Crush Depth (12 page)

The data for weapons status on Jeffrey’s console showed torpedo tube three turn green.

“Tube three is operational,”
Bell said.

“Tube three, load a nuclear Mark 48, set warhead to maximum yield.”
Challenger
’s Improved Advanced Capability
Mark 48 torpedoes were good, but the latest version’s top speed was seventy knots—barely a quarter of the Shkval’s.

Bell and Jeffrey did the procedures to arm the atomic warhead;
Challenger
’s torpedo-room hydraulic autoloader, repaired in New London dry dock, seemed to be working well.
It better keep working or we’re dead.

Jeffrey felt an iron determination to survive. To defeat this enemy ambush he had to strike back fast and hard. “Make tube three ready in all respects including opening outer doors!”

“Ship ready. Weapon ready. Solution ready,” Bell said.

“Tube three, Master One, match sonar bearings and
shoot.
”

“Tube three fired electrically.”

“Unit is running normally!” a sonarman said.

“What are you doing?” Wilson said. “You aimed at Master One, not the Shkval.”

“The unit will first pass near the Shkval. The
Amethyste
’s captain’ll think it’s my defensive shot at his missile, and he’ll be lulled. We have to return fire, to distract him and keep him from sending off a message. If he knows we’re
Challenger
…”

Wilson stayed quiet.

Good, this is
my
fight.
Jeffrey’s ship kept driving through the sea. The enemy Shkval kept following.

“Range to incoming Shkval?”

“Ten thousand yards,” Bell said. Five nautical miles. If its warhead yield was one kiloton, standard in Axis torpedoes, the blast would be in lethal range at four thousand yards.

With these speeds and distances we have less than a minute to live.

“Fire Control, more noisemakers and jammers.”

“Noisemakers, jammers, aye.”

“Tube three, load a brilliant decoy.”

“Tube three, decoy, aye.”

“Set decoy course due north, flank speed, running depth same as ours.”

“Due north, flank speed, same depth, aye.”

“Make tube three ready in all respects including opening outer doors. Tube three, brilliant decoy,
shoot.
”

“Tube three fired electrically.”

“Decoy is operating properly!”

Challenger
kept fleeing. The propulsion plant worked its heart out. The noise of the Shkval on the sonar speakers was almost deafening now. Jeffrey was taking an awful gamble, that the seeker head at the tip of the enemy rocket would home on the decoy and not his ship. He was taking another awful gamble, that his own atomic fish would force the
Tirpitz
’s captain to take defensive steps, and buy COB time to give Jeffrey another working tube.

The universe shattered in an unimaginable thunderclap, and
Challenger
was pummeled as if by the fists of an angry God. Mike cords, light fixtures, consoles, crewmen, everything rattled and jarred.

“Shkval has detonated!” Bell shouted. “Decoy destroyed!” The Shkval had gone for the brilliant decoy after all.

The Shkval’s nuclear blast reflected off the surface and the bottom, pounding
Challenger
more and more. Kathy turned off the speakers. Endless reverb sounded right through the hull. There were brutal aftershocks, as the fireball of the nuclear blast thrust upward for the surface. The fireball fell in on itself against the undersea water pressure, rebounded outward hard, fell in again and rebounded, over and over. Each rebound threw another hammer blow.

“Give me damage-control reports,” Jeffrey shouted.

“Torpedo room autoloader is out of action!”

“Load tube three manually, a nuclear Mark forty-eight.”

“Torpedo in the water!” Kathy yelled. “Assess as a defensive shot by Master One against our unit from tube three.” The
Tirpitz
was trying to intercept Jeffrey’s first torpedo with a nuclear countershot.

There was a huge eruption in the distance.

“Unit from tube three destroyed,” Bell said.

The enemy captain had succeeded. Jeffrey distracted his Shkval, but he smashed Jeffrey’s Mark 48. The initial exchange of fire was a draw.

“Shkval in the water,” Kathy shouted. “Master One has launched another Shkval!”

Jeffrey frowned.
My decoy fooled the first Shkval, but it didn’t fool the enemy captain. He knows that we’re still out here, and he wants to sink us once and for all.

Jeffrey grabbed the handset. “COB, I need another tube,
now.
”

“We’re doing everything we can, sir! We got wounded down here! We got men working block and tackle loading the weapons….”

Jeffrey clicked off.

