by Joe Buff
"It's good to be back," Jeffrey said. "Once they're cleaned up and rested, put Chief Montgomery and his men to work in the torpedo room, to help on damage control and the manual loading…. Messenger!"
"Sir!"
"When he can spare a moment have the acting corpsman issue depth-charge rations for everyone on the raid. I'll take mine in black coffee."
Depth-charge rations were strong spirits.
"I'll have mine in coffee, too," Ilse said.
Jeffrey looked at Ilse: war paint, Band-Aids, torn-up body suit, hair going five ways at once.
"No, Ilse. Take yours straight. I order you to get some sleep." Jeffrey looked around the familiar spaces, the fake wood wainscoting and flameproof linoleum floors. He smelled the smell of the ship, ozone and paint and warm electronics, lubricants and nontoxic cleansers. He saw all the faces he knew. Home.
"We're cut off and under attack, outnumbered ten to one, beyond any possible means of support, and I feel safer already."
They reached the CACC.
Jeffrey stood in the aisle, sizing up the situation. Their course was three one five, northwest, back toward the Sound.
"I have the conn."
"You have the conn," Lieutenant Sessions said. He went back to the nav console.
"This is the captain. I have the conn."
"Aye, aye," the watchstanders said.
Bell relieved one of his officers at Fire Control. Meltzer took the helm. COB was chief of the watch. "Helm, slow to ahead two thirds, make turns for twenty-six knots. Right standard rudder, make your course zero nine zero." Due east.
"Captain?" Bell said. "That's back into the Baltic."
"XO, your timing to open fire was impeccable. Now we can't just run, we have to keep the enemy guessing."
"Sir?"
"I want to launch three brilliant decoys."
"Aye, aye."
"Program one to sound and act like Seawolf, and send it east toward St. Petersburg."
"Seawolf, St. Petersburg, aye."
"Preset one as the Jimmy Carter and aim it toward Gdansk. Let them think we have a major SpecWar op against the occupied Polish coast." The Carter was a Seawolf class, modified for SEAL mission support.
"Understood."
"Make the third one sound and act like Connecticut. Loop it northeast toward Stockholm and Finland, in international waters."
"Connecticut, loop it northeast, aye." Connecticut was Seawolfs sister ship.
"That should confuse everybody for a while. Program all decoys for twenty-five knots, with ping-enhancers to emulate full-size hulls."
"Twenty-five knots, ping-enhancers, aye."
Jeffrey read his weapons status screen again. He needed the offensive power of the ADCAPs in tubes one and three, and the antiaircraft power of the Polyphems in tube seven. The water to the northwest, the only route to possible safety, would just get shallower and shallower, magnetic storm or no.
"Launch all decoys through tube five. We'll let them run on their own, it's okay to cut the wires to reload."
"Understood."
"Then I want to fire three ISLMMs." Improved Submarine Launched Mobile Mines. "Target the mobile mines toward Rostock. That's the closest German naval base threatening our path to the Sound. Use tube five for the ISLMMs."
"Understood."
Jeffrey called up the chart for Rostock harbor, and used his light pen. "Preset the mobile mine warhead pattern to create a barrier due north and one mile past the breakwater, spaced one five zero yards apart, like this. When tube five's empty, reload one more decoy."
Bell began to enter commands on his console, and gave orders to the Combat Systems technicians on the starboard side of the CACC. Deploying all these units would take a while — Challenger's rate of fire was low from old battle damage. Well, Jeffrey told himself, at least back on my nuclear-powered ship, I don't have to worry about running out of fuel like in that German minisub.
"Helm," Jeffrey said, "when the last ISLMM is launched, my intention is to come left to course three one five." Northwest again.
Then comes the hard part. The Sound's so shallow we can only get through if we surface first.
NINETY MINUTES LATER, ON DEUTSCHLAND. IN THE NORWEGIAN TROUGH
Ernst Beck knocked on the captain's stateroom door. "Come!" Beck entered.
"Einzvo," Kurt Eberhard said. He stubbed out a cigarette in irritation. "Still no contact on Challenger?"
"Nothing on our deployable hydrophone lines, sir. But we've received a high-priority message by secure undersea acoustic link. From Trondheim. The message is in captain's code."
