Crush Depth cjf-3

by Joe Buff

  Wilson’s face grew stern. “I know you’re upset, about your mother and now Miss Reebeck. But this is the wrong time and place to start getting touchy. And to answer your question, no, it’s not a reference to anything. You just got two goddamn Navy Crosses, a promotion in rank, and a ship.”

  “Yes, sir…. What other vessels are in the battle group?”

  “Several Royal Australian Navy diesel submarines. I don’t know how many yet. Maybe four.”

  “Not Collins boats?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “But they’re death traps! They’re noisy, they can’t stay down long, their crush depth is barely a tenth of ours, and they’re slow!”

  “This isn’t my decision, Captain. If Voortrekker does reach the Pacific, and gets loose in those tens of millions of square miles of very deep water…”

  “Can’t we work with our own fast-attacks?”

  “The ones that haven’t been sunk or badly damaged are stretched much too thin as it is. They’re busy escorting the remaining carriers and our boomers, protecting the North and South Atlantic convoys, conducting special ops or spying against the Axis or Russia or China, not to mention keeping an eye on Third World rogues that might act up. It takes time to rejuggle deployments and refits. You know how it is. We’ll get support, but not right away.”

  “I get the picture, sir.”

  “Challenger is by far the best platform to prosecute Voortrekker. You can handle Challenger in combat better than anyone, including me. You’ve faced Voortrekker before, and you did complete your assigned mission then.”

  “Understood.”

  “This is your chance for a rematch with ter Horst. Do it in Ilse Reebeck’s memory.”

  Jeffrey was too worn out and beat up to feel much emotion at this point. He knew the real pain would come later.

  Wilson rubbed his temples. Jeffrey suspected he was having another headache, and tried to look sympathetic.

  Wilson glared at him. “Go down to your ship. We have to get to the other side of the planet, pronto.”

  Jeffrey turned to leave the cubicle. He drew some comfort that Wilson was as much a hard-ass as ever. Wilson seemed to be reminding him, none too subtly, that life simply had to go on.

  “Oh,” Wilson called after him. “One other thing.”

  “Commodore?”

  “If you expect to make rear admiral, you’d better come up with something more articulate than ‘I don’t know what to say’ when someone hands you a medal or a promotion or a command.”

  TEN

  Thirty-six hours later

  Jeffrey woke up early, after barely four hours’ sleep. The cot in the dormitory zone of the underground pens was uncomfortable. But with all the noise inside Challenger, from the contractors working frantically there, sleep on the ship was impossible.

  Jeffrey put both feet on the floor, stretched to get the kinks out of his back, and it hit him. The handshakes and smiles, the flashbulbs, all the grand but hurried ceremonies of change of command and the medals, counted for little compared to the sense of loss that assaulted Jeffrey’s mind as he stood up. Ilse Reebeck was dead. All their shared experiences during battle, all their passionate times in more recent nights, were as nothing now, wiped away.

  Where could the captain of a U.S. Navy warship find the time or privacy to mourn? His cabin on Challenger was being used as a blueprint room by repair crews. He slept instead on a cot in a big room full of cots, hearing other people snore.

  Jeffrey dressed as quietly as he could in the dark, so as not to wake the strangers slumbering near him. Then the other thing hit him, and he felt his insides sink even more.

  His mother had come through surgery all right. But there were spots on the whole-body scan they’d done at Sloan-Kettering. Abnormalities on his mother’s pancreas and liver. The doctors said the spots might just be artifacts of the imaging process itself. They might not be tumors at all, don’t worry yet, they needed to run more tests. Jeffrey pictured what his mother might become: a wraith lying in a hospice bed, tubes in her arms, skin gray, body shrunken, life force draining away. He felt more grief and gnawing concern.

  He made himself bottle it up. He shook his head to clear his thoughts, to compose himself for his hectic first full day as a nuclear submarine’s commanding officer.

  Jeffrey looked at his watch. There was just enough time to take a leak and grab a simple breakfast. A shower would need to wait. He’d scheduled a meeting very soon with his navigator and sonar officer.

  Jeffrey sighed. He had so, so much work to do.

  At least work eased the pain. Jeffrey knew the next time he’d sleep wouldn’t be till Challenger was under way at sea.

