Crush Depth (16 page)

On
Voortrekker

“H
OW MANY MORE
torpedoes still to be loaded, Number One?”

“Six, Captain, not counting the one on the loading chute.”

“Make it quick,” ter Horst said. “The enemy’s so close I can almost smell that destroyer through
Tiger
’s hull.”

“I know, sir.” Van Gelder glanced again to the rear of the hold, where there’d just been more Australian clanking and hammering.

On
Voortrekker
’s deck, someone shouted.

Van Gelder turned to censure the man. Instead he watched his worst nightmare of all unfold.

The
Tiger
’s overworked loading crane failed. A big two-metric-ton nuclear torpedo, a German Sea Lion, teetered on a single length of fraying metal cable. The cable snapped and the Sea Lion landed nosefirst on
Voortrekker
’s deck, then fell over. It instantly crushed one crewman to bloody pulp, maimed another, and knocked two more off the deck and into the water. The torpedo rolled into the water with a heavy splash. It began to hit
Voortrekker
in the side, as the
Tiger
rolled and the water inside the hold sloshed.

The maimed crewman on deck was screaming in agony,
both legs from the knees down flattened like pancakes. The crewmen in the water also screamed, as the loose torpedo chased them in the demonic swimming pool the
Tiger
’s hold had become. One of the swimmers was caught and crushed against
Voortrekker
’s side. He screamed loudly before he went under in a cloud of blood, and didn’t come up. The other man in the water splashed his arms desperately—he wasn’t wearing a life jacket.

Van Gelder was first to react. He dived into the water, and both Kampfschwimmer followed immediately. Van Gelder dimly heard ter Horst shout orders, to silence the screaming crewman on deck and get him first aid, to rig lines to try to snag and hold the floating errant torpedo, and to rig more lines to pull Van Gelder and the others from the enclosed but vicious water.

Van Gelder plunged headfirst, rose to the surface, and gasped for breath. The salt water filled his ears and went up his nose. It tasted sharply brackish and made his eyes sting. He blinked and looked up and saw
Voortrekker
from an angle he’d dearly hoped never to see—the view by a man fallen overboard. Van Gelder reached the surviving crewman in the water, who grimaced and said he’d injured his thigh. Both Kampfschwimmer helped hold the man’s head above the water.

The
Tiger
took a nasty roll to starboard, then righted herself. The Sea Lion was thrown against the side of the hold, and caromed off the
Tiger
’s hull with a deafening crash. The
Tiger
rolled to port.

The Kampfschwimmer shouted and Van Gelder turned, seeing the Sea Lion coming right at them. They had nowhere to go. It was impossible to climb the smooth, curved, slimy side of the submarine, and the crewmen on deck, caught by surprise and exhausted from hours of loading, were too slow with their man-overboard drill.

Both Kampfschwimmer gestured frantically. Van Gelder realized they only had one choice. They held their breaths and grabbed the injured man and swam
down.
The Sea Lion
rushed right over their heads and slammed into
Voortrekker
’s side. At this rate, even her thick ceramic-composite hull might be damaged fatally. With the endless banging and screaming, the Australians were bound to investigate.

Finally ter Horst directed men to corral the torpedo and hold it firmly against
Voortrekker
’s side using a hastily rigged rubber bumper. Others helped Van Gelder and the crewman and Kampfschwimmer back on deck. The deck was covered in blood, thick and gumming up the antiskid coating.

Then
Voortrekker
jolted hard against the rubber blocks that held her, and Van Gelder was almost knocked from his feet. The
Trincomalee Tiger
was getting under way—the faked mechanical problems to engines and rudder must have been solved, and her crew couldn’t delay the Australians any further.

Soon someone came through the hatch that led from the rest of the ship to the catwalk. He was dark-skinned and wore a turban. He said in heavily accented German that he was the master of the
Tiger.
He wanted to know what was going on, then took in the scene on
Voortrekker
’s deck and gasped.

Ter Horst and Van Gelder turned to speak to him. Behind the ship’s master, smiling and obviously pleased with themselves, suddenly appeared two Australian navy chiefs. They’d followed the master without him realizing it, drawn by all the noise, and now they were obviously expecting another mechanical problem to fix.

