Crush Depth

investigate.

Finally ter Horst directed men to corral the torpedo and hold it firmly against Voortrekker’s side using a hastily rigged rubber bumper. Others helped Van Gelder and the crewman and Kampfschwimmer back on deck. The deck was covered in blood, thick and gumming up the antiskid coating.

Then Voortrekker jolted hard against the rubber blocks that held her, and Van Gelder was almost knocked from his feet. The Trincomalee Tiger was getting under way — the faked mechanical problems to engines and rudder must have been solved, and her crew couldn’t delay the Australians any further.

Soon someone came through the hatch that led from the rest of the ship to the catwalk. He was dark-skinned and wore a turban. He said in heavily accented German that he was the master of the Tiger. He wanted to know what was going on, then took in the scene on Voortrekker’s deck and gasped.

Ter Horst and Van Gelder turned to speak to him. Behind the ship’s master, smiling and obviously pleased with themselves, suddenly appeared two Australian navy chiefs. They’d followed the master without him realizing it, drawn by all the noise, and now they were obviously expecting another mechanical problem to fix.

They took in the clandestine hold, the nuclear submarine sitting there, and their jaws dropped. Ter Horst drew his pistol and aimed at them and fired. He missed. Each report echoed harshly, and pistol bullets zinged as they ricocheted. Everyone on Voortrekker’s deck ducked for what cover there was. The Australians ducked, realized they had no cover at all, and dashed for the hatch from the hold.

Ter Horst shouted to the Kampfschwimmer. They grabbed their AK-47s. Both fired well-aimed shots on semiautomatic fire. The muzzles flashed hot gases; the staccato reports were deafening. The Australians flopped on the catwalk, dead, and spent brass flew and clinked. Gunsmoke filled the air; crewmen coughed. More bright blood dripped to stain the water in the hold.

Ter Horst stared at the bodies. “Now that’s just great.”

Van Gelder considered their options. It was hard to think straight soaking wet, shivering from the coldness of the seawater and from the closeness of his brush with death.

The ship’s master still stood on the catwalk, unharmed.

“Come down here, you,” Van Gelder shouted in his best German. “Quickly!”

The master obeyed. He seemed an unsavory sort, someone you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley, and this gave Van Gelder a desperate idea.

“Your crew,” Van Gelder demanded. “What are their nationalities?”

“Most are Malaysians. They work cheap, and know how to keep their mouths shut.”

“We have to do something to explain two dead Australians to the others on that destroyer.”

“I know,” the master said. He stroked his thick beard, thinking.

“Pirates,” Van Gelder said.

“What?” ter Horst said.

“Some of your crew,” Van Gelder said to the master. “They were pirates.”

“Pirates?”

“Yes. That’s what you must say…. Say that it was hard for you to hire experienced hands willing to sail through the war zone. Say you hired men you didn’t know were criminals with weapons smuggled in their seabags. Say they must have reverted to their old ways—”

“Maddened when they thought my ship was sinking?”

“Yes, precisely. They ambushed the Australians in the cargo hold, intending to rob them.”

“Yes, yes,” ter Horst said. “You sensed something was wrong, you took your pistol, and went to investigate. You saw the crewmen, saw what they’d done, and had to shoot them in self-defense.”

“But I don’t have a pistol.”

“Take mine,” ter Horst said. “It’s already been fired.”

The master examined the pistol. “It’s Czech.”

“Yes, not German or Boer.”

The master looked from ter Horst to Van Gelder. His eyes narrowed to mean slits. “I’ll need to trick two of my men into coming down to the cargo hold.”

“Kill them with the pistol,” Van Gelder said. “Then put the AK-47s in their hands. If you have liquor, put some in their mouths and on their clothes. Try to force some down into their stomachs.”

The master’s eyes grew very hard. Slowly, he nodded. He understood what had to be done. The master took one AK-47 in each hand and started up the gantryway. The Kampfschwimmer went to help the master handle the enemy corpses on the catwalk.

“The spent brass!” Van Gelder yelled after them. “This has to look good. It has to look perfect! ”

Crewmen on Voortrekker’s deck began to pick up the expended shell casings from the two automatic rifles; some brass had fallen in the water, but the collection off the deck was large enough to be convincing.

The Kampfschwimmer chief returned, dirtied with gore from dragging the dead Australians through the crawl space leading to the real cargo hold. Someone gave him a bucket of water and towels, to clean the blood trails. He put the spent shell casings in his pocket, and went back into the crawl space.

Crewmen, under Van Gelder’s direction, hoisted the damaged, dripping Sea Lion back aboard and positioned it on the loading chute. A chief with a radiometer verified there was no leakage from the fissionable core inside. They sent the weapon down to the torpedo room. It was useless with its nose sensors smashed and its tail fins cracked and twisted, but it had to be put somewhere, somewhere safe and out of the way.

Van Gelder thought he heard distant pops, like pistol fire somewhere above.

Soon the two Kampfschwimmer and the Tiger’s master returned.

“It is done,” the master said. “You must depart at once.”

“But the destroyer’s sonar,” Van Gelder objected. “They’ll hear the hold doors opening.”

“Not with us moving like this. Our engine noise and pounding hull should cover your escape…. It was cold- blooded murder, sacrificing two of my own men to disguise your presence. Allah forgive me, we had no choice.”

NINETEEN

On Challenger

IN PRIVATE, IN THE commodore’s office, Wilson looked at Jeffrey harshly. “That’s exactly what I intended you to do all along. Did you really think I’d let one of your crewmen lose an arm or die?”

“Sorry, Commodore,” Jeffrey said. “It is an obvious thing to do, now that I know that you knew we’d be going through Panama.”

Challenger, inside the Prima Latina, was nearing the entrance to the canal. Challenger was just a huge passenger for now — a strange kind of cargo, as unusual as the sunken Russian Golf-class sub that Howard Hughes’s Glomar Explorer had tried to salvage from the ocean floor back in the 1960s. Jeffrey had ordered Challenger’s reactor be shut down, partly for stealth and partly because there was no supply of cooling water. Challenger was therefore rigged for reduced electrical, and also for a modified form of ultraquiet.

“So talk to your CIA liaison,” Wilson said. “This Rodrigo person. Work up some kind of story, that the injured man was part of the Prima Latina’s crew and was hurt in an accident. Cargo shifted, whatever.”

“We can drop him off in a harbor boat at Cristobal, as we enter the canal. They must have decent hospital facilities there, or maybe even they’ll fly him to Panama City.”

“Yes, yes. You’re going to have a problem with his lack of proper papers. If they find out he’s American, he’ll