by Joe Buff
"Nav gyros have tumbled," the assistant navigator called. "Reinitializing now" Another shock wave hit as the giant gas bubble of the fireball fell in upon itself and then rebounded hard, trading kinetic and potential energy back and forth. Jeffrey eyed a depth meter. The boat was falling slowly, rocking badly in the disturbed water all around.
"Chief of the Watch and Helmsman," Wilson said, "watch our buoyancy but do not let her broach. If we can play dead now convincingly, it'll make our next job easier." Wilson grabbed the red handset for Damage Control, located back in Engineering.
"Fire, fire, fire in the ESM room," a sound-powered phone talker said. Probably a short in one of the electronic support measures consoles, Jeffrey told himself, or maybe one of the multiband receivers kept warmed up on standby. That might impair Challenger's intelligence-gathering ability later, and her detection of enemy radar. As fire fighters hustled along the after passageway, someone opened the ESM door from inside. "It's out, it's nothing," the technician said, holding up a CO, extinguisher. Thin smoke drifted out of the small compartment and was sucked into the overhead vents. Jeffrey, now standing, was doubly relieved: the air-conditioning meant the boat couldn't be in such bad shape. The Enj wouldn't run the fans on batteries, he wouldn't waste the power. So the reactor and heat exchangers had to be okay, along with at least one shipservice turbogenerator. The speed log on Jeffrey's digital display told him both steam sides survived and Challenger's propulsor jet still worked.
Then Sessions shouted, "Flooding sounds! We're taking water somewhere!"
"Localize it," Jeffrey ordered.
"I'm getting flooding forward!"
"Phone Talker," Jeffrey said, "have all compartments near the bow check in."
"Sir," the phone talker said a moment later, "torpedo room does not respond."
"No feeds from the torpedo room," Jeffrey stated, studying his screens.
"We're taking water forward," COB confirmed.
A messenger arrived. "Sir," he said to Jeffrey, "Weps reports torpedo room is taking water. We looked through the hatch port. It's impossible in there." COB stopped juggling the variable ballast and safety tanks, reaching instead for the fore and aft emergency blow handles. He flipped up the protective plastic covers and looked meaningfully at the captain.
Wilson nodded. "Chief of the Watch, emergency blow on high-pressure air, do not use the backup chemical gas generators." There was a great roaring sound. "Start to vent again at four hundred feet. I don't want us surfacing a leaky boat right under a pair of mushroom clouds."
"Vent at four hundred, aye," COB said.
"How bad's the flooding?" Jeffrey said. The enlisted talker relayed the question on his big chest-carried mouthpiece, then listened on his headphones as the damage control party reported back.
"Bad, sir. Water's gaining on the bilge pumps fast, rising over a foot a minute. The spray's still taking paint right off the bulkheads."
"XO," Wilson said, listening on the damage control handset, "that's our biggest problem now. You head down there and take charge, get Weps in here as Fire Control." Wilson picked up the 7MC with his left hand. "Maneuvering, maintain back flank. We need speed for depth control and the pump-jet's got lousy pickup in reverse." Wilson turned to Meltzer. "Helm, how are the waterfoils?"
"Sir, foreplanes will not deploy. All after control surfaces are nominal, but functioning is awkward going backwards."
"Make your depth one hundred feet and try to hold her steady there. That'll reduce the outside pressure and give us some protection from the fallout." As the boat came up, she began to roll and pitch. "Captain," Meltzer said, "we're too unstable!"
Wilson held the mike open as he continued, "Right standard rudder."
"Right standard rudder, aye, sir. No course specified."
"As our bow swings left to two seven zero," Wilson said, "steady her there and stop the shaft. Then go ahead to one third smartly. I want us clearing datum upwind, just in case. The lower speed'll relieve some of the force of the water on the bow. Use down-angle on the sternplane function if we get too heavy forward."
"Understood, sir," Meltzer said.
"XO, tell me if you can't stop the flooding. Besides the radiation problem, I'd hate to surface and make a datum for some overflying satellite."
"I concur, sir," Jeffrey said. He started for the ladder aft of the CACC, the one leading down to the weapons spaces.