They took in the clandestine hold, the nuclear submarine sitting there, and their jaws dropped. Ter Horst drew his pistol and aimed at them and fired. He missed. Each report echoed harshly, and pistol bullets zinged as they ricocheted. Everyone on
Voortrekker
’s deck ducked for what cover there was. The Australians ducked, realized they had no cover at all, and dashed for the hatch from the hold.

Ter Horst shouted to the Kampfschwimmer. They
grabbed their AK-47s. Both fired well-aimed shots on semiautomatic fire. The muzzles flashed hot gases; the staccato reports were deafening. The Australians flopped on the catwalk, dead, and spent brass flew and clinked. Gunsmoke filled the air; crewmen coughed. More bright blood dripped to stain the water in the hold.

Ter Horst stared at the bodies. “Now that’s just great.”

Van Gelder considered their options. It was hard to think straight soaking wet, shivering from the coldness of the seawater and from the closeness of his brush with death.

The ship’s master still stood on the catwalk, unharmed.

“Come down here, you,” Van Gelder shouted in his best German. “Quickly!”

The master obeyed. He seemed an unsavory sort, someone you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley, and this gave Van Gelder a desperate idea.

“Your crew,” Van Gelder demanded. “What are their nationalities?”

“Most are Malaysians. They work cheap, and know how to keep their mouths shut.”

“We have to do something to explain two dead Australians to the others on that destroyer.”

“I know,” the master said. He stroked his thick beard, thinking.

“Pirates,” Van Gelder said.

“What?”
ter Horst said.

“Some of your crew,” Van Gelder said to the master. “They were pirates.”

“Pirates?”

“Yes. That’s what you must say…. Say that it was hard for you to hire experienced hands willing to sail through the war zone. Say you hired men you didn’t know were criminals with weapons smuggled in their seabags. Say they must have reverted to their old ways—”

“Maddened when they thought my ship was sinking?”

“Yes, precisely. They ambushed the Australians in the cargo hold, intending to rob them.”

“Yes, yes,” ter Horst said. “You sensed something was wrong, you took your pistol, and went to investigate. You saw the crewmen, saw what they’d done, and had to shoot them in self-defense.”

“But I don’t have a pistol.”

“Take mine,” ter Horst said. “It’s already been fired.”

The master examined the pistol. “It’s Czech.”

“Yes, not German or Boer.”

The master looked from ter Horst to Van Gelder. His eyes narrowed to mean slits. “I’ll need to trick two of my men into coming down to the cargo hold.”

“Kill them with the pistol,” Van Gelder said. “Then put the AK-47s in their hands. If you have liquor, put some in their mouths and on their clothes. Try to force some down into their stomachs.”

The master’s eyes grew very hard. Slowly, he nodded. He understood what had to be done. The master took one AK-47 in each hand and started up the gantryway. The Kampfschwimmer went to help the master handle the enemy corpses on the catwalk.

“The spent brass!” Van Gelder yelled after them. “This has to look good. It has to look
perfect!
”

Crewmen on
Voortrekker
’s deck began to pick up the expended shell casings from the two automatic rifles; some brass had fallen in the water, but the collection off the deck was large enough to be convincing.

The Kampfschwimmer chief returned, dirtied with gore from dragging the dead Australians through the crawl space leading to the real cargo hold. Someone gave him a bucket of water and towels, to clean the blood trails. He put the spent shell casings in his pocket, and went back into the crawl space.

Crewmen, under Van Gelder’s direction, hoisted the damaged, dripping Sea Lion back aboard and positioned it on the loading chute. A chief with a radiometer verified there was no leakage from the fissionable core inside. They sent the weapon down to the torpedo room. It was useless with its
nose sensors smashed and its tail fins cracked and twisted, but it had to be put
somewhere,
somewhere safe and out of the way.

Van Gelder thought he heard distant pops, like pistol fire somewhere above.

Soon the two Kampfschwimmer and the
Tiger
’s master returned.

“It is done,” the master said. “You must depart at once.”

“But the destroyer’s sonar,” Van Gelder objected. “They’ll hear the hold doors opening.”

“Not with us moving like this. Our engine noise and pounding hull should cover your escape…. It was cold-blooded murder, sacrificing two of my own men to disguise
your
presence. Allah forgive me, we had no choice.”

