Crush Depth (11 page)

If our pump jet doesn’t turn, we go right back into dry dock…and
Voortrekker
goes wherever Jan ter Horst wants.

Jeffrey’s heart pounded, but he also felt a nice silvery tingling anticipation in his chest. He paused, savoring the moment. He was about to give his first engine order as USS
Challenger
’s official commanding officer.

“Helm, ahead one-third.”
Challenger
started to move.

A few hours later, on
Challenger,
under way at sea

C
HALLENGER
WAS PAST
the edge of the continental shelf, submerged in very deep water. The crew had been sent to a hearty breakfast of nourishing hot food, with several choices of entrées, and now was settling in to the watch-keeping routines of being under way at sea.

Jeffrey sat alone at the desk in his stateroom. As usual, he kept the door open while he worked. In the control room, only a few feet up the corridor, a talented junior officer from engineering had the conn. Bell, in Jeffrey’s absence, was command duty officer, Jeffrey’s surrogate there. In a few more minutes Bell would turn in for badly needed sleep.

Jeffrey was a bit exhausted himself. His eyes burned. He knew they were bloodshot. His whole body felt wired, from lack of rest combined with too much adrenaline now growing stale.

Jeffrey was finishing paperwork, since the basic engineering tests were mostly complete. The ship had held up well enough as they gradually descended to test depth, ten thousand feet—two-thirds of their crush depth, which nominally was fifteen thousand. The problems discovered along the way were mostly small. They were resolved by isolating minor equipment, or bypassing sections of pipe.

The one potentially serious glitch was in the torpedo room. Several thousand feet down, during trials with seawater in the tubes at ambient pressure of more than a ton for each square inch, firing mechanism components failed in all four available tubes. COB and the weapons officer, aided by some of the contractors, had men working to install replacement parts from
Challenger
’s spares. This would take a while, but Jeffrey wasn’t overly worried. Though the weapons officer was inexperienced, COB was very good at getting things done. Besides, Jeffrey didn’t expect to need to shoot torpedoes very soon.

A messenger knocked on the doorjamb. Jeffrey looked up. The awkward youngster asked Jeffrey to go to the commodore’s office—Wilson had taken over the executive officer’s stateroom. Jeffrey’s navigator, Lieutenant Sessions, was with the messenger.

When Jeffrey and Sessions arrived, Wilson rose to greet them curtly. Jeffrey was still getting used to Wilson’s reading glasses and stubble of beard. Jeffrey thought they made Wilson look professorial.
Yeah, that type of hard-hearted slave-driving prof who’d always get the best out of you, and break you if you disappointed him once.

“Sit down, both of you.”

Jeffrey took the guest chair. Sessions perched on a filing cabinet.

“Captain,” Wilson said to Jeffrey, “as commodore of a battle group I require a staff.”

“Sir?”

“I want you to double as my operations officer, and Sessions here as my executive assistant…. I don’t need a separate communications officer, I’ll borrow yours as necessary.”

“Yes, Commodore.” Jeffrey glanced at Sessions. Sessions nodded.

“I want your XO and Sessions to trade racks for the duration of this cruise. That way Sessions and I can work together in here more closely. I’ll keep to Lieutenant Sessions’s watch schedule for now, so he and I will sleep at
the same time.” The XO’s stateroom had an extra rack—bunk—usually reserved for a VIP rider such as an admiral, or members of Congress.

“I’ll inform Commander Bell,” Jeffrey said. “I’m sure it won’t be a problem.”

“I’m
quite
sure it won’t be a problem.”

“Yes, sir.” By long naval tradition, not even the president of the United States could displace a warship’s captain from his stateroom. The captain, on his own ship, was supreme.

But I can see already having Wilson here as more than just an observer is going to be tricky,
Jeffrey told himself.
Where exactly does my authority end, and his begin? Where will the dividing line fall when we meet the Australian diesels days from now, and Wilson’s undersea battle group becomes an untested reality?

“If I may ask, Commodore, which route do you want us to follow to the Pacific?”

“South.”

Jeffrey glanced at Sessions, as a cue; Jeffrey let Sessions speak for himself.