“Helm, right full rudder, make your course one five zero.” South-southeast, directly away from the
Tirpitz.

Harrison acknowledged, shouting, and his voice cracked. The ship turned, banking too hard. Harrison lost control, and
Challenger
went into a snap roll—she’d heeled so much from the turn, her rudder began to act like sternplanes, forcing her down in a flank-speed dive. She plunged below three thousand feet before Harrison could recover.

If we had a steel hull,
Jeffrey knew,
we’d’ve gone right through our crush depth.

COB called on the intercom to complain about the wild maneuvers. They made it that much harder for his men to do their work.

“Get that unit loaded, COB, and load another as soon as I shoot.”

The second Shkval was louder and louder. At last tube three was reloaded. Jeffrey and Bell armed the nuclear fish. Jeffrey ordered it fired. The unit rushed at the incoming Shkval. The Shkval kept rushing at
Challenger
. This time the range to intercept was barely outside the Shkval warhead’s kill radius against
Challenger.

Bell detonated the wire-guided torpedo as a preemptive blast to smash the Shkval. The Mark 48’s maximum yield
was a tenth of the Shkval’s. But the desperate interception was so close to
Challenger,
the shock force was almost unbearable. The ship was slammed from astern.
Challenger
bucked and heaved hard. Objects broke loose and flew around the control room. Sonarmen’s headphones were knocked from their heads. The vibrations were so vicious Jeffrey’s vision was blurred.

As the reverb cleared, Kathy shouted that
another
Shkval was already in the water. Jeffrey waited impatiently while another nuclear Mark 48 was loaded by hand in his only working torpedo tube. He ordered it fired at the incoming Shkval, and ordered another fish loaded.

Again Bell smashed the inbound Shkval, too close, and once more
Challenger
rocked. Once more things broke loose and crewmen were injured.

Again torpedomen rushed to load another Mark 48. Again the
Tirpitz
launched another Shkval. Jeffrey reached for the handset. “COB, we need to get that tube reloaded faster.”

“We’re trying, Captain!” COB panted from exertion. In the background, over the handset, Jeffrey could hear clanks and thunking as the men struggled with block and tackle; he heard the torpedomen grunt and curse as they worked.

At last the unit was ready in the tube. Bell fired. The interception range was getting closer and closer to
Challenger.

Jeffrey realized this engagement was a battle of attrition: an endurance contest trading blow for blow.
But the enemy captain must see I’ve got a very slow rate of fire. How many Shkvals does the
Tirpitz
still have? How long can my men keep loading and firing like this, with just one tube and by hand, before they all drop from exhaustion?

How much more punishment like this can
Challenger
take?

Again Bell smashed the inbound Shkval, much too close to
Challenger.
Once again
Challenger
rocked, worse than before. Sweating, swearing men rushed to load another fish. Again the
Tirpitz
fired.

They’re shooting their Shkvals faster than we can shoot back. We lose more ground with every salvo. Our margin to intercept each inbound weapon wears thinner and thinner—soon it will be lethally small.

“Tube three ready in all respects!” Bell shouted.

“Tube three shoot!”

Another atomic fish leapt from the tube, and turned, and charged the Shkval as
Challenger
tore in the opposite direction.

But the German captain was smart. This time he’d set his Shkval, with its much bigger warhead, to blow before Bell’s fish could get in range.

The blast was so loud it went past Jeffrey’s real ability to hear. There was just a terrible pressure in his head and a painful dissonant ringing. The sharp force of the blast caught
Challenger
’s hull and pounded Jeffrey’s feet and bruised his ass. Crewmen were knocked to the deck, and some were knocked unconscious. Light fixtures shattered, console screens darkened, locked cabinets burst open. Manuals and clipboards and metal tools became projectiles. Chips of paint and particles of heat insulation, and leftover construction dirt, were thrown into the air. Jeffrey felt the grit in his eyes and he coughed as he breathed it in.

Jeffrey’s hearing came back slowly. As the numbness in his battered brain subsided, he saw Bell waving urgently to get his attention. The phone talker also was yelling something, and Jeffrey’s intercom light flashed.

“A Mark forty-eight has broken loose in the torpedo room!” Bell shouted in Jeffrey’s ear.

The noise and shaking and aftershocks of the Shkval blast went on and on. Jeffrey answered the intercom. It was COB, repeating Bell’s terrible news, telling Jeffrey there was no way they could load the one working tube. In the background, over the handset, Jeffrey heard desperate orders, and shouting, and agonized screams.

