by Joe Buff
“And I was kept in the dark.”
“Now you’re in the bright shining light with the rest of us. And don’t think I’m dragging you along just to assure your skipper won’t abandon us if something goes wrong.”
“You seem to be too good at reading my mind.”
Bauer gave a conciliatory shrug. “We’re both naval officers, you and I, and professionals. Remember, this is all grand strategy, high planning to win the war. You’ll be a hero, Van Gelder. You’ll win medals, you’ll personally help cement the bond between South Africa and Germany.”
Van Gelder grunted. This son of a bitch is using my own devotion to duty and love of country against me. The worst of it is, from a patriotic perspective he’s right.
“Besides,” Bauer said, “Jan ter Horst won’t command Voortrekker forever. He has his eyes on much bigger game, in the Boer regime in Johannesburg. Do a good job on this special mission tomorrow, and you’re one step closer to getting promoted. You do want Voortrekker yourself, don’t you, some day soon?”
Van Gelder nodded grudgingly. Bauer sure knows how to push my buttons.
“Timing is very important, to keep up the psychological pressure on the enemy and on neutrals after the New York and Diego Garcia raids. So don’t shit yourself. Adjust to it fast. The device we’ll use is tiny, less than half a kiloton. Just enough to destroy a hardened land node in the last leg of the SOSUS.”
“All right. You’ve made your point…. Will we face much opposition?”
“No trained troops, just local militia, and a lot of them are aborigine coloreds…. A godforsaken place called Chatham Island. A pushover.”
Twenty-four hours later, on Challenger
As Jeffrey watched in the control room, Commodore Wilson read the latest data assessment relayed to Challenger from the central SOSUS processing center via Ilse’s land-to-sea communications downlink. The live feed from sound-surveillance lines went first to the processing center, for detailed interpretation. Reports from there were radioed to Ilse on Chatham Island. Then she worked an acoustic array that sent the reports on to Challenger, deeply submerged. Ilse’s local sonar-based downlink was needed because no radio waves—not even extremely low-frequency ones—could penetrate thousands of feet of seawater and have any useful bandwidth or baud rate.
Not for the first time, Wilson frowned as he read the report. Jeffrey felt frustrated too. Jeffrey knew that a lot of this local SOSUS infrastructure had been cobbled together hastily since the outbreak of the war—maybe too hastily. Jeffrey ran the different steps of the process through his head, picturing what could go wrong at each stage.
The supercomputers outside Sydney, Australia, manned by U.S. Navy specialists, were busy digesting raw inputs from all the lines of SOSUS hydrophones. Jeffrey knew the inputs from the more distant lines were passed along to Sydney by satellite link, for redundancy in case of equipment failure or attack. Breaks in the undersea feed lines weren’t unknown—sharks sometimes tried to bite right through them, so they had to be buried and armored.
One ground station for this satellite relay network was built at a point where the northernmost hydrophone line’s main fiber-optic cable made landfall, on Chatham Island. The satellite loomed high overhead in geosynchronous orbit, a tenth of the way to the moon—which should be beyond the range of Axis antisatellite rockets and lasers. To try to tune out enemy jamming from off to the sides—based in Axis-held territory away from the ANZA Gap—the antennas that sent the radio beams back and forth through space were tightly focused.
Ilse was secretly using that same satellite link in reverse, to get key information covertly from Sydney. She passed the intelligence—radioed via the satellite—down through the ocean for Wilson’s consumption, using a line of special microphones strung into the deep by Clayton’s SEALs. But for good effective range and proper data reliability, Ilse had to constantly adjust for oceanographic conditions. Temperature and salinity at different depths, currents and tides and wind and waves and background noise, all varied over time. They’d degrade her signal badly if ignored. This was what she’d been trained for in the Aleutians off Alaska.
Jeffrey thought the whole thing sounded great, in theory. He wondered whether in practice it was functioning at all.
“We should have heard something by now,” Wilson stated.
“Concur, sir,” Jeffrey said. “Unless ter Horst is traveling a lot more slowly than we thought.”
“No. Sessions and I went over all the routes he could have taken. You saw our calculations, our time-and-motion estimates.”