“We propose to hide in the Gulf Stream, Commodore, at least until we’re past the Bahamas. Lieutenant Milgrom feels the confused sonar conditions in the stream will help conceal us.”

“Good. I leave the details to you to work out…. Captain, I want the ship to go faster.”

“How fast, Commodore?”

“Make flank speed until I say otherwise.”

“
Flank
speed, Commodore?” For
Challenger,
that was over fifty knots.
Challenger
was extremely quiet, but at flank speed any sub was noisy.

Wilson looked impatiently at Jeffrey. “
Flank speed,
Captain. I expect you to use local sonar conditions, and ship’s depth versus bottom terrain, to prevent our signature from carrying into the deep sound channel.”

“Understood.” If
Challenger
’s noise did leak into that acoustic superconducting layer in the deep ocean, it could be
picked up on the far side of the Atlantic—the German side. Jeffrey didn’t like this, but what was his alternative?

“That’s all.”

Jeffrey and Sessions got up.

“Lieutenant, you stay here. We have things to discuss. Have your assistant navigator take over in the control room.”

Sessions acknowledged.

Jeffrey, in the doorway, turned back to Wilson. “Sir, Commodore, I have a concern.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“At flank speed we’re almost totally sonar-blind. We could get into trouble.”

“The route south has been sanitized for us by other forces, and will continue to be. You need to remind yourself that undersea warfare is a
team
sport, Commander Fuller…. If we stick to the safe corridors, we’re immune to attack by our own antisubmarine assets.”

“We’ll be picked up by the Sound Surveillance System hydrophone nets for sure.”

“Of course.
So?
” Wilson glowered at him.

Jeffrey caught himself starting to ball his fists in irritation. He made himself relax. “Sir, I apologize if I’m not expressing myself clearly. My point is that it’s risky to create a big datum on our
own
SOSUS, even if the East Coast is clear of enemy subs. If the Axis has a spy on the SOSUS staff, or they’re tapping our data directly somehow, they’ll know we’re at sea, and which way we’re heading.” Jeffrey wasn’t naturally paranoid, but in force-on-force submarine missions paranoia was a survival trait.

“You really think the higher-ups haven’t thought of that?”

Wilson’s annoyance was obvious, but Jeffrey thought his own objection was perfectly valid. Now he really felt pissed, but by a supreme effort kept it internal.

“Shut the door,” Wilson said. “Sit down.”

Jeffrey pulled the door closed and took the guest seat again. Sessions still perched on the filing cabinet. He looked uncomfortable, and not just physically.

“First of all,” Wilson said, “the lines are monitored constantly for eavesdropping, and the hydrophones are inspected periodically as well.
That
much, you should have figured out for yourself. Secondly, Atlantic Fleet has performed certain naval maneuvers near Norfolk intended to surely pique the Germans’ attention, assuming they did have a mole in the SOSUS shop. We have our own espionage resources in Europe, I’m informed, and said maneuvers were not reacted to at all. Hence, the Germans were not aware of them, and therefore do not have a mole.”

“But—”
Maybe the Germans did have a well-placed spy, and knew the maneuvers were a trick and just ignored them.

“This is highly classified. You and Sessions are not to relate this to anyone else in the crew.”

“But the men, I mean Lieutenant Milgrom too…especially her, as Sonar…they’ll be very concerned to see us take such chances, going so fast. What am I supposed to tell them?”

“Tell them you’re the captain,” Wilson snapped, “and they’re
supposed
to obey your orders.”

Jeffrey hesitated. “Yes, sir.”

Wilson shuffled papers on his desk. “I said before, that’s all.”

Jeffrey turned to leave.

“Commander Fuller,” Wilson called after him.

“Commodore?”

“Have me informed when we draw level with the mouth of Chesapeake Bay.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“And tell someone to bring me another guest chair. I can’t have my flagship staff sitting on filing cabinets.”

Night of the first day at sea, one hundred miles east of the mouth of Chesapeake Bay

“C
OMMODORE IN
C
ONTROL
,” the messenger of the watch announced.

“As you were.” Wilson came over and stood next to Jeffrey. Jeffrey, after a pleasant catnap, was expecting him.
Challenger
made flank speed, as ordered, vibrating steadily as the propulsion plant worked hard. Consoles squeaked gently in their shock-absorbing mounts, and mike cords near the overhead swayed back and forth. A boyish part of Jeffrey really enjoyed seeing and hearing these little signs of how fast his ship was going.

