Thunder In The Deep (02) (17 page)

"And both port-side tubes are clear of debris," Jeffrey said. "We saw that with the LMRS." Jeffrey peered over the sonarmen's shoulders at their screens, out of curiosity and concern..

"Handy little gadgets," Taylor said, "those off-board probes. Ours were damaged, beyond repair."

There was a screeching sound, and everyone tensed. "I forgot to warn you about that," Taylor said with a wry smile. "She doesn't like being so deep."

"It's a miracle the ship held up after such a beating," Jeffrey said.

"What really worried me were all the penetrations for pipes and cables leading aft through the main watertight bulkhead. If just one of those seals or flapper valves gives way, with ambient sea pressure on the other side . . . But General Dynamics and Newport News built Texas good."

Jeffrey glanced at the sonar screens again, but there were no hostile contacts. COB cleared his throat. "I spoke to the Weps and made a list of things, sirs. I'd like to go back to Challenger to get them, in the ASDS with Meltzer."

"I'd appreciate that a lot," Taylor said. "What do you say, Captain Fuller?" Taylor smiled.

"I concur," Jeffrey said. "Just make it quick. We're way behind schedule already." He sensed Taylor was lonely for a peer with whom to unburden himself, and Jeffrey was it. Jeffrey had some idea of how the more senior man must feel. Jeffrey had never felt so lonely as since leaving Cape Verde.

"We better get most of your SEALs and their equipment over to my ship on this trip, too," Jeffrey said. "Otherwise the ASDS'll be overcrowded."

"Lieutenant Clayton and the men were assembling everything by the escape trunk," COB said.

"Let's go talk to them," Jeffrey said.

Ilse sat at a sonar console in Challenger's CACC, busy working on the METOC

oceanographic data. Kathy announced that Meltzer was calling from over by Texas. Ilse brought up the imagery from the LMRS probe. She saw the mini-sub sitting sideways on Texas's back, with the little ASDS's nose pointed down at the muck along the much bigger SSN's starboard side.

The Texas seemed dumb, inanimate. Ilse tried to picture all the people in the hull, Jeffrey and Clayton and more than a hundred others. Then she remembered the corpses, near the stern.

"Put him on the speakers, please," Lieutenant Bell said. He picked up a mike. "ASDS, Challenger, g'head." Bell's voice went through the fiber-optic wire to the probe, then from the probe to the mini by low-power gertrude.

"Sir," Meltzer answered the same way, "am returning now with one load of SEALs and equipment boxes, including the two special items. COB has a list of things to bring back to Texas on our second trip."

Ilse guessed the "special items" were the pair of briefcase atom bombs.

"V'r'well, ASDS. Relay COB's list and I'll have people get them together immediately."

"Switching to digital datalink mode," Meltzer said. "E-mail received," Kathy said. Then Bell warned Meltzer that the LMRS battery level was low. They arranged for him to escort it back to Challenger for a recharge, controlling the probe by autonomous acoustic link from the ASDS—they would cut the miles-long fiber-optic and dump it in deep water.

Meltzer undocked from the Texas. Ilse watched on the probe's laser line-scan camera as the mini rose from the disabled submarine. The mini quickly righted itself—zero bubble, to use the proper term—and got underway. From the viewing angle now, Ilse could tell the probe was following off the minisub's port quarter, tucked in close.

"Acoustic control of LMRS tested and functional," Meltzer said. "Will follow predetermined dog-leg course to Challenger." For stealth. "No hostile contacts held on ASDS sonars. Am commanding LMRS to jettison fiber-optic cable." Now, for a while, because of intervening terrain, Challenger would be out of touch with the minisub and Texas.

Jeffrey was chatting with some of Texas's enlisted men in the mess. They seemed grateful for the company, and gladly stopped their millionth game of cards or checkers. Shajo Clayton and Chief Montgomery came by for another cup of coffee. Overhead, they all heard a hard clunk.

"That wasn't hull popping," one of Texas's senior chiefs said.

"No," Jeffrey said, "it wasn't." Adrenaline poured through his blood. "Somebody's trying to dock."

Clayton and Montgomery tensed.

Jeffrey reached for a growler phone to call the CACC,

but it barked first—Captain Taylor. Taylor confirmed the

ASDS was long gone, well on its way back to Challenger.

Whoever was trying to land on Texas, it wasn't Meltzer. Jeffrey spoke briskly.

