by Joe Buff
"Will they recover?" Jeffrey said. He cast his eyes around the mess space.
"Yeah," the chief corpsman said through his air pack mask. "Eventually. Yeah. It'll be much worse on Texas."
Bell took another good breath from the overhead pipe, then he and Jeffrey walked forward. •
When they were out of earshot of the mess, Bell said, "Skipper, we need to talk." Jeffrey and Bell sat in Jeffrey's stateroom, both using plug-in masks now, their faces inches apart. Their air valves hissed and whooshed repetitively. The stateroom door was closed.
"Permission to speak frankly, sir," Bell said.
Jeffrey tried not to bristle. When he was XO himself, he'd always encouraged his department heads to speak their minds freely in private. Since the reshuffling from Captain Wilson's being injured, Bell, as acting executive officer, was Jeffrey's official interface to the entire crew. But there was something in Bell's tone that said this discussion would not be routine. "Permission to speak frankly," said the way Bell said it, by long naval tradition really meant "Permission to leave our difference in rank outside the room."
"Granted," Jeffrey said. He needed Bell's trust, now more than ever. To let a problem between them fester could lead to terrible consequences later, at a personal level or in combat.
"It is my respectful opinion, Captain, and I don't believe I'm alone in this, that you almost just got us all killed."
"We had to go after those German boats. We had to help that convoy."
"Two quiet enemy vessels? With ten torpedo tubes between them? With torpedoes that are smart and pack a bigger punch than ours? That constitutes a superior force, Captain. A clearly superior force. It's your job, with a command that is not expendable, to not risk the ship against a superior force."
"But we sank them. And there's no lasting harm done, as it turned out."
"We don't know that yet. Sir. We're a day away from the Texas. We do not know what we will find when we get there, or what Axis strength we'll meet. You compromised our strategic stealth."
"Granted," Jeffrey said. They'd just made one hell of a datum. . . . He remembered what he'd half warned himself about before: a calling card for Eberhard. "There's always risk. At least now you see why I didn't stream the towed array."
"Negative, Commander. We went in there half blind. The enemy got the jump on us."
"It was a judgment call. And mine to make." Jeffrey sat back defensively.
"You should not have gone to the engine room fire. Sir, you're the ex-XO. You must not cherry-pick whatever parts you want to play."
Jeffrey realized he'd been irresponsible, carried away in the heat of action, carried too far. . . .
"The worst damage is morale, Captain, including the junior officers. After Durban and all that, the crew was very high on you. We were in a tight spot and you got us through. But this is different."
This was different. Back then, they were also against a superior force, but that time not by choice. Bell's help had been indispensable.
Jeffrey cleared his throat. "They think I'm a cowboy?"
"Something like that, Captain. Even General Custer's luck eventually ran out. In the Civil War he won the Medal of Honor. Medals reinforce bad habits, sir. Self-appointed heroes in command . . . well, they add to the friendly body count."
"You mean I'm reckless. Going for personal score, so it looks good in my service jacket."
"Something like that. Yes."
Jeffrey knew Bell knew he'd won the Silver Star in Iraq, for the same SEAL op when he'
d gotten the wound in his leg. Jeffrey had recovered, but one of his men was still in a wheelchair from his wound.
Jeffrey had to clear his throat again. "We should have little trouble departing this area stealthily. An Axis air strike, or any long-range cruise missiles, ought to be stopped by Allied air cover from the Azores or the Canaries, not to mention the carriers protecting the convoy. That's the whole reason the second section came through here, not west of here."
"I know that."
"With this big storm topside, enemy airborne ASW will be badly degraded. By heading north we're steaming under a heavy-beam sea. Any Axis destroyers or frigates would have to steam right through it. They can't possibly keep up with us like that, nor can any diesel-AIP."
"I know. I knew that all along."
Jeffrey felt himself tensing, and told himself to calm down. With both men in their masks, needing to work for every breath and shout to be understood, this conversation was getting surreal.
"There's more, isn't there?" Jeffrey said.