"Give it to me."
Beck handed him the diskette. He watched Eberhard load it into his laptop.
"Look away." Beck heard Eberhard punch keys, the CO's personal passwords.
"Jawohl!" Eberhard exclaimed. Yes!
"Sir?"
"We're ordered to the Skagerrak at best possible speed. There's an American sub in the Baltic… that seismic activity we detected. The first shock was a low-yield atom bomb."
"Where, sir?"
"Greifswald."
"Greifswald?… We guessed the wrong target."
Eberhard shot him a contemptuous look, then rose from his desk. "None of that matters now."
Beck bottled down his anger. He followed as Eberhard took the short corridor to the Zentrale.
"We're ordered to find and destroy the enemy ship. Intel says it launched three decoys, acting like the Seawolf boats."
"Which is the real SSN, sir?"
They reached Control. Eberhard spoke distractedly as he studied his screens.
"It's believed to be USS Challenger. They somehow captured one of our minisubs. Our forces tracked it, certainly damaged it, but then it completely disappeared. Our listening nets heard no telltale flow noise of a dorsal load, so the mini must be in a conformal hangar now."
"Challenger's, sir."
"There's no way they can escape!"
Beck nodded — there was one route out of the Baltic, and Deutschland would have plenty of time to cut them off. Coming so soon after the destruction of the two-part Allied convoy — by Deutschland and other Axis submarines — the loss of the U.S. Navy's Challenger would be an unbearable blow to enemy morale and fighting power.
"I have the conn," Eberhard said. "Action stations."
Beck took his position at the IWO console. Maybe this war will end soon after all.
"Copilot," Eberhard said, "sever the hydrophone lines. Pilot, steer due south. Flank speed ahead."
"Jawohl," Jakob Coomans said. Deutschland banked and picked up speed. Eberhard turned to Beck.
"I just hope we find them before some idiot frigate captain gets Fuller with a lucky shot."
CHAPTER 24
ONE HALF HOUR LATER
Jeffrey stood on the ladder in the sail trunk. On his orders, Meltzer held Challenger down with bow and stern planes, fighting COB's intentional positive buoyancy.
"Battle surface," Jeffrey said to the local phone talker — the man was stationed with sound-powered phones in case the intercom system failed. Jeffrey heard compressed air roar as COB blew all main ballast tanks. Meltzer reversed the planes. Challenger breached.
Jeffrey undogged and hurled open the bridge hatch, and clambered into the little exposed cockpit atop the sail. A lookout — the messenger of the watch — came up right behind him. Then came Chief Montgomery, lugging a .50-caliber machine gun. Montgomery mounted the MG on a bracket he had deployed from the rear of the cockpit. Crewmen handed up heavy boxes of ammo.
It was pitch dark outside, and foggy again, and very cold. Behind Jeffrey, both photonic masts rotated, as the CACC prepared to take nav bearings visually, and scan for threats. Challenger was running the Køge Bugt, the shallows leading from the Baltic into the Sound. There were three men in the tiny bridge cockpit, all in bulky parkas over their flak vests, with life jackets over that; they could barely move. The air was clean — chemically, biologically, and radiologically
— so at least they didn't need respirators.
Jeffrey switched his night-vision visors to full-time infrared, because of the fog. He still couldn't see much — fog blocked passive infrared. The CACC, and the electronic support measures room, fed him information through his intercom headphones, under his helmet. He also had a tactical display on a weatherproof laptop he'd brought up; the wires all led below. The lookout used image-intensified and electronically stabilized binoculars to probe toward the horizon and the sky. So did Montgomery — the fog could clear at any moment, leaving them totally exposed.
By inertial navigation they followed the route the German minesweeper and captured mini had taken on the way in. Jeffrey hoped there weren't new mines. The sail-mounted mine avoidance array was useless out of the water, and the one on the chin had been wrecked at Durban. Jeffrey had to save the LMRS. Kathy tried to use the bow sphere to search the water ahead, but it was difficult in these conditions.
"Maneuvering, Bridge," Jeffrey called on the intercom.
"Bridge, Maneuvering, aye. Willey here."
"Enj, I need flank speed."
"Sir, there's still the damage to the pump-jet from that two-twelve's weapon near the Azores. We get vibrations around thirty-two knots submerged."
