Thunder In The Deep (02) (39 page)

"Fire Control, Bridge. I -want to launch four more ISLMMs. Preset them to loop up around Sjaelland Island. Lay a mine barrier across the mouth of the Great Belt. Warships may be racing from Kiel to head us off."

Bell acknowledged. He announced when each weapon was fired. It was slow work loading tubes manually, especially against Challenger's constant pitch and roll. Jeffrey used lens paper to dry his goggles and binocs, drenched again by flying spray; his weatherproof laptop was holding up.

ESM announced more surface search radars, German corvettes coming from the north. Jeffrey ordered ADCAPs fired to intercept. Challenger passed an enemy fast-patrol craft, hiding in ambush in a cove. He fired an antiship Tomahawk before it could launch its missiles. The Tomahawk burst viciously.

The ADCAPs hit their targets to the north, and Jeffrey saw bright flashes. More loud booms rolled across the Sound. The water was still very shallow, barely fifty feet, but at least the Sound was wide enough now Jeffrey could evade the wrecks. Challenger entered a snow squall, then came out the other side. Again Jeffrey cleaned his goggles and binocs.

"It's awfully quiet in the air," Montgomery said. "We should've stirred up one heck of a hornet's nest by now."

"I was thinking that," Jeffrey said. "Maybe our side sprang an info warfare assault on Axis command and control. Saving something really special, for a time like this."

"Then where are all our planes, sir?"

"Maybe the Axis did it to us, too."

In that case everything on and over the sea would come down to map reading, guesswork, and the Mark 1 human eyeball.

Challenger was running low on ammo. The Germans held the cards; soon they'd get their act together, and stop committing forces piecemeal.

Ven Island lay ahead, in the middle of the navigable part of the Sound. Ven was owned by Sweden, heavily fortified. Challenger had to come left. This forced them closer to Denmark, where the channel was studded with shoals.

Soon Challenger would be in range of accurate fire from yet more naval guns, in line of sight above the horizon, where laser range-finding worked.

Then Jeffrey heard something worse than naval guns. He heard the clatter of helo blades to the northwest.

"Fire Control, Bridge. What airfield bears three one five?"

"A German army base on Sjaelland, Captain."

Jeffrey spotted the helos in his big binocs. The lookout said they were Tigers—brandnew attack aircraft. Their shaped-charge antitank rockets could easily blast through Challenger's hull.

Montgomery leaped atop the sail and traversed his machine gun, for all the good it would do.

Jeffrey glanced at his search 'scope mast. It tracked the squadron of Tigers as they moved closer, strung out in line ahead.

"Fire Control, knock them down."

One by one a quadruplet of Polyphems broke the surface in their encapsulated launch tubes. Each lifted off, guided by fiber-optic wire and powered by a turbojet. The Tigers scattered, but the Polyphems' forty-pound fragmentation warheads shredded four helos. They burst into flames and crashed, but the other helos pressed on. Soon the eight survivors would be in rocket range, and it would take time to load more Polyphems.

"Bridge, ESM."

"ESM, Bridge, aye."

"Captain, static and propagation are fluctuating heavily. We're getting snatches of a big air battle shaping up due west."

"Range?"

"One hundred miles."

Hot-white light flared northwest, again and again. Balls of fire jetted toward Challenger—antitank rockets. Jeffrey screamed for the helm to zigzag. Once more he and the lookout ducked, and Montgomery dove headfirst into the cockpit. The chief landed on Jeffrey, knocking the wind from Jeffrey's chest.

The rocket motors roared. There was a red-white eruption. Waves of heat lashed the cockpit. A rocket had hit the after part of the sail, burning through the side of the structure, hardened for under-ice operations. Jeffrey glanced at the helos as they drew closer, just in time to see four more jink and then explode—another salvo of Polyphems hit home. He peered over the cockpit edge but couldn't see where the enemy rocket hit. He did see black smoke pour from the side of the sail. That part was free flooding, but it housed the floating-wire antenna winch. He ordered damage control parties to get in there from below with CO2.

Four Tigers still lived. They ripple-fired their rockets, then turned away. The rockets tore the air and pelted the sea. Several hit Challenger's forward hull, or rather the water cascading over it. They struck at a glancing angle to the surface, and the sea quenched their shaped-charge plasma jets. Others landed aft, and Jeffrey hoped they'd also failed to damage the ship—from the cockpit he couldn't see the after hull. Another rocket hit the after part of the sail. Jeffrey ducked. One hit the outside of the cockpit. It burst, and hot gas and metal from its armor-piercing shaped-charge warhead jetted through and instantly burned a hole on the other side. Jeffrey and Montgomery, lying flat on the bridge hatch, looked at each other wide-eyed, amazed to be alive. Then they realized their life vests were on fire. They tore them off and threw them over the side.

