Tidal Rip (56 page)

For a warrior to kill in war is not immoral….

Hell is just a fantasy, a story to scare little children. I am a grown man, a blooded soldier fighting for my country, as other German soldiers have fought for generations past. They never questioned their duty or their destiny…and neither will I. They sought only to do their duty well and face their destiny with clear and confident eyes…and so shall I.

Beck opened his laptop and turned it on. He brought up a map of Brazil. To pass the time constructively, he began to pick what he thought would be high-value targets in the country, just in case the order came to launch his nuclear cruise missiles. Growing bored with that, he studied a chart of the South Atlantic, and planned his campaign against
Challenger
and the convoy.

Jeffrey let the Brazilian hovercraft rush on ahead alone, as a diversion, while
Challenger
changed course to leave the continental shelf.
Challenger
continued moving south at top quiet speed out in deep water, off southern Brazil. The local time was three
A.M
. in Buenos Aires and Rio. Jeffrey knew this was late, even for urban middle-to upper-class South Americans, who tended to stay up well past midnight every day of the week.

He and Bell sat in the captain’s stateroom again, struggling over tactics for their fight against the
von Scheer
. Nautical charts and diagrams were windowed on his laptop screen. The display looked impressive enough, but Jeffrey knew that in reality he and the XO were going in circles and getting nowhere. They decided to take a break and went to the wardroom for coffee—Jeffrey locked his door, for security. In a short while they returned.

Jeffrey’s laptop sat there, with the same busy mess on the screen.

“Let’s get back to work,” Jeffrey told Bell. “This is what they pay us the big money for.” He sat down heavily.

Bell joined him, and many minutes passed. The two men still got nowhere. Jeffrey felt himself becoming irritable. That strong black coffee, instead of perking him up, had left him with acid reflux and a bitter metallic aftertaste in his mouth. The caffeine, the adrenaline, the long day of hard work and harder travel, the late hour and all the tension, were giving him a weird sensation—as though his head were stuffed with wool or wasn’t quite attached to his body.

Someone knocked on the door. Jeffrey, startled, jumped in his seat.

Much more of this pulverizing wait for news and I’ll
really
lose it.

A messenger informed him that Sonar was picking up Brazilian airdropped signal sonobuoys in the acoustic-tone code Jeffrey prearranged with Rio.

“We’ll be right there,” he told the young man tiredly, then slid his door closed again for a moment and fought to regain some composure.

Bell, still sitting, looked up at him, obviously torn between hope and dread.

Lieutenant Willey, the engineer, had the conn; Sessions was acting as fire control; the ship had been at battle stations now for seven hours. This was grueling, draining, extreme, but Jeffrey deemed it necessary—
von Scheer
might appear from nowhere at very short range, and then every second would count.

Sessions had already decoded the sonobuoy signal relayed by Sonar. “Captain, message says, ‘Come up to on-hull ELF antenna depth.’”

“ELF depth?”

“Yes, sir. That’s what it says in the codebook from that diskette you brought from Brazil.”

“But Brazil doesn’t have an ELF transmitter.” Such installations were miles across and hugely expensive. “Sonar, are you sure about what you got from the sonobuoys?”

“Yes, Captain. Quite certain this is the tone sequence they sent us.”

“Somebody there made a clerical error?” Bell suggested.

Jeffrey frowned. “We’d better find out.” He took the conn and Bell took fire control. Jeffrey ordered
Challenger
shallower.

Soon the radio room called on the intercom.

“ELF message with our address says to come to floating-wire-antenna depth and trail the wire, Captain. Imperative, and do not radiate. Commander, Atlantic Fleet sends.”

“Hey,” Bell exclaimed. “Our comms are working again!”

Jeffrey, very exhausted, was more cautious. “Either our information warriors defeated the Axis viruses for now, or this is all a fake and we’ll be led into a trap.”

“What do we do?”

“Watch real good for threats as we go shallower. Copy the message and see if the authenticators validate. If they do, we see what the message says. If they don’t, we launch noisemakers and fire a decoy and run for our lives.”

