by Joe Buff
The wind is from the east. That stuff is coming right at us.
Felix barely had time to form these thoughts when the airborne shock waves hit. They pounded the hull of the burned-out cargo ship, in a repetitive hammering action that was a result of the mushroom clouds being different distances away. The hulk rocked back and forth. The cracked porthole bulged inward. Rust and ash and blistered paint were shaken loose and drifted in the air like an infernal blizzard; it was harder to see inside the compartment where he and his men had taken shelter. Their suits were sprinkled and dusted by the clinging unholy black snow. Felix’s well-trained eardrums felt the air pressure constantly change; his suit faceplate was squashed or made to swell as the overpressures and following partial vacuums plucked at his lungs. As each shock front passed over the Rocks, the compounded noise of all the explosions increased. The noise made talking impossible.
The noise makes thinking impossible.
Then Felix saw the thing he dreaded most. The thing his protective suit could offer no protection from. The thing from which the hulk’s steel plates gave no real shelter at all.
In the distance, a long stretch of the horizon seemed oddly higher than before. Felix watched in morbid fascination as this strange phenomenon drew near.
It was the expanding tsunami, not a true seismic tidal wave but a huge wall of water kicked up by the force of the sixteen atomic blasts.
He yelled for his men to hold on. But there was little to hold on to besides one another.
Felix watched as the monster wave moved relentlessly closer.
When it came into shallower water near the Rocks, just as he expected, the wave began to pile up upon itself. It started to form an almost vertical churning, roiling wall. The wall climbed higher and higher, racing inshore.
Now Felix heard the noise of it, even above the continuing noise of the fireballs in the distance. The new noise was a terrible, deep-pitched roar.
He pulled himself from the porthole and, together with his men, cowered on the opposite side of the compartment. The noise became louder and louder. The wall of water was so close and so high, it blocked the sun from outside. The compartment grew totally dark.
The tsunami engulfed the hulk with a crash that made Felix’s skeleton shake inside his body. The porthole was smashed and a solid column of water jetted in.
The hulk began to list, to lean over from the force of the wave.
“We’re capsizing!” one of the SEAL chiefs shouted.
As water streamed in through every hatchway, down every ladder, between every crack in broken welds, the hulk leaned over more and more. There was a new sound now, of screaming metal, as weakened steel was further strained by the movement of the ship falling onto its side.
Felix and his team scrambled for their lives as the cargo ship tilted and seawater sloshed. In slow motion the deck became a bulkhead, and a bulkhead turned into the deck.
The hulk settled down with a teeth-jarring crash and sagged from its own redistributed weight. Felix knew the superstructure would collapse or break loose entirely, crushing him and his men under hundreds of tons of debris.
But at last the shaking and tumbling died down. The screaming of steel subsided into scattered moans and bangs. The roaring of the tidal wave receded into the distance.
Everything dripped. Sunlight came into the compartment again, through what was now acting as the overhead, the ceiling: the porthole Felix had looked out before. Yet another sound began, a whistling screech—wind was blowing through the mangled superstructure, a different sort of wind than before, as air was pulled in and upward toward ground zero, toward the cluster of ever-rising voracious mushroom clouds. Electric blue flashes flickered in the otherwise clear sky, followed by distant rumbles: the cooling moisture-laden mushroom clouds, with their heavy burden of static charges, were beginning to act like man-made thunderheads.
Felix was amazed that any of his men had survived the ordeal. The two men with broken bones were in great pain, and two others had suffered new fractures, including one of the chiefs. It made Felix feel guilty to know that others’ bodies had cushioned his own as they’d all gone rolling and falling.
But he and his people were, first and foremost, U.S. Navy SEALs.
“You, you, and you,” Felix said to the men who seemed in best physical and mental shape. “We have to find a way out of here, make contact with the minisub somehow, and then come back for the others…. Chief, stay put and take care of the wounded. You three with me, let’s go. You see any Germans, remember. Head shots only.”
