Tidal Rip (39 page)

“Captain Fuller is heading east because he believes the wall of nuclear detonations was intended by the
von Scheer
to break contact so that
von Scheer
can continue east unmolested, closer to Africa.
We
know now that in the bigger strategic picture, the South American front is as important as, or even more important than, Africa. And the Germans have known it for some time. Presumably since before the
von Scheer
sailed.”

“You mean—” the DCI said.

“Yes,”
Hodgkiss said. “Now it all fits.
Von Scheer
was thwarted at the Rocks….
Dammit
. Ernst Beck isn’t goingeast.
That’s
why Captain Fuller can’t find him…. He’s heading
west
, toward South America, this very minute.
That’s
why Beck led Fuller on that merry chase, then raised his wall of detonations. And that’s how the Germans intend to get the A-bomb warheads to their opportunist friends in Argentina.”

Hodgkiss got up and went to the globe in the corner. He spun it until it showed the South Atlantic. He ran his finger along the globe, almost angrily.

“I see it, all of it.” He made eye contact with the national security adviser. “Beck will cut two sides of a triangle as fast as he possibly can: the Rocks to Buenos Aires, then Buenos Aires across the South Atlantic to the Congo basin. Meanwhile our convoy will cut the third side of the triangle, see? Through the Narrows, past the Rocks, and straight for the Congo basin pocket…
Von Scheer
runs the errand to Argentina,
then
scoots over to take the convoy from the rear, completing the triangle and also creating the far end of a big pincers. The convoy gets sandwiched between the
von Scheer
on one side and the massed Axis U-boats and land-based forces on the other, the worst conceivable setup from our point of view. And the more time goes by, the more and more likely the German and Boer land offensive will open, too.”

“Oh boy,” the DCI said. “The
von Scheer
’s the perfect transport vehicle, isn’t she? One missile tube could hold dozens of atom-bomb warheads, all nicely gift wrapped for the opposition faction in Buenos Aires. Then the Germans step back and wash their hands, and watch as Latin America explodes in our face, literally. Atomic war on land by Third World countries, an entire new front to America’s south…”

“Something else just fell into place for me,” the national security adviser said. “Even Germany wouldn’t give nuclear weapons to a neutral country unprovoked. They’d know the connection couldn’t be hidden forever, and history would be the judge, and the sick hypocrites are always outward sticklers for the letter of international law…. So Germany must know something we don’t know. They must have their own proof that Brazil has the bomb.”

Hodgkiss nodded slowly and soberly.

The national security adviser and Hodgkiss locked eyes. “We’ve absolutely
got
to keep the
von Scheer
from delivering,” she said. “How do we warn Captain Fuller? Is he even the right guy to use?”

“
Challenger
is already tasked to prosecute
von Scheer
. She’s still the closest sub we have to
von Scheer
’s probable track. She’s by far the only one fast enough, deep-diving enough, stealthy enough, to get in range and kill
von Scheer
with adequate odds of success. To order a different sub after
von Scheer,
instead of Fuller, could be tantamount to sending good men to a useless death.”

Hodgkiss grabbed the phone and reached his aide. “ELF message, override anything else in the queue. Recipient address is
Challenger,
confirm hull number seven seven eight. Message is the cipher block for ‘Come to two-way floating-wire-antenna depth and trail the wire….’We’ll just have to hope we can both burn through all the jamming.”

Hodgkiss held the phone and turned to Ilse. “Might Fuller ignore the message if he thinks we’re only distracting him?”

“He very well might,” she answered honestly.

Hodgkiss spoke into the phone. “Append to message the cipher block for ‘Imperative order, no recourse, Commander U.S. Atlantic Fleet sends.’”

The admiral almost hung up the phone, but then gave his aide more orders. “Get whichever carrier’s closest now to send a medevac helo to the Rocks to pick up the injured SEALs from that cargo-ship hulk. Lots of ice and drinking water, electrolyte packs, the works, they’ll be dropping from heat stress by now, even the guys without wounds. Get an Osprey to haul a mobile radiological decontamination unit. On an underfuselage sling. They can set the trailer down on the ruined lighthouse…. Raise
Challenger
’s minisub. Radio, signal sonobuoy, whatever it takes. Tell the mini to close on the Rocks and recover all able-bodied SEALs. Then they head south to deeper water and prepare to dock inside
Challenger
…. You see what I’m getting at. Take it from there.”