There was jubilation in
Challenger
’s control room. Some crewmen grinned from ear to ear, while others simply managed a smile for the first time in days. The more outgoing chiefs slapped one another on the back. Jumping high fives were exchanged among the enlisted men—one of whom was so carried away he banged himself on the overhead, then laughed. Lieutenant Sessions combed his hair and tucked in his ruffled shirttails as if he wanted to look his best for the special occasion. Bell took the picture of his wife and baby out of his wallet and kissed them. Jeffrey watched all this serenely.

The message from Admiral Hodgkiss was valid; the Axis computer virus assaults had indeed been beaten back—in the heaviest information warfare battle ever known.

“Read it aloud,” Bell said, beaming. “Skipper, let’s hear the whole thing.”

Jeffrey cleared his throat dramatically. “I quote loosely as follows: ‘Anti-Axis truth-based propaganda, founded on Lieutenant Felix Estabo’s success, has foiled the Germans completely. Forestalled by aggressive warnings by President de Gama to his chief-executive counterpart in Argentina, an attempted coup in Buenos Aires has utterly collapsed. Military units that were revolting shortly before have switched back to their elected head of state.’ With cynical rapidity, I might add.” Jeffrey chuckled. “‘The ringleaders have been arrested or they killed themselves, or first were arrested and
then
killed themselves. More were beaten to death in the streets or lynched from lampposts by angry loyalist mobs. A few of the culprits,’ alas, ‘managed to flee for now into neutral Paraguay.’”

Crewmen mimicked hissing and booing the villains.

“‘Separately,’” Jeffrey continued, “‘reliable up-to-the-minute intelligence sources in-country confirm no German nuclear warheads are on the loose….’ God be praised for
that
.”

There was a chorus of sober
amens.

Jeffrey cleared his throat again, and held up the message at arm’s length as if it were a formal proclamation. “‘The Brazilian Congress, meeting in special session, has unanimously approved President da Gama’s request for a declaration of war against the Berlin-Boer Axis. Brazil is now one of the Allied Powers. The western side of the Atlantic Narrows is solidly in friendly hands…. Argentina remains neutral, at least for now, while taking active steps to fully restore democratic order and good public health. Her troops on the Brazilian border are standing down.’”

“This is just fabulous, Captain,” Bell exulted. “We whupped the Axis decisively in the whole South American theater!”

“Let’s not take too much credit, XO.” Jeffrey glanced around his control room. “You did great, people. But remember, plenty of others played a big part too. And we still have unfinished business.
Major
unfinished business.”

“
Von Scheer
.”

“We’ve taken away Beck’s purpose for being near South America. We need to do one more thing here now, XO.”

“Sir?”

“Give him a
very
compelling reason to go somewhere else.”

“Besides the convoy?”

Jeffrey nodded. “He needs to first make very sure he
reaches
the convoy undamaged…. Sonar.”

“Captain?” Milgrom said.

“If we ping on maximum power in the deep sound channel, say at a depth of five thousand feet, how far off do you think the
von Scheer
’s acoustic intercept might hear us?”

“Let me run a calculation, sir.”

“And if we move south at flank speed, could
von Scheer
’s signal processors know it from the Doppler effects of multipath sound-ray traces and reverb and so on? Could they tell our depth, within a thousand feet or so?”

“I’ll assume their capabilities are similar to ours.” Milgrom worked her keyboard. The senior-chief sonar supervisor looked on. He suggested some tweaks to the modeling. Milgrom glanced up from her console. “Six hundred miles, at least, Captain. And yes, if we’re making fifty-three knots at five thousand feet when we ping they’d know.”

“Good. Then they’ll have no doubt whatsoever we’re really
Challenger
.” Jeffrey double-checked the nautical chart windowed on his console screen. “That should be more than enough to do it.”
And we’ll be safely outside the
von Scheer
’s missile range.
“Ping once now in normal search mode, just in case there’s a U-boat around, or an Argentine diesel sub that didn’t get the word the Buenos Aires coup is off.”

A high-pitched screech went out through the water. Jeffrey waited for possible target echoes to come back.

“No submerged contacts,” Milgrom stated.

Jeffrey gave helm orders to Meltzer.