Beck had expected the worst, but nothing could have prepared him and his men for the reality of what happened.
Sixteen nuclear torpedoes had gone off at once, at his command, in an arc like a scythe several miles across. His mind and body were still reeling.
He squinted and shook his head to try to get his vision to focus. The vibrations through the deck were so wild, the pitching of the ship so violent, Beck’s knees kept buckling as he tried to stand. His organs felt as if they were flying apart inside his body. Many of his crew were in obvious pain from injuries.
But time was of the essence now.
Speech was out of the question as the noise of the tortured ocean continued to echo from all around, barely diminished by the thickness of the von Scheer’s immensely strong hull.
Beck struggled to the pilot’s station. He made his intentions known by hand signals, by pointing at the pilot’s controls.
Slow to ahead one-third, make engine revs for three knots. Hug the bottom, conceal the ship in terrain as much as you can. Right five degrees rudder, gently, steer due south.
All sonars were rendered useless by the endless reverb of nuclear bubble clouds. Jeffrey’s only outside data came from the gravimeter—which fortunately still worked.
Jeffrey realized his ship continued making flank speed, heading east.
Good. Everything still works, then. We can’t have serious damage.
But Jeffrey felt so addle-brained from all the sensory overload, he was having trouble thinking clearly much beyond that.
Then he realized that his ship was charging straight into the center of the watery maelstrom kicked up by the nuclear blasts. Her thick hull and shielded condenser pipes would stop the radiation out there, and clean seawater farther on would quickly wash external surfaces clean—but the maelstrom beckoned.
Meltzer, at the helm, seemed stuporous from a near concussion. COB kept blinking and shaking his head, in not much better shape. Bell appeared to be unhurt, but his console had gone dark. Jeffrey badly needed data, and needed to make some major judgment calls, but his thoughts moved like molasses, too much happening everywhere at once.
“Sonar!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. The noise from all around beyond the hull was impossibly loud.
Milgrom turned. Her face was pale, but her eyes were alert, and she showed no visible signs of serious injury. “Captain?”
“How many warheads went off?”
“I think all sixteen of theirs!”
Jeffrey was already getting hoarse from shouting, and the cacophony from outside refused to diminish. He mouthed each word carefully. “I need to know if any torpedoes are still running!”
If only one had survived, and it found Challenger, they were dead.
Milgrom turned to her console.
Jeffrey yelled, “Meltzer! COB!” but it did no good.
Milgrom pinged on the bow sphere, over and over, to search for a torpedo somewhere in the trillions of bubbles swarming everywhere. Jeffrey knew the lingering heat of all those blasts made acoustic propagation paths impossible to decipher. This pinging might do more harm than good. It might just draw a live torpedo toward them.
Then Challenger entered the worst part of the wall of solid turbulence. She heaved and bucked and plunged in different directions. Jeffrey’s stomach rose to his throat, or he was pressed down on his backside, with no letup. The ship’s autopilot kicked in, since the computer sensed
the lack of inputs from the helmsman. But there was just so much even the autopilot could do. Jeffrey was glad that Challenger had stayed shallow—a collision with bottom terrain would have been the end of everything.
Eventually Challenger came out the other side of the major turbulence. Meltzer and COB began to revive. Jeffrey shouted for them to slow to ahead one-third, in order to make a less noisy target, and maybe be able to pick up torpedo-engine sounds. But the passive sonars were useless in such a high acoustic sea state: The continuing noise, its primary source behind the ship now, drowned out any meaningful signal as it echoed and reverberated from all directions—off the surface waves and bottom terrain, and off the ocean’s ever-present tiny biologics and organic waste that drifted everywhere.
Then a message from Engineering appeared on Jeffrey’s screen, like an e-mail through the ship’s fiber-optic LAN. He was glad to see the LAN was functioning, but he wasn’t happy with what the message said. Lieutenant Willey strongly recommended avoiding any higher speeds until his men were able to check the propulsion-plant systems from top to bottom. Something might be on the verge of catastrophic failure, and a thorough safety inspection was vital. Jeffrey, disappointed but knowing exactly how valid Willey’s caution was, typed him an acknowledgment. For now, Jeffrey’s ship was almost immobilized.
