by Joe Buff
The Seahawk’s crew chief listened on his flight helmet’s headphones for a moment, then said something into his lip mike. He caught Commodore Wilson’s eye and held up both hands balled into fists. He opened and closed all ten fingers three times. Wilson nodded.
Thirty minutes until we land, Jeffrey knew the hand signals meant. Land where? More massed cargo vessels stretched below.
Jeffrey saw a U.S. Coast Guard cutter, one of the new class that were really major warships, steaming toward the mouth of the bay, to the battle-torn Atlantic. The cutter’s bow wave creamed high, foaming white as she made flank speed, nearly thirty-five knots. Her wake spread out behind her, faithfully following the ship like a V-shaped tail. Two helicopters flew ahead of the cutter, towing paravanes through the water to sweep for mines.
Jeffrey saw various aircraft at different altitudes, near and far. An air-force AWACS plane, its powerful radar enclosed in a saucer disk above the fuselage, coordinated military air traffic and monitored civilian airliners too. The AWACS also stood guard against enemy airborne incursions.
Four-engine long-endurance maritime patrol aircraft came and went; these planes carried airdropped antisubmarine torpedoes. Jeffrey saw a navy blimp. The blimps could stay aloft for days between refuelings and bore many sensors to keep a sharp eye on the sea. Jeffrey suspected that well concealed on the ground were other types of radars, antiaircraft guns, and anti-cruise-missile missile launchers—and hidden tanks and machine-gun nests.
Jeffrey seriously doubted that the land defenses all along the East Coast would ever face a full-blown invasion. That wasn’t a part of the Axis master plan. Berlin had openly said so. They were far more clever and calculating than to waste resources on such an impossible, preposterous task as a military occupation of the United States. Far better to unleash their unspeakable violence on the high seas, in international waters, to sever America’s lines of communication and trade abroad. Far more effective, for Axis aims, to isolate the U.S. than to invade it: let fear and deprivation gnaw away at American voters, until they chose en masse to allow Europe and Africa to fester on the far side of a gigantic ocean. Let Americans be frightened into accepting a new status quo, whittled down into making peace with a new Axis empire—at the price of America’s diminishing to a second-rate, also-ran power.
The real war being fought in and for the U.S. homeland was a psychological war. The targets weren’t factories or rail yards but people’s feelings, their confidence in their leaders and in themselves, and their willingness to risk eventual mass destruction here to benefit occupied foreign countries over there. Axis submarines had already launched harassment raids against several coastal American cities and bases, using supersonic cruise missiles with conventional warheads. The risk of nuclear escalation, intentional or inadvertent, was ever present and constantly rising—and the Axis made very sure the American public knew it.
Ahead of the Seahawk, Jeffrey saw land instead of water. The bridge-and-tunnel road link across the mouth of Chesapeake Bay loomed ahead of him, at an angle on the Seahawk’s left. The Seahawk banked to the right, into the now-setting sun. The Apaches peeled off and headed back toward Washington. The cargo ships moored on the water gave way to navy ships tied up at piers. The Seahawk’s engine noise changed pitch again, and the aircraft leaned back on its tail. The ground came up quickly, and the helo settled down on a concrete pad. It took a moment for Jeffrey’s senses to reorient from the heady exhilaration of flying to the mundane, narrowed perspective of a creature tied to solid land.
Fun’s over. Now back to work.
The crew chief squeezed past Jeffrey and Ilse and opened the passenger-compartment door. Jeffrey unbuckled, then followed Ilse and Wilson out of the aircraft. At first his legs wobbled a bit as he readjusted to walking on the ground. A safe distance from the helo, he and Ilse and Wilson took off their goggles and folding helmets and floatation vests, handing them to the crew chief. The pilot and copilot, still in the cockpit, shut down the engines and systems; maintenance and refueling teams already were setting up; heat rippled off the now-silent turbine engines atop the fuselage.
