Crush Depth

Ilse nodded reluctantly as everything sank in. “This is because of us, isn’t it, Jeffrey?”

“Yes. The retaliation. The escalation. Now it comes, the Axis revenge. Because of what we did.”

Jeffrey silently walked to the very edge of the observation deck, peering through the grilled-in railing for a better view. Ilse followed, not wanting to be alone. The wind battered at them and chilled their faces numb. Jeffrey and Ilse waited to die. Sirens continued to moan like tortured souls.

“They’ll use a big one, won’t they?” Ilse said.

“Twenty kilotons, at least. Up here I doubt we’ll feel much.”

“Except guilt,” Ilse said.

“Yes,” Jeffrey said. “Except guilt. This is happening because of us.”

Ilse hesitated. “The train problems, that computer attack, this was all part of their plan?”

“Yes. A distraction, I think, and to strand more military people in New York, to add to the high-value body count….” The U-boat must have snuck through under that nor’easter, Jeffrey thought, coordinated timing with the info warfare attack.

“Do you — do you think they know we’re here? Is it all really that personal?”

Jeffrey sighed. “There’s no way we’ll ever know. It’s possible…. It doesn’t matter.”

On the horizon, in the Atlantic, Jeffrey could see flashes and streaks of light. He knew this would be the outer defenses, ships and naval aircraft, trying to knock down the inbound missiles. But nothing the Allies had could intercept Mach 8 ground-hugging cruise missiles.

Damn it, we should have been at sea on Challenger. We might have made a difference, stopped this U-boat from launching, by working defense from under the storm. But Challenger’s laid up in dry dock, because of battle damage suffered on my watch.

Ilse saw red-orange bursts pepper the dark sky low in the distance, out over the Atlantic. The bursts were frighteningly hard and sudden, military high-explosive blast and fragmentation warheads. Their eerie silence, because the sound needed many seconds to reach her, only heightened her feeling of dread. She tried to see the incoming Axis cruise missiles, but no one knew better than Ilse how stealthy they were, how hard to stop.

A long series of harsh, sharp flashes ranged from right to left, low out over the ocean, then more bursts ran from left to right, seeking targets. There was pulsing glare beyond the horizon, in three different places, then endless salvoes of defensive missiles thrust into the sky from surface ships. Each missile — dozens and dozens of them — rode a brilliant moving point of hot yellow light.

As Ilse watched and waited for the inevitable, more streaks of flame took to the air, this time land-based defensive missiles launched from Sandy Hook, at the outer roadstead of New York Harbor. Another salvo of missiles rose from a ship at sea. Continuous boiling flame marked the launch point, strobing flashes and smoke trails marking each launch. The hard, sharp detonations on the horizon continued. Noise of the explosions began to reach Ilse, a deep rumbling counterpoint to the crying of the wind. The enemy Mach 8 missiles must be drawing close by now.

Heavy antiaircraft guns began to fire from Staten Island and the Meadowlands and Brooklyn, red searing gases belching from their muzzles, their reports unforgiving thuds that pounded Ilse’s gut. The shells exploded in midair, more hard and sudden bangs and flashes. More heavy-caliber guns opened fire. Their muzzle discharges stabbed and slashed at the sky. Each shot, then each shell’s detonation, lit the scene like infernal flashbulbs. Ilse saw the whole sky fill with fluffy balls of smoke from the flak. Now she smelled the stinking, acrid fumes, brought by the wind. Her eardrums started to ache from the constant punishment.

Antiaircraft missiles launched from Newark and Kennedy airports, and these streaked into the sky. One malfunctioned immediately and crashed on Staten Island. It started a huge fire there, whipped by the unceasing wind. The fire was in an area of residential housing. It spread faster than a man could run.

