Thunder in the Deep cjf-2 Page 15

  Everyone wished each other best of luck. Taylor shook Jeffrey's hand, then began to close the door.

  "We'll try to trick that Amethyste into the open for you," Jeffrey said. "Somehow."

  "We'll be ready," Taylor said. "One way or another, no German's coming close without getting a bloody nose, and with the intel treasure Texas represents, nobody's taking us alive."

  ON THE CAPTURED GERMAN MINISUB

  Chief Montgomery sat in the left seat, Jeffrey in the right. Shajo Clayton stood behind Jeffrey. Their prisoner was nicely trussed up in the transport compartment. The bottom hatch was dogged.

  "Collar is flooded and equalized," Montgomery said. "We're ready to separate."

  "Do it," Jeffrey said. The German mini got underway.

  A little later a red light started blinking. Clayton jumped. "What's this?" Neither he nor Jeffrey knew German.

  "Uh-oh," Montgomery said. "Incoming message on voice."

  "Don't answer it."

  "What if we force our prisoner to feed them a story?" Clayton said.

  "No. They've got world-class signal processors. Even if he hates the regime, and plays along, they'll see the micro-tremors in his voice…. Monty, can you get this thing to work on digital datalink?"

  "If you help me, Captain. We better work fast.".

  With Montgomery as the on-board German language interpreter, and Jeffrey as a passable expert on undersea comms, they got the switches and computer commands lined up.

  "Tell them our voice link is down, we took some damage during our melee with the SEAL armed guard."

  Montgomery typed on the keyboard with one hand and steered the mini with the other. He hit enter. His e-mail text in German on the screen meant nothing to Jeffrey, except for the acronym SEAL.

  A message came back, at once. "They want the recognition code."

  "Stall them."

  "Leave this to me. Captain, please take the conn. Here's your depth, here's your gyrocompass. Just hold us steady." Jeffrey took the controls. Instruments and data screens responded.

  Montgomery grabbed a box with a green cross: European-style markings for a first-aid kit. He rushed aft and closed the transport compartment door behind him.

  "I'm glad I don't have to watch," Clayton said.

  "Me, too," Jeffrey said. As he held the control joystick he realized his left wrist was sore. Damn, the crystal of his old Rolex was smashed, and the hour hand was gone. A German bullet must have done it. That was close.

  Montgomery came back. "Got it." He sat, and typed on the keyboard.

  "How do we know he didn't give you some kind of panic coder-Clayton said.

  "I said if he did, I'd cut his dick and testicles off, then clamp the arteries with hemostats, and I'd hold his head between his legs and let him think about it till he died."

  "Monty," Clayton said, "I'm very glad you're on our side." Jeffrey just shook his head.

  "Hey," Montgomery said, "I didn't actually do it." Another German message came back.

  "Bingo. They bought it. They want a status report. They say they heard a lot of bullet impacts on their sonar."

  "Okay," Jeffrey said. "Okay… tell them the enemy submarine is secured, all the American SEALs are killed. Tell them the ship is identified as the USS Texas, SSN 775. Her captain is alive. The Kampfschwimmer are collecting the highest-value prisoners and crypto gear right now."

  Montgomery typed.

  "They want us to confirm Captain Taylor's laser buoy message, that the ASDS was jettisoned and lost in combat."

  Jeffrey blanched. "They broke the code?"

  "Yup." Montgomery sounded disgusted.

  "Okay, tell them, Confirmed."

  "They say their remote-control probe detected flow noise a few minutes ago, heading south…. What probe?"

  Jeffrey blanched again. "They must have some kind of LMRS snooping around…. Uh, tell them it was probably a whale or a giant squid or something." Jeffrey wished Ilse was here. She was always good at this.

  Montgomery smiled, and typed.

  This is insane, Jeffrey told himself. We're busy holding a chat room with some enemy submarine captain, amid three warring SSNs all armed with nuclear torpedoes. A response came on the screen. "They want us to investigate thoroughly. They're afraid an American sub may be in the area by now. Maybe what they heard was an LMRS or an ASDS."

  "Tell them we'll investigate to the south. Ask them to rendezvous with us north of the spur for pickup in two hours. That should draw the Amethyste II into the open — we'll have to leave the rest to Captain Taylor. Let's get out of here. We need to catch up with Meltzer, and convince him it's us."

