one eight zero!” Due south.

  “Sir,” Van Gelder yelled, “strongly advise caution! Bottom here is deeper than our test depth!”

  “But not our crush depth! It’s getting too dicey. Do it.”

  The helmsman acknowledged. Voortrekker dove deeper and deeper. The echoing rumble outside continued and sonobuoys pinged. Smoke and dust swirled through the air outside Van Gelder’s breather mask. Icy freshwater sloshed on the deck. Van Gelder began to shiver as his shoes and pants were drenched.

  Everyone in the control room waited for the next atomic eruption. Would it be near or far? Would it be the one that killed them all? And when? When would it come? The nerve-ripping lull seemed to go on forever. A crewman whimpered, “What’s taking so long?”

  “Easy, now,” Van Gelder ordered. This helpless expecting, this tenterhooks of life and death, is mental torture.

  Van Gelder felt and heard another enemy depth charge blow much closer than the last one. His teeth hurt and his arms and legs flailed wildly from the shock. The lights went out completely.

  SIX

  Three hours later

  JEFFREY AND ILSE sat on the couch again, in the anteroom of the meeting chamber at the Pentagon. The vice chief of naval operations was still inside with some of his key people, holding a crisis meeting on the Indian Ocean attack. Word had reached Washington quickly, cutting short Jeffrey’s presentation. Now, aides, messengers, senior officers came and went through the double doors, all of them in a hurry. Their faces betrayed their emotions, ranging from grim determination to anger to grief. Jeffrey and Ilse were ignored.

  Jeffrey’s inner turmoil rolled around inside him. He didn’t mention to Ilse seeing his father, or the news about his mom. He tried not to think about this latest bad news either: the destruction of Diego Garcia, the obvious fact Voortrekker was on the loose, Jan ter Horst on the warpath. He wondered what Ilse would be thinking, being reminded of Jan.

  “How much longer till someone tells us what’s going on?” Ilse said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Will they want us to continue with the briefing?”

  “I think so. They’ll still need the big picture. I hope they don’t get tunnel vision now.”

  “But that’s what happened already, isn’t it? They got blindsided repeatedly. Now they’re reeling in shock. They just keep reacting, to things the Axis already did. You saw them in there too.”

  “That’s what happens. Standard military tactics. Diversion and deception. Then strike hard and aim to overload the enemy, paralyze his brain. Both sides can play that gambit.”

  “But I’d think your vaunted big shots would know that. They were acting like a bunch of children.”

  “Ilse, that was uncalled for.” Jeffrey felt defensive now. He glanced at the two marines. They both blinked, staring straight ahead, carefully expressionless.

  “Is this what it’s always like here?” Ilse said.

  “Is what like what?”

  “The Pentagon. The dirty politics. Finger-pointing, backbiting, he-said-she-said games…You used to work here.” Ilse made it sound like an accusation. “Then there’s the VCNO’s senior aide, that arrogant little bastard. I saw the way he talked to us.”

  “Ilse, don’t take it so personally.”

  Ilse turned to look at Jeffrey. “Don’t you talk to me about personally. What could you possibly know about personally? You don’t know how I feel. You don’t know what really matte
rs to me. You hardly know me.”

  “I—”

  The VCNO’s aide came out of the double doors.

  Why now of all times? Jeffrey thought.

  The captain read their body language, and cleared his throat pointedly. “Is something the matter here?”

  Jeffrey recovered fast. “No, sir.”

  “Good.” The man turned to Ilse. “Miss Reebeck.”

  “Captain?”

  “Decisions have been made. We’re pulling you out of the course you’re taking.”

  “But I’m not finished.”

  “We have something more important for you to do. It’ll use your skills as combat oceanographer.”

  “On a submarine?”

  “No.” The captain looked at his watch. “There’s no time to explain, and it’s top secret. Something new, fresh, and different.”

  “Where?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “But what about Challenger?”

  “Forget about Challenger.”

  Jeffrey tried to step in. “Sir—”

  “Later.”

