Tidal Rip

Challenger if need be.”

“If we can get there in time,” Jeffrey said a bit sourly.

“If not,” Milgrom said, “it is my understanding that other escort platforms will be tasked to prosecute the contact, just as they would be sent after any Orpheus contacts we detect too far beyond our own effective interception range. Again, that’s why we need the satellite communications dish.”

“What other escort platforms? We absolutely require a ceramic-hulled sub if we’re to stand an adequate chance of killing von Scheer. Dreadnought is way up by Greenland last I heard.” HMS Dreadnought was the only Allied ceramic-hulled sub besides Challenger. “I doubt she can get between von Scheer and the convoy at this point, given the geography and distances involved. Von Scheer could leap out of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge terrain anywhere from east of Maine to east of Miami for all we know.”

“Understood, Captain. The convoy routing plan accounts for that.”

“How?” Jeffrey already knew the supposed, official answer; he worried that that answer was too pat.

“Sir” — the assistant navigator broke in — “the convoy is avoiding steaming over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge until they reach the Atlantic Narrows, where the ridge can’t be avoided…. Lieutenant?”

Milgrom brought up a slide that plotted the convoy’s path versus sea-bottom topography. The assistant navigator used it to elaborate his point.

“Berlin can read the same terrain maps we can,” Jeffrey responded. “Who says they’ll do what we expect them to do? Maybe the von Scheer won’t hide in the ridge. Maybe she’ll sneak out over one of the North Atlantic abyssal plains and savage the convoy from there.”

“That’s where our other platforms come in,” Milgrom repeated.

“What other platforms?” Jeffrey pressed. The idea of a formal briefing is to cover every conceivable base and not hold back from tough questions.

“Antisubmarine aircraft, surface ships, and steel-hulled fast-attack submarines.”

“All of which might not be decisive enough against a ceramic-hulled SSGN hiding three miles down. We’re in a situation where ‘might not’ could spell disaster.”

“Yes, sir,” Milgrom said reluctantly.

Jeffrey relented. The U.S. and UK had fewer than sixty nuclear-powered fast-attack subs left in commission between them, because of budget cuts and then war losses — and after nine months of constant hard fighting, many of these were in dry dock for repairs, or at sea but barely battle-worthy. With heavy worldwide commitments, the submarine forces were spread too thin. Each country could afford to build only one ceramic-hulled submarine, because of the huge costs. But all this certainly wasn’t Milgrom’s fault.

“What other kinds of detections would Norfolk relay us?”

“Acoustic, or magnetic anomaly, or… or von Scheer’s missile launches.”

There was a long and uncomfortable silence.

Jeffrey looked around the room, to take the pressure off Milgrom and pass it equally among his people. “We better all hope the higher-ups guessed right, about where we and the SEALs are supposed to set up our ambush location.”

“That’s the point, sir,” Bell said. “You just need to look at a chart. Because of the layout of shorelines versus ocean, and the layout of all the old phone cables, we’re being sent to the one spot in the whole hemisphere that really is the optic nerve, the point of maximum searching-and-tactical focus.”

Jeffrey grunted. He wished he could share Bell’s upbeat take. But what’s the alternative? Putter around half blind and half deaf in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, six thousand miles between Central Africa and Greenland, and hope I get lucky? Hope I meet the von Scheer soon enough in that gigantic undersea mountain range, and I get off the first, decisive shots… before the convoy meets the von Scheer ?… At least Orpheus gives us a fighting chance.

Milgrom and the assistant navigator presented their plan for getting from the Caribbean to the Orpheus point with an optimum balance of speed versus stealth. Jeffrey approved. Bell outlined the enemy threats that Challenger might meet en route. Jeffrey nodded cautiously.

“Meeting’s adjourned,” Jeffrey said. Everyone waited for him to stand up.

Jeffrey stood, and walked to the screen on the bulkhead, still showing the assistant navigator’s final slide. He contemplated Challenger’s next destination, that lonely, tiny dot of land almost lost in the Atlantic Narrows. He reread the label next to the dot, on the nautical chart on the screen: THE ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL ROCKS.

CHAPTER 15

Beck sat at his command workstation in the Zentrale. Stissinger sat to his right. Von Loringhoven stood between them again, watching over their shoulders. The control room was crowded and hushed. Dim red lighting emphasized that the ship was still at battle stations and ultraquiet. Depth gauges around the control room, and windowed on Beck’s console screen, read 4,800 meters.

The von Scheer was so deep that the deck of the Zentrale was actually warped from the pressure squashing against the outer hull. Extra damage-control parties were stationed around the ship. Beck hoped they wouldn’t be needed. At this depth, five thousand meters — three miles — down, the slightest flooding would be catastrophic. If a single weld or valve joint failed anywhere that was exposed to full sea pressure, the ocean would blast in with a force beyond comprehension. The noise would be painfully loud, like artillery fire. The solid jet of water could instantly cut a man in half. It would ricochet everywhere, making the source of flooding impossible to find. Above the quickly rising water in the bilges and then on the decks, the air would become an atomized mist of stinging, blinding seawater. The flooding would drive the internal atmospheric pressure up very fast, making the air turn hot — burning hot — and the steaming salty mist would short out critical electric equipment. Men would die in horrible ways as the von Scheer herself was drowned and crushed from within.

Those thoughts were bad enough. The reality of what Ernst Beck was seeing was, in some ways, worse.

The ship was at the exact location specified in his orders, verified by the inertial navigation plot. The sonarmen and weapons technicians were all on high alert. Two remote-controlled off-board probes, designed to work at such depths, had already scouted the general area for any lurking threats.

At the moment, a kampfschwimmer chief and enlisted man were working at a console at the rear of the Zentrale, intensely focused on their task.

Video imagery was shown on the control room’s main display screens. Some of the images came from active laser line-scan cameras outside the ship. The images were crisp and sharp, at least within the effective range of the laser beams. Other pictures came from passive image-intensification cameras. Those views were murky, diffuse, even where floodlights pierced the darkness; backscatter glowed off floating silt. The live feeds all came in through fiber-optic tethers.

Ernst Beck saw the seafloor, a short distance beneath the von Scheer. The ship was holding perfectly steady as the pilot and copilot busily used the small auxiliary thrusters fore and aft to counteract the sluggish bottom current. The bottom at this location was a mix of clay ooze, washed down off dry land in Europe, and scattered basalt boulders. The boulders were jagged and rough, because at this depth there’d been no polishing by Ice Age glaciers, no weathering by wind or waves, no cycle of freezing and thawing. The water temperature was constant at four degrees Celsius — just above freezing. The terrain rose gradually toward the west. In the far distance soared the central peaks of the endless Mid-Atlantic Ridge, magma hardened as it emerged from the earth over eons.

On the imagery projected from outside, Beck saw bioluminescent glows and flashes from clouds of microbes and hideous fish. Over the sonar speakers, he heard the clicketyclack and popping of deep-sea shrimp.

This water was transgressed, defiled, by man. Near the von Scheer, settled on the bottom, sat the wreck of a U.S. Navy destroyer. Between the von Scheer and the wreck,