Jeffrey glanced around. He and Wilson and Ilse were in the middle of the sprawling, bustling, heavily defended Norfolk Navy Base. Nearby, Jeffrey knew well from his younger days as a SEAL, was the separate and equally sprawling Norfolk Amphibious Warfare Base. In that direction, at the far end of Pamlico Sound, sat the U.S. Marine Corps’ Camp Lejeune, with its barracks and obstacle courses, its shooting ranges and beaches for practice assaults. Closer lay the runways and hardened hangars of Oceana Naval Air Station. And in that direction, just across the nearby waters of historic Hampton Roads, were the Newport News Shipbuilding yards, where they made nuclear subs and nuclear-powered supercarriers. It had been right there in Hampton Roads that the world’s first ironclads, the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia—formerly the Merrimack—fought each other to a standstill in the Civil War.
Next to the helicopter pad, an aide stood by an unmarked but very navy-looking white van. He waved for Wilson’s party to come over.
Jeffrey yelled into Wilson’s ear, above the noise of other helos taking off or landing. “Sir, I thought we were supposed to go back to New London.”
Wilson gave him a disapproving look, but then smiled. He cupped a hand to Jeffrey’s ear; with the decibels roaring all around them, the exchange would be totally private. “Captain Fuller, view today as practice for tomorrow, and learn from it. Sometimes you don’t think enough. Other times, like right now, you assume too much. They’re both bad habits. Fix them pronto.”
Wilson walked on, and Jeffrey followed. Wilson leaned to Jeffrey’s ear again.
“The Medal you lost on that street back there in Washington can be replaced. You, as my most hot-running ship commander, I’d rather not lose. I want you to live long enough to win another Medal, not come back in a box yourself, or end up as radioactive fish food.”
Jeffrey and Wilson and Ilse were seated in a conference room deep underground, in Norfolk’s hardened communications and planning facilities belonging to commander, U.S. Atlantic Fleet. There were more than two dozen people crammed in the room—most of them generals or commodores or admirals, or high-level members of their staffs. One side of the conference room was made of soundproof glass, and the curtains were drawn open. Through the glass, Jeffrey could see the main war room itself. Large maps and situation plots covered the walls on big flat-screen displays. Men and women in uniform sat at consoles. Officers, with the gold cords around one shoulder denoting an admiral’s aide, hurried back and forth purposefully. Enlisted messengers dashed hither and yon.
The preliminaries in the conference room were long over, and the four-star admiral himself, Admiral Hodgkiss—commander, U.S. Atlantic Fleet—had the floor. The atmosphere was very tense. The feeling of urgency in the big war room, right outside, was infectious and mounting. Hodgkiss himself was a stiff and formal man at the best of times, and Jeffrey could see that this evening he was feeling the pressure like everyone else: the pressure of the relief convoy’s impending confrontation with the modern U-boat packs, of the Axis land offensive soon to open in Central Africa, and of the sailing of the von Scheer. The admiral finished laying out the many knowns and unknowns and uncertainties—the uncertainties seemed to predominate.
The admiral looked around the room. “All of you. My staff, the submarine squadron commanders, carrier battle-group commanders, everybody. We need a total effort now. I expect each of you to use your head, and stay sharp and put your forces in harm’s way aggressively. Show me real initiative every minute when the shooting starts, or I won’t hesitate to relieve you. Take a deep breath and savor the smell of gun smoke clinging to Captain Fuller’s clothes. Get addicted to it! Don’t defend yourselves against the U-boats. Attack the U-boats! We’re gambling everything on this throw of the dice. We have to get our convoy through, and we have to keep the pocket open. If we don’t, the war is probably as good as lost.”
J
ust then a messenger knocked. Hodgkiss’s aide, a full captain, let the man in. He handed Hodgkiss a communiqué. Hodgkiss read it and frowned. He turned to the room at large.
“This is as good a time as any to take a short break…. Everybody be back here in ten minutes. We need to discuss fleet dispositions to protect the convoy en route and sink or scatter the wolf packs. We need to go over the plans for landing and off-loading on the Central African coast, depending on whether we still have control of the beaches and surrounding waterspace and airspace, or not, when the convoy and escorts get there…. And Captain Fuller, I want to seeyou in private.”
