Thunder In The Deep (02) (14 page)

"It's different for you," Ilse said. "You chose this, as a profession. The Royal Navy, I mean. You knew there could be war someday; you trained for it. I got dragged into something horrible I wish never happened. It ruined my whole life."

"You and a few hundred million other people, Ilse. So far."

"There it is again. We each become a cipher, a cog in a little wheel, in a world full of wheels within wheels."

"Just do your job. Concentrate on the small things, and do them as well as possible. Take the track you're given to run on, and run it splendidly."

"Is that what you do, Kathy?"

"Think of yourself as a vital organ in a special organism. An instrument of peacerestoration and statecraft. It helps maintain your sense of self."

"It just all seems so, I don't know, so regimented, so horribly rigid."

"Have you ever tried to run a warship, my dear?" "Of course not."

"Then don't talk. Routine and hierarchy are what hold everybody together. The rules and procedures get us back alive."

"So you enjoy the work, day to day?"

"Immensely. Sure. Don't you?"

"Yes, I do. And I am good at it." Take that, COB. Take that, Jeffrey Fuller. At least I don'

t have to go on the SEAL

raid this time. . . . Best put Fuller out of my mind right now. He could easily get killed, like Kathy's boyfriend.

"Anyway, Ilse," Kathy said, "sleep well."

"Good night, Kathy. Thanks for the advice."

Just as Ilse was about to drift off, Kathy looked down from her rack.

"You know," Kathy said, "the submarine is not a penis." Ilse was wide awake now. " What?"

"Everyone thinks it is. The shape, how it launches torpedoes. How it's so nice and long and thick and hard. But they're wrong."

"You're not a Freudian?"

"I am, I am," Kathy said. "But listen to this." She smiled. "The submarine is a womb."

"You know, you're right. . . . I never saw it that way before. . . . It's snug and cozy. It protects you from the outside world."

"It goes into the sea, which represents Mother."

"I guess it takes a woman to realize that," Ilse said. "Or at least, to admit it."

"And on that note, Ilse, good night."

THAT SAME EVENING,

ON DEUTSCHLAND.

Off the starboard quarter, many sea miles away, another air-dropped nuclear depth bomb detonated. The roar and reverb engulfed Deutschland. The shock wave made her pitch and buck, but Ernst Beck got no new damage reports. There was pain and a feeling of pressure in his ears, from an endless day of such punishment. Beck wondered if it'd make him go deaf in old age, assuming he lived that long.

"They're dropping them at random," Eberhard scoffed.

The temporary stalemate at the sinking troopship Button

was over now. Allied carrier aircraft, and fresh destroyers

and helos, were hunting Deutschland with a vengeance

but she was too stealthy, especially in this rugged seafloor terrain. Another A-bomb went off, further away. A heavy manual slipped from a console top, and the crewman caught it just before it hit the deck. Eberhard gave him a withering glance.

Deutschland's bow nosed up as she climbed a canyon wall deep in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Then she nosed steeply down, to take the next in the endless series of canyons at an angle. Beck watched the gravimeter. Soon the vessel climbed once more. She topped the volcanic escarpment.

"Sir!" Haffner said. "New passive sonar contact." It was a long-range secure acoustic communication; the message address was Deutschland. Beck knew the top-secret transmitter was in the Biscay Abyssal Plain off occupied France. Beck's intercom light flashed—the junior officer in charge of the communications room.

"Sir, incoming message is in captain's personal code."

Beck told Eberhard.

"Pass the message packet to me."

Beck saw Eberhard enter the password to access his private decryption routines. The algorithms ran. It took ten seconds for the plain-text to come onto Eberhard's screen.

"Scheisse." Shit.

"Sir?"

"We're congratulated on sinking an official total one point four million tons, based on reconnaissance satellite imagery, but we're ordered to avoid all contact with the Truman carrier group."

Beck hesitated. "Why, Captain?" They were stalking Truman now; bagging her would be a perfect capstone to Deutschland's victory against the Allies' Convoy Section One.

"I suppose it's not so bad. We're to proceed immediately to the verge of the Celtic Shelf.

" Just west of the U.K. "To establish a barrier patrol and ambush USS Challenger. She's expected to be making for the North Sea."

"Does the message say her objective, sir?"

"Intel suspects they're headed for Norway. A commando raid against the ceramic SSGN

we're building in Trondheim."

