by Joe Buff
CHAPTER 18
Jeffrey and Milgrom and Bell were still sequestered in Jeffrey’s stateroom. Jeffrey had moved the discussion to a different question. They were once again, hurriedly, going over what little they knew about the von Scheer, to try to work out more specific tactics for when the fateful confrontation came—if it ever did. Jeffrey and his key people had been doing this often since leaving Norfolk. It became their daily mantra, a benediction almost, but unlike meditation or prayer, this convocation gave no peace of mind. And as Jeffrey said, pointedly, now could well be their final opportunity to brainstorm before the maelstrom of battle began. Then there’d be no pause button, no calling time-outs, no do-overs.
They knew the von Scheer was a very big ship, much bigger than Challenger. She was almost certainly slower than Challenger if both made flank speed. How much slower, Jeffrey didn’t know—and knowing could be the difference between life and death in a stern chase or dogfight. Running at the same speed, Milgrom suspected, knot for knot, von Scheer would be even quieter than Challenger: bigger meant more room for quieting gear, more room to isolate noisy machines from the hull.
But they had no good noise profile on the von Scheer. They didn’t know what her hybrid Russian-German propulsion plant sounded like. They didn’t even know if she had one reactor or two, one propulsor at her stern or two, or even if each propulsor was a screw propeller or a pump jet.
Milgrom pointed out that Challenger did have some sonar advantages. Von Scheer’s bigger size made her a bigger target on hole-in-ocean passive sonar—a larger spot in the water that was too quiet because the hull blocked ocean noises from farther off. And since ocean sounds or nuclear blasts bounced off the target and served to give it away in the same way as the echo from an active sonar ping, a larger hull meant a larger ambient-sonar contact too. “We can expect a longer detection range against the von Scheer than she against us in those modes, sir,” Milgrom said.
“We have another advantage, Skipper,” Bell said. “Von Scheer has to go shallow to launch her missiles. Otherwise they’d implode in the tubes. Going shallow, she loses the help of concealment by bottom terrain. She leaves herself wide open to easy tracking on active sonar, and a preemptive attack by us from below…or by other Allied forces from above.”
“And then there’s the wild card of Orpheus,” Jeffrey said, “our secret eye on von Scheer looking up from the bottom of the sea…assuming the gadget actually works.”
Felix stood behind the pilot’s seat in the cramped, red-lighted control compartment of Challenger’s minisub. There was just enough space for him to squeeze between the back of the seat and the front of the pressure-proof bulkhead to the lock-in/lock-out chamber. The mini was all of eight feet high externally, and inside Felix could barely stand up straight.
The mini was too small to have a gravimeter, but the nautical charts were detailed and the inertial nav position was accurate. At four knots, submerged, it took an hour to go from the edge of the undersea ridge—where Felix lost direct contact with Challenger—to the immediate vicinity of the Rocks. Instrument panels bristled with buttons and readouts. Computer screens showed depth and course and speed, ballast and trim, and the condition of the minisub’s atmosphere. Other screens showed sonar displays and a tactical situation plot. Right now there were no threats.
The very existence of the St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks was an accident of nature. They just happened to be in a most strategic location, where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge stopped curving south and took a sharp turn east along the Romanche Fracture Zone—a gigantic transform fault in the ocean floor straddling the Atlantic Narrows. At the eastern edge of the Romanche fault, hundreds of miles nearer Africa, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge resumed its southern procession, all the way through the South Atlantic Ocean to Antarctica. The St. P and P Rocks—as Felix and the others called them—were, in fact, a part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, right at the elbow of that sharp turn east. The Rocks were the only dry land of any sort, anywhere near the center of the Narrows. The relief convoy has to steam through the Narrows. The Germans have to know all this too.
Compared to the seafloor down in the sprawling abyssal plains on opposite sides of the endless and massive ridge, the St. P and P Rocks were the summit of a mountain range three miles high. Compared to local sea level, though, the highest point of the Rocks peaked barely sixty-five feet above mean high water.
