which everyone had their own way of doing, their 'fist.' Jeffrey could tell this call was from his acting XO, Lieutenant Bell, who this watch was officer of the deck.
Jeffrey gulped the last of his iced tea, wiped his lips with a white cloth napkin, then lifted the handset. 'Captain.'
'Sir,' Bell said, 'Sonar just picked up a mechanical transient. Submerged, left of the bearing to the convoy, and much closer to Challenger.'
Closer? Jeffrey's heart quickened. 'What's Milgrom's best guess of the range?'
'Maybe fifty thousand yards.' Twenty-five nautical miles. Hmmm… 'What's her assessment?'
'She thinks it was an underwater probe and drogue connecting, trying to hide in the reverb from that latest detonation.'
'Some kind of undersea replenishment,' Jeffrey said. 'Probably pulled back for a breather from the running fight northeast of us.'
'Yes, sir. Milgrom says she heard something like it once before, on Dreadnought, but that time the targets evaded. It's definitely Axis.'
Good. That's why Kathy was here, a bit of cross-pollination between American and Royal Navy ceramic-hulled submarine crews. Jeffrey stood up decisively, from the sacrosanct captain's place at the head of the wardroom table. Captain Wilson's place.
'I'll be right there, XO. Rig for ultraquiet and deep submergence. Sound silent general quarters, man battle stations antisubmarine.'
Jeffrey quickly piled the Texas work papers onto the sideboard. He ducked into the pantry to bus his dirty dishes.
Lying loose they might become dangerous projectiles — and the wardroom doubled as Challenger's operating theater. On the way, for the umpteenth time, he glanced at the wardroom data repeaters. The ship was approaching latitude 29°28? north. Jeffrey was glad he hadn't opened that 'RECURVE ARBOR' courier envelope. Some kind of secret orders? Which base to head for in the U.S.? Updated recognition codes for when they reached home waters?
Well, taking the fine print literally, he hadn't crossed 30 north yet — and there might be something in the package to limit his tactical discretion. For him, all the lives on the convoy — and the vital cargoes they carried — had to outweigh a single stranded crew on an already sunken submarine… didn't they?
Besides, here was a chance for Jeffrey's first independent kill. He was half afraid he wouldn't see combat before the East Coast and dry dock. Once hard and demanding Captain Wilson recovered, Jeffrey would revert to XO, taking orders in battle, not giving them.
Jeffrey climbed the ladder up one deck. He strode to the command workstation in the center of the CACC.
It occurred to Jeffrey that it hadn't occurred to him to be nervous making his first deliberate attack as acting captain, a big step in any naval officer's career. But as he'd discovered as a much younger lieutenant (j.g.), badly wounded on a black op in Iraq in '96, he didn't mind dying half so much as he minded being bored. The intense comradeship of people being shot at dispelled his gnawing sense of inner emptiness. The difference this time, though, was Jeffrey was almost forty, with everything that implied. And the burden of command was not one ounce diminished since his first taste of enemy fire; the unforgiving trade-offs of life-versus-life, that soul-wrenching calculus of war, only got harder, more wearing with age. He had never felt so lonely as in the past day, with no one, no one, to relieve the ultimate pressures of his responsibility as captain, or to share the blame in case he failed.
'Sir,' Bell said, talking fast, 'the ship's closed up at battle stations antisubmarine. We are rigged for ultraquiet. Our depth is twelve hundred feet, and we are rigged for deep submergence. Our course is due north, speed is top quiet speed, twenty-six knots.' Unlike other American submarines, Challenger had in-hull hangar space for her minisub; the ASDS didn't slow her down. Jeffrey repeated Bell's info per standard procedure, then took the conn. Bell slid over to the right seat of the desk-high console. Bell was an inch taller than Jeffrey, four years younger, and fit but not as muscular. Bell was a Navy brat, like his father before him, and had grown up all over the world.
Jeffrey announced in a loud clear voice, 'This is the captain. I have the conn.' The watchstanders acknowledged.
