Thunder In The Deep (02) (15 page)

"If there's no erosion underwater," Jeffrey said, "how come the summit's so flat?" He hated to admit it, but talking shop with Ilse really turned him on. Since their little encounter yesterday, she'd been cool and professional. Good for her, but the widening gulf between them only made Ilse seem sexier to him.

"The top used to be a volcanic crater," she said. "The probe's in the bowl."

"Oh . . . But where's the rest of it? This spur is just a fragment." The downhill side of the spur ended abruptly in a sheer drop of almost two miles. There was no crater rim at the edge of the drop.

"Blew up, looks like," Ilse said. "Think of an undersea Mount St. Helens."

"Yikes," COB said. "That must have hit the Azores with one heck of a tsunami."

"Concur," Ilse said. "But that was millions of years ago." Jeffrey chided himself on his one-track mind now of all times. He ordered his brain, the one in his head, to take back control of his thought processes.

COB continued to work the probe downhill, carefully searching.

"XO," Jeffrey said, "stand by with today's acoustic recognition signal and countersign."

"Recognition codes ready," Bell said.

"If anyone's still alive on Texas, this way they'll know we're here, and we're friendly."

"LMRS depth now sixteen hundred feet. Still no sign of Texas."

"How far past official crush depth do you think they could go?" Bell said.

"With the hull stressed by an atomic near miss?" Jeffrey said. "Lord, there's no way of knowing."

Jeffrey eyed the gravimeter. Past the end of the spur, at the bottom of the sheer drop, at a depth of over nine thousand feet, lay a huge field of boulders and lava extrusions.

"Probe depth now sixteen hundred fifty feet," COB said. "Still searching spur, now one thousand yards from the edge. No sign of Texas."

"What worries me," Jeffrey said, "is that after their second buoy got off, the ship may have slid down the slope. . . All the way down the slope."

"I saw something!" Ilse shouted.

"Keep your voice down," Jeffrey said. "Give me a proper report."

"Urn, sediment on slope appeared disturbed to the left. Striations, as if from a large moving object."

"Got it," COB said. "Good eyes, Miss Reebeck. Shifting LMRS to the left."

"Sonar, anything?" Jeffrey said.

"Nothing, sir," Kathy said. "No indications of enemy presence."

"Any signs of life at all?"

Kathy spoke to her people. "Negative, Captain. No Virginia-class tonals on sonar feed from LMRS, or other tonals for that matter. No broadband either, except for current flow noise."

"They must be conserving the battery," Bell said. "Or they're dead," Jeffrey murmured. Jeffrey watched the image-intensified picture from the probe. There was indeed a groove on the slope, gouged gradually deeper, running west. It went on and on.

"Debris now," COB said. "Stripped-off anechoic tiles . Something big, lying on its side. Yes, looks like the lower rudder."

"Careful," Jeffrey said. "Don't break the tether."

"This groove runs slightly downhill," COB said. "Present probe depth seventeen hundred twenty feet."

"That's too deep for Texas, sir," Bell said. "It's too deep."

"Keep praying," Jeffrey said. "At least it's in the right direction. Their last course would'

ve been west."

"More debris," COB said. "Starboard towed array fairing, broken from the stern. . . . What's that mess?"

"Crumpled part of a wide aperture array?" Bell said. "Probably torn off by a boulder."

"They had some residual control," Jeffrey said. "She made a fairly gentle landing, from the looks of this groove. . . . The torn-off pieces are encouraging, actually. They'd've helped her slow down."

"Groove widening." COB. "Looks like she started clewing sideways. . . . More wreckage now."

"That's the starboard bowplane," Jeffrey said.

"Groove narrowing again. Depth seventeen hundred sixty feet." Bell exhaled deeply. "We're almost at the edge now, Captain." Jeffrey began to lose hope.

"There!" Ilse said.

Jeffrey saw it, too, upright, suspended several feet above the silt. Big slats, at the back of a cowling. The slats were twisted and bent, and the cowling was badly dented. To the cowling's right was the ragged stump of a stern plane. Just past the cowling, in the murk, loomed a huge cylindrical mass that took Jeffrey's breath away.

"We found her," he said quietly. "That cowling's a Virginia-class pump jet propulsor, for sure." Jeffrey eyed the probe's depth gauge once more. It was too far down for a Virginia-class hull to survive.

