there was no dust or litter anywhere.
'I'm lucky to have — such a good crew,' Taylor said. 'The able-bodied men are helping care for the wounded. The ambulatory ones are doing what they can as well — I suppose I'm in that group myself. I'm grateful for the medical supplies you brought with you, and for the loan of your chief corpsman.'
'It's the least I can do,' Jeffrey said. 'Our doc volunteered to stay until you're rescued.
I'm sorry about the men you lost.'
Taylor grew sad. 'My XO showed a lot of promise. If we make it back I want to put him in for the Medal of Honor. If he hadn't gone aft, led the others to keep the propulsion plant going… And my engineer, my engineer… My father's known his father for fortyfive years; they were at the Naval Academy together.' Taylor had to pause to wipe his eyes. 'I'm not looking forward to breaking the news about his son.'
'Maybe they'll be able to salvage her,' Jeffrey said. 'At least then the men aft can get decent burial.'
'I keep hoping so,' Taylor said. 'Texas was, is such a fine vessel…. Compressed air bladders forced through the aft escape trunk, and through the machinery access hatches. Towed to friendly waters without changing her depth, for buoyancy control…. Won't be easy. But we need every ship we can get. I just wonder if this war will still be raging by the time she might be refurbished.'
'I keep thinking, sir, that from where we are right now, a quick end won't be a happy end for the good guys. From the sound of things, that big convoy suffered horrible losses yesterday.'
Jeffrey and Taylor reached Texas's CACC, similar in size and layout to Challenger's. The men on watch turned to greet Jeffrey, and Captain Taylor gave them encouraging words. Just then COB came up a ladder, past the far end of the CACC. He was breathing a little hard and had clear, sticky grease on his hands and his pants.
'Well, sirs,' COB said, 'I think we can get tube four working, if we could bring some spare parts from Challenger.'
'So you concur, Master Chief,' Taylor said, 'that torpedo tube two is operational?'
'Affirmative, Captain.'
'At least we'll be able to defend ourselves,' Taylor said. 'No melee ranging without a working bow sphere, but the port wide-aperture array has a good field of view, the way we landed, from what you told me.'
'And both port-side tubes are clear of debris,' Jeffrey said. 'We saw that with the LMRS.' Jeffrey peered over the sonarmen's shoulders at their screens, out of curiosity and concern..
'Handy little gadgets,' Taylor said, 'those off-board probes. Ours were damaged, beyond repair.'
There was a screeching sound, and everyone tensed. 'I forgot to warn you about that,' Taylor said with a wry smile. 'She doesn't like being so deep.'
'It's a miracle the ship held up after such a beating,' Jeffrey said.
'What really worried me were all the penetrations for pipes and cables leading aft through the main watertight bulkhead. If just one of those seals or flapper valves gives way, with ambient sea pressure on the other side… But General Dynamics and Newport News built Texas good.'
Jeffrey glanced at the sonar screens again, but there were no hostile contacts. COB cleared his throat. 'I spoke to the Weps and made a list of things, sirs. I'd like to go back to Challenger to get them, in the ASDS with Meltzer.'
'I'd appreciate that a lot,' Taylor said. 'What do you say, Captain Fuller?' Taylor smiled.
'I concur,' Jeffrey said. 'Just make it quick. We're way behind schedule already.' He sensed Taylor was lonely for a peer with whom to unburden himself, and Jeffrey was it. Jeffrey had some idea of how the more senior man must feel. Jeffrey had never felt so lonely as since leaving Cape Verde.
'We better get most of your SEALs and their equipment over to my ship on this trip, too,' Jeffrey said. 'Otherwise the ASDS'll be overcrowded.'
'Lieutenant Clayton and the men were assembling everything by the escape trunk,' COB said.
'Let's go talk to them,' Jeffrey said.
Ilse sat at a sonar console in Challenger's CACC, busy working on the METOC
oceanographic data. Kathy announced that Meltzer was calling from over by Texas. Ilse brought up the imagery from the LMRS probe. She saw the mini-sub sitting sideways on Texas's back, with the little ASDS's nose pointed down at the muck along the much bigger SSN's starboard side.
