Tidal Rip

cast a pink and melancholy glow on the deserted beaches, the sandbars, the marshes and abandoned cottages, and the many cargo ships moored in the sheltered bay; Jeffrey was sure these ships were waiting to sail in the convoy to Africa. Now and then he could see the three helos’ shadows cast on the water. The shadows appeared to pursue him, each one dark and insubstantial, sometimes far off and sometimes close. Jeffrey felt as if he were being chased by the ghosts of the dead.

The Seahawk’s crew chief listened on his flight helmet’s headphones for a moment, then said something into his lip mike. He caught Commodore Wilson’s eye and held up both hands balled into fists. He opened and closed all ten fingers three times. Wilson nodded.

Thirty minutes until we land, Jeffrey knew the hand signals meant. Land where? More massed cargo vessels stretched below.

Jeffrey saw a U.S. Coast Guard cutter, one of the new class that were really major warships, steaming toward the mouth of the bay, to the battle-torn Atlantic. The cutter’s bow wave creamed high, foaming white as she made flank speed, nearly thirty-five knots. Her wake spread out behind her, faithfully following the ship like a V-shaped tail. Two helicopters flew ahead of the cutter, towing paravanes through the water to sweep for mines.

Jeffrey saw various aircraft at different altitudes, near and far. An air-force AWACS plane, its powerful radar enclosed in a saucer disk above the fuselage, coordinated military air traffic and monitored civilian airliners too. The AWACS also stood guard against enemy airborne incursions.

Four-engine long-endurance maritime patrol aircraft came and went; these planes carried airdropped antisubmarine torpedoes. Jeffrey saw a navy blimp. The blimps could stay aloft for days between refuelings and bore many sensors to keep a sharp eye on the sea. Jeffrey suspected that well concealed on the ground were other types of radars, antiaircraft guns, and anti-cruise-missile missile launchers — and hidden tanks and machine-gun nests.

Jeffrey seriously doubted that the land defenses all along the East Coast would ever face a full-blown invasion. That wasn’t a part of the Axis master plan. Berlin had openly said so. They were far more clever and calculating than to waste resources on such an impossible, preposterous task as a military occupation of the United States. Far better to unleash their unspeakable violence on the high seas, in international waters, to sever America’s lines of communication and trade abroad. Far more effective, for Axis aims, to isolate the U.S. than to invade it: let fear and deprivation gnaw away at American voters, until they chose en masse to allow Europe and Africa to fester on the far side of a gigantic ocean. Let Americans be frightened into accepting a new status quo, whittled down into making peace with a new Axis empire — at the price of America’s diminishing to a second-rate, also-ran power.

The real war being fought in and for the U.S. homeland was a psychological war. The targets weren’t factories or rail yards but people’s feelings, their confidence in their leaders and in themselves, and their willingness to risk eventual mass destruction here to benefit occupied foreign countries over there. Axis submarines had already launched harassment raids against several coastal American cities and bases, using supersonic cruise missiles with conventional warheads. The risk of nuclear escalation, intentional or inadvertent, was ever present and constantly rising — and the Axis made very sure the American public knew it.

Ahead of the Seahawk, Jeffrey saw land instead of water. The bridge-and-tunnel road link across the mouth of Chesapeake Bay loomed ahead of him, at an angle on the Seahawk’s left. The Seahawk banked to the right, into the now-setting sun. The Apaches peeled off and headed back toward Washington. The cargo ships moored on the water gave way to navy ships tied up at piers. The Seahawk’s engine noise changed pitch again, and the aircraft leaned back on its tail. The ground came up quickly, and the helo settled down on a concrete pad. It took a moment for Jeffrey’s senses to reorient from the heady exhilaration of flying to the mundane, narrowed perspective of a creature tied to solid land.

Fun’s over. Now back to work.

