hand. Ilse gave him a noisemaker. He threw it into the water, hard. She gave him another, another. Contact with saltwater would do the rest. Jeffrey grabbed the intercom. 'Pilot, make a knuckle, steer due north.' He and Ilse held on as the mini banked into the turn.
Jeffrey dropped three more noisemakers, then closed the bottom hatch. Again he grabbed the mike.
'Equalize to one atmosphere, then go deep.'
'How deep?' Montgomery asked on the intercom. 'Ten feet off the bottom.' Jeffrey and Ilse went into the control compartment as the mini nosed back down. The incoming torpedo pinged more rapidly.
'Torpedo still on constant bearing,' Meltzer said. 'Range decreasing fast.' There was a tremendous concussion, and the mini lurched and yawed. One of the wide screens went blank, and smoke came from the environmental control console. Meltzer cut the power there and sprayed with CO2. An acrid stink lingered.
'We're still under control,' Montgomery said. 'That fish went for the noisemakers.' Jeffrey watched the tactical plot. The surface craft converged on the latest datum.
'New passive sonar contact!' Meltzer said. 'Bremen-class frigate, bearing two eight zero, range twelve thousand yards…. More new passive sonar contacts, two helos, closing fast from two eight zero.'
'We're never gonna make it,' Jeffrey said. 'We're almost out of fuel, and almost out of noisemakers. We lie doggo on the bottom, they'll just wait us out or hunt us down. Our environmental control is fried, and our battery's almost flat.'
'Torpedo in the water!' Meltzer screamed. 'From two eight zero, the Bremen. It's a prewar U.S. export, a Mark forty-six.' A dangerous one.
Jeffrey eyed the nav chart. 'Bottom the boat in this ',hollow just ahead on zero one five. Maybe we can hide in he terrain.'
'Air-dropped torpedo in the water! ASW helo overhead!' 'Damn,' Jeffrey said. The Mark 46 dashed by with a scream and hit the lip of the hollow. The detonation shook the mini and warning lights came on. The air-dropped unit, another 46, spiraled down and also exploded nearby. The mini was shoved sideways against the bottom muck and boulders.
'Seawater leakage in the external battery cans,' Montgomery said. Another console shorted out. Meltzer sprayed more CO2, sparingly, but now they'd have to breathe it and the smoke — the mini lacked air breathers to go around, and the few undamaged Draegers wouldn't last long. The built-up CO2 made Jeffrey sluggish and depressed. Ilse coughed. More depth charges blasted, much closer now, from the Class 130.
'Another torpedo in the water!' Meltzer said. 'Bearing two nine five!'
'I'm sorry, people,' Jeffrey said. 'We tried. In the interest of saving as many lives as possible, I'm ordering the mini to surface and surrender.'
Ilse looked at Jeffrey. He saw a sense of betrayal in her eyes. 'I'm sorry.' Ilse wondered if she'd go to Hell for taking her own life. Was that better or worse than hanging, than dangling and kicking naked while she endlessly choked and her tongue tried to burst and her bladder let go? Was Hell better or worse than being gang-raped first and then strung up for the rapists to watch?
'Captain!' Meltzer shouted. 'Latest torpedo now on diverging course! Screw-count and engine noise show it's an Improved ADCAP Mark forty-eight, targeting the Bremen!'
'Are you sure?'
'Confirmed! Second ADCAP in the water, targeting the Class one-thirty… New passive sonar contact! Polyphems, torpedo-tube launched, aimed at the helos overhead!' Polyphems were small anti-aircraft missiles.
'What's going on?' Ilse said.
The message light blinked.
'Answer it,' Jeffrey snapped.
'It's plain text gertrude,' Montgomery said.
'On speakers.'
'This is USS Challenger. Repeat, this is USS Challenger.' The voice was scratchy and garbled, but Ilse knew it was the XO, Lieutenant Bell, the acting captain.
