"Understood," Jeffrey said, then he glanced at Monaghan again.
"They put him in your rack," Morse continued. "They're stitching up his scalp now."
"Why not the CO's state-room?" Jeffrey said distractedly.
"You need the data repeaters in his cabin, when you turn in for some rest … You know you're acting captain now."
"I got a heartbeat," the corpsman called.
"Can you keep him going?" Jeffrey said. Then he tried to stand. He could barely put weight on his leg now.
"I don't know," the corpsman said. He inserted a plastic airway down the navigator's throat and started squeezing rhythmically on a breather bag. "It's a nasty translation injury, like you'd expect from a torpedo hit. Neck vertebrae are crushed, his spinal cord's been damaged, maybe severed altogether. He needs to be on a life support respirator and we don't have one aboard."
"Come on, Chief," Jeffrey said. "We've got a boatload of fancy pumps and spark-proof motors, a lifetime supply of pure 02, and some of the best engineers in the world. We'll make a respirator."
"Sir," the corpsman said, pressing down on Monaghan's chest to get him to exhale, "that could take us hours."
"Then we give him artificial respiration for hours … Phone Talker," Jeffrey ordered, " SEAL medic to the CACC stat … They'll go in the hyperbaric chamber in the ASDS together, on oxygen, and the SEAL'Il breathe for Monaghan, however long it takes. When the respirator's done, we lock it into the chamber with them."
Jeffrey eyed his weapons screen. Tubes one and three were loaded now with ADCAPs. Turn and rise and fire on Master 27? Get set to use one of the precious Mark 88s, a deepcapable nuclear torpedo, since Challenger's ADCAPs were conventional?
Jeffrey turned to Sessions. "Sonar, can you tell me Master 27's depth?"
"Sir, passive contact lost as reverb dwindled. Doppler showed her moving but less fast than us." Sessions worked his keyboard and conferred with Ilse. She worked her keyboard too. Sessions looked up. "Sir, last elevation angle datum applied to local ray trace path shows Master 27 passing through three thousand feet."
"Are you sure?"
"Sir, the calculations check."
"Any sounds of hull distress? A bad equipment casualty, maybe, or hit by friendly CAPTOR fire?"
Jeffrey waited as Sessions scanned his tapes.
"No inrushing water or hatches popping, sir, no escaping bubbles or collapsing frames … No high-speed dive flow noise or groaning steel … and no impact with the bottom." Jeffrey made eye contact with Ilse.
"It's Jan's boat," Ilse said. "This far down it has to be."
"Yeah," Jeffrey said. "The Axis doesn't use titanium hulls."
"Deutschland's in the North Atlantic," Morse said, "busy devastating the convoys from America."
Jeffrey looked around the crowded CACC, silently cursing the typically overoptimistic battle damage assessment. "Voortrekker survived, people, and now she's after us. Our battle isn't over, it's just begun."
"Number One," ter Horst said, "launch another message buoy, Flash Double Zed priority again. Message reads: Am in contact with USS Challenger. Am best platform to prosecute, all units stand clear my chase, ter Horst sends … Add our position, depth and course and speed, and get it off immediately."
"Aye aye, sir," Van Gelder said.
"Load tube six with a nuclear 65. Prepare to fire a salvo of three."
"Sir, this close to shore?"
"I'm not going to detonate them here, Gunther. I'll run them twenty thousand meters further out, use a nice wide spread, since we don't have the target localized. That'll put the bursts a comfy forty klicks from land."
"Sonar," Van Gelder said, "what's the wind?"
"Still backing, sir," the sonar chief said, "from west around to south. Wind's coming out of roughly two four zero now. I'd say speed's down to maybe twenty knots."
"The dangerous semicircle must have passed," ter Horst said, "and the storm's recurving northward, but the wind's still blowing nicely out to sea."
"Yield setting on the warheads, Captain?" Van Gelder said.
"Maximum yield. Twenty thousand meters is a touch more distance than Wilson could have covered running at top quiet speed. So wherever he actually is, Challenger should be inside lethal range of one of the blasts."
Van Gelder read his tactical display. "Sir, there are friendly units on the arc you plan to sanitize."
"We just warned them," ter Horst said, "with that message buoy … Don't use active search — our fish might just pick up a wreck."
"Captain," Van Gelder said, "with respect, messages take time to relay, ships need time to clear the area, and these two Navors-class coastal minesweepers are much too small to stand the shock and tsunami."
Ter Horst eyed the screen. "Gunther, Gunther, Gunther. You know as well as I do all target-motion analysis is notional. This just shows who we think perhaps might be at these positions, approximately speaking, based on estimates and projections, subject to judgmental guesses and any sensor error. This data isn't real. Those minesweepers might well be somewhere else, or they might not be there at all."
"Captain … "
"For all we know," ter Horst said, "there could be other hostile units we might eliminate, support for Challenger we haven't yet detected. So it's a wash, as far as I'm concerned."
"Very well, sir," Van Gelder said reluctantly. He worked his weapons menu screen. " Tubes six, seven, and eight now loaded, all nuclear torpedo gyros spooling up to speed."
Ter Horst eyed him piercingly. "Your compassion is misplaced. This is war."
"Helm," Jeffrey said, "all stop."
"All stop, aye," Meltzer said. "Maneuvering acknowledges all stop."
"Ilse," Jeffrey said. "You know Jan ter Horst. What's he gonna do next?"
"Kill us all," Ilse said. "Any way he can, the sooner the better."
"You think he'll launch nuclear torpedoes this close to shore?"
"Yes."
"This close to friendly units?"
"He'll convince himself it's his duty. They'd be martyrs. Friendly losses definitely won't stop him."
"And if we fire a weapon now ourselves, it'll let him and half the Axis navy get us localized," Jeffrey said. A nearby searching surface unit pinged again as if for emphasis.
"What's the bottom here?" Jeffrey said.
"Hard sand," Ilse said.
"Very well, Oceanographer," Jeffrey said. "Chief of the Watch, bottom the boat."
"Put her on the bottom, aye." COB did the evolution so smoothly Jeffrey hardly felt or heard a thing. The only indication was a minor down-angle, three degrees.
"At least this way we won't be smashed against the seafloor," Jeffrey said, "we'll be sitting there already, and the sand just might help cushion the concussion." Jeffrey turned to Commodore Morse. "He'll probably fire onto zero nine zero true. That's presumably his last known course for us, and it's also the mean bearing away from land."
"Makes sense," Morse said. "Let me give you some advice, though, while we're waiting to find out."
"Sure," Jeffrey said, now bracing himself for a criticism.
"You're trying to do too much. Get Lieutenant Bell up here as acting executive officer." Jeffrey grabbed his phone-set mike. "Weps, come up to the CACC, assume the right seat at the command console. Have the senior weapons chief relieve you at the special weapons console." Bell acknowledged.
"And take off that sound-powered phone," Morse said. "That's what the phone talker's for. Your job's to delegate."
"Direct hit, Commodore," Jeffrey said. He removed the bulky unit. He took a deep breath. "Phone Talker, repeat to all hands. Rig for depth charge, prepare for a close-in nuclear detonation."