  Montgomery resumed the conn. He followed the course he knew the ASDS would take. Jeffrey looked around the German mini's cockpit more thoroughly. It was sophisticated, more futuristic than the ASDS. It was faster and had much longer cruising, range, too, thanks to hydrogen peroxide power; Jeffrey saw a fuel gauge labeled "H202."

  "What's this thing's crush depth, Chief?"

  Montgomery called up a document labeled "Hilfe." Help. "Seven hundred meters."

  Jeffrey whistled. "Twenty-three hundred feet… Good, we can use that. Dip down behind the spur and make flank speed. It'll take some juggling, but I want to jettison our ASDS and keep the German mini instead."

  TWO HOURS LATER, ON CHALLENGER

  Ilse was glad that Jeffrey and the others had made it back okay. The ASDS was abandoned, lodged under a big outcropping of a different seamount. The German minisub was safely stowed in Challenger's conformal hangar now.

  Ilse felt Challenger rock.

  "Loud explosion bearing three two five!" Kathy shouted. 'Range sixty thousand yards!"

  "That matches Seamount 458," Jeffrey said. "Whose weapon was it?"

  "A one-tenth-KT warhead, sir. Can't tell whose side."

  "Torpedo screw-count?"

  "None detectable at this range, Captain."

  Ilse heard another blast on the sonar speakers, not as loud and different in character.

  "Hull implosion!" Kathy shouted. "Same range and bearing! Full-size steel sub hull implosion!"

  "What class vessel?"

  "Impossible to tell in this acoustic sea state, sir."

  "It was either the Amethyste II," Bell said, "or the Texas."

  "Or both," Jeffrey said. He hesitated. "There's no more we can do."

  Ilse felt the awkward, worried silence in the CACC. Then she had a terrible thought.

  "Captain, what if there were two German submarines near Seamount 458? That guy you captured might not even know."

  Jeffrey turned. "Your point, Miss Reebeck?"

  "What if the other German sub sent its mini to Texas, with more German commandos, and captured everyone and everything for real? What if they blew up the spur, to cover their tracks and keep the Allies from salvaging Texas? What if they tortured Captain Taylor till he talked? What if the Germans know all about the Greifswald raid?"

  Jeffrey made a face and looked away. "Navigator, plot a course for the English Channel."

  "Sir?" Lieutenant Sessions said. "Our orders are to transit north of Britain."

  "They just say to do what Texas was supposed to do. We don't have time for that, and we've lost strategic stealth."

  "But, Captain," Sessions said, "part of the Channel is barely a hundred feet deep. On a clear day you can see the Dover cliffs from the French beach at Calais!"

  "Exactly," Jeffrey said. "Squeezing through there is the last thing the Axis would expect."

  Ilse saw Jeffrey look around the CACC. He avoided eye contact with her, and she chided herself for feeling miffed. Besides, she thought he looked pretty silly, with the bulge of a chemical cold-pack under his shirt. What'd Jeffrey do, bruise himself on a stanchion?

  "Think of it as a dress rehearsal, people," Jeffrey said. "For when we try to penetrate the Skagerrak and Kattegat."

  Ilse heard crewmen inhale sharply. She saw one man grin, as if he'd won a bet, about where Challenger was headed. H
e didn't smile for long.

  Sessions walked to the navigation table, and spoke with his senior chief. They studied the digital charts and ran some calculations.

  "Captain," Sessions said. "Advise that from out present position, the distance to the mouth of the Skagerrak is two and a quarter times as great if we take the northern route through the Iceland-U.K. gap, compared to running the Channel.".

  "Exactly," Jeffrey said.

  "But the southern route, through the Channel, sir, would require a much slower speed, because of the shallows and the intensity of antisubmarine measures…. We won't save any time, and may actually lose time."

  "Ladies and gentlemen," Jeffrey said. "This ship has an appointment in the Baltic Sea. We need to get there before the upcoming magnetic storm dies down, and for another reason that some of you know, that I can only say is classified. From right now we've barely four days to get in position, and Lord knows if that's soon enough. We are going through the Channel, to regain strategic surprise, and we are going to make up lost time, because we have to."