"Concur," Taylor answered. "We didn't hear anything on sonar till that docking transient just now. They must have come in through our blind spot, over the stern. Smart bastards .

. . I'm sounding silent battle stations. Prepare to repel boarders." Jeffrey hung up the mike.

"Get everyone and everything out of here," Jeffrey said to the men in the mess. "Some of you, help keep the injured calm in the berthing spaces. The rest, hide as far forward as you can. Lie down, don't move, and don't say a word."

The crewmen disappeared. Clayton and Montgomery listened as Jeffrey thought and talked fast.

"I don't like the scenario we played out before, with rifles in each other's faces. If we'd been German instead of friends, there could've been a dozen dead, and a flooded mini blocking the escape trunk."

Clayton nodded. "We can't afford that."

"We have a mission to run at Greifswald," Montgomery said.

"We need to make this look good," Jeffrey said. He glanced at the overhead. "We better hurry up." Montgomery summoned his men with their weapons,

and they began laying out fields of fire. Jeffrey and Clayton ran the short distance from the mess, past the bottom of the escape trunk, round the bend, to the ship's freezer. Inside were three dead American submariners, in body bags.

Jeffrey and Clayton pulled the corpses out of the bags

and dragged them along the deck to near the escape trunk. "God forgive me for doing this," Clayton said.

"Put a breather mask on one, it'll look more realistic." "I'll leave this other guy faceup, so the Germans know

for sure he's dead."

"Must've had a broken neck," Jeffrey said, looking at the corpse.

"They don't smell bad enough," Clayton said. He used his strength to rearrange one dead man's arms and legs; the limbs were stiff.

"Get some garbage from the compactor room," Jeffrey said. "That and a soiled bedpan, with the lid up, should do the trick. Put them behind that mess booth in the corner."

"Right."

"And have the SEAL team use silvered blankets from the corpsman's cubicle. To suppress our infrared signatures."

Jeffrey put on his battle helmet and lowered the visor. The other SEALs did, too.

"Gas masks," Montgomery said.

Jeffrey lifted his helmet and pulled on his mask.

"Try to breathe real quiet when the time comes," Montgomery said. His voice was muffled.

Jeffrey nodded.

Clayton told the enlisted SEALs to get sacks of flour and oatmeal from the galley, to use as sandbags.

Montgomery handed Jeffrey an ammo clip for a spare electric machine pistol. "Hollow point only," the SEAL chief said. No armor-piercing rounds. "For use in an SSN's hull." Jeffrey raised his eyebrows.

"We made these just in case."

Jeffrey charged his weapon, then used the growler phone. "Captain Taylor," he projected his voice through the gas mask, "cut all power to the mess deck." The bug juice machine stopped gurgling, and the lights went out; the emergency battle lanterns came right on. Montgomery's men went around and smashed the bulbs with their weapon butts. Diodes still glowed to show the lanterns' batteries held charge—this gave the team's image-intensifier visors enough photons to see.

Clayton and Montgomery pointed to where each man should hide.

Jeffrey's heart was beating extraordinarily loud. "Weapons off safe," Clayton whispered.

"Selectors on semiauto."

"When you hear me shoot," Montgomery whispered, "everybody shoot."

"Make every shot count," Jeffrey whispered. "Make sure every bullet gets stopped by a German body." He pointed aft. "The watertight bulkhead's right there. Break the packing for a cable run, we flood the ship."

Jeffrey took his position, huddled on the deck, just inside the galley. He arranged the blanket, silver side in, to cover his body, except for where he needed to see. He hoped that to an enemy IR visor, he'd look like a corpse, still somewhat fresh, cooling. Everyone waited. Soon there was another clunk.

Then Jeffrey heard more noises. The docking collar was being pumped dry... . The upper escape hatch was being opened. . . . Soon he heard the sound of many people coming down the ladder inside the trunk.

Jeffrey badly needed to take a leak. Very badly, all of a sudden. He decided he would, to add to the effect of a submarine full of dead men.

He felt better at once. The urine ran to the forward starboard corner of the galley, and puddled there. Jeffrey's gas mask kept out the smell. Someone undogged the lower escape trunk hatch from inside, and opened it just a crack. There was a long, pregnant silence, then Jeffrey barely made out confident, tough whispering in German. Something small sailed out of the air lock and landed on the deck. There was a brilliant blue-white flash, then a hiss as some kind of gas filled the air. It spread, a fine aerosol, and Jeffrey thought it looked like military tear gas.

