Tidal Rip

“The maximum for Mark Eighty-eights. I’m sure he’ll use the maximum.”

“One-tenth kiloton.”

Beck nodded.

Little disks appeared around each inbound torpedo symbol. They represented the radius within which their warhead detonations would inflict fatal damage on Ernst Beck’s ship at her present depth. The disks still had some time before they were dangerous to the von Scheer. Though water was very rigid and dense, so that blast force traveled great distances, the warhead yields were small, and the von Scheer was very shock hardened…. And blast force in deep water died off inversely with the cube of the range: ten times as far from ground zero meant only one-one-thousandth the impact. Even a megaton hydrogen bomb set off in the sea could just kill a steel-hulled sub out to a dozen miles or so.

Beck was surprised at his own inner calm as he ran through these cold-blooded facts. But calm was one key part of his plan. He watched the icon on his display that represented Challenger. He listened to her noise coming over the speakers.

Who knows himself and the other man better, Captain Fuller, you or me?

Who remembers more from the last time we met? Who more clearly understands the crucial differences now?

And who learned the most from our previous battle? The victor or the vanquished, you think? I do believe that failure is a sharper, keener tutor than success.

“Master One still maintaining constant course and speed, sir,” Bell reported.

“No countermeasures? No decoys? No torpedoes launched?” Jeffrey was puzzled — a sensation he really didn’t like.

“Negative, Captain.”

“He has to have heard us pinging.”

“I concur.”

“So what’s he up to?” Jeffrey’s common sense set off alarm bells in his head. Beck must be up to something. The German’s total lack of reaction to the surprising presence of Jeffrey’s ship and then to Challenger’s aggressive pinging, and now Bell’s full salvo of oncoming nuclear fish, was the last thing he had expected.

“Sir,” Bell warned, “there’s so little we know about the von Scheer’s design. He may have a nasty trick up his sleeve.”

“Like what, XO?”

“He’s much too quiet at thirty knots for that to be his flank speed. He’s holding something back.”

“You mean you think he might be faster than us?”

“Maybe.”

“Sonar.”

“Captain?”

“What’s von Scheer’s stern look like? One propulsor or two?”

“One large pump-jet propulsor, sir.”

“How many nuclear reactors?”

“Captain?”

“The Russians often use two on their bigger submarines, right? We know the Axis gets help on propulsion plants from Moscow. Does von Scheer have a single reactor, or two?”

“Wait, please,” Milgrom said.

Jeffrey turned to Bell. “What’s your guess?”

“He might have two.”

“I know he might have two. I need a specific best guess.”

“One big propulsor seems to suggest one single big reactor.”

Jeffrey bobbed his head around as if he was thinking about what Bell said and wasn’t sure if he agreed with his XO or not.

“Sonar?” he pressed. He felt worried and impatient.

“Impossible to tell number of Master One reactors on-line from the sound profile available.”

Jeffrey looked at Bell. “So he may be running at whatever top quiet speed he can get out of just one reactor, with another held in reserve, idling in quick-start-up power range. He might suddenly throw both on-line at full power and zoom away from us.”

“But from our torpedoes, sir?” Bell said. “The Mark Eighty-eights do seventy knots.”

Jeffrey fought hard not to lose his temper as he went on: “And the Russian Shkval undersea rocket torpedoes do two hundred knots. And we know even back in the Cold War, the Russians worked on slippery long-chain polymers they’d squirt from the front of the bow dome to lower hull friction in order to help them outrun inbound fish.”

Bell nodded reluctantly. “So at least for short periods, sir, the von Scheer might be able to run at seventy knots.”

Something in Jeffrey’s spirit sagged. “If that’s true, we’ve already lost this contest. If Beck is waiting for just the right moment to shove all his throttles hard against the firewall, and he really is able to sprint that fast, we don’t have a weapon aboard that can stop him.”

“Our Tomahawks do hundreds of knots.”

“You know they’ve all been loaded just for high-explosive land attack.”

Bell stared at his screens. Jeffrey realized his XO had run out of useful ideas. He felt his own throat start to go dry; he had to pucker to summon saliva. A few uncomfortable minutes passed.

“Sonar, Fire Control,” Jeffrey said, “any change whatsoever on Master One?”

“Negative, sir,” Milgrom said. “No change in tonals, no mechanical transients at all.”

“Contact’s course and speed continue steady, sir. Due east at thirty knots.”

Jeffrey looked at the tactical plot. His eight atomic weapons were drawing closer to the Admiral von Scheer. Very soon they’d be in lethal range, and Ernst Beck had to know it, and Ernst Beck wasn’t doing anything to save himself.

Unless he has a way to sprint even faster than my torpedoes. Is he rubbing it in now, reading my mind, and showing me his contempt?… Or does he have a whole new secret weapon, and he knows that I don’t know it, and he’s not the least bit worried about me or my inbound fish?

Maybe Beck has something awful, an entire new technology — and he’s about to deal with me and my torpedoes once and for all, the same way a horse would use its tail to swat down pesty flies.

For almost the first time in his life in the navy, Jeffrey began to feel genuine, gnawing, soul-crushing fear.

“I think we’ve toyed with Fuller’s mind enough,” Ernst Beck said, and cleared his throat. “Achtung, Einzvo, target one Sea Lion at each incoming Mark Eighty-eight. Set all Sea Lion warhead yields to maximum, one kiloton.”

“One kiloton, sir? Doctrine is to make defensive countershots at lowest yield.”

Beck smiled again at Stissinger, then shrugged theatrically. “So I’m a nonconformist.”

“Maximum yield, jawohl,” Stissinger acknowledged.

“Load firing solutions.”

“Loaded.”

“Close all inner doors. Flood tubes.”

“Closed and flooded, Captain.”

“Equalize to sea pressure. Open all outer doors.”

“Equalized and doors open.”

“Achtung, tube one, los!” Go!