Thunder In The Deep (02) (46 page)

She busily sifted through her METOC data files, and typed. She worked hard to help refine the models and numbers for Kathy's people. This constant drill under pressure was giving Ilse a whole new appreciation of her work and the ocean around her. She felt a facility and skill level she never imagined possible.

What she was doing was critical. The slightest change in Master One's noise echoes would give clues to Eberhard's intentions and equipment status, if detected quickly enough. It was difficult, but vital, to sift out Challenger's flank speed flow noise perfectly. The water depth was now almost nine thousand feet; the water temperature was a steady 34° Fahrenheit.

"We're matched to the tenth of a knot down here," Bell said. The greater pressure and lower temperature helped the propulsion plant slightly. "But time's on Eberhard's side." Ilse knew Bell was right, After all their discussion before, Jeffrey was heading for the polar ice cap anyway... . . Oh. South toward the GIUK Gap the water got much shallower—there, Deutschland could use her high-explosive Series 65's, and Challenger had nothing nonnuclear to answer with, and precious few AT rockets and noisemakers left as well.

Ilse thought about the enemy right behind them. There were over a hundred men inside Deutschland, living and speaking and moving around, intent on killing Ilse and Jeffrey and everyone else on Challenger. Ilse pictured Kurt Eberhard, at a command console like Jeffrey's—she knew Eberhard's face, from that newsreel. Jeffrey and Bell , seemed to like and trust each other more and more; Ilse tried to picture Deutschland's XO. What sort of man was he? How did he feel, reporting to Eberhard?

At once, a machine-scream filled the air: the sonar speakers.

"Inbound torpedo in our baffles!" Kathy shouted. "A Sea Lion, screw count and Doppler indicate closing rate twenty-two knots!"

"He's doing it," Jeffrey said. "Trying to break our pump-jet by collision with a safed Sea Lion. . . . Once he cripples us he can bash away at our sonar arrays with more Sea Lions and AT rockets, then draw off when we're blinded and finish us with a weapon that isn't safed."

Bell cleared his throat. "Impact in three minutes."

Beck controlled the Sea Lion himself. Sonar, and the weapons techs, fed his console data on the eel and Challenger's pump-jet. With his joystick he tried to keep the eel icon on his screen centered on the pump-jet bull's-eye. The weapon pinged continually. The range dropped by ten meters per

second, as the Sea Lion overtook Challenger from behind with a speed advantage of twenty-two knots: the weapon's seventy-five compared to the target's fifty-three. There was no way to vary the weapon's speed; its only other setting, for stealth attack, was much too slow.

"Intermittent blue-green laser illumination," the weapons officer said. "Challenger has activated stern photonics sensors."

The Sea Lion closed steadily, but it began to buffet in the enemy's wake, the flank-speed turbulence. Challenger whipped her stern away, and the Sea Lion ran up her starboard side: Beck had missed.

"Bring it around for a reattack," Eberhard said.

Beck tried again to ram. He was better at handling the turbulence this time. He waited for Challenger to turn. Her stern began to swing right. He followed. Fuller's rudder turned hard the other way, and her stern-planes tilted as she banked. The Sea Lion missed again, glanced off the target's starboard quarter, and ran on beyond. Challenger resumed course.

"Pass control to me," Eberhard said. "We need to get this over with."

"Sir, I'm starting to get the hang of it."

"You've had two tries already"

"Sir, recommend we launch another weapon. Let's both try, together. We can catch him in a pincers, and he's ours.

Eberhard and Beck rushed their safed torpedoes at Challenger in sync, to box her in, to smash her propulsor.

At the last moment Challenger's bow reared up sharply, and her pump-jet dipped. Beck and Eberhard tried to follow with their joysticks. Challenger's bow nosed down, her pump jet lifted. Both Sea Lions passed under her, scraping along her hull, then veered away.

"Lost the wire, tube two," a weapons tech called. Eberhard's eel was wasted; he cursed. There was no change in Challenger's speed or trim.

Eberhard ordered another weapon launched. Again

Beck looped his back for a coordinated try. Beck had to admit he was enjoying this strange little contest: bludgeon Challenger till she was paralyzed and blind, then sneak off to a safe distance and deliver a good one-kiloton coup de grace.

"Two inbound torpedoes overtaking again," Bell called. "One from port and one from starboard. . . . They're closing in more smoothly than before!"

"Practice makes perfect," Jeffrey said. "I want to try something else, hit their torpedoes with AT rockets."

