Tidal Rip

Milgrom turned to her console.

Jeffrey yelled, “Meltzer! COB!” but it did no good.

Milgrom pinged on the bow sphere, over and over, to search for a torpedo somewhere in the trillions of bubbles swarming everywhere. Jeffrey knew the lingering heat of all those blasts made acoustic propagation paths impossible to decipher. This pinging might do more harm than good. It might just draw a live torpedo toward them.

Then Challenger entered the worst part of the wall of solid turbulence. She heaved and bucked and plunged in different directions. Jeffrey’s stomach rose to his throat, or he was pressed down on his backside, with no letup. The ship’s autopilot kicked in, since the computer sensed the lack of inputs from the helmsman. But there was just so much even the autopilot could do. Jeffrey was glad that Challenger had stayed shallow — a collision with bottom terrain would have been the end of everything.

Eventually Challenger came out the other side of the major turbulence. Meltzer and COB began to revive. Jeffrey shouted for them to slow to ahead one-third, in order to make a less noisy target, and maybe be able to pick up torpedo-engine sounds. But the passive sonars were useless in such a high acoustic sea state: The continuing noise, its primary source behind the ship now, drowned out any meaningful signal as it echoed and reverberated from all directions — off the surface waves and bottom terrain, and off the ocean’s ever-present tiny biologics and organic waste that drifted everywhere.

Then a message from Engineering appeared on Jeffrey’s screen, like an e-mail through the ship’s fiber-optic LAN. He was glad to see the LAN was functioning, but he wasn’t happy with what the message said. Lieutenant Willey strongly recommended avoiding any higher speeds until his men were able to check the propulsion-plant systems from top to bottom. Something might be on the verge of catastrophic failure, and a thorough safety inspection was vital. Jeffrey, disappointed but knowing exactly how valid Willey’s caution was, typed him an acknowledgment. For now, Jeffrey’s ship was almost immobilized.

He ordered Milgrom to ping again on the bow sphere, to search for von Scheer.

Nothing.

He told Milgrom to ping again. He waited for a good target echo.

Nothing.

Jeffrey turned to Bell. “I think you were right!” he shouted.

Bell seemed dazed. His face was ashen. “Sir?”

“He didn’t want to sink us! He knew he couldn’t win a stand-up fight if we traded blow for blow!”

“Yes, Captain!”

“He cared more about getting away! He raised that solid wall of atomic fireballs to block von Scheer from our view! Then he took off, east! Using twin reactors and polymer squirts and God only knows what else! He regroups with all the other Axis submarines massing near Africa, and takes another shot at the convoy from there!”

Bell nodded dumbly.

Jeffrey touched Bell on the shoulder to make sure the man was all right. He knew there’d be injured throughout the ship. Mess-management specialists, trained as the ship’s paramedics, began to appear, making their rounds with firstaid kits.

Bell tapped Jeffrey’s hand and nodded more briskly, less disoriented now. “We have to go after him, sir! Abandon the SEALs and the minisub if we must!”

Jeffrey hated that last part, but he had to agree. “Helm, make your course zero nine zero!” Due east.

Jeffrey picked up a mike for Engineering — he wanted Willey to hear the urgency in his voice.

“Give me flank speed now! Forget caution, the von Scheer is getting away!”

CHAPTER 24

Ilse Reebeck watched at her post in Admiral Hodgkiss’s war room as the first stage of the Battle of the South Atlantic began. There was a frenzy of constant activity at desks and consoles all around, people yelling across the room, messengers running, senior officers talking into two or even three phone handsets at once. Reports came in from out on the ocean. Command and logistic decisions were made under terrible pressure. Hasty orders went out from Norfolk to major fleet units at sea. The shouting of SEAL Lieutenant Estabo over the radio, before he got cut off on the Rocks, hung in the air of the war room like a storm cloud. The news of contact on von Scheer, and then the huge burst of undersea atomic detonations, was electrifying and terrifying. In the worst scenario possible, escalation all the way to global thermonuclear exchange, the Norfolk naval complex would be high on Russia’s target list; Ilse pitied civilians in any large city — in this war there was no such thing as being safe far behind the front lines.

Ilse was way too busy to be able to worry much more than that. Oceanographic data poured in to her desk from sensor platforms in space or in the air, and from other platforms on or under the water. All this information she helped to harness and massage, to render most meaningful other data cascading in to Norfolk, data relayed by satellite from ships and planes and helicopters: data from hundreds of active and passive sonobuoys.

Ilse was so intent on her work, she was startled to notice that Commodore Wilson was standing next to her. He nodded curtly, as was his manner, then glanced back and forth between her console displays and the huge TV screens on the wall. Ilse suspected the waiting must be difficult even for him, and he’d come to her for a measure of companionship.

On the surface-warfare plot, Ilse saw that the destroyers and frigates were tearing toward their new positions, well out ahead of the carriers. The carriers and cruisers themselves raced at flank speed to form up for the dash through the Narrows, and then for their suppression of Axis installations posing seaward threats from looming North Africa. The main air-warfare situation plot showed modified U.S. Air Force long-endurance midair refueling tankers were staging from bases in Venezuela to help keep carrier planes in the air far longer than the navy could on its own, and let them stay much farther forward deployed than the Axis would ever expect. B-52s with huge lift capacity and almost endless on-station time were also helping the navy — by dropping sonobuoys, not just air-to-ground missiles and smart bombs. There’d been very few air-to-air combat skirmishes yet with enemy fighters, but Ilse knew the modern Luftwaffe would be coming up in strength when it best suited them.

Just then the house phone on her console rang. The caller was Hodgkiss’s senior aide, who wanted Wilson. Ilse gave the phone to the commodore. He listened, then said, “We’ll be right there.”

Wilson gave her back the phone handset. “The admiral wants us in his private conference room. Now.”

Ilse quickly made sure the people on either side of her had things under control and could fill in while she was gone. They were staffers from the navy’s Meteorology and Oceanography Command — they knew their stuff.

Ilse followed mutely a step behind Wilson. They left the big war room, took a corridor, then cleared a security checkpoint and entered a windowless room, with a mahogany table and half a dozen nice chairs. Hodgkiss and his aide came into the room a moment later. Hodgkiss nodded to Ilse and then addressed Wilson. “They said it’s an emergency. Beyond that I know as much as you do.”

The director of naval intelligence entered. He was a vice admiral — a three-star. He and Hodgkiss exchanged looks of concern, and Ilse wondered what was going on. The DNI said hello to her; they’d met several times before.

A minute later, two new people walked in. Ilse was surprised and impressed. She’d met them both back in January at a formal debriefing after her first two missions on Challenger.

“Admiral,” a tall and lanky woman said to Hodgkiss.

“General,” Hodgkiss responded. They shook hands as Ilse watched. The woman was a retired U.S. Air Force general, now the national security adviser to the president. She had bags under her eyes, but seemed alert, if severe. She was elegantly dressed, and her eyes were hard and piercing. Her chin was chiseled and naturally jutting. Her lips were pursed in a permanent frown.