"That would be a high-priority target for them, Captain."

"The only problem for Challenger is that Trondheim is a diversion. The activity there is fake. Even I don't know where they're really hiding the new boat. . . . With our superior sonars, we'll pick up Challenger easily, whatever longitude she follows north. We'll turn my old friend Jeffrey Fuller into radioactive fish food."

ONE DAY LATER, ON CHALLENGER.

The CACC was hushed. Jeffrey took a deep breath—and regretted it; the air still stung as it went up his nose.

The final search for the USS Texas was about to begin. However it ended, it wouldn't take long. For the umpteenth time Jeffrey wondered if the enemy had gotten here first, and was waiting for him. He hoped the long-term mine reconnaissance system (LMRS)

—a remote-controlled probe vehicle—wouldn't give Challenger away.

"Captain," COB said, "LMRS approaching next-tofinal way-point. Now on the southern flank of Seamount 458, hovering at depth twenty-seven hundred feet as ordered." The fiber-optic feed was working properly.

"Very well," Jeffrey said. Each seamount here was named by the depth at its peak in meters, based on British Admiralty nautical charts. Though Challenger's charts were online, easily converted to feet or fathoms, the metric reference persisted.

"Sir," COB said, "advise that the tether is now strung out for twenty-four nautical miles, nearing the end of both the torpedo tube's and on-probe reels." Jeffrey frowned. "If it breaks or isn't long enough, we'll have to go on with autonomous link."

"For that we'd need to shift Challenger, sir," Bell said. For a good acoustic line of sight to the probe. "We'd make a datum by moving, and another by signaling the LMRS." Jeffrey thought hard for a moment. "No, I like our hiding place here. . . . COB, just be careful with the probe."

"Understood," COB said.

"Helm, any trouble maintaining ship's position?"

"Negative, sir," David Meltzer said, in the seat on COB's right. "Challenger holding well against the bottom crosscurrent." Their depth was ninety-one hundred feet, at the base of the southeast slope of a different seamount, labeled 960.

Jeffrey eyed the gravimeter again. The huge bulk of the seamount completely masked Challenger—that was the idea.

"A dozen seamounts all together in this cluster," Jeffrey said. "The Olympus Knoll." The cluster formed a rough oval, with its long axis running north-south. The formation lay some three hundred nautical miles due north of Graciosa, a small island in the wesiern Azores.

"Collectively," Ilse said, "they mark an ancient hot spot in Earth's mantle, like the Azores or Hawaii."

The Knoll's peaks loomed high above the local sea-floor, an undulating plain ten thousand feet deep.

"And only one of them," Jeffrey said, "Mount 458, is tall enough near its summit, shallow enough, for a Virginia-class sub to survive. . . . The Axis has to know that, too."

"Sir," Ilse said, "why don't we search for Texas with our gravimeter?"

"At this range the resolution is much too coarse to see it," Bell said.

"Sonar," Jeffrey said, "any new contacts?"

"Nothing but biologics, sir," Kathy said. "But advise that surrounding terrain blocks our arrays on many bearings."

"I'm not comfortable with how thorough' our area search really was," Bell said.

"Me, neither," Jeffrey said. "But we can't dawdle and play things safe. There are badly injured people on Texas. . . . We don't know what shape any of them are in by now, and we have another pressing engagement ourselves."

Bell nodded glumly. "It would be difficult to try to hit Greifswald with just Clayton and his men.,"

"I've been thinking that if we need to, we could try to rig the warhead from one of our own torpedoes, and somehow carry it into the lab."

"Wouldn't work, sir," Bell said. "Security. They're very specifically designed to not be removable from the unit in the field."

"In extremis? Clayton's good at that sort of thing."

Bell shook his head. "Once, on a bet, a special weapons surety guy from Johns Hopkins and I tried to figure out how"

"And?"

"We spent a solid week on it—we were bachelors then, on leave. No can do, sir. Period. Without the right tools and electronic preauthorization, which they didn't give us at Cape Verde, you'd disable the arming suite permanently, and damage the physics package, too.

"

"Yeah," Jeffrey said. "I'm sure you're right." There was an uncomfortable pause.

"My biggest worry right now would be Deutschland," Jeffrey said. "She could dig us out of this bottom terrain, with her hull and her sensors and weapons."