"Will it get worse if we go faster, Enj, or is it a resonance that'll stop?"
"One way to find out, Captain."
"V'r'well…. Helm, Bridge."
"Bridge, Helm, aye," Meltzer answered on the intercom.
"Ahead flank."
"Ahead flank, aye."
Water began to cream over Challenger's bow. Jeffrey felt it splash as some was deflected up by the streamlined fairing at the base of the sail. He felt the nasty vibrations begin just as Willey predicted, but they subsided as the ship accelerated more, as Jeffrey had hoped. Challenger reached flank speed and ran more smoothly, but flank speed on the surface was much slower than submerged — the unavoidable wave-making wasted power. Jeffrey heard a constant churning rushing as his command cut through the seas, and he felt a frigid wind on his face. The ship rolled badly, the sideways motion exaggerated here atop the sail.
Almost sixty miles to go before we can dive again. German command and control infrastructure would be in disarray with the solar storm, and Challenger had the element of surprise, but sooner or later she'd be found. Once localized, she'd be prosecuted to destruction.
Sixty nautical miles on the surface. An eternity. At least Jeffrey took comfort from his companions shoulder to shoulder.
"Fire Control, Bridge."
"Bridge, Fire Control, aye," Bell answered.
"We need all the firepower we've got. Spool up the gyros, all conventional Tactical Tomahawks in the vertical launch system."
"Bridge, ESM." The Electronic Support Measures room.
"Bridge, aye."
"Captain, we're picking up surface-search radars. WM-twenty-five track-while-scan fire control systems. Assess as Bremen-class frigates."
Jeffrey glanced at his laptop screen. One threat was to the north and one to the south, both about twenty thousand yards away — easy gun and missile range. They were converging on Challenger, and she'd entered the new dredged channel south of Saltholm Island. The narrow channel was for deep-draft shipping, and an SSN on the surface had deep draft — Challenger drew almost forty feet, and was really in a bind. If her stern dug in, due to bottom suction from the pump-jet intake, she'd take more damage there. If the stern was trimmed too light, to solve that problem, the pump-jet might suck air instead. Challenger also had no room to maneuver or evade to left or right; outside the channel the water was ten feet deep.
"ESM, Bridge. Is the return signal a threat?"
"Difficult to tell in these electromagnetic conditions, Captain."
It didn't matter — the frigates were faster than Challenger now, and the one to the north had her decisively cut off.
Jeffrey saw a flash to the north through his goggles: a strong infrared emitter, persisting, getting brighter fast.
"Bridge, ESM. J-band homing radar! Inbound Harpoon."
The burning light in the fog got closer and Jeffrey could hear the Mach .85 antiship missile roar.
"ESM, go active. Try to spoof it!"
The light and noise approached Jeffrey steadily — a Harpoon warhead was deadly against any submarine. It came down to a contest between Challenger's low-observable sail and her electronic countermeasures, and the Harpoon's advanced target seekers and the frigate's counter-countermeasures. Challenger barely won, this time. The missile tore past the sail and Jeffrey felt its sizzling engine exhaust. It veered west, under external targeting control, to avoid the frigate to the south. It self-destructed with a hard blam and a stabbing glare. Jeffrey felt the shock and a wave of blast-furnace heat.
The fog bank cleared, leaving Challenger naked. The sky was overcast here. Jeffrey switched visor modes — the pixel gain control would keep the imagery from flaring, and help preserve his night vision. The blackout of the Swedish and Danish coasts was absolute.
Another missile was launched from the Bremen to the north.
This time the Harpoon came much closer before it missed and self-destructed.
"Bridge, ESM. They're defeating our countermeasures."
That was the problem with electronic warfare. Every time you radiated you gave something away, and the other guy responded. Jeffrey thought hard. He could fire ADCAPs at both frigates, but torpedo attack speed was barely a tenth of a Harpoon's. There was no time to switch the load in a torpedo tube.
"Weps, Bridge. Target an antishipping Tomahawk from the VLS at each of the Bremens, smartly." The vertical launch system was twelve cruise-missile tubes built into Challenger's forward ballast tanks.
"Captain," Bell said, "we've no procedures for using the VLS on the surface."
