Deep Sound Channel (10 page)

Van Gelder ran the infrared binoculars along their quarry's hull. The huge laden cargo tanks stood out clearly in the enhanced imagery, the warmth of the crude petroleum radiating through the vessel's cold steel sides.

"Weapons," ter Horst called, "she's turning away. . . . She handles like a pregnant bathtub. . . . Angle on the bow now starboard zero five four. Bearing three two zero relative. Make the range thirty-six hundred meters, mark."

Again a tinny acknowledgment came back, barely audible above the howling of the storm and the water surging, slapping the cockpit.

Van Gelder stared at their target. A heavy bank of fog spoiled his view, then passed. "Sir, I don't understand something."

"Weapons," ter Horst called impatiently, "final bearing, three two four, angle on the bow now starboard zero six one. Range closing to thirty-four hundred meters, mark. . . . What is it, Gunther?"

"Her tanks aren't quite full. In fact I'd say they've only got three quarters of capacity."

"Helm," ter Horst said, "increase speed five more knots. I'm getting cold." He turned to Van Gelder. "The way she's altered course away from us makes it more challenging, you know. Not that she can keep it up. Icebergs calve in that direction this time of year."

"I know, sir. We're inside the mean limit of pack ice for December as it is."

"Bergy bits off the starboard quarter!" a lookout called. Van Gelder watched the cottagesized translucent obstacles bob and tumble. The sub quickly left them behind.

"We have our prey in the snare for sure," ter Horst said. "She's embayed against Princess Ragnhild Coast. . . . We should change that name. Kruger Coast, or something."

"Sir, these waters are getting hazardous, and something doesn't make sense." Ter Horst leaned to the intercom again. "Weapons, make tubes one through four ready in all respects. Open the outer doors. . . . What is it now, Gunther?"

"If she's running the blockade, why wouldn't her tanks be full?"

"Let me see that," ter Horst snapped. He grabbed the binoculars. "Hmm. I see what you mean."

"Sir, I don't like this."

"What's there not to like? We're alone with her out here."

"I know, sir, it's just that—"

"Look. We've used her noise to do an ambient sonar search, and we checked twice for anything backlit against the grinding of the floes. We patrolled under the ice shelf on our way over here, remember?"

"Yes, sir, I know."

"I inspected her bottom myself using an unmanned undersea vehicle probe. There's nothing that's a threat."

"Something just doesn't feel right, Captain. The bridge crew, they never move." Ter Horst chuckled. "Talk about frozen with fear." "Bridge, Sonar," came over the intercom.

"Sonar, Bridge, aye aye," Van Gelder shouted.

"Mechanical transients, wide-field directional effects, mean bearing one five seven true. Range matches the tanker."

"Near her stern," ter Horst mused. "Engine room noises?"

"Bridge, Sonar, negative. They sounded like muzzle doors opening."

"Muzzle doors?" ter Horst said. He hesitated. "Scheisse!" He turned in a circle and pounded the cockpit windscreen with his fist. "Now it all makes sense. Seawater. I'll bet her tanks are filled with fucking seawater!"

Van Gelder nodded. "Crude's lighter, sir." That's why the tanks were partly empty. Saltwater took some 80 percent of the cargo volume for the same weight and hull displacement.

"Torpedo in the water bearing one five seven!"

Again ter Horst cursed. "Fire an antitorpedo rocket!" He glanced at Van Gelder confidently. "They'll never go nuclear, Gunther. Not while we're this close." There was a violent explosion halfway between the submarine and tanker. Dirty water soared into the air, and soon the acrid fumes made Van Gelder choke.

"Intercept successful," Sonar said.

"She's a verdammt Q-ship," ter Horst sputtered. "Torpedo tubes jury-rigged below the waterline." "Yes, sir," Van Gelder said.

"How dare they? The whole thing's a bloody trap!" "Second torpedo in the water!"

"Destroy it!" ter Horst shouted.

Again rumbling water fountained and a shock wave raced across the sea. The torpedo and antitorpedo's twin concussion hit Van Gelder in the gut.

"Sir," he said, "she's turning toward us."

"With that deep draft they'll try to ram. . . . Helm, port thirty rudder now, steer one six five true."

Ter Horst winked at Van Gelder as the sub's sail heeled into the turn, putting the two vessels on a collision course. "We'll still do this my way." He leaned to the intercom. " Weapons! Firing point procedures on the tanker, tubes one through four." Van Gelder looked through his binoculars, his ears ringing from the explosions, his forehead aching from the cold. "The crew still haven't moved. I think they're heated dummies, sir."

