Deep Sound Channel (18 page)

"Oh, okay," Ilse said.

"Another thing," Sessions said, "with the exotic nonacoustic ASW methods, like surface-wake anomalies, is they need minutes or hours of supercomputer time to make sense of the raw data, by which point you're tens of miles away. That's why we always zigzag these days, even out in blue water, deny the enemy our base course and speed."

"Right," Ilse said. Boy, do these guys love their shop talk.

"And now," Sessions said, "please excuse me." He got up and started walking the line of sonar consoles, talking to his people. Ilse went back to her screens. Challenger plunged onward.

Up ahead, on the display, she noticed an interesting formation of big rocks on the bottom, where the canyon opened out. The rocks lay in a perfect triangle.

"What's that, Helm?" she heard Jeffrey say.

"More boulders, sir," Meltzer said. "We'll pass well clear."

"Very well, Helm," Jeffrey said.

As they got closer to the boulders, Jeffrey watched the gravimeter's resolution sharpen. " That middle one. COB, if you will, gimme a close-up."

The image changed as Challenger seemed to leap ahead.

Jeffrey stared. "All stop!" he shouted. "Hover on manual!"

"All stop, aye," Meltzer said.

"Rig for ultraquiet," Jeffrey said.

"Aye, sir," COB responded instantly. The CACC lights blinked urgently and Sessions dashed back to his seat. Phone talkers hurried to their positions as Jeffrey reached for the handset to call the captain.

"Captain's in the CACC," the messenger announced. Jeffrey turned to see Wilson right behind him, in boxer shorts and slippers.

"What is it?" Wilson said.

Jeffrey pointed. "Those three objects on the bottom there. Around the next bend, range about one thousand yards. They look too much like subs."

"I see them," Wilson said.

"The closest one," Jeffrey said, "beam-on to us—that mass gradient can't be natural. I think we're seeing reactor shielding, Captain, and a core."

"Awfully big reactor for a vessel of that size," Wilson said. "Each of them's barely a hundred feet from stem to stern."

"Who'd be down here?" Jeffrey said. "Japanese?"

"In the war zone?" Wilson said. "They'd love to know what's going on, but they're not crazy."

"Something new the Axis has?" Jeffrey said.

"It's possible," Wilson said. "The other two could be ceramic diesel/AIPs."

"Or a clandestine seafloor habitat?" Jeffrey said. "For intel gathering maybe?"

"Maybe," Wilson said.

"The way they're all just sitting there, sir," Jeffrey said, "like they've circled as a laager Boer style, I don't like it."

"I don't either," Wilson said. "XO, I have the conn. Chief of the Watch, sound quiet general quarters. Man battle stations antisubmarine."

Jeffrey slid over, but Wilson stayed in the aisle, studying the helm screens. More crewmen hurried into the CACC and powered up their consoles.

"Captain," Jeffrey said, "recommend we get in closer, get some visuals, and do a full sound profile on these contacts. We can't just sneak around them and leave unknowns in our rear."

"I concur," Wilson said. "Fire Control, prepare to launch a long-range mine reconnaissance system vehicle."

"Prepare to launch an LMRS, aye," Jeffrey said. "Recommend we skip autonomous mode to stay covert."

"Concur," Wilson said. "Belay acoustic uplink, use the fiber-optic tether."

"Recommend we warm up the Mark 88 in tube three," Jeffrey said.

"Warm up the nuclear torpedo in tube three," Wilson said.

"Messenger of the Watch," Jeffrey said, "bring the captain some black coffee and his bathrobe, please."

Jeffrey concentrated on the screen, his right hand glued to the trackmarble. "Proton magnetometer's getting something, Captain. Field lines are bunching up."

"What's the range?" Wilson said.

"From the nearest mass concentration to our probe, four hundred yards."

"Get closer. Make it three."

Jeffrey tapped some keys, increasing the image intensification gain to a factor of 10, 000. Diffuse and point-source bioluminescence, blues and greens stirred up by the torpedo-shaped LMRS, gave him a fuzzy view for a few yards ahead of its nose-mounted charge-coupled eyes. Jeffrey gingerly piloted the probe up off the bottom, inching it closer to the enemy subs, using a dip in the ground for cover.

"Definitely ferrous hulls," he said a minute later, eyeing the magnetometer again.

"Take it to two hundred yards," Wilson said.

"Aye aye, sir," Jeffrey said. "I'll hang a left, see where that fissure goes."

