Tidal Rip

fuel supplies, five hundred sea miles south of their targets.”

“Perfect firing solutions,” von Loringhoven emphasized, “against the most high-value enemy targets, from far beyond the range of von Scheer’s sonars. Perfect firing solutions, from well beyond the outer screens of the carrier battle groups’ submarine and surface escorts and airborne protection. We’ll even be outside the longest over-the-horizon detection range of their AWACS radar planes, with your cruise missiles hugging the wave tops.”

Stissinger nodded.

“Berlin has sea-surveillance satellites in geosynchronous orbit,” Beck said. “The hardware was disguised in German-built vehicles belonging to Third World neutrals lofted by the ArianeSpace consortium before the war. So the Allies have no idea of our actual space-based targeting capabilities.”

Stissinger smiled. Beck addressed his next remarks to Shedler. “Your team’s role is so important because the data we need has to come in via radio, and radio at such frequencies can’t penetrate the sea.”

“Understood,” Shedler replied.

“The land installation you erect amounts to an interface between the open air and the deep ocean. The two mediums admit two different methods of communicating, radio waves versus sound. Your portable satellite dish is one-half of the link. The transducer line you’ll lay underwater forms the other half. The black boxes you brought in your equipment from Norway contain electronics for the interface, and they in turn feed proper signals into the transducers. Digitized acoustic-message bursts will then be picked up by von Scheer’s passive sonar arrays. In short, those bursts will take the information that comes down from space via radio, and send it on to us to use while we remain concealed and tactically mobile. You’ll be stuck in the open, Lieutenant, working on the Rocks, but you buy us important time and a vital safety margin. The only alternative to a land-based interface relay of this type would be for us to raise an antenna mast above the surface ourselves, and revealing von Scheer too soon that way is simply out of the question.”

“I understand, Captain.”

“You and your men will have to work very quickly to get set up. Remember, the Allies have sea-surveillance assets too. Once you’re spotted, the danger for all of us mounts.”

“The Allies may assume,” Stissinger offered, “that the kampfschwimmer presence, their data uplink even if it’s seen, doesn’t relate to us, Captain. There are many other Axis submarines. Besides, it’s natural our side would want control of the Rocks. They’re the only land in the whole Atlantic Narrows. They represent a military high ground of sorts. There are lots of things the Axis might use them for. Signals intelligence, visual surveillance, even occupy them briefly just to deny them to the Allies at a crucial moment in the battle.” He shrugged.

“Timing is everything,” Beck said. “The faster we all move, obtaining the targeting data and then getting rid of our missiles, the better our chance to keep the Allies guessing until it’s too late. Then we all make our escape while they’re still reeling, reacting, confused. That’s where your role comes in, Einzvo. You’ll be supporting me in an engagement like none you’ve ever seen. Discipline and teamwork among the crew must be precise in order to program each missile and then execute each step of every launch in such rapid succession. There is no margin for error. None.”

“I’ll see that all goes well, Captain.”

“And as soon as our first missiles broach the surface,” Beck said, “we give von Scheer’s exact position away. Once our last missile is launched, prompt recovery of the kampfschwimmer and evasive maneuvers by von Scheer against incoming retaliatory fire become a matter of life and death. Sonar, Ship Control, Engineering, every department and every station must put out a maximum effort for me.”

“Understood, sir. The men will perform.”

“The whole point,” von Loringhoven said, “is that setting up this ground station, getting the data from such long range by satellite, maximizes that other crucial factor, the distance from us to the escorts and thus the duration until such return fire via missile or aircraft can even reach us. And besides, jamming and spoofing the Allied surveillance and communication circuits is an essential part of the plan. Information warfare experts elsewhere will trigger prearranged virus attacks, just as you ripple your missile salvos, Captain.”

“Well…” Beck was perhaps the only man at the briefing who fully understood the uncertainties and risks of what was proposed.

“It certainly gives us the best way to lay down accurate fire and live to tell about it,” Stissinger said. He was warming more and more to the overall plan. “Since the Allies use random formations for their carrier groups, and they shift the formation shapes constantly, we won’t know which ship in a clump of warships is which. They’ll use heavy passive and active electronic countermeasures too. If Berlin tells us exactly where the high-value targets are, sir, and their course and speed and zigzag habits, we shoot fan spreads of missiles with a very high kill probability.”

Beck frowned. “Launching our missiles from extreme range maximizes their transit time, and gives the enemy the greatest margin for evasive maneuvers too. That’s the one thing that bothers me.”

Von Loringhoven shook his head. “Your missiles go Mach two point five. From five hundred sea miles away, they’ll reach their target coordinates in less than fifteen minutes…. That’s why you carry so many missiles, Captain. You saturate each target coordinate zone. The Americans will have no escape.”

“The Americans call that overkill,” Beck said with irony, mostly to himself. “You shoot enough weapons to nuke your opponent several times over.”

“And what’s wrong,” von Loringhoven said, “with destroying our enemy several times over? With the carriers and marine amphibious warfare ships and escorts out of the way, our wolf packs can then close in and savage the cargo ships at will. Even were there no Axis interference, it would take those merchant vessels a solid week to steam from the Atlantic Narrows to the Congo-basin coast. With such a long gauntlet to run, subjected to coordinated and merciless U-boat attacks, and not one friendly nation in sight for thousands and thousands of miles, a worthless trickle at most will ever get through to the Allied pocket.”

CHAPTER 18

Jeffrey and Milgrom and Bell were still sequestered in Jeffrey’s stateroom. Jeffrey had moved the discussion to a different question. They were once again, hurriedly, going over what little they knew about the von Scheer, to try to work out more specific tactics for when the fateful confrontation came — if it ever did. Jeffrey and his key people had been doing this often since leaving Norfolk. It became their daily mantra, a benediction almost, but unlike meditation or prayer, this convocation gave no peace of mind. And as Jeffrey said, pointedly, now could well be their final opportunity to brainstorm before the maelstrom of battle began. Then there’d be no pause button, no calling time-outs, no do-overs.

They knew the von Scheer was a very big ship, much bigger than Challenger. She was almost certainly slower than Challenger if both made flank speed. How much slower, Jeffrey didn’t know — and knowing could be the difference between life and death in a stern chase or dogfight. Running at the same speed, Milgrom suspected, knot for knot, von Scheer would be even quieter than Challenger: bigger meant more room for quieting gear, more room to isolate noisy machines from the hull.

But they had no good noise profile on the von Scheer. They didn’t know what her hybrid Russian-German propulsion plant sounded like. They didn’t even know if she had one reactor or two, one propulsor at her stern or two, or even if each propulsor was a screw propeller or a pump jet.

Milgrom pointed out that Challenger did have some sonar advantages. Von Scheer’s bigger size made her a bigger target on hole-in-ocean passive sonar — a larger spot in the water that was too quiet because the hull blocked ocean noises from farther off. And since ocean sounds or nuclear blasts bounced off the target and served to give it away in the same way as the echo from an active sonar ping, a larger hull meant a larger ambient-sonar contact too. “We can expect a longer detection range against the von Scheer than she against us in those modes, sir,” Milgrom said.