  Ilse thought of ARBOR, the mole. Was she already dangling from a gallows?

  THIRTY MINUTES LATER

  Ilse knocked on Lieutenant Bell's door.

  "Come in."She entered.

  "Shut it behind you."

  Ilse felt her gut tighten. Bell looked at her as if she were a total stranger.

  "The messenger said you wanted to see me." She reached for the guest chair.

  "Don't," Bell said. "I'll keep this short and sweet."

  "Sir?"

  "You were completely out of line in the CACC."

  Ilse bristled. "How so?"

  "Your remark about a second German submarine."

  "But it could be true, couldn't it?"

  "Yes, it could be true. That long silence you felt so compelled to fill? Everyone in the compartment was thinking that already. Do you have some kind of a patent on undersea tactics? What could you possibly accomplish by giving voice to everyone's fears?"

  "I, er…"

  "Exactly. You didn't even think of that, did you? The submariner community's very tight. Half the people on Challenger have, or had, friends on Texas. You didn't even think of the effect you'd have on your shipmates' morale."

  Whew "Did Jeffrey put you up to this?"

  "That's Captain Fuller to you," Bell snapped. "And no, he did not. Discipline is my job."

  "I, look, I, I want to make a contribution here." Ilse knew she was stammering, and felt angry with herself.

  "Don't you have any common sense on when to keep your mouth shut?"

  "No, Lieutenant, I'm sorry, that's just too harsh. I'm here for a reason. Lieutenant Sessions talked back to the Captain, just before, in front of everyone."

  "First of all, Miss Reebeck, you address me as Mister Bell, or preferably as XO."

  "Well, I didn't know that."

  "Second of all, Lieutenant Sessions has been in the Navy ten years. It's his job as navigator to devil's-advocate the Captain. Your job is to concentrate on your specific scientific tasks, under the direction of the sonar officer. Consider her your boss. Do nothing without her prior consent."

  "No one told me that."

  "Captain Fuller told you that. He said to work with Lieutenant Milgrom. Right?"

  Ilse nodded.

  "When the captain of a naval ship says something, it's not a request or a suggestion. It's an order, dammit."

  "Yes, sir." Ilse moved to the door. "May I go now?"

  "No. I'll tell you when you're dismissed. You realize, don't you, that you completely violated security back there?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "The crew is not supposed to know exactly where we're going. The same thing that happened to Texas could happen to us. RECURVE is highly classified. You just blurted it out. Greifswald. How careless can you be?"

  Ilse hesitated. It all sank in at once. Celebrity syndrome; prima donna. She'd been warned by the chief of the boat, and just ignored it.

  "Oh, God."

  "Your wardroom privileges are revoked."

  "Excuse me?"

  "From now on you eat in the enlisted mess. That's all. Get out of here."

  Ilse closed the door behind her, in shock. Two crewmen wriggled by. They read her face and looked away. She covered up as best she could and hurried to her stateroom.

  THE NEXT DAY, ON DEUTSCHLAND

  "Still no contact on Challenger, Captain," Ernst Beck said. As ordered, Deutschland lurked at the Celtic Shelf, just west of the U.K.

  "We can't afford to take the chance they snuck right past us," Eberhard said. "We'll have to try an end-around, to cut Fuller off. Einzvo, have the navigator plot a course for the English Channel."

  CHAPTER 13

  NIGHT OF D DAY MINUS 4, ON CHALLENGER

  Ilse changed to pajamas, exhausted from work and her seesaw emotions. Visions of false-color 3-D bathythermograms danced in her head, colliding with probability isobars of early winter pack-ice drift.

  She felt Challenger speed up.

  "Fast, then slow, then fast again, over and over and over."

  Kathy, reading a novel in her rack, grunted. "Sprint and drift tactics. It's the only way to get where we're going by the deadline, and have a prayer of not getting killed."

  "But isn't it dangerous, going so fast for most of the time? Noisy?"

  "Yes. That's why we stop to listen."

  "But—"

  "Don't say it," Kathy said. "Just don't."

  Ilse climbed into her rack, then tried to adjust the covers without banging her elbows or her head. She awkwardly pulled the little curtain closed, then groped and turned off her reading light.

