Tidal Rip

Jeffrey opened his mouth to object but COB cut him off.

“Let’s leave aside the question of who really outranks whom, a commander or a master chief. Someone needs to tell you this. Whatcha gonna do, fire me for it? Bust me to seaman second class?”

“COB, you know you always have my attention. You don’t need to rub it in like that.”

“See? You’re even touchy now, and you’re supposed to be the meanest sumbitch in town in any nasty fight…. Go tothe wardroom immediately. Eat a decent meal and skip the coffee. Then come back here and lie down for a solid six hours at least.”

“But—”

“Sir, we’ll all be right outside! If something happens we’ll get you!”

Jeffrey stood up straighter. COB had made his point. “Aye aye, Master Chief. Tell Lieutenant Willey he retains the conn. He knows the plan. He knows where to find me.” Jeffrey looked at COB and smiled — with relief and gratitude. “You clever old sea dog you. Now I see why you brought the engineer forward.”

Alone in his cabin, Ernst Beck prepared for bed. He welcomed the chance to escape, from his workload and from his overbearing passenger, Baron von Loringhoven.

Beck’s sleep was troubled. He kept waking from vague but disturbing nightmares. He would roll over and fall asleep again, but only for a short while.

Then Ernst Beck had a different sort of dream. He was age ten, and home with his mother and father on their prosperous dairy farm in Bavaria, in the scenic rolling foothills of the mighty snowcapped Alps, near historic and cosmopolitan Munich. In the dream they were finishing dinner, time for dessert, and Beck’s mother had baked a pie that looked and smelled delicious.

Ernst Beck woke in a cold sweat after this dream, soon enough to remember it very vividly. He felt homesick, nostalgic, almost heartbroken for that simple, innocent, and happy time forever lost in the past.

Throwing off the soggy covers, he began to get up; he knew that sleeping now was useless.

As his right foot hit the floor, Beck realized something and almost gasped. To make doubly sure, he rushed to open his laptop and called up a nautical chart. The SEAL setup on the Rocks that Shedler had described in some detail after the battle — the satellite dish and the cables running down into the water — was there for a reason. It couldn’t be coincidence. It had to be cause and effect.

Beck now understood how the Allies, how Challenger, had located his ship near the Rocks in the Atlantic Narrows so easily and precisely. And he recognized what he had to do to keep them from finding him and his ship the same way again.

My unconscious mind took facts and processed them and made connections while I slept.

On the chart on his laptop screen he saw the St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks and the east-west ridge on which they lay. The chart also showed the undersea phone cables, as nautical charts usually did.

Through the LAN, Beck downloaded from stored data the exact pattern of the enemy SSQ-75 sonobuoys dropped north of the Rocks during the battle. He overlaid this on the nautical chart.

The fit was too perfect for there to be any other explanation. They were trying to get me cornered between two cables, to force me to flee over one or the other.

It was the cables. It was somehow all about the cables.

Beck knew the countermeasure was simple, now that he understood the danger. Whenever his ship neared another such old cable on a chart, he’d have to go shallow or go very slow…. Annoying, but a minor inconvencience to beat the Allies’ high-tech trick.

CHAPTER 26

Jeffrey awoke refreshed from his long nap and took a very hot shower. He decided to use his privilege as captain and let the steaming water run for two whole minutes continuously. No quick on-off conserve- the-water navy shower for me today.

Then he shaved, an unpleasant business, as the razor snagged on two-days-plus worth of stubble. He donned clean khakis and checked himself out in the dressing mirror: he was transformed, in appearance and mood.

Now this is how a warship’s commanding officer is supposed to look.

Jeffrey went into the control room with a much lighter step than when he’d left it eight hours before. Now, instead, the prospect of more cat and mouse with von Scheer, of more stalking and shooting with Korvettenkapitan Ernst Beck, excited him. A thrill of adrenaline rushed through his body.

The weapons officer, Lieutenant Torelli, had the deck and the conn. Jeffrey eyed a ship’s clock. It was before midnight, local time. The watch was about to change, as it did every six hours around the clock, day in, day out, whenever the ship was under way but not at actual battle stations.

In the control room, which was rigged for red, Jeffrey greeted Torelli. Weps was fairly new to the ship, having first come aboard for Challenger’s previous mission the month before. Jeffrey found out fast, then, that he was a good department head, knowledgeable and yet eager to delegate, crisp and attentive to duty under fire, and great fun to share a beer with while relaxing in home port. Torelli was single, in his late twenties, from a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee. He came across as arrogant until you got to know him. He also seemed like a hard-ass toward his men, until you heard how he mentored them so well as individuals in private.

Jeffrey told Torelli he intended to take the conn once he familiarized himself with the ship’s present status. He then wandered purposefully around the compartment, studying different men’s console displays: sonar, weapons, navigating, ship control.

“Very well,” he said to Torelli. “I have the conn.”

“You have the conn.” Torelli slid over and Jeffrey sat down.

“This is the captain. I have the conn.”

“Aye aye,” the watchstanders acknowledged. Soon the entire watch rotated. A talented lieutenant (j.g.) from Engineering came forward.

Jeffrey settled in at the command workstation conning officer’s console. The lieutenant (j.g.) from Engineering sat next to him, serving as officer of the deck. The OOD’s job was — among other important things — to oversee machinery operations and related procedures inside the ship. This left Jeffrey undistracted, free to monitor the larger picture and make the big decisions on how Challenger should fight.

Jeffrey scrolled through the digital log from the previous watch for the sonar department. The sonarmen had detected a number of loud explosions in the distance, back toward North Africa. These were all identified as tactical nuclear detonations on and under the sea.

The battle between the relief convoy and Axis forces is definitely heating up…. Still no hint of a contact on the von Scheer.

Then Jeffrey had an awful thought. His feeling of being transcendently alive at the prospect of combat quickly wilted.

He turned to the messenger of the watch. He tried to keep his voice even. “Where’re the XO and Sonar?”

“XO’s sleeping, sir. Lieutenant Milgrom is using the enlisted mess to do a training drill for some of her people.”

“Get them, smartly.”

“Aye aye.” The messenger, a very young enlisted man still pimply-faced from acne, hurried aft.

Milgrom arrived in seconds. Bell showed up a minute later, stuffing his shirttails into his pants. He fast went from drowsy to alert when he read Jeffrey’s expression.