Tidal Rip

“The von Scheer will hear my launch datum.”

“The same way the convoy is lure for other U-boats, Challenger is bait for von Scheer. You absolutely must stop the von Scheer. Beck might not have figured out where you are. This will bring him to you, positively. I’m trying to do you a favor…. And we simply can’t let Boer tanks break into the pocket.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I remind you that your ship is expendable in an equal exchange with von Scheer as a last resort. You have very little time to launch your Tomahawks and sink the von Scheer. Fail, and everything in this theater will come apart at the seams. Let that happen, we’ve lost the war. Good luck to you, Captain. Out.”

Jeffrey went back to the control room. He ordered Meltzer to bring the ship to periscope depth. He told Bell to stand by for a Tactical Tomahawk land attack. The XO was speechless.

“Everything’s happening together,” Jeffrey said. “The pieces interlock. Convoy, von Scheer, land offensive — they’re all part of one whole. For now we play network-centric warfare.” Firing weapons using real-time targeting and sensor data from distant platforms.

Meltzer called out when Challenger reached periscope depth. Jeffrey ordered COB to raise a photonics mast; mounted above the optical scanners on the mast was a small passive signals-intercept antenna. Bell quickly reported no visual threats on imagery coming down from the mast; the outside world showed on monitors in the control room. Via the sigint antenna, the Electronic Support Measures room gathered data from the ether above the surface, and analyzed it with special receivers and software. New contacts came onto Jeffrey’s tactical plot, showing the range and bearing to far-off hostile radars. Safe enough. Jeffrey told COB to raise the two-way high-baud-rate antenna.

The digital handshake was made with a command vessel in the convoy escort group, via satellite. Data began to pour in. Detailed targeting information and route way points were sent for every Tomahawk launch. The data gave precise three-dimensional mapping of land topography each missile should follow by using its built-in look- down radar. The data also included visual and infrared video of the targets, whether tanks or artillery batteries or formation-headquarter vehicles or hasty bunkers. It all took many megabytes…. The download was complete.

Jeffrey ordered the antenna mast lowered. Bell and Torelli went to work with the combat-system specialists to preprogram each missile for the emergency strike. Challenger had twelve high- explosive Tomahawks in small individual silos in her vertical launching system, built into the forward ballast tanks. She had eight more in the torpedo room on the holding racks. One Tomahawk was quickly loaded into each torpedo tube. Now comes the scary part.

Jeffrey decided to fire the torpedo room’s missiles first. They could all be in the air in less than two minutes. They would make a god-awful racket, and be utterly conspicuous as they launched. Each was subsonic, as fast as a jumbo jet, with a range of about fifteen hundred miles — this put Jeffrey in striking distance of the African coast, even though von Scheer’s faster but shorter-legged supersonic missiles couldn’t yet reach the convoy at sea.

Jeffrey issued orders to shoot. He watched a periscope monitor. One by one, the missiles broached the surface, riding a solid-fuel booster rocket. The flame was bright yellow against the blue sky. The exhaust smoke was dirty brown. The rocket noise came through the hull.

The first cruise missile’s wings unfolded. The rocket got the missile up to speed, then dropped away. A jet engine in the Tomahawk took over. Bell called out every step of each launch. Soon all eight Tactical Tomahawks disappeared beyond the horizon. They could be redirected in flight by other Allied platforms, such as fighter- bombers or recon drones or satellites, via radio. Enemy units on the attack, on the move, would thus have much more trouble decoying or spoofing the warhead final-homing sensors.

Now for the vertical-launch-system salvo.

The launch noise was louder now. One by one, twelve more Tomahawks rocketed into the air, dropped their spent boosters, and transitioned to level flight. When the last one was away, before it even reached the horizon, Jeffrey ordered the photonics mast lowered. Torelli and the fire controlmen expressed proud satisfaction in their work despite the risks involved: that everything should have gone just right, that twenty out of twenty missiles made fully successful takeoffs, said much about the Weapons Department’s months of training and constant hard work on equipment maintenance. Jeffrey gave them a heartfelt “Well done.” Cluster minelets, fuel-air explosives, bunker busters were all on their way to the enemy. And now we reap what we have sown. “Helm, emergency deep.”

Meltzer acknowledged and down the ship went, fast. Jeffrey needed to dodge the supersonic cruise missiles he was sure would be inbound from von Scheer. Her passive sonars had to have heard those Tomahawk-missile launches. From the first launch, enough time had passed for Beck to order von Scheer shallow in relative safety, enter good firing solutions, and send nuclear missiles after Jeffrey at Mach 2.5. Those missiles would have plunging warheads, designed to survive a hard impact with the surface and go off underwater.

Then there was the unknown factor: In what form would retaliatory fire come from other Axis forces on land or at sea? Cruise missiles, subsonic or supersonic? Torpedoes from diesel U-boats?

Jeffrey ordered evasive maneuvers among the seamounts in desperation.

But nothing happened.

He realized the Axis forces must have other priorities, or were afraid they’d damage the von Scheer by mistake, or were simply out of position for an effective counterattack.

“Why didn’t Beck shoot?” he asked Bell after a while.

“Protecting his stealth? Saving all his missiles for the convoy, maybe? Figures he can get us with Sea Lions alone?”

“He’s an awfully confident SOB if he thinks that.”

“There’s one other factor, sir.”

Jeffrey nodded. “Missiles could easily miss, and badly muddle acoustic conditions in this whole area. Beck wants good clear water for his final tangle with us.”

CHAPTER 42

Ernst Beck listened in disbelief as Werner Haffner reported a series of cruise-missile launches directly ahead, shallow, amid the Valdivia Seamounts. “Is it some kind of trick?” he asked. “A new type of noisemaker, to act as a decoy?”

Haffner replayed the recording of the launch noises on the sonar speakers. Beck listened to each set of watery whooshes and rumbles, each booster rocket suddenly cut off, the diminishing whine of each jet engine as it receded into the distance, and the final hard splash as each discarded booster hit the surface at hundreds of knots. He counted a salvo of eight torpedo tube launches, then twelve vertical-launch-system shots.

An ELF radio message from Berlin soon confirmed that radio transmissions had been intercepted from the launch location right before the launches, on two different bands. One transmission suggested a two-way floating wire antenna in use. The other was a high-baud-rate antenna — presumably a handshake and an error check.

“I can’t imagine any decoy that can do all that,” Stissinger said.

“Concur,” Beck said.

“Could it be a different submarine, not Challenger?” von Loringhoven asked.

“I don’t think so. The Allies would give Challenger a clear playing field, to avoid sonar contact confusion or any risk of friendly fire. And we expected Challenger to be in the Valdivia Seamounts by now.”

“Then why would they launch missiles when they must know we’re very near?”

“Baron, I’m sure they were ordered to from above. The course of the missiles, toward the southern flank of the Allied pocket, suggests the land offensive has opened and the Allies are in dire straits. The convoy is still very far from landing any reinforcing troops or tanks or ammo.”