“We’re at periscope depth,” the copilot said. “Want to take a look, sir?” The copilot was a senior chief in the SEALs, qualified to operate the minisub—he’d come with Felix from the Ohio. The pilot, also a senior chief, was a submariner from Challenger. This was standard doctrine for using the ASDS minisub in combat: teamwork, a marriage of cultures, between two of the navy’s different elites, submariners and SEALs.
“Do it,” Felix said.
The copilot flipped some switches. The fold-down periscope mast was raised hydraulically, and one of the control compartment’s display screens lit up with scenery from outside.
It was first light, just before sunrise. The sky facing east was a beautiful golden yellow.
From this angle, with the top of the periscope just above the sea, the St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks didn’t look like much.
A jumble of stones sticking out of the water. Four main chunks, plus a few tiny islets. Barely eight hundred feet from end to end, running north-south. Barely a football field’s worth of total dry-land area, and barely two square feet of it flat. More than five hundred miles from mainland Brazil. Just over a thousand from Africa. Not a place someone would ever choose to go.
The minisub rocked gently in the minor swells. Felix could make out white water where the swells broke here and there against the edges of the rocks. The weather forecast was good, and he could already see it would be a nice day. The lightening sky was clear and azure blue, with scattered high fluffy clouds that glowed pink in the sunrise. The sunrise was happening fast, even as Felix watched through the digital periscope display. The Rocks were only thirty miles north of the earth’s exact equator.
“I better get suited up,” he said. This was the part he wasn’t looking forward to at all.
Beck stood near the bottom of the lockout trunk that led into the von Scheer’s pressure-proof internal hangar for her mini-sub. The rest of the kampfschwimmer group, and their equipment, were already loaded. Beck was saying good-bye and good luck to Lieutenant Shedler; the two of them were alone by the heavy watertight door that sealed the entrance to the trunk.
“I appreciate what you’re doing for us.” Beck gripped Shedler’s hand in both of his firmly. “Godspeed to you.”
“You make it sound like a suicide mission, Captain.”
“Whatever our friend the baron said back there in the wardroom, Lieutenant, the moment you and your men break the surface, the clock begins to run out on all our lives.”
“If we come under attack by air,” Shedler said, “we can pull back underwater and take shelter in the minisub. It’s combat-hardened, remember.”
“What about nuclear bombs?”
“The Rocks are already a radioactive wasteland. We’re prepared to deal with that. We’ll just have to work quickly, and get you the targeting data you need before the Allies have time to retaliate. With luck we’ll be up and down, out and back, before they ever know what hits them.” Shedler, always so sure and optimistic, turned serious. “Just promise me one thing, Captain, if you can.”
“Name it.”
“If something does go wrong, don’t leave us behind.”
Beck and von Loringhoven were making small talk in the wardroom. Beck drank hot tea, Von Loringhoven black coffee. They used expensive china cups and saucers; the wardroom silverware was exquisite sterling; the embroidered tablecloth was antique, imported from old Persia.
“French coffee is good,” von Loringhoven said idly, “but the coffee in Buenos Aires is much better.”
“You’ve been stationed in Argentina?”
“Once, earlier
in my career, before the war.”
Beck felt the von Scheer’s deck tilt as the ship nosed down. He watched the readouts on the captain’s console next to his end of the table. The ship’s depth mounted steadily.
Stissinger returned from the control room. “Minisub safely away, Captain. In-hull hangar pressure-proof doors are closed and sealed. We’re heading back to the bottom. Navigator has the conn.”
“Very well, Einzvo,” Beck acknowledged formally.
“Thank you for joining us,” von Loringhoven said to Stissinger.
“Thanks for inviting me, Baron, but I’m still not sure why I’m here.”
“My instructions are that the next portion of your captain’s secret orders are to be opened and read in your presence. I thought that three of us in the captain’s cabin might be crowded. The wardroom gives us space to spread out. The large flat-screen display lets us look at maps and charts together in comfort.”
