Crush Depth by Joe Buff

thirty-six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles were converging on the atoll, tearing in at a kilometer per second, and everyone on the base must know it by now.
    A third big air-dropped depth charge went off near Voortrekker, probably hitting another decoy, almost deafening through the hull. This is Russian roulette, Van Gelder told himself. Jan ter Horst just smiled. Van Gelder wanted to scream. The enemy airborne radar sweeps were stronger.
    Another atomic depth bomb exploded, louder and much harder—closer than the last ones, shaking Van Gelder to his core.
    Please, God, let our missiles hit and then let’s dive and get out of here. Crewmen gasped as the fireball from this latest undersea blast reared skyward from beyond the horizon, on the main screen. A periscope technician zoomed in, and everyone saw the crown of the mushroom cloud soar. It blew a hole in the overcast, then disappeared higher up.
    Van Gelder had to clear his throat. “Captain, urgently recommend submerging now.”
    “Negative,” ter Horst said sternly. “You know as well as I do we have no telemetry to the missiles. We must have real-time battle-damage assessment. Now is the time to attack, with the Pentagon befuddled by that psy-war air raid on New York, and the Reagan battle group too far from Diego Garcia to intervene. Once the Allies realize we’re out of dry dock so much sooner than they expected, all our strategicsurprise will be lost. If the first missile salvo does not succeed, we need to know it immediately, and you’ll have to fire more missiles now. ”
    “Inbound visual contact!” one of Van Gelder’s fire-control technicians shouted as he monitored a periscope display. “Enemy aircraft closing fast!”
    Van Gelder took over the display control and flipped to maximum magnification. “A jet, Captain. Too fast to use an antiaircraft missile.” The Polyphem high-explosive missiles Voortrekker could launch from her torpedo tubes were meant only for slow propeller planes or helicopters.
    “Target bearing?” ter Horst snapped.
    “Two eight five!” Van Gelder watched the distant dot of the aircraft. It gradually got larger. Suddenly the control room felt much, much too small, and Voortrekker ’s hull too thin.
    “It’s slowing!” the fire-control tech shouted. “It’s going to drop a parachute-retarded torpedo!”
    “Snap shot,” ter Horst ordered, “tube one, maximum yield, on course two eight five! Shoot. ” A snap shot was a desperation move, a quick launch with no proper firing solution to lead the target.
    Van Gelder relayed commands. A nuclear torpedo raced from the tube. But the Boer torpedo was so much slower than the jet. The jet raced at Voortrekker ’s conspicuous antenna, and the wire-guided torpedo churned through the water toward the jet.
    “Detonate the snap shot now. ”
    “Too close to our own ship!” Van Gelder warned.
    “Do you want him to drop? I said now!”
    Van Gelder pressed the firing button. The undersea warhead blew. The water shielded Voortrekker ’s masts from the instantaneous electromagnetic pulse, but the ocean could do nothing to quench the fireball and the blast force. Through the periscope image, Van Gelder saw the ocean near the aircraft heave. The full energy of the warhead broke the surface, and a tower of white water rose and spread with violentspeed, higher and higher and wider and wider. The fireball thrust above the water column, blanking out the image. When the glare subsided, a mushroom cloud stood proudly and the enemy aircraft was gone.
    Voortrekker whipped and shivered viciously from the force of its own underwater blast. A sonar screen imploded and caught fire; a crewman doused it with an extinguisher. Damage reports came to Van Gelder from other parts of the ship—nothing major yet.
    Van Gelder watched on the periscope as the tsunami of the detonation approached Voortrekker quickly, even as the mushroom cloud grew taller in the air. The tsunami was a solid wall of