“Status, Captain?” Wilson asked.

“We’ve been following the edge of the continental shelf, sir. The north side of the Gulf Stream throws off meanders and eddies here. Horizontally, vertically, they form temperature and salinity cells that distort and attenuate sound.”

“Why did you pick eleven hundred feet as your depth?”

“In case someone does get a whiff of us, they’ll think we’re a steel-hulled sub.”

“Bring the ship to these coordinates. Slow to ahead one-third when you’re twenty minutes out.” Wilson handed Jeffrey a piece of paper.

Jeffrey raised his eyebrows. Wilson wanted a spot farther
south, off North Carolina’s Cape Fear. But the location was miles more away from the land, in very deep water, since the coast here ran southwest. They’d have to cut diagonally through the whole width of the Gulf Stream.

“Why there, Commodore?”

“More eddies and meanders on the far edge of the stream. We have a rendezvous.”

Jeffrey was surprised. This was the first he’d heard of it. “With what ship?”

“No ship. A minisub.”
Challenger
was sailing with her in-hull hangar empty, since the Advanced SEAL Delivery System mini she’d taken with her to Germany had had to be jettisoned in combat.

“The mini’s one of ours?”

“Yes, an ASDS.”

“Purpose of rendezvous, sir?”

“Pick up the crewmen we left behind, and keep the mini.”

Jeffrey read the coordinates to his assistant navigator, a senior chief at the digital plotting table near the back of the control room. The chief recommended a course. Jeffrey gave the helm orders.

The helmsman for this watch acknowledged—Tom Harrison again.
Challenger
banked into the turn, still making a noisy flank speed.

Then Jeffrey started to wonder. “Commodore, do we need an ASDS where we’re going?” If the minisub was carrying eight of Jeffrey’s crew, there’d be no room in it for SEALs.

“Got your torpedo tubes working yet?”

“Not yet.”

They were nearing the rendezvous. Jeffrey gave the order to reduce speed. The vibrations died down, and the ride became very smooth. The ship felt oddly sedate, after hours of tearing through the ocean at more than fifty knots. With much reduced self-noise, it was time for a thorough sonar sweep. Jeffrey turned to Kathy Milgrom. She sat nearby
with her back to him, at the head of a line of sonar consoles along the control room’s port side; thanks to advances in miniaturization and fiber-optic data fusion, Sonar no longer had a separate room.

It took some time to perform the sweep and analyze the data.
Challenger
turned slowly in a wide circle, to expose her hydrophone arrays on every compass bearing.

When the gradual circle was almost complete, Jeffrey drew a breath to tell the helmsman to resume course.

Kathy tensed in her seat before Jeffrey could speak. She looked his way. “New broadband contact, Captain. Ahead of us.”

“Classify it?”

“Difficult in these conditions, sir. The signal surges and fades. Designate it Master One.”

“Submerged?”
Could be it’s the minisub.

“Wait one.” Kathy talked with her sonar chief. He spoke with the enlisted technicians. They studied their screens and listened on headphones.

“Master One is submerged,” the sonar chief said confidently.

“The minisub must be out of position,” Jeffrey said. “Good thing we found it.”
Maybe the mini had a navigation error that brought it here. Such things do happen.

“Negative,” Kathy said. “Master One is not a minisub.”

“I got tonals!” a sonarman shouted. “No, wait, it’s gone.”

“Play it back,” Kathy ordered. She and the chief put on headphones. She typed on her keyboard, and Jeffrey saw the frequency spectrum of the contact’s noise. “Captain, it’s nuclear powered.”

Jeffrey nodded. “Must be the fast-attack that dropped off the mini, going back to Norfolk.”

“I can’t be positive, sir.”

Jeffrey waited and waited for more information. Technicians intently worked their gear. Kathy and her senior chief murmured in consultation.

Jeffrey forced himself to be patient. He knew Kathy Mil
grom had been in combat on HMS
Dreadnought
since the very start of the war. He knew firsthand, from
Challenger
’s mission to Germany, that she was a more than capable officer.

