depending on him for rescue. How much air did they have left? How much blood plasma, and morphine? He thought of the crews on those convoy ships, also bleeding, drowning, burning alive.
Jeffrey realized that if his choice to shoot for score against these two Axis submarines backfired, there'd be no salvation for the Texas. No one else was close enough to effect a timely rescue if Challenger was lost. Not for the first time, Jeffrey wondered what he was doing.
The ship was at six thousand feet.
'Still nothing, Sonar?' Jeffrey snapped.
'No, sir. Nothing. We haven't picked up anything.' 'Was that transient a mistake?'
'No,' Kathy said, looking insulted. 'It was much too clear on the tape. The system is optimized to pick up mechanical transients.'
'Sir,' Bell said, 'we're almost out of time. Maybe we should just go back.'
'No. We keep looking.'
'I have something!' Kathy shouted. A sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead.
'What's target depth?' Jeffrey demanded.
'Within the deep scattering layer, Captain.'
'Is it one or both of them?'
'Width of the target suggests it's Master One and Master Two, cruising side by side.'
'Good job.' Jeffrey saw Kathy grab a piece of toilet paper, used to clean the console screens. She wiped her face instead.
'Sir,' Bell said, 'we need horizontal separation.'
'Concur.' They're practically on top of us; we'd get blown up by our own A-bomb. ' Give me the conn.'
Bell slid over. 'Target course is zero zero five.'
Almost due north, as Jeffrey guessed. He smirked: He'd out-psyched the German captains beautifully. 'We'll steer the other way. Let's get more vertical separation, too.' Jeffrey ordered two two five, southwest, and a depth of nine thousand feet. Meltzer acknowledged. The deck tilted. The tension mounted.
Jeffrey kept one eye on a depth gauge: Nine thousand feet was very close to Challenger's test depth. 'We'll use one Mark eighty-eight, set to run at slow speed for stealth. If we're lucky, Master One and Master Two won't ever know what hit 'em.'
'Sir,' Meltzer said, 'my depth is nine thousand feet.' The control room deck creaked slightly, from the compression of the hull.
Sonar still tracked the U-boats, on Challenger's starboard wide aperture array. Jeffrey cleared his throat. 'Firing point procedures, Mark eighty-eight in tube one, area burst on adjacent sonar contacts Master One and Two.'
Bell acknowledged, then relayed commands: Jeffrey had the targets cold.
'Six thousand yards separation, sir.' In combat Bell was Fire Control Coordinator. Jeffrey was satisfied Challenger wouldn't be damaged; the shock from a blast in deep water fell off quickly with the distance. The 88 warhead's variable yield was set on maximum, one-tenth kiloton — equal to three hundred high-explosive torpedoes combined.
Jeffrey saw Bell react to something on his console screen. 'Sir! The contacts have changed course! Now steering zero eight five.' Almost due east.
'Sonar, have they separated?'
'Not sure yet, sir.'
'I said have they separated?'
Kathy stared at her screens. 'Negative.'
'XO, update the data to our weapon. Any sign they've detected us?'
'Negative,' Bell and Kathy said.
'Good. Here we go. Tube one, match sonar bearings and—'
'Do not shoot!' Kathy shouted. 'Revised contact classification! Biologics, adult whale and calf!'
Jeffrey turned to Kathy. 'Christ, if we'd fired we'd've given ourselves away for sure. You almost got us killed.'
Before Kathy could say anything, Bell gave Jeffrey a quick reproachful look. 'Captain, the one hour you allotted has been and gone. They've probably secured the fuel lines and cleared the area, assuming it wasn't a diversion ploy to begin with.' Jeffrey ran a tired hand over his face. He knew Bell's real point, turn back now, was correct. He wasn't sure whether to be angry at Bell or himself. He apologized to Kathy.
'Nay,' Jeffrey said, 'what's optimum course to the Texas?'
'Recommend three two zero,' Sessions said immediately.
'Helm, make your course three two zero. Let's get out of here.'
'Captain,' Ilse said, 'urgently request permission to visit the head.' Jeffrey laughed, sheepishly. 'Fine. One at a time, ladies first. Lieutenant Milgrom, you go next…. And Messenger of the Watch, please put up fresh coffee.' As Ilse washed her hands, she was startled by a blast heard right through the hull, distant but very loud. The convoy battle's heated up again.
Then she realized something was wrong. Challenger turned hard to starboard, then to port, throwing her against the outside of a toilet stall. We've made a knuckle. A muffled boom sounded from aft, the reactor check valves slamming into their detents. The ship began to vibrate, and kept vibrating, roughly and urgently. Jeffrey's ordered flank speed. This can't be good.
Ilse dried her hands on her blouse as she ran to the CACC. She struggled to her seat, almost knocked flat by the sudden steep up-bubble. Ilse donned her headset, one earcup in place. Immediately she heard the nerve- grinding scream of enemy torpedoes in the water, close on Challenger's tail.
'The U-boats found us first,' Kathy said. 'That convoy shot, its echo gave us away.' Just like that, the tables were turned. Challenger was the hunted now. She'd been running deep; they needed to get much shallower for their countermeasures to work. The ship topped forty knots, accelerating hard.
'Range to inbound weapons is ten thousand yards,' Bell called out as Fire Control. 'Net overtaking speed is thirty knots.' The Axis weapons were chewing up the remaining distance fast. They were wire-guided, and nuclear- capable.
Jeffrey ordered a steeper up-bubble. He grabbed an intercom mike. 'Maneuvering, Captain. Push the reactor to a hundred five percent.' The flank speed shaking grew much rougher; turbulence and straining the propulsion plant as Challenger tore a tunnel through the sea — forty-eight knots now. Jeffrey told Meltzer to make another knuckle.
'Still two incoming weapons,' Kathy reported. They were spreading apart, making it harder to intercept. Kathy's voice was even and clear; she wasn't sweating now. Jeffrey told Bell to fire the Mark 88's in tubes one and three, as snap shots down the inbound weapons' bearings — Ilse heard them on her headphones, a deeper tone than the Axis fish and louder, too. But they still had no good data on Master One and Two, the small and stealthy U-boats.
'Depth five thousand feet,' Meltzer said, 'coming up to four.'
'Bring our unit from tube one up to eight hundred feet,' Jeffrey ordered. 'Run the other at two thousand.' Above and below the deep scattering layer. 'Have them both go active now.' To probe for the enemy submarines.
'Sir,' Bell said, 'don't you want to use them to knock down the Axis fish?'
'Negative,' Jeffrey said. 'I want the boats.'
'They've got ten tubes between them….'
'We'll try to evade the torpedoes, XO. Stand by to reload two more eighty-eights, in case we can't.'
Slow work, Ilse knew — the torpedomen were down to block and tackle, and the ship was making radical angles, too. But if they closed the outer doors to reload prematurely, they'd lose the wires to the units they'd already fired. Jeffrey was taking an awful gamble. Those U-boats, somewhere out there, each held two dozen men, intent on killing Challenger and everyone aboard.
Meltzer reached three thousand feet. He leveled off. The ride was just as rough. Bell fired a noisemaker and an acoustic jammer pod. Jeffrey ordered a course change: south. He launched the brilliant decoy in tube five, to loop behind the ship, running back north. He fired the conventional ADCAP fish in tube seven directly ahead, to run out in front of Challenger. Ilse saw he was trying to distract the inbound weapons.