  Oh, God, it felt good to just lie down and shut out the world.

  "G'night, Kathy."

  "I missed you at dinner," Kathy said from inside her bunk, with an interrogatory tone. Her light stayed on. Ilse sighed.

  "It's a long story"

  "I see; please go on."

  Ilse realized she couldn't keep it from Kathy forever. What if Kathy already knew?

  "The XO put me in hack. For shooting my mouth off in Control. He said I have to eat in the enlisted mess."

  "I heard, and shame on you for being such a bad girl."

  "Are you mocking me?" Ilse said.

  Kathy changed her tone. "I was trying to cheer you up."

  "Sorry"

  "The food's the same as in the wardroom, Ilse, and the atmosphere in the enlisted mess is more relaxed."

  "I know. It's a mob scene. Teenagers, family men, it's fun to sit with them all. Still, it stings to get yelled at, after everything I've been through with this ship…. It seems so childish. 'Go to your room.' `No TV for you tonight.' "

  "The XO is teaching you to do your job. Part of your problem is you spend too much of your time with the senior officers."

  Ilse hesitated, then almost blushed when comprehension dawned. "This way I get to know the chiefs and other ranks."

  "Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Adapt and learn. Fast as you can, is my advice. I said so once before."

  "I'm trying. The more I try, the worse it seems to get. I mean, not fitting in. The honeymoon is definitely over."

  "Poor baby."

  "Ouch."

  "What's the worst part of your punishment? Paper napkins instead of cloth when you eat? Give me a break!"

  "I guess you're right."

  Kathy's tone had been sarcastic — was she pulling rank?

  "I feel just awful about that security goof."

  "Good. You ought to. You could have gotten people killed. People who relied on you."

  Ilse stayed silent.

  "Well," Kathy said, "it's not all bad, as it turned out. At least not yet."

  "How so?"

  "The crew felt simply horrible about leaving the Texas behind."

  "The XO said that."

  "At least, now they understand why."

  "The mission?"

  "The captain and COB put the word out, after you
r gaffe. About the missile lab. Crew morale has skyrocketed. Didn't you notice?… No, I don't suppose you would…. People need to feel needed. They also need to know that fleet commanders do things for good reason."

  "Um, so everybody isn't totally mad at me?"

  "Now who's being childish? We need all the morale boost we can get, where we're going."

  Ilse settled into her rack, mentally numb. She fought with herself, then decided to ask. Kathy was the closest thing to a friend she had on the ship.

  "Were you ever disciplined, Kathy?"

  "I got my share of bollockings when I was starting out. It's hard to avoid. I told you once already, remember how little training you have for this. Learn from the experience, and put the ship always first, and move on."

  "I'll try"

  "Try harder. The timeline of personal growth speeds up terribly during war. I sense we're covering the same ground as two days ago."

  "That did sting."

  "Success is not guaranteed," Kathy said. "You have to feel the calling. It's not for everyone."

  Yeah, Ilse thought, it's not for everyone. Let's see how far I get, one of a hundred twenty ants in a naval anthill, where I'm censured for breaking rules no one even mentioned.

  "First thing after breakfast," Kathy said officiously, "we go over halocline-induced horizontal signal loss in the surface wave-mixed isothermal zone. With the shallow bottom and so many wrecks coming up, and the chin-mounted sonar unserviceable, you and I have our work cut out for us."

  "Yes, ma'am." Ilse felt the ship slow down again, then bank to port, so the on-watch sonar techs could listen for hostile contacts yet again.

  It all just never ends….

  Kathy turned off her reading light, plunging Ilse into total darkness. Ilse waited, hesitated, then said, "G'night, Kathy."

  But the only response was snoring. Ilse felt utterly alone, and cold beneath her blankets.

  PREDAWN, D DAY MINUS 3.

  By 0415 local time Ilse was back in the CACC, as Challenger snuck into the English Channel. Ilse was busy integrating her updated version of the METOC data with the ship's latest readings of water temperature and salinity.

  She glanced at the nav chart. Her modeling work was falling behind. While she slept, Challenger had climbed onto the European continental shelf. Already they were inside the western, widest part of the Channel proper.