spewed.
At last Challenger reached the sinking frigate.
'Helm, Bridge, all stop. Rotate the ship on auxiliary propulsors to true bearing zero four five. Then translate us due north. I want to shove that Bremen out of the way.' Meltzer acknowledged.
Sharp concussions went off inside the Bremen. By now anyone still alive had abandoned the hulk. Jeffrey saw men in the water. Montgomery covered them with his machine gun, but they were in no shape to threaten Challenger. Jeffrey and Montgomery and the lookout were forced to go below and shut the hatch, because of the heat and smoke, and the secondary explosions and flying wreckage.
Jeffrey stepped on his intercom wire by mistake, and it yanked his lip mike askew. ' Collision alarm!' he shouted down the ladder to the phone talker. The raucous siren blared.
In the CACC, Jeffrey knew, Bell watched the scene via photonics imagery. Still in the sail trunk, Jeffrey called it up on his laptop, to conn the ship. When they were very close he ordered COB to lower the masts.
Jeffrey was almost thrown from the ladder when Challenger nudged the starboard bow of the Bremen hard. He fixed his mike. He told Meltzer to use more forward auxiliary propulsor thrust, to lever the hulk aside, like a tugboat. Jeffrey heard more blasts through the hull. Shivers and jolts were transmitted from the steel side of the Bremen to the ceramic side of Challenger, right through her anechoic skin. At last the pathway north was clear.
'Ahead flank! Make your course three four five!' Straight up the Sound. Jeffrey climbed through the bridge hatch. There were bits of smoking debris in the cockpit and atop the sail. The Plexiglas windscreen was melted. He peered over the port side. By the glare of the burning frigate he could see Challenger's coatings were scorched. The sonar wide arrays were mounted low on her main hull's flanks, and Jeffrey hoped they weren't badly damaged. Montgomery climbed on top of the sail on his belly, and batted bits of frigate away. He fired a short burst as a test — the machine gun was okay. Jeffrey ordered COB to raise the masts.
Behind him, with one final shuddering detonation, the Bremen settled on the bottom; its superstructure protruded above the waves, still burning fiercely. The underwater blast caused several mines in the shallows to detonate sympathetically. Jeffrey doubted many German sailors in the water survived.
Challenger cleared another fog bank. She was free of the confining dredged channel, but the water was still so shallow she had to stay on the east side of the Sound, the Swedish side. The icy wind and freezing salt spray bit Jeffrey's face. Over his right shoulder Jeffrey saw another flash, quick and sharp: a naval defense gun on the Swedish coast. The shell landed a hundred yards off Challenger's bow, directly ahead of the ship. The bridge crew ducked as water fountained. Razor-sharp shell splinters pelted the sail.
'Helm, Bridge. Left standard rudder. We're violating Swedish neutrality'
'Bridge, Nay,' Sessions broke in.. 'No can do, sir, unless we slow down. We need bottom clearance the way the pump jet's digging in.'
'ESM, Bridge. How are they tracking us? That gun's dead-on.'
'Infrared laser, sir. There's no way we can jam.'
'Yes, there is.' The gun was off Challenger's starboard quarter, near Malmo, on a headland. 'Chief of the Watch, raise the snorkel mast. Start the emergency diesel. Figure out how to put oil into the exhaust, to make a smoke screen.' The diesel air intake had nuclear-biologicalchemical filters, and detectors to warn of bad air, just in case. Another Swedish shell landed, one hundred yards astern, again dead-on in azimuth. The ship was bracketed, an unmistakable message the next shell wouldn't miss. Jeffrey heard and saw another gun open up, from near Copenhagen, on the occupied Danish side: incoming German fire this time. Challenger was caught in the middle. Her diesel coughed to life. Stinking exhaust poured from the vents in the sail, then dense smoke obscured the view aft.
'Helm, Bridge. Zigzag smartly!'
