by Joe Buff
“Not so loud,” Beck said. “He’s right next door.”
“In what should be my cabin, with him sharing it as our guest.”
“He said privacy was needed, for security.”
“I believe it. The messengers say he’s always huddled over papers and maps and documents, and keeps scribbling on a thick notepad. Each time they bring a new meal tray, he turns everything upside down before asking them in. The previous meal, the leftovers, sit shoved in a corner. Besides his computer, he just has the reading light on, day and night. Never uses the overhead fluorescents, and the men swear his bed looks completely unslept in.”
Beck nodded. “He seems to take what’s going on very seriously.” He pointed at the door into the head, the bathroom he shared with von Loringhoven. “I’ve heard him take a shower a couple of times. And I know he pisses and shits like any mortal.” Beck grinned lopsidedly. “You can tell the men I seriously doubt he’s a vampire.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Anyway, let’s see if our baron wants to join us in the Zentrale for the latest excitement.”
The von Scheer was at battle stations, running deep. Beck and Stissinger sat at the command console. Von Loringhoven stood, wedged in behind them, so he could look between their shoulders at their status plots. Way over their heads, the surface Gulf Stream current ran northeast, back the way they’d come. The air and water temperatures were well above freezing here; there was rain and wind and heavy seas, but no ice.
“Sonar,” Beck ordered, “put passive broadband on speakers, volume low.”
Werner Haffner acknowledged from his console, past Stissinger’s seat on Beck’s right. Now Beck heard the sounds of biologics — lobster and herring that had so far survived the heavy oil spills of war — and the gentle murmur of bottom currents flowing along rough terrain. He also heard a steady eerie mechanical pulsating throb: the two submerged Russian submarines that concealed von Scheer from above.
Beck kept one eye on the tactical plot and the other on the gravimeter. His orders told him exactly which route to take. Ordinarily Beck would not have liked such restriction. But now, with the need to move in formation with the pair of Russian Sierra IIs — yet remain undetected himself — he understood the requirement for things to be organized in advance.
“This is good,” Beck told Stissinger. He knew von Loringhoven would be in the conversation too, simply by his physical proximity. “This is exactly what I would have done.”
“Jawohl,” Stissinger said respectfully.
“Explain,” von Loringhoven said.
Beck glanced at the diplomat for a moment, then pointed at the gravimeter display. “Our two friendly Ivans are taking the deepest part of the gap, right between the northern tip of Scotland and the Faroe Islands. The water here goes down a thousand meters plus, in most places. This valley between the European continental shelf, here, and the Faroes Rise, here, is ideal for us to hide in by hugging the bottom.”
“I see that,” von Loringhoven said. He gave Beck a look as if to say, Don’t you think I can read a nautical chart?
Beck decided to ignore his irritating attitude. Otherwise, this could be an extremely long cruise. “It’s all a very neat bluff. This route is shortest for the Russians to get from their home port to the Atlantic, so it’s natural they’d come this way, just as if they’ve nothing to hide. Plus, after we pass Scotland we go right down the west coast of Ireland, which is the last thing the Allies would expect the von Scheer to do. They’re much more likely to be looking for us way up near Greenland or Iceland.”
The two Russian submarines pinged on their sonars again. They were continuing to signal their presence as neutrals — to invite inspection by Allied antisubmarine forces and avoid accidental attack.
“We’re about to see how well this works,” von Loringhoven stated. “We don’t know how thoroughly the Brits will probe beneath the two 945A boats.” His tone was distant, almost sarcastic.
Is he really such an arrogant bastard, Beck asked himself, or is he just scared and won’t admit it? Either way, doesn’t he have the common sense to behave better in my control room, in front of my crew?
The Russians slowed to seven knots. Beck ordered the pilot to slow the von Scheer, to keep station. Then he ordered that one of his ship’s two nuclear reactors be shut down to reduce the von Scheer’s noise signature. In an emergency, it would take several minutes to bring the reactor fully back on-line. This would sacrifice a lot of the ship’s propulsion power when it might be needed most. But the von Scheer was truly boxed in — by dry land to north and south, and by minefields and enemy forces in other directions. Absolute stealth, not escape speed, counts the most. Beck ordered that the air-circulation fans, and other nonvital equipment, also be turned off. To further save amperage demand — and remind everyone to make as little noise as possible — lighting shipwide was cut to dim red.