"Sir, this deep their motor exhausts barely function."

"They won't need to. Once they're launched they'll fall back toward our wake. Set their warheads to blow at the right moment, and the depleted uranium buckshot ought to hurt the Sea_ Lions or their wires. . . . Besides, what choice have we got? We can't let them take us alive."

The Sea Lions bore in steadily. Beck and Eberhard watched for Challenger's next evasive move. Beck's heart pounded, but it exhilarated him. Up or down? Right or left? He tried to anticipate.

"Rocket motors!" Haffner shouted. "Antitorpedo rockets." The noise was muffled, choked. There was a double boomf.

Eberhard's Sea Lion engine noise grew ragged; it lost speed. He moved it out of Deutschland's way just in time. Beck's weapon lost its wire but not velocity. It crashed into the seafloor with a drawn-out crunch.

"This is useless," Eberhard said.

"Concur, Captain. We're just wasting ammo." "Damn him for his clever tricks." Beck hesitated. "Sir, we need some way to break contact with this Fuller, get separation, and find him again."

Ilse watched the latest frightening game of thrust and parry. Again it was a draw. Earlier, Challenger had to stay on Deutschland's tail to keep Eberhard from going nuclear near land. Now, Deutschland needed to stay on Challenger's tail, or Jeffrey could get off the first effective A-bomb shot. Ilse looked at the charts again. This stern chase could go on for thousands of miles, up past the North Pole and beyond.

But it couldn't go on forever. There on the chart, on the far side of the winter Arctic ice cap, stretching from horizon to horizon, was the solid land mass of Russia. Much nearer lay Spitsbergen, owned by Norway, now Axis-controlled. Every minute, Deutschland forced Challenger closer toward unfriendly waters backed by hostile shores.

"They're still holding position in our one-eighty, sir," Bell said. Jeffrey nodded.

"Sonar. Oceanographer. I want you to give me some way to break contact with Deutschland, get separation, and find her again."

TWO HOURS LATER.

On the gravimeter, Ilse saw the canyon Challenger followed grow narrower. Ahead lay a different formation of ridges, barring the Shetland Channel from the huge Norwegian Basin to the northeast. These new ridge lines, their crests sawtooth-jagged, ran northwest. If Challenger continued straight, she'd have to climb the wall into the Basin—

the Basin was open and flat.

Despite the stress, Ilse smiled: Above the constant flow noise on her headphones, she heard whales playing. There were many here, between Norway and the ice cap. Ilse wondered how many whales and dolphins had been killed by the fighting so far. She stopped smiling and pressed her headphones closer. "Oh, bizarre." Kathy heard it, too. "Captain, Deutschland is calling us on underwater telephone." Jeffrey hesitated. "Put in on the speakers."

". . . Not your fault . . . Your own uncaring commanders . . . sent you in over your head." Eberhard's voice echoed and reverbed on the gertrude, like the announcer in a sports stadium. He was almost drowned out by the steady hissing at flank speed—

Challenger's hull and sail and control planes tearing through the water—but it was definitely Eberhard.

"Jesus," Jeffrey muttered. Ilse helped Kathy's people clean up the signal.

"Accept my truce. .. . Let us be chivalrous. . . . I promise you safe passage . . . to internment in Russia or Sweden." The voice was crisp, blasé, superior. The English was perfect, the accent aristocratic.

"He can't be serious," Bell said.

"He wants to get under my skin."

Ilse turned to look at Jeffrey. He stood, and steadied himself against the ship's vibrations by grabbing a stanchion on the overhead. Ilse saw him frown, then smile and grab the mike for the underwater telephone.

"Hiya, Kurt. Whazzup, buddy?" Jeffrey unkeyed the mike, and laughed. "That should piss him off nicely." Eberhard didn't answer. Jeffrey keyed the mike again. "Why should I trust you?"

"I make my offer. sincerely . . . as one naval officer to another . . . as warrior to warrior .

.. across the gulf between us. . . ."

"Melodramatic, don't you think?" Bell said under his breath.

"Typical Eberhard."

"I make this offer . . . for old times' sake. . . . We once worked together. . . . Let us do so again, for peace."

"Old times' sake?" Jeffrey said to Bell. "Wrong thing to say."

"You have one minute . . . or I withdraw my offer .. . and you die."

"Ooh," Bell said. "Think he means it? Has some new secret weapon up his sleeve?"

