mixed-cargo vessel in the center of the formation, with extra antennas and armor to harden her bridge. Each of the fifty-plus cargo ships and dozen frigates looked small and insubstantial against the vast ocean, but Beck knew there were four or five thousand people in their crews, plus six to eight thousand soldiers on each of the troopships — an entire city underway, an armada of sustenance bound for the U.K., that thorn in the side of the Axis. Beck tried to dehumanize these people in his mind, to prepare for the killing to come, but it was difficult. Most of the frigates were U.S. Navy, Oliver Hazard Perry — class, and they and their helos were pinging aggressively. Beck knew from past experience that they'd fight and die very hard — today's confrontation might well be decisive to the outcome of the war.
Eberhard's voice broke in. 'Show me that natural gas carrier again.'
'We'll let the convoy run right over us,' Eberhard said. 'They're so close now we're golden even if they zigzag.' Beck kept monitoring the huge formation.
'How quaint,' Eberhard said a minute later. 'Flag signals from the flagship.' Beck saw them, too, through his Honeybee. Then searchlights blinked in code. Two escorts traded places. Some stray merchant ships got back where they belonged.
'Sir,' Werner Haffner interrupted from his sonar console, 'sudden high-speed blade rate from one escort on convoy's eastern flank.'
'Contact classification?' Beck said.
'Appears to be a U.S. Navy auxiliary, an oceanographic research ship.'
'Visually confirmed,' Beck said. 'The small-waterplane twin-hull Kaimalino.' Eberhard snorted. 'They're at the end of their rope, pressing her into service in an atomic war zone.'
Beck had to agree. He knew the Allies were badly short on escort craft, after six months of mostly losing battles on the high seas.
Beck went back to his tactical plot and the Honeybee screens. In a few more minutes, he frowned. The Kaimalino moved to the head of the convoy. It deployed a deep-towed side-scan sonar sled, and started searching the canyons in the armada's path. Whoever's commanding the convoy defenses is good, Beck told himself. He'd realized this was the time and place of maximum danger, the last few hours and nautical miles before the escort reinforcements arrived — and he was taking no chances. Deutschland was trapped. If she stayed still she'd be spotted for sure, a very distinct hull shape against the rock-hard bottom. But if she moved, the side-scan sled would pick her up on Doppler even sooner.
The encapsulated Shipwreck missiles wouldn't launch for several minutes yet — they were autonomous, with no wires back to Deutschland. Eberhard's attack plan was coming unglued. And he knew it. 'Achtung, Einzvo, open fire! Direct all prelaunched Sea Lions to attack!
Target one eel at the Kaimalino before they find us!'
Beck barked out the orders. Commands went through the wires. The escorts reacted at once. High-speed propellers and pump-jets sounded, much more shrill than the merchant ships, racing in different directions, the frigates and eels. Eberhard ordered Coomans to steer toward the convoy at thirty knots. Deutschland began to move. Her bow pulled up. Coomans banked her hard into the turn. Eberhard ordered Beck to have both prelaunched brilliant decoys mimic Class 212's, as a distraction, to buy Deutschland time.
The Sea Lion reached the Kaimalino — Deutschland was barely outside the self-kill zone of her own one- kiloton warhead. Through the Honeybee, Beck watched as the sea around Kaimalino blasted toward the heavens, like three thousand conventional torpedo hits at once. The vessel, a huge steel catamaran, split from stem to stern. In the blink of an eye the two hull sections, each the length of a soccer field, flew into the air and tumbled and spun. An instant later the fireball broke the surface. The image whited out. When the image cleared, the fireball broiled and fulminated. The airborne shock wave spread.
The waterborne boom that struck next badly hurt Beck's ears. Deutschland was lifted by the stern. Beck watched the gravimeter as the seafloor loomed too close. Coomans fought to bring the ship back on an even keel. Fireball pulsations, then more surface reflections of the underwater blast, tried to pound Deutschland into the razor-sharp basalt bottom.
Beck forced his eyes back to the surviving Honeybee feeds. He saw the next thing Haffner heard. The frigates were launching updated ASROCs in retaliation, rockets that each dropped off an antisubmarine torpedo.