The air in the control room quickly grew stale and humid and warm — from the people and from electronic gear. The repeated bass and high-pitched sonar tones from the Russians filled the control-room speakers every minute or so. It made Beck feel as if he were one of several vessels on the surface in thick fog, feeling their way half-blind in the days before radar.
Beck ordered Stissinger to launch two remote-controlled undersea probes through two of the von Scheer’s eight oversized torpedo tubes. These battery-powered, reusable probes would check out the bottom rocks and muck ahead for antisubmarine detectors that could be problems for the von Scheer.
Stissinger whispered with his weapons technicians and relayed orders to the torpedo room. Rapidly, the unmanned undersea vehicle probes were launched, attached to fiber-optic tethers; Beck windowed their sensor readouts on his console.
“Isn’t that risky?” von Loringhoven said.
“To not use the probes and trust to blind luck is riskier,” Beck mumbled. “And please keep your voice down.”
The ship’s copilot took control of one probe to gain cues to help the pilot steer Beck’s vessel. One of Stissinger’s senior-chief weapon technicians controlled the other probe. The darkened Zentrale grew hushed.
“Einzvo,” Haffner called out in a forced whisper. “New passive sonar contacts. Airborne contacts, approaching from east, assess as Royal Navy helicopters possibly based in the Orkneys or Shetland Islands.”
“Captain,” Stissinger murmured, “the Brits have sent their inspection team to take a good look at the Russians.”
Beck nodded. In a few minutes, he could barely hear the beating of rotor blades and the whine of engines coming straight down through the sonar layer, playing over the speakers.
“Aircraft are hovering near the Russians,” Stissinger said.
“Sounds of dipping sonars,” Haffner reported softly. The Royal Navy was using high-frequency pings, above the range of human hearing — for better image resolution of returns off the Russian hulls. “New surface contacts, weak, closing. Warship tonals.”
“Traces of blue-green laser light also now,” Stissinger said. “Assess helicopters making close inspection with line-scan cameras… And Royal Navy frigates, distant, approaching.”
“Fine,” von Loringhoven said. “They’ll see two Russian submarines.” The Zentrale crew became even more hushed.
“Our own acoustic masking routines continue to function nominally,” Stissinger said. “Line-scan cameras are too shallow to pick us up down here in the bottom terrain.”
“Very well, Einzvo.” Beck tried to sound calm, but he couldn’t allow himself to relax. He saw several crewmen hunch closer over their consoles, as if they were literally ducking to hide from the enemy undersea cameras way overhead.
Beck understood better than any of them how savagely fast this delicate ballet of deception could all come unglued.
“Captain,” the copilot said.
The urgent call hit Beck like an electrical shock. “What is it?” he snapped in an undertone. “Give me a proper report.”
“New cont
act on off-board probe.”
“Concur,” Haffner said. “New passive sonar contact by one of our unmanned undersea vehicles.” The vehicles had hydrophones and other mission sensors. “Strong contact. Range is short.”
“Classify it,” Stissinger ordered.
“Nuclear submarine. On the bottom. Same depth as us!”
“Quiet,” Beck snapped. He looked at Stissinger. “A nuclear sub at a thousand-plus meters? Identify it. Seawolf class? Dreadnought? Either way we’ve got big trouble.”
“New contact signal strength increasing,” Haffner said through clenched teeth. “Contact is approaching our location.”
“Copilot,” Stissinger ordered, “pass control of the probe to me.”
“Jawohl.” The copilot was a junior officer. His voice now sounded very tight.
Stissinger gripped the joystick on his console. Through the fiber-optic guidance wire, he directed the probe in a wide arc around to the side of the hostile deep-running nuclear sub. Beck saw Stissinger’s hand was white knuckled on the control stick. He knew his XO was aiming for a better acoustic profile of the hostile contact.
