Thunder In The Deep (02) (16 page)

"It's worth a try," COB said.

"Think it'll work, Pilot?"

"Worth a try, sir," Meltzer said.

"Let's do it," Jeffrey said.

Clayton went aft and brought his people and some of their equipment into the lockin/lock-out sphere. COB transferred all variable ballast forward as much as possible. Meltzer turned the ASDS ninety degrees, so it straddled Texas at a right angle, with the mini's bow hanging past the SSN's starboard side.

Clayton came back into the control compartment. "Everybody lean to port as much as you can," Jeffrey said.

The SEALs gave each other doubtful looks, but complied.

"How are we doing?" Jeffrey said.

"So-so," COB said. "Six degrees port list, and we need eleven to mate with Texas. Ten degrees trim by the bow and we need twenty."

"Pilot, try using the thrusters."

Meltzer worked different knobs to position the retractable side-thrusters. "Thrusters going to maximum power." The ASDS dipped more, and leaned more to the left. "We're not there yet," COB said.

"Best we can do," Meltzer said, "and we're drifting away from the collar."

"Bring us back," Jeffrey said.

Meltzer did, using the main screw and the thrusters. "If I hold us over the collar, sir, I can't use the thrusters to angle us properly."

Jeffrey ran his hand over his face.

"So near and yet so far," Clayton said.

Jeffrey shot him a look, but Clayton was smiling. "Think like a rifleman, sir," Clayton said. "We need to lead the target."

"You're right. . . . Pilot, can you put us upstream in the current just enough, and let us drift back over-the collar as you lever the boat to line up?"

"Understood," Meltzer said. The ASDS moved forward. He and COB worked the controls. The mini tilted, and drifted crabwise, and descended toward the hatch.

"No good!" Jeffrey said.

Meltzer pulled up, and exhaled deeply. "I've almost got it, Captain. Let me try again."

"Begin when ready." Jeffrey noticed Meltzer was sweating. Once more COB and Meltzer juggled their controls. The mini moved away, tilted, drifted, and came down.

With a satisfying clunk, the docking was perfect.

"Well done," Jeffrey said. He patted Meltzer on the shoulder. "Now for the next problem. COB, extend the docking pitot. Equalize the collar to one atmosphere and drain it. See if it's watertight."

Jeffrey waited tensely while COB went through the procedures.

"Collar is holding a good seal, Captain."

Jeffrey grabbed the gertrude mike, and kept Lieutenant Bell informed. Then everybody listened. There were no signs of life from below, no loud banging, no gentle tapping, no voices calling, nothing.

"They have to have heard us docking," COB said.

Jeffrey nodded. "There's no point in us hammering now"

"It'd just make a datum, wouldn't it?" Clayton said.

"Now comes the scary part," Jeffrey said. "We don't know what's on the other side of the Texas escape hatch. Air at one atmosphere or so, or water at a thousand psi? .. . And there's no way to know, unless we crack the hatch."

"So what do we do?" Clayton said. "If the Texas is flooded, and we crack her escape hatch, we'll all die. The hyperbaric chamber can't withstand the pressure this deep."

"It's not that bad," Jeffrey said. "The dogs are designed to open the hatch gradually, for exactly this reason. If water squirts through, we turn it closed real quick."

"At least," COB said, "that's the theory."

"Yeah," Jeffrey said. "We don't know what a nuclear shock might have done to the mechanism. Even if the forward compartment itself is okay, the escape trunk might have flooded through a broken pipe or fitting. . . . Or I suppose the Germans could booby-trap the hatch, burn off the ends of the dogs as a nasty surprise with thermite lances, then flood the trunk on purpose."

"Oh, boy," Clayton said.

"We can't turn back," Jeffrey said. "The Greifswald mission is too important—we need those briefcase A-bombs bad. We say our prayers, and open the hatch." Jeffrey knelt over the bottom hatch of the minisub. All ASDS lights, inside and out, were turned off. He wore his combined passive-infrared/image-intensification goggles. The image switched back and forth between modes every half second. He also wore his battle helmet now, and he had a K-Bar fighting knife strapped to one leg and his special .50caliber pistol in a belt holster. Around Jeffrey stood Clayton and his five SEALs, similarly garbed, gripping .50-caliber machine pistols—shortbarreled assault rifles that fired subsonic bullets. The fully silenced, electric ignition weapons were turned on, with caseless rounds in the chamber. Black tape covered the digital round-count diodes and the tritium backup night sights; this way, they wouldn't give obvious targets to an enemy wearing night-vision goggles, too.