Jeffrey watched the latest grim picture coming from the probe. COB had already done a quick inspection of most of the disabled sub's exterior. For a moment, for a respite, Jeffrey glanced to the rear of the control room.

Lieutenant Willey and a junior officer from Engineering caucused there now, using a spare console behind the nav table. They carefully replayed earlier video from the probe. Willey and his j.o. were trying to tell exactly what sank Texas, and exactly what shape her forward compartment was in.

Jeffrey wasn't happy. From the outside, like this, there seemed no way to know if the front of the boat was filled with air, and the living, or with water and the dead. COB kept working his joystick. The LMRS reached the bow.

"Look at that;" Jeffrey said. "The streamlined cover for the bow sphere got knocked off. .

. . Not surprising; it's mostly fiberglass."

"Where do you think it went?" Bell said.

"Pushed ahead of the ship, I guess. Kept going, tumbled off the cliff."

"We still can't tell what flooded her aft," Willey said.

"From what we see, sir, and what their captain said in his two buoy messages, I suspect a main steam condensor shifted in its mount, from the A-bomb shock." Jeffrey thought for a moment. "Yup." That could strain a cooling seawater intake or outlet pipe, and break a weld at the hull.

"We're still analyzing the forward section," Willey said. "No sign of cracks or implosion .

. . or explosion, either."

"Very well," Jeffrey said. "COB, bring the LMRS to the Texas's forward escape hatch again."

Soon the LMRS moved back behind Texas's sail, to over the accommodation spaces.

"There's the hatch," COB said. "Her ASDS docking collar looks intact. No debris fouling the hatch."

"No sign an enemy minisub has been there?" Jeffrey asked.

"I'd need to go to active laser line-scan, sir."

"What do you think, XO?"

"We need to risk it, Captain. We'd radiate to send the recognition code anyway."

"COB, switch to active line-scan."

The picture got much clearer and sharper.

"Ilse," COB said, "from that little amount of silt and sea snow, can you tell if the collar's been disturbed?"

"I can't say," Ilse said. "If German commandos were here, or are here, wouldn't they cover their tracks?"

"Messenger of the Watch," Jeffrey said, "have Lieutenant Clayton come to the CACC. .

. . Shajo ought be here for this. I should've thought of that before." Clayton arrived a minute later.

"Oh, boy," he said when he looked at the screens. "You found her, didn't you?" Jeffrey nodded. "It's humbling to see something so powerful lying there like that."

"Looks like her crash-landing ground to a halt just in time." Clayton was right. From her bow to the edge of the cliff was less than the length of a football field.

"See the escape hatch and the collar?" Jeffrey asked. "Any way to know if the Germans were here?"

Clayton stared at the picture. "Sorry, no can say" "Sonar," Jeffrey said, "anything now?"

"Still no sign of the enemy, sir, and no signs of life."

"Send it again," Jeffrey said.

"Recognition sign transmitted," Kathy said. "Anything?" Kathy paused. "Nothing, sir."

"Captain," Bell said, "we've been trying for twenty minutes now, with the highest signal power we dare. We aimed the LMRS transducer right at her port wide-aperture array, and what's left of the starboard wide array, and then her bow sphere. Nothing."

"They'd still have plenty of air reserve," Willey said, "assuming the compressed air banks in the forward ballast tanks survived the crash. . . ."

"It could be their hydrophones failed," Kathy said, "and they can't hear our signal. Or their transducers failed, and they can't answer back."

"Or their forward battery went flat," COB said. "Maybe it couldn't hold a charge after the crash. Or they drained it, running equipment to survive."

"Or they sprung a leak they couldn't stop," Jeffrey said. "Something small we can't see."

"Or German Kampftchwimmer are in control," Bell said, "waiting for us."

"You could always just bang on the hull," Clayton said. "Not literally" Jeffrey said. "You heard the XO. We need stealth."

"What now, then, sir?" Bell said.

"COB, exactly what angle is Texas sitting at?"

"Down eleven degrees by the bow, listing twenty degrees to starboard."

"And the docking collar looks good?"

"Yes, sir."

"Can our ASDS mate properly, with those angles?" "Tricky, Captain. Maybe."

"All right," Jeffrey said. "There's no choice. Shajo, get your men with their rifles. Messenger of the Watch, summon the medical corpsman. We're going to try to board her.