The crew chief squeezed past Jeffrey and Ilse and opened the passenger-compartment door. Jeffrey unbuckled, then followed Ilse and Wilson out of the aircraft. At first his legs wobbled a bit as he readjusted to walking on the ground. A safe distance from the helo, he and Ilse and Wilson took off their goggles and folding helmets and floatation vests, handing them to the crew chief. The pilot and copilot, still in the cockpit, shut down the engines and systems; maintenance and refueling teams already were setting up; heat rippled off the now-silent turbine engines atop the fuselage.

Jeffrey glanced around. He and Wilson and Ilse were in the middle of the sprawling, bustling, heavily defended Norfolk Navy Base. Nearby, Jeffrey knew well from his younger days as a SEAL, was the separate and equally sprawling Norfolk Amphibious Warfare Base. In that direction, at the far end of Pamlico Sound, sat the U.S. Marine Corps’ Camp Lejeune, with its barracks and obstacle courses, its shooting ranges and beaches for practice assaults. Closer lay the runways and hardened hangars of Oceana Naval Air Station. And in that direction, just across the nearby waters of historic Hampton Roads, were the Newport News Shipbuilding yards, where they made nuclear subs and nuclear-powered supercarriers. It had been right there in Hampton Roads that the world’s first ironclads, the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia — formerly the Merrimack — fought each other to a standstill in the Civil War.

Next to the helicopter pad, an aide stood by an unmarked but very navy-looking white van. He waved for Wilson’s party to come over.

Jeffrey yelled into Wilson’s ear, above the noise of other helos taking off or landing. “Sir, I thought we were supposed to go back to New London.”

Wilson gave him a disapproving look, but then smiled. He cupped a hand to Jeffrey’s ear; with the decibels roaring all around them, the exchange would be totally private. “Captain Fuller, view today as practice for tomorrow, and learn from it. Sometimes you don’t think enough. Other times, like right now, you assume too much. They’re both bad habits. Fix them pronto.”

Wilson walked on, and Jeffrey followed. Wilson leaned to Jeffrey’s ear again.

“The Medal you lost on that street back there in Washington can be replaced. You, as my most hot-running ship commander, I’d rather not lose. I want you to live long enough to win another Medal, not come back in a box yourself, or end up as radioactive fish food.”

Jeffrey and Wilson and Ilse were seated in a conference room deep underground, in Norfolk’s hardened communications and planning facilities belonging to commander, U.S. Atlantic Fleet. There were more than two dozen people crammed in the room — most of them generals or commodores or admirals, or high-level members of their staffs. One side of the conference room was made of soundproof glass, and the curtains were drawn open. Through the glass, Jeffrey could see the main war room itself. Large maps and situation plots covered the walls on big flat-screen displays. Men and women in uniform sat at consoles. Officers, with the gold cords around one shoulder denoting an admiral’s aide, hurried back and forth purposefully. Enlisted messengers dashed hither and yon.

The preliminaries in the conference room were long over, and the four-star admiral himself, Admiral Hodgkiss — commander, U.S. Atlantic Fleet — had the floor. The atmosphere was very tense. The feeling of urgency in the big war room, right outside, was infectious and mounting. Hodgkiss himself was a stiff and formal man at the best of times, and Jeffrey could see that this evening he was feeling the pressure like everyone else: the pressure of the relief convoy’s impending confrontation with the modern U-boat packs, of the Axis land offensive soon to open in Central Africa, and of the sailing of the von Scheer. The admiral finished laying out the many knowns and unknowns and uncertainties — the uncertainties seemed to predominate.

The admiral looked around the room. “All of you. My staff, the submarine squadron commanders, carrier battle-group commanders, everybody. We need a total effort now. I expect each of you to use your head, and stay sharp and put your forces in harm’s way aggressively. Show me real initiative every minute when the shooting starts, or I won’t hesitate to relieve you. Take a deep breath and savor the smell of gun smoke clinging to Captain Fuller’s clothes. Get addicted to it! Don’t defend yourselves against the U-boats. Attack the U-boats! We’re gambling everything on this throw of the dice. We have to get our convoy through, and we have to keep the pocket open. If we don’t, the war is probably as good as lost.”