  Jeffrey sat in the little cubicle that was his temporary office. He nursed his third cup of coffee of the morning. The first to arrive was his navigator, with a laptop under one arm.

  Lieutenant Richard Sessions had started as Challenger’s sonar officer, under Captain Wilson, even before Jeffrey first joined the ship as XO. Because of other casualties at the same time Wilson was wounded, Jeffrey made Sessions the acting navigator. Later this move up, to department head, was formalized.

  Sessions was in his mid-twenties, earnest and capable. He came from a small town in Nebraska. He was a tad overweight, the sort of person whose clothes and hair always seemed a little sloppy no matter what he did. That might not go over well in the military, but Jeffrey liked and respected Sessions. One thing the lieutenant’s work never was was sloppy, and in combat he kept his cool well. At the awards ceremony yesterday, when Jeffrey got his double Navy Cross, Sessions received a Bronze Star.

  Sessions put his laptop on Jeffrey’s desk, plugged it in, and turned it on. Then Challenger’s sonar officer scurried into the cubicle, Lieutenant Kathy Milgrom of the Royal Navy. She’d been transferred from the crew of the U.K.’s ceramic-hulled nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnought, after Challenger’s mission to South Africa. Before the war, the Royal Navy had begun to experiment with women on fast-attack crews. Kathy came to Challenger as an exchange officer, highly recommended. To some — but not all — higher-ups her presence was controversial. She fit in very well on the ship, and Jeffrey found her outstanding at her job.

  Kathy was born in Liverpool; her accent was distinctive. Her family had been providing men — and more recently women — to the Royal Navy for generations. Kathy wore special submariner eyeglasses, with narrow frames to fit under an emergency air-breather mask. When she’d first joined Challenger, before the mission to Germany, she’d been plump. Two months later the love handles were gone. She was as businesslike as ever.

  Kathy and Sessions took seats. There was a moment of mutual awkwardness. This was the first time they were talking serious matters since Jeffrey had formally assumed command. Having Jeffrey as acting captain in a crisis was one thing, but reporting to him as their official, ongoing commanding officer was new for all three of them.

  Jeffrey hadn’t anticipated this, the need to reorient relationships and subtly alter mind-sets. He decided immediately he’d continue as before. His style with his officers was collegial and confiding. If it worked in the heat of action, it would work again now. Jeffrey maintained discipline by example, by conspicuous dedication to his work, and through his contagious love of navy tradition and pomp. He knew his combat record spoke for itself.

  “I’m sorry about Miss Reebeck,” Sessions said.

  Jeffrey nodded. “Thank you.”

  Kathy nodded too, and had to wipe back a tear. Then Jeffrey put it together: Kathy and Ilse had been roommates, and fast friends, on the ship. Kathy must miss her terribly.

  It all came roaring back to Jeffrey, the sense of loss that was still sinking in, and he couldn’t keep his eyes from moistening. He muttered to himself and reached for his handkerchief. Kathy pulled out a tissue. Then tears started in earnest. Sessions couldn’t hold back either. The three of them let themselves cry. Mourning was a team effort, Jeffrey knew. Families had to mourn as a unit, t
ogether.

  My crew is a family too. So be it. Let us mourn.

  In a little while everyone felt better, and also felt bound closer together.

  “All right, folks,” Jeffrey said. Sessions and Kathy drew their chairs closer to his desk. Jeffrey used the laptop to bring up a map of the world.

  “We have a problem,” Jeffrey said. “We need to get from the East Coast of the U.S. all the way to the South Pacific quickly. We also need to be entirely covert about it, to make the Axis keep thinking that Challenger’s still caught in dry dock. I only see two ways to head, and I don’t like either one of ’em.”

  “Go north or go south for starts, sir,” Sessions said. “That’s the main question, isn’t it?”

  “North means transiting under the ice cap, in the dead of winter. Very few areas of thin ice, so we’d be out of touch and possibly trapped. Russian attack subs lurking, protecting some of their boomers. Anything could happen, including an incident that triggers all-out World War Three.”

  Kathy Milgrom pointed to the spot on the map where Alaska and Siberia almost touched. “If we went north we’d have no choice but to come out here, Captain. The Bering Strait. Quite a tight choke point, right past Russian hydrophone grids. The chance of our being undetected is nil, I should say, and then the Russians might alert the Boers.”