Jeffrey followed Hodgkiss nervously down the hall, to a smaller meeting room that was unoccupied. The admiral sat, gesturing for Jeffrey to sit facing him across the table.
Hodgkiss stared at Jeffrey very hard, without saying anything, as if to take Jeffrey’s measure, to weigh him in Hodgkiss’s unforgivingly objective hand.
Hodgkiss was short and skinny, and incredibly intelligent. As a former submariner who now bore immensely broad responsibilities, he tended at times to distance himself from the submariner community. He controlled huge numbers of naval assets, going far beyond fast-attack subs. His empire included such surface combatants as Aegis cruisers, and naval aviation—both the planes and their carriers—plus powerful marine amphibious warfare groups. Hodgkiss could be rough on his subordinates and had the reputation of being a man you did not want to displease. In both his wiry build and his overbearing manner, he reminded Jeffrey a lot of the late Hyman Rickover, self-proclaimed father of America’s nuclear navy, the maker and destroyer of careers.
Hodgkiss had been the admiral Jeffrey could barely get himself to talk with in the reception back at the Omni Shoreham Hotel.
Hodgkiss put the message slip on the table, looked Jeffrey right in the eyes, and without preliminaries, began to speak. “The Russians just made a formal announcement to us through their ambassador. I quote, Any first use of thermonuclear weapons by the United States anywhere in the eastern hemisphere will be taken as a first use against the Russian Federation itself. Retaliation in kind will be massive and swift. Unquote.” He waited inscrutably for Jeffrey to react to this bombshell.
“Does the statement say Allies, sir, like the UK or the Free French, or just the United States specifically?”
“Smart question, son. The United States, specifically and only…They’re telling us we better not be first to escalate past tactical fission bombs. And this”—the admiral tapped the message slip—“puts the Axis Powers explicitly under Russia’s hydrogen-bomb umbrella.” Neither Germany nor South Africa possessed any H-bombs. France’s had either been evacuated before her capitulation or destroyed by French Special Forces.
“Why now?” Jeffrey asked.
“You tell me. Answer the question yourself.”
“They know about the von Scheer. They know about the relief convoy and the African land offensive. They’re protecting themselves in case things get out of hand and we’re tempted to escalate. They’re also throwing more weight behind the Axis.”
“Concur. I’m sure they’re also reacting to something else.”
“Admiral?”
“Their certain knowledge that last month you almost started World War Three.”
Jeffrey wasn’t sure how to respond.
I acted under orders that originated with the commander in chief, delivered to me through the proper chain of command.
And I didn’t start World War III.
Hodgkiss shot Jeffrey an amused look, as if he’d read his mind; part of the admiral’s scary reputation was that he was very good at reading minds.
The admiral chuckled. “If you can’t take the heat in here, how are you going to manage out in the deep blue sea? No one’s blaming you for anything, at least no one in the Allied High Command, including me. You just got a big fancy medal for what you achieved last month. I wanted this little chat, one-on-one, because your role in what’s coming next will also be very important.”
Jeffrey hesitated. “Yes, sir.” Everybody keeps telling me that today.
“Commodore Wilson is quite aware of this tête-à-tête outside his formal chain of command. He approved, naturally enough. I didn’t ask him about it, I told him.” Hodgkiss chuckled again. “I promised you’d fill him in on the highlights as soon as you two get the chance.”
“Yes, sir, Admiral. Of course.” Jeffrey felt less uncomfortable.
Hodgkiss became more intense. “HMS Dreadnought is already on station on barrier patrol in the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap. Now that we know the von Scheer is leaving from Norway, Dreadnought is our first line of defense. Her and our best steel-hulled submarines like Seawolf are also deployed in the gap.” The Seawolf class was very deep diving and fast, optimized for open ocean sub-on-sub combat in a late Cold War scenario. Dreadnought was the UK’s ceramic-hulled equivalent to Challenger. “Since the von Scheer can pick her place to infiltrate the gap, and Dreadnought and Seawolf can’t be everywhere, it is my informed view that von Scheer will break into the Atlantic. That’s where you and your ship become indispensable to me.”