“Maybe he wants to wait, so our side lets our guard down.”
“Emphatically negative, Captain. Think about it. The longer he hangs back from the SOSUS gauntlet in the ANZA Gap, the more nuclear subs we could free up from other duty and vector in, and the more Australia and New Zealand can strengthen their minefields and other defenses. The more time ter Horst allows to pass before his next attack, the more our embassies abroad can reclaim the initiative against the diplomatic repercussions of the Diego Garcia catastrophe. As far as ter Horst’s supposed to know, if he gives enough time, we could be here standing in his path.”
“What do you think we should do?”
“Launch your minisub again. I want you to go to the island in person, and report to me over the link.”
“Yes, sir.” Jeffrey gestured to Ensign Harrison to get the mini ready—Harrison had already made two trips to Chatham Island and back, to ferry Ilse and the SEALs and all their gear.
“Conduct a close on-site inspection,” Wilson said. “Make sure the equipment is set up properly, the locals are cooperating, and Lieutenant Reebeck knows her business.”
TWENTY-SIX
Later, on Challenger’s minisub
TO JEFFREY IT was refreshing and pleasantly different, almost a tourist junket, to be going somewhere in the minisub outside a combat zone. It would also be the first time Jeffrey stepped ashore in a foreign country since becoming commanding officer, and he was looking forward to this small but momentous event.
Jeffrey manned the mini’s copilot seat and Harrison, sitting next to him, had the conn. The trip from Challenger’s hiding place to Chatham Island took a while; they shared the driving. Back in the transport compartment, one of Lieutenant Clayton’s logistics-support enlisted SEALs rested having a coffee—he alternated with Harrison as pilot every hour, so they all stayed sharp while cruising submerged to and from the island.
The battery-powered mini’s control compartment, with its low headroom and red lighting and computer icons dancing on display screens, formed an intimate setting, and Jeffrey was feeling expansive. He’d taken a shining to the earnest and eager young Harrison by now. They’d already traded life stories, with the more painful parts left out. But Harrison did say his parents went through an ugly divorce when he was twelve—he’d viewed the navy as a way to afford a good college, and then find order and purpose in life and gain a substitute family. Though they’d come at doing Navy ROTC from different directions, Jeffrey saw something of himself in Harrison.
The conversation paused. Jeffrey’s mind ran to his own folks, and he felt that sudden sinking feeling again: the recurrent gnawing concern for his mom. There’d been no news from Sloan-Kettering, but that was to be expected. Personal e-mail familygrams got very low priority these days.
Jeffrey had hoped that going to sea would clear his mind of such distractions. Usually when a sailor left the land beyond the horizon, and settled into the rhythm of the ship, shore-based cares fell away and he or she saw life with greater ease and clarity. This time, for Jeffrey, it hadn’t helped.
He told himself he was selfish. With all the radioactive fallout in the air worldwide from this terrible war, many thousands of people would be coming down with cancer—most of them years from now—people who would otherwise have gotten to live a full and healthy life. But that viewpoint didn’t help either—Jeffrey still felt very bad about his mother. Scenes from his early childhood
with her, when life was simple and parents seemed perfect and he and his mom were on much better terms, kept flashing through his head. These images and impressions came unbidden and unwelcome, too vivid and unsettling and unreachably, painfully nostalgic, like a video recording running out of control. At times the sense of loss was almost unbearable.
Then there was Jeffrey’s biggest worry of all, everyone’s biggest worry: that the brutal fighting might escalate, that limited tactical nuclear war at sea might spread to all-out atomic devastation on land. Thank God the Axis didn’t have hydrogen bombs, but Hiroshima-sized mushroom clouds over Allied cities would be bad enough. To Jeffrey, since his trip to New York and Washington, the threat felt very personal. No longer were his mom and dad safe in America’s heartland, well away from the coast. Now his mother might still lie in a hospital bed in Manhattan, and his father worked in D.C.—prime ground zeroes for cruise missiles tipped with fission bombs. Since Diego Garcia the risk seemed so much higher. On Challenger no one talked about it. It was as if the entire subject, mass destruction on land, was taboo by a silent consensus; to bring it up would just destroy morale. The best thing, the only thing, that Jeffrey and his crew could do was to do their best to help bring the war to a close….