On
Challenger

I
N PRIVATE
,
IN
THE
commodore’s office, Wilson looked at Jeffrey harshly. “That’s exactly what I intended you to do all along. Did you really think I’d let one of your crewmen lose an arm or die?”

“Sorry, Commodore,” Jeffrey said. “It
is
an obvious thing to do, now that I know that you knew we’d be going through Panama.”

Challenger,
inside the
Prima Latina,
was nearing the entrance to the canal.
Challenger
was just a huge passenger for now—a strange kind of cargo, as unusual as the sunken Russian
Golf
-class sub that Howard Hughes’s
Glomar Explorer
had tried to salvage from the ocean floor back in the 1960s. Jeffrey had ordered
Challenger
’s reactor be shut down, partly for stealth and partly because there was no supply of cooling water.
Challenger
was therefore rigged for reduced electrical, and also for a modified form of ultraquiet.

“So talk to your CIA liaison,” Wilson said. “This Rodrigo person. Work up some kind of story, that the injured man was part of the
Prima Latina
’s crew and was hurt in an accident. Cargo shifted, whatever.”

“We can drop him off in a harbor boat at Cristobal, as we
enter the canal. They must have decent hospital facilities there, or maybe even they’ll fly him to Panama City.”

“Yes, yes. You’re going to have a problem with his lack of proper papers. If they find out he’s American, he’ll be interned for the duration of the war.”

“Maybe Rodrigo can say the documents were soaked in blood and destroyed.”

“You don’t have to feed me
all
the details, Captain. A commodore rarely appreciates his operations officer thinking out loud in front of him when said commodore has more important work to do.” Wilson gestured to all the notes and diagrams and computer disks on his desk, where he was developing battle doctrine for working with the
Collins
boats in the South Pacific.

Jeffrey excused himself, and left Wilson alone. Jeffrey was grateful they’d be able to get the torpedoman with the mangled arm proper medical attention soon, after all. He went into the control room, to have the officer of the deck talk to the corpsman and then make preparations to transport the injured man. This was dealt with quickly, and word passed, and the mood of the crew lifted visibly.

With Jeffrey’s ship so inert, cocooned inside the
Prima Latina,
he had relatively little to do to keep himself occupied—except worry about all the things that might go wrong. He decided to stop in the wardroom for a coffee, to try to forget about naval mines and aggressive Russian trawlers for a minute.

Jeffrey shook his head to himself as he walked down the passageway, thinking. He didn’t like Wilson’s constant irritability.

But is it really irritability? He’s always been hard and demanding. Even when he was captain of
Challenger
and I was executive officer, he wouldn’t hesitate to roast me in front of the crew…. Maybe he thinks he’s building my character.

And maybe he’s right. If I flinch or lose my cool in front of
him,
what showing am I going to make against
Voortrekker?

In the wardroom, Ensign Harrison sat hunched at the table, under the dimmed lighting. He was using some spare time to study for his submarine qualification. Jeffrey complimented Harrison again on his help while they docked with the
Prima Latina.
Then Jeffrey looked over his shoulder, kibitzing as Harrison memorized charts of
Challenger
’s hydraulic systems. It brought back memories of Jeffrey’s own early days in subs, cramming to earn his gold dolphins in every free moment.

That’s really what the Silent Service community is all about. Everybody needs to keep on qualifying at a higher and higher professional level. Everyone needs to help their shipmates get better and better at their jobs. The difference between me and Commodore Wilson is in our approach, our personal styles. What he does works for him, and what I do works for me.

Jeffrey poured himself a mug of coffee and took a sip. It was cold, since the coffeemaker was off to help save power. It was nice to drink it cold—the air in the ship was already warm with no air conditioning, given the tropical weather outside. Jeffrey let the caffeine flow through his system. He took a deep breath, to unwind.

Then Jeffrey had second thoughts about the commodore.

Wilson didn’t talk to Lieutenant Sessions at all the way he talked to Jeffrey. Actually, Jeffrey wasn’t sure if Wilson talked to
anybody
the way he talked to Jeffrey. Jeffrey wondered if it was himself, then, and not Wilson. Something about
himself
that made Wilson be this rough.

Jeffrey thought of his father, Michael Fuller, and the relationship he had with his dad, the way his father talked to him.
Rough.