Meltzer turned hard right. A Swedish shell landed in Challenger's wake. Another landed where she would've been if she had stayed on course. Another flash near Copenhagen, off Challenger's port bow. Another German shell landed, almost as close. Dirty water drenched the cockpit. The stench of high explosives mixed with diesel fumes.
'Weps, Bridge. Target that naval gun by Copenhagen with a land-attack Tomahawk. Fire at will.' Another VLS hatch popped open. This time the bridge crew knew to go below before the booster ignited.
They were past Copenhagen and Malmo now. They avoided the wreckage of the new bridge-and-tunnel that connected those two cities — started in the late nineties, finished in time to be destroyed by the Swedes as German forces flooded into Denmark. Jeffrey lost sight of the structure's stumps in his own smoke screen, streaming out behind the ship.
Despite ESM's efforts to spoof the gunnery radars, more German shells tried to follow from behind. Some came very close. Jeffrey ducked, and shrapnel whistled, and something behind him made a whack.
'Bridge, Control. Attack periscope photonics mast knocked out.' It was only a matter of time before a five-or eight-inch shell hit the hull. Ahead would lie more naval guns, and soon they'd be in visual range, and from that direction the smoke screen wouldn't work. Jeffrey ordered land-attack Tomahawks launched to take the guns out. Again he and Montgomery and the lookout went below and felt and heard the missiles launch. When the boosters were well clear, they went topside.
'Fire Control, Bridge. I — want to launch four more ISLMMs. Preset them to loop up around Sjaelland Island. Lay a mine barrier across the mouth of the Great Belt. Warships may be racing from Kiel to head us off.'
Bell acknowledged. He announced when each weapon was fired. It was slow work loading tubes manually, especially against Challenger's constant pitch and roll. Jeffrey used lens paper to dry his goggles and binocs, drenched again by flying spray; his weatherproof laptop was holding up.
ESM announced more surface search radars, German corvettes coming from the north. Jeffrey ordered ADCAPs fired to intercept. Challenger passed an enemy fast-patrol craft, hiding in ambush in a cove. He fired an antiship Tomahawk before it could launch its missiles. The Tomahawk burst viciously.
The ADCAPs hit their targets to the north, and Jeffrey saw bright flashes. More loud booms rolled across the Sound. The water was still very shallow, barely fifty feet, but at least the Sound was wide enough now Jeffrey could evade the wrecks. Challenger entered a snow squall, then came out the other side. Again Jeffrey cleaned his goggles and binocs.
'It's awfully quiet in the air,' Montgomery said. 'We should've stirred up one heck of a hornet's nest by now.'
'I was thinking that,' Jeffrey said. 'Maybe our side sprang an info warfare assault on Axis command and control. Saving something really special, for a time like this.'
'Then where are all our planes, sir?'
'Maybe the Axis did it to us, too.'
In that case everything on and over the sea would come down to map reading, guesswork, and the Mark 1 human eyeball.
Challenger was running low on ammo. The Germans held the cards; soon they'd get their act together, and stop committing forces piecemeal.
Ven Island lay ahead, in the middle of the navigable part of the Sound. Ven was owned by Sweden, heavily fortified. Challenger had to come left. This forced them closer to Denmark, where the channel was studded with shoals.
Soon Challenger would be in range of accurate fire from yet more naval guns, in line of sight above the horizon, where laser range-finding worked.
Then Jeffrey heard something worse than naval guns. He heard the clatter of helo blades to the northwest.
'Fire Control, Bridge. What airfield bears three one five?'
'A German army base on Sjaelland, Captain.'
Jeffrey spotted the helos in his big binocs. The lookout said they were Tigers — brandnew attack aircraft. Their shaped-charge antitank rockets could easily blast through Challenger's hull.
Montgomery leaped atop the sail and traversed his machine gun, for all the good it would do.
Jeffrey glanced at his search 'scope mast. It tracked the squadron of Tigers as they moved closer, strung out in line ahead.
'Fire Control, knock them down.'