Harrison, hands firmly on throttle and steering yoke, opened his mouth as if he had something to say, but he hesitated.
“What’s on your mind?” Jeffrey asked, welcoming any change of subject. “Go ahead. No one has personal secrets for long on a submarine.”
Harrison kept his eyes glued to his instruments. “I feel there’s some unfinished business, Captain…. Basically I—I wanted to apologize, for pissing my pants in our action with the Tirpitz.”
“Oh, that.” Jeffrey chuckled, feeling expansive once again. “I can’t tell you how often I’ve seen guys do that in combat. Especially their first time.” He turned to Harrison and gave him a confiding wink. “Don’t tell anybody, but I peed my pants on our last mission, and I probably would’ve twice except the second time I was much too busy to think of it.”
“What happened, sir? If it’s not classified?”
“I had an unexpected meeting with some Kampfschwimmer.”
“I heard those guys are pretty wicked and fierce.”
“They are. Believe me.”
Harrison grew introspective and serious. “But the thing is, sir, plenty of people don’t wet themselves under fire. Right?”
“Have the guys been ribbing you?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s just that it makes me wonder, why do some people panic and some people don’t? We didn’t expect to meet the Tirpitz either, and no one else lost control of their bladder.”
Jeffrey saw that Harrison still blamed himself, and this wasn’t healthy. Jeffrey’s job was to do what he could to give Harrison perspective. That was one part of Jeffrey’s workload he truly enjoyed, leading and counseling juniors on their careers and on life in general. He was just barely old enough to be Harrison’s father, and people like Harrison were the closest thing that Jeffrey had to his own kids. Jeffrey, still unmarried and almost forty, had that worry on his mind as well—he’d begun to think his last chance had vanished when Ilse left him. He feared that he’d stay single the rest of his days and never get to raise a family, even assuming he survived and Armageddon didn’t come. Jeffrey forced his mind back to Harrison’s needs.
“I’ve had this private theory for years, Tom, that everybody panics, and it’s completely random who shows it first. In a good, disciplined unit like ours, that first person’s reaction, his visible reaction, triggers the others to focus on duty, and it helps them force back their fear. It just happened to be you who helped to tighten our unit cohesion. It could’ve been anyone.”
Harrison pondered. “That’s an interesting take on it, sir. The social effects of the group dynamic in battle. A sort of one for all and all for one when the first guy says, ‘I’m scared.’ It makes sense.”
“You know, animals often instinctively piss or crap when they come against that urgent fight-or-flight decision. It ties in with another theory I have, that we all should get in better touch with our inner caveman selves.”
Harrison laughed. “That’s a good one, Captain.”
“Thank you, but I mean it. I read about a study once, I think done by some anthropologists, they were looking at just this question. Why drop a load at such a critical time? Their answer was, that that was precisely the point. You weigh less.”
“Like, if you were a caveman you could run faster, or jump higher, or whatever?”
Jeffrey nodded. “Besides, it was your very first day at sea with us, and we did win the battle. You did great when we met with the Prima Latina, which has to be the craziest docking maneuver I’ve ever pulled. And I’m getting good reports on your attitude and learning curve from my XO.” Challenger had only eleven officers, counting Jeffrey, so every person’s role and progress mattered a great deal.
“Thank you for telling me, Captain.”
The conversation paused again. This time it was Jeffrey who hesitated. “If you don’t mind my asking, how come you’re still an ensign?” Officers were supposed to be at least lieutenant j.g.’s by the time they’d finished nuclear power school and been assigned to a ship. “What did you do, dishonor some high admiral’s comely daughter?”
Even in the red lighting, Jeffrey saw Harrison blush. Jeffrey put it together: Harrison did college in three years, at a pressure-cooker like MIT of all places. Maybe he was still a virgin.
Harrison had to clear his throat. “No, sir. Nothing like that…”
Yup, he’s a virgin.
“I didn’t want to push it, Captain, considering I’m just a tiny little cog and there’s a war, but my detailer said the paperwork for the change in rank got lost, somewhere in the bowels of the bureaucracy in Washington.”