He ordered Milgrom to ping again on the bow sphere, to search for von Scheer.
Nothing.
He told Milgrom to ping again. He waited for a good target echo.
Nothing.
Jeffrey turned to Bell. “I think you were right!” he shouted.
Bell seemed dazed. His face was ashen. “Sir?”
“He didn’t want to sink us! He knew he couldn’t win a stand-up fight if we traded blow for blow!”
“Yes, Captain!”
“He cared more about getting away! He raised that solid wall of atomic fireballs to block von Scheer from our view! Then he took off, east! Using twin reactors and polymer squirts and God only knows what else! He regroups with all the other Axis submarines massing near Africa, and takes another shot at the convoy from there!”
Bell nodded dumbly.
Jeffrey touched Bell on the shoulder to make sure the man was all right. He knew there’d be injured throughout the ship. Mess-management specialists, trained as the ship’s paramedics, began to appear, making their rounds with firstaid kits.
Bell tapped Jeffrey’s hand and nodded more briskly, less disoriented now. “We have to go after him, sir! Abandon the SEALs and the minisub if we must!”
Jeffrey hated that last part, but he had to agree. “Helm, make your course zero nine zero!” Due east.
Jeffrey picked up a mike for Engineering—he wanted Willey to hear the urgency in his voice.
“Give me flank speed now! Forget caution, the von Scheer is getting away!”
CHAPTER 24
I lse Reebeck watched at her post in Admiral Hodgkiss’s war room as the first stage of the Battle of the South Atlantic began. There was a frenzy of constant activity at desks and consoles all around, people yelling across the room, messengers running, senior officers talking into two or even three phone handsets at once. Reports came in from out on the ocean. Command and logistic decisions were made under terrible pressure. Hasty orders went out from Norfolk to major fleet units at sea. The shouting of SEAL Lieutenant Estabo over the radio, before he got cut off on the Rocks, hung in the air of the war room like a storm cloud. The news of contact on von Scheer, and then the huge burst of undersea atomic detonations, was electrifying and terrifying. In the worst scenario possible, escalation all the way to global thermonuclear exchange, the Norfolk naval complex would be high on Russia’s target list; Ilse pitied civilians in any large city—in this war there was no such thing as being safe far behind the front lines.
Ilse was way too busy to be able to worry much more than that. Oceanographic data poured in to her desk from sensor platforms in space or in the air, and from other platforms on or under the water. All this information she helped to harness and massage, to render most meaningful other data cascading in to Norfolk, data relayed by satellite from ships and planes and helicopters: data from hundreds of active and passive sonobuoys.
Ilse was so intent on her work, she was startled to notice that Commodore Wilson was standing next to her. He nodded curtly, as was his manner, then glanced back and forth between her console displays and the huge TV screens on the wall. Ilse suspected the waiting must be difficult even for him, and he’d come to her for a measure of companionship.
On the surface-warfare plot, Ilse saw that the destroyers and frigates were tearing toward their new positions, well out ahead of the carriers. The carriers and cruisers themselves raced at flank speed to form up for the dash through the Narrows, and then for their suppression of Axis installations posing seaward threats from looming North Africa. The main air-warfare situation plot showed modified U.S. Air Force long-endurance midair refueling tankers were staging from bases in Venezuela to help keep carrier planes in the air far longer than the navy could on its own, and let them stay much farther forward deployed than the Axis would ever expect. B-52s with huge lift capacity and almost endless on-station time were also helping the navy—by dropping sonobuoys, not just air-to-ground missiles and smart bombs. There’d been very few air-to-air combat skirmishes yet with enemy fighters, but Ilse knew the modern Luftwaffe would be coming up in strength when it best suited them.