"The briefing papers said she's under the ice cap, far from here." The assessment supplied before Challenger left Cape Verde said that Deutschland was sneaking toward Canada, for a raid against Halifax or the St. Lawrence Seaway.

"There could still be German subs somewhere above

us, XO, playing hide-and-seek around the mountaintops. Waiting for us to make just one mistake."

"Agree, sir," Bell said. "Texas is perfect bait, for them to use against us." Jeffrey looked Bell in the eyes. "A disadvantage of our hugging the seafloor is, one Axis nuclear fish in seamount nine-sixty's chin, six thousand feet above our heads, and we're buried alive down here."

Jeffrey took a deep breath. He glanced around the CACC.

"All right, people, we don't have all day. . . . Chief of the Watch, bring the probe to the final way-point."

"Probe holding at way-point," COB said, "depth two thousand feet. Inertial nav agrees with dead reckoning plot for probe. Position checks complete."

"Very well," Jeffrey said.

Bell recommended testing the probe's sensor functions, and Jeffrey agreed. Jeffrey configured his console to show the scanning sonar data from the torpedo-shaped LMRS

probe. He watched his screens. A computer image slowly sketched the near side of Mount 458. The slope was extremely steep, almost vertical. COB shifted the probe. More seamount features appeared, including a jagged protrusion.

"Don't snag the tether," Jeffrey said. The probe's sonars were functioning properly. Then COB turned on its passive imaging cameras. The picture was featureless, inky black.

"Changing to image intensification factor ten thousand." Now Jeffrey saw a dull glow in the window on his screen, the barest trace of bright predawn moonlight, penetrating from high above, the photons picked up and. multiplied by the cameras' CCDs. There was faint blue bioluminescence, too, as the LMRS stirred up microbes in the water.

COB brought the probe closer to the wall of the sea-mount. Deep-sea fish began to react to the movement. There were flashes in yellow and green, and flickers of sheet lightning, ghostly white.

"Image intensification fifty thousand," COB said.

The picture grew brighter, more detailed, though still fuzzy and murky. Jeffrey saw a swarm of small creatures dash by.

"Pelagic shrimp," Ilse said from her console. She was obviously watching, too.

"Confirmed," Kathy said. "Biologics. We're hearing the shrimp click and pop." A huge jellyfish drifted past, translucent and gelatinous. Ilse said something in Latin. Out of curiosity, Jeffrey selected Challenger's own lowlight-level TV camera mounted on the sail. He saw something black and ugly, with needle-sharp teeth, and a bright green lure dangling near its mouth.

"Demonfish," Ilse said.

Next COB tested the probe's active laser line-scan cameras. Now Jeffrey could see a small swatch of the seamount's slope, in crisp black and white. The texture of the bare rock was very rough.

"COB, it's time to break cover. Proceed to the peak of four-fifty-eight." COB worked his joystick. "Bringing the LMRS up to fifteen hundred feet, sir." Jeffrey saw Bell eye a chronometer. "LMRS battery level check," Bell said.

"Sixty-two percent," COB said.

"Very well," Bell said.

"Probe is at the summit."

"Sonar," Jeffrey said, "anything new?"

"Negative, sir. Not even any distant nuclear blasts in some while now."

"Quiet today," Bell said.

"Both sides are licking their wounds," Jeffrey said.

"Very well, Sonar. . . . COB, begin the expanding snake search down the spur. Until we find Texas."

"Understood, sir."

"Use forward-and side-looking sonars in passive mode, to listen for transients and threats. Use passive-only imagery as a piloting aid. . . . I don't want the probe damaged, by an outcropping or uncharted wreck, or by Texas herself for that matter."

"Understood. LMRS has begun descent down the slope. Depth now fifteen hundred fifty feet."

Jeffrey saw a big boulder go by, lit by the living flashes and glows—or rather, the LMRS

went by the boulder. The boulder's edges were softened by muck.

Jeffrey saw a starfish, waving an arm.

"There's silting on this spur," Ilse said.

"That would be organic waste, right?" Jeffrey kept his voice very even as he spoke with her. At least, he hoped he did. "Dead diatoms and plankton?"

"The bottom current transports nutrients," Ilse said. "The seamount makes it upwell, feeding an ecosystem over the summit. That's why the water turbidity's higher now." Ilse was right. The image from the LMRS was murkier. For a while the only sense of motion came from floating specks and particles. They appeared out of the darkness, diverged to the edge of the picture, and were lost from view.