Another four Polyphems pursued the remaining Tigers in the distance. They impacted one by one. The blasts and sheets of flame were much larger than the rocket hits on Challenger.

Jeffrey and Montgomery realized the lookout was gone, and the cockpit was spattered with smoldering gore.

Jeffrey saw Montgomery's machine gun was wrecked, and ordered him below—it was just too dangerous up here. The chief carried the ruined weapon down, and Jeffrey passed him boxes of ammo.

Now Jeffrey stood on the bridge alone, and they still had so far to go. Jeffrey ordered the ship to slow momentarily. He wanted a man to mount the hull behind the sail, wearing a lifeline from the aft escape trunk, to do a close visual inspection for damage from the antitank rocket hits. If the hull had been burned through, even just partway, Challenger would never dive again.

They were past Ven Island now. The main hull was okay, but Willey reported the protruding top of the rudder looked like Swiss cheese. The fire inside the sail was out, but two firefighters had third-degree burns through their suits from shaped-charge blasts. The choke point at the north end of the Sound was coming up fast. Challenger ran north at flank speed; wind whistled through the holes in the side of the cockpit. She wasn't meant for surface battle: She had no chaff dispensers, no magnesium decoy flares. Her ESM abilities were limited, just one mast with small antennas.

"Fire Control, Bridge."

"Bridge, Fire Control, aye."

"X0, I want to make some radar decoys. Take our radar reflectors and mount them on blocks of Styrofoam."

"Understood," Bell said. The radar reflectors were aluminum shapes with many right angles. Used on the surface in friendly waters, they helped the SSN show clearly on navigation radars, so she wouldn't be run down by a careless merchant ship.

"Confirm how many non-nuclear Tomahawks we have in the VLS." Jeffrey had lost count.

"Two land-attack, sir. That's all."

And they had two more in the torpedo room, which could be fired from there.

"Fire Control, target the suspected cable landing sites for the German hydrophone lines in our path."

"Which ones, Captain?"

Jeffrey reached for his computer, then realized it was wrecked—also from that antitank rocket blast. "Send me another laptop."

A new messenger handed one up, and Jeffrey plugged it in.

He called up the map with its classified data. "Fire Control, the ones on Anholt Island, Laesø Island, then Saeby, then Hirtshals." That would take Challenger through the Kattegat, and halfway through the Skaggerak if they were lucky. But there were more hydrophone nets between Hirtshals and the North Sea, and no more land-attack Toma-hawks.

•

Before Bell could open fire, Jeffrey sensed—more in his gut than his ears—hard explosions in the distance to the west. Visibility was clear again, but he didn't see any flashes, just the amazing aurora still dancing overhead.

Face it, without this solar storm we'd never have even made it into the lab, let alone had the slightest prayer of

making it home. . . . Weather has always been a critical factor in battle; now that includes weather on the sun.

"Bridge, ESM." Electronic Support Measures called again.

"ESM, Bridge, aye."

"Captain, that big air battle is heating up, and coming closer." Two more VLS doors popped open. Jeffrey ducked below. Through the hatch he heard the roar of their boosters. He went back up and watched till the boosters separated, and the missiles rushed into the dark. Two more Tomahawks broached the water, from the torpedo tubes this time, and again their boosters roared. Then boosters fired on the land to the west and raced into the sky: antiaircraft missiles, pursuing the Tomahawks. The choke point out of the Sound lay shortly ahead, barely three nautical miles wide between Helsingør in Denmark and Halsingborg in Sweden. The Germans would be marshaling forces there for sure, or planting more mines, or both, to lay an impassable roadblock. Jeffrey knew that if he took the Swedish side of the channel now, with the Axis in hot pursuit, he'd draw both Swedish and German fire.

Jeffrey ducked as something roared at him out of the west. It was a pair of jet planes. They turned hard south, then waggled their wings as they receded. Jeffrey waved: Allied air cover at last.

The two aircraft came back. Their noses sparkled and red streamers darted out—they were German. Jeffrey ducked once more as 20mm cannon shells hit the water. The pilots corrected their aim, walking the tracers toward the ship. Jeffrey dashed below and dogged the hatch. He heard whacks and bangs as shells hit the side of the sail. His ship was all out of Stingers, and Polyphems were useless against fast movers like these jets.

