Thunder In The Deep (02) (38 page)

"Copilot," Eberhard said, "sever the hydrophone lines. Pilot, steer due south. Flank speed ahead."

"Jawohl," Jakob Coomans said. Deutschland banked and picked up speed. Eberhard turned to Beck.

"I just hope we find them before some idiot frigate captain gets Fuller with a lucky shot." ONE HALF HOUR LATER.

Jeffrey stood on the ladder in the sail trunk. On his orders, Meltzer held Challenger down with bow and stern planes, fighting COB's intentional positive buoyancy.

"Battle surface," Jeffrey said to the local phone talker—the man was stationed with sound-powered phones in case the intercom system failed. Jeffrey heard compressed air roar as COB blew all main ballast tanks. Meltzer reversed the planes. Challenger breached.

Jeffrey undogged and hurled open the bridge hatch, and clambered into the little exposed cockpit atop the sail. A lookout—the messenger of the watch—came up right behind him. Then came Chief Montgomery, lugging a .50-caliber machine gun. Montgomery mounted the MG on a bracket he had deployed from the rear of the cockpit. Crewmen handed up heavy boxes of ammo.

It was pitch dark outside, and foggy again, and very cold. Behind Jeffrey, both photonic masts rotated, as the CACC prepared to take nav bearings visually, and scan for threats. Challenger was running the Køge Bugt, the shallows leading from the Baltic into the Sound. There were

three men in the tiny bridge cockpit, all in bulky parkas over their flak vests, with life jackets over that; they could barely move. The air was clean—chemically, biologically, and radiologically—so at least they didn't need respirators.

Jeffrey switched his night-vision visors to full-time infrared, because of the fog. He still couldn't see much—fog blocked passive infrared. The CACC, and the electronic support measures room, fed him information through his intercom headphones, under his helmet. He also had a tactical display on a weatherproof laptop he'd brought up; the wires all led below. The lookout used image-intensified and electronically stabilized binoculars to probe toward the horizon and the sky. So did Montgomery—the fog could clear at any moment, leaving them totally exposed.

By inertial navigation they followed the route the German minesweeper and captured mini had taken on the way in. Jeffrey hoped there weren't new mines. The sail-mounted mine avoidance array was useless out of the water, and the one on the chin had been wrecked at Durban. Jeffrey had to save the LMRS. Kathy tried to use the bow sphere to search the water ahead, but it was difficult in these conditions.

"Maneuvering, Bridge," Jeffrey called on the intercom. "Bridge, Maneuvering, aye. Willey here."

"Enj, I need flank speed."

"Sir, there's still the damage to the pump-jet from that two-twelve's weapon near the Azores. We get vibrations around thirty-two knots submerged."

"Will it get worse if we go faster, Enj, or is it a resonance that'll stop?"

"One way to find out, Captain."

"V'r'well. . . . Helm, Bridge."

"Bridge, Helm, aye," Meltzer answered on the intercom. "Ahead flank."

"Ahead flank, aye."

Water began to cream over Challenger's bow. Jeffrey felt it splash as some was deflected up by the streamlined fairing at the base of the sail. He felt the nasty vibrations begin just as Willey predicted, but they subsided as the ship accelerated more, as Jeffrey had hoped. Challenger reached flank speed and ran more smoothly, but flank speed on the surface was much slower than submerged—the unavoidable wave-making wasted power. Jeffrey heard a constant churning rushing as his command cut through the seas, and he felt a frigid wind on his face. The ship rolled badly, the sideways motion exaggerated here atop the sail.

Almost sixty miles to go before we can dive again. German command and control infrastructure would be in disarray with the solar storm, and Challenger had the element of surprise, but sooner or later she'd be found. Once localized, she'd be prosecuted to destruction.

Sixty nautical miles on the surface. An eternity. At least Jeffrey took comfort from his companions shoulder to shoulder.

"Fire Control, Bridge."

"Bridge, Fire Control, aye," Bell answered.

"We need all the firepower we've got. Spool up the gyros, all conventional Tactical Tomahawks in the vertical launch system."

"Bridge, ESM." The Electronic Support Measures room. "Bridge, aye."

"Captain, we're picking up surface-search radars. WM-twenty-five track-while-scan fire control systems. Assess as Bremen-class frigates."

