German.
'Uh-oh,' Montgomery said. 'Incoming message on voice.'
'Don't answer it.'
'What if we force our prisoner to feed them a story?' Clayton said.
'No. They've got world-class signal processors. Even if he hates the regime, and plays along, they'll see the micro-tremors in his voice…. Monty, can you get this thing to work on digital datalink?'
'If you help me, Captain. We better work fast.'.
With Montgomery as the on-board German language interpreter, and Jeffrey as a passable expert on undersea comms, they got the switches and computer commands lined up.
'Tell them our voice link is down, we took some damage during our melee with the SEAL armed guard.'
Montgomery typed on the keyboard with one hand and steered the mini with the other. He hit enter. His e- mail text in German on the screen meant nothing to Jeffrey, except for the acronym SEAL.
A message came back, at once. 'They want the recognition code.'
'Stall them.'
'Leave this to me. Captain, please take the conn. Here's your depth, here's your gyrocompass. Just hold us steady.' Jeffrey took the controls. Instruments and data screens responded.
Montgomery grabbed a box with a green cross: European-style markings for a first-aid kit. He rushed aft and closed the transport compartment door behind him.
'I'm glad I don't have to watch,' Clayton said.
'Me, too,' Jeffrey said. As he held the control joystick he realized his left wrist was sore. Damn, the crystal of his old Rofex was smashed, and the hour hand was gone. A German bullet must have done it. That was close.
Montgomery came back. 'Got it.' He sat, and typed on the keyboard.
'How do we know he didn't give you some kind of panic coder-Clayton said.
'I said if he did, I'd cut his dick and testicles off, then clamp the arteries with hemostats, and I'd hold his head between his legs and let him think about it till he died.'
'Monty,' Clayton said, 'I'm very glad you're on our side.' Jeffrey just shook his head.
'Hey,' Montgomery said, 'I didn't actually do it.' Another German message came back.
'Bingo. They bought it. They want a status report. They say they heard a lot of bullet impacts on their sonar.'
'Okay,' Jeffrey said. 'Okay… tell them the enemy submarine is secured, all the American SEALs are killed. Tell them the ship is identified as the USS Texas, SSN 775. Her captain is alive. The Kampfschwimmer are collecting the highest-value prisoners and crypto gear right now.'
Montgomery typed.
'They want us to confirm Captain Taylor's laser buoy message, that the ASDS was jettisoned and lost in combat.'
Jeffrey blanched. 'They broke the code?'
'Yup.' Montgomery sounded disgusted.
'Okay, tell them, Confirmed.'
'They say their remote-control probe detected flow noise a few minutes ago, heading south…. What probe?'
Jeffrey blanched again. 'They must have some kind of LMRS snooping around…. Uh, tell them it was probably a whale or a giant squid or something.' Jeffrey wished Ilse was here. She was always good at this.
Montgomery smiled, and typed.
This is insane, Jeffrey told himself. We're busy holding a chat room with some enemy submarine captain, amid three warring SSNs all armed with nuclear torpedoes. A response came on the screen. 'They want us to investigate thoroughly. They're afraid an American sub may be in the area by now. Maybe what they heard was an LMRS or an ASDS.'
'Tell them we'll investigate to the south. Ask them to rendezvous with us north of the spur for pickup in two hours. That should draw the Amethyste II into the open — we'll have to leave the rest to Captain Taylor. Let's get out of here. We need to catch up with Meltzer, and convince him it's us.'
Montgomery resumed the conn. He followed the course he knew the ASDS would take. Jeffrey looked around the German mini's cockpit more thoroughly. It was sophisticated, more futuristic than the ASDS. It was faster and had much longer cruising, range, too, thanks to hydrogen peroxide power; Jeffrey saw a fuel gauge labeled 'H202.'
'What's this thing's crush depth, Chief?' Montgomery called up a document labeled ' Hilfe.' Help. 'Seven hundred meters.'
Jeffrey whistled. 'Twenty-three hundred feet… Good, we can use that. Dip down behind the spur and make flank speed. It'll take some juggling, but I want to jettison our ASDS and keep the German mini instead.'
TWO HOURS LATER, ON CHALLENGER
Ilse was glad that Jeffrey and the others had made it back okay. The ASDS was abandoned, lodged under a big outcropping of a different seamount. The German minisub was safely stowed in Challenger's conformal hangar now.
Ilse felt Challenger rock.
'Loud explosion bearing three two five!' Kathy shouted. 'Range sixty thousand yards!'
'That matches Seamount 458,' Jeffrey said. 'Whose weapon was it?'
'A one-tenth-KT warhead, sir. Can't tell whose side.' 'Torpedo screw-count?'
'None detectable at this range, Captain.'
Ilse heard another blast on the sonar speakers, not as loud and different in character.
'Hull implosion!' Kathy shouted. 'Same range and bearing! Full-size steel sub hull implosion!'
'What class vessel?'
'Impossible to tell in this acoustic sea state, sir.'
'It was either the Amethyste II,' Bell said, 'or the Texas.'
'Or both,' Jeffrey said. He hesitated. 'There's no more we can do.' Ilse felt the awkward, worried silence in the CACC.
Then she had a terrible thought.
'Captain, what if there were two German submarines near Seamount 458? That guy you captured might not even know.'
Jeffrey turned. 'Your point, Miss Reebeck?'
'What if the other German sub sent its mini to Texas, with more German commandos, and captured everyone and everything for real? What if they blew up the spur, to cover their tracks and keep the Allies from salvaging Texas? What if they tortured Captain Taylor till he talked? What if the Germans know all about the Greifswald raid?' Jeffrey made a face and looked away. 'Navigator, plot a course for the English Channel.'
'Sir?' Lieutenant Sessions said. 'Our orders are to transit north of Britain.'
'They just say to do what Texas was supposed to do. We don't have time for that, and we've lost strategic stealth.'
'But, Captain,' Sessions said, 'part of the Channel is barely a hundred feet deep. On a clear day you can see the Dover cliffs from the French beach at Calais!'
'Exactly,' Jeffrey said. 'Squeezing through there is the last thing the Axis would expect.' Ilse saw Jeffrey look around the CACC. He avoided eye contact with her, and she chided herself for feeling miffed. Besides, she thought he looked pretty silly, with the bulge of a chemical cold-pack under his shirt. What'd Jeffrey do, bruise himself on a stanchion?
'Think of it as a dress rehearsal, people,' Jeffrey said. 'For when we try to penetrate the Skagerrak and Kattegat.'
Ilse heard crewmen inhale sharply. She saw one man grin, as if he'd won a bet, about where Challenger was headed. He didn't smile for long.
