Deep Sound Channel (38 page)

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 Watch, 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."

"Engage terrain-following cruise mode, aye aye, sir." "We'll head south at top quiet speed," ter Horst said. "Helm, half ahead, thirty knots."

"Half ahead, thirty knots, aye aye, sir. . . . Turbine room answers steam throttles set for half ahead, making revs for thirty knots, sir."

"Number One," ter Horst said, "once you see that message buoy off, you take the conn. I want to do a walk-around inspection of our running repairs, speak to the crew in small groups as well. Then I plan to take a nap. . . . Have me awakened in four hours and I'll relieve you. Then you get some rest yourself. Gunther, you look tired." 12 HOURS LATER

Jeffrey's head jerked upright and he realized he'd been dozing at his console, after hours of poring through the on-line sonar technical manuals. It all came down to who would have the better first-detection range, Challenger or Voortrekker. He'd hoped for inspiration somewhere in the circuit diagrams, but Jeffrey's muse had most cruelly abandoned him.

He noticed that Commodore Morse was standing in the aisle—that must have been what woke him.

Jeffrey rubbed his eyes and looked at Bell, who had the conn. "Any contacts?"

"Nothing, sir," Bell said. "We thought it best to let you sleep." Jeffrey glanced at a chronometer. He'd been out for forty minutes. "Boy, do I need to take a leak."

"So do I," Morse said. The two men headed aft. "I just finished visiting the wounded," Morse said.

Jeffrey chided himself. "One more thing I didn't think of." Morse waved dismissively. "The men all understand. You're working very shorthanded."

"How's the captain?"

"The corpsman let me talk to him for just a minute. I told him you're doing a great job. He said he wasn't surprised."

"I should stop in," Jeffrey said as they entered the empty CO state-room.

"Don't," Morse said. "He's out again. His brain's swollen, you know. That's what a bad concussion is—tissue abraded against the inner skull ridges. Needs time for all his neurons to get back to normal. Total rest, so let him be."

Jeffrey noticed that Wilson's family pictures were gone from his desk, presumably moved next door to be with him. Jeffrey deferred to Morse, who used the head first. When it was Jeffrey's turn, he glanced at himself in the mirror. He needed a shave and his cheeks looked pale and jowly. He wondered if that was fatigue, or middle age coming on early. He tried to imagine how he might look with a moustache. Where did that come from? he asked himself.

When he'd done his business, he and Morse lingered in the captain's quarters.

"How's Monaghan doing?" Jeffrey said.

Morse sighed. "As well as can be expected, they told me. He regained consciousness for a little while, was actually communicating by Morse code using his eyelashes, since they have the respirator hooked up through his trachea."

"That's clever," Jeffrey said. "Who thought of Morse code?"

"Monaghan did. Took the SEAL a minute to catch on. But then he went into a coma. His blood gases don't look very good. We need to get him proper care and quickly."

"I know," Jeffrey said. "He has four kids."

"The engineering staff used spare parts to jury-rig a shock gimbal for his litter, so at least he's protected from further mechanical stress."

"Good," Jeffrey said. "Lieutenant Willey's initiative always has impressed me."

"You'll be glad to learn Ilse's friend Otto is well cared for

too. COB made the arrangements, in his role as your master-at-arms. Our fiendish EPW

is under guard by at least two people at all times, one officer and one enlisted."

"Just like an atom bomb," Jeffrey said.

"He's trussed up nice and snug so he can't harm himself."

"Where are they keeping him?" Jeffrey said.

"A storage compartment next to the goat locker," Morse said. Jeffrey knew that meant the chiefs' office and berthing area. "For a while," Morse said, "they had him on display in the enlisted mess."

"You're kidding," Jeffrey said. He laughed.

"No. The lads took to rubbing his head for luck. Seemed like he was going to have a stroke, though, so they had to put a stop to that."

"Morale's all right, then?" Jeffrey said.

"Clayton and his boys told everybody about you and that shark. Plus whatever else they could talk about. Seems your stock is high among the crew now, Mr. Fuller."

"It's hard to believe all that was only yesterday," Jeffrey said. He and Morse started back to the CACC.

"I also took a little walking tour," Morse said, "into the spaces I'm allowed. Told people what it was like back in my last war, the olden days in Her Majesty's Submarine Conqueror. Seemed to help relieve some of the tension."

"Thanks, Commodore," Jeffrey said. "I don't know what I'd do without your help."