Using folds in the terrain and rubble from ancient undersea earthquakes, Stissinger snuck the probe nearer and nearer the inbound submarine. Then his senior chief reported that the other probe’s cameras had spotted a line of acoustic-and magnetic-anomaly sensors freshly emplaced on the bottom just ahead.
The tension in the control room rose sharply.
Beck told himself there was no reason to think the von Scheer had been spotted, yet. Maybe this was just routine Allied procedure to guard the gap and also keep an eye on Russian submarine movements.
Don’t kid yourself. They know the von Scheer is on the prowl, somewhere.
“Good tonals now,” Haffner said in an almost yell. “Inbound contact is definitely nuclear-powered, definitely American.”
Stissinger turned to Beck. “Probe’s magnetic-anomaly sensors confirm unidentified vessel is steel-hulled, not ceramic, sir.”
“A Seawolf,” von Loringhoven said. “But she’s practically at her crush depth. Or below it. Something doesn’t make sense.”
Beck shot him a disapproving look. “Quiet in the Zentrale.” Baron or not, this guest had to learn to keep his mouth shut.
“Better tonals now,” Haffner hissed.
“It’s NR-One,” Stissinger said disbelievingly. The one-ofa-kind NR-1 had been a pet project of Admiral Hyman Rickover years ago.
“What’s NR-One doing here?” von Loringhoven said.
“I said be quiet,” Beck snapped. “We’ve got difficulties, Einzvo. That little sub out there may be unarmed, but she’s optimized for deep-sea surveillance and recon.”
“Concur, Captain.” Stissinger sounded extremely worried. The aged NR-1, with her eight-man crew and powerful sensors, could find the von Scheer and unmask her… and then, by acoustic comms or radio buoy, call in overwhelming firepower.
In a pinch, those two Russians will flee for their lives, and we’ll be naked down here, and damned to destruction.
“Do something,” von Loringhoven said. He’d read Beck’s mind, and now was almost pleading. A coward, under the facade?
Beck stared hard at the gravimeter and a nautical chart. This bluff of hiding under Russian subs was about to unravel completely. NR-1 moved closer and closer. The stale air in the Zentrale grew stifling, suffocating. Crewmen squirmed in their seats; sweat-soaked backsides squeaked on vinyl.
“Arm nuclear torpedoes?” Stissinger prompted.
Beck thought fast. This is my first real test as captain. And an awful test indeed. “Negative. Make no mechanical transients…. Pilot, bring the boat up to one hundred meters.” The two Russians were moving slowly, above the layer, at fifty meters. “Rise on autohover, get us up there quickly. Cut the wires, jettison both probes.”
Beck watched as von Scheer’s depth decreased. On the gravimeter display, the local terrain receded beneath the ship.
“What are you doing?” von Loringhoven demanded.
“Upping the ante,” Beck said. “I told you to be quiet.”
The diplomat bit down whatever he was going to say next.
“Einzvo. Sonar. We’re about the same size and shape as a U.S. Navy strategic-missile sub, correct?”
“An American boomer?” Stissinger asked. “Er, yes, Captain.”
“Use our active wide-aperture arrays and the bow sphere. Take the sound profiles we have of Allied submarines. On our way up, as we pass through two hundred fifty meters, start making us sound like a barely audible newer Ohio-class vessel.”
“Understood,” Haffner said. “Working on it, sir.” He and his sonarmen got very busy.
“Captain?” Stissinger said.
“We know they’ll know we’re here. There’s only one way we stand a chance to get through now unmolested…. We aren’t that far from Holy Loch.”
“The reactivated Allied submarine base?”
Beck nodded. “The strategic-missile subs are controlled by different authorities from their tactical antisubmarine forces. That’s what I’m counting on, delay and confusion while they sort things out. If the Royal Navy and NR-1 think we’re a U.S. boomer, turning the tables and trailing a pair of Russian fast-attacks to grab some intell, they’ll leave us alone. They’ll be extra careful to not draw attention to us, especially if they think we’re exploiting Ivan to hide from the Germans.”
Stissinger exhaled unsteadily. “Remind me to never play poker with you, Captain.”
