Thunder In The Deep (02) (37 page)

"Equalize to one atmosphere, then go deep."

"How deep?" Montgomery asked on the intercom. "Ten feet off the bottom." Jeffrey and Ilse went into the control compartment as the mini nosed back down. The incoming torpedo pinged more rapidly.

"Torpedo still on constant bearing," Meltzer said. "Range decreasing fast." There was a tremendous concussion, and the mini lurched and yawed. One of the wide screens went blank, and smoke came from the environmental control console. Meltzer cut the power there and sprayed with CO2. An acrid stink lingered.

"We're still under control," Montgomery said. "That fish went for the noisemakers." Jeffrey watched the tactical plot. The surface craft converged on the latest datum.

"New passive sonar contact!" Meltzer said. "Bremen-class frigate, bearing two eight zero, range twelve thousand yards. . . . More new passive sonar contacts, two helos, closing fast from two eight zero."

"We're never gonna make it," Jeffrey said. "We're almost out of fuel, and almost out of noisemakers. We lie doggo on the bottom, they'll just wait us out or hunt us down. Our environmental control is fried, and our battery's almost flat."

"Torpedo in the water!" Meltzer screamed. "From two eight zero, the Bremen. It's a prewar U.S. export, a Mark forty-six." A dangerous one.

Jeffrey eyed the nav chart. "Bottom the boat in this ',hollow just ahead on zero one five. Maybe we can hide in he terrain."

"Air-dropped torpedo in the water! ASW helo overhead!" "Damn," Jeffrey said. The Mark 46 dashed by with a scream and hit the lip of the hollow. The detonation shook the mini and warning lights came on. The air-dropped unit, another 46, spiraled down and also exploded nearby. The mini was shoved sideways against the bottom muck and boulders.

"Seawater leakage in the external battery cans," Montgomery said. Another console shorted out. Meltzer sprayed more CO2, sparingly, but now they'd have to breathe it and the smoke—the mini lacked air breathers to go around, and the few undamaged Draegers wouldn't last long. The built-up CO2 made Jeffrey sluggish and depressed. Ilse coughed. More depth charges blasted, much closer now, from the Class 130.

"Another torpedo in the water!" Meltzer said. "Bearing two nine five!"

"I'm sorry, people," Jeffrey said. "We tried. In the interest of saving as many lives as possible, I'm ordering the mini to surface and surrender."

Ilse looked at Jeffrey. He saw a sense of betrayal in her eyes. "I'm sorry." Ilse wondered if she'd go to Hell for taking her own life. Was that better or worse than hanging, than dangling and kicking naked while she endlessly choked and her tongue tried to burst and her bladder let go? Was Hell better or worse than being gang-raped first and then strung up for the rapists to watch?

"Captain!" Meltzer shouted. "Latest torpedo now on diverging course! Screw-count and engine noise show it's an Improved ADCAP Mark forty-eight, targeting the Bremen!"

"Are you sure?"

"Confirmed! Second ADCAP in the water, targeting the Class one-thirty . . . New passive sonar contact! Polyphems, torpedo-tube launched, aimed at the helos overhead!" Polyphems were small anti-aircraft missiles.

"What's going on?" Ilse said.

The message light blinked.

"Answer it," Jeffrey snapped.

"It's plain text gertrude," Montgomery said.

"On speakers."

"This is USS Challenger. Repeat, this is USS Challenger." The voice was scratchy and garbled, but Ilse knew it was the XO, Lieutenant Bell, the acting captain.

"They're on bearing two nine five," Meltzer said. "Range fifteen thousand yards." Ilse saw Jeffrey grab the gertrude mike. Before he could answer, the roaring Polyphems hit the German helos in harsh eruptions. There were pops as debris impacted the surface. The wreckage made a rushing noise as it plunged to the bottom, then thumped into the silt. Something clunked onto the mini's top deck, then something else. The high-explosive ADCAP hit the Bremen. The frigate's magazines went up. Reverb from the detonations drowned out the other sounds as the surface warship died. The other ADCAP hit the Class 130 corvette. The minisub rocked.

Jeffrey looked furious.

"Challenger, Challenger, this is Captain Fuller! What in God's name are you doing in the Baltic? I told you to get out if there was trouble!"

"Captain," Bell said, "we were ordered in by COMSUBLANT. Stand by for rendezvous and hangar pickup."