Jeffrey almost blushed. Was it something Jeffrey was doing in front of
both
men, something in his own attitude toward authority figures? It certainly was his way to question everything and second-guess, and bristle if he felt he was being pushed around. He’d done it to Wilson already over working with the Australians, over making flank speed
through the Gulf Stream, over the secrecy of the
Prima Latina,
and now about the crewman’s arm.
What drives this in me? Pridefulness? Rebelliousness? Resentment, even?

“Is something the matter, Captain?” Harrison asked.

That tore Jeffrey from his preoccupation fast. “I think I just made a useful connection, between two separate problems. They’re not as separate as I thought.”

“Is that good, sir?”

Jeffrey smiled at Harrison’s earnest innocence. “I think it might be.”

Jeffrey finished his coffee in one gulp, and departed the wardroom. He walked down the corridor with a lighter step. He’d gained an important insight about his own personality. He wasn’t sure what to do about it, or where it might lead, but at least his approach to authority figures was something he could try to control. Jeffrey was always biased toward action over inaction. Now he had a clue about where there was room in himself to take positive action.

He decided next to visit the enlisted mess. Between mealtimes, some men off watch would be viewing a movie, or playing checkers or cards. Jeffrey knew he ought to put in another brief appearance, and thank them once more for all their hard work getting
Challenger
ready for sea and repaired again after battle. It always gave Jeffrey a special pleasure to show his face and mingle with the crew—within proper bounds of hierarchy and discipline, of course.

On his way to the mess he passed outside a packed and narrow enlisted berthing compartment. Jeffrey thought of the men who’d be sleeping in there, or trying to—each man stood watches six hours on, twelve off. With constant maintenance and training duties after standing watch, they were lucky to get four or five hours sleep in a day. Some men in the berthing space would be awake now, Jeffrey knew, studying for their silver dolphins, or writing letters home that might never be delivered, or simply enjoying privacy in the only place they could: their curtained-off, coffin-size racks.

Jeffrey smiled to himself to think what wonderful people
his crewmen were, so carefully selected. He smiled again, more soberly, reminding himself with pride that now—as their captain—it was his ultimate, inescapable task to oversee their welfare, ensure their morale, and protect their very lives. This relentless and immense responsibility was, to Jeffrey, deeply gratifying. It was what he had sought for, fought for, craved, for his entire naval career.

His warm inner glow was eclipsed by a troubling realization. Thinking of his crew made Jeffrey think of the man with the injured arm.

A wounded American submariner kicking around in a neutral foreign country, sedated and on painkillers…How well can my torpedoman keep up the act of being someone he’s not, and for how long? What if the Axis gets wind? Dropping him off is like us making a datum, a ticking time bomb, leaving a sign that
Challenger
was here….

Simultaneously, on
Voortrekker

Van Gelder thought
Voortrekker
must be the luckiest ship in the world. Right after the
Trincomalee Tiger
opened the submarine hold’s bottom doors—while traveling at a dicey eleven knots—the Australian destroyer ordered her to stop because of the shootings. This gave ter Horst the best of both worlds: undetected access to the sea with the destroyer right there, and a
Tiger
that was stationary except for rolling and pitching. The bulk of the
Tiger
’s hull around them masked the noise as ter Horst gently flooded his ballast tanks.
Voortrekker
dived away carefully, just as another motor launch started from the destroyer to the freighter.

An hour later both launches returned to the destroyer; the destroyer and the freighter got under way;
Voortrekker
’s sonar showed the two surface ships were on diverging courses. The destroyer was heading back toward Perth, Australia, while the freighter was continuing with her real cargo to South America.

The Aussies must have believed the
Tiger
’s story, that her master’s two dead crewmen had reverted to piracy—muggers at sea might be a better term. Real pirates were a serious problem up in the South China Sea. Tragic, and senseless, though minor against the ongoing backdrop of tactical nuclear war.

But the more Van Gelder thought about the shooting incident, the less he liked it.

When forensic experts in Perth examined all the corpses and physical evidence carefully—as they surely would—flaws might well be found in the cover story. Ships or aircraft would then be sent to intercept the
Trincomalee Tiger.
A thorough search would reveal the submarine hold with its loading crane.

Those Australian corpses are like us making a datum, a ticking time bomb, leaving a sign that
Voortrekker
was here.