Deep Sound Channel (9 page)

"The balks won't hold it," the local man in charge yelled in Jeffrey's ear, above the constant roaring of the water. "The outer door's jammed open!"

"We tried driving in more shims!" a leading petty officer said. "It didn't do much good!" The LPO held a sledgehammer with both hands.

Jeffrey nodded. The balks, hastily fitted when Wilson ordered the door shored up, had kept the door from being blasted inward by their own Mark 88. But the shock wave of the detonation had driven into the tube—kept open so they wouldn't lose the fiber-optic wire—and like a water hammer, it warped the inner mounting frame.

Jeffrey eyed the door once more. "We'll have to knock those off first," he shouted through his mask, pointing to the balks, "then fit a lock-down collar on!" He glanced at his radiac and didn't like what he saw. "Everybody without a respirator get out of here!" The LPO read Jeffrey's unit, a proportional counter that caught radioactivity from the unfissioned uranium or plutonium scattered in a low-yield burst. "Sir, four millirems a minute's nothing!"

"The guidelines say—"

"Screw the guidelines, Commander! We helped build this boat!"

"Okay," Jeffrey shouted back, "belay the order." He'd transferred on as Challenger's exec after the war started, and wasn't about to argue with a motivated plank owner, especially one who'd just lost friends.

Besides, everybody was already soaking wet and breathing hard. Ordering them to put their masks on wouldn't make much difference now Instead Jeffrey told the local phone talker to have COB pump in high-pressure air—at least that would slow the flooding. The man kept flicking water from his mouthpiece as he bellowed each word carefully, then listened. He caught Jeffrey's eye and nodded hard.

Jeffrey glanced at a depth gauge as the bow suddenly whipsawed vertically, sloshing water everywhere, knocking crewmen off their feet. The boat was going down, getting too hard to control.

"Sir," the man in charge yelled hoarsely, "that topmost ADCAP's shifted more! We can't get to it with this spray, and if it falls, the thing could blow!" And if they surfaced now, the A-bomb-ravaged seas would toss them more.

But the torpedo room's rear bulkhead wasn't very pressure-proof. Jeffrey knew that if this compartment filled at depth, the seawater could get into the battery bank in the bilge spaces just aft. Broken batteries would short, giving off hydrogen and chlorine gas, and then explode. Jeffrey's ears began to ache as the atmospheric pressure rose. He swallowed hard to ease the pain.

"All right!" Jeffrey shouted. "We have to do this all at once and fast!" He positioned several crewmen next to the leaking door, ready with the heavy ceramic repair collar. Another half dozen men stood by to get the massive beams out of the way. On Jeffrey's command the LPO whacked the shims loose with his sledgehammer, freeing the beams. The water inflow got much worse, and now they used hand signals because of the noise.

Jeffrey helped wrestle the two halves of the repair collar, hinged at a joint, to fit the collar around the door, fighting hard against the bruising spray. He grunted when one of the beams rammed him in the calf as it was hastily moved aside. An electrician's mate slipped, cracking his jaw against a protruding autoloader cam. The man got up, lip and chin bloodied, hair and denim jump suit soaked, and resumed his place. A severed arm floated by and Jeffrey batted it aside.

The crewmen crouched into the rising water to get more leverage. Jeffrey and two men wearing respirators put their heads under to better see what they were doing. Pink water pressed the improvised scuba masks against their faces, but at least down low the builtup water helped soften the incoming spray. They rammed the collar flush. Muscles bulged as the men gradually forced the halves of the collar together against the flow, then cranked it closed. Someone brought a metal tool, a long valve extension rod, and the work gang used brute strength to tighten each of the collar's ten giant wing nuts, squashing the door the rest of the way shut. The LPO gave the mating crank one more solid heave, seating the collar decisively.

"Pretty good, guys," Jeffrey said, admiring their handiwork. He noticed the flood in the compartment was already going down, as submersible pumps passed the water to main bilge pumps aft whose motors were still dry. Jeffrey pulled off his breather mask and picked up a mike hanging from the overhead. Taking a breath, he smelled the heady odor of machine oil mixed with sweat, and the blood-and-sewer stink of mangled corpses.

"Control, torpedo room lower level," Jeffrey said. "Flooding secured, three fatalities."

"Who are they?" Wilson said over the intercom.