"Your treatment of Miss Milgrom, in front of the entire CACC crew, violated every principle of good leadership."
"I apologized."
"You need to do a better job, in private."
"What's your real point here?"
Bell took a deep breath inside his mask. "You gave the crew the impression you think we got stuck with a sideshow rescue mission, at this critical stage in the war. Now everybody thinks that, too. . . . We're the Challenger, Captain, the state-of-the-future boat. We're supposed to be in the middle of the fight, doing things no other sub can do."
"I agree. I'm not happy about it, either."
"Instead we're being worn down bit by bit. More damage here, more crew casualties there, mental stress all around. I'm not a mind reader, sir, but as the new XO it's my job to try. I believe the crew now believe that one reason we're heading for the Texas and then home is that our present acting captain does not have the full confidence of the powers-that-be."
Jeffrey looked away, not saying anything, not daring to.
"Three responsible specialists advised you in almost so many words to keep on going to Texas. Sonar, Oceanography, and myself as XO and Weps. You plain ignored us all, in front of sixteen of the crew."
"But—"
"I helped build Challenger, Captain. I'm a plank owner, like most of the men. You got here two months ago. Me playing devil's advocate with you is not a knee-jerk game." Jeffrey opened his mouth, but Bell cut him off.
"As an African-American myself, I am well aware of the problems of bias. I have never once sensed that with you, which is to your credit. But your blatant reaction to Miss Milgrom as a female submariner, a woman in uniform serving on this warship, simply has to change."
Jeffrey's face was burning. He realized Bell was right on every count, but still Bell didn't quit.
"You're responsible to the people, the chiefs, the junior officers, the department heads, and me. They're all courageous and tough. But at this point, if they could, as a matter of principle half the crew would put in for immediate transfer to another front-line boat. Think how that would look in your service jacket." Jeffrey sat there, stunned. It would ruin his career.
"It is my considered opinion, sir, that the crew now believes that if you continue your current tactical and leadership style, it will be a miracle if we ever complete this rescue mission and reach the East Coast of the United States alive." A half hour later, Jeffrey sat alone in his stateroom. This time the door wasn't just closed—unusual enough for him—it was locked.
Spread across his fold-down desk were the formal orders, and briefing papers and data disks, from the Cape Verde courier's envelope.
Jeffrey was feeling much better than when Bell left to take back the conn. He was also feeling much worse. RE-CURVE ARBOR.
The powers-that-be did trust Jeffrey, and the crew, after all. They did know what Challenger could really do, even when damaged.
This damaged, though? Jeffrey blushed, thinking about his attack on the U-boats, and about what Bell just said. Half of Jeffrey wished he'd opened the envelope sooner. On the pages in front of him, he was directly ordered to avoid all contact with the enemy whatsoever until reaching the USS Texas.
But Texas was a red herring. It wasn't a rescue mission at all. Challenger was ordered to stop at Texas only long enough to take off her specially trained surviving SEALs with certain unique items of equipment, including two briefcase ato
m bombs. Challenger was being tasked to complete the job originally given to Texas. They were going all the way. Up through the narrow, shallow waters between occupied Denmark, and occupied Norway and aggressively neutral Sweden, to
penetrate the impenetrable German bastion, the Baltic Sea. When they got there, they were to pull off a nuclear demolition raid that made Durban, as frightening and important as it was, seem routine by comparison. A demolition raid so vital, apparently, that the rest of the men on Texas had to wait.
Jeffrey's tactical personality might indeed get everyone on Challenger killed. But now, he hoped, considering what they were up against, his on-the-edge way of war-fighting at least gave them a chance to succeed and survive.
Their involvement at Durban was, and had to remain, covert. Their role now was direct action. Jeffrey saw this -new mission was also meant to aid the lasting effects of the Durban raid, as a double bluff: If Challenger set off A-bombs in Germany's face, so soon after the mysterious mushroom cloud in South Africa, then the U.S. wasn't behind the previous blast. Jeffrey hoped it worked.
