Crush Depth

Soon the secret bottom hold doors swung open.

The continental-shelf edge here was steep. Challenger immediately dived. She was on her way, following the bottom in water ten thousand feet deep. The Prima Latina started up again, on course for her destination in Peru, her throttles restored by her engine-room crew to proper working order.

Jeffrey wondered if he would ever meet Rodrigo again, during or after the war. He was a very likable man, and Jeffrey found his sincerity rather touching.

Several hours later

Jeffrey had the conn. The ship was at battle stations. The control room was hushed. Bell, as fire-control coordinator, sat right next to Jeffrey. Kathy Milgrom’s technicians worked their sonar consoles, as she and her senior chief spoke. Lieutenant Sessions and Commodore Wilson stood at the navigation plot. COB and Meltzer manned the ship-control station; Harrison had the relief pilot’s seat. Every position in the control room was occupied, and other men stood in the aisles, to help or to watch and learn.

Challenger made flank speed again. The deck vibrated, consoles squeaked, and spring-loaded light fixtures jiggled.

Deep underwater, the volcanic rise of the Coiba Ridge loomed just to Challenger’s starboard. The mass of the Malpelo Ridge lay just to port. Challenger was about to exit the valley between the two ridges, into the flat, wide-open depths of the Panama Basin. Crossing the basin would be risky — it was like a vast undersea plain, or a drowned plateau; there were no terrain features there to mask the ship. Even moving slowly for stealth, Jeffrey’s vessel would be very exposed, almost naked.

But Jeffrey had no choice. The basin was the only possible route to the next long, rugged tectonic feature on the ocean floor, the Colon Ridge. The comfortably wide and jagged Colon Ridge ran southwest for a thousand miles, right into the all-concealing Galapagos Fracture Zone.

“Helm,” Jeffrey ordered, “slow to ahead one-third, make turns for four knots.”

Meltzer acknowledged. Jeffrey wanted to do a thorough sound search before they left the safe ridge valley to venture into the dangerous basin plain. Jeffrey’s immediate tactical problem was crossing the Panama Basin unnoticed but quickly. Using the Panama Canal might have cut several crucial days from his trip to the South Pacific, but there still was a long way to go.

The passive sonar search began. More cargo shipping quickly appeared on the plot.

“New passive sonar contact,” one of Kathy’s people announced. “Contact is submerged.”

A submarine. Is it one of ours? Is it hostile, and waiting for us?

“Contact classification?” Jeffrey demanded.

“A diesel running on batteries, Captain,” Kathy said. “Multiple screws, heavy cavitation and blade-rate effects.”

Jeffrey relaxed. He told Kathy to put the contact on the speakers. New sound filled the control room, a rhythmic churning with an underlying constant hiss.

Bell listened, then turned to Jeffrey. “It sure isn’t trying to hide, sir. Not making that kind of noise.”

This diesel boat was an old one. It was running so shallow that the suction of its screws created tiny vacuum bubbles which popped as they collapsed — cavitation hiss. The revolving screws were swishing distinctly as each blade cut through the wake turbulence from the diesel sub’s rudder and sternplanes. This caused a steady, throbbing, syncopated beat — blade rate.

“Can you identify it?” Jeffrey said.

“Contact appears to be a Peruvian Foxtrot,” Kathy said.

“No threat,” Bell said. “A thirdhand, third-rate, Third World neutral vessel. Obsolete sonars and fire control.”

“Obsolete is the word for it,” Jeffrey said. Foxtrot was the old NATO code name for a class of Russian diesel sub. A handful still traded on the global arms market. “Maybe it’s here on a training cruise.”

“Sir,” Kathy reported, “the Foxtrot is emitting now on superhigh-frequency active sonar.”

“Curious,” Jeffrey said. “They retrofitted something fancy.” Only the latest equipment could handle the one- thousand-kilohertz band, forty times above the top range of human hearing.

“Sir, the signal reads as a frequency-agile encrypted communications burst.” The digitized tones changed frequency thousands of times per second, to avoid detection by unwelcome guests.

“Who’s he talking to?” Bell said. The fact that Challenger heard the message burst at all suggested the Foxtrot was using an Allied frequency-hopping format routine. Those protocols were highly classified.

Jeffrey’s intercom light blinked. It was the lieutenant junior grade in charge of the secure communications room. The lieutenant asked for Commodore Wilson. Jeffrey was miffed.

“Commodore, it’s for you.”

Wilson took the handset and listened. “Very well.” He hung up.

“Captain, bring your ship to one-five-hundred feet.” Fifteen hundred feet. “Prepare to send your minisub to rendezvous underwater with the Foxtrot.”

Jeffrey and Bell had decided to send SEAL Chief Montgomery to pilot the minisub, with Ensign Harrison along as copilot-under-instruction. This would get Harrison started on qualifying as a minisub pilot that much sooner. David Meltzer was already a combat veteran in the ASDS mini, but he couldn’t be in two places at once, and Jeffrey needed Meltzer at the helm on Challenger.

Wilson had ordered that no one else go in the minisub, to allow for the weight of cargo being brought back from the Foxtrot. It appeared that Peru, like Cuba, was willing to quietly violate its own neutrality to aid the Allied cause.

Now, Jeffrey stood impatiently under the lockout trunk to Challenger’s streamlined in-hull minisub hangar. The mini had returned, and the docking procedures were almost complete.

Finally the lockout hatch swung open.

Jeffrey had a sudden awful feeling of hopeless longing and bitter regret. He realized he was dreaming, and was self-aware he was in the dream but couldn’t make it stop.

It was a dream he’d had once before, a dream that left him drained and depressed. It was a wish-fulfillment dream, and he knew it, and the dream went on and he couldn’t make it stop.

Standing in front of him, returned from the dead, was Ilse Reebeck. Not the real person, but a memory of her made real in his mind because of the weight of her loss.

Ilse Reebeck, in actuality cremated to ashes, was standing in front of him, whole, seeming alive. It was all a sick illusion, and Jeffrey knew it.

“What’s the matter?” the false shade of Ilse Reebeck said. “I thought you’d be glad to see me.”

Oh God, please make this stop. Jeffrey knew he’d wake up any moment in his stateroom, bathed in sweat.

“Jeffrey Fuller, what is wrong with you?”

This time, Chief Montgomery also appeared in the dream. He was smiling, as if to rub it in. Jeffrey resented this intrusion, even knowing Montgomery too wasn’t real. Jeffrey wanted to be alone with the shade of Ilse Reebeck, and not have someone else there. He wanted the dream to go on forever, for Ilse to be there standing near him, alive and breathing and warm. He wanted this as badly as he wanted the nightmare to end.

“Captain,” Montgomery said. “Captain!” The chief grabbed Jeffrey’s shoulders and shook him, and Jeffrey realized it wasn’t a dream.

Jeffrey opened and closed his mouth but words wouldn’t form. He leaned back against the corridor wall, and punched the bulkhead with his knuckles to make sure the metal was real and the pain in his fingers was real.

Jeffrey stared at Ilse. “I… Jesus, I thought you were dead.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“They told me you were dead.”

“That’s ridiculous. Who’s they?”

“Commodore Wilson.”

“Commodore Wilson?”