Just then the house phone on her console rang. The caller was Hodgkiss’s senior aide, who wanted Wilson. Ilse gave the phone to the commodore. He listened, then said, “We’ll be right there.”
Wilson gave her back the phone handset. “The admiral wants us in his private conference room. Now.”
Ilse quickly made sure the people on either side of her had things under control and could fill in while she was gone. They were staffers from the navy’s Meteorology and Oceanography Command—they knew their stuff.
Ilse followed mutely a step behind Wilson. They left the big war room, took a corridor, then cleared a security checkpoint and entered a windowless room, with a mahogany table and half a dozen nice chairs. Hodgkiss and his aide came into the room a moment later. Hodgkiss nodded to Ilse and then addressed Wilson. “They said it’s an emergency. Beyond that I know as much as you do.”
The director of naval intelligence entered. He was a vice admiral—a three-star. He and Hodgkiss exchanged looks of concern, and Ilse wondered what was going on. The DNI said hello to her; they’d met several times before.
A minute later, two new people walked in. Ilse was surprised and impressed. She’d met them both back in January at a formal debriefing after her first two missions on Challenger.
“Admiral,” a tall and lanky woman said to Hodgkiss.
“General,” Hodgkiss responded. They shook hands as Ilse watched. The woman was a retired U.S. Air Force general, now the national security adviser to the president. She had bags under her eyes, but seemed alert, if severe. She was elegantly dressed, and her eyes were hard and piercing. Her chin was chiseled and naturally jutting. Her lips were pursed in a permanent frown.
“Admiral,” a short and rotund balding man said. He also looked rather tired, but very focused.
“Director.” The man was the director of central intelligence—the DCI, the head of the CIA. Ilse knew he had a civilian background, in academia and high-power Washington think tanks. He wore a dark gray business suit, which seemed out of place amid the other people’s uniforms. But the national security adviser seemed not the least bit out of place; she carried herself as if she still bore four general’s stars on each shoulder.
Ilse noticed the director’s attaché case was handcuffed to his wrist.
Hodgkiss noticed too. “This must be important if you came down here as the bagman, sir.”
“Let’s sit,” the national security adviser suggested. Hodgkiss’s aide left the room, locking the door shut behind him. Everyone else sat down without formalities; these sen
ior people had bonded closely since the start of the war. Any politics or rivalry, Ilse noticed, was either nonexistent during the present national crisis or—as was more likely—it was suppressed to a level so subtle that it didn’t show to someone as junior as her. She began to wonder why she’d even been invited.
The national security adviser seemed to read her mind. “I wanted you here as a stand-in for Captain Fuller.”
“Yes, ma’am.” That again.
“So what’s going on?” Hodgkiss said. His tone put it somewhere between a question and an order.
The national security adviser sighed. She turned to the DCI. “Harry, you do the talking.” The retired general herself was known as a woman of few words, at least when not ensconced in high-level meetings with the president—or while playing with her grandchildren.
The DCI cleared his throat. “The president told us to fly here instead of teleconferencing because he’s very worried about enemy signals intelligence, and possible agents or moles in the White House or Pentagon. That brazen attack in the Capital has everyone stirred up about security.”
“Which I’m sure was part of the Axis intent,” Hodgkiss said rather sourly. “Gets us wasting time on mole hunts. Makes us scared to even use the phone.”
“Yup. And with good reason.” The DCI unlocked and opened his briefcase. “Most of you know that lately we’ve been increasingly concerned about Axis activity in South America.”
Hodgkiss and the others nodded, but this was new to Ilse.
“Pieces of the puzzle seem to be falling together,” the DCI went on, “and the picture looks ugly.”
“Brazil and Argentina,” Hodgkiss stated.
“The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency have been working together on this one. That’s giving us a good set of electronic reconnaissance assets and human intell sources too. In plainer language, satellites in space and spies and informers on the ground. We learned the hard way, ten or twelve years back, that we can’t get by with one and not the other.”