by Joe Buff
Ilse dried her hands on her blouse as she ran to the CACC. She struggled to her seat, almost knocked flat by the sudden steep up-bubble. Ilse donned her headset, one earcup in place. Immediately she heard the nerve-grinding scream of enemy torpedoes in the water, close on Challenger's tail.
"The U-boats found us first," Kathy said. "That convoy shot, its echo gave us away." Just like that, the tables were turned. Challenger was
the hunted now. She'd been running deep; they needed to get much shallower for their countermeasures to work. The ship topped forty knots, accelerating hard.
"Range to inbound weapons is ten thousand yards," Bell called out as Fire Control. "Net overtaking speed is thirty knots." The Axis weapons were chewing up the remaining distance fast. They were wire-guided, and nuclear-capable.
Jeffrey ordered a steeper up-bubble. He grabbed an intercom mike. "Maneuvering, Captain. Push the reactor to a hundred five percent." The flank speed shaking grew much rougher; turbulence and straining the propulsion plant as Challenger tore a tunnel through the sea—forty-eight knots now. Jeffrey told Meltzer to make another knuckle.
"Still two incoming weapons," Kathy reported. They were spreading apart, making it harder to intercept. Kathy's voice was even and clear; she wasn't sweating now. Jeffrey told Bell to fire the Mark 88's in tubes one and three, as snap shots down the inbound weapons' bearings—Ilse heard them on her headphones, a deeper tone than the Axis fish and louder, too. But they still had no good data on Master One and Two, the small and stealthy U-boats.
"Depth five thousand feet," Meltzer said, "coming up to four."
"Bring our unit from tube one up to eight hundred feet," Jeffrey ordered. "Run the other at two thousand." Above and below the deep scattering layer. "Have them both go active now." To probe for the enemy submarines.
"Sir," Bell said, "don't you want to use them to knock down the Axis fish?"
"Negative," Jeffrey said. "I want the boats."
"They've got ten tubes between them. . . ."
"We'll try to evade the torpedoes, XO. Stand by to reload two more eighty-eights, in case we can't."
Slow work, Ilse knew—the torpedomen were down to block and tackle, and the ship was making radical angles, too. But if they closed the outer doors to reload prematurely, they'd lose the wires to the units they'd already fired. Jeffrey was taking an awful gamble. Those U-boats, somewhere out there, each held two dozen men, intent on killing Challenger and everyone aboard.
Meltzer reached three thousand feet. He leveled off. The ride was just as rough. Bell fired a noisemaker and an acoustic jammer pod. Jeffrey ordered a course change: south. He launched the brilliant decoy in tube five, to loop behind the ship, running back north. He fired the conventional ADCAP fish in tube seven directly ahead, to run out in front of Challenger. Ilse saw he was trying to distract the inbound weapons.
"Shut the outer doors, tubes five and seven."
"Lost the wires, tubes five and seven!"
"Reload five and seven, Mark eighty-eights."
Bell acknowledged; backbreaking labor began.
The units from tubes one and three continued their active search: still no contact on Master One and Two. They must both be in the deep scattering layer, virtually opaque to the pings of the 88's. The U-boat captains weren't just sitting there, either; they were thinking and fighting.
"Inbound weapons have ignored our countermeasures," Bell said. "Weapons are tracking us, not the units from five and seven. . . . Both turning into our baffles." The enemy fire control technicians, Ilse thought, steering them through the wires. Jeffrey's counterploy had failed. "Range now?" Jeffrey said.
"Seven thousand yards, closing by one thousand every minute." Bell said the enemy warhead yields would surely be set at their maximum—one kiloton each—with a kill zone against Challenger of four thousand yards or more. The Mark 88's from tubes one and three had run well past the Axis weapons, too late to bring them back to make the intercept.
Jeffrey ordered more noisemakers, then a dive to ten thousand feet, to confuse the inbound weapons by jinking out of their search cones. Ilse buckled her seat belt; she'd forgotten to before. Challenger's speed was steady now, 50.7 knots. The constant shaking showed how hard the ship was working. Consoles jiggled, making squeaking sounds.
"We still do not hold contact on Master One or Two," Bell said. This was an unforgiving contest in which every second counted; Jeffrey told Kathy to ping on the bow sphere, a powerful but last-ditch measure since it would surely give Challenger away. Kathy used a rising sawtooth tone, optimized to cut through the layer. The signal processors ran, ready to sift the returns.