Jeffrey gave the names, feeling sad and humbled as crewmen put them into body bags. The LPO opened a first-aid kit and tended to the injured crewman's jaw, irrigating the cuts thoroughly with disinfectant.

"Material condition?" Wilson said.

Jeffrey cleared his throat. "Depot-level equipment casualty, inner door tube eight. I count six weapons damaged beyond repair based on gross visual inspection." „ "What else do you need down there?" Wilson said.

"Request a freshwater decontamination washdown, machinery and personnel. Request a corpsman's radiological exposure assay, all affected personnel."

"Sir," a torpedoman suggested, "we'll start checking all the weapons right away. Hopefully the rest of them still work."

Jeffrey nodded, looking around at the four dozen

close-packed missiles, mines, and torpedoes. Emergency battle lanterns cast harsh shadows—the compartment's power had been isolated when the flooding started, to eliminate shock hazard in the highly conductive seawater. Now two auxiliarymen eyed the ground readings and cross-checked the switch lineup on a control panel, reset some breakers, and the regular lights came on. Jeffrey saw the air still held a pungent mist, saltwater atomized. Everything dripped.

A machinist's mate restored hydraulic pressure, dumped earlier so an errant piece of equipment wouldn't maim or kill. He raised the pressure slowly while companions checked for leaks, after first isolating some obviously damaged autoloader machinery. They gave up immediately—fluid still oozed everywhere.

As Jeffrey studied the devastation wrought by the incoming sea, he tried not to think about the tons and tons of high explosives and self-oxidizing fuels stacked all around him here, and the atomic warheads. Fire and water, he told himself, the elements that own all submariners. Buoyancy and crush depth, nuclear furnaces and steam, they make us go and make us die.

Another worry crossed his mind and he spoke into the mike. "Captain, XO. Request permission to cycle the outer doors tubes one through seven to verify their function." NEAR THE ANTARCTIC CIRCLE,

Captain Jan ter Horst grinned as another blast of frigid water hit him in the face. "Just like the good old days, Gunther," he shouted over the southeast gale. "The way it used to be, when sharks of steel drank diesel fuel and wolf packs ruled the seas!" Gunther Van Gelder eyed his skipper, more than ever convinced the man was mad. " None of this is really necessary, Captain," he said through chattering teeth. "Can't we just dive and get it over with?" He gripped the edge of the bridge cockpit with gloved hands, trying to steady himself against the roll, the pitch, the shudders of the hull.

"Never!" Ter Horst laughed as his vessel bounded and punched through the waves. He sneered at the surface ship in the middle distance. "I want them to see Voortrekker! I want them to try to run!"

Van Gelder ducked as more green water broached the cockpit, then drained away. Ice rime was already two centimeters thick on the ESM antennas and photonic masts. "We'll freeze, sir, before much longer, and this is dangerous." He tried to close his parka tighter but it was zipped high as it would go.

"Don't be silly, Number One," ter Horst said. "There aren't aircraft anywhere near here. She's been running her radar at full power since she spotted us—and we keep stealing echoes. Besides, their low-observable fighters don't have the range, and if they did, we'd pick them up on passive infrared."

"But sir, that's just line of sight."

"The latest satellite pass showed nothing in the area. . . . So let them call for help. That's the whole idea!"

"But they might attack us!"

"Pah. She's unarmed except for some machine guns. Our unmanned aerial vehicle told us that. Probably worried about a special boat squadron takedown, not a sub." Van Gelder watched the supertanker morosely, barely visible as it labored through the blowing fog. Half a million tons displacement, laden with priceless crude. Liberian registry, U.S.-owned and -manned. They'd known that much about the target for hoursVoortrekker had sonar tapes of all the big ships that plied the Persian Gulf.

"I suppose we could have used a missile," ter Horst said half to himself, "but we fired the last of them up north. . . . I wonder if the Americans know it was my vessel that sank Ranger."

Van Gelder felt too frozen to wonder about much of anything. "We're not supposed to waste nuclear warheads on single merchant ships, Captain." He huddled by the bridge instrument panel, gaining scant shelter from the forty-plus-knot wind. The cockpit crew's bright orange protective clothing gave the only color to the scene of blacks and leaden grays.

Ter Horst nodded curtly. "What I don't understand," he yelled in Van Gelder's ear, "is why she's here at all."

"Greed, sir?" Van Gelder spat out bitter seawater as more spindrift hit his face. He shifted position and frozen glaze crackled on his coat front.