  A young man in civilian clothes arrived. “Good,” the captain said to Ilse. “Your transportation’s here.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.”

  “What?”

  The captain gave her a dirty look. “Reebeck, haven’t you learned anything about operational security by now?”

  To Jeffrey, Ilse looked furious. He was afraid she’d make a scene, but she bit her feelings down.

  “Go with this person,” the captain said. “That’s all I can tell you.”

  “What about me?” Jeffrey said.

  The captain looked down his nose at Jeffrey—not an easy thing to do, since Jeffrey was inches taller. “Aren’t you taking some kind of course?”

  “Yes, sir.” Jeffrey knew the man was well aware he was in the Prospective Commanding Officers course. The captain was putting Jeffrey in his place.

  “You’re missing class. Get back to school.”

  “How?”

  “You have an open ticket to New London, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your travel papers should get you on the next train. You might have to stand, but so it goes. There is a war on.”

  The captain turned to Ilse. “Move out. Time is of the essence.” He went back into the meeting room.

  Ilse looked at Jeffrey. “I guess this is how we part.”

  Jeffrey’s heart was pounding. “I thought we’d have more time together.”

  “Ma’am,” the young man insisted.

  “I have to go,” Ilse said to Jeffrey.

  “But—”

  “I hate good-byes. I’ve seen too many good-byes.” Ilse hurried away.

  Jeffrey stood there, alone and very lonely. He remembered he had a train to catch, and he’d missed two days of school already.

  When he got to D.C.’s Union Station, he phoned Sloan-Kettering. The train passed through New York; maybe he could get off to see his mother at the hospital. They said she’d just gone into surgery, and would be in the recovery room—no visitors—for many hours after that.

  Jeffrey stood in the station’s packed waiting room, leaning dejectedly against the wall between an empty vending machine and a withered potted plant. While he waited for his train to be called, he kept wondering where the navy was sending Ilse, and where Jan ter Horst and Voortrekker would strike next.

  Ilse was rushed to Dulles International Airport in the back of an unmarked, windowless van. The driver was a lieutenant from Naval Intelligence. He told Ilse there were indications the Germans knew she’d been on the SEAL raid in the Baltic in December, and good indications the Axis had already tasked assassins working in the U.S. to kill her to get even. The driver wore a Super-Kevlar undershirt and had an Uzi submachine gun under the dashboard, and the van was armored. Still, Ilse didn’t feel safe.

  At the airport, the van went into an underground garage. Ilse was led up through a maze of drab corridors and locked in a windowless room, for her own protection. After hours of sitting on a cracked plastic chair, at 7:30 P.M. Ilse finally heard someone outside. Keys jangled and a woman opened the door. The woman wore a military flight suit, including a pistol. She had on red-tinted goggles and carried a bulky satchel. The aviator, who was about Ilse’s height and build but maybe a few years older, put the satchel on the floor.

  “Strip to your underwear and put these on.”

  Ilse unzipped the satchel. It contained another flight suit. Boots, helmet, G-suit attachments, inflatable life vest, everything.

  “They’re all your size. Leave your other clothes here. You won’t need them where we’re going.”

  Ilse looked doubtfully at all the flight gear.

  “Let me give you a hand.”

  Eventually the aviator was satisfied. Wearing this getup felt strange to Ilse, but it was also exciting.

  “Put the helmet on,” the woman said. “Put down the sun visor…. Don’t worry, you’ll see well enough. Follow me. From now on, no talking.”

  Ilse put on the helmet and the woman helped her position the earphone cups and buckle the chin strap properly. The sun visor was shiny silver, like a one-way mirror. They left the room and the aviator locked it behind them. After a long walk down anonymous hallways, Ilse and the aviator came to a heavy metal door with security warnings. The woman punched in a number code, then opened the door.

