'You're kidding,' Jeffrey said. He laughed.
'No. The lads took to rubbing his head for luck. Seemed like he was going to have a stroke, though, so they had to put a stop to that.'
'Morale's all right, then?' Jeffrey said.
'Clayton and his boys told everybody about you and that shark. Plus whatever else they could talk about. Seems your stock is high among the crew now, Mr. Fuller.'
'It's hard to believe all that was only yesterday,' Jeffrey said. He and Morse started back to the CACC.
'I also took a little walking tour,' Morse said, 'into the spaces I'm allowed. Told people what it was like back in my last war, the olden days in Her Majesty's Submarine Conqueror. Seemed to help relieve some of the tension.'
'Thanks, Commodore,' Jeffrey said. 'I don't know what I'd do without your help.'
'I'm sure you'd manage,' Morse said, 'just with considerably greater difficulty.' He chuckled. 'I told your men about the time we almost hit an uncharted seamount south of the Falklands because our charts went back to 1777, and how our trailing wire antenna once got tangled in the screw. How we had to surface and send divers over the side while rather vengeful Argie fliers might have found us any moment.'
'Puts current things in perspective, doesn't it?' Jeffrey said. They'd arrived back at the command console. Jeffrey sat again, eyeballing the navigation and gravimeter displays. The boat was at 11,750 feet, making twenty-six knots on base course 192, well masked by the rugged terrain.
'Anything yet?' Jeffrey said.
'Still no hostile contacts near our depth, sir,' Bell said. 'We're threading a series of repeatedly branching fissure canyons now, using a path through the whole complex I picked at random. It was Miss Reebeck's idea. Makes it very hard for someone else to guess which way we'd come.'
'Terrific,' Jeffrey said.
'Recommend we stop and drift again in another fifteen nautical miles,' Bell said, 'to listen when we reach this ridge.' He pointed to a bunching-up of topographic contours on the bottom chart.
'Concur,' Jeffrey said, bending over to read the screen. 'If we cruise in a slow circle when we get there, we'll be able to scan in all directions using the bow sphere and both wide-aperture arrays, get the best sensitivity possible on all bearings and frequencies. Our crinkled bow cap's interfering flow noise stops whenever Challenger does.'
'Understood,' Bell said. 'We're still at a real disadvantage, sir, when we approach the choke point. To get away we have to move. Voortrekker can just sit there.'
'I know,' Jeffrey said.
Jeffrey turned to look at Ilse. She was dozing at her station, a wrapped towel forming a kind of pillow to cushion her head against her shoulder. She was snoring softly, as were several others in the CACC.
'I think she's rather cute while she's asleep,' Morse said.
'Foxy too,' Bell said, giving Jeffrey a suggestive look.
'Cut it out, guys,' Jeffrey said.
'No,' Morse said. 'You're not getting any younger, Jeffrey.'
'Come on,' Jeffrey said, 'we're in the middle of a battle, in the middle of a war.' He glanced at Ilse again, his eyes staying on her longer this time. Her features seemed softer than when they'd first met, and in sleep she wore a peaceful smile. Jeffrey went back to his screens, once more studying the terrain that lay ahead around the choke point, trying to imagine where Jan ter Horst would hide, where he would pounce. Jeffrey wracked his brain over how Challenger could possibly get in the first detection, on Voortrekker rather than a salvo of her nuclear torpedoes inbound at high speed on the last part of a dogleg.
Sonar superiority, Jeffrey told himself. How can we possibly achieve sonar superiority?
4 HOURS LATER
Ilse was studying the terrain around the choke point. Beside her Jeffrey and Sessions were going over sonar hardware specs and signal processing algorithms. Neither man looked very happy. Suddenly there was a distant rumble.
'Transient's classification?' Lieutenant Bell called from the command console. Sessions quickly reconfigured his displays. 'Nuclear explosion, sir. Bearing three three seven, wide-aperture array gives range approximately fifty- five nautical miles.' Then another one went off. 'Ten miles further away from us, sir,' Sessions said, 'on bearing three two nine.'
Ilse heard a third sharp rumble, mixing with the dying echoes from the other two. 'That one was much closer,' she said.
'Affirmative,' Sessions said. 'Range thirty-five nautical miles, relative bearing three three four.'
Jeffrey stood. 'Off the port bow,' he said, 'between us and the choke-point hump. Sonar, what was warhead yield?'
'Working on that, sir,' Sessions said. Ilse watched as he conferred with his staff. ' Estimate each at about one kiloton, Captain.'
'Very well,' Jeffrey said. 'Fire Control, your thoughts.'
'One KT sounds small for depth bombs, sir,' Bell said.
'Concur,' Jeffrey said. 'That's more the size of an Axis torpedo warhead…Sonar, can you tell the detonation depth?'
Ilse worked quickly with Sessions on a refined estimate.
'Depth in each case was about twelve thousand feet,' Sessions said.
'It's Jan, isn't it?' Ilse said.
'Yeah,' Jeffrey said. 'He's not trying to create a cordon. The warheads were set off too far apart, and they don't lie on a straight line or an arc.'
'They aren't on a single bearing from any particular firing position either,' Bell said, 'so he didn't shoot a spread at a suspected contact with uncertain range.'
'Concur,' Jeffrey said, 'and he wasn't working from one good TMA, leading a moving target. He'd've had to launch those weapons half an hour apart to put the furthest torpedo that far out and then have simultaneous blasts.'
'Concur, sir,' Bell said.
'Voortrekker's expended an awful lot of nuclear torpedoes since making contact with us,' Sessions said.
'At least half a dozen to our one,' Jeffrey said. 'We only have three left now, so you'd think they'd start to run low too, even fresh from reprovisioning at the bluff.'
'That's the whole point,' Ilse said. 'Jan's making sure we know he's there, somewhere in front of us, and taunting us by visibly wasting ammo. He's messing with our minds.'
2 HOURS LATER
Ilse and Jeffrey were grabbing a quick bite in the enlisted mess, visiting with the crew, released from general quarters a few at a time so they'd be in top form later. Bell had the conn again and knew where Jeffrey was.
One man finished eating, then lit a cigarette. Ilse bummed one off him — she didn't smoke but really needed one right now. She took a deep draft and then the both of them exhaled, blowing toward the overhead.
She saw Jeffrey give her and the crewman a funny look.
'Sorry, sir,' the crewman said, 'I'll put it out.'
'What?' Jeffrey said. 'Oh, no, no, that's okay. It's just that, urn, uh, you two gave me an idea.' Jeffrey seemed to stare off into space. 'Yeah,' he said, 'this just might work.'
'What just might work?' Ilse said.
'It'll take a lot of careful effort,' Jeffrey said, 'and luck. Heavy-duty calculations, Ilse, using every bit of data