Ter Horst grabbed the binocs. "It's robotic," he said at last. He looked up at the sky and shook his fist. Van Gelder wondered if the satellite could see.

"We can't stay here, sir," Van Gelder said. "They'd

gladly sacrifice an empty tanker to get one of our nuclear-powered boats."

"Fire tubes one through four!" ter Horst screamed. Then, "Port thirty rudder! Clear the bridge! Dive! Dive! Emergency deep!" The lookouts, stiff and awkward in their bulky garb, unclipped their soaking harnesses, then latched open the bridge hatch and dashed below.

Van Gelder went last. As he glanced fearfully over his shoulder, Voortrekker's conventional torpedoes hit home. Four bursting eruptions marched along the tanker's starboard side. Wreckage flew up higher than her superstructure aft. Entire sections of her waterline gaped open to the sea, and even above the driving wind Van Gelder thought he heard the ocean rushing in. Thick black smoke and dazzling flame began to spread amidships—there must have been some oil left in her auxiliary tanks and pumping systems. Machine-gun ammo cooked off vividly, red tracers jabbing into the sky. Mist and foam sprayed as Voortrekker's ballast vents first sighed, then screamed, then roared. Van Gelder stood transfixed as the sub's bow started nosing under. The tanker seemed dead in the water now, her keel beginning to sag, overstressed metal moaning and screeching. But what if she bore an atomic warhead, or maybe more than one?

Van Gelder climbed through the massive bridge hatch, made a quick inspection, and yanked it shut. He twirled the wheel to lock it as fast as he could. The Americans would wait for the tanker to be well underwater, to maximize the blast effect submerged. They'

d probably use some kind of timer, or a pressure-sensitive switch. The world's biggest nuclear depth charge, Van Gelder told himself, with Voortrekker's name on it. There was a terrible drawn-out detonation and Van Gelder cringed. Voortrekker rocked but that was all. It must have been the tanker's red-hot boilers, rupturing from thermal shock as frigid seawater reached the engine rooms. But the next explosion wouldn't be from chemicals or steam, and it would be Van Gelder's last. He clung desperately to the sail trunk ladder as his boat dived hard and turned away. Van Gelder saw the lower sail trunk hatch pop open. Ter Horst looked up from below " Gunther," he said with exaggerated politeness, "would you care to come down, please?" As Van Gelder dropped into the control room, a messenger handed him a flask of genever, a high-proof gin. He gulped some gratefully, then shed his outer garments. The deck was tilted steeply and his boots squished as he walked.

Van Gelder took up his position at the conning stand next to the captain. The warmth of the genever spread throughout his body. He flexed his fingers as the circulation returned. "Helm," Van Gelder said, "report."

"Steering zero zero zero, sir," the helmsman said. Due north. "My speed is ahead flank."

"Diving Officer, report."

"Making emergency deep per captain's orders, thirty degrees down angle on the planes. Passing through six hundred fifty meters, no maximum depth specified."

"Navigator, soundings."

"Water depth fifty-eight hundred meters, sir." Van Gelder made eye contact with ter Horst.

"They fooled us, Gunther," ter Horst said. "They

won't fool us again."

"Sonar," Van Gelder said, "range to the tanker?" "Four thousand meters, sir."

"Sonar," ter Horst said, "put it on the speakers." Roaring and burbling echoed in the control room, seawater and air bubbles in vicious foregone conflict. A continuous noise like breaking glass told of steam pipes bursting endlessly. Van Gelder heard the rapid-fire pops of rivets failing, the sharp bangs of ruptured welds. The tortured screams of frames and plating punctuated the giant tanker's death, steel groaning in final torment.

"Sonar," ter Horst snapped, "target depth?"

"About two hundred meters, sir, increasing fast. She's tearing apart in the middle, still in one piece so far." "Target range?"

"Now forty-seven hundred meters, Captain."

"I'm afraid to go any faster," ter Horst said. "I don't want to overpower the reactor. . . . Damned Russian nuclear engineering."

"I agree, sir," Van Gelder said. "Even with the Hamburg firm's enhancements we could lose the boat."

"We still might," ter Horst said. "If that tanker's rigged with an atomic warhead, we'll know it very soon."