Jeffrey thought it best to hold his tongue.
Hodgkiss picked up the message slip. “This Russian ultimatum should trigger another question.”
Jeffrey began to sweat mentally, thinking hard.
This guy knows how to put me through my paces without wasting time.
“Admiral, does the announcement make any specific reference to them retaliating against first use of tactical nuclear weapons in open land warfare well outside Russia?”
“Good, you got it in one. To answer you: No; it does not. The attached assessment by our analysts says the Russians wish to sidestep that rather loaded topic.”
“To keep both us and the Germans and Boers guessing.”
“And to keep the Germans and Boers feeling dependent on Russian help…It also indirectly raises the wild card of atomic fighting spreading ashore in Central Africa, which would be our worst nightmare.”
Jeffrey found the thought appalling—but this was exactly the sort of stress that always made him feel emboldened. “The best way to discourage that, sir, is for our landing to be fast and powerful and well dispersed. Get our tanks and vehicles and helos well in past the beaches quickly. Then stay mobile, don’t bunch up. Don’t tempt the Axis with concentrated targets for fission weapons.”
“You’re up on your theory…. Your job is to help turntheory into fact. This is your prime motivation, Captain. Stop the von Scheer. Make sure the convoy gets there with minimal losses so our marines and army troops can do all the things you just said they should do. Helos and eighty-knot air-cushioned landing craft and fast amphibious armor are useless if their parent ships can’t get in range intact.”
“I understand.”
Hodgkiss changed subjects abruptly again—another of his trademarks. “Challenger has gotten under way, using a twofold subterfuge. Step one is that the Axis has almost certainly been tracking her captain since his helo flight from Washington, and her captain is here in Norfolk, not in New London. That’s you, Commander Fuller, CO of our navy’s most capable undersea warship.” The admiral smiled disarmingly. “Step two is that Challenger has gotten under way using a new form of concealment for which special code-name project clearance is required.”
Jeffrey was confused. “I’m supposed to stay put, as a deception, so the Germans and Boers think my ship is still in dry dock?”
“Negative,” Hodgkiss snapped. “You join your ship covertly, by mini-sub, when she reaches the Norfolk area. Challenger has your executive officer in temporary command.” He raised his bushy eyebrows at Jeffrey. “I presume, Captain, that your XO has your confidence to safely make the transit here through friendly waters?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Lieutenant Reebeck is not coming with you this time.” Now Hodgkiss gave Jeffrey a quizzical look. Jeffrey realized someone, somewhere, had decided Jeffrey and Ilse had better be
separated. Then he remembered he himself considered asking that Ilse be transferred off Challenger after his previous mission.
“Lieutenant Reebeck will remain here at my headquarters, with Commodore Wilson, to assist me in divining your probable tactics and intent, since we will frequently lose communications contact with your vessel. Lieutenant Reebeck will also apply her skills as combat oceanographer to help the larger effort.”
Jeffrey digested this. It made good sense from the wider context of the admiral’s tasks and areas of control.
He waited for Hodgkiss to go on.
“No, Lieutenant Clayton and his SEALs are not on Challenger. They will not be joining you either.”
“Then—”
“You will be taking on a different team of SEALs, by rendezvous with another submarine’s minisub, as you reach your principal operating area.”
Hodgkiss leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. Jeffrey let down his guard—and instantly regretted it.
“Why aren’t you wearing your Medal?”
Jeffrey hesitated. This was embarrassing. “It was lost, sir.”
“Yes, I know. I know exactly where, and when, and how. The question was purely rhetorical.”
“Sir?”
“Before we resume the other meeting and move on to general business, I wanted to personally make a point to you, Captain.”
“Admiral?”
“This time, once you join Challenger, you are not to go gallivanting off with the SEALs and expose yourself to enemy fire on land…. If necessary to destroy the von Scheer, your ship and crew are expendable. You, as an individual, separated from your ship, are not.”