Crush Depth cjf-3

by Joe Buff

  On Voortrekker's minisub

  Images of bullets piercing bodies plagued Van Gelder's mind. His arms and legs and back were sore from running and cIlmbing, from rappelling down a cliff face into the water, and from swimming into the minisub wearing Draeger gear. Even after he had toweled off and changed clothes, his hair was damp and his skin itched from dried sea salt.

  He sat wearily in the mini's passenger compartment; he could tell from the way the Ilttle vessel handled that it was being driven at flank speed. He was surrounded by Kampfschwimmer all extremely pleased with themselves despite their losses on the island. They spoke to each other nonstop in low voices, reIlving highIlghts of the action, enjoying a postcombat high.

  Van Gelder coughed. His tongue and throat still tasted of burning rubber and flesh, and his mouth was coated with acrid dust.

  "Try this:' Commander Bauer said. He held out a thermos bottle.

  "What is it?"

  "Just what you need, my friend?' Bauer drank, then smacked his lips with obvious relish and proffered the thermos again.

  Van Gelder took a taste. He thought drinking right from the bottle was crude, but everyone else was doing it. The thermos held hot coffee strongly laced with schnapps. It cleared his throat quite nicely and went smoothly into his gut. He let the heat of the coffee, and the different heat of the alcohol, spread to his limbs. It reduced his fatigue and made him feel a little better.

  Bauer made eye contact. "You did a good job back there:' Van Gelder glowered at him.

  Bauer shrugged. "I couldn't tell you everything in advance, for security. Your reactions on the spot were perfectly normal."

  Van Gelder just nodded, indifferent, feeling utterly defeated.

  "Don't be so down on yourself. You think any of us enjoy endangering women and children? War is a brutal business. We're soldiers, so we fight."

  Van Gelder stared into space.

  Bauer touched his shoulder. "You've never been in a land battle before, have you?"

  Van Gelder had to clear his throat. "No:'

  "It's different than you're used to, with all your fancy gadgets in the control room, isn't it?"

  "Yes."

  "You see whom you fight with, close up. You watch friends and enemies die. It should disturb a man of good character… But afterward, the feeIlngs of comradeship and achievement make us glow inside better than schnapps. Even our grief for the fallen is sweet as well as bitter, for they have done their duty and gone ro a warrior's Valhalla."

  "You left a man behind aIlve:'

  "My chief. Taken prisoner, yes. It couldn't be helped. He's a decent man. Don't worry, he Won't talk."

  Van Gelder knew that tears were coming. He held his head in his hands. To think of what he'd helped to do, and how he'd failed to stop it, and now the utter outrageousness of everything Bauer was saying…

  Still Bauer tried to comfort him good-naturedly. The German knelt in the aisle and reached and held Van Gelder in his arms. "This sort of emotional crash is not uncommon.

  Each of us has been through it at one time or another, in our own personal way." Bauer asked his men for confirmation. Van Gelder heard them agree.

  Bauer gently pulled Van Gelder's hands from his face. "I anticipated your stubbornness about the rules of engagement all along. It's the reason you were sent, remember. Now the BerIln-Boer Axis can move forward with Truth on our side. Come, let us spend a moment in worship together?'

  Bauer led his men, as in hushed tones they began to hum an old Germanic battle hymn.

  It was the last thing Van Gelder needed.

  They sent me just so they could say a special ROE man was there. They involved me in a major war crime, not really to justify the crime, but to give the outward appearance of justification. By implicating me they also made me a captive tool for further Axis exploitation… and they'll name me as a scapegoat to the Allies if we ever all get caught.

  Bauer convinced Van Gelder to take another drink from the thermos. Van Gelder swallowed, then wiped his face. In. the control compartment, the pilot altered course.

  The force of the turn showed Van Gelder they still hurried home to Voortrekker at top speed.

  "I mean what I said," Bauer told him. "That you did a good job, for a beginner. If you hadn't shown some moral qualms, I wouldn't trust you now. But you're no beginner anymore. We want to make you feel one of us, an honorary Kampfschwimmer."

  Each of Bauer's men shook Van Gelder's hand, and one of them tousled his hair. The enlisted Kampfschwimmer all sat down again.

