Thunder In The Deep (02) (49 page)

d either rush off in a different direction, to try to'

regain contact, or detonate, in a last-ditch try to kill their receding target. When they detonated—outside the immediate zones of the fireballs—the shock wave would act like sound: It was sound. It, too, would be bent up and diffused, as it passed through the plume, and with luck would deflect harmlessly above Challenger; the extent of ray refraction was independent of sound intensity.

Sometimes, Ilse had to admit, Jeffrey amazed her. The one big question was, would it work?

Then there was the wild card: the magma outburst, now overdue.

Deutschland was dying even as she drove for the surface. All the hours of chase and searching, all the plans and strategy, had given way to these last few savage seconds of guessing and outguessing—and Deutschland had lost. Beck manned his station grimly. Along both sides of the Zentrale men sat broken-necked or stunned; only Beck's headrest, as he faced forward, prevented whiplash from the Mark 88 A-bomb blasts astern.

Damage reports came in from all over the ship. There was bad flooding in Engineering and in the torpedo room. There was a bad electrical fire in equipment near the enlisted mess. Eberhard ordered Coomans aft, to take charge at the fire. The Leutnant zur See copilot took over the helm; the relief pilot was dead.

"Sir," Beck said. "We're losing positive buoyancy. We're losing the ship." They were sinking, still far below the surface, despite the completed emergency main ballast blow. Eberhard ran to the copilot's station. He worked the controls for the conformal hangar.

"Einzvo, use the minisub. Save as many men as you

can.”

"Captain?"

"Verdammt, you have a family. Go, there isn't time."

Beck eyed a pressure gauge as smoke filled the Zentrale. Deutschland peaked out at four hundred meters depth, then started to go back down.

There was an internal explosion somewhere aft—the pressure of the blast burst Beck's eardrums.

"Captain!" Beck shouted. He saw Eberhard juggling the ballast controls. The captain picked up a sound-powered phone and yelled into the mike, but Beck couldn't hear. Eberhard turned to Beck. "For God's sake, go!" Beck read his lips. Werner Haffner moved in his seat. Beck unbuckled Haffner and slapped him and he rallied. "Sonar, come."

Beck and Haffner ran aft, choking on the smoke, gathering crewmen as they could. They had to use a ladder to bypass the fire. Beck saw Jakob Coomans lying on the deck, unconscious. Beck lifted him in a fireman's carry, and struggled toward the conformal hangar lock-out trunk.

"Abandon ship!" he shouted to the damage control parties, and to anyone else he saw. " Follow me!" More crewmen followed.

Beck's hearing began to come back. Coomans revived and moaned. He coughed, then vomited blood. Beck could feel Coomans's abdomen growing rigid and distended. Severe internal injuries.

Beck slipped on blood and vomit and fire-fighting foam. He slid downhill, aft. Deutschland was sinking by the stern.

He reached the lock-out trunk. Men helped him carry Coomans up the ladder, into the minisub. Beck ran into the control compartment and powered up the systems. Men kept climbing the ladder into the central sphere, then clambered in back. Smoke came up through the bottom hatch. More men came and filled the hyperbaric sphere around the hatch.

Beck eyed the mini's instruments. Eberhard had flooded and equalized the hangar, and the doors were fully

open. Deutschland's depth was seven hundred meters. That meant the mini's was seven hundred, too. At eight hundred the mini would implode with the hangar equalized, and Deutschland was dragging her down.

There was a deep thud from below, from aft. The ship's rate of descent increased sharply. Something must have given way, increasing the rate of flooding. The minisub's hull creaked.

"That's it," Beck shouted. "Close the bottom hatch." The moment the mini's board went, straight and green Beck released the hold-down clamps. The mini was free. He drove for shallower depth. He dared not surface with the mushroom clouds above. The minisub was sluggish with the weight of all the men. He activated the sonar speakers. Above the other noise he heard a terrible whistling: Deutschland, flooded, plunging for the ocean floor at over one hundred knots. There was a thunderous crack, the ship impacting the basalt bottom. Beck knew Deutschland would have smashed into a million pieces.

Beck let a surviving crewman, qualified in the mini, take control. Beck went aft and did a head count. Including himself, there were eighteen men aboard. Eighteen saved out of ten dozen.

But Jakob Coomans lay flat on the deck. Haffner looked at Beck and shook his head. "I'

m sorry, sir."

Beck knelt and cradled Coomans in his lap. He tried to smooth Coomans's hair, and wipe the blood from his lips and nose. Coomans, cynical but shrewd, always knowing just what to say, to lighten Beck's mood or restore his perspective. Coomans, a good man by any measure, and the closest thing to a friend Beck had had on Deutschland. Jakob Coomans was dead. Beck's captain, Kurt Eberhard, was dead—to the very end, Beck had never understood the man. Deutschland, Beck's ship, his home at sea, was dead. Beck sat there, tears streaming. Such a horrible, horrible waste.

