Crush Depth

line of sandbars enclosed a big tidal lagoon. The hamlet of Owenga, where they’d started out, was nestled in the southeast corner of the I. Ilse’s setup was near the middle of the southern edge of the island.

Jeffrey held on as the road got rougher and bumpy. In low spots, sheltered hollows, with the windows of the Land Rover open, Jeffrey smelled the manure-and-urine odor buildup of cattle. He saw many sheep and cows, and sometimes a horse or two. Trees stood in lonely isolation, all bending the same way, leaning permanently eastward toward the morning sun.

“That’s from the wind?”

“The trade winds almost never stop. Hang onto your hat, Captain, or you’ll have to send to Peru to find it.” Henga laughed again. “That’s, oh, five thousand miles from here.”

The wind and rising sun had cleared the mist. The sky was a beautiful turquoise, flecked with high fluffy clouds. The road went past a stream, then took a culvert over a larger stream.

“Rained recently,” Harrison said idly as he glanced back down the road — which by now was more like a rutted, rough-hewn trail. “We aren’t kicking up dust.”

“That’s quite correct,” Henga said. “One thing about Chatham Island, the weather is unpredictable and never stays the same for very long. This afternoon could be perfectly sunny, or cloudy and cold. By tomorrow a tropical storm could hit. There’s a severe one passing New Zealand right now, you know. Drenched half of Australia on the way.”

Jeffrey nodded, then thought ahead. They were nearing Ilse and the SEALs.

“You’ve worked out rules of engagement?” Jeffrey didn’t want to take friendly fire.

“Oh yes, first thing. Your Lieutenant Clayton and I agreed, and I’ve informed my home-guard militia. Point one, no one shoots first. Point two, if you see strangers working in and around the water, leave them alone.”

“Good, good… How big is your militia?”

“One hundred twenty men and women. I put them through regular drills with vigor. Mandatory firearms practice every Saturday. We even have an old armored car.”

Harrison perked up. “What kind?”

“A Saracen. Ex — British Army. It usually stays by the airport. Fuel is short, you understand, and the thing’s transmission is rather worn, as is the barrel of its gun.”

“How large is your airport?” Harrison asked.

Henga smiled. “To call it an airport insults other airports. It’s an asphalt strip, uneven and not very long, barely adequate to take small propeller airplanes. We have one aircraft, in fact, privately owned, for short hops to the other inhabited island in the Chatham group, Pitt Island…. Before the war there were more-or-less daily flights from Wellington and Christchurch.”

Jeffrey knew those were cities on the New Zealand mainland, five hundred miles to the west. “Why do you say more-or-less?”

“The airplanes are what you Americans would call puddle jumpers. If they don’t have good weather, they can’t fly, as simple as that. As I mentioned, the weather here is very unpredictable.”

The road took a turn to the left and topped a rise. In front of Jeffrey loomed a big satellite dish. Near it was an equipment bunker dug into jutting bedrock. The door of the bunker stood open, and cables ran in and out. By the downwind side of the rock outcropping, Jeffrey saw a pair of khaki tents.

Chief Montgomery stepped from behind a stunted tree, one that was barely wide enough to hide his bulk. He’d obviously been waiting for them. He didn’t smile.

Jeffrey followed Ilse’s lead and glanced carefully over the edge of the jagged cliff on the rugged headland. A hundred feet below, strong white surf creamed endlessly against the base of the tan-yellow stone. The wind howled, the air was filled with seabirds and their cries, and further out seals and dolphins fed and played.

Jeffrey saw the cable Ilse was pointing to, draped over the edge of the cliff, leading down into the water. The main part of the lengthy cable, the acoustic link to Challenger, had been strung along the sea floor using the minisub.

“You know as well as I do,” Ilse said, “the microphone line has sensors that let me adjust for hydrographic conditions. I’m not doing this by the seat of my pants.”

“You’ve made communications checks with Sydney?”

“Repeatedly. And also with… Serenity. You heard me loud and clear, didn’t you? You didn’t miss a single one of my reports. Or do you want to run through the entire list again?”

“But the whole thing’s so theoretical.”

Ilse bristled. “I’ve seen you use weird tactical tricks in combat based on theories far crazier than this downlink. And I didn’t invent it, I just use it.”

“But—”

“I do know how to use it. It worked fine in the Aleutians, which is a harsher environment than here. It’s working just fine now.”

“So what’s wrong?”

“Maybe nothing’s wrong. Maybe he isn’t coming. Maybe he was sunk after all, or damaged and went back to Durban, and this whole thing is one giant fucking wild-goose chase.”

“Ilse, you shouldn’t use foul language.”

“Honest to God, Jeffrey, sometimes you’re too much.”

“It’s Captain to you, Lieutenant. Watch out, you’re on the verge of insubordination.”

“And you’re way past the verge of pompousness. I’m an officer in a foreign navy, and we’re on foreign soil. Off the ship you can’t push me around like you tried to on the last mission.”

“It doesn’t work like that. I’m still your commanding officer. I deserve, I insist on, your respect.”

“Well excuse me, Captain Fuller.”

“Why are you so irritable?”

“Because you’re irritating. You’re second-guessing me, just like you used to. It’s insulting. I’m an expert at this work and you know it.”

“So like I said, what’s wrong?”

“Like I said, maybe nothing’s wrong.”

“No, we know for sure he’s coming.”

“How? How do you know? He’s the most unpredictable bastard you or I ever met.”

“The Australians intercepted a neutral merchant ship. They got tipped off by some kind of shooting, during a rescue when the ship broke down. The ship was hollow inside, Ilse, like the one we took through the canal. The boarding party found a handful of Axis nuclear torpedoes in the secret hold.”

“You mean he got fresh ammo?”

“Yes. But something happened. Maybe the Aussies surprised him, blundering into the hold, and they had to be killed. The merchant master tried to tell some cockamamie story about pirates. It didn’t hold up. So ter Horst is definitely coming, and we definitely should have heard by now.”

“Then I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Let’s go back to the tent. You can get the SOSUS center for me live on voice?”

“Yes. I told you, didn’t I? I’ve talked to them myself.”

“Let’s go. And in front of the others, Ilse, act with decorum. What happened between us is private.”

“I had no idea we’d be assigned together again, on the ship. If I thought that would possibly happen, I’d never have let what went on between us get started to begin with.”

“So you blew it, because it did get started, and here we are. At least be discreet. I cannot let you argue with me in front of Clayton and Montgomery.”

Ilse balled her fists. “Stop lecturing me. This is exactly why I knew you and I would never work out. You’ve got some kind of complex. You don’t treat women with respect.”

“That’s it, Lieutenant! You’re the one with the complex. You don’t know how to take orders and play on a team.”

Jeffrey and Ilse trudged back the three hundred yards or so from the edge of the cliff to where the tents were set up. Out of the corner of his eye, Jeffrey spotted movement in the dense bushes, on the edge of a nature reserve that bordered the satellite ground-station site. A wild pig, probably.