"I'm sure you'd manage," Morse said, "just with considerably greater difficulty." He chuckled. "I told your men about the time we almost hit an uncharted seamount south of the Falklands because our charts went back to 1777, and how our trailing wire antenna once got tangled in the screw. How we had to surface and send divers over the side while rather vengeful Argie fliers might have found us any moment."

"Puts current things in perspective, doesn't it?" Jeffrey said. They'd arrived back at the command console. Jeffrey sat again, eyeballing the navigation and gravimeter displays. The boat was at 11,750 feet, making twenty-six knots on base course 192, well masked by the rugged terrain.

"Anything yet?" Jeffrey said.

"Still no hostile contacts near our depth, sir," Bell said. "We're threading a series of repeatedly branching fissure canyons now, using a path through the whole complex I picked at random. It was Miss Reebeck's idea. Makes it very hard for someone else to guess which way we'd come."

"Terrific," Jeffrey said.

"Recommend we stop and drift again in another fifteen nautical miles," Bell said, "to listen when we reach this ridge." He pointed to a bunching-up of topographic contours on the bottom chart.

"Concur," Jeffrey said, bending over to read the screen. "If we cruise in a slow circle when we get there, we'll be able to scan in all directions using the bow sphere and both wide-aperture arrays, get the best sensitivity possible on all bearings and frequencies. Our crinkled bow cap's interfering flow noise stops whenever Challenger does."

"Understood," Bell said. "We're still at a real disadvantage, sir, when we approach the choke point. To get away we have to move. Voortrekker can just sit there."

"I know," Jeffrey said.

Jeffrey turned to look at Ilse. She was dozing at her station, a wrapped towel forming a kind of pillow to cushion her head against her shoulder. She was snoring softly, as were several others in the CACC.

"I think she's rather cute while she's asleep," Morse said.

"Foxy too," Bell said, giving Jeffrey a suggestive look.

"Cut it out, guys," Jeffrey said.

"No," Morse said. "You're not getting any younger, Jeffrey."

"Come on," Jeffrey said, "we're in the middle of a battle, in the middle of a war." He glanced at Ilse again, his eyes staying on her longer this time. Her features seemed softer than when they'd first met, and in sleep she wore a peaceful smile. Jeffrey went back to his screens, once more studying the terrain that lay ahead around the choke point, trying to imagine where Jan ter Horst would hide, where he would pounce. Jeffrey wracked his brain over how Challenger could possibly get in the first detection, on Voortrekker rather than a salvo of her nuclear torpedoes inbound at high speed on the last part of a dogleg.

Sonar superiority, Jeffrey told himself. How can we possibly achieve sonar superiority?

4 HOURS LATER

Ilse was studying the terrain around the choke point. Beside her Jeffrey and Sessions were going over sonar hardware specs and signal processing algorithms. Neither man looked very happy. Suddenly there was a distant rumble.

"Transient's classification?" Lieutenant Bell called from the command console. Sessions quickly reconfigured his displays. "Nuclear explosion, sir. Bearing three three seven, wide-aperture array gives range approximately fifty-five nautical miles." Then another one went off. "Ten miles further away from us, sir," Sessions said, "on bearing three two nine."

Ilse heard a third sharp rumble, mixing with the dying echoes from the other two. "That one was much closer," she said.

"Affirmative," Sessions said. "Range thirty-five nautical miles, relative bearing three three four."

Jeffrey stood. "Off the port bow," he said, "between us and the choke-point hump. Sonar, what was warhead yield?"

"Working on that, sir," Sessions said. Ilse watched as he conferred with his staff. " Estimate each at about one kiloton, Captain."

"Very well," Jeffrey said. "Fire Control, your thoughts."

"One KT sounds small for depth bombs, sir," Bell said.

"Concur," Jeffrey said. "That's more the size of an Axis torpedo warhead. . . . Sonar, can you tell the detonation depth?"

Ilse worked quickly with Sessions on a refined estimate.

"Depth in each case was about twelve thousand feet," Sessions said.

"It's Jan, isn't it?" Ilse said.

"Yeah," Jeffrey said. "He's not trying to create a cordon. The warheads were set off too far apart, and they don't lie on a straight line or an arc."

"They aren't on a single bearing from any particular firing position either," Bell said, "so he didn't shoot a spread at a suspected contact with uncertain range."

"Concur," Jeffrey said, "and he wasn't working from one good TMA, leading a moving target. He'd've had to launch those weapons half an hour apart to put the furthest torpedo that far out and then have simultaneous blasts."

"Concur, sir," Bell said.

"Voortrekker's expended an awful lot of nuclear torpedoes since making contact with us," Sessions said.