On the way he grabbed a portable radiac — radiation, detection, indication, and computation. This one measured alpha particles, the heaviest and slowest-moving — thus least penetrating — fallout emission by-product. But alpha sources were the most carcinogenic if inhaled, lodged in the alveoli of the lungs. At another locker Jeffrey donned a self-contained Scott air pack. He sealed the mask very tightly, drawing in the metallic-tasting oxygen from the heavy tank. He put on thick work gloves. When he reached the torpedo room lower level, the damage control parties were inside. Jeffrey quickly sized up the situation.
Challenger's eight torpedo tubes, her war-fighting business end, were grouped vertically in sets of four, starboard and port of her centerline. The tubes were located abaft the bow, canted outward nine degrees to clear her sonar sphere — gantries between the four tall weapons racks created an upper mezzanine. Tube eight was on the lower left of the port-side, even-numbered group. Water gushed from around its inner door, blasting harder than a fire hose.
By the time Jeffrey climbed through the hatch and dogged it shut behind, the boat was trimming noticeably by the bow from all the weight of added water. The lowest pair of three-foot-wide gleaming titanium inner doors was half submerged. The next pair up, tubes five and six, wore small signs, WARNING WARSHOT LOADED.
The water was tinged with red and flecked with bits of plastic and raw flesh. Shoved out of the way behind one weapons rack were the remains of the torpedomen who manned the room at general quarters. The force of the incoming spray at depth had battered them beyond recognition. Electronics cabinets near the tube-eight door were smashed as if hit by cannon fire. The fore-ends of the weapons in direct line to the door had all been shredded, their blue protective covers and fiberglass nose caps gone and their guidance packages in tatters. The conventional Mark 48 highest on the inner port-side rack teetered menacingly, its support clamps knocked asunder by seawater jetting in at a thousand psi. Jeffrey wondered what state its arming circuitry was in. He sloshed forward through the thigh-deep freezing water, his head just clearing the gantry overhead, his shoulders brushing the weapons racks on either side. He wriggled past the damage control party, then bent over and took a good look at tube eight, which projected from the forward bulkhead through a mass of pipes and fittings. Thick wooden beams pressed against the damaged door, placed there before the concussion by the nowdead crewmen. The sea spewed out all around the edges of the interrupted-screw breach, ricocheting off the bulkheads and hydraulic loading gear.
"The balks won't hold it," the local man in charge yelled in Jeffrey's ear, above the constant roaring of the water. "The outer door's jammed open!"
"We tried driving in more shims!" a leading petty officer said. "It didn't do much good!" The LPO held a sledgehammer with both hands.
Jeffrey nodded. The balks, hastily fitted when Wilson ordered the door shored up, had kept the door from being blasted inward by their own Mark 88. But the shock wave of the detonation had driven into the tube — kept open so they wouldn't lose the fiber-optic wire — and like a water hammer, it warped the inner mounting frame.
Jeffrey eyed the door once more. "We'll have to knock those off first," he shouted through his mask, pointing to the balks, "then fit a lock-down collar on!" He glanced at his radiac and didn't like what he saw. "Everybody without a respirator get out of here!" The LPO read Jeffrey's unit, a proportional counter that caught radioactivity from the unfissioned uranium or plutonium scattered in a low-yield burst. "Sir, four millirems a minute's nothing!"
"The guidelines say—"
"Screw the guideli
nes, Commander! We helped build this boat!"
"Okay," Jeffrey shouted back, "belay the order." He'd transferred on as Challenger's exec after the war started, and wasn't about to argue with a motivated plank owner, especially one who'd just lost friends.
Besides, everybody was already soaking wet and breathing hard. Ordering them to put their masks on wouldn't make much difference now Instead Jeffrey told the local phone talker to have COB pump in high-pressure air — at least that would slow the flooding. The man kept flicking water from his mouthpiece as he bellowed each word carefully, then listened. He caught Jeffrey's eye and nodded hard.
Jeffrey glanced at a depth gauge as the bow suddenly whipsawed vertically, sloshing water everywhere, knocking crewmen off their feet. The boat was going down, getting too hard to control.
"Sir," the man in charge yelled hoarsely, "that topmost ADCAP's shifted more! We can't get to it with this spray, and if it falls, the thing could blow!" And if they surfaced now, the A-bomb-ravaged seas would toss them more.