"Active sonar contacts," Kathy reported. "Bearing zero two four, range eleven thousand yards, Master One. . . . Bearing zero three seven, range twelve thousand yards, Master Two." Two small blips on Ilse's display—with a murderous reality
"Bring both our Mark eighty-eights to twelve hundred feet now," Jeffrey said. "Deenable their active pinging and slow them to thirty knots for stealth. Send one each at Master One and Two, on random approach arcs." Jeffrey would use the deep scattering layer, too.
"Launch transients," Kathy called a moment later, "from Master One and Two." Each Uboat fired a spread of weapons, assessed as countershots at Challenger's pair of Mark 88'
s. Challenger kept diving.
"Hull popping, self-noise transient." Then, "Two more torpedoes in the water. Assess as aimed at Challenger."
Jeffrey ordered another course change; Meltzer acknowledged; something made a scary tone in Ilse's ear.
"Acoustic intercept contact," Kathy stated. "Closest inbound weapons have gone to active search."
"Range six thousand yards," Bell said. "They're locked on us for sure." At this depth our stealth hull coatings are useless, Ilse knew, squashed rock hard. She admired Kathy's detachment.
"Two minutes till those warheads blow," Jeffrey said.
"Then we're a mission-kill for sure, if not feeding bottom crawlers outright. How's the reload doing on tubes five and seven?"
Shajo Clayton and his SEALs were helping in the torpedo room, but even so . . . At last the reloads were armed. The acoustic intercept receiver made another scary tone.
"Inbound torpedoes still locked on!" Bell said. "They're getting echoes off our stern—
we can't actively suppress!"
Jeffrey ordered tubes five and seven fired as counter-shots. Now Axis nuclear weapons ran at Challenger, and hers ran at the U-boats, both offensive plays. More Axis weapons ran at Challenger's fish, and more of hers ran at theirs—these were the defensive races, all going on at once.
"Time to intercept the inbound weapons?" Jeffrey said. "One hundred seconds," Bell said.
"Time till inbound weapons are in lethal range of Challenger?"
"Sixty seconds."
Too close. Jeffrey ordered Challenger back to three thousand feet. Ilse heard sharp thunder, a staccato roar, and shock waves pummeled the ship. Master One and Two had begun to detonate their antitorpedo nuclear weapons. . . . They seemed to be shooting blind. Challenger's units from tubes one and three still had live feed through the wires—but thanks to the deep scattering layer they also were running blind. Jeffrey told Kathy to ping again; Bell updated his fire control solutions, then sent them to his weapons through the wires. "Forty seconds till our first two units are in lethal range of Master One and Two . . . and also till the closest inbound weapons are in lethal range of Challenger."
Jesus, Ilse thought, it'll be a three-way kill.
"Fire Control, fire two more noisemakers and jammers. . . . Maneuvering, push the reactor to one hundred
eight percent. . . . Helm, forty degrees down bubble, left standard rudder, smartly." Challenger seemed to twist sideways and aim straight down.
"No effect by the countermeasures! Inbound weapons still locked on!" Ilse heard them pinging faster and faster. Challenger's speed was fifty-two knots.
"Helm, forty degrees up bubble, smartly."
Ilse grabbed her armrests hard as the ship took off for
the sky; the g-force pressed her neck onto one shoulder. "Inbound weapons are rising to follow," Bell said. "Chief of the watch, sound rig for depth charge." "Rig for depth charge, aye."
"Fire Control, reset our units from one and three to detonate by timer. This way if we're dead, and the Germans try to evade, we still might take them with us." Small comfort, Ilse told herself, for throwing away our lives.
"Resets accepted!"
"Chief of the watch, do an emergency blow."
"Sir?" Bell shouted as compressed air made a deafening roar.
"I'm counting on some help from the surface cutoff effect!" A blast was less destructive very shallow.
Challenger kept driving upward hard. "Inbound weapons are too close. Our counterfire from five and seven will fail!" Bell shouted.
"Reset units from five and seven, maximum yield, not minimum. Detonate them now!" Challenger lifted violently, punched in the stern by a pair of atomic fists—her own antitorpedo shots, set off in final desperation. Ilse's headphones blanked out, the automatic amplitude filters, but she heard and felt the unforgiving concussions through the hull.