It was. The initial shock was so hard it made Van Gelder's vision blur. A gigantic rolling boom hammered through the hull and over the sonar speakers, strangely stereophonic. Half the control room screens imploded, ground glass flying everywhere. Crewmen's arms and legs and heads flailed wildly as Voortrekker lurched and lurched. Then the speakers all went dead but the nerve-rending thundering continued. Van Gelder's limbs and ass felt pins and needles from the impacts. He waited for the hull to crack, for the inrush of the icy crushing sea, for the sudden compression of the atmosphere that would set his clothes and skin afire.

Instead Voortrekker's stern reared up, higher and higher, lifted by the blast, throwing Van Gelder and ter Horst forward against their workstations.

"Fifty-two degrees down bubble!" the helmsman shouted. "I can't control the boat!" A soul-piercing alarm bell filled the air. "Reactor scram!" came over an intercom. " Excessive trim reactor scram!" The overhead lights dimmed immediately, switched to batteries as Voortrekker's turbogenerators

wound down. Then Van Gelder heard the inevitable: "Control, Maneuvering, we've lost propulsion power!" The sub's vibrations changed in character, nastier than before.

"We're in a jam dive!" the helmsman screamed. "Cruise by wire's inoperative! Backup hydraulic system's failed!" He and the diving officer twirled their control wheels uselessly.

"Fire in the forward fan room," came over the intercom. "Flooding through the main shaft packing gland."

"Diving Officer," ter Horst said, "pump all variable ballast. Pump out the safety tanks." The intercom began to hiss and squeal, becoming unintelligible. Ter Horst tore a soundpowered phone rig from a crewman lying on the deck. The man's neck stretched like rubber and Van Gelder realized he was dead. The body slid downhill.

"Silence on the circuit!" ter Horst snapped, then, "Engineering, engage sternplane manual overrides. Can you give me back full revs on batteries?" Ter Horst listened, frowning. "Then lock the shaft and use the propulsor as a water brake. We've got to stop this dive!"

Van Gelder glanced at a depth gauge. They'd just passed 2,500 meters, rate of descent increasing fast. This far down even Voortrekker's ceramic hull compressed, reducing their buoyancy further.

"Captain," Van Gelder said, "our momentum's much too high. Recommend emergency main ballast blow while we still have the chance."

"That was a three-KT warhead out there," ter Horst said, "if not more."

"I know, sir. But we're too heavy now with the heat and gas bubbles around us." The ocean's supporting density had just dropped out from under them. "Our crush depth's coming up fast!"

"Surfaced into those tsunamis, we could turn turtle

easily," ter Horst said, "spill air from the bottom of the ballast tanks and sink, even do a full three-sixty, smashing everyone and everything inside."

Van Gelder nodded. Which was the better way to die?

"Engineering," ter Horst said into the bulky mouthpiece, "status on the diveplanes? Can you shunt past the bad main motor breakers?" He paused for the response. "They need more time."

"Captain!" Van Gelder urged as he watched the depth gauge. "We've got barely sixty seconds till the hull implodes!"

"Very well," ter Horst said, sighing, "it's the lesser of two evils. . . . Diving Officer, emergency-blow the forward main ballast group."

High-pressure air screeched like a strident harpy, forcing its way into the tanks outside the pressure hull. Enough leaked through the distribution manifold to pop Van Gelder's ears.

"Number One," ter Horst told him, "lay forward and steady the damage control parties. See to that fan room fire."

As Van Gelder stood up awkwardly, the control room began to fill with wispy smoke. He ordered the crewmen into respirators. Some cursed in pain as they put masks to bruised and bloodied faces, then aided unconscious or stunned neighbors who flopped sideways strapped into their chairs. Van Gelder reached for a walk-around breather set stowed under his console.

"We're still going down," ter Horst said. "Diving Officer, give the forward ballast tanks more air."

"Sir," the senior chief said, coughing, "it'll expand too much as we go up and we'll lose bubbles through the bottom vents. They'll make a datum topside."

"Christ, man, that doesn't matter now!"

Van Gelder staggered as an aftershock hit. The deck tilted even further in spite of the bow tank blow. He

reached out desperately to avoid a long fall down the forward passageway. He grabbed a stanchion on the overhead and lunged to safety, dropping his air pack on the way. He wound up pinned by gravity beside the diving officer and helmsman. He heard his respirator crash against a transverse bulkhead somewhere forward. That could have been my skull, he told himself, then wondered how the fire fighters were making out.

"Emergency-blow stern ballast tanks," ter Horst said. "Use all the air you've got." Van Gelder's ears hurt more, but nothing happened.