The men relied on the sighting reticle integral to their visor images, based on low-energy laser interferometers that always knew where their weapons were pointed. Jeffrey turned the wheel of the ASDS lock-out hatch until it opened. He let it drop down on its hydraulically dampened hinges.

Below him was the hatch into Texas. On the other side of that hatch, Jeffrey knew, was the air lock of her forward escape trunk. There was another escape trunk—with another air lock—near Texas's stern, for use from the engineering spaces. That part of the boat, Jeffrey knew for sure, was flooded.

The forward compartment might or might not be flooded. The men from Texas might or might not all be dead. There might or might not be Kampfschwimmer waiting on the other side of this hatch, or further into the ship.

Even as an ex-SEAL himself, Jeffrey was frightened by Kampfschwimmer. After all, the Draeger scuba combat re-breather was a German invention. Images came to his mind from old war movies, and captured Nazi documentaries, of relentless, merciless warriors in those ballistically-optimized coal-scuttle helmets. Picturing such men in wetsuits and swim flippers made it even worse.

Jeffrey climbed down into the space enclosed by the docking collar. It was damp and very cold—confirmed by the blue tinge of the image in infrared. Challenger's medical corpsman—who, like the other men, appeared a multicolored aura when Jeffrey viewed him in IR—handed Jeffrey a stethoscope. The corpsman retreated to the transport compartment and dogged the door.

Jeffrey squatted by the hatch—it and Texas's hull were much too thick, and too well insulated, to see through with wearable passive infrared. Jeffrey used his handkerchief to wipe away the slime. The steel hull was freezing, from immersion in seawater at 34°

Fahrenheit. He put the stethoscope to the hull, next to the hatch, and he listened. He heard a disembodied rushing sound: current flow noise transmitted by the hull. He heard occasional creaking, and metallic moaning: Texas's hull as she complained about the outside pressure, or settled more on the uneven

spur. Once he heard a sharp pop, as some item of equipment back aft—or maybe forward—could no longer hold out, and it imploded. He also heard steady clicking, which he guessed was the scrammed reactor as it continued to cool. There were no voices, and no machinery running that he recognized. Jeffrey looked up at Clayton and shook his head. "Can't tell, or all flooded?" Clayton whispered. "Can't tell," Jeffrey mouthed.

"How's the dogging mechanism?"

"Can't tell, without opening it."

Jeffrey saw COB watching through the door into the mini's control compartment—he and Meltzer now wore vision goggles, too. COB disappeared. He came back a minute later.

"Challenger says good luck, sir." In Jeffrey's crisp blackand-white LLTV image mode, COB looked worried, and suddenly seemed very old.

"It's now or never," Jeffrey said.

Clayton and his five SEALs looked at each other and shrugged, carefully expressionless.

"Ready?" Jeffrey whispered.

Clayton cleared his throat. "Will we feel anything?"

"Pressure, heat, wetness. Agony, then blackest death." Jeffrey was immensely satisfied to see that his hands weren't shaking.

With both hands, Jeffrey gripped the special wrench that would open the watertight hatch from outside. Through a fitting in the hatch, the wrench turned the inside locking wheel. Clayton and his men aimed their weapons at the hatch, safeties off. Jeffrey dreaded a firefight—ricochets could kill them all and wreck the minisub.

Jeffrey turned the wheel. He waited for it to explode at him, propelled by a killing water cannon. He wondered if he would feel anything, if his brain would even have time to register before his skull was smashed. He turned the wheel more. The hatch emitted a terrible ssssss—he'd forgotten there might be air before the water, if there was a bubble of it trapped inside Texas's hull. His brain formed the words "poison gas." He tried to crank the hatch shut, but it fought him and did burst open. A blinding light pierced Jeffrey's eyes and bore into his soul—was this death?

"Hande hoch!" a deep voice shouted, German for "put up your hands." Five heavycaliber muzzles stared through the hatch at Jeffrey and the SEALs.

"Drop your weapons!" Clayton bellowed.

There was a pause, then a tentative, "Shajo, is that you?"

"Cripes on a pita with margarine," Clayton answered. "Chief Montgomery, you son of a goat! I could've killed you!"