“Got ’em again,”
the sonarman exclaimed—with relief, and professional pride.

Jeffrey opened his mouth to offer a compliment.

The young man jolted like he’d gotten an electric shock. His voice rose two octaves. “Master One is hostile! Confirmed! Classify as a definite
Amethyste II!”

Jeffrey was wide awake. Everyone sat up much straighter. The
Amethyste II
s were German, captured from France. They were state-of-the-art, and deadly.

“Chief of the Watch,” Jeffrey snapped, “sound silent general quarters. Man battle stations antisubmarine.” COB acknowledged.

The word passed quickly, and more men ran to the control room. The compartment became a sea of hurrying figures in blue cotton jumpsuits, squeezing past each other purposefully. Some men grabbed seats and powered up their consoles. Others stood in the aisles. The phone talker took his position, put on his rig, and did a communications check.

“COB,” Jeffrey said, “get me a torpedo tube, fast.”

“I better go down there, Captain.”

“Do it.” A senior chief took over from COB in the left seat at the ship-control station. Harrison still had the right seat as helmsman. Jeffrey saw Harrison shift in his chair. He flexed his fingers as he gripped the control wheel.
Sure. He’s nervous.

I’m nervous too.

Jeffrey set his jaw in firm concentration.

Bell dashed in in his boxer shorts, barefoot and rubbing sleep from his eyes, and sat down next to Jeffrey. At battle stations, Bell was fire-control coordinator. Sonar and weapons reported to him.

Commodore Wilson came in, followed by Sessions. Wilson wore a bathrobe and slippers. Sessions stuffed his khaki shirttails into his pants by the navigation console.

“What is it?” Wilson snapped.

Jeffrey told him.

“Evade it.”

“That’s my intent.” Jeffrey turned to Bell. “Fire Control, can you give me the enemy’s course?”

Bell got an update from the fire-controlmen who sat to his right.

“Not yet, Captain. Sparse data. The contact seems to bounce around a lot because of the eddies. We’re in bad water, sir, sound paths get twisted all over the place.”

“Range? Speed? Anything?”

“Nothing yet.”

“Evade it,” Wilson repeated, coldly.

Jeffrey needed to make a decision, with very little to go on. He figured the
Amethyste II
was waiting for a juicy target—a big, noisy carrier—to come out of the Norfolk, Virginia, naval base, heading for the North Atlantic battle front. Jeffrey would distance himself from Norfolk and hence from the enemy sub.

“Helm, right ten degrees rudder. Make your course one three five.” Southeast.

Harrison acknowledged. He sounded calm enough, but his rudder work was still clumsy under pressure.

The new course should give Kathy better sonar data. It pointed
Challenger
’s port wide-aperture array directly toward Master One. The wide arrays, attached along both sides of the hull, could do powerful things with advanced signal processing.

“Fire Control,” Jeffrey urged, “get me a firing solution, just in case.”

“Still working, sir,” Bell said. It was strange to see him sitting in his underwear, taller than Jeffrey, fit but not as muscular. Bell might just as well have been wearing a formal dress-mess tuxedo, for all the difference it made to his manner and bearing.

“Fire Control, sir,” Kathy broke in. “We’ve got more detailed tonal data. Advise this
Amethyste II
is the
von Tirpitz.
”

Bell raised his eyebrows. “Captain, that’s the one that launched those Mach eight missiles at New York.”

Jeffrey had a flashback, him and Ilse atop the Empire State Building. He frowned.
This is personal now.

“But what’s it doing
here?
” he asked pointedly, disturbed. “Intelligence said it evaded our forces that counterattacked and snuck back to Europe badly damaged.”

“No evidence of damage in the tonals, Captain,” Kathy said. “We’ve a definite match to the New York event’s datum on the
von Tirpitz
.”

“So much for intelligence,” Wilson said. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Phone talker,” Jeffrey said, “ask COB how they’re doing.” Jeffrey
had
to have the ability to defend himself.

“Torpedo room reports they need another few minutes.”

That’s not what I wanted to hear. If Master One’s captain was willing to carry liquid-hydrogen-fueled cruise missiles, then what other awful weapons does he have aboard?

