Thunder In The Deep (02) Read Online Free PDF Page B

of camaraderie on the ship, built from their shared first taste of combat two weeks ago, strengthened by this compelling new assignment, the Texas.
    Well, maybe I'll get to know Kathy better, once we have a chance to unwind together alone in our stateroom.
    Ilse felt Kathy stiffen abruptly. "Here we go," she muttered. The Brit put both ear cups firmly in place, and frowned. "Console five," she said into her headset mike, speaking to one of the enlisted sonar techs. "Play back the last ten seconds, starboard wide-aperture array, on bearing zero two five true. Show me the power spectrum."
    "What's happening?" Ilse said.
    Kathy's lower screen changed to show a jagged, squirming oscilloscope trace, a plot of sound intensity versus frequency, on bearing zero two five over time.
    "That." Kathy pointed to a quick blip at about 2000 hertz that stuck out like a sore thumb. On the tape, enhanced, it sounded like a clunk. Kathy froze the picture and studied it. "Console three, give me the ray trace." Her upper screen now showed a tangle of overlapping arcs and sine curves; Ilse's detailed knowledge of ocean mechanics made this plot more precise.
    "Conn, Sonar," Kathy called out. "Mechanical transient, bearing zero two five. Closer than our first convergence zone. . . . It isn't friendly."
    Jeffrey finished wolfing down a stale ham sandwich alone in the wardroom. He felt Challenger shimmy for a moment, as she passed through a dying shock wave from another distant atomic explosion. He knew the second section of a huge convoy to the U. K. was under attack way up ahead, part two of a shipment of food and heating fuel on dozens of escorted merchant ships. The first section had run into trouble enough the day before, near the path of the Texas. The convoy had sailed in two sections—a day apart and on different routes past the Azores in mid-Atlantic—partly because the number of cargo ships that started out was so large, and partly as a one-two punch to try to overwhelm and blow past the Axis wolf packs. Similar tactics had been used in World War II, with mixed success—and now the U-boats had A-bombs, and silent airindependent propulsion if not nuclear power, and didn't send constant radio reports for the Allies to home on and decode.
    Jeffrey heard and felt another detonation. He wished there was something he could do to help those merchant mariners. Half a year into the war, Great Britain was already starving, the initial six-month surge capacity of the Allies' submarine fleets was nearing exhaustion, and the killing North Atlantic storms had barely begun. But the convoy action was too far off for Challenger to make much difference. Besides, she had a pressing engagement elsewhere, Jeffrey's preoccupation: Texas, Texas, Texas. Her hundred or so combat-experienced American submariners—or as many as would actually live and recover from their injuries—were a priceless war-fighting asset, even with their ship herself lost. They were also an invaluable prize, if the enemy got to them first. Jeffrey rubbed sleep-deprived eyes. Spread before him on the wardroom table were hard copies of Virginia-class blueprints and subsystem diagrams. Just as he had for most of the past twenty-four hours—often in conference with his engineer, Lieutenant Willey, and with COB Jeffrey was
    trying to understand what the men aboard Texas might do to survive, and what Challenger might best do to aid them once she reached the scene. It would take several hours to evacuate the survivors, shuttling them from Texas to Challenger in Jeffrey's ASDS. It would be tragic indeed if some succumbed to wounds or oxygen deprivation while waiting their turn, when salvation was so near.
    One of the wardroom intercoms barked. To Jeffrey the signal, the growler, always sounded like a shih tzu puppy. More stressed-out than usual, Jeffrey winced at this mental connection: His family had had a shih tzu when he was growing up, in a middle-class suburb of St. Louis. In a sick way,