Tidal Rip

Jeffrey laughed. “That’s great. I’d love to meet whoever comes up with these things.”

Bell smiled. “So would I.” He took a pad and pen from Jeffrey’s desk and sketched out the shape of the special barge. “I guess, Skipper, from the thing’s layout, the way there was good headroom for us to hide tied up and surfaced, it was sort of like a catamaran more than a barge.”

“So you snuck in through the stern under a smoke screen, hid under this arcade running down the middle of the hull, and the tugs pushed you and this big trash scow merrily down the river and through Long Island Sound.”

“Pretty much. They lay infrared-proof smoke screens all the time, you know, when ships go in or out and just to keep the Axis guessing. The tricky parts were squeezing in to begin with, without breaking something, and then getting through Hell Gate in one piece so we could use the East River.” Hell Gate was the portal from the west end of Long Island Sound, near La Guardia Airport and the Triborough Bridge, into the East River, which ran down one side of Manhattan — tidal currents in the narrow Hell Gate were infamously treacherous.

Jeffrey looked at Bell’s drawing of the special barge again and shook his head in amazement. He knew that a major dredging operation in the early 2000s had greatly improved the depth and clearances of shipping channels in the Inland Waterway around New York Harbor and Long Island Sound. This work, which took years and cost a fortune, was proving invaluable now.

“So where did they toss out the garbage?”

“Way beyond Sandy Hook, past the edge of the continental shelf. I’m told it was all nontoxic stuff not suitable for landfill. We untied first, and dived, and steamed away real quick. But I gotta tell you, Captain, the noise of all that refuse pouring overboard and falling through the water, and then smashing into the bottom mud, was really something over the sonar speakers.”

“And you’ve been using the Gulf Stream for concealment as you came south?”

“That was Lieutenant Milgrom’s idea, based on things she and Reebeck worked on in the past.” Sonar conditions in the Gulf Stream were very confusing because of chaotic temperature mixing and unpredictable side eddies.

“Okay. Great. Chalk one up to SubGru Two for supporting us as effectively as ever…. A garbage barge. The Axis probably don’t even know we’ve sailed.”

Bell looked a little worried. “Let’s hope so, anyway. They must suspect something, sir.”

“Yeah. The Germans probably know we know the von Scheer is on the way. They know we won’t just sit on our backsides. If anything, their failed attempt to have me and Ilse killed in Washington will put them even more on their toes.”

Bell sat there thoughtfully.

Jeffrey leaned forward to dispel the beginnings of a negative mood about what the future might bring. “So how’s my ship?” Challenger had received some hasty repairs and upgrades since returning from her previous deployment.

“The new fiber-optic acoustic towed array is just terrific, Captain. Milgrom and her people are very turned on about what it can do.”

“Good. We’ll need it.”

“And we finally have all eight torpedo tubes in working order again.”

“This I’m real glad to hear. What kind of weapons load-out could they give us? Was that inventory page I saw on your status display for the exercise, or a wish list, or was it real?”

“It was real. High-explosive Tactical Tomahawks in all twelve vertical launching-system tubes. A mix of warheads, like ground penetrator and cluster minelet. And a well-balanced, full load in the torpedo room. High- explosive ADCAP fish, a few more Tomahawks, and improved versions of our newer toys.”

“Improved how?”

“The unmanned undersea vehicles are mission reconfigurable now. We have a decent supply of the plug-in black boxes so the vehicles can probe for us in different sortie profiles.”

“And we really got the Mark Eighty-eight Mod Twos they promised?” Mark 88s were Challenger’s custom-made deep-diving nuclear torpedoes. They were vital to take on a ceramic-hulled opponent, since conventional Mark 48 Improved ADCAPs had a crush depth of about three thousand feet — and ceramic fast-attacks subs could dive maybe five times deeper.

“We sure did, Skipper. A bit faster, a bit longer range, and the variable-yield warhead is booped up to a maximum of one kiloton.”

Jeffrey nodded. “Finally we have parity with the Axis torpedo-warhead punch.”

“I’ve already started reviewing how that can alter our tactics,” Bell said. In the past, the Mark 88 warheads went up only to a tenth of a kiloton. But the higher yield could be a mixed blessing, Jeffrey knew. Extremely quiet submarines tended to detect one another at very short range. The whole point of using tactical nukes was they had a kill radius vastly larger than any conventional warhead — large enough to defeat most noisemakers and evasive maneuvers. But there was real danger, in a close-quarters melee, that a submarine would be damaged or even sunk by its own atomic warhead going off near its enemy’s hull.

“Okay,” Jeffrey said. “Ship’s material condition is otherwise in good shape?”

“Affirmative.” Bell gave him a rundown of items out of commission or on reduced status; the list was short. “Though of course we won’t know for sure until we shock-test everything, Captain.”

Jeffrey knew what his XO really meant. The shock test would come when they engaged the Admiral von Scheer.

“How’s the crew?”

Bell sighed, his face clouding enough for Jeffrey to be instantly concerned. “Going out again with so little rest is hard on people.”

“What else is new? We’re at war…. What are you bobbing and weaving about, XO?”

Bell shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “A few of the guys came back from leave, well… Let’s say, they were visibly three sheets to the wind.”

Jeffrey was shocked, and angry. “Drunk? Some of my people reported back drunk?”

Bell looked down at the floor.

“Who are they?”

Bell reluctantly told him.

“Crap,” Jeffrey said. “Older men. Married. This isn’t good, XO. You putting them on report?”

“Well, the corpsman had them diagnosed with nonspecific flulike symptomology and confined them to their racks till they sobered up. COB and I decided their hangovers would be sufficient penance. We can dodge any formal paperwork till after this patrol…. The option to push it further’s reallyyour decision, sir.”

Jeffrey looked at his hands. “Why, XO?”

“You mean why did it happen?”

Jeffrey nodded.

Bell took a deep breath. “I think it’s obvious. They’re scared.”

“We’re fighting for national survival. Who isn’t scared?”

“It’s just that, well… Even if the ship has nine lives, each time we head out into the blue we use up a handful more. Ditto for your narrow escape in Washington yesterday, sir. The men know all about it, and in their eyes you are the ship. The guys pretty much feel like we’re playing Russian roulette. Sooner or later, Captain, the bullet with Challenger’s name on it has to come up. It’s just a matter of statistics.”

“But they all got the Presidential Unit Citation last time!”

“I know.”

“That ought to have been good for morale.”

“That’s the problem, I think. It created this artificial emotional high.”

“You mean, a false sense of closure, and escape.”

“Yup. Then having to turn around so fast for another deployment, it just meant more of a group mental crash.”

Jeffrey sat there, pondering. “I’ll have to go around and talk to the men.”