"Inbound torpedoes still running!" Kathy screamed. "Any second," Bell said hopelessly. The ship kept rising, almost straight uphill. Her depth
wound madly down to zero, along with her life expectancy.
The shattering ocean erupted again with a hundred times the force, just as Challenger leaped out of the sea. The vibrations were so vicious Ilse's arms and legs flapped wildly; her bare knuckles rapped Kathy in the face. All the lights went out. A world-ending roar kept piercing Ilse's skull.
There are nuclear fireballs right outside, and tons of radioactive steam. Bile rose in Ilse's throat, as Challenger peaked in her trajectory. The ship dropped down so hard Ilse's headphones flew off.
"Fire, fire, fire in Engineering," the phone talker bellowed in the dark. "Upper level starboard side!"
Challenger pitched roughly, riding atomic tsunamis. Ilse caught a whiff of biting smoke. The CACC power switched to batteries. Everyone grabbed their emergency breather masks.
"Shut the main fore-and-aft air vents," Jeffrey ordered. "Do not ventilate. Keep the boat sealed up!" The ship rolled hard to starboard, then to port, her nose corkscrewing insanely on the tortured surface.
"Units from tubes one and three have detonated!" Bell said. "Assess Master One and Two destroyed! Assess surviving inbound weapons blinded by nuclear sonar whiteout!" The crew finished donning their masks, then plugged the air lines into sockets in the overhead. Immediately the compartment filled with an eerie, repetitive hiss and whoosh, as twenty people each drew breaths through the regulator valves and exhaled. Ilse heard the crewmen speaking, badly muffled through their masks, half drowned out by the atomic cacophony beyond the hull. Inside her mask she felt terribly isolated; her heart pounded, and she fought to steady her respiration rate. The ship's burning. . . . How bad is it?
Having nothing to do only made the waiting worse.
Jeffrey and Bell were talking, no, arguing, and Bell sounded angry. Jeffrey dashed aft. But wasn't Bell, the XO, supposed to go to the fire? Has Jeffrey's hero-playing gone completely over the top?
Ilse started to panic. We can't get out, not here. Suddenly the deck tilted steeply down, and Challenger's depth began to mount, though her forward speed was low. In terror Ilse turned toward COB and Meltzer. It looked like the ship wasn't sinking, yet—they were taking her deep on purpose.
Ilse glanced at Kathy Milgrom. Amid the lurid shadows cast by emergency battle lanterns, Kathy gave Ilse a determined, reassuring smile through her mask. But Kathy's eyes were worried, very worried. And Kathy was experienced; she'd been in action on Dreadnought since the very start of the war. Diego Garcia was Challenger's first-ever taste of battle. How then must the young men around Ilse feel?
Bell's voice sounded again, tough, completely in control. He was ordering Kathy to find the U-boats. The battle wasn't over yet, but Ilse was amazed how reassured she felt just to hear—and see—Bell so confident, in charge. The bow sphere pinged, tuned to cut through the reverb and roiling ocean.
All right! Two separate clouds of metal fragments, falling through three thousand feet. The U-boats were dead. Their last torpedoes were running off to the south somewhere, no longer a threat.
Several men cheered, but Ilse just sat there numb. What about the fire back aft? What of other damage to the ship? And what about the men on Texas? Challenger might still die too.
Bell ordered flank speed. The ship sped up. Jagged vibrations began, all wrong, and they had to slow down right away.
The phone talker said something was wrong with the propulsion shaft or the pump jet. He relayed more status reports to Bell: The engine room fire had spread to oil that leaked in the bilge. . . . The number of wounded was mounting. . . . They'd destroyed the U-boats, yes, but at what price? Wasn't the rescue mission enough for Jeffrey Fuller? What could he have possibly been thinking?
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER.
In the engineering spaces, Jeffrey surveyed the dripping turbogenerator. The charred casing was off now, the wiring melted and fused. The bulkhead behind it, and the overhead, were blackened and blistered from flame. The lubricant injector section smoldered. The deck nearby was covered with slippery fire-fighting foam, and waterlogged piles of torn heat insulation lay everywhere.