“Get more damage-control teams in there!” Jeffrey said to Bell. Jeffrey turned to the phone talker. “Medical corpsman to the torpedo room on the double!”

Jeffrey waited. He forced himself to sit and exude a sense of control and let his crew do their jobs.

Jeffrey squeezed his armrests involuntarily, and just rode the ship.

Challenger
shimmied and rolled, fighting her way through troubled water, still making flank speed. Jeffrey knew each shimmy and roll would throw that errant fish in the torpedo room even more, as it darted and veered and banged around, literally like a loose cannon.

“Weapon in torpedo room is fractured!” Bell reported.

Then Jeffrey heard the thing he dreaded most.
“Weapon’s fuel is leaking, Captain. Fuel leak in the torpedo room!”

“Countermeasures tubes are inoperable,” the chief at the ship-control station yelled, almost as an afterthought.

“We’re defenseless,” Wilson said. “One more Shkval and we’ve had it.”

“This can’t be happening,” a fire controlman whined.

“Cut it out,” Bell told him. “I’m too underdressed to die.” Bell was still wearing his boxer shorts.

Crewmen laughed at Bell’s remark, but Jeffrey knew the laughs verged on hysteria. The wait for the next incoming Shkval was driving everyone mad. “We’ve been in worse fixes than this,” Jeffrey said in a loud voice to Bell. Jeffrey tried to sound much more blasé than he felt, pretending to make idle conversation, to reassure and steady his men.

Bell nodded, his neck muscles visibly tight. The control-room crew grew silent.

Jeffrey listened to the ocean around them boil and roar, from all the effects of the nuclear blasts that had already taken place.

Another aftershock from the most recent Shkval hit
Challenger.

The phone talker looked up, very alarmed. “Fire, fire, fire in the torpedo room. Fuel spill in torpedo room has ignited.”

Jeffrey turned to Bell, and the two men made eye contact. Bell’s face said more than words could: there were fifty weapons on the holding racks around that fire, with tons of
volatile fuel, and tons more of high explosives and a lot of fissile material.

“Get down there, XO. Take charge at fighting the fire.” Jeffrey dearly wanted to rush to the torpedo room himself. But his job as captain required that he remain in the control room, to stay in overall charge of the ship and maintain the big tactical picture. He caught himself squeezing his armrests in a death grip as he sat there. He forced his fingers to lighten up by a supreme exercise of will.

Jeffrey deeply trusted Bell. But Jeffrey knew Bell’s efforts would only prolong the inevitable—any moment
Tirpitz
would set loose another Shkval. There was nothing Jeffrey could do now about it but make
Challenger
continue to flee, and the Shkval, once launched, would gain on Jeffrey’s ship at an inescapable 250 knots net closing speed. Everybody, including Commodore Wilson, knew this simple, cold-blooded fact.

At the first word of the fire, the crew had begun to grab their emergency air-breather masks. They plugged them into the air manifolds in pipes that lined the overhead. The control room filled with eerie hissing and whooshing, as people inhaled and exhaled through the valves of their masks—and waited to die. Jeffrey felt an icy emptiness in his chest—never one for denial of harsh realities around him, Jeffrey finally started to run out of hope. He caught a whiff of acrid, toxic fumes, spreading from the torpedo-room fire. Before he had his mask fully on, Jeffrey also smelled urine. Someone, in panic, had wet himself—Harrison, at the helm.

Bell doggedly fed Jeffrey progress reports through the intercom. He’d put on a flameproof suit and was supervising near the fire. Bell’s voice was hoarse from bellowing orders over the noise and pandemonium. He sounded muffled through the breather mask of a portable respirator pack. From exertion and overexcitement, Bell panted raggedly.

Bell said men were rushing to rig hoses and set up the fire-fighting foam. Meanwhile others did what they could with carbon dioxide extinguishers, with chemical powder
extinguishers, with anything they had. It was difficult to work in the huge but cramped torpedo room, with clearance between the rows of holding racks barely as wide as one man’s shoulders. Down on their hands and knees, avoiding the hot spots of burning fuel, dodging the leaky Mark 48 that still ran loose, slowed the men down badly. Bell said the deck was slippery with blood. The heat was intense and the smoke was thick and a weapon would cook off soon.