Crewmen were clearly aghast at the sleight of hand Beck was proposing to pull off. If it worked, they’d soon be free in the NorthAtlantic and could insert into the superbly concealing bottom terrain of the vast Mid-Atlantic Ridge. But still, if those jettisoned Axis probes are found here by NR-1 …
“What if your ploy doesn’t work?” von Loringhoven said.
“If the einzvo reports enemy weapons in the water, we return fire and take as many of them with us as we can.”
“You didn’t arm nuclear warheads.”
“That’s correct.” As von Loringhoven turned livid, Beck held up a forceful hand. “There is no way, Baron, that I’m going to use atomic bombs so close to civilian population centers, enemy or not.”
CHAPTER 11
Felix Estabo woke that morning in his coffin-sized sleeping rack aboard the USS Ohio. Felix had an uncannily accurate internal body clock — he didn’t have to glance at his watch to tell that it was 0450 local time. Every night, worldwide, no matter the jet lag and season, he decided exactly when to get up — and next morning he would, within a minute or so.
For a few seconds, without stirring, Felix listened to the sounds of the ship, the gentle ventilation and subdued electrical hum. He knew the Ohio was running deep, heading northwest, away from South America and into the Caribbean Sea. As always on rising, even before pulling off his blanket and yanking open the privacy curtain of his rack, Felix said a brief prayer.
Today, barely forty-eight hours after rejoining Ohio, Felix was especially grateful to be alive. He was sad that his lieutenant had been killed back there in the rain forest of Brazil. He was glad his man with the chest wound had come through surgery okay. The trickiest part had been moving the injured SEAL from the fisherman’s motorboat — as it began to sink once and for all off the mouth of the Araguari — down into the minisub, submerged at thirty feet for stealth. But a one-man pressure-proof transfer capsule was carried in the mini for just that purpose. Held safely inside at a steady one atmosphere, warm and dry, already wounded men were spared the added physiological strains of diver compression and decompression, and of immersion in the sea that might be icy cold or might contain sharks. A navy corpsman was part of the minisub’s crew on combat missions, and the Ohio — unlike American nuclear subs in peacetime — carried a medical doctor who specialized in trauma surgery.
The rest of Felix’s team weren’t seriously injured, though shrapnel had to be pulled out of their bodies under general a
nesthesia, and many, many stitches were required. Ironically, Felix himself was the only man to escape with nothing but minor abrasions from bushes and vines.
Then Felix asked God to protect the Ohio and everyone on her. No expert in submarine combat, he did know that the surrounding waters might hold naval mines — planted by infiltrating Axis U-boats or dropped from disguised, pseudoneutral merchant ships. The Ohio might even be ambushed by a U-boat at any time. Felix pictured the nightmarish blast and influx of crushing water if the ship hit a mine or was hit by an inbound torpedo. The absolute worst would be getting sunk by friendly fire, in the tragic and wasteful confusion inevitable during a shooting war.
Felix pushed these morbid thoughts from his mind. He knew that the Ohio, as a former strategic-missile sub, was slow by modern standards but was also exceedingly quiet, and her refitted sonars were state-of-the-art. Her officers and men — it was the Blue Crew for this rotation — inspired total confidence.
The ending of his prayer was for the safety and well-being of his family.
Felix got out of bed and stood up straight; because of his seniority, he had the middle rack in a tier of three — the easiest to enter and exit. He was careful to not make noise, since people around him still slept. But the advantage of the Ohio, as an ex-boomer, was her roominess. She carried a powerful complement of SEALs: sixty-six men, including command and planning staff, plus communications and logistics personnel. Each SEAL had his own rack in a dedicated bunk area, with separate climate control from the rest of the ship. The air at the moment was kept warm and humid; Felix was lucky not to have to risk a chest cold or worse coming back from the jungle to the dry and freezing air of a typical fast-attack sub.
He was still very stiff and sore from his physical exertions on the bloody but successful mission, and his whole body ached, as if he’d run a competitive ultramarathon — which, indeed, he had. His chest was black-and-blue from the impact of enemy bullets against his flak vest. Even after almost ten hours of uninterrupted sleep, he felt weary and drained. But he knew from experience that strong hot coffee and a nice big breakfast were just the thing to restore his vigor and spirit.