"Sonar," Wilson almost whispered, "anything?" "Slight flow noises from bottom currents, sir," Sessions said. "Nothing artificial."

"Okay," Wilson said, "they're meeting their hotel load off batteries or fuel cells, and cooling that reactor convectively or just letting it run hot." Jeffrey listened to the conversation as he gently moved the probe. "Ready now," he said.

"Pop up and take a look," Wilson said.

Jeffrey increased the CCD image gain once more, to 50,000 times. As the probe rose slowly, he saw the lip of the fissure moving down the screen.

"Whoa!!" Jeffrey ducked the probe back down, his heart pounding in his throat.

"What was that?" Wilson said.

"A bow dome, sir. Big." Jeffrey ran the replay. "Should we flood tube three?"

"Sonar," Wilson said, "any reaction?"

"Negative, sir," Sessions said. "No sign they know we're here."

"Should we flood tube three?"

"Negative," Wilson snapped. "They'll hear it. We have to back off first to fire anyway."

"Captain," COB interrupted, "that sub's not showing on the gravimeter at all."

"Or the probe's not where it should be," Jeffrey said. He checked his screens and enunciators. "Negative on a guidance flaw. Position overlay matches with dead reckoning." Again he brought the probe up. "Captain, look at this . . . a gigantic crack in the fiberglass."

The probe rose over the top of the enemy sonar

dome. "It's just the cap," Jeffrey said. "There's nothing behind it." Wilson sputtered. "We found a goddamn wreck."

"A fresh one, sir," Jeffrey said. "No growths yet, and hardly any sea snow."

"All right," Wilson said. "Check out that middle contact now."

"Aye aye, sir," Jeffrey said. "I'll be careful—a wreck's the perfect spot to hide an ambush."

"Sonar," Wilson said, "what's happening?"

"No change, Captain."

Jeffrey moved the probe. "Something here." The murky picture showed a twisted, fractured, splintered mass.

"That used to be the sail," Wilson said. "See? There's the mounting for the port-side fairwater plane. . . . What's left of it."

"I'll go around," Jeffrey said. Suddenly ahead of the probe there loomed another mass, a huge one. "The reactor compartment," he said.

"Get closer," Wilson said. "Switch to active line scan. Lowest emitter power." The picture changed, no longer an eerie natural glow. Now it was much sharper, more detailed. Jeffrey could see tattered steel, wires, and cables waving in the current. He saw a small dogged hatch in the middle of a bulkhead, next to broken pipes.

"The forward accessway," he said, "into the reactor tunnel." He brought the probe in closer, already suspecting. He could see the writing now, fragments of the safety warnings posted near the access door. "It's one of ours, sir," Jeffrey said. "Early Los Angeles class. Unimproved 688, pre-751 hull number."

"One of the flight-one boats still in commission," Wilson said. "Make that past tense." Jeffrey nodded. "It's not a lengthy list, Captain, who

she could be. . . . Sir, the crew may not have had time to destroy the crypto gear, and it probably wasn't all cremated by the atmosphere compression. Maybe we should try to find the stuff, before the enemy does."

"No, XO," Wilson said. He frowned. "We'll have to take the chance that this engagement was a double kill. We'll report it later. We don't have time or the right tools to do a proper inside search here."

For a while no one spoke. Jeffrey moved the probe along the side of the middle hull section, knowing this chunk would have been unoccupied.

"Radiation?" Wilson said.

"Just normal background," Jeffrey said, "when you account for the added seawater shielding. I'm getting a minor thermal plume, that's all."

"Good," Wilson said, "the reactor's stable. That core should be clean too. This boat would've been refueled recently."

"And no hull implosion," Jeffrey said. "It must have flooded first, before they went through crush depth."

"Switch back to passive," Wilson said. "Move to the next masscon contact, the one to starboard. Watch out for wreckage—there'll be a nasty debris field out there."

"Understood." Jeffrey worked the trackball and his keyboard, once more seeing through the LMRS's eyes by the faint glow of bioluminescence, strobed by natural flashes and sheet lightning. A fish darted past, then another, too quick to make out details. Jeffrey guided the probe around a shadowy pile of mangled metal.

"Auxiliary machinery?" Wilson said.

"I can't tell," Jeffrey said. "It made quite a crater." "Keep going."

"I'm at the second contact now."

"Okay, switch back to active laser line scan."

"Looks like the forward hull," Jeffrey said. "Probe's over the accommodation spaces, sir." For another long moment no one spoke.