The Texas seemed dumb, inanimate. Ilse tried to picture all the people in the hull, Jeffrey and Clayton and more than a hundred others. Then she remembered the corpses, near the stern.
'Put him on the speakers, please,' Lieutenant Bell said. He picked up a mike. 'ASDS, Challenger, g'head.' Bell's voice went through the fiber-optic wire to the probe, then from the probe to the mini by low-power gertrude.
'Sir,' Meltzer answered the same way, 'am returning now with one load of SEALs and equipment boxes, including the two special items. COB has a list of things to bring back to Texas on our second trip.'
Ilse guessed the 'special items' were the pair of briefcase atom bombs.
'V'r'well, ASDS. Relay COB's list and I'll have people get them together immediately.'
'Switching to digital datalink mode,' Meltzer said. 'E-mail received,' Kathy said. Then Bell warned Meltzer that the LMRS battery level was low. They arranged for him to escort it back to Challenger for a recharge, controlling the probe by autonomous acoustic link from the ASDS — they would cut the miles-long fiber-optic and dump it in deep water.
Meltzer undocked from the Texas. Ilse watched on the probe's laser line-scan camera as the mini rose from the disabled submarine. The mini quickly righted itself — zero bubble, to use the proper term — and got underway. From the viewing angle now, Ilse could tell the probe was following off the minisub's port quarter, tucked in close.
'Acoustic control of LMRS tested and functional,' Meltzer said. 'Will follow predetermined dog-leg course to Challenger.' For stealth. 'No hostile contacts held on ASDS sonars. Am commanding LMRS to jettison fiber-optic cable.' Now, for a while, because of intervening terrain, Challenger would be out of touch with the minisub and Texas.
Jeffrey was chatting with some of Texas's enlisted men in the mess. They seemed grateful for the company, and gladly stopped their millionth game of cards or checkers. Shajo Clayton and Chief Montgomery came by for another cup of coffee. Overhead, they all heard a hard clunk.
'That wasn't hull popping,' one of Texas's senior chiefs said.
'No,' Jeffrey said, 'it wasn't.' Adrenaline poured through his blood. 'Somebody's trying to dock.'
Clayton and Montgomery tensed.
Jeffrey reached for a growler phone to call the CACC, but it barked first — Captain Taylor. Taylor confirmed the
ASDS was long gone, well on its way back to Challenger.
Whoever was trying to land on Texas, it wasn't Meltzer. Jeffrey spoke briskly.
'Concur,' Taylor answered. 'We didn't hear anything on sonar till that docking transient just now. They must have come in through our blind spot, over the stern. Smart bastards.
I'm sounding silent battle stations. Prepare to repel boarders.' Jeffrey hung up the mike.
'Get everyone and everything out of here,' Jeffrey said to the men in the mess. 'Some of you, help keep the injured calm in the berthing spaces. The rest, hide as far forward as you can. Lie down, don't move, and don't say a word.'
The crewmen disappeared. Clayton and Montgomery listened as Jeffrey thought and talked fast.
'I don't like the scenario we played out before, with rifles in each other's faces. If we'd been German instead of friends, there could've been a dozen dead, and a flooded mini blocking the escape trunk.'
Clayton nodded. 'We can't afford that.'
'We have a mission to run at Greifswald,' Montgomery said.
'We need to make this look good,' Jeffrey said. He glanced at the overhead. 'We better hurry up.' Montgomery summoned his men with their weapons, and they began laying out fields of fire. Jeffrey and Clayton ran the short distance from the mess, past the bottom of the escape trunk, round the bend, to the ship's freezer. Inside were three dead American submariners, in body bags.
Jeffrey and Clayton pulled the corpses out of the bags and dragged them along the deck to near the escape trunk. 'God forgive me for doing this,' Clayton said.
'Put a breather mask on one, it'll look more realistic.' 'I'll leave this other guy faceup, so the Germans know for sure he's dead.'