  "You and I need a good working relationship," Bauer murmured privately in Van Gelder' s ear — insisrently, almost threateningly. "Who knows when we might have more such keen adventures?"

  Van Gelder said nothing.

  "Besides;' Bauer added in a normal voice, "as his number one you bring important news ter Horst will welcome, Challenger's proximity, to stir your captain's battle lust."

  On Challenger's minisub

  Jeffrey stood uncomfortably, squeezed in bebind Harrison as the younger man piloted the minisub. The enlisted SEAL had the copilot's seat. The air in the control compartment was ripe, with Jeffrey and Harrison stinking of burnr cordite and stale sweat.

  The mini came through the underwater safe corridor, past the small minefield protecting Owenga.

  "Pilot," Jeffrey ordered, "ahead flank." They were still too far away to call Challenger using the mini's covert acoustic Ilnk.

  Harrison acknowledged and worked his throttle. The battery-powered mini picked up speed — to all of sixteen knots.

  Jeffrey was really annoyed with himself. He'd misread the entire situation during a seesaw firefight with Kampfschwimmer. Now, he was stuck in a race against Voortrekker's minisub, somewhere out there in the depths. The enemy had a head start, and the German mini was faster, and the first to reach their mother ship could influence the outcome of the war.

  "Copilot, show me a chart of this broad area."

  The copilot worked his keyboard. A digital map popped on a screen. Jeffrey studied the bottom terrain with a seasoned, professional eye. He assembled what few facts he knew.

  The whole Chatham Rise — a ridge of shallow water stretching west from Chatham Island all the way to the New Zealand coast-was heavily mined against enemy subs.

  The AustraIlan diesels, and Challenger, were arrayed in a Ilne on the opposite side of the island, stretching more than a hundred miles to the east.

  Mentally, Jeffrey drew a straight line on the chart: along the minefield on the Chatham Rise, through Chatham Island itself, and east through the positions of Commodore Wilson's bartle group. Voortrekker had to be south of that line.

  South of Chatham Rise was the Bounty Trough, shaped like a giant amphitheater in the sea floor, facing east, in water ten thousand feet deep.

  South of the farthest, eastern flank of Wilson's battle group was a lengthy range of sea mounts, marching toward Antarctica. The sea mounts jutted from an abyssal plain that went down well past fifteen thousand feet.

  Given the maximum cruising range of a German minisub, Voortrekker had to be somewhere between the grandstand of the Bounty Trough and the near side of the sea mounts.

  To himself, as he began to plan the hunt and the combat, Jeffrey shook his head. There was an immense arena to cover, and the tactical uncertainties were huge.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Ninety minutes later, on Challenger

  Jeffrey left the minisub nestled in Challenger's in-hull hangar space. He climbed down the docking trunk and came out in Challenger proper, near the enlisted mess. Commodore Wilson stood there waiting for him.

  Wilson looked stern and intense. "So Voortrekker beat the SOSUS, and they're somewhere right in the neighborhood, and their combat swimmers left a big bomb?'

  Jeffrey nodded. That sure sums it up.

  "Your head's bleeding:' Wilson said.

  Jeffrey touched his forehead near the hairIlne. His fmgers came away with blood. A nasty gash he'd received in the battle
with the Kampfschwimmer had opened up as he used the ladder down the docking trunk. The gauze he'd changed in the mini had soaked through again and was dripping. He dabbed at it with his handkerchief.

  Wilson turned and started briskly for the control room. Jeffrey ordered Harrison to go lie down for some rest, then rushed to catch up with the commodore.

  "How did you know, sir? And how did you know to come get us?" To Jeffrey's pleasant surprise, Challenger had left her hiding place and rendezvoused with the mini much nearer the island than Jeffrey expected — right after that, Challenger turned back east and sped up to her top quiet speed, twenty-six knots.

  "I'd ordered one of the Collins boats to keep trailing its floating wire antenna. Lieutenant Clayton reached Pearl Harbor like you told him, then the Collins heard from CINCPACFLT." By radio. "The Collins relayed on to me by covert acoustics."

