two hundred and fifty yards from pier to breakwater, and the continental shelf there drops off quickly. The thirty- fathom curve is barely a mile offshore. Submarines can stay deep coming in or out, even go into the bluff submerged, thanks to the latest excavations.'
'The iron oxide they keep sprinkling stops our long-range LIDAR scans,' Jeffrey said. ' Rust. Now it's a weapon.'
'It causes phytoplankton blooms,' Ilse said. 'The water's surface transparency drops to almost zero.'
Monaghan called up another map, the Durban coast.
'Another problem is the winds, which affect the distribution of the fallout. The shoreline here for many miles is straight, except for minor bays and headlands, and runs along a bearing north-northeast. Ninety percent of the time the wind blows up or down the coast; the rest, it usually blows inland.'
'That whole coastline's heavily populated,' Commodore Morse said.
'That's true,' Ilse said. 'It was a big resort attraction before the war, with perfect beaches and lots of coral reefs. Swimming and surfing, diving, golf, nature preserves, everything.'
'Sounds like Hawaii,' Jeffrey said.
'Yes,' Ilse said, 'except there's even more to do. Umhlanga Rocks was part of that. Tourism was a growth industry for us.'
'It might someday be again,' Morse said. 'If. ' Monaghan went on. 'Inland lie more suburbs of Durban, with millions of black South Africans and close to a million minorities of Indian descent. Fallout from a nuclear blast, of any size, is a serious concern.'
'That's why the weather factor's crucial,' Wilson said. 'We have a window coming up in which the winds will blow offshore, because a major storm is on the way. There was a big convoy-versus-wolf-pack battle two days ago, with heavy use of atomic warheads by both sides. That created a cyclonic depression in the South Atlantic Ocean, in an area that's almost always calm.'
'The winds and lofted moisture from the fireballs got things started,' Monaghan said. ' They formed the vortex, one that's especially intense. The result was a true man-made hurricane, as the sun pumped in more energy. Now it's drifting east across South Africa.'
'Mind-boggling,' Jeffrey said.
'Fortunately,' Monaghan said, 'most of the fallout came down at sea. Our arrival at Durban is timed for the few hours when this disturbance passes through, blowing itself out. Heavy precipitation is expected then, with — most importantly — winds to south or east.'
'And built-up ground moisture,' Clayton said, 'plus rain and occluded skies. All of which should help limit collateral damage outside the lab itself.'
'There's just one thing, though,' Jeffrey said. 'They'll know about the weather too. They might be on alert, all up and down the coast.'
'We're counting on that,' Clayton said. 'Stricter curfew means less chance of witnesses, and more of the sentries will be outside where we can get to them. Few bystanders if any in line of sight of the thermal pulse, and their precautions against the storm should hold down blast-wind drag force injuries.'
Captain Wilson made eye contact around the room. 'The team goes in at night four days from now.'
'If we make top quiet speed to start with,' Monaghan said, 'then slow as we draw near, we'll just be in position to lock out the SEALs on time.'
'We'll need to get some updates,' Jeffrey said, 'particularly on the weather.' Wilson shook his head. 'Not if that would compromise our hard-won stealth. If we're lucky, the Axis think we're dead, killed by those 212 boats.'
'But wouldn't there be wreckage on the surface?' Ilse said.
'All that floated up from Thresher was a rubber glove,' Jeffrey said.
'What about your own headquarters?' Ilse said. 'Won't they be worried?' Jeffrey smiled. 'They'll know we're okay when they see our flaming datum, the mushroom cloud at Umhlanga Rocks.'
ABOARD VOORTREKKER
Something jarred Van Gelder wide-awake. He tried to move but couldn't. He saw he was restrained in bed, on oxygen and packed in ice. He squinted but his vision was too blurred, and it made his splitting headache worse. He thought this was his cabin, on Voortrekker. His mouth was dry. He felt so hot. There was an intravenous in each arm. He sensed more than heard the next concussion. It shook his bones and made an ice bag fall onto the deck. Someone entered.
'Just stay like this, please, sir,' the sweating first-aid corpsman said. Van Gelder tried to speak. It sounded like a croak. The corpsman took a washcloth from a bucket of cold water, then squeezed it out to drip some on Van Gelder's lips and tongue, holding the oxygen mask aside for just a moment.
'How…'?'
'Heatstroke, sir. A nasty case. You've been out for almost two hours.' Van Gelder tried to rise but felt awfully nauseous. The corpsman gently pressed him back. 'Your temperature was forty-two Celsius.'
Van Gelder frowned. Now he remembered everything. He could have died.
'Good thing you were healthy, sir…You sure were a sight, though, lying in the passageway. First thing we did was put a fire hose down your suit. Cooled you off real good that way.' The corpsman laughed.
Another hard shock hit.
'We're being depth-charged, sir. Big atomic ones.' Another blast, but this one was different: a growing roar that built to a crescendo, then died out. Van Gelder cleared his throat. 'That one was far away,' he whispered. 'The multipath. the multipath effect.'
The corpsman nodded as he took Van Gelder's pulse. 'Just like Mozambique Channel, sir. Someone told me how that works, with distant contacts. I forget exactly what he said.'
'The longest ray paths curve down through the deepest water. The sound speed's higher there, from the added pressure, so they reach us sooner, but with more attenuation loss.' Good, Van Gelder told himself, my brain's okay. He knew severe heatstroke sometimes caused permanent dysfunction.
Another roar, heard more than felt this time. Like the others, it seemed to come from everywhere outside the hull at once. Surface and bottom reflections echoed eerily, and bubble-rebound shock waves thumped.
'They don't know where we are,' the corpsman said, checking Van Gelder's blood pressure. 'Fast-movers, worst thing for ASW. Those jets are shooting blind.'
'What's our course?'
'Once we got propulsion and the sternplanes back, the captain headed west, right at them, but at modest speed, he said.'
Van Gelder smiled. 'The planes would bomb a circle, thinking that we'd run.'
'They dropped one where we dived too, in case we just lay doggo. That must have been what woke you.' The corpsman coughed. 'The air's still pretty foul.' He undid the BP cuff.
Another roar, not as loud, and then the reverb. 'Farther off,' Van Gelder said.
'Or a smaller warhead?'
'No, the impulse was too extended. We'd need Sonar to tell the bearing.' The corpsman nodded. 'Our ears can't sense direction underwater very well. Sound moves too fast. A safety diver told me that one time.' He put a disposable thermometer in Van Gelder's mouth, then changed the ice bags. 'Captain said that once these jets are gone, we'll go back to Durban. Resupply, more mines and missiles, and a quick turn in the dry dock…And crew replacements, too.'
Van Gelder turned his head to face the corpsman. 'How bad were our losses?' He tried not to chew on the thermometer, a flimsy plastic thing.
'Just the three dead that you know about. We were lucky. Plus a dozen badly wounded. Compound fractures, class three concussions, things like that to keep me busy. No one senior. They'll all recover, more or less.'
'How long?'
'To get to base?'
Van Gelder nodded, his head back on the pillow. He was feeling weaker now.