“Ahead flank, aye,” Meltzer acknowledged in his thick Bronx accent. “Make my depth five thousand feet, aye.” He turned his engine order dial. “Maneuvering answers, ahead flank, sir.” He pushed his control wheel forward gently.
Challenger
’s bow nosed down, then leveled off. “My depth is five thousand feet, sir.”
Challenger
’s speed continued mounting steadily.

“Very well, Helm…Now we let the
von Scheer
know we’re coming, in no uncertain terms. Sonar, make some noise.”

The sonarmen got their equipment reconfigured. Soon an almost deafening deep rumble, like a foghorn, pierced the hull from the big sonar sphere at the bow. It made the deck and the very air in the control room seem to hum, above the vibrations and shaking
Challenger
always made at flank speed. Jeffrey’s toes tingled, and his clothing rippled oddly against his skin.

“No new sonar contacts, Captain,” Milgrom reported routinely after a while. “All active surface contacts within our detection range already held on one or more passive arrays.”

“Very well, Sonar. Keep it up.” Low-frequency sound waves had the longest range before the underwater signal died off. Jeffrey’s intent was not to find Beck but shoo him away with finality—before Berlin could do something insane.

Between the powerful blasts, Jeffrey turned to Bell. “XO, back to my stateroom for a minute…Nav, take the conn.”

Sessions acknowledged.

“Chief of the watch,” Jeffrey told COB with immense satisfaction, “secure from battle stations.”

Ernst Beck sat alone in his stateroom with the doors locked, both the one into the passageway and the one into the head he shared with von Loringhoven.

On his desk was the latest ELF message from Berlin. Like all ELF messages, it was short. The alphabetic cipher blocks conveyed, in essence, “Proceed at once Africa. Attack enemy convoy soonest possible.”

Beck was greatly relieved, but his relief went only so far. He was trading one form of Armageddon for another—the battle against
Challenger
would be violent, high-risk.

But he now had to inform his guest, the baron:
Von Scheer
was ordered away from South America immediately, leaving that whole continent untouched by nuclear fire.

Before Beck could stand to go talk to von Loringhoven, his intercom light blinked.

“Captain.”

“Sonar, sir,” Werner Haffner said. “Distant acoustic intercept contact bearing north. Extreme detection range, source submerged. Depth and speed of contact confirm positive identification, USS
Challenger,
heading our way at flank speed.”

Beck rushed into the Zentrale, took the conn, and issued helm orders to turn due east and evade.

Jeffrey and Bell sat down, and Jeffrey turned his laptop on again. This time he called up a large-scale nautical chart of the whole South Atlantic, with the bottom terrain highlighted.

“I have a search plan, XO. It’s simple. I’m completely changing tactics.”

“Tell me more, Skipper. More ass-backward Mahan?”

“No. Ass-backward Jeffrey Fuller.”

“Huh?”

“You said it yourself before. Searching for
von Scheer
on the way over here, we struck out completely.”

“Yes.”

“Now that Sonar’s making doubly sure the
von Scheer
’s on the run, you realize, don’t you, XO? We’ve scored a strategic and tactical victory against her without ever firing a shot. Without ever even holding sonar contact once in this theater…”

Bell gazed at the overhead for a moment, digesting this, then tapped his fingers to his lips, digesting it more. “You know, Captain, you’re right! This has to be one for the history books. A masterstroke of thinking outside the box!”

Jeffrey
was
feeling rather pleased with himself. As he gradually had time to reflect on it, the magnitude of what he’d accomplished was almost frightening.

I’ve also made some key people in Berlin extremely angry at me, in a different and worse way than ever before…. Those people have long memories.
This frightened Jeffrey too.

He took a deep breath, and let it out. “Anyway, here’s my new search plan.”

“Keep going active as we transit east?”

“No. We already played that particular hand at the St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks, and you see where that got us against Ernst Beck. Ditto for searching on passive with our fancy triple fiber-optic towed array.”

Bell nodded. “Shot nerves and ulcers for a week. Empty hours of worry for the safety of our families back home.”

Jeffrey smiled. “Now we intentionally avoid all contact with the
von Scheer
as we cross the South Atlantic. We waste no time on search tactics during the transit. Instead we make flank speed as much as possible, and hide in the bottom terrain on the way. In the meantime, I’m making you command duty officer.” Effectively, acting captain. “I’ll be on vacation.”