Crush Depth

“Cigar?” Rodrigo offered.

“Yes, thank you.”

“Cuban, of course.” Rodrigo grinned.

“Of course.”

Jeffrey rarely smoked. He drew a puff — it was delicious, and the smoke smelled very good. The tobacco made him lightheaded, so he took it slow. Slow was the best way to enjoy a fine cigar.

Rodrigo went to lean on the railing as the Prima Latina chugged along through the cut. The ship’s deck vibrated steadily, reassuringly. Jeffrey came to stand next to Rodrigo, and turned his face to the sun. He let its warm rays bathe his cheeks and forehead, his arms and neck, relaxing the tightness he felt inside. Then Jeffrey leaned against the dented, rusty railing beside Rodrigo.

For a long while, neither man spoke. Jeffrey just enjoyed the ride and the cigar, and savored the air and the sun and the view. It was remarkable how totally refreshed he felt.

Then Jeffrey saw the bow of a freighter up ahead, coming around the curve in the cut from the opposite direction.

“I think perhaps, Capitan, that soon you should go below.”

Jeffrey nodded.

Rodrigo sighed, and raised his cigar to the mountains. “To the fallen, to all those who made this great canal possible.”

“Yes,” Jeffrey said, raising his cigar, “to the fallen.”

“And to the fallen who fought to make my Cuba free.”

“Cuba Libre,” Jeffrey said, then hoped it wasn’t in bad taste.

Rodrigo looked at Jeffrey and his eyes were moist with joy and sorrow. “Thank you, my friend.” Rodrigo raised his cigar once more. “To success in your journey, wherever you are bound.”

“Thank you, Rodrigo,” Jeffrey said from the heart. “Thank you.”

Rodrigo paused. “And to the most recent fallen, Capitan, now in this latest fight we share to make the whole world free.”

“Yes,” Jeffrey said, thinking of Ilse. “To the fallen.”

TWENTY-ONE

On Voortrekker

Van Gelder had the conn. Voortrekker was back in the all-concealing bottom terrain of the Mid — Indian Ocean Ridge. She continued on her journey toward the Australia — New Zealand — Antarctic Gap and the wide Pacific beyond. As before, Voortrekker moved slowly, scouting ahead with an off-board probe. Van Gelder looked up from the imagery feed when a messenger came to his console.

“The captain’s compliments, sir, and he requests your presence in his cabin.”

“Very well… Navigator, take the conn.”

Van Gelder stepped aft to ter Horst’s cabin.

“Come in, Gunther, come in.” Ter Horst switched from Afrikaans — the Boer tongue — to German. “I believe you already know Commander Bauer.”

Van Gelder nodded. Bauer was the head of the Kampfschwimmer team. He was tall and blond and handsome, slim-waisted, and seemed like a real tight-ass. Van Gelder disliked him on sight.

“I enjoyed our little swim together, First Officer,” Bauer said. “It is good we rescued your crewman from the water, ja? It is not so good about the killed Australians.” Bauer shot ter Horst an almost dirty look, as if to say, Be glad my marksmanship is better than yours, mein Kapitan. Van Gelder was taken aback. Although Bauer outranked Van Gelder — a mere lieutenant commander — and was equal in rank to ter Horst — a full commander — it still was customary to show respect for a warship’s senior officers.

Seated beside Bauer was one of the enlisted Kampfschwimmer, who didn’t say anything.

Ter Horst waved dismissively. “We can’t worry about that now.” Van Gelder thought ter Horst still looked sad, shaken, aged a bit, by the intelligence Bauer had brought with him, that Ilse Reebeck had died in an accident in America. Van Gelder was surprised to see this human side of his captain. He realized ter Horst’s relationship with Ilse Reebeck had been complex.

“Gunther, pull your chair over here, and let’s look at a chart.”

Van Gelder and Bauer sat where ter Horst showed them. Ter Horst typed on his laptop. A nautical chart appeared on the flat-screen TV on the wall of ter Horst’s cabin. It showed the South Pacific.

“This is the problem we face,” ter Horst said. “Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica. The so-called ANZA Gap… The waters north of Australia are much too shallow and constricted, butting up against Indonesia and New Guinea. That leaves us the Tasman Sea, between Australia and New Zealand, as one choice. The alternative is the part of the Southern Ocean between New Zealand and Antarctica.”

This much was obvious, and Van Gelder had already been thinking about which route Voortrekker might take. He knew ter Horst was leading up to something… and maybe testing him. “Captain, I think the Tasman Sea is the poorer choice. The sea-floor terrain is nicely broken, but the Tasman route is much narrower than the Southern Ocean portion of the gap.”

“Ja,” Bauer said. “Besides, the Tasman is flanked by hundreds of miles of enemy coast on both sides. Australia and New Zealand are strong with surface and airborne antisubmarine defenses.”

“Now we come to the Southern Ocean route,” ter Horst said. “Antarctica is nonmilitarized, by international treaty. That’s good for us. The weather there will be more severe than the Tasman Sea, which is bad for Allied antisubmarine ships and aircraft. The bottom terrain there also is good for us. Lots of fracture zones in which to hide.”

Ter Horst obviously wasn’t finished, so Van Gelder nodded. Van Gelder was starting to think, by the barely repressed smug grin on Bauer’s face, that Bauer knew more than Van Gelder did.

Ter Horst stood and touched the nautical chart. “One thing to bear in mind is that the waters south of New Zealand are protected by this chain of islands running northeast, the same direction we want to go.” Ter Horst reeled them off on his fingers. “Macquarie Island, Campbell Island, Antipodes Island, Bounty Island. The last of them is the little Chatham Island group, some five hundred nautical miles due east of New Zealand…. Now, south of them hereon the chart, in the Southwest Pacific Basin, the water is close to six thousand meters deep.”

“That’s deeper than our crush depth,” Van Gelder said.

“It is,” ter Horst said. Bauer smirked.

“The Allies aren’t dumb,” ter Horst went on. “See these red arcs marked on the map? These are their bottom-moored hydrophone lines, part of their vaunted worldwide SOSUS system. The Southwest Pacific Basin is wired for sound, and most of the hydrophones are down in water much too deep for Voortrekker to get at them.”

“And in such deep water,” Van Gelder said, “the deep sound channel will function perfectly.”

“Yes,” ter Horst said. “We’d need to pass right over three of the hydrophone lines to get fully through the gap.”

Van Gelder glanced at Bauer, then said, “I suppose we can’t just nuke a segment of the SOSUS here, like the Germans did in the North Atlantic right at the start of the war.” Bauer blinked.

“That’s quite true, Gunther. With such ideal sound propagation, quiet as we are, they’d hear us coming before one of our torpedoes could be in range of the hydrophones. The detonation of the warhead would reveal Voortrekker’s presence, within a circle much too tight for comfort.”

Van Gelder remembered the plastering the Ronald Reagan gave Voortrekker after Diego Garcia — running repairs were still going on in many parts of the ship. “So what do we do, Captain?”

Ter Horst turned to Bauer. Bauer turned to his enlisted man. “Stand up. Take off your shirt. Turn around.”