messages to Bell on his laptop. Bell answered the same way. Bell gave him an updated tactical plot. Modern Brandenburg frigates and more Class 130 corvettes were charging through the choke point directly ahead. There were three of each detected so far. Another squadron of Tiger helos was closing in from the west. Jeffrey tossed one radar decoy to port, and hoped the improvised counterweight would make it land in the water right side up. He counted to five and also threw the other decoy to port. The Class 130's each had eight Harpoons.
Each Brandenburg also had eight Harpoons, plus quadruple torpedo tubes with thirty-two Mark 46's aboard, and two state-of-the-art NH-90 antisubmarine helos. They also had active antitorpedo defenses — mortars and explosive nets — powerful against conventional fish, especially in such shallow water. Jeffrey had few high- explosive ADCAPs left, and only four Polyphems. He had no ISLMMs, no antiship Tomahawks. The Brandenburgs' total load of torpedoes wildly outnumbered Challenger's antitorpedo rockets. The water was barely sixty feet deep — it was impossible to dive. The cleared channel was narrow again, its flanks studded with mines — it was impossible to turn away.
'Target the Brandenburgs with three ADCAPs,' Jeffrey typed in despair. 'Target the Tigers with Polyphems. Fire at will.'
This was. Challenger's last stand, and it was hopeless, and Jeffrey knew the Germans knew it. His brilliant decoys and noisemakers would be useless against enemy wireguided Mark 46's, with the frigates holding visual contact on his ship like this. Jeffrey was forbidden to use nuclear munitions so close to neutral and occupied land, even in self-defense or self-destruction: The ROEs were inviolable.
Another aircraft exploded and fell from the sky. It crashed into the sea near Challenger. Friend or foe? Jeffrey couldn't tell. Flaming avgas marked its grave. Jeffrey saw no chutes. Still tracers and missiles ripped the air high above. Aircraft twisted and turned, and their cannon stuttered, and turbojets roared.
'Bridge, Sonar,' Kathy Milgrom typed. 'Eight torpedoes in the water. Mean bearing three five one, constant bearing, closing.' Two of the Brandenburgs had fired a full salvo from their quadruple launchers, and would be racing to reload. The third Brandenburg was holding their first salvo in reserve.
'Helm, try to comb their tracks,' Jeffrey typed. 'Fire Control, arm the antitorpedo rockets.' They were carried in nonreloadable launch tubes in the hull.
'XO,' Jeffrey typed, 'begin destroying crypto gear. Shred Top Secret documents. Jettison through the trash ejector.'
Jeffrey saw hot-white flames to the west — incoming antitank rockets. Swelling glows to the north — inbound Harpoons. Quick, sharp flashes to the northwest — naval guns, more shells targeting Challenger.
Jeffrey felt the taste of defeat, more bitter than he imagined it could ever be. He saw more flames to the west, streaking through the sky, more incoming fire. He'd failed his crew and Ilse, and failed his country. Tears came to Jeffrey's eyes for everything he'd lost.
Above the cacophony all around he heard a different noise, a powerful whine. Were transport helos coming with Kampfschwimmer, to fight their way aboard? In despair Jeffrey turned with his binoculars. What he saw brought different tears to his eyes. Two dozen Royal Navy Sea Harriers came in fast from behind him, right above the waves. Their wings were heavy with antiship and antiaircraft missiles, and electronic warfare pods, and depth charges and smart bombs.
Their flight leader drew level with Challenger's sail on the starboard side. He kept pace with the ship perfectly, so near that Jeffrey could touch his wing tip. Jeffrey waved. The pilot saluted. The Harriers attacked.
Everything happened at once. Missiles streaked in all directions like a meteor swarm. Their smoky trails crisscrossed, lit by fires and flashes on every side. Decoy flares burned and silvery decoy chaff blossomed in the air. Antitank rockets streaked past Challenger's sail; one missed Jeffrey's head so close its engine exhaust burned his face. Another hit the sail port side, and more smoke spewed from the hole. Enemy helos, and Harriers, were hit by incoming missiles. They burst into flames and crashed into the sea. Enemy warships began taking hits.
Enemy Harpoons roared by, tearing momentary gaps in Challenger's trailing smoke screen, then disappeared. Tracer rounds stitched the sky. More helos were hit, and their rocket pods ignited and flew everywhere like angry bees; their torpedo loads went up in volcanoes of torpex and fuel. Vicious fountains of dirty water towered high, as antitorpedo rockets ripped through the sea and stopped incoming Mark 46's; enemy antiaircraft fire stopped another incoming Harrier. Conventional jets still tangled high above. Jeffrey knew an electronic warfare battle savaged the invisible ether, equaling in violence the battle he could see.