"Sir," Haffner interrupted. "What do we do now?"

"What?"

"What should we do, sir? Head to Iceland and internment?"

"No." Beck pulled himself together. "Let me look at the charts." He went into the control compartment. He studied the data: fuel supply, drinking water, battery levels, air. He measured distances, and eyed the prevailing currents. He thought of the ceramic-hulled SSGN, almost ready to put to sea. She'd need battle-hardened men, and a good XO and sonar officer. Beck had a duty, to try to continue the fight. He thought of his wife and young twin sons. He had a duty to them, to get back, and to protect them. Beck turned to the pilot. "Make four knots, steer zero three zero."

"Jawohl. Our destination, sir?"

"Spitsbergen. We'll drift as much as we can, ration our emergency supplies. . . . Seven hundred sea miles. . . . It should take about a week. We'll make contact with our forces there." Challenger may or may not have survived—Beck didn't know, but Intel would find out eventually.

Haffner stuck his head in the control compartment. "Sir, what should . . . What should we do with Chief Coomans?"

"When it's safe, we'll go shallow, and equalize the sphere. We'll bury him at sea." SIMULTANEOUSLY, ON CHALLENGER.

Ilse yanked her seat belt tighter as Challenger fought the worst turbulence she'd ever experienced. On the bird's-eye view gravimeter mode, Ilse saw they were right above the volcano's central crater cauldron.

"Contact with inbound torpedoes fading," Kathy said. "Engineer reports we're going into vapor lock!" the phone talker said.

"Helm, maintain flank speed."

Ilse watched her speed log. Flank speed could only give thirty knots. Behind Challenger, a Sea Lion exploded, inside what should've been lethal range. The blast was muffled, but still it jarred the ship. Another Sea Lion blew. The shock lifted Challenger's stern. Meltzer fought his controls.

"Switch all batteries to propulsion," Jeffrey ordered.

Another Sea Lion blew. Challenger was making barely twenty knots, going more on momentum than on her pump-jet. She drifted deeper in the crater. The CACC air grew warm. Jeffrey ordered the fans turned on again. Still the air grew warm.

"Hull popping!" Kathy said. "It's expansion noise." "We're being cooked!" Bell shouted.

"At least it'll help us float." A bigger hull should mean more buoyancy, but it wasn't enough. The ship kept sinking.

The final Sea Lion blew. Once more Challenger plunged and bucked. Ilse stared at the gravimeter. The ship was down inside the crater now, lower than the lip of the wall. They were trapped, and churning lava beckoned.

There was another gigantic eruption astern—the magma outburst, at last. It was more powerful than all four Sea Lions combined. Challenger's stern reared up even more, and everything in the CACC shook violently; the ship was heading down, closer and closer to the lava.

"The gravimeter!" Ilse said. "Look!" Before her eyes the rim of the crater gave way. "An avalanche!"

"Captain," Bell shouted, pointing, "head through there!" "Helm," Jeffrey ordered, "steer for that gap in the wall!"

On her photonics screen, Ilse watched as Challenger barely fit through. The ship continued sinking, plunging for the rock-hard seafloor three thousand feet below, carried by a seismic seawave, pacing the gigantic boulders tumbling down the seamount's slope. It's turning into a double-kill after all, us and Deutschland both.

"Chief of the Watch, give us buoyancy! Blow the sail trunk. Blow the safety tank. Blow everything you can!" Jeffrey grabbed the mike for Maneuvering. "Enj, get our power back or we've had it!"

The roar of the avalanche made it hard for Ilse to hear. Two thousand feet to unforgiving impact with the bottom. One thousand. Five hundred. Two hundred.

And then, as Challenger entered colder, denser water, she regained positive buoyancy and propulsion power came back. Almost miraculously, Challenger hurried away.

"Captain," Kathy said. "Large object heading toward the bottom fast! Heavy flooding and breaking-up sounds!"

"Object is Deutschland, sir," Bell said.

"Put it on speakers." There was a horrendous crash, followed by endless banging and clunking, as pulverized wreckage scattered and hit the bottom. There was a continuing whoosh, as all the air and fumes in Deutschland's shattered hull and ballast tanks rose to the surface to mark the ship's grave.

"Helm," Jeffrey said, "make your depth eight thousand feet. Left standard rudder, make your course two one five."

Ilse looked at a nav chart. Course two one five: the GIUK Gap.