Beck interrupted. “We need security.”
“At your convenience, Captain.”
Beck grabbed the intercom handset and called the control room. He asked the chief of the boat to have a senior enlisted man posted outside the main wardroom door, and another outside the door that led from the wardroom into the pantry. “Chief, tell the guards to admit no one without my permission.”
In a few minutes, the guards were posted outside.
“Open the next envelope whenever you like,” von Loringhoven said.
Beck’s curiosity was aroused by the change in procedure. “Why now, before we’ve completed our next mission task, the Rocks and the convoy? And why with my einzvo this time?”
“Once Shedler and his men reach the St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks, things will move very quickly.”
Beck nodded. That’s putting it mildly. We’ll soon go from daintily sipping coffee and tea under fine oil paintings in gilded frames to dealing out supersonic mass death, and then become absorbed in a fight for our lives.
“Management of the battle time line, by our side, is now more essential than ever,” von Loringhoven said.
“Granted,” Beck replied.
“In order to destroy the convoy, and achieve our broader war aims, and utterly defeat the Allied Powers, many things must be delicately coordinated and synchronized. Lieutenant Shedler will help us seize the tactical initiative. We three here, Captain, have a broader duty, to seize the larger, strategic initiative. Destroying the Allied convoy, alone, will not win us the war. It will just bring the enemy closer to losing. The convoy is not the last of your mission tasks on this vessel’s deployment.”
Beck glanced at Stissinger, who shrugged.
“Once you read the orders,” von Loringhoven said, “you will understand. Contingency plans have been carefully made in Berlin. You both, as the von Scheer’s senior officers, must study those plans in detail now. Now, before Shedler’s sudden appearance on the Rocks is noticed by the Allies, and that event in turn begins an unforgiving contest, and starts an inexorable race.”
“And I’m to take these new directives into account, in shaping my further decisions after the von Scheer’s missiles are launched?”
“Precisely. And I assure you, these orders are valid, from the highest levels in Berlin. You can double-check the authenticator codes against your private passwords on your computer if you wish. If you prefer, I’ll leave the wardroom while you do so.”
Beck ripped open the latest envelope. Hastily, he began to read. Before Stissinger even had a chance to move close to look over his shoulder, the captain felt his heart begin to pound.
As he read further, he could feel himself turning livid. He put down the hard-copy orders. He could see Stissinger reading now, staring at the papers in disbelief. Beck turned to face von Loringhoven accusingly.
“What this says is an outrage! It’s a crime against humanity!”
CHAPTER 19
Felix’s minisub was nestled in a sheltered area where the four main chunks of the St. P and P Rocks formed a west-facing U-shaped lagoon. The water here was very shallow, less than thirty feet. The minisub, weighing sixty-five tons and all of fifty-five feet long, was trying, for stealth, to pass for a dead whale. This was believable, Felix knew, because there were two dead whales, real ones, washed up and stranded against the rocks, decomposing.
Felix wore his Draeger rebreather and diving mask, swim fins, and knives. He had his firearms—his MP-5 submachine gun and his backup Beretta pistol and ammo—in a waterproof equipment bag. He also wore a full-body rubberized antiradiation protective suit, colored flat black and with shreds of ragged cloth and plastic for camouflage. This suit included thick gloves and boots, thoroughly sealed to the main part of the outfit. Felix’s Draeger oxygen rebreather—the latest prewar German model enhanced by an American contractor—had a nominal endurance of twelve hours. It would double as his respirator once he reached the land—a compressed air tank, in comparison, would weigh the same but give him only thirty minutes. A regular gas mask might have been most convenient, but it had two big flaws: The filters needed changing now and then, and changing them required a clean environment, and the Rocks were anything but clean. And a gas mask was useless for scuba diving.
The protective suit was hot and sweaty, and would only get more uncomfortable the longer Felix wore it. But he was used to being hot and sweaty. It was one more reason Commander McCollough had chosen him and his new platoon for this task.