'They're on bearing two nine five,' Meltzer said. 'Range fifteen thousand yards.' Ilse saw Jeffrey grab the gertrude mike. Before he could answer, the roaring Polyphems hit the German helos in harsh eruptions. There were pops as debris impacted the surface. The wreckage made a rushing noise as it plunged to the bottom, then thumped into the silt. Something clunked onto the mini's top deck, then something else. The high-explosive ADCAP hit the Bremen. The frigate's magazines went up. Reverb from the detonations drowned out the other sounds as the surface warship died. The other ADCAP hit the Class 130 corvette. The minisub rocked.
Jeffrey looked furious.
'Challenger, Challenger, this is Captain Fuller! What in God's name are you doing in the Baltic? I told you to get out if there was trouble!'
'Captain,' Bell said, 'we were ordered in by COMSUBLANT. Stand by for rendezvous and hangar pickup.'
The minisub was docked, stowed snugly inside Challenger's conformal hangar. The pressure-proof hangar doors were closed, the pressure relieved, the water in the hangar drained. Meltzer opened the mini's bottom hatch, mated to the top of the ship's forward escape trunk, aft of her sail.
Jeffrey went down the ladder first, and fast. He helped the enlisted SEALs pass a groggy Clayton through the trunk, then onto a waiting litter outside the trunk's bottom hatch, in Challenger proper. Clayton grimaced in pain from being manhandled, but with the missile in the lockout sphere they couldn't bring a stretcher up. Clayton's wound — actually two, an entry and an exit hole — began to bleed again. The acting corpsman looked him over as Salih and crewmen carried the litter toward the wardroom, which doubled as Challenger's operating theater. Salih's arm wound bled, too. Ilse came, down next, followed by Meltzer. Chief Montgomery stayed behind to deal with his men and their gear. Minisub maintenance specialists went up the ladder with tool bags.
Bell came to meet Jeffrey. 'Sessions has the conn.'
Jeffrey and Bell shook hands warmly. 'Mission accomplished, so far,' Jeffrey said. ' Lab destroyed, intel gotten.' Compared to Bell's crisp appearance Jeffrey realized how grungy he must look.
'Who's that guy with the big mustache?'
'A Turk guest worker turned resistance leader. He has quite a story.' Jeffrey heard more torpedo hits in the distance, then heavy secondary blasts. Challenger banked to port and then to starboard as she made a knuckle. From the feel, Jeffrey judged they were doing close to thirty knots, about as fast as they could go with their damaged pump-jet.
'Will you please tell me what's going on?' Jeffrey knew the ship was at general quarters — he saw the damage control and first-aid parties stationed. He and Bell rushed along the corridor to the CACC. Ike and Meltzer tagged behind.
'Mossad has a covert team in the mountains in southern Sweden, sir. They put up a Predator long-range recon drone with a laser downlink, to monitor Greifswald.'
'Nosy bastards,' Jeffrey said.
'They watched you come out of the lab with the missile. They must have contacted our embassy in Stockholm, and the attache reached the Pentagon somehow, maybe land-line through Russia.'
'How did SUBLANT reach you?'
'They activated a submarine commo satellite when it was over Denmark, then burned through a message before the satellite got fried by the solar storm. I'd raised the radio mast an inch when Milgrom heard your atom bombs go off, on the off chance. '
'How did you get through the Sound?'
'On the surface, Captain, the only possible way.' The Sound was very shallow 'When German forces asked for the recognition code, we said in plain text we were Deutschland. We'd been on patrol too long, and our crypto books were stale. Surprise, poor visibility, no quick way to check… We fooled 'em.'
Jeffrey looked Bell in the eyes, and saw Bell's confidence, his pride — he was shaping up as a worthy protege. 'That's damn fine work, XO.' Jeffrey could picture it, too, that long run south: the endless minutes of vulnerability and nerve-racking suspense, moving further and further into enemy-held waters surfaced, waiting to be found out and destroyed at any time. 'I don't think that's gonna work on the way out.'
'I know, Captain,' Bell said. 'Still, it's good to have you back.' Bell turned and gave Ilse and Meltzer congratulatory handshakes, too.
'It's good to be back,' Jeffrey said. 'Once they're cleaned up and rested, put Chief Montgomery and his men to
