Crush Depth

the squid or the whale crashed into the cable with their bodies.

“Two’s panicking,” Bauer said between clenched teeth. Van Gelder saw he was right. Two’s vital signs, the tremoring as he held the camera, his garbled words on his keyboard, all made this clear. Bauer grabbed the mike and tried to calm Diver Two down.

A fragment of tentacle flew by the viewport, vivid on Van Gelder’s picture — the whale was biting the squid. The huge whale flashed by the capsule with its lower jaw gaping wide open. Van Gelder saw an endless row of large teeth, and then a giant, intelligent eye. The whole bulk of the sperm whale drove past the capsule. The force of its tail flukes thrashing the water made the capsule spin in dizzying circles.

Diver Two switched on his floodlight and shined it out the viewport, to try to scare away the battling, maddened undersea creatures. This was a big mistake. Before Bauer could order him to stop, the squid and the whale both noticed the light, and attacked.

The last thing Van Gelder saw on the picture was a close-up blur of tentacles and hard, sharp, beaklike squid mouth parts, of gnashing whale teeth and smashing fins. On the sonar he heard a crunching noise, and the picture went totally blank. Bauer cursed.

The load on the cable was instantly lighter. On sonar, Van Gelder could hear the squid and the whale still fighting. The sperm whale won, and Van Gelder heard more crunching, tearing, chewing sounds that made him sick.

The winch at last unjammed. The cable reeled in quickly. But the end was a ragged stump. There was no sign of any pressure capsule, no sign of Diver Two. The chief and his man hurried back into the mini before the sperm whale could decide to come shallow and hunt for more rivals or prey. Bauer went aft to assist them. Van Gelder, hands trembling, steered the minisub back to Voortrekker.

TWENTY-FIVE

The next day

Jeffrey sat tense and worried at the command console in Challenger’s control room. Outwardly, in order to do his duty and show good leadership to his crew, he made sure he exuded nothing but calm and confidence. The cost of this internal-versus-external conflict was a tight knot in Jeffrey’s stomach, and gradually increasing fatigue. He hoped to grab another catnap soon.

But not right now. Commodore Wilson stood sternly in the aisle, supervising as the diesel boats reported in. The Royal Australian Navy submarines Farncomb, Rankin, Sheean, and Waller were holding for now to the east of Chatham Island, arrayed in a line.

Each vessel was thirty-five miles from the next. The four Collins-class subs created a scouting and search line a hundred miles across, under Wilson’s control. Orders and reports would be passed up and down the line using covert acoustic communication bursts. At least that was the plan.

The Australians would listen on passive sonar, ping on active when needed, launch atomic torpedoes, and also serve as decoys and lures — all while Challenger lurked very deep, to catch ter Horst unawares and destroy Voortrekker in a pincers.

But the most iffy part of the plan was that the diesel boats couldn’t cover great distances quickly. To cruise very far at all they had to snorkel and run their main engines, which would ruin strategic stealth. Specific targeting data — ter Horst’s route of approach, Voortrekker’s course and speed — had to come well in advance, from the SOSUS network. The first of the three SOSUS lines guarding the ANZA Gap lay several hundred miles to the south, hopefully far enough away to give Wilson and his squadron adequate warning to get into proper position for the attack. A real-time downlink to the squadron from the main SOSUS land-based processing center, while Challenger stayed concealed and mobile, was Ilse Reebeck’s job. This downlink was new, and experimental.

Diego Garcia had proved to the Pentagon that when facing Jan ter Horst, surface ships and planes and depth bombs simply weren’t enough. Jeffrey knew full well that the best platforms to use against any sub were other submarines. But Voortrekker was so quiet that the SOSUS data would be vague and soft. There’d also be a lag between when the raw jumble of the ocean’s innumerable sound waves hit the hydrophones and when the center’s supercomputers could sniff out Voortrekker’s signature. Wilson’s squadron would have to work very hard to hunt ter Horst once he was localized.

All this was why Jeffrey was inwardly tense. As self-disciplined as he was, he couldn’t make himself forget how awfully dependent they were on the SOSUS. As always in naval combat, everything hinged on making the first detection of the adversary, on being able to fire effectively first.

On Voortrekker’s minisub

After the first line of the SOSUS grid was hacked, the minisub rendezvoused with Voortrekker and docked. Then Voortrekker spent hours sneaking farther north along the bottom. Van Gelder got some fitful sleep, his head filled with images of swelling, bursting men and gnashing sea monsters. Maintenance technicians looked over the mini, and topped off its tanks with more hydrogen peroxide air-independent fuel. Then ter Horst released the mini again, in range of the second SOSUS line.

That was yesterday and earlier today. Now, Van Gelder drove the minisub while Bauer relaxed in the pilot’s seat. The second pair of dialysis divers had already done their jobs and were safely retrieved. They lay now, cocooned in their pressurized transfer capsules, in the passenger compartment aft of the mini’s lockout chamber. The Kampfschwimmer chief and his assistant tended them there.

Van Gelder tried to unwind, and sought to make conversation with this inscrutable German, Bauer. Sitting practically in his lap, it was difficult to ignore the man. “Everything went well this time,” Van Gelder said.

“Compared to yesterday, ja.” Bauer laughed roughly.

“But you knew you might suffer losses, didn’t you?”

“It comes with the work.” Bauer seemed very pleased with himself.

“Then I don’t understand something. If there are three SOSUS lines we need to disable, and we have to do all this one more time tomorrow, why didn’t you bring three pairs of men fitted with ports for the backpacks?”

“The whole point of the pressure capsules is we can send the same men down to make repeated dives. We just hold them inside the capsules after the first excursion, and lower them to the sea floor when needed again, and avoid the whole decompression and recompression cycle.”

“But what if something bad had happened today? We’d be really stuck, wouldn’t we?”

Bauer cleared his throat in an ominous way. “We’re taking a different approach for the last part of the SOSUS.”

Van Gelder didn’t like the tone of this. “What exactly?”

“It’s just as well you brought it up. In the interest of time, Captain ter Horst had asked me to brief you here, while we make the trip back to Voortrekker.”

“I’m listening.”

“You’re aware of the ostentatious rules of engagement for nuclear demolitions on land used by the so-called Allies?”

“Yes.”

“A responsible naval officer not part of the commando team must accompany the team,” Bauer recited, “to independently affirm that the blast will not cause undue collateral damage among enemy civilians.”

“That’s right. They make a big deal that their SEALs don’t ever set off an atomic weapon without an objective second opinion rendered on site.”

Bauer glanced at Van Gelder and smiled. “Now it’s your turn.”

“My turn for what?”

“We’re taking out the third SOSUS line with a tactical nuclear device.”

“I thought the whole point was stealth!”

“Mind your depth, Copilot,” Bauer snapped.

Van Gelder was so distracted he’d let the mini’s bow nose up. He corrected, and Bauer sneered.