Tidal Rip by Joe Buff

Author:Joe Buff [Buff, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780061355035
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2009-10-13T07:00:00+00:00

Jeffrey bounced against his seat belt as Challenger tore after von Scheer at flank speed…. Or at least after the place where Orpheus said the von Scheer should be.

She’s down there somewhere, on the bottom, heading east. We’re looking down at the seafloor terrain from thousands of feet higher up. The ridgelines here all run east-west, so von Scheer won’t be screened from us by bumps or cracks in the bottom…. Right now Ernst Beck can’t hide.

“Sonar, go active!” Jeffrey ordered. “Maximum intensity, ping.”

Challenger’s bow sphere emitted an earsplitting screech, a burst of sonic power so loud it came back through the hull and nearly deafened most of the crew. The screech began to rise and fall in tone, like a whale call. It ended abruptly, with a sudden silence that seemed a portent of doom. Milgrom’s people hunched over their sonar consoles.

The ping was on its way, a spreading blast front of pure acoustic power—a mix of changing frequencies to cut through ocean reverb, optimized by the most advanced signal processors known. Designed to pick out a target whether it was moving or still, to sense its speed and even give its size and shape and which way it was heading…Impossible for the stealthiest sub in the world to cloak itself entirely or suppress a telling echo.

Sound traveled through seawater at almost a mile every second, five times as fast as through air. Even so, it would take half a minute for any real target return to come back.

Jeffrey forced himself to keep breathing evenly. Next to him, as fire-control coordinator, Lieutenant Commander Bell looked prepared and eager to unleash the forces trapped within tiny atoms, and give birth to brand-new underwater suns, to destroy the von Scheer with unspeakable violence and kill every person aboard her.

The Axis started this, Jeffrey told himself. Now it’s our turn to help finish it.

“New active sonar contact!” Milgrom shouted. “Bearing zero eight five, range thirty thousand yards! Course zero nine zero, speed thirty knots!…Depth eleven thousand feet, hugging the bottom!”

“Identify!” Jeffrey ordered.

“Contact consistent with Orpheus datum. I merge and designate the contact Master One. Master One identified as the SMS Admiral von Scheer.”

“Fire Control,” Jeffrey snapped. “Firing point procedures, Mark Eighty-eights in tubes one through eight, target Master One.”

“Solution ready,” Bell recited. “Ship ready…Weapons ready.”

“At five-second intervals, match generated bearings and shoot.”

“Unit from tube one fired electrically,” Bell said. “Good wire to the weapon.” The Mark 88s were wire guided.

“Unit is running normally,” Milgrom reported. Sonar, by listening, made doubly sure the torpedo was running true.

“Unit from tube two fired electrically. Good wire.”

“Unit is running normally.”

And on and on the litany went as Challenger launched eight wide-body, deep-capable nuclear fish at the Admiral von Scheer.

“Reload all tubes, Mark Eighty-eights Mod Twos. Set warhead yields to maximum.” One full kiloton each.

Bell, Weps, and their people got busy.

Jeffrey studied the tactical plot. Challenger had gained on the von Scheer’s projected position, but Challenger’s torpedoes were dashing ahead and gaining on the von Scheer much faster.

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