'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?