Ilse turned to Jeffrey and smiled. Jeffrey grinned back. They'd done it. They'd done it. Bell pointed at a chronometer. It was 0005, Zulu time.

Zulu time was also Greenwich Mean Time. Challenger, up near the Arctic Circle—not all that far from the North Pole—happened to be due north of Greenwich. It was 24

December 2011.

"Hey, everybody," Jeffrey said. "Tonight's Christmas Eve!" NEW YEAR'S EVE.

NAVAL SUBMARINE BASE,

The Navy tugs moved USS Challenger toward her berth in the new hardened underground pens, blasted into the high bluffs up the Thames River opposite Groton, Connecticut. Jeffrey stood in the cockpit atop the sail. He eyed the nontoxic smoke screen that blocked the sky but gave his ship concealment. He heard the roar of F-18's and F-22's flying top cover. He couldn't hear the racket in the ether, as aggressive electronic countermeasures helped ward off Axis attack.

Inside Challenger, Jeffrey knew, things were very crowded. Here on the bridge, things were crowded, too. Besides the regular lookouts, standing in safety harness up on the sail roof itself, Captain Taylor, from USS Texas, and Ilse Reebeck stood next' to Jeffrey in the cockpit. Ilse pressed against Jeffrey every time Challenger rolled, and she seemed to enjoy the body contact. Jeffrey desperately wanted to hold her hand, but it was out of the question with Captain Taylor there. . . .

After leaving the erupting volcano, Jeffrey had examined the site of Deutschland's impact with the bottom: The

wreckage was real, the German SSN truly destroyed. Then a message through the deep sound channel ordered Challenger to rendezvous with HMS Dreadnought in the North Atlantic. Texas had won her duel with the German Amethyste II after all. The ceramichulled Dreadnought evacuated the survivors from Texas, then transferred them to Challenger, using her Royal Navy minisub. Challenger, out of ammo, the German mini with the missile back inside her internal hangar, was the field ambulance. Dreadnought, freshly provisioned, all eight tubes and her autoloaders working, provided armed escort, until Jeffrey could link up with U.S. Navy forces near the East Coast. Jeffrey and Kathy Milgrom even got to visit with their Dutch uncle and mentor Commodore Morse for a little while—Dreadnought was his flagship for an undersea battle group. They shared a drink in Morse's cabin, in honor of the holidays and Challenger's success. Morse told Jeffrey an attempt would be made to salvage Texas, using gas bladders robotically placed in the flooded engine room. Till then, two Royal Navy SSNs stood guard. Now, Challenger was inside the pen. The blast door interlock was closed behind her. Lining the underground pier were hundreds of people. These were the welcoming committee, wives and children and parents and friends—and girlfriends—of the two hundred plus souls Challenger was bringing safely home. Jeffrey also saw a group of people wearing black, comforted by chaplains of several faiths; not everyone had made it.

As Challenger nudged the deep draft separators against the concrete pier, Jeffrey noticed several figures in dress blue. He counted seven captains and four admirals. With them was Commander Wilson, Challenger's CO, looking refreshed and well. The moment the aluminum brow was in place, Captain Wilson strode onto Challenger's hull. Jeffrey climbed down through the sail trunk to meet him; the trunk was damp, from the flooding, and it stank. Ilse went below.

Chief Montgomery and his SEALs tenderly carried Shajo Clayton's litter up through the weapons loading hatch. Wilson spoke to Clayton and shook his hand; both men smiled warmly. Shajo, Jeffrey knew, had a Special Warfare commando's million-dollar wound: a Purple Heart, a Silver Star at least, a paid vacation to convalesce, then an almost certain return to combat status.

Wilson surveyed his command. He looked very hard at Jeffrey. "What did you do to my beautiful boat?"

Jeffrey felt self-conscious standing next to Wilson. The captain's uniform was spotless, beautifully starched. His shoes had a mirror-hard shine, and the three gold rings on each jacket cuff gleamed. Under Jeffrey's salt-stained parka, his khakis were wrinkled and dirty—at least he'd had time to shower and shave, in spite of the water rationing. Jeffrey glanced around, following Wilson's gaze. For the first time in weeks, he could see Challenger from outside. The periscope and antenna masts were ragged stumps. Aircraft cannon shell hits, and shore defense gun shrapnel, pockmarked the sail. Shaped-charge antitank missile hits holed the sail and the top of the rudder. The anechoic coatings and piezorubber tiles were shredded in some spots, and missing altogether in places. The sailmounted under-ice and mine avoidance sonar complexes were smashed. The whole ship's upper works were scorched along her port side. From this angle, Challenger looked like she'd been through the wars indeed.