Thunder In The Deep (02) (10 page)

Beck heard a string of distant rumbling roars. Each swelled and then died away. Several overlapped: more atomic detonations, near far-off Convoy Section Two.

"Load tube eight," Eberhard ordered, "quadruplet of Honeybee unmanned aerial vehicles.

" The low-observable Honeybees were miniature helicopters, and a built-in autopilot made them easy for Beck's technicians to fly. They were hardened against the electromagnetic pulse of a tactical nuclear blast, and linked to Deutschland by rugged fiber-optic tether. Their live imagery would be fed to the Zentrale's wide-screen displays.

"Arm the atomic warheads, tubes one through seven."

Beck followed Eberhard through their special weapons arming procedures. "All commands accepted," the weapons officer said; the warheads were armed. In battle, Weapons and Sonar reported to Beck.

Beck's mouth was suddenly dry, and he felt a peculiar lethargy coming over him. . . . In his younger days, he'd pictured the romance of rounding Cape Horn in a driving gale, or showing the flag for peace and prestige at naval reviews abroad, or maybe patrolling for gunrunners off Kosovo under U.N. auspices, or helping fight against terrorism. But never this. . . .

There was a little time before the engagement would begin; Beck asked the messenger to get him some hot tea.

Eberhard glanced at Beck. For a split second there was a harshness in Eberhard's eyes. It gave a whiff of consummate arrogance, of moving in social circles where Beck knew he could never go. There was a whiff of something else though. Not the warrior ethos Beck expected and could respect—warriors had honor, and practiced teamwork, and loved their men. What he saw now in Captain Eberhard, what he sensed for the first time, was something very different, directed not at Beck but at the world: a sociopath, amoral coldness.

"Launch the. Honeybees," Eberhard ordered, dragging Beck back to the matter at hand. Beck focused his mind on business, all his doubts and regrets buried deep. Beck drew a breath, in awe.

The air was clear, and cloud cover minimal. The entire miles-across convoy was spread before him, in crisp view from different angles. Hardworking merchant vessels, of all different sizes and types, rolled and pitched through the North Atlantic's mountainous winter swell. Whether steam turbine-powered or diesel, many smokestacks gave off thick smoke, white or black—the white suggested fuel oil tainted by seawater leaking in. The strong wind merged the exhausts into a gray haze blown southwest, above the countless whitecaps of the gale.

The surviving escort warships did what they could to guard their charges, but many of the frigates—the ones still afloat—were visibly damaged from nuclear battle near the Azores the previous day, their superstructures or helo decks charred, their masts bent at an angle, their bilge pumps discharging heavily.

Beck's technicians busily tallied the targeting data: a fleet oiler, Cimarron-class, good for forty thousand tons. A group of large grain ships, and refrigerated meat transports. A giant liquid natural gas carrier. Two so-called troopships, improvised in desperation: the Cape Fear and Sgt. William R. Button, both actually U.S. Navy cargo-container vessels. The hundreds of big steel boxes were modified as habitation modules, each for an infantry squad; Button also carried a million gallons of transferable bulk fuel. Beck spotted the convoy commodore's flagship, a large mixed-cargo vessel in the center of the formation, with extra antennas and armor to harden her bridge. Each of the fifty-plus cargo ships and dozen frigates looked small and insubstantial against the vast ocean, but Beck knew there were four or five thousand people in their crews, plus six to eight thousand soldiers on each of the troopships—an entire city underway, an armada of sustenance bound for the U.K., that thorn in the side of the Axis. Beck tried to dehumanize these people in his mind, to prepare for the killing to come, but it was difficult. Most of the frigates were U.S. Navy, Oliver Hazard Perry—class, and they and their helos were pinging aggressively. Beck knew from past experience that they'd fight and die very hard—today's confrontation might well be decisive to the outcome of the war.

Eberhard's voice broke in. "Show me that natural gas carrier again."

"We'll let the convoy run right over us," Eberhard said. "They're so close now we're golden even if they zigzag." Beck kept monitoring the huge formation.

"How quaint," Eberhard said a minute later. "Flag signals from the flagship." Beck saw them, too, through his Honeybee. Then

searchlights blinked in code. Two escorts traded places. Some stray merchant ships got back where they belonged.

"Sir," Werner Haffner interrupted from his sonar console, "sudden high-speed blade rate from one escort on convoy's eastern flank."

"Contact classification?" Beck said.

"Appears to be a U.S. Navy auxiliary, an oceanographic research ship."