The minisub was docked, stowed snugly inside Challenger's conformal hangar. The pressure-proof hangar doors were closed, the pressure relieved, the water in the hangar drained. Meltzer opened the mini's bottom hatch, mated to the top of the ship's forward escape trunk, aft of her sail.

Jeffrey went down the ladder first, and fast. He helped the enlisted SEALs pass a groggy Clayton through the trunk, then onto a waiting litter outside the trunk's bottom hatch, in Challenger proper. Clayton grimaced in pain from being manhandled, but with the missile in the lockout sphere they couldn't bring a stretcher up. Clayton's wound—

actually two, an entry and an exit hole—began to bleed again. The acting corpsman looked him over as Salih and crewmen carried the litter toward the wardroom, which doubled as Challenger's operating theater. Salih's arm wound bled, too. Ilse came, down next, followed by Meltzer. Chief Montgomery stayed behind to deal with his men and their gear. Minisub maintenance specialists went up the ladder with tool bags.

Bell came to meet Jeffrey. "Sessions has the conn."

Jeffrey and Bell shook hands warmly. "Mission accomplished, so far," Jeffrey said. " Lab destroyed, intel gotten." Compared to Bell's crisp appearance Jeffrey realized how grungy he must look.

"Who's that guy with the big mustache?"

"A Turk guest worker turned resistance leader. He has quite a story." Jeffrey heard more torpedo hits in the distance, then heavy secondary blasts. Challenger banked to port and

then to starboard as she made a knuckle. From the feel, Jeffrey judged they were doing close to thirty knots, about as fast as they could go with their damaged pump-jet.

"Will you please tell me what's going on?" Jeffrey knew the ship was at general quarters—he saw the damage control and first-aid parties stationed. He and Bell rushed along the corridor to the CACC. Ike and Meltzer tagged behind.

"Mossad has a covert team in the mountains in southern Sweden, sir. They put up a Predator long-range recon drone with a laser downlink, to monitor Greifswald."

"Nosy bastards," Jeffrey said.

"They watched you come out of the lab with the missile. They must have contacted our embassy in Stockholm, and the attaché reached the Pentagon somehow, maybe land-line through Russia."

"How did SUBLANT reach you?"

"They activated a submarine commo satellite when it was over Denmark, then burned through a message before the satellite got fried by the solar storm. I'd raised the radio mast an inch when Milgrom heard your atom bombs go off, on the off chance . ."

"How did you get through the Sound?"

"On the surface, Captain, the only possible way." The Sound was very shallow "When German forces asked for the recognition code, we said in plain text we were Deutschland. We'd been on patrol too long, and our crypto books were stale. Surprise, poor visibility, no quick way to check . . . We fooled 'em."

Jeffrey looked Bell in the eyes, and saw Bell's confidence, his pride—he was shaping up as a worthy protégé. "That's damn fine work, X0." Jeffrey could picture it, too, that long run south: the endless minutes of vulnerability and nerve-racking suspense, moving further and further into enemy-held waters surfaced, waiting to be found out and destroyed at any time. "I don't think that's gonna work on the way out."

"I know, Captain," Bell said. "Still, it's good to have you back." Bell turned and gave Ilse and Meltzer congratulatory handshakes, too.

"It's good to be back," Jeffrey said. "Once they're cleaned up and rested, put Chief Montgomery and his men to work in the torpedo room, to help on damage control and the manual loading. . . . Messenger!"

"Sir!"

"When he can spare a moment have the acting corpsman issue depth-charge rations for everyone on the raid. I'll take mine in black coffee." Depth-charge rations were strong spirits.

"I'll have mine in coffee, too," Ilse said.

Jeffrey looked at Ilse: war paint, Band-Aids, torn-up body suit, hair going five ways at once.

"No, Ilse. Take yours straight. I order you to get some sleep." Jeffrey looked around the familiar spaces, the fake wood wainscoting and flameproof linoleum floors. He smelled the smell of the ship, ozone and paint and warm electronics, lubricants and nontoxic cleansers. He saw all the faces he knew. Home.

"We're cut off and under attack, outnumbered ten to one, beyond any possible means of support, and I feel safer already."

They reached the CACC.

Jeffrey stood in the aisle, sizing up the situation. Their course was three one five, northwest, back toward the Sound.

"I have the conn." "You have the conn," Lieutenant Sessions said. He went back to the nav console.

"This is the captain. I have the conn."

"Aye, aye," the watchstanders said.