"The hull's intact," Jeffrey finally said, to break the silence.

"Move back and forth," Wilson said. "I want to know what sank her."

"Oh boy," Jeffrey said when he found what he'd been looking for. "Here's the forward escape trunk, sir. Busted in completely"

"Not solely from blast shock," Wilson said. "The rim's too whole. That was water pressure, rupturing the weakened welds. Trunk gave out before the hull, catastrophic flooding. Again, no implosion."

Jeffrey saw more tortured pipes and cables down inside the trunk. "I'm moving on." Soon he reached the dead sub's bow

"Smashed in," he said. "Looks like she hit nose-first."

"This part did anyway," Wilson said as the probe explored the chaotic flattened tangle. " She may have broken up on the way down, from the strain, tumbling at over a hundred knots terminal velocity."

"Yes," Jeffrey said. He studied the image-enhanced display. "Look at how the ballast tanks accordioned. . . . I see fragments of the sonar sphere."

"What's that thing off to the left?"

Jeffrey moved in closer. "It's a body, sir." Wormlike creatures swarmed around it.

"Christ," someone said.

"Easy, people," Jeffrey said. He took a breath. "There'll be more, inside or outside. We have to do this."

Wilson sighed. "X0, go to the engineering plant now."

Jeffrey piloted the probe, being careful not to snag the fiber-optic line. He stayed well off the bottom, afraid of what he'd see there. For a while the screen showed little, then the after portion of the hull came dimly into view.

"Here's what did it," Jeffrey said. "That crack, it runs ten yards along the hull. . . . A near miss from something nuclear, Captain."

"The crack's right where the steam turbines would be," Wilson said.

"Hopeless flooding," Jeffrey whispered. "They'd lose propulsion quickly. There's no way they could save her after that."

"Let's try for a positive ID," Wilson said. "Something with a serial number, a logbook, a uniform with a name on the shirt, anything."

Jeffrey swallowed in spite of himself, then felt weak at his own show of emotion. We're intruders here, he told himself. This is hallowed ground . . . and a charnel house. He forced himself to shift the probe once more.

"The men back aft died fastest," COB said as he watched his screens. "If it had to happen, they were the lucky ones."

"No," Jeffrey said, "nobody was lucky on that boat. Crushed or burned or drowned, gouged by shrapnel, scalded by live steam, there's no good way to die in a submarine."

"Come in, XO," Jeffrey heard Wilson call. Once more he wondered how the captain always knew when it was him. The way I knock? My footsteps? That sixth sense skippers have? Jeffrey entered the CO's state-room.

"You look like a fugitive from Hell Week Two," Wilson said.

"I feel that way, Captain." Jeffrey wore a white undershirt with the SEAL emblem in red, dark green swim trunks, and black battle booties. He was still sweating and breathing a little hard.

"Just morning PT, XO, or something special today?"

"Both, sir," Jeffrey said. "Climbing ladders against the clock, crawling through the bilges with full gear, dancing quietly around simulated bushes, hopping gingerly past simulated mines. . . . And the virtual-reality training aids are quite realistic, great for your reaction time, and to maintain depth perception."

"Good," Wilson said. "I like your moccasins." "They're something new that Clayton brought, Kevlar-lined throughout."

"Laces and Velcro?"

"They won't get sucked off by swamp mud, sir. Our swim fins fit right over them. With these on we could run for miles on coral or broken glass." Jeffrey was grateful now for his daily workouts on the ship's treadmill, in the aft auxiliary machinery room.

Wilson chuckled. "You're happy with the plan."

"It's all based on sound military principles, Captain." "And Clayton's leadership?"

"He's smart, sharp, his men all seem devoted. I just need to tag along and do what he tells me."

"No problems, XO, taking orders from a junior?" "I trust his tactical judgment."

"And Miss Reebeck?"

Jeffrey smiled. "She's really getting into it, Captain. She's a natural shooter."

"Many Boers are. . . . Not that I like repeating ethnic stereotypes. How'd you judge her emotional state?"

"Pretty good, considering what she's been through, becoming a displaced person and everything else. Good enough for what we have to do."

"How's your leg holding up?"

Jeffrey glanced down at the old scars on his left thigh, the puckered entrance wound dead center, the overlapping crisscrossed lines of surgical incisions. "It's a little sore, Captain, but it hasn't stiffened any. The corpsman gave me ibuprofen."