  “You think they’d do that?” Sessions said.

  “I wouldn’t put it past them,” Jeffrey said. “It’s a very short step from selling arms to passing intelligence.”

  “Concur with that, sir,” Sessions said.

  “The southern route isn’t much better,” Jeffrey said. “In that direction, the choke point that really worries me is the Drake Passage.” That was the gap between the southern tip of Argentina — Tierra del Fuego — and the northern tip of the jutting Antarctic Peninsula. “Half the neutral countries in South America are teetering on the fence, and Argentina is heavily rumored to favor the Axis side.”

  “Agreed, Captain,” Kathy said. “Their navy may be cooperating with the Germans or Boers already, for all we know.”

  “Which route does Commodore Wilson want us to take?” Sessions asked.

  “He hasn’t decided yet, so we need to sketch out navigation and sonar counterdetection plans for both routes.”

  “There are thousands and thousands of miles to cross, Captain, whichever route we take,” Sessions said.

  “It’s going to be very difficult to move fast yet remain invisible ourselves,” Kathy added.

  “That’s the bind we’re in, folks. Exactly. There’s nothing we can do about it. There’s another factor too, which makes the bind much worse: we’ll be sailing with half our torpedo tubes sealed off. It’s one penalty we pay for getting under way so quickly.”

  “There’s nothing the yard workers can manage?” Sessions asked. “Jury-rig something so we have our full rate of fire?”

  Jeffrey shook his head. “The battle damage was too serious. Four tubes is all we get.”

  Kathy and Sessions looked grim.

  “At least we’ll have our full complement of weapons,” Jeffrey told them. More than fifty in Challenger’s huge torpedo room, plus twelve cruise missiles in her separate vertical launch array.

  “Very well,” Jeffrey said. “Thanks. Get back to me when you have some basics worked out.”

  The two lieutenants took their laptops and their notes, and went off to find an unoccupied worktable somewhere. Jeffrey rose to go down to his ship. He had to check on the progress of the priority repairs. He needed to verify a million details: of equipment tests, of safety checks, of loading weapons and spare parts and food, of interfacing with the inspectors from Naval Reactors, of starting the cleanup of all the construction work so the ship would be ready for sea. There was no hope at all of time for a proper shakedown cruise, and this made Jeffrey nervous. There was hardly time to put a charge into Challenger’s refurbished battery banks, and this made Jeffrey very nervous indeed.

  “Sir!” a familiar voice called.

  Jeffrey turned. It was his executive officer, Lieutenant Jackson Jefferson Bell. He was back a bit earlier then expected, from leave with his in-laws in Milwaukee. The two men shook hands warmly.

  “How’s the baby?” Jeffrey said. Bell’s wife had just given birth to their first, a son, and mother and child were staying with her parents.

  “Terrific.” Bell grinned. “I brought pictures.”

  Jeffrey couldn’t help smiling. “You look good,” he told Bell. “Fatherhood suits you.”

  Bell did a double take when he saw Jeffrey’s collar tabs. He reached to shake Jeffrey’s hand again. Then Jeffrey smiled.

  “I should congratulate you, Lieutenant Commander Bell.”

  “What?”

  “Yesterday was a big day.” Jeffrey filled Bell in on all the news, including Bell’s promotion in rank and award of two Silver Stars, Bell’s formal assignment as XO of Challenger, and the loss of Ilse Reebeck. The whole thing was bittersweet, but at least Bell was back. The two men were very close; Bell had done well as acting XO in mortal combat, twice. More to the point, as was his proper job now as official executive officer, Bell could help his captain — Jeffrey — with some of those final details of getting Challenger fit for battle in record time.

  Most important of all, Bell could size up the twenty-five new crewmen, just assigned — all fresh trainees, starting the months of hard work needed to qualify on the boat and earn their dolphins. They were meant to replace an equal number of seasoned hands who’d been transferred off the ship when she went into dry dock. Twenty-five was a lot; it made Jeffrey fret. One entire fifth of his crew, when Challenger sailed in harm’s way, would be facing enemy fire for the first time in their lives. Some of them didn’t know yet which way to turn a cutoff valve to stop bad flooding, or even which end of the boat was up.