On the outside of Felix’s full-body suit was a buoyancy compensator and a weight belt. His knives were worn outside, strapped to his forearm and his thighs so he could reach them. His Draeger was worn underneath so he could breathe through its mouthpiece without risk of toxic contamination. The suit included a soft all-enclosing helmet with a big plastic faceplate. It was under this that Felix wore his dive mask so he could equalize his eyes and nose to the pressure of the sea.
Inside his suit, Felix also wore radiation dosimeters attached to his body.
Felix stuck his head into the mini’s control compartment. The pilot and copilot were ready. Felix shut and dogged the hatch into the central hyperbaric sphere. He stuck his head out of the rear hatch, into the aft transport compartment. Some of his men were there, either manning the Orpheus equipment or resting from a work session out on the Rocks or underwater. Felix nodded to them encouragingly, and gave a quick wave, then dogged the rear hatch. He stood in the lockout sphere, with an enlisted SEAL as his dive buddy. They did a final equipment check on each other’s gear. Felix awkwardly used the intercom to indicate they were ready.
The air pressure in the sphere began to rise. Felix kept swallowing to clear his sinuses. The pressure held steady, at less than two atmospheres—the mini was shallow. When the copilot announced that the lockout sphere was equalized, Felix opened the bottom hatch. It dropped down on its dampers. Beneath him was a pool of dark and dirty water.
Felix gripped his mouthpiece firmly in his teeth. He held his dive mask in place with his left hand, through the soft clear plastic of his protective suit faceplate. He sat on the coaming of the bottom hatch, then slipped into the water.
“Captain,” Werner Haffner reported from the sonar consoles, “the minisub is calling on the acoustic link. Lieutenant Shedler is asking for you.”
A very troubled Ernst Beck got up from his command console and grabbed a microphone from the overhead. He asked Haffner to put the conversation on the sonar speakers. Rudiger von Loringhoven stood in the aisle, smug now, almost gloating about his victory in the latest mental game with Beck.
Damn him. He knew about those orders even before we departed from Norway. But Ernst Beck had a job to do, a duty to follow. And he knew he needed a very clear head to do his job and survive.
The von Scheer was hovering close to the bottom, northeast of a long and narrow undersea rise that was topped at its farthest end by the jutting St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks. The von Scheer hid in the eastern foothills, tucked tight inside a huge L-shaped bend of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge—behind
the ship, farther east toward Africa, sprawled the Guinea Plain, five thousand meters deep or more.
“Go ahead,” Beck said into the mike, keeping his voice as even as possible, forcing down his moral revulsion.
“Sir…” Shedler’s voice came over the speakers, scratchy and distorted. “Nearing the Rocks. At periscope depth. I see human activity.”
Von Loringhoven tried to grab the mike, but Beck stepped away from him. “Clarify,” he said to Shedler.
“People on Rocks.”
“Who?” the diplomat demanded. “What are they doing?”
Beck repeated the questions into the mike.
“Not sure,” Shedler said. “Topography on Rocks all up and down. Much of view blocked, far side of steep slopes, from my current position. Heavy shadowing with sun so low in east. People seen wear protective suits.”
“Military? Enemy?”
“Unknown. Not close enough to see weapons or not, or nationality. Risk of them spotting my periscope head.”
“The Rocks do belong to Brazil,” von Loringhoven said. “A weather station, perhaps?”
“Weather outpost, Lieutenant?”
“Possible. Do appear establishing some technical installation. Could be study radiation on Rocks, effect on environment. I’m guessing.”
“We can’t abort the mission,” Beck told Shedler. Duty, always duty. The source of pride has become instead an inescapable prison.
“Understood, sir,” came back over the sonar speakers. Shedler knew Beck required the targeting data.
Von Loringhoven caught Beck’s attention. “How long do they actually need to have their land station up and running for us to get what we want from Berlin?”