Still Ilse didn’t see the Axis cruise missiles themselves. Smaller automatic weapons opened up, cannon and heavy machine guns ringing the inner harbor. Their muzzles flickered steadily. Their tracers all spewed skyward, red and green, weaving back and forth, adding to the wall of steel and gauntlet of blast that tried to save New York. But it was all for show, Ilse knew, an act of desperation, hoping against hope for a lucky hit.

Did the people working those guns and launchers know what was really in store? How did families cowering in cellars feel as shrapnel and spent bullets hit their homes, piercing shingled roofs or breaking curtained windows, chunks of red-hot metal raining from the sky?

Ilse watched in helplessness and despair. There was nothing she could do. She and Jeffrey had already done what they could to destroy these Axis hell-weapons. They’d succeeded but not well enough. Now the unstoppable enemy cruise missiles came right at them. There was so little time to feel regret or shame, to plead to God, to do anything but anguish over the death of a great city.

The missiles had to be very close now. They moved so terribly fast, and every weapon in sight, from foreground to distant horizon, was firing into the air. Defensive missiles locked onto each other by mistake and collided in double eruptions. Tracer shells of every caliber constantly crisscrossed the sky. Shell and missile bursts of every size and intensity lit up the harbor, reflecting off the water and off the land all covered with snow, bursts so constant and bright that the Milky Way and stars were drowned out by the glare. The bangs and thumps and roars of the defensive fire were endless, painfully loud.

The inbound missiles’ projected path was bombarded so thoroughly, a man-made overcast formed — a continuous blanket of smoke and fumes from all the weapons operating. This choking overcast swirled and grew thicker and thicker. It pulsated from within like strobing lightning through a thunderhead, as gun after gun kept plastering the sky. Defensive missiles would launch, disappear in the smoke layer, then break out higher and turn and look for something to destroy. By now missile trails entwined and twisted everywhere, like satanic confetti.

One defensive missile hit a friendly fighter by mistake, and the fireball of jet and missile fuel plunged earthward in New Jersey, starting a conflagration at the point of impact with the ground. That area began exploding, sending up heaving sheets of liquid flame and flying sparks and thick black smoke — a tank farm or oil refinery. The fire on Staten Island was bigger now too.

Something tore through the air above Ilse’s head with a wave of heat and a soul-tearing sonic boom. She was inside the sonic boom, deafened by it, shattered by it. A Mach 8 missile had made it through, bound for midtown. In seconds she and Jeffrey would be killed. She’d never felt so alone, felt nothing now but self-revulsion and guilt. Her face twisted into an ugly mask of rage and bitter resentment, at this war, at what she’d done behind enemy lines, at all the things she wanted to do in her life but would never get to do. She didn’t want to die feeling nothing but cold anger and such loneliness. She turned to Jeffrey, and he turned to her, and his face showed deep regret.

There was a blinding flash right over the Statue of Liberty. Ilse waited for unimaginable heat to broil her skin, to melt her eyeballs, to set her parka afire. She waited for the invisible burst of neutrons and hard gamma rays to kill every cell in her body. She waited for the blast wave to come and knock her charred corpse to dust.

Instead there was whistling and banging. Fireworks began to explode over the Statue of Liberty, and more back behind her over midtown. Decorative fireworks, pretty cloudbursts of blue and green and silver — like on the Fourth of July — as if to mock the Americans.

Things began to blow on the wind, small strips. Ilse thought they were antiradar chaff.

Jeffrey angrily tried to catch one of the floating strips. He jumped and reached, and on the third attempt he grabbed one. It was a piece of paper, one of thousands scattering everywhere now. Jeffrey looked at the strip, then handed it to Ilse.

“They’ll never be able to hush this up. It’s the end of civilian morale.”

Ilse read the slip with difficulty. There were tears in her eyes and she shivered, from the cold and fear and now from this. She knew Jeffrey was right. In large, bold, black Germanic script were printed words in English, a psychological-warfare body blow:

“If this had a nuclear warhead been, you would now be dead. Think of it.”

THREE