Jeffrey thought some more about what Bell had said and implied. Jeffrey had been selfish, and too judgmental of people whom he needed and who needed him, and they'd seen it all over his face in the control room: It was just like with his family twenty, thirty years before. Second-guessing, and not listening. Condescending, burning bridges that might never be rebuilt. Walking out on them.
Jeffrey'd seen—too late—how it felt to be on the receiving end of that. After Iraq, during his year of painful rehab, when he'd struggled to learn to walk again and wondered if his Navy career was over forever, his fiancée dumped him.
Jeffrey held his head in his hands, mask and all. Dear God, he had soul-searching to do. His job was to protect his crew.
Finally, Jeffrey put his highly classified orders back in the envelope, and took a deep breath. He unplugged the mask's connector hose; the compressed air made its usual pop. Jeffrey took the envelope to the CACC. He decided to
hold an impromptu mission briefing right there, within the limits of security. First, though, he owed his XO a heartfelt thank-you, and his people a sincere public apology. If they ever got through this new mission, they'd get through it together. SIMULTANEOUSLY,
ABOARD DEUTSCHLAND.
ON ANTICONVOY PATROL, SOUTHWEST OF ENGLAND
"I hate this war," Ernst Beck said. He looked at the pile of papers on the fold-down desk in his cabin and then at the man sitting opposite him.
Oberbootsmann Jakob Coomans was a seasoned noncommissioned officer. He was Deutschland's chief of the boat. At age forty-one the oldest man aboard, he hailed from Hamburg, that great port on the North Sea facing England. Coomans's build was slight, but he ruled the ship's enlisted ranks by the force of his personality and the sharpness of his tongue.
Beck sighed. "I never thought when I signed up that someday I'd sit in a German nuclear submarine, censoring crewmen's letters home, in the middle of tactical nuclear war at sea."
Coomans's eyes sparkled. "A war against our own NATO allies. A war we started."
"You always had a strong sense of the ridiculous, Chief." "Or the grotesque, sir."
"Be careful," Beck said. But he smiled. "Someone might think you disapprove of the new regime."
"Crew morale is good," Coomans said. "The first batch of letters after leave, you expect some homesickness. That's when the men's fears and regrets show most, in their words to wives and lovers."
"Wives and lovers?"
"Very funny, sir."
"But no, I agree. Their spirits seem high. They are high. Good morale is hard to fake, living cheek-by-jowl as we do." Beck had pictured each of the men as he read their letters: a name, a face, a distinct personality, each with his hopes and concerns, his strengths and foibles. Most of the hundred-plus crewmen Beck knew well, from their secret fast-attack sub training in Russia, and Deutschland's notso-secret construction at Emden. Then came the quiet practicing under the ice cap, the ultraquiet snooping off U. S. and British naval bases . . .
"And why wouldn't their spirits be high?" Coomans said. "In the Great War our forefathers took fifty percent losses in-the U-boats. In Hitler's war, it was eighty percent killed in action. Now our little Class two-twelves amount to suicide machines, but there's still no end of volunteers."
"And how will it all end this time?" Beck said. "How many dead? Widows? Orphans?
Grieving parents and girlfriends?"
"You know what Bismarck said."
"Remind me, Chief."
"There are two things you never want to see get made: politics and sausage."
"So?"
"I'll paraphrase our soldier-statesman thusly: There's a third thing you don't want to see being made: empire." "I never knew you were such a philosopher."
"Yes, you did, sir. That's why we're such great friends."
"I thought we were friends 'cause neither of us has anyone else we can talk to on this boat." In public, Beck and Coomans had to mirror their captain's detached interpersonal style.
"Don't be such a cynic, sir. You might hurt my feelings."
"That's bloody unlikely."
Coomans chuckled. "But you do see what I mean. Consider the Brits in their heyday. Killing wars over the centuries on almost every continent. The Boers haven't forgotten."
"But South Africa was on the British side in World War Two."