"It's bull. If he had something, he'd've used it already." Jeffrey keyed the mike. "You're a mass murderer, Eberhard. . . . I'd love to see you hang for war crimes."

"You fool. I'll crush your ship like a cheap cigar."

"No. I'm gonna blow your Teutonic ass to Hell." Prolonged silence. Jeffrey hung up the mike.

Both ships kept charging north along the bottom. Ilse eyed her gravimeter once more.

"Captain," Sessions said, "we're at the way-point." "V'r'well, Nay. Helm, left standard rudder. Make your course three one five." Northwest.

Meltzer acknowledged. Challenger settled on course, still making flank speed, down in a new canyon—a different valley squeezed between parallel ridge lines that ran on for another hundred miles.

The water got deeper and deeper. Deutschland followed close behind. Over the speakers, Ilse could hear a steady rumbling now, not from flow noise, nor from Deutschland, not from crunching icebergs on the distant ice cap edge, nor from some far-off nuclear battle.

"Live volcanoes on the seafloor, Captain," Kathy reported. "Bearing three one five. Range one hundred nautical miles, matches the latest charts." These volcanoes, Ilse knew, lay at the northern extremity of the tectonic-plate spreading seam that formed the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. They were a recent offshoot of the same magma hot spot that caused lava flows on Iceland. Ilse knew, because it was her job to know, and it was her recommendation to head there.

"Perfect," Jeffrey said.

Eberhard hung up the gertrude mike, and smirked.

"Aspect change on Challenger," Haffner said.

"Confirmed," Beck said. "Challenger steadying on new course three one five."

"Exactly as I predicted. Pilot, steer three one five." Coomans acknowledged. Beck could just make out a rumbling and burbling over the speakers. "Live volcano field now one hundred sea miles ahead."

"Perfect, Einzvo. How are you and Haffner coming on the new acoustic holography module?"

"We'll be ready, Captain."

"Perfect."

TWO HOURS LATER.

Jeffrey sat at his console. Challenger at this point had run at flank speed, with her reactor pushed as hard as he dared, for longer than ever in her short but exciting life as a warship.

The ride was still very rough. Jeffrey knew from Bell that crewmen who took their coffee with milk and sugar had taken to not bothering to stir; the constant tossing and bouncing did it for them.

The men thought this was funny; morale was high. Everyone aboard had heard by now of Jeffrey's strange conversation with Kurt Eberhard. Whatever the German had sought to achieve, his ploy backfired. The crew was more determined than ever—their fatigue, and any self-doubts, melted away.

Was this because the crew saw Jeffrey, and their banged-up boat, as the underdogs?

What had Eberhard been trying to achieve? The enemy Fregattenkapitan was a coldly rational man.

Jeffrey stared at the gravimeter and listened to the sonar speakers. There ahead of him, close enough now to be sharply resolved on the screen, was a group of active volcanoes. The noise was like a mix of rolling thunder and ten thousand boiling witches' cauldrons. Jeffrey felt a tightness and a tingling in his chest: This was the most risky, if not downright insane, maneuver he'd ever even thought to pull in a submarine. Now here they were, actually doing it, and not even on their own but with a determined opponent on their tail fixated on sinking them before some natural phenomenon could. Challenger began to rattle and buck in a different way than before; the ride was choppy, the ship rolled back and forth. She rose and dipped, forcing Jeffrey into his seat, then forcing his stomach toward his Adam's apple.

"Captain," Meltzer said as he fought his controls, "advise encountering volcano-related turbulence."

"Maintain course and speed." Jeffrey knew this would be very dangerous.

"Sea temperature and chemical content fluctuating rapidly," Ilse said. "Average water temperature rising almost one degree per second."

"Constant variable ballast adjustments needed," COB reported. He worked his panel actively.

"Very well, Oceanographer, Chief of the Watch." "Captain," Kathy said, "advise acoustic sea state has risen to thirteen."

"V'r'well, Sonar."

Jeffrey's plan was simple: If you're blind and going into a knife fight, you lure your sighted opponent into a dark room. If you're deaf in one ear, and your opponent has good hearing, you take him somewhere deafening.

Jeffrey heard a crunch on the speakers.

"Hull popping," Kathy said. "Self-noise transient." Jeffrey wasn't surprised—Challenger had just gone through her test depth: ten thousand feet. The ship would have to endure every conceivable peril Mother Nature could throw at a deep-running SSN before this one-on-one battle with Eberhard was over with.