Then there was silence. Jeffrey tensed.

Another flash-and-gas grenade. Jeffrey's visor pixel antibloom control kept him from being blinded.

The first Kampfschwimmer dashed silently out of the lock-out trunk. Jeffrey saw him through his visors, on infrared, through the intervening aluminum bulkhead. The man was a giant, easily six foot six. His posture showed he held a short-barrel, two-handed weapon. It traversed as he peered in all directions fast.

Jeffrey had left a dental mirror, a standard Special Warfare item, in the galley doorway, camouflaged with a shriveled banana peel. As the German came closer, Jeffrey could see in low-light high-def TV mode that the man wore flat-screen night-vision goggles himself, outside an evil-looking respirator hood, with a full-body nuclear-biologicalchemical protective suit. The thickness of his machine pistol's barrel showed it was silenced.

The German bent over and checked out the corpses, the real ones. Jeffrey worried he would think they were too cold.

The German turned and gestured to the lock-out trunk. Six more Kampfschwimmer appeared, just as tall and muscular as the first. One of them held something toward the stern, toward the reactor. A Geiger counter? Another held up something else—gas analyzer? Both men nodded to the others. One took out a long, thin wand—to check for trip wires in the dark? They advanced.

The SEALs were outnumbered. Besides Jeffrey and Clayton and Montgomery, only two had stayed behind when the rest went over to Challenger. The odds were seven to five against, and who really owned the element of surprise here?

Jeffrey wanted to move. The death-posture he'd adopted was dramatic, but his right leg had fallen asleep. The left leg, with his old war wound, started to ache horribly. He thought of what Ilse said, that it might be in his mind, from stress. He pushed her out of his thoughts. He wanted to shift his weapon for a better line of fire. He dared not move a muscle.

The first Kampfschwimmer came down the corridor, toward the mess and the galley. The Germans covered each other skillfully. Two of them pulled out large canisters, more gas. As one Kampfschwimmer came to the door of the galley, Jeffrey saw through his goggles that the canister bore a skull-and-bones. What was Montgomery waiting for?

It also bore a large white cross. Jeffrey couldn't remember if that meant mustard gas or chlorine.

Jeffrey realized it wasn't to kill any surviving Texas crew—for that they'd use an odorless, nonpersistent nerve agent. The noxious poison gas was to force anyone still breathing to put on respirators, so they'd have to move, make noise as air valves hissed, be slowed down and partly immobilized.

Of course. The Germans would want to take prisoners, for thorough interrogation. But mustard gas caused terrible burns to bare skin. What the hell was Montgomery waiting for?

Jeffrey heard a silenced weapon cough—his heart raced out of control. He brought his own weapon to bear on the Kampfschwimmer in the galley doorway. The man brought his weapon to bear on Jeffrey. The German fired first, hitting Jeffrey in the chest as Jeffrey tried to stand.

The force of impact against his flak jacket shoved Jeffrey backward. His weapon pointed wildly, and he saw the German's barrel aimed dead center at his face, but the German's neck exploded and blood spattered Jeffrey's visor.

Jeffrey tried to crouch but wobbled—his right leg was badly numb. He heard more weapons coughing, the thud and crunch of bullets hitting flesh and bone. He heard grunts and screams, then a whining ricochet forced him flat on the deck. Two bullets tore through the aluminum curtain wall, and zinged into the wardroom pantry where Clayton was firing steadily.

Two Kampfschwimmer charged the medical corpsman's cubicle and killed the SEAL

who was shooting from there. The intervening bulkhead was structural, steel. They had the SEALs pinned down. The drinking fountain was hit and water sprayed. Jeffrey belly-crawled to the corridor. His aim was blocked by bodies. Jeffrey realized the SEAL who'd saved his life—by shooting that Kampfschwimmer in the back of the neck, between his flak vest and his helmet—had also been killed. His brains were smeared across the wide-screen TV at the front of the mess. The screen was spider-webbed with cracks.

The German minisub! Jeffrey was sure there'd be someone up there, who'd be calling their parent vessel for help.

While the surviving SEALs and Germans sniped at each other viciously, Jeffrey reached into the corridor and pulled dead bodies toward him. A hot bee snapped by his wrist, then another.

Jeffrey used the bodies as a bullet stop. More rounds hit home, making the corpses jump and twitch, as Jeffrey scrambled along the deck. Clayton saw what he was doing and threw a flash grenade of his own. Clayton and Montgomery pumped out rapid covering fire.