'What do we know?' Jeffrey said impatiently.
Bell relayed him the large-scale tactical plot. 'Submerged hostile contact designated Master One, bearing zero two five true.' Off the starboard bow, given Challenger's course.
'Sonar, any further data since that transient?'
'Negative, sir,' Kathy said. 'Recommend splitting contact designation as Master One and Master Two, since I'm certain there are two vessels involved.'
'Do it. Contact identification?'
'Speculation, sir. One Class two-twelve attack sub and one modified Class two-fourteen long-endurance milch cow'
'Makes sense,' Jeffrey said. The 212 must be replenishing its liquid oxygen and hydrogen supplies, for its air- independent fuel cells (AIP). 'The German boats won't be making more than three knots, cruising in close proximity, linked by fueling hose. A juicy target, if we can get near enough for a decent shot.' An easy target, too.
'Sir,' Bell said, 'if our priority is helping the Texas, shouldn't we decline an engagement here? The closer we get to these U-boats, the more likely they'll pick us up.'
'They'll have twenty or thirty nuclear torpedoes between them. We put 'em on the bottom in little pieces, more of our ships get through.'
'Er, yes, sir.'
Jeffrey turned to the phone talker. 'Give me your rig.' Jeffrey put on the bulky headphones and pressed the switch for the sound-powered mike.
'This is the captain.' It got easier each time he said it. He made eye contact around the control room as he spoke. 'Men… and women of Challenger. You all know we have somewhere important to get to, to help our friends on Texas.' He paused to let the phone talkers stationed around the ship catch up, relaying his words to the other crewmen in earshot in each compartment. 'Now we have a chance to do some good on the way. We are going to destroy two hypermodern Axis diesel submarines and neutralize their atomic weapons. Our actions will allow more ships to reach the U.K., on this convoy and future convoys. We must act quickly while they're still linked up for refueling and they're slow and vulnerable. Those AIPs are fast enough to be a threat to us and god-awful quiet on their fuel-cell electric drives. There's some risk, but it's worth it and we're taking it.' Jeffrey paused again. 'That's all.' He took off the rig. There was tense silence in the compartment. Jeffrey imagined some of the men chafed at this delay in the rescue mission. He decided to pretend he didn't notice: He was in charge now.
Jeffrey glanced toward the ship control station, on the forward bulkhead. COB was in the left seat, as general-quarters chief of the watch. Lieutenant (j.g.) David Meltzer had the right seat, as the helmsman. Both sat with their backs to Jeffrey; he couldn't read their faces.
'Helm,' Jeffrey ordered, 'make your course zero two five…. XO, I want to aim for the enemy's baffles.' The blind spot behind their stern. 'How long would it take a two-twelve to refuel, if it was running on empty to start with?'
Bell cleared his throat. 'Intel thinks about sixty minutes, Captain.'
'Then let's assume we have one hour, starting with that transient…. At our present speed we'll close the range to fifteen thousand yards in forty minutes. We'll launch our fish from there…. That won't leave much margin for close-in tactics. Face it, time's on their side.'
'But, sir, if we shoot any sooner, and give our torpedoes too long a run, the enemy will hear them coming for sure. Then things could get very dangerous for us.'
'Yeah,' Jeffrey said. Defending Diego Garcia, Challenger had lost three torpedomen, and had half her tubes damaged, and it was a dry-dock job to fix her autoloader gear. ' That's probably why they picked us to rescue the Texas. We're not good for much else.' Jeffrey stood, leaning against the side of the command workstation as Challenger moved in on Kathy's now stale transient contact. Standing always helped Jeffrey think, and he'd been awake for thirty-six hours straight, so far. Sonar held no new data on the targets yet. Jeffrey and his key people were debating whether to deploy Challenger's one remaining towed array, for a better chance of detecting the U- boats early, through the verylowfrequency tonals they'd be making. The conversation had already gone in circles