But the torpedo room's rear bulkhead wasn't very pressure-proof. Jeffrey knew that if this compartment filled at depth, the seawater could get into the battery bank in the bilge spaces just aft. Broken batteries would short, giving off hydrogen and chlorine gas, and then explode. Jeffrey's ears began to ache as the atmospheric pressure rose. He swallowed hard to ease the pain.
"All right!" Jeffrey shouted. "We have to do this all at once and fast!" He positioned several crewmen next to the leaking door, ready with the heavy ceramic repair collar. Another half dozen men stood by to get the massive beams out of the way. On Jeffrey's command the LPO whacked the shims loose with his sledgehammer, freeing the beams. The water inflow got much worse, and now they used hand signals because of the noise.
Jeffrey helped wrestle the two halves of the repair collar, hinged at a joint, to fit the collar around the door, fighting hard against the bruising spray. He grunted when one of the beams rammed him in the calf as it was hastily moved aside. An electrician's mate slipped, cracking his jaw against a protruding autoloader cam. The man got up, lip and chin bloodied, hair and denim jump suit soaked, and resumed his place. A severed arm floated by and Jeffrey batted it aside.
The crewmen crouched into the rising water to get more leverage. Jeffrey and two men wearing respirators put their heads under to better see what they were doing. Pink water pressed the improvised scuba masks against their faces, but at least down low the builtup water helped soften the incoming spray. They rammed the collar flush. Muscles bulged as the men gradually forced the halves of the collar together against the flow, then cranked it closed. Someone brought a metal tool, a long valve extension rod, and the work gang used brute strength to tighten each of the collar's ten giant wing nuts, squashing the door the rest of the way shut. The LPO gave the mating crank one more solid heave, seating the collar decisively.
"Pretty good, guys," Jeffrey said, admiring their handiwork. He noticed the flood in the compartment was already going down, as submersible pumps passed the water to main bilge pumps aft whose motors were still dry. Jeffrey pulled off his breather mask and picked up a mike hanging from the overhead. Taking a breath, he smelled the heady odor of machine oil mixed with sweat, and the blood-and-sewer stink of mangled corpses.
"Control, torpedo room lower level," Jeffrey said. "Flooding secured, three fatalities."
"Who are they?" Wilson said over the intercom.
Jeffrey gave the names, feeling sad and humbled as crewmen put them into body bags. The LPO opened a first-aid kit and tended to the injured crewman's jaw, irrigating the cuts thoroughly with disinfectant.
"Material condition?" Wilson said.
Jeffrey cleared his throat. "Depot-level equipment casualty, inner door tube eight. I count six weapons damaged beyond repair based on gross visual inspection."
"What else do you need down there?" Wilson said.
"Request a freshwater decontamination washdown, machinery and personnel. Request a corpsman's radiological exposure assay, all affected personnel."
"Sir," a torpedoman suggested, "we'll start checking all the weapons right away. Hopefully the rest of them still work."
Jeffrey nodded, looking around at the four dozen close-packed missiles, mines, and torpedoes. Emergency battle lanterns cast harsh shadows — the compartment's power had been isolated when the flooding started, to eliminate shock hazard in the highly conductive seawater. Now two auxiliarymen eyed the ground readings and cross-checked the switch lineup on a control panel, reset some breakers, and the regular lights came on. Jeffrey saw the air still held a pungent mist, saltwater atomized. Everything dripped.
A machinist's mate restored hydraulic pressure, dumped earlier so an errant piece of equipment wouldn't maim or kill. He raised the pressure slowly while companions checked for leaks, after first isolating some obviously damaged autoloader machinery. They gave up immediately — fluid still oozed everywhere.
As Jeffrey studied the devastation wrought by the incoming sea, he tried not to think about the tons and tons of high explosives and self-oxidizing fuels stacked all around him here, and the atomic warheads. Fire and water, he told himself, the elements that own all submariners. Buoyancy and crush depth, nuclear furnaces and steam, they make us go and make us die.
Another worry crossed his mind and he spoke into the mike. "Captain, XO. Request permission to cycle the outer doors tubes one through seven to verify their function."