'Flank speed ahead,' Eberhard ordered. Coomans acknowledged. Deutschland sped up. Beck watched the rockets leave the frigates, shrouding their foredecks in boiling flame. Soon the booster stages fell behind, plunging into the waves. Each booster left an American Mark 50 torpedo arcing through the air. Each 50 hit the ocean with a giant splash. They were a brand-new design, the 50's, and deadly.
'Four torpedoes in the water,' Haffner shouted.
Beck heard their propulsion systems scream. They were targeted at the points where Deutschland's loitering Sea Lions started their high-speed runs, on the assumption that German submarines were there. Soon there were four undersea atomic blasts. Four white fountains burst into the sky. They rose higher and higher without slowing down, and grew wider and wider. The ocean spawned a foursome of new suns. The combined undersea pressure waves, from off the port and starboard quarters, threatened to shatter Deutschland's hull. Damage reports poured in — the torpedo room autoloader gear was jammed.
'Lost the wires,' Beck shouted, 'all units from tubes one through seven. Brilliant decoys destroyed!'
'Convoy aspect change,' Haffner said.
Beck saw the convoy wakes hook sharply left. 'Convoy's new course west.' Deutschland's fourteen Sea Lions still ran south.
'Sea Lions now on preprogrammed active search,' Haffner said. Beck tracked his own torpedoes by their pings. 'All Sea Lions converging on frigates guarding convoy eastern flank.' The eels were out of control; Deutschland's element of surprise was hopelessly lost; and the smashing blow of her Shipwrecks, meant to open the battle, still hadn't come.
The eastern frigates detected the swarm of inbound eels. They fired their antitorpedo mortars, but the high- explosive bombs fell short. Beck could see the frigates towed noisemaker sleds, designed to draw off Axis acoustic-homing weapons. The sleds were useless at the lethal range of a tactical nuclear blast.
Several Sea Lions went off at once. Mushroom clouds marked the warships' graves. The spreading airborne shock waves reached the
Honeybees; the pictures went blank. Eberhard ordered another brace of Honeybees launched immediately. There were plenty more frigates up there, and their seasoned captains were very angry indeed, and the sonar whiteouts would only hide Deutschland so long.
'Sonar whiteouts clearing somewhat,' Haffner shouted. 'Inbound torpedo, bearing zero seven five!'
Amid the undersea chaos, an ASROC's Mark 50 had found Deutschland. Eberhard ordered a Sea Lion fired as antitorpedo snap shot. The inbound weapon's range was eight thousand meters, closing by one thousand every minute.
'Copilot,' Eberhard snapped, 'status of autoloader gear?'
'Both ship-sides out of action due to bearing pins sheared off from shock. Starboard autoloader will soon be repaired.'
'Achtung, Einzvo, tubes two through seven, fire a spread at the convoy. Spiral our units to three hundred meters at stealth speed to mask our launch depth. Limit attack speed to fifty knots to mimic Class two-twelve — launched weapons. Match sonar bearings and los!' Launch! Deutschland had to do as much damage as possible, before she was forced on the defensive by the outnumbering frigates.
'Inbound Mark fifty still closing,' Beck said. 'Unit from tube one converging on intercept course. Unit in range of inbound weapon now.' He detonated the warhead through the wire.
Deutschland's stern slammed sideways, knocking the vessel off course. A monitor fell from its mounting bracket, tore out the power cable and coaxial feed, and imploded on the deck.
'Starboard autoloader badly damaged!' the copilot shouted. 'Flooding through number two countermeasures launcher!'
'Chief of the Watch,' Beck said, 'give them a hand at the flooding.' At this depth no leak was minor — Eberhard was playing it very close, hugging the nuclear blast zones for better shots at the enemy, hugging the sonar whiteouts in order to hide. The relief pilot took over, and Coomans hurried aft. Haffner announced new rocket motors, igniting underwater — the encapsulated Shipwrecks' timers had wound down at last.
Beck called up the pictures from the new Honeybees; the next blasts would be air bursts. Sixteen long, thin,