Jeffrey glanced at his laptop screen. One threat was to the north and one to the south, both about twenty thousand yards away—easy gun and missile range. They were converging on Challenger, and she'd entered the new dredged channel south of Saltholm Island. The narrow channel was for deep-draft shipping, and an SSN on the surface had deep draft—Challenger drew almost forty feet, and was really in a bind. If her stern dug in, due to bottom suction from the pump-jet intake, she'd take more damage there. If the stern was trimmed too light, to solve that problem, the pump-jet might suck air instead. Challenger also had no room to maneuver or evade to left or right; outside the channel the water was ten feet deep.

"ESM, Bridge. Is the return signal a threat?" "Difficult to tell in these electromagnetic conditions, Captain."

It didn't matter—the frigates were faster than Challenger now, and the one to the north had her decisively cut off.

Jeffrey saw a flash to the north through his goggles: a strong infrared emitter, persisting, getting brighter fast.

"Bridge, ESM. J-band homing radar! Inbound Harpoon."

The burning light in the fog got closer and Jeffrey could hear the Mach .85 antiship missile roar.

"ESM, go active. Try to spoof it!"

The light and noise approached Jeffrey steadily—a Harpoon warhead was deadly against any submarine. It came down to a contest between Challenger's low-observable sail and her electronic countermeasures, and the Harpoon's advanced target seekers and the frigate's counter-countermeasures. Challenger barely won, this time. The missile tore past the sail and Jeffrey felt its sizzling engine exhaust. It veered west, under external targeting control, to avoid the frigate to the south. It self-destructed with a hard blam and a stabbing glare. Jeffrey felt the shock and a wave of blast-furnace heat. The fog bank cleared, leaving Challenger naked. The sky was overcast here. Jeffrey switched visor modes—the pixel gain control would keep the imagery from flaring, and help preserve his night vision. The blackout of the Swedish and Danish coasts was absolute.

Another missile was launched from the Bremen to the north.

This time the Harpoon came much closer before it missed and self-destructed.

"Bridge, ESM. They're defeating our countermeasures."

That was the problem with electronic warfare. Every time you radiated you gave something away, and the other guy responded. Jeffrey thought hard. He could fire ADCAPs at both frigates, but torpedo attack speed was barely a tenth of a Harpoon's. There was no time to switch the load in a torpedo tube.

"Weps, Bridge. Target an antishipping Tomahawk from the VLS at each of the Bremens, smartly." The vertical launch system was twelve cruise-missile tubes built into Challenger's forward ballast tanks.

"Captain," Bell said, "we've no procedures for using the VLS on the surface."

"Improvise!"

"There's no way to flood the tubes after we fire. If we

launch too many weapons we'll be too buoyant to dive!" "There's plenty of water coming over the bow." "Aye, aye."

Jeffrey saw two of the heavy pressure-proof VLS doors pop open. He saw another flash, another Harpoon launch. Challenger and the Bremen to the north were closing at almost sixty knots. The Harpoon came at his ship, more like six hundred. There was a blinding flash and a terrible roar. Jeffrey and the others in the cockpit ducked instinctively. There was another flash and roar, and Challenger nosed and bucked even harder. Jeffrey was bathed in unbearable heat, and he choked on noxious fumes. He peeked over the edge of the cockpit. Yellow-white flame receded fore and aft of the ship. The third Harpoon had missed, just barely. The Tomahawks sought their targets. Before the frigates could zero in and jam the guidance frequencies, both weapons hit. The frigate to the south was ripped by the Tomahawk, whose thousand-pound warhead was much larger than a Harpoon's. The frigate began to sink, blocking the channel, protecting Challenger's rear. But the Bremen to

the north, burning now, began to settle too. If it did, Challenger would be trapped. Jeffrey had a clear view of the northern Bremen. The flames lit dense black smoke. The frigate was drifting sideways in the channel. Its bow was already level with the water. Jeffrey ordered Willey to push the reactor hard. It was a race against time, and a fraction of a knot might make the difference. As if to mock Jeffrey, something on the northern Bremen exploded. An on-deck missile pod? Balls of fire spewed.

At last Challenger reached the sinking frigate.

"Helm, Bridge, all stop. Rotate the ship on auxiliary propulsors to true bearing zero four five. Then translate us due north. I want to shove that Bremen out of the way." Meltzer acknowledged.

Sharp concussions went off inside the Bremen. By now anyone still alive had abandoned the hulk. Jeffrey saw men in the water. Montgomery covered them with his machine gun, but they were in no shape to threaten Challenger. Jeffrey and Montgomery and the lookout were forced to go below and shut the hatch, because of the heat and smoke, and the secondary explosions and flying wreckage.

Jeffrey stepped on his intercom wire by mistake, and it yanked his lip mike askew. " Collision alarm!" he shouted down the ladder to the phone talker. The raucous siren blared.