CHAPTER 3
NEAR THE ANTARCTIC CIRCLE, FAR SOUTH OF DURBAN
Captain Janter Horst grinned as another blast of frigid water hit him in the face. "Just like the good old days, Gunther, "he shouted over the southeast gale. "The way it used to be, when sharks of steel drank diesel fuel and wolf packs ruled the seas!"
Gunther Van Gelder eyed his skipper, more than ever convinced the man was mad. " None of this is really necessary, Captain," he said through chattering teeth. "Can't we just dive and get it over with?" He gripped the edge of the bridge cockpit with gloved hands, trying to steady himself against the roll, the pitch, the shudders of the hull.
"Never!" Ter Horst laughed as his vessel bounded and punched through the waves. He sneered at the surface ship in the middle distance. "I want them to see Voortrekker! I want them to try to run!"
Van Gelder ducked as more green water broached the cockpit, then drained away. Ice rime was already two centimeters thick on the ESM antennas and photonic masts. "We'll freeze, sir, before much longer, and this is dangerous." He tried to close his parka tighter but it was zipped high as it would go.
"Don't be silly, Number One," ter Horst said. "There aren't aircraft anywhere near here. She's been running her radar at full power since she spotted us — and we keep stealing echoes. Besides, their low-observable fighters don't have the range, and if they did, we'd pick them up on passive infrared."
"But sir, that's just line of sight."
"The latest satellite pass showed nothing in the area … So let them call for help. That's the whole idea!"
"But they might attack us!"
"Pah. She's unarmed except for some machine guns. Our unmanned aerial vehicle told us that. Probably worried about a special boat squadron takedown, not a sub." Van Gelder watched the supertanker morosely, barely visible as it labored through the blowing fog. Half a million tons displacement, laden with priceless crude. Liberian registry, U.S.-owned and — manned. They'd known that much about the target for hours Voortrekker had sonar tapes of all the big ships that plied the Persian Gulf.
"I suppose we could have used a missile," ter Horst said half to himself, "but we fired the last of them up north … I wonder if the Americans know it was my vessel that sank Ranger."
Van Gelder felt too frozen to wonder about much of anything. "We're not supposed to waste nuclear warheads on single merchant ships, Captain." He huddled by the bridge instrument panel, gaining scant shelter from the forty-plus-knot wind. The cockpit crew's bright orange protective clothing gave the only color to the s
cene of blacks and leaden grays.
Ter Horst nodded curtly. "What I don't understand," he yelled in Van Gelder's ear, "is why she's here at all."
"Greed, sir?" Van Gelder spat out bitter seawater as more spindrift hit his face. He shifted position and frozen glaze crackled on his coat front.
"Arrogance, more like," ter Horst said. "They think they can run the blockade. To reach America's Gulf Coast refineries by crossing the Pacific instead would take four times as long."
"Maybe they hoped to hide against the ice pack." Van Gelder stamped his feet to keep his legs from getting numb.
"Idiots!" ter Horst shouted. "Did they really think their engine tonals would be masked against the floes?"
"They must not realize, sir, what modern sonar can do."
"Fools! Our merchant marine masters would never make that error. The Americans are soft, Gunther, I'm telling you, and desperate. Putting this tanker on the bottom will show that to the world, and it will show the world we're strong."
"But, sir! Here of all places? It'll be an ecological catastrophe."
"Exactly! A test of will, a monument to our determination. The Southern Ocean current will carry the oil slick round and round, till the whole Antarctic coast is mired. Fifty million gallons loosed! From every longitude, from every nation, they'll look south and see our power."
"Couldn't we just trail her till she makes for the Atlantic?"
"In God's name, why? We have other work to do!"
"But the penguins, sir. The seals, the whales. They'll be wiped out!"
"Birds, Gunther? You worry about fish and birds? You're not backsliding, are you?"
"Sir, no, of course not. Of course not, sir."
"Good. Remember what happened to the others. It took some of them five minutes to die! More stiff-necked, I suppose."
Seasick already, Van Gelder rolled his eyes at the dull overcast. He swallowed bile. Ter Horst laughed again. "Relax." He pounded Van Gelder on the shoulder. "I trust you implicitly, my friend."