"Visually confirmed," Beck said. "The small-waterplane twin-hull Kaimalino." Eberhard snorted. "They're at the end of their rope, pressing her into service in an atomic war zone."

Beck had to agree. He knew the Allies were badly short on escort craft, after six months of mostly losing battles on the high seas.

Beck went back to his tactical plot and the Honeybee screens. In a few more minutes, he frowned. The Kaimalino moved to the head of the convoy. It deployed a deep-towed side-scan sonar sled, and started searching the canyons in the armada's path. Whoever's commanding the convoy defenses is good, Beck told himself. He'd realized this was the time and place of maximum danger, the last few hours and nautical miles before the escort reinforcements arrived—and he was taking no chances. Deutschland was trapped. If she stayed still she'd be spotted for sure, a very distinct hull shape against the rock-hard bottom. But if she moved, the side-scan sled would pick her up on Doppler even sooner.

The encapsulated Shipwreck missiles wouldn't launch for several minutes yet—they were autonomous, with no wires back to Deutschland. Eberhard's attack plan was coming unglued. And he knew it. "Achtung, Einzvo, open fire! Direct all prelaunched Sea Lions to attack!

Target one eel at the Kaimalino before they find us!"

Beck barked out the orders. Commands went through

the wires. The escorts reacted at once. High-speed propellers and pump-jets sounded, much more shrill than the merchant ships, racing in different directions, the frigates and eels. Eberhard ordered Coomans to steer toward the convoy at thirty knots. Deutschland began to move. Her bow pulled up. Coomans banked her hard into the turn. Eberhard ordered Beck to have both prelaunched brilliant decoys mimic Class 212's, as a distraction, to buy Deutschland time.

The Sea Lion reached the Kaimalino—Deutschland was barely outside the self-kill zone of her own one-kiloton warhead. Through the Honeybee, Beck watched as the sea around Kaimalino blasted toward the heavens, like three thousand conventional torpedo hits at once. The vessel, a huge steel catamaran, split from stem to stern. In the blink of an eye the two hull sections, each the length of a soccer field, flew into the air and tumbled and spun. An instant later the fireball broke the surface. The image whited out. When the image cleared, the fireball broiled and fulminated. The airborne shock wave spread.

The waterborne boom that struck next badly hurt Beck's ears. Deutschland was lifted by the stern. Beck watched the gravimeter as the seafloor loomed too close. Coomans fought to bring the ship back on an even keel. Fireball pulsations, then more surface reflections of the underwater blast, tried to pound Deutschland into the razor-sharp basalt bottom.

Beck forced his eyes back to the surviving Honeybee feeds. He saw the next thing Haffner heard. The frigates were launching updated ASROCs in retaliation, rockets that each dropped off an antisubmarine torpedo.

"Flank speed ahead," Eberhard ordered. Coomans acknowledged. Deutschland sped up. Beck watched the rockets leave the frigates, shrouding their foredecks in boiling flame. Soon the booster stages fell behind, plunging into the waves. Each booster left an American Mark 50 torpedo arcing through the air. Each 50 hit the ocean with a giant splash. They were a brand-new design, the 50's, and deadly.

"Four torpedoes in the water," Haffner shouted.

Beck heard their propulsion systems scream. They were targeted at the points where Deutschland's loitering Sea Lions started their high-speed runs, on the assumption that German submarines were there. Soon there were four undersea atomic blasts. Four white fountains burst into the sky. They rose higher and higher without slowing down, and grew wider and wider. The ocean spawned a foursome of new suns. The combined undersea pressure waves, from off the port and starboard quarters, threatened to shatter Deutschland's hull. Damage reports poured in—the torpedo room autoloader gear was jammed.

"Lost the wires," Beck shouted, "all units from tubes one through seven. Brilliant decoys destroyed!"

"Convoy aspect change," Haffner said.

Beck saw the convoy wakes hook sharply left. "Convoy's new course west." Deutschland's fourteen Sea Lions still ran south.

"Sea Lions now on preprogrammed active search," Haffner said. Beck tracked his own torpedoes by their pings. "All Sea Lions converging on frigates guarding convoy eastern flank." The eels were out of control; Deutschland's element of surprise was hopelessly lost; and the smashing blow of her Shipwrecks, meant to open the battle, still hadn't come.

The eastern frigates detected the swarm of inbound eels. They fired their antitorpedo mortars, but the high-explosive bombs fell short. Beck could see the frigates towed noisemaker sleds, designed to draw off Axis acoustic-homing weapons. The sleds were useless at the lethal range of a tactical nuclear blast.

