Deep Sound Channel by Joe Buff Page B

dripped.
    A machinist's mate restored hydraulic pressure, dumped earlier so an errant piece of equipment wouldn't maim or kill. He raised the pressure slowly while companions checked for leaks, after first isolating some obviously damaged autoloader machinery. They gave up immediately—fluid still oozed everywhere.
    As Jeffrey studied the devastation wrought by the incoming sea, he tried not to think about the tons and tons of high explosives and self-oxidizing fuels stacked all around him here, and the atomic warheads. Fire and water, he told himself, the elements that own all submariners. Buoyancy and crush depth, nuclear furnaces and steam, they make us go and make us die.
    Another worry crossed his mind and he spoke into the mike. "Captain, XO. Request permission to cycle the outer doors tubes one through seven to verify their function." NEAR THE ANTARCTIC CIRCLE,

FAR SOUTH OF DURBAN
    Captain Jan ter Horst grinned as another blast of frigid water hit him in the face. "Just like the good old days, Gunther," he shouted over the southeast gale. "The way it used to be, when sharks of steel drank diesel fuel and wolf packs ruled the seas!" Gunther Van Gelder eyed his skipper, more than ever convinced the man was mad. " None of this is really necessary, Captain," he said through chattering teeth. "Can't we just dive and get it over with?" He gripped the edge of the bridge cockpit with gloved hands, trying to steady himself against the roll, the pitch, the shudders of the hull.
    "Never!" Ter Horst laughed as his vessel bounded and punched through the waves. He sneered at the surface ship in the middle distance. "I want them to see Voortrekker! I want them to try to run!"
    Van Gelder ducked as more green water broached the cockpit, then drained away. Ice rime was already two centimeters thick on the ESM antennas and photonic masts. "We'll freeze, sir, before much longer, and this is dangerous." He tried to close his parka tighter but it was zipped high as it would go.
    "Don't be silly, Number One," ter Horst said. "There aren't aircraft anywhere near here. She's been running her radar at full power since she spotted us—and we keep stealing echoes. Besides, their low-observable fighters don't have the range, and if they did, we'd pick them up on passive infrared."
    "But sir, that's just line of sight."
    "The latest satellite pass showed nothing in the area. . . . So let them call for help. That's the whole idea!"
    "But they might attack us!"
    "Pah. She's unarmed except for some machine guns. Our unmanned aerial vehicle told us that. Probably worried about a special boat squadron takedown, not a sub." Van Gelder watched the supertanker morosely, barely visible as it labored through the blowing fog. Half a million tons displacement, laden with priceless crude. Liberian registry, U.S.-owned and -manned. They'd known that much about the target for hoursVoortrekker had sonar tapes of all the big ships that plied the Persian Gulf.
    "I suppose we could have used a missile," ter Horst said half to himself, "but we fired the last of them up north. . . . I wonder if the Americans know it was my vessel that sank Ranger."
    Van Gelder felt too frozen to wonder about much of anything. "We're not supposed to waste nuclear warheads on single merchant ships, Captain." He huddled by the bridge instrument panel, gaining scant shelter from the forty-plus-knot wind. The cockpit crew's bright orange protective clothing gave the only color to the scene of blacks and leaden grays.
    Ter Horst nodded curtly. "What I don't understand," he yelled in Van Gelder's ear, "is why she's here at all."
    "Greed, sir?" Van Gelder spat out bitter seawater as more spindrift hit his face. He shifted position and frozen glaze crackled on his coat front.
    "Arrogance, more like," ter Horst said. "They think they can run the blockade. To reach America's Gulf
    Coast refineries by crossing the Pacific instead would take four times as long."
    "Maybe they hoped to hide