Jeffrey clambered down the sail trunk ladder, then dogged the second hatch. More cannon shells impacted.

"Bridge, Fire Control," Bell called in Jeffrey's headphones.

"I'm not on the bridge."

"Sir, we've lost the other periscope mast, and the ESM mast and the radio mast." Challenger was blind and deaf, except for her sonars. And at flank speed on the surface, her sonars were almost blind.

"V'r'well," Jeffrey said. "I'm going up again."

"Bridge, Sonar," Kathy said. "Self-check indicates sail-mounted mine avoidance sonar, and under-ice sonar, are destroyed."

Jeffrey flung open the hatch. The sky was crystal clear now. The approaching air battle had definitely arrived. Aircraft tore in every direction, and dogfights raged at every altitude. Jeffrey saw tracers etching the sky. Missiles streaked like shooting stars. Airplanes exploded and wreckage pelted the sea. Above it all, the powerful aurora danced mockingly, from the zenith overhead to the horizon on every side, insensate and uncaring.

The combined roar of all the turbojets on full military power was so intense, Jeffrey was reduced to typing messages to Bell on his laptop. Bell answered the same way. Bell gave him an updated tactical plot. Modern Brandenburg frigates and more Class 130

corvettes were charging through the choke point directly ahead. There were three of each detected so far. Another squadron of Tiger helos was closing in from the west. Jeffrey tossed one radar decoy to port, and hoped the improvised counterweight would make it land in the water right side up. He counted to five and also threw the other decoy to port. The Class 130's each had eight Harpoons.

Each Brandenburg also had eight Harpoons, plus quadruple torpedo tubes with thirty-two Mark 46's aboard, and two state-of-the-art NH-90 antisubmarine helos. They also had active antitorpedo defenses—mortars and explosive

nets—powerful against conventional fish, especially in such shallow water. Jeffrey had few high-explosive ADCAPs left, and only four Polyphems. He had no ISLMMs, no antiship Tomahawks. The Brandenburgs' total load of torpedoes wildly outnumbered Challenger's antitorpedo rockets. The water was barely sixty feet deep—it was impossible to dive. The cleared channel was narrow again, its flanks studded with mines—it was impossible to turn away.

"Target the Brandenburgs with three ADCAPs," Jeffrey typed in despair. "Target the Tigers with Polyphems. Fire at will."

This was. Challenger's last stand, and it was hopeless, and Jeffrey knew the Germans knew it. His brilliant decoys and noisemakers would be useless against enemy wireguided Mark 46's, with the frigates holding visual contact on his ship like this. Jeffrey was forbidden to use nuclear munitions so close to neutral and occupied land, even in self-defense or self-destruction: The ROEs were inviolable.

Another aircraft exploded and fell from the sky. It crashed into the sea near Challenger. Friend or foe? Jeffrey couldn't tell. Flaming avgas marked its grave. Jeffrey saw no chutes. Still tracers and missiles ripped the air high above. Aircraft twisted and turned, and their cannon stuttered, and turbojets roared.

"Bridge, Sonar," Kathy Milgrom typed. "Eight torpedoes in the water. Mean bearing three five one, constant bearing, closing." Two of the Brandenburgs had fired a full salvo from their quadruple launchers, and would be racing to reload. The third Brandenburg was holding their first salvo in reserve.

"Helm, try to comb their tracks," Jeffrey typed. "Fire Control, arm the antitorpedo rockets." They were carried in nonreloadable launch tubes in the hull.

"XO," Jeffrey typed, "begin destroying crypto gear. Shred Top Secret documents. Jettison through the trash ejector."

Jeffrey saw hot-white flames to the west—incoming antitank rockets. Swelling glows to the north—inbound Harpoons. Quick, sharp flashes to the northwest—naval guns, more shells targeting Challenger.

Jeffrey felt the taste of defeat, more bitter than he imagined it could ever be. He saw more flames to the west, streaking through the sky, more incoming fire. He'd failed his crew and Ilse, and failed his country. Tears came to Jeffrey's eyes for everything he'd lost.

Above the cacophony all around he heard a different noise, a powerful whine. Were transport helos coming with Kampfschwimmer, to fight their way aboard? In despair Jeffrey turned with his binoculars. What he saw brought different tears to his eyes. Two dozen Royal Navy Sea Harriers came in fast from behind him, right above the waves. Their wings were heavy with antiship and antiaircraft missiles, and electronic warfare pods, and depth charges and smart bombs.