Bell relieved one of his officers at Fire Control. Meltzer took the helm. COB was chief of the watch. "Helm, slow to ahead two thirds, make turns for

twenty-six knots. Right standard rudder, make your course zero nine zero." Due east.

"Captain?" Bell said. "That's back into the Baltic." "X0, your timing to open fire was impeccable. Now we

can't just run, we have to keep the enemy guessing." "Sir?"

"I want to launch three brilliant decoys."

"Aye, aye."

"Program one to sound and act like Seawolf, and send it east toward St. Petersburg."

"Seawolf, St. Petersburg, aye."

"Preset one as the Jimmy Carter and aim it toward " Gdansk. Let them think we have a major SpecWar op against the occupied Polish coast." The Carter was a Seawolf class, modified for SEAL mission support.

"Understood."

"Make the third one sound and act like Connecticut. Loop it northeast toward Stockholm and Finland, in international waters."

"Connecticut, loop it northeast, aye." Connecticut was Seawolfs sister ship.

"That should confuse everybody for a while. Program all decoys for twenty-five knots, with ping-enhancers to emulate full-size hulls."

"Twenty-five knots, ping-enhancers, aye."

Jeffrey read his weapons status screen again. He needed the offensive power of the ADCAPs in tubes one and three, and the antiaircraft power of the Polyphems in tube seven. The water to the northwest, the only route to possible safety, would just get shallower and shallower, magnetic storm or no.

"Launch all decoys through tube five. We'll let them run on their own, it's okay to cut the wires to reload." "Understood."

"Then I want to fire three ISLMMs." Improved Submarine Launched Mobile Mines. " Target the mobile mines toward Rostock. That's the closest German naval base threatening our path to the Sound. Use tube five for the ISLMMs."

"Understood."

Jeffrey called up the chart for Rostock harbor, and used his light pen. "Preset the mobile mine warhead pattern to create a barrier due north and one mile past the breakwater, spaced one five zero yards apart, like this. When tube five's empty, reload one more decoy."

Bell began to enter commands on his console, and gave orders to the Combat Systems technicians on the starboard side of the CACC. Deploying all these units would take a while—Challenger's rate of fire was low from old battle damage. Well, Jeffrey told himself, at least back on my nuclear-powered ship, I don't have to worry about running out of fuel like in that German minisub.

"Helm," Jeffrey said, "when the last ISLMM is launched, my intention is to come left to course three one five." Northwest again.

Then comes the hard part. The Sound's so shallow we can only get through if we surface first.

NINETY MINUTES LATER,

ON DEUTSCHLAND.

Ernst Beck knocked on the captain's stateroom door. "Come!" Beck entered.

"Einzvo," Kurt Eberhard said. He stubbed out a cigarette in irritation. "Still no contact on Challenger?"

"Nothing on our deployable hydrophone lines, sir. But we've received a high-priority message by secure undersea acoustic link. From Trondheim. The message is in captain's code."

"Give it to me."

Beck handed him the diskette. He watched Eberhard load it into his laptop.

"Look away." Beck heard Eberhard punch keys, the CO's personal passwords. Jawohl!" Eberhard exclaimed. Yes!

"Sir?"

"We're ordered to the Skagerrak at best possible speed. There's an American sub in the Baltic . . . that seismic activity we detected. The first shock was a low-yield atom bomb."

"Where, sir?"

"Greifswald."

"Greifswald? . . . We guessed the wrong target." Eberhard shot him a contemptuous look, then rose from his desk. "None of that matters now."

Beck bottled down his anger. He followed as Eberhard took the short corridor to the Zentrale.

"We're ordered to find and destroy the enemy ship. Intel says it launched three decoys, acting like the Seawolf boats."

"Which is the real SSN, sir?"

They reached Control. Eberhard spoke distractedly as he studied his screens.

"It's believed to be USS Challenger. They somehow captured one of our minisubs. Our forces tracked it, certainly damaged it, but then it completely disappeared. Our listening nets heard no telltale flow noise of a dorsal load, so the mini must be in a conformal hangar now."

"Challenger's, sir."

"There's no way they can escape!"

Beck nodded—there was one route out of the Baltic, and Deutschland would have plenty of time to cut them off. Coming so soon after the destruction of the two-part Allied convoy—by Deutschland and other Axis submarines—the loss of the U.S. Navy's Challenger would be an unbearable blow to enemy morale and fighting power.

"I have the conn," Eberhard said. "Action stations." Beck took his position at the IWO console. Maybe this war will end soon after all.