Several Sea Lions went off at once. Mushroom clouds marked the warships' graves. The spreading airborne shock waves reached the

Honeybees; the pictures went blank. Eberhard ordered another brace of Honeybees launched immediately. There were plenty more frigates up there, and their seasoned captains were very angry indeed, and the sonar whiteouts would only hide Deutschland so long.

"Sonar whiteouts clearing somewhat," Haffner shouted. "Inbound torpedo, bearing zero seven five!"

Amid the undersea chaos, an ASROC's Mark 50 had found Deutschland. Eberhard ordered a Sea Lion fired as antitorpedo snap shot. The inbound weapon's range was eight thousand meters, closing by one thousand every minute.

"Copilot," Eberhard snapped, "status of autoloader gear?"

"Both ship-sides out of action due to bearing pins sheared off from shock. Starboard autoloader will soon be repaired."

"Achtung, Einzvo, tubes two through seven, fire a spread at the convoy. Spiral our units to three hundred meters at stealth speed to mask our launch depth. Limit attack speed to fifty knots to mimic Class two-twelve—launched weapons. Match sonar bearings and los!" Launch! Deutschland had to do as much damage as possible, before she was forced on the defensive by the outnumbering frigates.

"Inbound Mark fifty still closing," Beck said. "Unit from tube one converging on intercept course. Unit in range of inbound weapon now." He detonated the warhead through the wire.

Deutschland's stern slammed sideways, knocking the vessel off course. A monitor fell from its mounting bracket, tore out the power cable and coaxial feed, and imploded on the deck.

"Starboard autoloader badly damaged!" the copilot shouted. "Flooding through number two countermeasures launcher!"

"Chief of the Watch," Beck said, "give them a hand at the flooding." At this depth no leak was minor—Eberhard was playing it very close, hugging the nuclear blast zones for better shots at the enemy, hugging the sonar whiteouts in order to hide. The relief pilot took over, and Coomans hurried aft. Haffner announced new rocket motors, igniting underwater—the encapsulated Shipwrecks' timers had wound down at last.

Beck called up the pictures from the new Honeybees; the next blasts would be air bursts. Sixteen long, thin, matte-gray missiles leaped from out of the deep, riding trails of urgent flame and billowing smoke. Their winglets unfolded on leaving the water. They accelerated to near Mach 1 in the twinkling of an eye. The missiles settled on course, gaining speed steadily, skimming right above the surface, blowing spume back off the waves. They quickly reached full speed, Mach 2.5—faster than any carrier-borne fighter plane could go. Some aimed for the convoy; others targeted the distant Truman carrier group, far beyond the horizon.

Beck sensed a change in the pitch of the convoy noise. They'd seen the Shipwrecks. The escorts tried to shoot them down with Sea Sparrows, Mach 3.5 antimissiles of their own. But they were too late, perhaps because of battle damage and human stress. Beck looked at his screens. Missile trails crossed every which way. The convoy flagship—the commodore's ship—was changing course, trying to veer away from the inbound Shipwrecks, trying to defend herself. Red tracers arced toward the missiles as men on deck used heavy machine guns. Countermeasure launchers on the flagship loosed off bursts of silvery chaff. Magnesium flares on parachutes began to burn as infrared lures. Aluminized decoy blimps inflated, stiffened, and drifted on the wind. The Honeybee picture bloomed featureless white, making Beck's eyes ache. When it cleared, a violet-lavender fireball blossomed off the flagship's starboard side. Her paint burned off in an instant, and blew away in a puff of smoke. Her American flag simply vanished, her machine gunners shriveled to ash. The masts, the superstructure, the hull, all cast stark shadows away from the blinding, sizzling glare. Beck could see the airborne shock wave of the A-bomb begin to spread, like a swelling sphere of ghostly condensation. The force of the blast hit the ocean. A tsunami grew The air-and waterborne shock waves hit the flagship; the vessel broke in half. The aft end still drove forward as her insensate props kept turning, scooping up tons of seawater. The bow section flipped on its side, exposing red bottom paint and green sea-growth fouling. The sea growth began to smolder at once, from the heat of the blast. The swirling atomic fireball, now a beautiful orange-yellow, rose higher into the air. Beneath it a pillar of smoke and steam formed rapidly, drawn by the powerful updraft. A zone of fine mist spread from the pillar, dispersing as the mushroom cloud shot even higher. Lightning flashed on its crown, near an ethereal purple glow, the very air fluorescing from the radiation's intensity, Other Shipwrecks struck their targets.