Tidal Rip

“The cargo-ship hulk! That’s the real high ground, Chief! From there we control the Rocks by fire! It’s the only place we stand a chance to survive the nuclear blasts!”

The chief set his jaw with new determination.

Felix clapped him on the shoulder. “We have to occupy the cargo-ship hulk!”

Felix ducked as more bullets poured in. He was forced to shift his position. In their black suits, everyone looked the same, but Felix had too visibly been acting like an officer.

So much for the joys of command.

The incoming fire died off suddenly.

Felix suspected a trap. He peeked from around a rough, charred boulder and caught fleeting glimpses of movement on Northeast Rock, black against the black there. The kampfschwimmer were pulling away from him and heading north.

“The Germans are going for the hulk! If they get there before us we’ve had it! ”

Jeffrey gripped a microphone as he stared at the gravimeter readouts. We have our quarry localized. Now we need to track and target Beck.

Using one mode, the gravimeter gave Jeffrey a perfect picture of the seafloor terrain around the Rocks, like a 3-D bird’s-eye view — as if the water weren’t there — with Challenger’s position plotted as she moved along at top quiet speed. In a different mode, the imagery was like looking out the front windshield of a car — but with eerie clairvoyance, because the gradiometers could sense through solid rock. Right now Jeffrey had both modes on his command workstation screens to help him think and visualize tactics.

“Minisub, minisub,” Jeffrey called through the mike, “any more contact with Lieutenant Estabo?”

“Negative, negative,” the submariner chief in the mini responded. “Kampfschwimmer came at them from behind. I think the Germans cut the hydrophone wire by the Rocks. We have no commo signal, sir, not even acoustic carrier tone.”

“What’s the last you heard from Estabo?”

“He asked for reinforcements.”

“Who’s left in the mini?”

“SEAL chief copilot, two enlisted SEALs aft at Orpheus consoles.”

“Do you copy anything at all on radio?” The mini had her own small floating wire antenna.

“Negative, sir. Enemy jamming keeps getting heavier.”

“Okay. Okay. Don’t raise any masts. Do nothing that might make a datum.” Give their position away. “Do you have enough cable to stay hooked into the Orpheus grid but move the mini farther from the Rocks?”

“We can manage a mile from the feed-in anchor. That’s all.”

“Good. Stay shallow, but get out to deeper water.” Jeffrey glanced at his screens. “Head two five zero.” West-southwest. “That’ll give you six hundred feet of water. I don’t want you right by the Rocks when tactical nukes start going off. The tsunami effects, understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t want German combat swimmers finding you. They might be looking for an Allied mini already.”

“Understood.”

“Keep the bottom hatch dogged. Be careful who you let in…. Be careful who you let get near you. They might plant limpet mines, even drop them on you like bombs if you try going deep.”

There was a thoughtful, pregnant silence on the line for a minute. “Acknowledged.”

“Good luck. Out.”

Jeffrey turned and looked at Bell. “Estabo’s on his own. At least the mini can hide underwater, watch for threats with her cameras and sonars.”

Bell nodded. “Estabo seems like a man who knows how to take care of himself, Captain.”

“I hope so. I hate abandoning people.”

“Sir, what the chief on the mini told us — that the radio jamming is worse. It seems like more confirmation.”

“I think I see where you’re going, XO, but say it.”

“Electronic countermeasures support from other German forces, all of a sudden? From land, from space, from U-boats, I don’t know. But I think it’s another sign von Scheer is preparing to launch.”

“Bring up the map of all the old phone cables Orpheus uses. Put it on your console, XO, my displays are swamped.”

Bell typed on his keyboard. “We do have a bit of an information explosion going, don’t we, Captain?”

Jeffrey ignored the remark. He did not want to think about his ship exploding.

The large-scale map came up on Bell’s screen. The two men studied it together, elbow to elbow.

“So this is the cable the von Scheer crossed when Orpheus first picked her up.” Jeffrey pointed to a jiggly line that ran north, past the east side of the local rise capped by the Rocks.

“She came from east to west.” Bell moved his hand from right to left on the map. “Just about here.” He pointed to a spot on the map. “She must have been moving in to deploy her minisub with the kampfschwimmer.”

“This one other cable is real important to us now,” Jeffrey said. It also ran north, but on the west, the left side of the Rocks. “Orpheus hasn’t sensed von Scheer cross over that cable, yet.”

“So she has to be somewhere between the two, Skipper.”

“Yup. The question is whether she’s still north of this rise here by the Rocks. Or has she been moving southward, sneaking east of the Rocks running deep, while we’ve been moving north, going shallow and to the west?” Jeffrey moved his hands while he talked, as if the von Scheer and Challenger were twirling past each other with the Rocks stuck in the middle, screening them both.

“Why would she move south, Captain?”

“To look for us? Beck has to know there’s another sub in the area.”

“But he’s not a fast-attack, Captain. It’s not his job to go hunting for an enemy and offer combat.”

“You’re right, XO. And that’s our other trump card, in addition to Orpheus. We are a fast-attack. We get paid every day to go looking for trouble and mix it up with our adversary.”

“I admit that’s an important observation, sir, but very dangerous if we’re wrong. Remember, Beck used to be XO on a fast-attack. And he knows you, sir.”

Jeffrey frowned. “Our problem is that the Rocks split this whole area between the two phone cables into separate playing fields. North, and south. Which one do we play in?”

Uncertainty piled on uncertainty.

“Go north, sir,” Bell said decisively.

Jeffrey smiled. “Why so sure?”

“Our priority is protecting the convoy. The convoy is north. Beck’s priority is attacking the convoy. The convoy is north.”

“North it is.” Jeffrey knew everyone in the control room who wasn’t wearing sonar headphones heard snatches of this talk. For clarity, he said, “Helm, steady as you go.”

“Aye aye,” Meltzer said. “My course is zero one five, sir.” A bit east of due north.

“Until Orpheus tells us otherwise, XO, we assume von Scheer is north of the Rocks, somewhere between these two cables.”

This give-and-take between a submarine’s senior officers, in the control room before and during an attack, was an old and valued Silent Service tradition. Brainstorming approaches and tactics, thinking things through out loud, was essential to survival and success.

Bell called up a larger-scale chart. “Check this out, Captain. The two cables are almost parallel, but not quite. They slowly draw closer together, as they run north away from the Rocks.”

Jeffrey saw what Bell was getting at. “They intersect here.” He touched a spot on the map near the Azores and used Bell’s joystick to move a cursor. He clicked on the Rocks, then clicked again when the cursor hit where the two cables met. He read off the distance that popped on the screen. “One thousand