  CINCPACFLT was the acronym for Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, the operational boss of Pacific Ocean naval forces — in conversation pronounced "Sink Pack Fleet."

  Jeffrey and Wilson took narrow, winding corridors, and went up steep ladders. They passed damage-control parties mustered at key points in the ship; some men wore firefighting gear. The men, including the newest guys, seemed confident and chipper and prepared. One senior chief, always irrepressible and outspoken, said they looked forward to the rematch with Challenger's pesky foe. Jeffrey was proud of them all.

  Jeffrey and Wilson reached the control room. Jeffrey felt good to be back. Now that he was on Challenger; he at least could do something. He tried not to think about Ilse and the SEALS, left stranded on the island because of military necessity — such were the burdens of command.

  Lieutenant Commander Bell, Jeffrey's trusty executive officer, had the conn. COB and David Meltzer manned the ship-control station. Kathy Milgrom led the sonar chief and his men. As usual Jeffrey thought Kathy looked owlish, but she was alert and sharp — he reminded himself that owls were birds of prey who hunted by night. Lieutenant Sessions stood at the digital-navigation table with his own department's chief and their enlisted techs. Sessions was calm and earnest, as always. Jeffrey exchanged quick greetings with the crew.

  "You're bleeding," Bell said as he shook Jeffrey's hand. Bell told the messenger to summon the medical corpsman. Bell was mentally charged up from taking command of the ship in such a crisis, if only till Jeffrey was back. Bell crackled with vital energy that was infectious — his whole head almost seemed to glow. Jeffrey drew comfort from Bell' s steady presence at his side, and couldn't help smiIlng.

  Smiling made Jeffrey's face hurt. The old wound in his left thigh ached and throbbed; it usually did when he was tired and under pressure.

  "I need a shower and a change of clothes," Jeffrey said to the control room at large, apologetically. He knew he smelled awful, and must look frightful too. Everyone around him was so neat and clean.

  "Later," Wilson said. "CINCPACFLT wants us immediately, live on voice."

  `"The seas are too rough, Commodore. We can't transmit like this on our two-way floating wire:'

  "Use your satellite dish:'

  "We'd need to come to periscope depth. An Axis spy bird might notice. With an enemy sub so near.. "

  "We don't have a choice. If we're lucky, Voortrekker's so deep she's out of touch anyway."

  To himself, Jeffrey shrugged. This was taking a serious risk. It's up to Wilson and CINCPACFLT — a four-star admiral not me.

  Jeffrey told Bell to bring the ship to periscope depth. Bell relayed orders to Meltzer and COB. The deck nosed up, and Challenger slowed. Jeffrey could sense the tension around him increase by the minure: the ship was exposing herself, surrendering stealth to achieve two-way communications connectivity.

  Jeffrey felt and saw blood drip from his head to the front of his shirt. Head wounds always bleed a lot, but I can feel my blood pressure rising a point as Challenger rises each foot. Bell gave Jeffrey a doubtful look, concerned both for his captain and for the safety of their mission and the ship. The control-room crew shifted nervously in their seats and studied their glowing screens, apprebensively searching for threats.

  Jeffrey began getting lightheaded, and sat down at the command console. The corpsman arrived with a medical kit. "That needs stitches, sir."

  "Do it, here."

  "What was it, sir? Shrapnel cut? Rock fragment?" "I can't remember."

  The corpsman gave Jeffrey a local painkiller shot in his scalp, then an antibiotic in his arm, and opened a suture pack. He cleaned the wound and put in three stitches. Even though the skin grew numb, Jeffrey could feel it being tugged; it unnerved him to hear the sounds the needle and thread made as they pierced his scalp and then were pulled through.

  As rhe ship reached periscope depth, she began to roll because of the strong seas topside. The corpsman hurried to tie off the fmal suture. It hurt despite the painkiller when another steep roll hit — the corpsman went one way and Jeffrey the other as they braced themselves.

  At last the corpsman was done. Jeffrey thanked him and he left. At battle stations the corpsman's place was below, in his cubicle near the wardroom. The wardroom table would double as his operating theater if need be.

