'No,' she said. 'We have to strike back quickly. But why not use two fish? Send one to search down from the north end of the arc.'
'We're awful low on ammo,' Jeffrey said quietly, 'and awfully far from home. The Mark 88s are the only weapons we can operate at depth. ADCAPs and ISLMMs will fail much past three thousand feet, and that's on a good day. And to launch our Tomahawks we'd have to be much shallower than that.'
'Okay,' Ilse said. 'I was just curious.' She noticed Jeffrey's eyes were strangely hooded for a moment. Is he concerned I challenged his authority, or is this some personal quirk?
I noticed it when we first met, he's the sensitive type outside of purely military circles.
Could it be he has trouble making shop talk with a woman…or that he likes it? Still single at his age, and so damned good-looking too, I wonder what's the deal.
'Fire Control,' Jeffrey said, 'I aver that ROEs apply for hot pursuit in enemy territory, authorizing use of tactical nuclear weapons undersea.'
'I concur,' Bell said.
'Assistant Navigator, make a record,' Jeffrey said. 'Fire Control, get a nuclear Mark 88 loaded and enabled in tube seven.'
'Aye aye,' Bell said. 'Tube seven, load an 88.'
'Also prep the other three Mark 88s,' Jeffrey said. 'Use tubes one, three, and five. I've a feeling we may need them in a hurry.'
'Make tube seven ready in all respects,' Jeffrey said, 'including opening outer door. Firing point procedures on tube seven, programmed area search.'
'Solution ready,' Bell said. 'Ship ready. Weapon ready.'
'Match generated bearings and shoot,' Jeffrey said. 'Tube seven fired electrically,' Bell said. 'Unit swimming out.'
'Unit is running normally,' Sessions said.
'Time to make some tracks,' Jeffrey said, 'and here comes the really dangerous part. Chief of the Watch, disengage shallow water valves and pumping hardware, line up abyssal suite.'
'Line up abyssal pump and valve suite, aye,' COB said.
'Helm, all stop,' Jeffrey ordered. Meltzer acknowledged.
'Phone Talker,' Jeffrey said, 'relay to all hands. Now transiting the deep sound channel under combat conditions. Rig for superquiet.' Jeffrey knew the deep sound channel was formed by sound wave bending, in the region where seawater stopped getting colder with depth and then hovered just above freezing. The deep sound channel acted like an acoustic superconductor, and the slightest noise would propagate for countless miles.
Morse raised an eyebrow at Jeffrey. 'Superquiet?'
'Aye, sir,' Jeffrey said, abashed. 'I'm making a lot of this up as we go along… Chief of the Watch, give us five tons negative buoyancy and let us drift on down.'
'Five tons of negative buoyancy, aye,' COB said.
'The thing that makes me really nervous,' Jeffrey whispered, 'is that the upslope toward the continental margin will tend to focus sound energy right at their SOSUS nets.'
'Too true,' Morse whispered back. 'With all the pinging going on up there, someone may get an echo despite your active masking.'
Jeffrey glanced apprehensively at a depth gauge — passing through 6,000 feet. 'With the beating Challenger's taken, the hull might start popping shallower than normal.'
'They'll sound like shotgun blasts on enemy passive sonar,' Morse said quietly. 'Let's hope nobody's trailing a hydrophone down here.'
'Keep your fingers crossed,' Jeffrey mouthed.
'Still no sign of anything,' Van Gelder said.
'We've got lots more ground to cover,' ter Horst said. 'Sir, I've been thinking.'
'That can be dangerous in today's world, Gunther.'
Van Gelder hesitated. 'Understood, Captain. But hear me out, sir, with respect. I'm looking at what that Q- ship did to us in the Antarctic. If you adjust for warhead yield and range, I'm not sure how badly we hurt Challenger.'
'Go on.'
'She may have used the same tactic we did when those British planes came after us, staying well inside the limiting circle of possible egress distance covered.'
'You mean you think we missed?'
'Sir!' the sonar chief called out. 'New passive sonar contact on starboard wide-aperture array. Sounds like a mine-avoidance sonar but it's at our depth…Incoming torpedo bearing one zero zero! Range three thousand meters, approach speed twenty knots!'
'Verdammt,' ter Horst snapped. 'Helm, ahead flank maximum revs!'
'Ahead flank maximum revs, aye aye,' the helmsman said. 'Turbine room answers steam throttles are wide open, sir.'
'Range-gating active lock,' the sonar chief said, 'too close to cancel it, torpedo accelerating to end-game speed!'
'What type is it, Number One?' ter Horst said.
'Closed-cycle liquid-metal fuel,' Van Gelder said, 'geared turbine and pump-jet propulsor. An American Mark 88, Captain.'
'Torpedo gaining on us!' the chief shouted.
'Firing jammers and noisemakers now,' Van Gelder said.
'No time to launch a decoy,' ter Horst said, 'and the things don't always work. Prepare to fire tube seven, deep-capable nuclear torpedo. Tube seven snap shot on course one zero zero, minimum yield, our depth.'
Van Gelder reached for his special weapons key at the same time ter Horst pulled his own out. 'Weapon enabled!' Van Gelder shouted.
'Open the door and shoot!'
'Tube seven fired!' Van Gelder said. 'I have control of the weapon.'
'Helm,' ter Horst said, 'port thirty rudder smartly, make a knuckle, minimize our profile.'
'Port thirty rudder smartly, aye aye, no course specified, sir.'
'Get that incoming torpedo, Number One,' ter Horst said between clenched teeth. ' Intercept and smash it.'
Van Gelder read his screens, then checked the trigonometry. 'Detonation in three seconds.'
He flipped up the plastic cover and pressed ARM. The light went green. He held his breath and then pressed FIRE. The status screen said DETONATED.
Jeffrey, Ilse, Morse, and the assistant navigator were still gathered round the digital nav display. Challenger was right over the bottom at 7,800 feet, and Jeffrey considered it okay to talk in normal tones again. Apparently they'd made the trip down through the deep sound channel safely, given the lack of enemy fire. The hardest part right now was restoring neutral buoyancy, since COB had to pump those five tons from the negative tank against the outside pressure, plus an extra gallon of water for each ten feet of depth they'd added simply to adjust for hull compression — and he had to do it quietly. There was a sudden roar in the distance, building into an ear-splitting crescendo that died off slowly, seeming to spasm as surface and bottom reflections hit.
'What was that, XO?' Jeffrey said.
'Captain,' Bell said, 'unit from tube seven has detonated.'
'Weapon effect?' Jeffrey said.
'Impossible to tell.'
A half second after the signal came back through the fiber-optic wire, a gigantic kaboom kicked Voortrekker in the stern, jarring Van Gelder forcefully against his seat back, rolling the boat to port, and surrounding him in sound that was more felt than heard, a physical sensation of ungodly Armageddon that made him want to curl up in a ball. Instead Van Gelder gripped his console with both hands, watching the damage control enunciators, dreading what he'd see. The blast was simply too powerful — the enemy warhead must have gone off an instant before the weapon did, subjecting the boat to both A-bombs at once.
'Very well, Fire Control,' Jeffrey said. 'Assistant Navigator, give me the 30-by-30degree square centered at