"

Jeffrey stood, squeezed behind the pilot's seat in the mini-sub's cramped control compartment. David Meltzer was acting as pilot, and next to him sat COB as copilot. They all watched the imagery on one of the monitor screens, as the ASDS ultrahighfrequency sonars built a picture of what lay outside. There was Texas, listing to one side near the edge of the spur. There was the LMRS, hovering beyond the submarine's forward escape hatch.

Jeffrey reached past COB for the mike for the lowprobability-of-intercept secure gertrude. "COB, lowest power, please, and keep the emitter aimed at the LMRS." COB turned a knob, flipped a switch, worked his joystick, and flipped the switch again.

"Challenger, ASDS," Jeffrey called. "Challenger, ASDS. Communications check, over." Jeffrey was calling his ship through the LMRS, using it and its fiber-optic tether as an audio link back to Challenger.

"ASDS, Challenger," Bell's voice answered. "Read you five-by-five. How you me? Over."

"Same-same," Jeffrey said. "We're about to attempt the docking, over."

"Understood," Bell said. "Will monitor your approach through the probe's passive imagery, over." Bell talked to Jeffrey the same way, using the probe's active sonar as a stealthy underwater telephone.

"ASDS out," Jeffrey said. "COB, give me the transport compartment." Jeffrey keyed the mike again. "Shajo, come forward, please."

In a moment Shajo Clayton walked through the mini-sub's central hyperbaric sphere and dogged the hatch behind him quietly.

COB juggled the variable ballast, to adjust for the shift in weight. Shajo squeezed behind Meltzer, and looked at the screens.

"Almost show time," Shajo said. He wore a black body-suit, a black ceramic flak vest, a black ceramic combat helmet, and had his dual-mode night vision visor flipped up. Jeffrey was dressed the same way, except for the helmet and visor.

"Pilot," Jeffrey said, "position us over the docking collar." Meltzer took the main joystick now. He deftly turned the ASDS, using her side thrusters and her rudder and main screw propeller—all battery-powered, and silent. The minisub crept forward.

When they were over the collar, COB turned on the external light and the docking cameras.

Jeffrey could see the international-standard bright white lines and circle painted on the SSN's hull, like crosshairs around the escape hatch.

"I don't like these angles," Jeffrey said. "The collar's designed for a boat holding a zero bubble."

"The way the Texas is lying," COB said, "we could damage the collar. At this depth we can't equalize the lockout chamber if it floods. No watertight seal to Texas, no opening the hatches."

"Can't you, like, tilt the minisub?" Clayton said.

"We're only eight feet in diameter," Jeffrey said. "We don't have the lever arm to put on a big list using the trim tanks. . . . Twenty degrees is too big."

"We could just flood negative," COB said, "come down heavy, and hope we settle on the collar just right." "We'll have to try it," Jeffrey said. Meltzer rotated the ASDS to line up fore-and-aft with Texas. He used his joystick and the side thrusters to fight the crosscurrent, almost two knots up here on the spur. COB

worked his ballast control panel again.

Jeffrey watched the video screen. The round edge of the docking collar came at the camera. He could see the outer escape hatch now, down inside the collar. The mini hit the collar hard. There was a scraping noise that sounded all wrong.

"Pull up!" Jeffrey said.

The minisub rose.

"This isn't working," COB said.

"Do you want me to try again?" Meltzer said.

Jeffrey looked at the screen. The part of the collar toward Texas's stern was slightly dented. Paint particles floated in the water.

Jeffrey shook his head. "Too risky. We may have blown it already."

"We've come awfully far to give up now," Clayton said.

"We're definitely not giving up. . . . We have to think outside the box, folks. We're not a deep submergence rescue vehicle, we don't have a flexible ball-joint collar. We can't put on a twenty-degree starboard list. . . . So, what if we come in sideways? We'd only need an eleven-degree list in that case, right? If we could put on twenty degrees fore-and-aft somehow?"

"Urn, yes, sir," Meltzer said.

"Easier said than done, Captain," COB said. "We're not designed for it. We dumped the back seats back at Cape Verde, so we're light at the stern. We can't make the bow any heavier, we've got max hot bodies crammed in here as it is." That's true, Jeffrey thought. Shifting people around was the time-honored submariner's trick to alter bubble, but it only went so far.

"How about this?" Jeffrey said. "We bring the SEALs and their gear into the central chamber, and make us as nose-heavy as possible on variable ballast. Then we create a vertical twisting moment with our fore and aft rotatable side thrusters."