Again Hodgkiss almost hung up, then spoke to his aide. “I want another Orpheus station established, on Ascension Island. Pronto, smartly, yesterday. The Brits own it; the Royal Navy liaison is in the building somewhere, track him down and get their help. Their Special Boat Squadron boys can make the hookups. Ascension has a decent cable net to help us monitor the South Atlantic for
von Scheer
.” The admiral hung up.

The director of central intelligence looked around the room. “What if we guessed wrong? What if it
is
a giant German trap, or double bluff, after all? What if
von Scheer
is still going toward Africa
now?
We’re taking by far our most powerful antisubmarine asset,
Challenger,
our only ceramic-hulled sub, and we throw her away on a wild-goose chase to nowhere and beyond. The enemy gets the convoy and escorts in a pincers
soon,
with the U-boats and their land offensive on one side and
von Scheer
on the other. It’ll be a perfect nutcracker, a bloodbath, with
Challenger
on a fool’s errand to the wrong continent.”

“We can’t have things both ways at once, Director.” Hodgkiss stared very hard at the globe. “If we guessed wrong, ladies and gentlemen, I think we just lost the war, and the Allies will have to offer the Axis an armistice…. But if we guessed right, and Captain Fuller fails and Ernst Beck sinks him off South America, we’re looking at Armageddon itself.”

CHAPTER 25

T
wo days later, off the east coast of Brazil, Jeffrey Fuller sat in his control room, tense and exhausted. The lighting was rigged for red. He’d set the main menus on his console to feed his screens each status page in turn, changing every ten seconds. The constant updating, and the simple stimulation of such movement on his console, helped him stay awake.

Jeffrey had been awake for over forty-eight hours continuously—since before his two-way conversation with Norfolk, when Admiral Hodgkiss issued him new orders at the Rocks, and the subsequent recovery of the minisub with Felix and a handful of SEALs.

Jeffrey was still pissed off at himself. Ernst Beck had gotten him completely confused and left him looking like a fool, tagged as the weakest link in a complex and vital strategic situation.

This Beck is better than I thought
.

Jeffrey turned and glanced at Bell sitting next to him. The younger man looked fresh, rested, and recently shaved.

At least he’s had the common sense to grab some sleep and take a shower. I’m falling into old bad habits, trying to keep an eye on everything every minute during a hunt for our adversary….

“I hope we’re doing the right thing, XO,” he said quietly. As he spoke he could tell how much his whole body and mind dragged from fatigue. His arms seemed much too heavy. His head felt as if it was stuffed with cotton.

“Captain?” Bell’s voice was deep and confident, and the whole set of his face was different than it had been in the past. He seemed more mature but not worn down internally, more centered within himself, more evenly balanced as a person, than on previous deployments with Jeffrey on the ship.

“I tried to be unpredictable at the Rocks. Unpredictable for
me
. Look where it got us.”

“Sir, it made the most sense at the time. Beck outthought us both. It’s my job to backstop you, but instead I led you straight down the path Beck wanted you to take.
Seventy-knot sprint speeds
. What a bunch of hooey! It was all just mental smoke and mirrors. I fell for it too, Skipper.”

Instead of answering, Jeffrey looked once more at the picture of Ernst Beck that he kept windowed on his console.

Then he studied the status screens. Eight nuclear fish were armed and ready in
Challenger
’s torpedo tubes. Her new towed sonar array, installed in New London dry dock, was deployed. Instead of electric hydrophones along a lengthy cable, this array had three separate parallel cables. And the acoustic sensors were thousands of tiny fiber-optic coils in line, each with its own built-in laser. The subtlest low-frequency signals hitting the cables distorted the coils by the slightest amount, and this altered the laser-light wavefronts’ behavior by just enough to be recorded. The whole system was a quantum leap in performance ahead of even the most advanced conventional electric-based towed arrays. Kathy Milgrom and her staff were using it well.

