Tidal Rip

one hundred nautical miles.”

“That’s a long way off.”

“I know. At flank speed that would take us over twenty hours…. And at flank speed our best sonars would be half deaf, and von Scheer might hear us coming from a hundred miles away or more.”

“It’s an awfully big area to search,” Bell said.

“The convoy forward elements are closer than that already. That cuts down the area somewhat. It’ll keep on shrinking even if we don’t do anything more ourselves.”

Bell nodded. The convoy was moving south, generally toward the Rocks and away from the Azores.

Jeffrey pondered. “The closer the convoy gets, the more the search area narrows. But the closer the convoy gets, the more it moves in easy range of von Scheer’s missiles.”

“Use our active sonar, sir? While there’s still time?”

“Without knowing who’s winning or losing on the Rocks, the SEALs or the kampfschwimmer, we don’t know how much time we really have. Active sonar used too soon might hurt us more than it helps…. It’s time to commit to another strategy step.”

“Sir?”

“Helm, slow to ahead one-third, make turns for seven knots.”

Meltzer acknowledged.

“Sir?” Bell asked again.

“If we can’t be rushing all over the place, we go for the other extreme. We lurk in one spot until the situation clarifies.”

“Should I show you the large-scale bottom terrain?”

“You just read my mind, XO.”

Bell typed again. He windowed a map of the seafloor, in that key slice of ocean between the two old phone cables.

Jeffrey and Bell studied the nautical chart — its area reached far beyond the maximum range of their gravimeter, which could see out only thirty-five or forty miles from Challenger.

“The eastern foothills of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,” Jeffrey said. “Rugged and rolling terrain, all the way from here to the convoy and past. All deep, but well within a ceramic-hulled submarine’s operating envelope.”

“Yes, Captain. For both us and for the von Scheer.”

“I can think of several things we might do next, XO. But I don’t like any one of them.”

“Sir?”

“Von Scheer has to come shallow to launch her missiles. We know it, and Beck knows we know. That’s his one real weakness.”

“That’s why I suggested active sonar, Captain. If he rises out of the bottom terrain, we’ll make contact. He’ll use outof-phase acoustic masking, but our arrays and signal processors are probably smart enough to not be fooled. Especially if we get an echo off the slats at the back of his pump jet.”

“Or, he’ll hear us prematurely and not come up from the bottom terrain. He’ll either shoot nuclear torpedoes at us, which is bad enough, or he’ll sneak quietly away. If he shoots, we get some idea of where he is, and we shoot back and maybe at least we damage his ship. But if Beck sneaks away, we’re left empty-handed. Until he launches… He’ll be thinking what we’re thinking. So he’ll know his best choice is to sneak away, once he either gets what he wants from the kampfschwimmer or knows they lost on the Rocks. Time is on his side, not ours.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Sonar,” Jeffrey called.

Kathy Milgrom turned her head. “Captain?”

“Anything at all of von Scheer on passive sonar?”

“No contact on von Scheer whatsoever. My men would have reported it instantly, sir.” Milgrom gave the captain just enough of a look, as if to say, And you know they would have too.

“Very well, Sonar.” Jeffrey stared into space.

“But there’s Orpheus, Captain,” Bell said.

“Two hours or so from now, XO, unless we slow down even more or change our course, we’ll be too far north of the Rocks and we’ll lose the acoustic link with the minisub. From there we’ll be on our own. No more help from Orpheus on getting von Scheer’s location and course and speed so we can move to intercept her smartly, whatever her actual distance from us right now. It all hinges on that fixed anchor station…. But if Beck does sneak off north, he’ll unwittingly lie masked between those two cables until he’s too far off for us to put a stop to him, and we won’t even know it. In that case, us lingering here and depending on Orpheus will have done more harm than good.” It’s like we can’t win either way.

Bell looked at the map for a very long time. Jeffrey let him think; he knew there were many moving parts to this tactical problem, and he didn’t want to rush Bell. Undersea warfare was in some ways like a grand-master chess tournament. You had to think several moves ahead. You had to consider a lot of different strategy choices and trade-offs. And you had to try to take account of what your opponent would think and feel and do.

But unlike chess, the stakes here aren’t prestige or money. The stakes are life and death for hundreds, even thousands of people.

Bell looked up abruptly. He seemed emotionally unsettled, but he’d clearly made up his mind. “We have to nuke the Rocks ourselves, Captain, now.”

Jeffrey raised his eyebrows. “Why?”

“We can’t afford for Estabo to loose his battle. If the kampfschwimmer win, and we guessed right about their purpose, they’ll send good targeting data to von Scheer.”

“And if we nuke the Rocks we kill everybody, so that way the Germans can’t win?”

Bell nodded, but seemed doubtful when he heard Jeffrey put it so bluntly out loud.

Jeffrey shook his head. “First of all, I’m not intentionally killing friendly troops. Second, the blasts would cause so much noise and aftershocks we’d lose the acoustic link to Orpheus, assuming the mini even survived.”

“I agree, sir. I just felt I had to offer the option.”

“Good. Keep it up.” But Jeffrey felt halfhearted when he said it. The von Scheer was out there, somewhere tantalizingly close — unseen but real. She must weigh something like twenty thousand tons submerged, and have well over a hundred men in her crew, but even so she’d vanished. For all the brainstorming with Bell, Ernst Beck’s mind remained opaque to Jeffrey. The German captain held the initiative, and Beck’s ship remained invisible.

Jeffrey felt frustration. The taste of failure began to rise inside his gut like bile.

“Captain!” Kathy Milgrom called.

Jeffrey turned, his train of thought broken. “What is it?”

Milgrom didn’t flinch. “New contact on acoustic intercept… Multiple contacts on acoustic intercept.” The acoustic intercept array was specifically designed to detect another active sonar pinging.

“Range? Bearing? Classification? Come on, give me a proper report.”

I’m starting to lose my grip here. Chill out, buddy. Your people don’t need such abuse.

“Contact rough bearing is north, sir, picked up through the deep sound channel. Range approximately four hundred miles. Contact classification, tentative, is airdropped active sonobuoys.”

Jeffrey brightened.

“Another cluster of sonobuoys, Captain. Closer to us, by maybe fifty miles.”

“Can you identify the sonobuoys?”

“Definite American and British manufacture, sir. Some are SSQ-seventy-fives.” That model of sonobuoy could descend to sixteen thousand feet or more.

“Okay, Sonar. Good. Thanks. Keep the info coming…. XO, plot these contacts on the large-scale nautical chart.”

Marks for the rough location of the sonobuoys began to appear on the chart on Bell’s console.

“What do you think, XO? Antisubmarine search by the convoy’s forward aircraft screens?”