“Well, talk about your bowel movements!…I’m gonna get this business deconstipated right now. I am, after all, commanding officer of USS Challenger, am I not? I’m giving you a battlefield promotion. Thomas Harrison, you are henceforth Lieutenant Junior Grade Harrison.”
Harrison beamed. Jeffrey too was pleased. With the right nurturing, Jeffrey felt sure, Harrison would go far.
Jeffrey was self-aware enough to know his moods were on a seesaw today, up and down and up—exhaustion and overwork did that to him. So did the pins-and-needles anticipation of imminent combat. He resolved that once he sorted things out on the island and got back to Challenger, he’d make sure to get a solid block of uninterrupted sleep. That way I’ll be fresh and alert when the big matchup comes with ter Horst.
And I better make the rounds of the ship before the fateful day. Talk to the men in small gatherings. Visit with the seasoned hands and help them steady the new guys. Bring out the group dynamic, as Harrison called it. Stiffen our unit cohesion in advance, ’cause we’ll need it when the shooting starts.
Jeffrey glanced at the navigation display. He picked up the intercom mike. The enlisted SEAL in the transport compartment responded. “Come forward, please. We’re closing fast on the minefield protecting the fishing piers.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Owenga fishing station, Chatham Island
JEFFREY GINGERLY OPENED the minisub’s top hatch. It rose partway and hit the planks of the pier the mini was hiding under. Jeffrey peeked outside. It was barely dawn. Jeffrey caught his first whiff of natural air in almost a week. What struck him at once were the smells. Dead fish, diesel fuel and lubricants, and tarry creosote—the odors of a working waterfront. The minisub bobbed in the swell, which was noticeable even here on the downwind side of the island.
Jeffrey listened. The swell sloshed. Rope lines creaked. The minisub scraped gently against seaweed and barnacles growing on the pilings of the pier.
Next to the pier, as Jeffrey expected, was an old fishing boat, large but wooden hulled, resting on the bottom mud, derelict. By the red light coming from down in the mini’s lockout chamber, Jeffrey spotte
d a stained and dirty canvas tarpaulin hanging over the side of the hulk, between the rotting fenders that still held the boat against the pier. He motioned for Harrison to follow him.
Harrison held the hatch open as far as he could, and Jeffrey clambered up. Then he helped Harrison. They dogged the hatch—the enlisted SEAL and the mini would wait for them here.
Jeffrey crawled along the cold, wet top deck of the mini. He timed the swells carefully, so he wouldn’t be crushed. At the right moment he worked his way under the tarpaulin, climbed over the side of the fishing boat, and flopped onto its greasy deck in front of the half-collapsed wheelhouse. He moved aside, concealed beneath the canvas sheet, and Harrison followed. They were already filthy.
Jeffrey waited, listening carefully again. There was nothing but the wind and waves, and the normal clanking and swishing sounds of dormant, tied-up vessels. Jeffrey glanced from under the tarpaulin. Scattered lights along the shore showed him it was very misty. Jeffrey and Harrison climbed from the derelict boat to the pier. They walked onto the land as casually as they could. More mist blew by a lamppost. Gravel crunched beneath their feet.
“Who goes there?” someone called. The accent fell between Australian and British.
“Serenity,” Jeffrey said. “Serenity One.” “Serenity” was the code name Clayton had established for the submarine on which the SEALs had come. “One” was navy talk for the captain himself.
A figure stepped from behind a parked vehicle. He advanced and offered his hand.
“Welcome to Chatham Island!” Constable Joshua Henga smiled. “Precisely halfway between the South Pole and the equator, right on the international date line. The first populated land to greet every new calendar day…That’s one of our main claims to fame, Captain. We like to say we’re quite easy to find on a map, though usually no one bothers looking.”
Given word from SEAL lieutenant Clayton, already on the island, Henga had been expecting Jeffrey, including Jeffrey’s sneaky approach to the land. Henga started up his ancient Land Rover truck and took a narrow road west. Jeffrey sat in the passenger seat, and Harrison sat behind Jeffrey—Jeffrey brought Harrison along as his aide, and also just for fun. They’d both removed their dirty coveralls and thrown them in back. Underneath they wore low-key civilian clothes.