Challenger
was in the deep sound channel, listening for whiffs of the
von Scheer
that even the quietest submarine had to give off. Infrasonic noises, disturbances with a frequency as low as only one cycle per
minute
—a sixtieth of a hertz—were caused by any sub’s motion through the water, and by resonances of internal heavy machinery with the hull, and by slow and rhythmic flexing of the hull itself, all of which no known quieting mechanism could suppress.

Challenger
was moving at top quiet speed, twenty-six knots. The ship’s course was generally southwest. Though the shortest route from the Rocks to Buenos Aires ran straight down the long east coast of Brazil, Jeffrey had decided to swing wide into very deep water. The ship was between the landmass of South America and the rugged terrain of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, over the vast abyssal plain that separated the two. Here, the bottom was at or below
von Scheer
’s and
Challenger
’s crush depths. Here, it would be much harder for Ernst Beck to hide. And here, so long as he stayed more than two hundred nautical miles from the neutral coast, the Joint Chiefs of Staff global rules of engagement let Jeffrey go atomic against an enemy target.

In the last two days,
Challenger
had left the convoy and its escorts and air support over a thousand nautical miles behind. Now no sonobuoys pinged anywhere near—they were being saved to guard the convoy, or for later, and their pinging might by accident give
Challenger
away. Now
Challenger
’s on-watch communications officer in the secure radio room listened for another ELF order telling Jeffrey to come up to two-way radio depth. If such a message did arrive, it could mean news of an Orpheus contact on
von Scheer
. By now the new listening station on Ascension Island might be up and running.

And now
Challenger
’s active sonar was secured. The foundations of Jeffrey’s new tactics were stealth and surprise. The South Atlantic was huge—almost five thousand miles from Buenos Aires to the Congo-basin coast.
Von Scheer
could already be almost anywhere inside an arc with a total area of millions of square miles. Every hour, as Ernst Beck steamed at thirty knots—or whatever his maximum quiet speed actually was—that arc of possible locations expanded more.

Jeffrey’s main advantage, he hoped, was that Beck didn’t realize he was on his tail again—this was why Hodgkiss was holding back on surface warfare and air support: in order not to tip Jeffrey’s hand, to make Beck think
Challenger
still searched for him near Africa. Another advantage, Jeffrey hoped, was that he himself could stay closer to Brazil, and hence take a shorter route to Argentina, because the
von Scheer
had more to conceal from Brazil—and thus more reason to hide—than
Challenger
did. Brazil’s navy was not insignificant, and her coastal defenses were strong. And a third advantage, Jeffrey hoped, was that whatever devious route Ernst Beck might take, his ultimate destination was known: the pro-Axis, prowar faction waiting a few more days to the south. The geography was fixed, and for once worked in the Allies’ favor: the coast of Argentina started south of the coast of Brazil.

“New passive sonar contact,” Lieutenant Milgrom announced. “Transient contact.” Jeffrey looked up, eager for news.

“Contact bearing zero five zero, range extremely distant, identified as underwater nuclear detonation, near the North African coast.”

“Very well, Sonar,” Jeffrey said. “Any trace of
von Scheer
? Hole-in-ocean contact?” The
von Scheer
backlighted by acoustic illumination from that nuclear blast. “Ambient sonar contact?” The echo of the blast off
von Scheer
’s hull.

“Wait please.” It could take minutes for a quiet spot or echo far away to be detectable, and minutes more for
Challenger
’s signal processors to verify a genuine detection.

The wait seemed to drain the last of Jeffrey’s energy.
The Battle of the South Atlantic just started with that nuclear shot. The battle started, and I’m not there to help.

“Negative contact, Captain.”

Jeffrey felt terribly disappointed.

“
New
passive sonar contact,” Milgrom called. “Contact held on towed array.”

Jeffrey’s adrenaline surged.

“Contact bearing two eight two.” West. “Contact is submerged.” Jeffrey’s heart leaped into his throat. “Contact distant, uncertain range…Correction, contact is over the Brazilian continental shelf…. Contact now held on starboard wide-aperture array. Contact classified as a snorkeling diesel submarine.”