"Improvise!"
"There's no way to flood the tubes after we fire. If we launch too many weapons we'll be too buoyant to dive!"
"There's plenty of water coming over the bow."
"Aye, aye."
Jeffrey saw two of the heavy pressure-proof VLS doors pop open. He saw another flash, another Harpoon launch. Challenger and the Bremen to the north were closing at almost sixty knots. The Harpoon came at his ship, more like six hundred. There was a blinding flash and a terrible roar. Jeffrey and the others in the cockpit ducked instinctively. There was another flash and roar, and Challenger nosed and bucked even harder. Jeffrey was bathed in unbearable heat, and he choked on noxious fumes. He peeked over the edge of the cockpit. Yellow-white flame receded fore and aft of the ship. The third Harpoon had missed, just barely.
The Tomahawks sought their targets. Before the frigates could zero in and jam the guidance frequencies, both weapons hit. The frigate to the south was ripped by the Tomahawk, whose thousand-pound warhead was much larger than a Harpoon's. The frigate began to sink, blocking the channel, protecting Challenger's rear. But the Bremen to the north, burning now, began to settle too. If it did, Challenger would be trapped. Jeffrey had a clear view of the northern Bremen. The flames lit dense black smoke. The frigate was drifting sideways in the channel. Its bow was already level with the water. Jeffrey ordered Willey to push the reactor hard. It was a race against time, and a fraction of a knot might make the difference. As if to mock Jeffrey, something on the northern Bremen exploded. An on-deck missile pod? Balls of fire spewed.
At last Challenger reached the sinking frigate.
"Helm, Bridge, all stop. Rotate the ship on auxiliary propulsors to true bearing zero four five. Then translate us due north. I want to shove that Bremen out of the way." Meltzer acknowledged.
Sharp concussions went off inside the Bremen. By now anyone still alive had abandoned the hulk. Jeffrey saw men in the water. Montgomery covered them with his machine gun, but they were in no shape to threaten Challenger. Jeffrey and Montgomery and the lookout were forced to go below and shut the hatch, because of the heat and smoke, and the secondary explosions and flying wreckage.
> Jeffrey stepped on his intercom wire by mistake, and it yanked his lip mike askew. " Collision alarm!" he shouted down the ladder to the phone talker. The raucous siren blared.
In the CACC, Jeffrey knew, Bell watched the scene via photonics imagery. Still in the sail trunk, Jeffrey called it up on his laptop, to conn the ship. When they were very close he ordered COB to lower the masts.
Jeffrey was almost thrown from the ladder when Challenger nudged the starboard bow of the Bremen hard. He fixed his mike. He told Meltzer to use more forward auxiliary propulsor thrust, to lever the hulk aside, like a tugboat. Jeffrey heard more blasts through the hull. Shivers and jolts were transmitted from the steel side of the Bremen to the ceramic side of Challenger, right through her anechoic skin. At last the pathway north was clear.
"Ahead flank! Make your course three four five!" Straight up the Sound. Jeffrey climbed through the bridge hatch. There were bits of smoking debris in the cockpit and atop the sail. The Plexiglas windscreen was melted. He peered over the port side. By the glare of the burning frigate he could see Challenger's coatings were scorched. The sonar wide arrays were mounted low on her main hull's flanks, and Jeffrey hoped they weren't badly damaged. Montgomery climbed on top of the sail on his belly, and batted bits of frigate away. He fired a short burst as a test — the machine gun was okay. Jeffrey ordered COB to raise the masts.
Behind him, with one final shuddering detonation, the Bremen settled on the bottom; its superstructure protruded above the waves, still burning fiercely. The underwater blast caused several mines in the shallows to detonate sympathetically. Jeffrey doubted many German sailors in the water survived.
Challenger cleared another fog bank. She was free of the confining dredged channel, but the water was still so shallow she had to stay on the east side of the Sound, the Swedish side. The icy wind and freezing salt spray bit Jeffrey's face. Over his right shoulder Jeffrey saw another flash, quick and sharp: a naval defense gun on the Swedish coast. The shell landed a hundred yards off Challenger's bow, directly ahead of the ship. The bridge crew ducked as water fountained. Razor-sharp shell splinters pelted the sail.