  Ilse was hit by a blast of cold air. She followed the aviator out onto the tarmac. The door slammed shut with dramatic finality. Ilse realized they were in the military section of Dulles Airport. The only lighting was dim and red. The sky had grown cloudy. Ilse’s eyes adjusted to the dark. She strained to see through her sun visor. Parked there in front of them was a two-seat fighter jet, sleek and futuristic—twin-tailed, with stealthy angles to the wings and fuselage, deadly looking.

  “You ride in back,” the woman said to Ilse. Ilse watched her walk straight to the jet with a confident, possessive swagger.

  We’re going to fly in this thing?

  Ordnancemen finished loading wicked air-to-air missiles into side bays in the fighter’s fuselage. They shut the side-bay doors. Ilse eyed the plane more carefully. All she could read, black against the blue-gray of the fuselage, was USAF.

  The woman and the crew chief helped Ilse use the ladder to the rear seat of the cockpit. Up close, Ilse noticed things painted over. But she could make out what was there, because of the layering of the paint. The pilot’s name matched the name on the woman aviator’s flight suit: Lt. Col. Rachel Barrows. Under the name, also visible from this close, were five double-headed Imperial German eagles. Barrows was a combat ace.

  SEVEN

  On Voortrekker, in the Indian Ocean

  “SCHNAPPS, GUNTHER?”

  Jan ter Horst poured Van Gelder a glass before he could refuse. Van Gelder didn’t feel like drinking. He was exhausted from hours of supervising damage-control repairs throughout the ship. The air was breathable now without respirator masks, but it smelled bad. Van Gelder heard men go by outside ter Horst’s closed cabin door, carrying tools and spare parts. Van Gelder knew the crew was still recovering, mentally and physically, from their thorough atomic depth charging by planes from the USS Reagan.

  Ter Horst had said it would take a lucky shot to sink Voortrekker. But Van Gelder thought it was only luck that let Voortrekker survive.

  On second thought, maybe I could use a drink.

  This was the first time in a great while that ter Horst had summoned Van Gelder to a special private meeting, and Van Gelder was nervous. They sat with ter Horst’s fold-down desk between them.

  Did he see my hesitation, my qualms, during the attack on Diego Garcia?…Or worse, did he sense my vicarious sadism, watching the warheads blow, and he wants to reclaim all such emotion as his exclusive right?

  What ter Horst did say was completely unexpected.

  “Thank you for
backstopping me before, Number One, with the men, in the control room.”

  “Sir?”

  “When I told you to relax, while our missiles were in the air and our antenna dish was up. It had the exact opposite effect from what I intended, of course. It just made the men more nervous, and it undermined your authority as first officer. But what you said then settled everyone down quite nicely. You handled it well.”

  Van Gelder thought it safest to just let ter Horst go on. He could be leading me onto very dangerous ground….

  “With all the work in dry dock, and the tribunal on the nuclear sabotage at Umhlanga Rocks, I feel you and I have grown apart, Gunther, outside our official duties.”

  Van Gelder hesitated. “I know you’ve been very busy, Captain.”

  “As have you. As have you. The best proof of that was our successful attack today. Our ship and crew are responding well, thanks to your efforts.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  “Sir?” That question can be taken several ways.

  “Do you know why you’re my first officer?”

  Oh…uh-oh. “I was proud to be selected.” Which was safe to say, and true.

  This time ter Horst let the silence linger, forcing Van Gelder to speak. Ter Horst sipped from his schnapps. He looked over the rim of the glass at Van Gelder expectantly.

  “I don’t know much about the process by which you made the choice, Captain. I could only speculate.”

  “A number of men wanted the job. Some pulled strings, lobbied hard, tried to curry my favor. Those men disappointed me. You, in contrast, stayed modest and discrete. Yet your record caught my eye. It told me things your own words never could. About you, your experience, your character, your abilities.”

  “Again, thank you, sir.”

  “There’s another reason, Gunther. You and I are different in many ways. But this is good. We complement one another ideally…. Yes, I know I love the theatrical, the grand gesture if you will. It’s my nature, these things, and I know that in some ways I’m less than perfect.”