  Jeffrey and Wilson pur on headsets so they could conference-call with Pearl Harbor; Bell helped Jeffrey so he wouldn't hit his newly sewn-up cut. Jeffrey asked the messenger to bring him a mug of hot coffee with plenty of sugar. Jeffrey drank it down.

  When the communications mast was raised at periscope depth, the radio room established contact with Pearl Harbor. Reception was scratchy, and came and went, because the antenna kept getting dunked.

  CINCPACFLT personally came on the line. Jeffrey instinctively sat up straight. He was talking to one of the navy's most senior officers.

  A half hour latet, on Chatham Island

  Ilse stepped out of the modest building that housed Waitangi's town hall. She needed a break from the tension and frenzy in Constable Henga's command post. She was losing her voice from endless talking and shouting. It seemed like she'd spent hours on the phone nonstop, helping call islanders and also answering questions in person, making sure everyone knew what to do. The hardest part was keeping up the front, to make ir sound like the evacuation plan had a purpose.

  For a respite Ilse looked out to sea, to the west. Waitangi Bay sparkled at her mockingly in the golden midafternoon sun. The bay was tossed by chop and whitecaps. The growing wind had backed, from out of the southwest now, and Point Weeding sheltered the bay from the worst of the surf. But out beyond Waitangi Bay were the waters of the much larger Petra Bay, which filled the whole left side of the island's I-shaped coastline.

  The waves in Petra Bay were very large. Ilse knew big sea swells were always the product of a distant major weather system, and in this case the source was the tropical storm now blasting New Zealand.

  Repeated calls to mainland authorities, eight hundred kilometers away, only confirmed what Henga and Ilse and Clayton already knew. Those planes large enough to possibly fly in the storm had no way to land on the island — and even if by some miracle they could, the runway was much too short for them to ever take off again. HeIlcopters couldn't take off at all, as major cities like Wellington and Christchurch were pummeled by blinding rain and winds of sixty knots. They'd tried, but when the third helicopter in a row crashed and exploded, overburdened with barely enough fuel for the long round trip, the government called off further efforts. Ilse knew good men and women had been killed in the attempt.

  Ilse turned in the other direction. Her heart sank as once more she saw conditions on the only road leading north toward the airstrip, an airstrip that had no planes. The narrow road was jammed by the occupants of the whole southern half of the island, and the sights and sounds of their useless exodus were heartrending. Rattletrap cars and trucks carried entire families and all the possessions they could move on such short notice.

  Axles squeaked as draft hones pulled overloaded farm carts, piled high with trunks and bursting suitc
ases and heirloom furniture, with their owners often on foot. Dogs of every size and breed barked, and a few had broken loose and were chased by their owners.

  Other people rode horses, and the horses sensed the human panic. They whinnied, and sometimes reared, and threatened to throw their riders to the ground.

  The youngest children seemed more bewildered than scared, though many infants — like the hones — felt the panic and cried. Older children's reactions varied from fear to shock to resolve to traumatic denial. Their parents were often in no better shape. Ilse thought the scene could have come from any one of the major wars or disasters of the past century. These people were refugees. The problem was this time the refugees had nowhere to go.

  Ilse looked southeast. Above the land in the distance hung a cloud of dense black smoke.

  The wildfires, started by the battle with the Kampfschwimmer, were spreading farther and farther. Owenga was in danger of being cut off.

  Ilse looked due south. Somewhere there, on the higher ground, sat the infernal device left by the Axis.

  Ilse was almost overwhelmed by everything. She went back inside.

  Constable Henga corralled her at once. He looked harried and weary.

  "The phone lines to Owenga just went out. The last I heard the road's been cut, by the fire and smoke and maddened sheep. We're taking people off by fishing boat instead, and bringing them through the lagoon on the downwind side of the island. The airsrrip's on a spit of land. The boats can drop them there:'

  "Still no news of an airIlft?" Ilse asked.

  "No. Nothing's changed."

  "What do you want me to do?'

  "Get to the airstrip, and try to help keep people calm!' "But what's the point?" she said. "

  You heard Lieutenant

  Clayton. He doesn't even know if that timer readout on the bomb is telling the truth. It could go off any minute?' "For God's sake, don't tell anyone that!"