As Jeffrey's eyes adjusted, the. SEAL chief standing down inside the nine-man Virginiaclass Special Warfare escape trunk looked up at Jeffrey and Clayton and smiled. His men put their weapons on safe.

"Commander Fuller, sir," Montgomery said. "I'm honored." Montgomery was just over six feet tall, and had a very powerful chest. "Welcome to the United States Submarine Texas."

"Permission to come aboard?" Jeffrey said. Montgomery nodded. Then he winked at Clayton. "Nah, LT, I would've killed you first."

"I'd already told the men not to expect to be home for Christmas," Captain Taylor said.

"I'm sorry there isn't more we can do," Jeffrey said. Texas's captain, a full commander, looked exhausted but determined. He'd shaved recently, but clearly needed a shower—no dice, with the water rationing. One arm was in a sling, and it obviously hurt when Taylor breathed. The air in the disabled sub was cold and damp and stale. There wasn't much smell of sewage or rotting garbage, at least not yet, but this deep Texas couldn't jettison waste or blow sanitary. The freezer was being kept running—they needed the food—so there wasn't a smell from there.

The lighting was very dim, to conserve the battery. The coffee was strong and hot. Near the sleeping spaces there was a smell: like a hospital, of disinfectant, wounds, pain, and of unbathed men, of sweat.

"The Greifswald thing has to come first," Taylor said. "We all know that. I'm just grateful it was you, and not some Germans."

"You didn't trust the recognition codes?"

"Frankly, no," Taylor said. "We've no idea what the Axis has been able to compromise. I decided to lie doggo, and find out. Chief Montgomery concurred." Jeffrey nodded. "Captain Wilson said the same thing to me, before he was wounded. He said remember Ultra, when we read the German Enigma codes in World War Two. He said Lord knows what the Germans are reading now."

"It smarts, doesn't it, when the shoe is on the other foot?" Taylor continued giving Jeffrey a quick tour of the unflooded part of Texas. The hardest thing was walking, with the ship tilted downhill and leaning sharply to the right as they faced forward. The whole place was strangely quiet, without the usual reassuring sound of air circulation fans, and with so little physical activity by the crew, to help save oxygen.

"Morale seems high, all things considered, sir," Jeffrey said. He was impressed that everything was clean. Broken glass had been swept up, blood and vomit mopped, smashed equipment tidied as much as practical, and there was no dust or litter anywhere.

"I'm lucky to have -such a good crew," Taylor said. "The able-bodied men are helping care for the wounded. The ambulatory ones are doing what they can as well—I suppose I'

m in that group myself. I'm grateful for the medical supplies you brought with you, and for the loan of your chief corpsman."

"It's the least I can do," Jeffrey said. "Our doc volunteered to stay until you're rescued. .

. . I'm sorry about the men you lost."

Taylor grew sad. "My XO showed a lot of promise. If we make it back I want to put him in for the Medal of Honor. If he hadn't gone aft, led the others to keep the propulsion plant going . . . And my engineer, my engineer... My father's known his father for fortyfive years; they were at the Naval Academy together." Taylor had to pause to wipe his eyes. "I'm not looking forward to breaking the news about his son."

"Maybe they'll be able to salvage her," Jeffrey said. "At least then the men aft can get decent burial."

"I keep hoping so," Taylor said. "Texas was, is such a fine vessel. . . . Compressed air bladders forced through the aft escape trunk, and through the machinery access hatches. Towed to friendly waters without changing her depth, for buoyancy control. . . . Won't be easy. But we need every ship we can get. I just wonder if this war will still be raging by the time she might be refurbished."

"I keep thinking, sir, that from where we are right now, a quick end won't be a happy end for the good guys. From the sound of things, that big convoy suffered horrible losses yesterday."

Jeffrey and Taylor reached Texas's CACC, similar in size and layout to Challenger's. The men on watch turned to greet Jeffrey, and Captain Taylor gave them encouraging words. Just then COB came up a ladder, past the far end of the CACC. He was breathing a little hard and had clear, sticky grease on his hands and his pants.

"Well, sirs," COB said, "I think we can get tube four working, if we could bring some spare parts from Challenger."

"So you concur, Master Chief," Taylor said, "that torpedo tube two is operational?"

"Affirmative, Captain."

"At least we'll be able to defend ourselves," Taylor said. "No melee ranging without a working bow sphere, but the port wide-aperture array has a good field of view, the way we landed, from what you told me."