Tidal Rip

“There’s a trend to the patterns they’re dropping,” Bell said. “They’re not probing along the relief convoy’s base course through the Narrows, Captain.”

“Hmm… Let’s just watch for a minute…. Helm, steadyas you go.”

“Aye aye, sir. My course is zero one five.”

“Captain,” Bell said, “something strange is happening here.” He pointed at the map.

Jeffrey looked at the map. Minutes ticked by. Precious minutes. Then he saw it, and in a flash all his second- guessing and worries vanished.

“That brilliant son of a bitch,” Jeffrey exclaimed. “He figured it out!”

“Captain?” Bell said.

“The sonobuoys, XO! They’re all being dropped between the two phone cables. Admiral Hodgkiss figured it out! Our radios are jammed so we can’t talk to him, but still he sees the same things we’ve been seeing, thinks the same things we’ve been thinking…. He sent us air support, XO. Thoseplanes are coming at us at almost five hundred knots. Unless Ernst Beck has stronger nerves than I do, he’ll have to move out of the way, east or west, or an SSQ-seventy-five will hit him on the nose and then a big nuclear depth bomb’ll hit him hard right in the head.”

Jeffrey walked over to Milgrom’s console to watch as more and more data came in. A solid carpet of sonobuoys was saturating the bottom terrain between the convoy and the Rocks, between the two old telephone cables. The leading edge of the carpet inched south steadily.

The number of sonobuoys expended was truly prodigious. Jeffrey knew that, at this rate, soon the carriers and even their underway-replenishment-support auxiliary ships would exhaust their entire inventories.

Jeffrey was very glad that he’d decided to stay shallow and not rush away farther north. Otherwise, those constant pings might’ve bounced off Challenger’s hull and given her away to the von Scheer, or — worse — might have subjected him to friendly atomic fire.

“Captain,” Bell called out. “New Orpheus contact. Positive Orpheus contact! Von Scheer is moving due east, here. Her speed is thirty knots.”

Thank you, Admiral Hodgkiss! You flushed Beck for us after all.

Jeffrey turned to COB — it was time to hunker down for the fight. “Chief of the watch, relay by phone talkers shipwide, rig for nuclear depth charge.”

COB acknowledged smartly. Jeffrey returned to Bell.

“We’ve got him, XO. We’ve got him.”

“Yes, sir.” Bell gave a feral grin.

That suddenly, the entire mood in the control room altered. The crew, which had been sensing Jeffrey’s growing despair, sensed instead his confidence, and their own confidence skyrocketed.

“Helm, right thirty degrees rudder. Make your course zero nine zero.” Due east.

“Right thirty degrees rudder, aye. Make my course zero nine zero, aye.”

Estabo and his men will have to fend for themselves for now.

Challenger banked steeply into the turn. The readings on analog compass circles, and digital gyrocompass displays, spun rapidly, then steadied. “My course is zero nine zero, sir.”

“Very well. Helm, ahead flank.”

“Ahead flank, aye!”

The ship began to accelerate. As she topped forty knots, flow turbulence began to cause a harsh hiss on the sonar speakers and a constant shaking in the control room. As Challenger topped fifty knots, the engineering plant worked very hard. Immense power was being put through the propulsion shaft to the pump jet.

The vibrations grew heavy. Consoles squeaked as they jiggled in their shock-absorbing mounts. Light fixtures in the overhead bounced on their springs. Mike cords swayed and everyone held on tight. Challenger’s speed was steady now at just over fifty-three knots.

“Sir,” Bell said, “you told us before that at this speed we’d be blind, and noisy as a freight train.”

“Except for one thing, XO. Now we know where von Scheer is. And now we use active sonar.”

CHAPTER 23

Ernst Beck watched the data on his console in disbelief as his ship fled east to escape the barrage of enemy sonobuoys. “So many SSQ-seventy-fives,” he said mostly to himself. “I didn’t know they even had that many SSQ-seventy-fives.”

Von Loringhoven looked disturbed, even irate. “Everything is going wrong. Everything. First our men on the Rocks encounter U.S. Navy SEALs. Now their carrier planes are searching bottom terrain at our crush depth. The SEALs, that could be explained in other ways. But the deep-capable active sonobuoys, in such heavy quantities, there can be only a single explanation. They suspect the von Scheer’s presence. They suspect it, or they know it.”

“Baron, I concur,” Beck said. “But there’s little good in belaboring the obvious.”

Von Loringhoven opened his mouth to say something, but to Beck’s gratitude, Stissinger smoothly cut him off. “Captain, recommend clearing baffles.” The von Scheer was moving too fast to trail a towed array. Aft of her stern, she couldn’t hear a thing.

“Very well, Einzvo. Pilot, slow to ahead one-third, turns for seven knots. Starboard ten degrees rudder.”

Von Scheer slowed and began to turn in a circle. Her sensitive side-mounted wide-aperture arrays began to listen keenly to the water outside as the arrays swung with the ship in a wide arc.

“New passive contact on the starboard wide-aperture array!” Haffner shouted. “Bearing two seven zero true.” Due west. “Range is forty thousand meters.” Twenty nautical miles. “Contact is submerged! Confirmed! Contact gaining, contact speed is over fifty knots!”

“The Connecticut?” Stissinger asked, referring to the sister ship of the USS Seawolf. According to Imperial German Naval Intelligence, the Seawolf was way up near Iceland, but the Connecticut might be escorting the convoy.

“Negative!” Haffner yelled. “Strong tonals now… Not, repeat not, a Seawolf-class.” Then the sonar officer gasped. “Contact is USS Challenger! Confirmed, definite match of flank-speed tonals to prior data in our library! Contact is USS Challenger!”

Man, this is worse than hell itself. Felix scrambled over a charred inhuman landscape beneath an absurdly clear and balmy blue sky. Other black figures swarmed on the Rocks, grappling with each other or spitting muzzle flashes, like warring parties of fire ants.

Felix cursed when he almost tripped on loose rock. He shouldered his MP-5 and fired another three-round burst at a glimpse of an enemy kampfschwimmer. He missed — the nine-millimeter rounds everyone carried weren’t meant for accurate sniping over long distances.

Felix gasped for air. He was almost drowning in his own perspiration — it couldn’t evaporate within his protective suit, because his body sweated faster than the special layered material could breathe — and Felix roasting from built-up body heat. His mouth was so dry that his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth and his lips were chapped and cracked and bleeding. He had a headache and felt nauseous — definite signs of early heatstroke.

It was so bad he was starting to seriously consider taking his suit helmet off, radioactivity be damned.

Stay focused. Don’t be stupid. You’re the man in charge.

Felix ducked as another German bullet cracked by, frighteningly close. The boulder he chose for his next bit of cover was black and slimy, like all the rest, and the outside of his suit was smeared with toxic goo.