Tidal Rip

Beck raised the first glass. “To a successful voyage, and now to a nice long well-earned nap.”

Von Loringhoven raised his glass. “To a successful voyage, and to more good work by our kampfschwimmer.” He downed his schnapps in one gulp.

For a moment, Beck thought there was a soulless predatory look in the other man’s eyes. It sent a chill up his spine, enough to ruin the feeling of warmth brought on by the schnapps.

Von Loringhoven raised his second glass. “To our destination, our ear to Berlin’s sea-surveillance satellites, the St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks.”

CHAPTER 16

Four days later, near the St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks, Jeffrey stood in the aisle in Challenger’s control room. A main display screen on the forward bulkhead, above COB’s and Meltzer’s ship-control stations, showed him and everyone else the big picture. Challenger lurked deep in the western foothills of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, eleven thousand feet down. Farther west was the flat and open Ceara Plain, four thousand feet even deeper than that, off the northeast coast of Brazil. Challenger’s minisub lingered shallow, near the St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks. The mini was careful to keep a direct acoustic line of sight to Jeffrey’s ship, southwest of the Rocks.

The two vessels communicated by covert undersea acoustic link, which transmitted voice or data by a series of digitized pulses. The pulses were incredibly short, at frequencies extremely high and changing thousands of times each second — so the likelihood of intercept by an enemy was very low. The range of the link was up to thirty nautical miles, depending on local oceanographic conditions.

Most of the Orpheus setup work was complete. Robotic undersea vehicles, launched from Challenger and controlled by the ship’s technicians or by specialist SEALs in the mini-sub, had tapped into the undersea telephone cables. Thin wires from those taps were strung to a place by the Rocks, in sheltered water one hundred feet deep. SEAL divers had rigged those wires into an anchor and relay station, ready for use by men at Orpheus consoles in the minisub, and ready for linkage by fiber-optic to a satellite transceiver site that the SEALs would create on the Rocks.

“Captain,” Lieutenant Milgrom reported, “Lieutenant Estabo is calling from the minisub. He indicates he’s ready to transfer to the Rocks.”

“Ask him how Orpheus is performing so far.”

“Wait one, sir.” She spoke into her microphone and listened on her headset. Classified signal-processing software encoded and decoded the two-way conversation and generated the sonar pulses Challenger sent to the minisub; the mini had identical software, though her sonar arrays were simpler and less powerful.

“Sir, his men are just now calibrating the consoles. Lieutenant Estabo prefers to establish the satellite link with Norfolk first, to double-check each other using raw incoming Orpheus data.”

“Very well. Tell him to proceed.”

Milgrom spoke into her mike, then signed off. To deliver Felix to the Rocks, the mini would have to move in closer, and the line of sight, the acoustic link, to Challenger would be blocked.

Jeffrey looked at the main display once more. Bell had the conn, and Jeffrey glanced over the man’s shoulder at the tactical situation plot. Something just didn’t add up.

“XO, Sonar, I want you both in my stateroom.”

Officers traded places as Bell passed the conn to Lieutenant Sessions. One senior chief, the assistant navigator, took over for Sessions. Another senior chief, the sonar supervisor, sat in for Milgrom. Bell and Milgrom followed Jeffrey to his stateroom.

“What’s the matter, Skipper?” Bell asked. He stood, because Jeffrey was standing. Milgrom stood too, and frowned, because Jeffrey was frowning.

“Sonar, when was the last time you heard a nuclear detonation in the North Atlantic?”

“Days, sir. We’ve heard hardly any since departing New London.”

“And how long has the relief convoy been under way?”

“About a week,” Bell said. “Pretty much the same as us.”

“And where is the convoy right now?”

“Right now? Streaming down toward the Atlantic Narrows.”

“We’re just picking up traces of their signature, sir, on our wide-aperture arrays,” Milgrom said.

“A week. Why haven’t the U-boats attacked?”

Milgrom and Bell looked at each other. Bell spoke for both of them. “I guess we’ve all been wondering, Captain.”

“And our latest intelligence download from Norfolk confirmed what our sonars have heard. Or haven’t heard.”

Milgrom and Bell nodded; when Challenger went shallow to launch the minisub with Felix and his men, Jeffrey had used his floating wire antenna to grab short text messages from headquarters. Jeffrey summarized what he’d been told then.

“The convoy escorts picked up a few false contacts, dropped high-explosive torpedoes or depth charges, and then nothing. No confirmed contacts, no confirmed kills… They blew up biologics by mistake, or bleary-eyed observers were just seeing things, or nervous sonar techs heard sounds that weren’t there.”

Milgrom and Bell nodded again, reluctantly.

“Don’t you see what’s happening?”

“Sir?”

“Atlantic Fleet’s whole take on the shape of the battle has been all wrong. The defensive tactics, the carrier and escort dispositions, everything, they’ve been all wrong.”

Bell nodded.

Milgrom glanced at the XO. Her face turned grim. “The Axis have been one step ahead of us the entire time, haven’t they, sir?”

Jeffrey looked into space and worked his jaw. “For a solid week the carrier battle groups and escorting ships and fast-attacks have been at general quarters almost nonstop. Their antisubmarine helos and aircraft have been flying patrols on high alert around the clock. Men and women will be exhausted, close to dropping on their feet, from lack of sleep and interrupted meals. Equipment will be worn down more and more, to the point where critical failures are almost imminent, from the aggressive operational tempo. Crews on the merchant ships will be going crazy from the endless waiting game…. And nobody’s sunk one single U-boat. And I think I know exactly why.”

“Yes, sir,” Milgrom said; she obviously realized why too.

“The real battle, the battle the Axis intend to fight exclusively on their own terms, hasn’t even started yet. Their submarines are massed much farther south that we expected.”

Bell looked. “You mean—”

“Yup. In a day or so, the convoy starts to go through the Atlantic Narrows. The Axis knows we’re coming, and they know our ships can’t hide. Then, for another entire week, the convoy and escorts try to run the South Atlantic. The carrier battle groups and our available fast-attacks are mostly deployed for a fight in the North Atlantic, that was supposed to have come from the east, from Europe, already. Now they’re out of position to give good mutual support against a massed threat to the south. If they come steaming through the Narrows one at a time, they’ll get torn to pieces. Think about it.”

“Oh, God,” Bell said.

“To the west, thousands of miles away, will be the neutral, unhelpful shores of South America. To their east and then their north will loom the bulge of occupied North Africa, menacing the convoy’s left flank the whole way. To the south, against their other flank, are Boer home waters.”

“I see what you’re leading to, Captain,” Milgrom said.

“That’s where they’ll strike. That’s what they’ve been waiting for all along, sitting fat and happy and stealthy and rested and fresh. The convoy-versus-U-boat fight won’t