“That’s good to hear.” Von Loringhoven smiled.
Beck nodded. “Let’s take care of Jeffrey Fuller once and for all.”
Beck glanced at his chart and at the gravimeter. The closest edge of the seamounts was almost in maximum Sea Lion range. But even at seventy-five knots, it would take a Sea Lion half an hour to cover those thirty-five sea miles from the von Scheer.
Beck decided to wait to get closer. He intended to use more off-board probes to feel around for Challenger. If that didn’t turn up anything, he would fire Sea Lions from closer in, to force a response. The same seamount maze that von Scheer could use in order to disappear from Jeffrey Fuller might just as nicely serve as a way to box Fuller in.
Let me see. Eight Sea Lions approaching the Valdivias from different bearings… Yes, he’d have to shoot back or go to flank speed, or both, and either way I’ve got him.
I’ve got him because I hold one decisive advantage. Challenger cuts her guidance wire to a weapon every time she shuts the outer torpedo tube door to reload. Von Scheer has better tube architecture. We can fire repeated salvos through a tube and not cut any wires…. Our fire-control systemsare designed to control more eels in the water at once than we can even fit aboard. And our technicians are highly trained in handling such a weapon-rich environment. It was hard for Beck to not feel smug.
“Torpedoes in the water,” Haffner screamed. “Eight torpedoes in the water, inbound at our depth and pinging! New sonar contact, submerged, flank-speed tonals, Challenger! Challenger’s relative bearing is steady, range is closing fast!”
Beck watched his tactical screens in shock. Mark 88s were coming at von Scheer in a wide fan spread, converging from every point on the compass between east and northwest. The Mark 88s were attacking at seventy knots. Challenger was charging at Beck, right behind Fuller’s torpedoes.
“Hydrophone effects!” Haffner yelled. “More torpedoes in the water. One, two, three… six, eight more torpedoes in the water, pinging!”
Jeffrey gripped his armrests as Challenger made her rough flank-speed vibrations. The final death ride had begun.
His plan was very simple. Hodgkiss’s orders pushed Challenger into another odd reversal of roles: it was she, not the von Scheer, who had needed to come shallow to conduct a missile launch. Forced to make lemonade from this unexpected lemon, Jeffrey saw a way his Tomahawk strike could help him trap the von Scheer: such a conspicuous datum, exactly as Admiral Hodgkiss said, would make very sure Ernst Beck knew precisely where Jeffrey was. Rather than have to think up some credible ploy of his own, the missile launch — under the present strategic circumstances — was believable by itself. The datum would strongly confirm Beck’s likely hunch about Jeffrey’s next tactic, that Challenger would make a stand amid the Valdivias. Beck’s recollection of Jeffrey’s final gambit the last time they clashed, before Christmas, would work to Jeffrey’s advantage now.
Then Jeffrey, his ultimate commitment already made in agreement with Bell, threw the whole rule book away. Whether or not it’s true, Ernst Beck, keep thinking I’m predictable and — as captains going head-to-head — you’re better than me.
The von Scheer had been moving slowly, for tactical caution and for stealth. Challenger built up full momentum, with her reactor pushed to 120 percent — by hiding just beyond the north side of the Walvis down on the very bottom. This gave Jeffrey good acoustic masking until he was ready to turn and rush up over the top of the ridge. He used the active pinging by his first fish to find the von Scheer, then ordered Meltzer to bear down on her relentlessly.
Now that he’d caught the von Scheer by surprise, his salvos of Mark 88s would force Beck south, out of the protection of the Walvis Ridge and into the Cape Basin, where there was nowhere for either ship to hide.
Jeffrey smiled. To hell with caution. To hell with stealth. Just keep on believing I’m bluffing, Beck. And then I’ll see you in hell.
Beck ordered salvos of Sea Lions fired at Challenger’s torpedoes in self-defense. Even with the Mark 88 guidance wires cut, their active pinging would let them home on Beck’s ship.
Beck fired other Sea Lions at Challenger, but Fuller already had more weapons in the water. Still Fuller charged right at von Scheer.
Beck ordered the pilot to turn the von Scheer south and make flank speed. He needed to buy space and time in order to give his defensive countershots enough room so they wouldn’t take von Scheer with them when they blew.
Challenger’s bow sphere went active. It must have been set on maximum power. A strident screech pierced the water and the von Scheer’s hull. The noise sundered the air in the Zentrale, rising and falling in pitch, setting Beck’s nerves on edge as if fingernails had dragged on a blackboard. It made it hard for him to think.
He wanted to retaliate, but Challenger was coming at him from behind, in that arc where his own bow sphere was useless.
Fuller has to have planned it this way.
He’s using his active sonar as a psychological weapon.
The worst of it is, it’s working.
The sonar noise was drowned out only when atomic torpedo warheads began to detonate. The von Scheer was kicked hard in the stern. Now Beck began to understand what Fuller and Challenger had gone through back in the mountain pass. Warhead concussions and fireball pulsations, bounces of shock fronts off the surface and the bottom and the ridge, pounded the von Scheer like the Roman god Vulcan working at his forge.
Still heading south into very deep water, Beck knew he had to continue to flee. The massive blasts and aftershocks did more than deafen his crew and damage his vessel. They blinded all his sonar arrays. It became impossible to know what was happening back behind the ship.
One leaker, one Mark 88 making it through Beck’s Sea Lion defensive barrage, could catch the von Scheer and put her on the bottom in pieces.
Still the blasts and hammer blows went on. The port-side torpedo autoloader jammed. Broken parts sprayed flammable hydraulic fluid, and firefighters raced to smother the fluid with foam before it ignited.
Overhead light fixtures shattered. Cooling-water pipes cracked. Consoles went dark, and software systems crashed. The control room filled with the burned-plastic reek of smoldering electronics. The crewmen raced to don their emergency air-breathing masks. Beck and Stissinger glanced at each other worriedly through their masks. A chief helped the fumbling von Loringhoven get his mask on properly and plugged its hose into the overhead supply pipe.
“He’s going to kill us all!” von Loringhoven shouted. His voice was muffled through his mask, and he was barely audible above the noise.
“No!” Beck yelled. “I know him! That’s what he wants us to think!”
Von Scheer had reached flank speed, over forty knots. But Beck knew Challenger was ten or twelve knots faster, and he realized by now that her warhead yields had been upgraded to a full kiloton. We’re in a stern chase, and he’s gaining… assuming he’s still back there at all.
Beck ordered the pilot to turn east, just enough so the port wide-aperture array could hear back the way von Scheer had come.
Haffner and his men worked hard to filter out the noise and clean up the signals. The hissing and whooshing of air-breathing masks, including Beck’s own, added to the other noise and made the scene seem mad. But Beck knew the lunacy was all too real.
Beck waited for a report from Haffner. Challenger had probably turned away, to
