FOURTEEN HOURS LATER
Ilse grabbed a catnap in her rack, then had some pizza, and now was back at her console. She eyed the speed log — thirteen knots. The water depth was a harrowing 122 feet. Challenger still enjoyed her concealment right under the Delta, which Kathy's people hours ago identified as the K-117, commissioned in 1990. Fortunately, though much longer than Challenger, the Delta was slightly narrower — Jeffrey said it wore an ugly hunchback for its missiles, aft of the sail. This gave the Delta shallow draft for a boomer, providing Challenger a bit more headroom. Fortunately, the seas had calmed and came from astern; the Delta didn't roll and pitch much.
The available headroom was badly needed by Challenger's ship-control station. The piggyback ride of the two submarines produced both suction and drift effects, some predictable, some not. COB and Meltzer, relieved for a head call and sleep and food, were back and had their hands full. Challenger shimmied and vibrated constantly. Even with the sonar speakers off, the machinery noise from the Delta with his two reactors, his thrusting through the seas and surface cavitation of twin screws, were noticeable through the hull.
It gave Ilse the creeps to be so close to another vessel, especially one whose main weapons had a single purpose: to unleash dozens of megatons on some foreign country, if deterrence failed. Ilse figured the yield of just one of those MIRVed ICBMs exceeded all the kilotons set off so far in the Berlin-Boer tactical nuclear war. The first half of this chilling journey took both subs northeast, the entire length of the Skagerrak, some one hundred twenty nautical miles. The Axis safe-shipping route skirted the Norwegian Trough, and Jeffrey had ordered COB to send the LMRS into it, to get a partial map of the German mine fields. K-117 bypassed the Swedish convoy in the wide part of the Skagerrak.
Now, Challenger and K-117 headed south-southeast, beyond the bulk of German mines. The LMRS was retrieved, once more recharging its batteries. The ships were two thirds through the narrow Kattegat, itself a hundred twenty nautical miles from end to end, studded with islands and shoals. The two subs were six miles from the Swedish coast now, as the Delta exercised his right of peaceful passage in the navigable channel. Several times while in the Kattegat, Challenger had had to quickly sidestep, when the water got too shallow, and hide just to seaward of the Delta.
Kathy's voice brought Ilse to the present.
'I need another update of your projected salinity gradients.'
'Working now.'
Ilse knew just how important accurate data was, especially for predicting underwater sound speed and attenuation loss. Hiding under the Delta presented one big problem: The Russian sub's fathometer probed downward, and its mine-avoidance sonar — NATO code name Mouse Roar — searched constantly ahead.
Challenger blocked the Delta's look-down fathometer whenever it tried to take soundings. The solution, easier said than done, was to detect its emissions using the acousticintercept hydrophones mounted on Challenger's sail. Then, Kathy's staff reprogrammed their under-ice look-up sonar transducers to suppress the real return using active out-ofphase. Instead they sent a bogus echo, at the correct frequency and with a perfect time delay and decibel reduction, to give the men in K-117 an accurate reading of depth, and the impression there was nothing between them and the bottom but water. Jeffrey had joked that this made it okay to exploit the Delta. The global ROEs forbade threatening a Russian vessel. Challenger was actually helping. Bell was very uncomfortable, and wanted to enter his formal objection in the log to cover his ass. But he quickly thought better of it, and got into the spirit of things.
Ilse just hoped they knew what they were doing.
Besides, fair is fair. The look-forward Mouse Roar pings helped Challenger, too. Her mine-avoidance hydrophones on the front of the sail intercepted them, so the CACC crew could watch the bottom for obstructions without radiating.
Ilse checked the nav chart again. They'd just skirted several known wrecks to starboard, and the Stora Middlegrund shoal lay further off in that direction. Above her head, the Delta hissed and whirred and thrummed. Again she thought of all those hydrogen bombs.
'Captain,' Sessions said from the nav table, 'pings stolen from the Mouse Roar indicate several more wrecks to starboard and port, dead ahead and not on our charts.' Bottommapping for navigation was his job.
'Confirmed,' Kathy said. 'Wreck seeping and settling noises.'
'Very well, Nav and Sonar.' Jeffrey called up the virtual imagery. 'Detritus from a recent Royal Air Force raid, maybe.' He saw a hummock, a bump, in the bottom terrain — overhead clearance would be tight.
Challenger topped the hummock.
'Captain,' Sessions shouted, 'more debris dead ahead inside the shipping lane!' Jeffrey saw it, too. 'Helm, can we maneuver past?' 'Negative,' Meltzer said. ' Insufficient lateral clearance due to wreckage.'
'Master thirty-four blade-rate unchanged,' Kathy said.
'He isn't slowing,' Bell said. 'He has plenty of room.'
'Sir,' Meltzer said, 'our momentum's too great. Advise back two thirds smartly or we'll hit an obstruction!'
Jeffrey thought fast. A quick reverse would make the pump-jet cavitate. The Delta would hear. He studied the screens.
'Maintain course and speed. Take us through. We can make it.'
'Captain,' Bell said. Jeffrey ignored him.
Meltzer and COB struggled at their controls. There was barely six feet between Challenger's sail and the Delta now. There was less than that between Challenger's keel and the mass of tangled steel.
Water squeezed between the two subs' rounded bows forced Challenger down. Meltzer pulled up to keep from shredding the sonar dome and making a terrible datum. Challenger bucked hard.
Jeffrey saw COB reach for the collision alarm. 'Belay that!' Too much noise. Challenger's sail, hardened for under-ice operation, kissed the Delta's belly with a thud. Jeffrey's heart almost stopped. He waited for damage reports. He waited for the Russian captain to react: All he need do was dash to one side and signal for help. The Swedes and Germans would finish Challenger off.
'No blade-rate or aspect change on the Delta,' Kathy said.
'We're past the obstructions,' Sessions said.
Jeffrey shook his head, more wide awake than he ever wanted to be. 'They must have thought they hit some bobbing debris, neutrally buoyant like waterlogged wood, missed by the Mouse Roar.'
In unison, twenty people in the CACC breathed again.
Jeffrey told himself this was Challenger's first collision at sea. 'Assistant Navigator, record in the deck log that I take full responsibility for this mishap. Note that the helmsman and chief of the watch did their jobs well.'
Jeffrey went back to watching his screens. He wondered how Devron TWELVE—
Challenger's squadron — and Group TWO — the commanding rear admiral — and the higher-ups would react to this part of his patrol report.. assuming he lived to file one. Jeffrey blushed. What would Captain Wilson think?
Half an hour later, Kathy reported, 'Master thirty-four aspect change. Master thirtyfour is turning to starboard.' Jeffrey eyed the chart. 'Don't follow. The water there's too shallow.'
'Why's he heading that way?' Bell said. 'The route through the Great Belt channel's twice as long as the run due south.'
'Helm, make turns for four knots. Let the Delta pull away from us.' Meltzer acknowledged. Jeffrey heard the boomer's twirling screw slice overhead. His rudder would come very close to Challenger's sail.
'I think, XO,' Jeffrey said when the Delta was past, 'he's not going to St. Petersburg after all. He's heading for Kiel.'
Bell sputtered. 'What's a Russian boomer doing visiting one of the biggest German naval bases?'
'I doubt it's a transfer of ownership. The Russians wouldn't go that far…. No, I'll bet some of her missile silos are full of high-value cargo. Strategic metals, spare parts for the Russian weapons the Germans have already bought. '
'They expect to keep this a secret?'