"Arrogance, more like," ter Horst said. "They think they can run the blockade. To reach America's Gulf

Coast refineries by crossing the Pacific instead would take four times as long."

"Maybe they hoped to hide against the ice pack." Van Gelder stamped his feet to keep his legs from getting numb.

"Idiots!" ter Horst shouted. "Did they really think their engine tonals would be masked against the floes?"

"They must not realize, sir, what modern sonar can do."

"Fools! Our merchant marine masters would never make that error. The Americans are soft, Gunther, I'm telling you, and desperate. Putting this tanker on the bottom will show that to the world, and it will show the world we're strong."

"But, sir! Here of all places? It'll be an ecological catastrophe."

"Exactly! A test of will, a monument to our determination. The Southern Ocean current will carry the oil slick round and round, till the whole Antarctic coast is mired. Fifty million gallons loosed! From every longitude, from every nation, they'll look south and see our power."

"Couldn't we just trail her till she makes for the Atlantic?"

"In God's name, why? We have other work to do!" "But the penguins, sir. The seals, the whales. They'll be wiped out!"

"Birds, Gunther? You worry about fish and birds? You're not backsliding, are you?"

"Sir, no, of course not. Of course not, sir."

"Good. Remember what happened to the others. It took some of them five minutes to die! More stiff-necked, I suppose."

Seasick already, Van Gelder rolled his eyes at the dull overcast. He swallowed bile. Ter Horst laughed again. "Relax." He pounded Van

Gelder on the shoulder. "I trust you implicitly, my friend."

"Target aspect change, sir," Van Gelder said, grateful for the distraction. He pointed. "I think she's started zigzagging."

Ter Horst leaned to the intercom. "Weapons, Bridge. Disable torpedo homing packages. Use zero gyro angle, set running depth seven meters."

A muffled acknowledgment sounded on the speaker.

"Her draft is four times that, sir," Van Gelder said. That's why the tanker couldn't use the Suez Canal, he told himself, not that they'd ever make it through the Med.

"I know," ter Horst said. "I want to blow her sides out. She'll go down fast that way. . . . Infrared binoculars, please."

Van Gelder took the strap from around his neck, gulping at the grisly association, and presented them to his CO.

"I can see her load," ter Horst said as he peered intently. "It's a kind of X-ray vision, you know, infrared." "Yes, sir."

"Good German optics, and good electronics too. Look at that, I can even see the crewmen on the bridge . . . and a few more in the deckhouse on her forecastle."

"Can't we give them a chance to surrender, Captain?" "Don't be ridiculous. What do you think this is, World War I?"

"It's just that—"

"Yes, I know. With the best survival gear in creation they'd never be rescued from the sea in time. Whose fault is that, hmmm? Certainly not ours."

A rogue wave struck from aft, and Voortrekker's bridge was under for endless seconds. Van Gelder felt the suction begin to lift him from his feet. He fought to hold his breath, praying that his lifeline held. Then the water cleared. Ter Horst shook himself off and leaned to the intercom again. "Weapons, use target speed eighteen knots. Our angle on her bow is starboard zero four zero, mark."

"May I see, sir?" Van Gelder said, badly needing something to do. It was so cold with the wind chill that his speech was getting slurred, and his face had lost all feeling in spite of the woolen ski mask and fur-lined parka hood.

Ter Horst handed over the binocs. "Sonar," he called, "go active. What's the range?"

"Thirty-nine hundred meters, Captain," came back a few seconds later.

"Weapons," ter Horst said, "target bearing, call it two four five relative, mark!" Van Gelder heard the acknowledgment as he studied the doomed tanker. Their own boat pitched to an especially nasty following wave. The sub heaved upward in the swell and he could see the endless choppy seas. The horizon was a dusky blur beneath a dark and glowering sky, the sun a lifeless coppery orb low to the north. He watched the wave roll past the bow, completely covering Voortrekker's foredeck. The massive supertanker, four hundred meters long or more, seemed to barely feel the storm.

"It's a little approximate," ter Horst shouted, "doing this by eye, but she's so big we can hardly miss." "I know, Captain."

"We've pulled ahead. Time to set up the shot. Helm, Bridge, port ten degrees rudder. Steer one nine five true." The sub slid down the back of one tall wave, bore up into the next, and a wall of water slammed the sail. Now the seas came from broad off the port bow, slowing Voortrekker down, and the wind seemed more intense.