  ELEVEN

  Very early the next morning, on the Thames River, New London, Connecticut

  Jeffrey stood in the open bridge cockpit atop Challenger’s sail — the conning tower. He was crammed between the phone talker and the officer of the deck. In spite of his parka, Jeffrey shivered in the heavy, freezing sleet and freakish wintertime hail. At least the wind was from behind him and the ship, from upriver. It was in the wee hours of the night. The total dark and terrible visibility were exactly what he and Commodore Wilson wanted. They were already five hours behind schedule, just now getting out of the pens. Fortunately this unexpected squall, with the perfect concealment it gave, took some of the edge off Wilson’s displeasure at Jeffrey’s delay.

  Challenger’s reactor was shut down, to suppress her infrared signature. As a consequence, the ship had no propulsion power. She was being pulled behind a big oil barge, itself pulled by a powerful civilian tugboat. The lash-up began to hurry down the river in the blinding squall.

  The unladen, high-riding barge was there to mask Challenger’s already-stealthy radar cross section from prying enemy eyes. The barge also shielded Challenger from making telltale echoes off the tugboat’s busy navigation radar, echoes which a hostile passive radar receiver might hear. To further avoid any witnesses, the Interstate 95 bridge was closed by state police — supposedly because of icing due to the squall. The railroad drawbridge was up, but it was normally kept open until just before a train came.

  Jeffrey knew the path ahead had been swept for enemy mines, but such sweeps were made regularly in any case. He hoped that Challenger’s departure would go totally unnoticed.

  Because of the dangers of this untried maneuver, Jeffrey himself had the conn. Now and then the wind shifted, and caught the sail, and Challenger rolled. Jeffrey would give helm orders over the intercom — the phone talker was there as backup, in case the intercom failed. Even without propulsion power, Jeffrey needed the rudder constantly to keep the submarine lined up behind the barge.

  Challenger’s helmsman was not the ship’s regular battle stations helmsman, Lieutenant (j.g.) David Meltzer. Meltzer was one of eight experie
nced men on leave who, because of travel delays nationwide and Wilson’s emergency order to sail, hadn’t made it back to the ship. Jeffrey was thus working even more shorthanded than he’d expected, and on any submarine eight missing fully qualified crewmen was a lot. Instead, Challenger brought a dozen civilian contractors along, needed to keep working away on critical repairs and upgrades. They’d all eagerly volunteered, in spite of their draft exemptions, even knowing they might never return from this cruise.

  Jeffrey hoped his stand-in helmsman, a raw ensign, would do an effective job. Without her own propulsion power, Challenger had no way to stop quickly. She might ram the barge if something went wrong. If that happened, the bow cap and the sonar dome would be smashed, and the mission would end before it began. It was the railroad drawbridge that really worried Jeffrey. The gap there was infamously tight.

  Jeffrey held his breath as the soaring I-95 bridge went by overhead, unseen in the pitch-dark and bad weather. Jeffrey knew that broken concrete and twisted rebars dangled somewhere up there high above, damage from the cruise missile raid before Christmas that was still undergoing repair. People feared the whole bridge might come down, because of the constant heavy trucking that used the only two of the original six lanes still open. I-95 was a vital logistics artery for the whole Northeast. If the bridge did collapse — maybe because of wind stress from this storm — that artery would be cut. The wreckage, in the shallow riverbed, would also block the only way from the New London base to the sea.

  The I-95 bridge, or debris from it, didn’t fall. Jeffrey wiped the lenses of his night-vision goggles again. The constant sleet buildup made them almost useless. Jeffrey realized he couldn’t count on much help from his lookouts either. They stood behind him, in their safety harnesses, on the roof of the sail. They peered intently into the murk all around, but Jeffrey knew no night-vision gear could penetrate such thick weather.

  The sleet turned into hail the size of lima beans. The hail beat against Jeffrey’s shoulders and his parka hood. It made a drumming, spattering sound against Challenger’s hull and the barge dead ahead. Sharp, cold fragments of hail punished Jeffrey’s face. He and the phone talker and the officer of the deck huddled closer together for warmth and protection. The hail went through the grating on which they stood, down through the open hatches of the bridge trunk, and into a corridor inside the hull. Hail or worse getting into the ship just had to be put up with: It was a navy safety regulation to always keep these two hatches open when the bridge was manned.