Tidal Rip

“We have another advantage, Skipper,” Bell said. “Von Scheer has to go shallow to launch her missiles. Otherwise they’d implode in the tubes. Going shallow, she loses the help of concealment by bottom terrain. She leaves herself wide open to easy tracking on active sonar, and a preemptive attack by us from below… or by other Allied forces from above.”

“And then there’s the wild card of Orpheus,” Jeffrey said, “our secret eye on von Scheer looking up from the bottom of the sea… assuming the gadget actually works.”

Felix stood behind the pilot’s seat in the cramped, red-lighted control compartment of Challenger’s minisub. There was just enough space for him to squeeze between the back of the seat and the front of the pressure-proof bulkhead to the lock-in/lock-out chamber. The mini was all of eight feet high externally, and inside Felix could barely stand up straight.

The mini was too small to have a gravimeter, but the nautical charts were detailed and the inertial nav position was accurate. At four knots, submerged, it took an hour to go from the edge of the undersea ridge — where Felix lost direct contact with Challenger — to the immediate vicinity of the Rocks. Instrument panels bristled with buttons and readouts. Computer screens showed depth and course and speed, ballast and trim, and the condition of the minisub’s atmosphere. Other screens showed sonar displays and a tactical situation plot. Right now there were no threats.

The very existence of the St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks was an accident of nature. They just happened to be in a most strategic location, where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge stopped curving south and took a sharp turn east along the Romanche Fracture Zone — a gigantic transform fault in the ocean floor straddling the Atlantic Narrows. At the eastern edge of the Romanche fault, hundreds of miles nearer Africa, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge resumed its southern procession, all the way through the South Atlantic Ocean to Antarctica. The St. P and P Rocks — as Felix and the others called them — were, in fact, a part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, right at the elbow of that sharp turn east. The Rocks were the only dry land of any sort, anywhere near the center of the Narrows. The relief convoy has to steam through the Narrows. The Germans have to know all this too.

Compared to the seafloor down in the sprawling abyssal plains on opposite sides of the endless and massive ridge, the St. P and P Rocks were the summit of a mountain range three miles high. Compared to local sea level, though, the highest point of the Rocks peaked barely sixty-five feet above mean high water.

“We’re at periscope depth,” the copilot said. “Want to take a look, sir?” The copilot was a senior chief in the SEALs, qualified to operate the minisub — he’d come with Felix from the Ohio. The pilot, also a senior chief, was a submariner from Challenger. This was standard doctrine for using the ASDS minisub in combat: teamwork, a marriage of cultures, between two of the navy’s different elites, submariners and SEALs.

“Do it,” Felix said.

The copilot flipped some switches. The fold-down periscope mast was raised hydraulically, and one of the control compartment’s display screens lit up with scenery from outside.

It was first light, just before sunrise. The sky facing east was a beautiful golden yellow.

From this angle, with the top of the periscope just above the sea, the St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks didn’t look like much.

A jumble of stones sticking out of the water. Four main chunks, plus a few tiny islets. Barely eight hundred feet from end to end, running north-south. Barely a football field’s worth of total dry-land area, and barely two square feet of it flat. More than five hundred miles from mainland Brazil. Just over a thousand from Africa. Not a place someone would ever choose to go.

The minisub rocked gently in the minor swells. Felix could make out white water where the swells broke here and there against the edges of the rocks. The weather forecast was good, and he could already see it would be a nice day. The lightening sky was clear and azure blue, with scattered high fluffy clouds that glowed pink in the sunrise. The sunrise was happening fast, even as Felix watched through the digital periscope display. The Rocks were only thirty miles north of the earth’s exact equator.

“I better get suited up,” he said. This was the part he wasn’t looking forward to at all.

Beck stood near the bottom of the lockout trunk that led into the von Scheer’s pressure-proof internal hangar for her mini-sub. The rest of the kampfschwimmer group, and their equipment, were already loaded. Beck was saying good-bye and good luck to Lieutenant Shedler; the two of them were alone by the heavy watertight door that sealed the entrance to the trunk.

“I appreciate what you’re doing for us.” Beck gripped Shedler’s hand in both of his firmly. “Godspeed to you.”

“You make it sound like a suicide mission, Captain.”

“Whatever our friend the baron said back there in the wardroom, Lieutenant, the moment you and your men break the surface, the clock begins to run out on all our lives.”

“If we come under attack by air,” Shedler said, “we can pull back underwater and take shelter in the minisub. It’s combat-hardened, remember.”

“What about nuclear bombs?”

“The Rocks are already a radioactive wasteland. We’re prepared to deal with that. We’ll just have to work quickly, and get you the targeting data you need before the Allies have time to retaliate. With luck we’ll be up and down, out and back, before they ever know what hits them.” Shedler, always so sure and optimistic, turned serious. “Just promise me one thing, Captain, if you can.”

“Name it.”

“If something does go wrong, don’t leave us behind.”

Beck and von Loringhoven were making small talk in the wardroom. Beck drank hot tea, Von Loringhoven black coffee. They used expensive china cups and saucers; the wardroom silverware was exquisite sterling; the embroidered tablecloth was antique, imported from old Persia.

“French coffee is good,” von Loringhoven said idly, “but the coffee in Buenos Aires is much better.”

“You’ve been stationed in Argentina?”

“Once, earlier in my career, before the war.”

Beck felt the von Scheer’s deck tilt as the ship nosed down. He watched the readouts on the captain’s console next to his end of the table. The ship’s depth mounted steadily.

Stissinger returned from the control room. “Minisub safely away, Captain. In-hull hangar pressure-proof doors are closed and sealed. We’re heading back to the bottom. Navigator has the conn.”

“Very well, Einzvo,” Beck acknowledged formally.

“Thank you for joining us,” von Loringhoven said to Stissinger.

“Thanks for inviting me, Baron, but I’m still not sure why I’m here.”

“My instructions are that the next portion of your captain’s secret orders are to be opened and read in your presence. I thought that three of us in the captain’s cabin might be crowded. The wardroom gives us space to spread out. The large flat-screen display lets us look at maps and charts together in comfort.”

Beck interrupted. “We need security.”

“At your convenience, Captain.”

Beck grabbed the intercom handset and called the control room. He asked the chief of the boat to have a senior enlisted man posted outside the main wardroom door, and another outside the door that led from the wardroom into the pantry. “Chief, tell the guards to admit no one without my permission.”

In a few minutes, the guards were posted outside.

“Open the next envelope whenever you like,” von Loringhoven said.

Beck’s curiosity was aroused by the change in procedure. “Why now, before we’ve completed our next mission task, the Rocks and the convoy? And why with my einzvo this time?”

“Once Shedler and his men reach the St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks, things will move very quickly.”

Beck nodded. That’s putting it mildly. We’ll soon go from daintily sipping coffee and tea under fine oil paintings in gilded frames to dealing out supersonic mass death, and then become absorbed in a fight for our lives.

“Management of the battle time line, by our side, is now more essential than ever,”