"Because they didn't like getting swallowed by Hitler's juggernaut. So this time we offer the Boers their own fair share of empire. At the right price every nation's soul is for sale. Empires come and go. Right now we have a Kaiser again, and a half-finished empire." Yes, Beck reflected, a nation's soul is always for sale. But what of man's soul? Why are we here? What about our responsibility to our own morality? Beck stared at a battle map taped to the wall. Yes, a sailor always has his duty, but what if that duty becomes a trap?
"I sometimes wonder if it'll end up finished, Jakob, or finished." While Beck spoke, a far-off nuclear detonation sounded through the hull, drawn out and growing to a crescendo before dying off. The tragedy of his words was heightened by the reality of their tactical situation.
"If we lose this time," Coomans said half to himself, "it will be very bad." Beck nodded somberly. There could be no quitting halfway now.
The two men, lost in their own interior journeys, were startled from their reverie by a knock on the door: a messenger.
"Sir, the captain's compliments. Enemy Convoy Section One is approaching. We're almost in attack position, and he requires your presence in the Zentrale." Beck forced a smile; it was his job to help put this convoy on the bottom of the sea today. . . . He thought of his twin sons, now ten. He thought of having grandchildren someday, of playing with them when he retired, long after this war. Germany's place in the sun. He was doing it for them.
He followed Coomans wordlessly, down the short corridor, past the Christmas decorations.
Deutschland's crowded Zentrale, her control room, was rigged for red. The men were up, excited, and Beck took an inner pride in their readiness. He'd taught them, drilled them, made them the eager tools they were for Kurt Eberhard. "Attack stations manned and ready, Captain." Convoy Section One was the target.
"Very well, First Watch Officer. I don't like surprises." Beck winced. Intel on the rendezvous of relief warships from England with the convoy had proven inaccurate. The enemy reinforcements were coming hours ahead of expected. Beck saw Eberhard study the tactical plot and frown.
"Now we're caught between the convoy's frigates driving from the south, and fresh destroyers converging from the north. And the escorting carrier battle group has us boxed in from the west."
Beck nodded ruefully: The carrier was the nuclear-powered Harry S. Truman, one of America's latest and best, probably escorted herself by four Allied fast-attack subs. Eberhard gave Beck a withering look. "If this first con voy section does get through, in spite of the beating it took off the Azores yesterday, and the second section s
uffers acceptable losses, Allied morale and logistics will get such a boost this war could drag on for years!"
Beck shuddered to think of the consequences if Deutschland failed today. Whole continents were waiting to choose sides, or to pick through the cooling ashes when the First World immolated itself: all of Asia, half of the Middle East, and most of South America were holding back from the fight. Everything hinged on starving out the U.K. quickly, exposing America's impotence, and scaring U.S. voters to sue for peace. Beck told himself there was no choice but to press on.
Luck and timing, good or bad, were always crucial factors in armed conflict. Merchant ship tonnage sunk was what mattered.
"I will not settle for sniping at the convoy from the flanks," Eberhard said. "To hit the priority targets with confidence, we need to get in very close, and damn the escorts." Beck eyed the large-scale digital tactical plot on his console. Deutschland steamed due west, on an interception course with Section One. She made top quiet speed, thirty knots. Her depth was fifteen hundred meters, exploiting a temperature/salinity layer caused by conflicting currents deep in the ocean—excellent concealment from searching Allied planes and surface ships.
"Sir," Beck said, "recommend update target motion analysis on the carrier group. They may cease steaming semi-independently and close up with the convoy for the rendezvous."
Beck knew his ship had a clear playing field here today, which meant she'd get no interference from Axis forces, but no help: The German Class 212's, and captured French SSNs, were striking Convoy Section Two way off to the south. This made sense, to avoid friendly fire, but Beck suspected Eberhard had had a hand in it: no friendly forces present, no credit shared.
"Concur, Einzvo, update the data. A more concentrated target for us if they do close up, but better all-around protection for them . . . which only adds to the time pressure." Beck turned to the sonar officer, who sat at the head of a line of consoles on the Zentrale'
s starboard side. He was a likable young man, Werner Haffner, an Oberleutnant zur See—lieutenant junior grade—from Kiel, a major base and port on the Baltic. Haffner was earnest and talented, though high-strung.