Lieutenant Willey, in his plug-in breather mask, stood next to Jeffrey on the narrow catwalk, leaning on a cane; Willey's left leg was still in a cast from the recent mission to Durban. Emergency lights cut harshly through the gradually clearing smoke. Jeffrey's air pack was heavy against his shoulders and hips—he'd need a new tank soon. He was very hot and sweaty under the firefighter's coat he'd borrowed from an injured man. Just then Lieutenant Bell appeared; he'd gone from breather outlet to outlet, drawing air as he worked aft. "Lieutenant Sessions has the deck and conn." With his foot Bell nudged a foam concentrate can into line with a dozen others, making the pile of empties a little neater.
"Total loss for this piece of equipment," Willey said, looking at the auxiliary generator, one of two that gave power for everything but main propulsion.
"No way to just rewire it?" Jeffrey said. He liked the tall, straight-talking Willey—
Jeffrey had been an engineer on his own department head tour, right before the Naval War College, right after the Pentagon.
Willey shook his head. "Too much damage, sir. . . . We also lost the main desalinators, Captain. We'll have to go to the backup system." The old-fashioned way: boiling.
"Water rationing, then," Bell said. "The crew won't like it."
"No," Willey said. "They never do. It'll be much worse, with an extra hundred people aboard from Texas."
"How badly will this wrecked turbogenerator affect our operations?" Jeffrey asked.
"Not by that much," Willey said. "The port-side unit is fine, and we can help meet a heavy domestic load from the main propulsion turbogenerators." Challenger had allelectric drive. "That should be okay, since we won't be doing flank speed anytime soon."
"How bad is it?" Bell said.
"The propulsion shaft is okay," Willey said. "I think the pump jet rotors are okay, too. That leaves the fixed blades at the back end of the cowling. They're probably bent, from that nuclear near miss."
"It seems all right now," Jeffrey said.
"The vibrations start at thirty-two, thirty-three knots."
"What if we need to make flank speed again?" Bell said. "To outrun another torpedo, once we find the Texas or, God help us, before then?"
"Keep your fingers crossed," Willey said. "The propulsion power's there. The question is, what will the pump-jet do? It might just vibrate a lot, but that would cost some speed. It might break apart if we push it too hard. . . ."
Jeffrey looked down past the edge of the catwalk. He could see crewmen with tools and mops and machinery wipes, beginning to clean up the lower engine
room level. Jeffrey turned to Willey. "We'll make do. Good job fighting the fire. How long to get the air cleaned up?"
"Six to eight hours 'til we can stop using masks, twenty-four 'til it smells good, using air scrubbers alone. We can't exactly snorkel to refresh the atmosphere, can we now?" Jeffrey chuckled. "No, probably not a good idea." Then he realized Willey was being sarcastic. "Keep me posted on the repairs."
Jeffrey and Bell went forward, out of the vast but crowded engine room spaces and through the maneuvering room. The reactor operator and throttleman looked up as they passed. Jeffrey eyed the instrument reading's—nothing wrong there. They squeezed around enlisted men, busy rolling up hoses. They walked into the reactor tunnel, then reached the watertight door. The crewman posted by the hatch lifted the canvas smoke curtain, so they could clamber through more easily.
They came out near the enlisted mess, stepping over gear and supplies mustered there for the Texas mission. Jeffrey waited while Bell drew fresh air from the overhead pipe. Some firefighters rested in an eating booth, recovering from heat stress, heads in their hands, their hair all shiny and curly, soaked with sweat. Assistant corpsmen tended the wounded, ranging from bad sprains or bruises to concussions and deep cuts and burns. The cost of Jeffrey's victory had been very high indeed.
Jeffrey and Bell visited with the men briefly, offering encouragement, thanking them for their efforts. The men seemed listless, tight-lipped, distant, or dazed, several of them in very obvious pain.
The chief corpsman came out of the kitchen area, drying his clean hands with a wad of sterile gauze. He pulled on a fresh pair of surgical gloves. There was fresh blood on his rolled-up sleeves.
A cook-paramedic helped another wounded man stumble from the wardroom toward an open mess booth, where
he lay down flat on the table, his eyes scrunched closed. His head was half concealed in bandages, already leaking more blood, and he breathed from a small oxygen bottle instead of a regular mask.
"Twenty-seven stitches," the corpsman said. "That's a new record for me." He began to examine the next waiting crewman, reading the latest vital signs scribbled on a tag clipped to the patient's jumpsuit, and testing his reflexes.