More antiship missiles leaped from beneath the surviving Harriers' wings, and homed on the German warships. More missiles left the surviving ships and tried to home on the Harriers and Challenger. More enemy five-and eight-inch shells landed in the water close to Jeffrey, and the whole hull shuddered and the grating he knelt on jumped. Enemy antitorpedo defenses flashed and raised more fountains. Jeffrey's ADCAPs reached the frigates and triple eruptions heaved; brutal concussions rolled across the Sound. Spent cannon brass rained from the sky, heavy and white hot. Shattered aircraft, friendly and enemy, also rained from the sky.
At last all six German warships were dead, settling in the water under merciless geysers of flame, or engulfed in searing fireballs as main magazines blew up. Jeffrey saw Harriers launching yet more missiles, and the naval guns on the Danish coast were pulverized.
Challenger came up on the hulks of the frigates and corvettes. Jeffrey gave quick conning orders to bypass the wreckage. He ducked as ammo cooked off and burning debris whizzed by. He choked on the acrid, stinking smoke, burning fuel oil and cordite and metal, burning rubber and plastic and flesh. The smoke coming from the fire inside the sail was thicker too, blending with the diesel exhaust from Jeffrey's smoke screen. Harriers began to drop depth charges well in front of Challenger. They went off in yet more muddy fountains of watery rage, and sometimes there were secondary explosions: naval mines. The Harriers were clearing a path for Jeffrey's ship. Challenger was through the choke point, out of the Sound, into the Kattegat at last. The bottom dropped off quickly here, not by much but enough. The Harriers' flight leader came back. He skillfully drew up right next to the sail. He pointed straight down, then to the north, then made a shoving gesture: 'Go! Go!' Jeffrey understood: Submerge, maintain flank speed. The Harriers would follow his wake hump, and take care of surface and airborne threats.
Jeffrey gave the pilot a thumbs-up. He ordered Meltzer to slow, so they wouldn't hit terrain as they dived. Jeffrey deployed the bridge cockpit's streamlining clamshells over his head — they were holed by enemy rockets, too. He went through the bridge hatch and dogged it shut.
He looked at the messenger standing at the base of the ladder, below the second hatch in the trunk. Jeffrey coughed on more acrid smoke, coming from inside the sail.
'Dive the ship! Dive! Dive!' Jeffrey felt the ship nose down. He clambered below and dogged the lower watertight hatch, as water sprayed into the sail trunk through a leak. The trunk flooded, but the fire inside the sail was snuffed.
As Jeffrey reached the CACC, Kathy Milgrom announced, 'Loud underwater explosions bearing two five zero! Range approximately one hundred thousand yards! Assess as ISLMM mine warhead detonation, and large secondary blasts!'
'Very well, Sonar.' Something trying to cut Challenger off, a warship racing from Kiel, had just been sunk.
'Sir,' Meltzer reported, 'the ship is at periscope depth.'
'Chief of the Watch, retract the foreplanes. Secure the diesel and lower the snorkel mast. Helm, ahead flank smartly. Follow the path through the Kattegat we took with that Delta four.'
Meltzer acknowledged. Challenger was going much too fast to use the LMRS. Jeffrey took his seat. The ship vibrated heavily as the propulsion plant worked hard. The pumpjet cavitated heavily at such shallow depth.
'Fire Control, we'll have to rely on our remaining anti-torpedo rockets if we trip a CAPTOR mine. Let's hope the Harriers can stay with us long enough.' Bell agreed. At flank speed — fifty knots on a good day — it would be two and a half hours to the Norwegian Deep. The Deep formed the gaping maw at the south end of the Norwegian Trough, well inside the Skagerrak, where the seafloor plunged to almost twenty-five hundred feet.
Another air-dropped depth bomb went off ahead of the ship — but how many could the Harriers possibly have?
Jeffrey called up the tactical plot. The air battle raged chaotically, almost impossible to follow by passive sonar. For now, there were no surface threats or enemy submarine contacts held, but sonar performance degraded badly at flank speed. There was extraheavy flow noise from the holes in Challenger's upper works; Kathy's people tried to filter it out.
Ilse came into the CACC, looking somewhat refreshed from her nap. She took her place at a sonar console.