In the CACC, Jeffrey knew, Bell watched the scene via photonics imagery. Still in the sail trunk, Jeffrey called it up on his laptop, to conn the ship. When they were very close he ordered COB to lower the masts.

Jeffrey was almost thrown from the ladder when Challenger nudged the starboard bow of the Bremen hard. He fixed his mike. He told Meltzer to use more forward auxiliary propulsor thrust, to lever the hulk aside, like a tugboat. Jeffrey heard more blasts through the hull. Shivers and jolts were transmitted from the steel side of the Bremen to the ceramic side of Challenger, right through her anechoic skin. At last the pathway north was clear.

"Ahead flank! Make your course three four five!" Straight up the Sound. Jeffrey climbed through the bridge hatch. There were bits of smoking debris in the cockpit and atop the sail. The Plexiglas windscreen was melted. He peered over the port side. By the glare of the burning frigate he could see Challenger's coatings were scorched. The sonar wide arrays were mounted low on her main hull's flanks, and Jeffrey hoped they weren't badly damaged. Montgomery climbed on top of the sail on his belly, and batted bits of frigate away. He fired a short burst as a test—the machine gun was okay. Jeffrey ordered COB to raise the masts.

Behind him, with one final shuddering detonation, the Bremen settled on the bottom; its superstructure protruded above the waves, still burning fiercely. The underwater blast caused several mines in the shallows to detonate sympathetically. Jeffrey doubted many German sailors in the water survived.

Challenger cleared another fog bank. She was free of the confining dredged channel, but the water was still so shallow she had to stay on the east side of the Sound, the Swedish side. The icy wind and freezing salt spray bit Jeffrey's face. Over his right shoulder Jeffrey saw another flash, quick and sharp: a naval defense gun on the Swedish coast. The shell landed a hundred yards off Challenger's bow, directly ahead of the ship. The bridge crew ducked as water fountained. Razor-sharp shell splinters pelted the sail.

"Helm, Bridge. Left standard rudder. We're violating Swedish neutrality"

"Bridge, Nay," Sessions broke in.. "No can do, sir, unless we slow down. We need bottom clearance the way the pump jet's digging in."

"ESM, Bridge. How are they tracking us? That gun's dead-on."

"Infrared laser, sir. There's no way we can jam."

"Yes, there is." The gun was off Challenger's starboard quarter, near Malmo, on a headland. "Chief of the Watch, raise the snorkel mast. Start the emergency diesel. Figure out how to put oil into the exhaust, to make a smoke screen." The diesel air intake had nuclear-biologicalchemical filters, and detectors to warn of bad air, just in case. Another Swedish shell landed, one hundred yards astern, again dead-on in azimuth. The ship was bracketed, an unmistakable message the next shell wouldn't miss. Jeffrey heard and saw another gun open up, from near Copenhagen, on the occupied Danish side: incoming German fire this time. Challenger was caught in the middle. Her diesel coughed to life. Stinking exhaust poured from the vents in the sail, then dense smoke obscured the view aft.

"Helm, Bridge. Zigzag smartly!"

Meltzer turned hard right. A Swedish shell landed in Challenger's wake. Another landed where she would've been if she had stayed on course. Another flash near Copenhagen, off Challenger's port bow. Another German shell landed, almost as close. Dirty water drenched the cockpit. The stench of high explosives mixed with diesel fumes.

"Weps, Bridge. Target that naval gun by Copenhagen with a land-attack Tomahawk. Fire at will." Another VLS hatch popped open. This time the bridge crew knew to go below before the booster ignited.

They were past Copenhagen and Malmo now. They avoided the wreckage of the new bridge-and-tunnel that connected those two cities—started in the late nineties, finished in time to be destroyed by the Swedes as German forces flooded into Denmark. Jeffrey lost sight of the structure's

stumps in his own smoke screen, streaming out behind the ship.

Despite ESM's efforts to spoof the gunnery radars, more German shells tried to follow from behind. Some came very close. Jeffrey ducked, and shrapnel whistled, and something behind him made a whack.

"Bridge, Control. Attack periscope photonics mast knocked out." It was only a matter of time before a five-or eight-inch shell hit the hull. Ahead would lie more naval guns, and soon they'd be in visual range, and from that direction the smoke screen wouldn't work. Jeffrey ordered land-attack Tomahawks launched to take the guns out. Again he and Montgomery and the lookout went below and felt and heard the missiles launch. When the boosters were well clear, they went topside.