Jeffrey could only wait: for his ship to put some distance between him and the
Tirpitz,
for Bell to figure out the
Tirpitz
’s depth and course and speed, and for COB to get a tube in order for Jeffrey to fight if forced to. Unfortunately, the acute need for stealth meant that
Challenger
had to move slowly, and the men in the torpedo room dared not bang against the hull.

Jeffrey made a conscious effort to keep from fidgeting in front of his crew. He was inherently a man of action. He disliked unavoidable idleness, this inevitable part of undersea warfare that required he hold for better data and better position before having something specific to do.

Jeffrey pictured the
von Tirpitz
lurking out there somewhere near, her hull containing a hundred-plus well-trained German officers and men who’d do their damnedest to sink
Challenger
if given the slightest chance.

Each second felt like an hour.

A sonarman shattered the edgy silence. “Hydrophone effects!” he screamed.

“Classify,” Kathy ordered, very coolly.

“Underwater missile booster engine firing!”

“Where?” Jeffrey demanded.

“Source is Master One,” Bell said.

Crap.
“Put it on speakers.” A rumbling roar filled the air.

“Main missile engine firing!”
The roar got deeper and louder.

“It’s a Shkval, Captain,” Kathy reported. “Constant bearing and depth, signal strength increasing. It’s aimed at
Challenger!
”

The
Tirpitz
found us. With these quirky sonar conditions, we just weren’t quiet enough.

“Helm, ahead flank.”

“Ahead flank, aye!” Harrison turned the engine order telegraph, a four-inch dial on his console. “Maneuvering answers, ahead flank!”
Challenger
sped up.

Jeffrey fought to keep himself from cursing aloud. The Shkval undersea missile-torpedoes were Russian, sold to the Axis. They rode through the water in a vacuum bubble caused by their own speed. They could do three hundred knots, and nothing could escape them.

Jeffrey grabbed an intercom handset.

“Get me COB…. COB, we’ve got a Shkval on our tail. We have to get a tube working so we can launch counterfire.”

“Any minute, Captain, I’ll give you tube three.”

“We don’t have minutes, COB. We barely have seconds.”

Jeffrey put down the mike. He could picture the harried activity, as men struggled with parts and tools inside the torpedo tube. The ship topped forty knots, fast on the way to fifty. The flank speed vibrations resumed.
Challenger
shivered and quaked, as if to somehow shake off the Shkval, as if the ship herself felt fear.

Jeffrey listened as the Shkval roared and roared on the speakers, a mindless machine that ate up the distance relentlessly. Jeffrey began to order countertactics he knew would probably fail. Shkvals were nuclear armed. It didn’t need to
get close to do
Challenger
terrible damage. Jeffrey thought of the fallout any atomic blast would create.
Thank God we’re far from the East Coast now, and the winds are blowing farther out to sea.

“Helm, make a knuckle.” The ship banked hard to port and then to starboard. It left a turbulent spot in the water, which an enemy weapon just might think was
Challenger.
The deep roar of the Shkval kept getting louder.

“Helm, left fifteen degrees rudder. Make your course one one zero.”

“Left fifteen degrees rudder, aye! Make my course one one zero, aye!” A turn left, east-southeast. Jeffrey would try to jink out of the weapon’s path, to force it to lead the target. This might confuse its sensors, and buy him precious time. It also led the weapon farther away from the land.

“Fire Control, launch noisemakers and acoustic jammers.”

“Noisemakers, jammers, aye!” Loud gurgling, and an undulating siren noise, were heard now on the speakers. There was also the roar of the Shkval, deeper in tone as it came up to maximum speed, plus a nasty hiss from flow noise as
Challenger
herself reached fifty knots. The gurgling and sirens subsided, as
Challenger
’s countermeasures were quickly left behind.

Jeffrey picked up the handset again. “Maneuvering, Captain. Push the reactor to one hundred fifteen percent.”

Challenger
sped up slightly, and the flank-speed vibrations grew much rougher. Jeffrey bounced in his seat. The ship kept racing through the ocean, heading east-southeast at over fifty knots. The Shkval was following them around through the turn, closing by more than the length of a football field every second. It ignored the knuckle and countermeasures.