Tidal Rip

bring prestige and great social advancement, but at the cost of countless innocent lives.

I need more time to deal with this.

“The time approaches,” von Loringhoven said. “Let’s open the envelope, shall we, and then get Lieutenant Shedler in here?”

Beck stood up. He felt something inside him yield and break. There was a terrible sinking in his stomach and chest.

But the feeling of falling inside himself wasn’t endless. It rebounded swiftly, as if his innermost being had hit a core of hardened steel. “I’ll go through the act, Baron. Only make no mistake.”

“Yes?”

“I completely despise you.”

“So long as we achieve what our country asks of us in South America, you’re welcome to detest me as much as you like.”

“All this just rolls right off your back, doesn’t it?”

“I take that as a compliment. No sarcasm intended. You have your talents and I have mine.”

“Suppose this Jeffrey Fuller is smarter than you think? Suppose he’s hunting for us, here, in these waters, now? What if they know we’re giving atom bombs to Argentina? What if they even know we stole one of theirs from that destroyer hulk?”

“Lucky guesses, compromised codes, double agents are always threats. You think High Command are amateurs? Open your safe. Contingency plans for every scenario wait in there for you, and for your kampfschwimmer team. Sink Challenger off Latin America, now, so far from the convoy? Why, then that much the better for you and all your descendants, Captain von Beck.”

CHAPTER 29

The sea was warm and sunlight dappled the surface overhead. Jeffrey — refreshed by another catnap — breathed underwater through his Draeger, embraced by the sea. Felix and a SEAL chief were his dive buddies. He watched for a moment as a large ocean turtle swam by above him, silhouetted by the sun; it paddled rapidly, as if it was in a great hurry. Jeffrey floated effortlessly, weightless, letting his body relax. He drew air in and out of his rebreather mouthpiece rhythmically and evenly. Felix did a last equipment check, gave him a macho thumbs-up, then unclipped the six-foot lanyard attached to Jeffrey’s waist. Jeffrey looked down through his dive mask and watched. Beneath him was Challenger — from an angle, an aspect, he’d never seen before. The top of her sail was barely thirty feet beneath the surface. She was almost at periscope depth, as shallow as she dared go — just shallow enough for Jeffrey’s pure-oxygen rig not to give him convulsions.

Felix and the chief swam down through the open upper hatch atop the sail. The lower watertight hatch was closed, of course, and would be opened only after the flooded sail trunk was pumped dry. The sail of a nuclear submarine was rarely used as a lockout chamber. But the capability was there. Doing it this way kept the main bulk of the ship as far beneath the waves as possible.

Challenger was a huge black shape, longer than a football field and more than forty feet in diameter. Jeffrey couldn’t see as far as the bow or the stern. The water here was murky as he gazed down, alive with tiny organisms, clouded by their waste, and further obscured by silt from rivers swollen by the rainy season. As he observed her from outside, breathing through his Draeger, Jeffrey felt a mix of pride and concern. He remembered that more than ten dozen people worked inside that looming pressure hull. He prayed that they’d be safe, and he’d be reunited with them soon under favorable circumstances.

Challenger had come close inshore off the coast of Brazil, up on the continental shelf — the water beneath her keel right now was only three hundred feet deep. She was following a safe corridor arranged by President da Gama’s senior naval staff, as laid out in the instructions from Admiral Hodgkiss. This side trip hadn’t helped the schedule any, but the minisub lacked the required range and was much too slow to be of use. Jeffrey’s ship, under Bell’s command, was already running hours late; the atomic torpedoes in all eight tubes had been replaced with conventional ADCAPs.

Jeffrey saw the sail cockpit’s outer streamlining clamshells swing closed. Even this nearby, his ears could register no sounds as Felix and his chief locked back into the ship.

Isolated so suddenly, left all by himself in a state that verged on sensory deprivation, he was struck by a surge of paranoia. What if it’s all a giant trap? Challenger ’s pinned against the coast and the bottom, and now she’s half disarmed.

Jeffrey almost physically reasserted self-control and told himself to trust his chain of command, to have faith in their security measures. But it wasn’t easy.

He allowed himself to drift slowly south just beneath the surface, riding the one-knot Brazil Current, saving his strength. COB and Meltzer kept Challenger on a perfect trim beneath the gentle swells. Now they moved the sub sideways, north, by engaging her auxiliary maneuvering units — again there was nothing but silence. They needed to get well away from Jeffrey before they went deeper and picked up speed, or he might be pulled down by the suction, with fatal results. Too close, he might even be drawn into the pump-jet propulsor intake. Challenger would be crippled, and her captain would be very dead.

Jeffrey watched with growing misgivings as his vessel shied away and disappeared. Soon he felt a firm jostling and suspected it was Challenger’s rudder wash as she turned.

The Draeger mouthpiece he had donned tasted rubbery, and the oxygen he breathed felt dry. But he knew his throat was dry for other reasons too. He rose to the surface and took a quick peek up into the air.

The sun overhead was deceptive. Not far off, eastward, threatening low dark clouds were massing, their undersides blurred by what Jeffrey knew was strong rain. As expected, as detected on passive sonar before, a squall line was forming, moving inshore. Then brilliant lightning sizzled, and unfettered thunder cracked — and a fuzzy gray funnel reached down to the sea.

Jeffrey realized he was near a waterspout, a tornado on the ocean. To a ship or swimmer, it was as deadly as any twister on land.

A seaborne tornado was not part of the plan, nor was a squall so sudden and violent. Jeffrey felt defenseless as the wind began to pick up. Lightning sizzled again, and hit the surface of the highly conductive sea. He knew Brazil had more lightning-bolt strikes per square mile each year than anywhere else on earth; someplace or other in the country received such a million-volt shock on average every half second. Jeffrey gripped his waterproof travel bag more tightly, as if that would help; it was attached to his gear belt by a lanyard, and also had a floatation bladder so its weight didn’t drag him down.

He wondered how deep he’d have to dive to be safe from the lightning, and if the metal in his equipment would draw the terrifyingly sudden energetic bolts, even if he was submerged. He wondered as well if the Brazilians would cancel the pickup because of this squall — and leave him helpless, abandoned, with no radio and very little shark repellent and no drinking water at all.

Will they even be able to find me once the storm passes, assuming I survive? Delay of another hour could spell a disastrous loss against the von Scheer.

Then Jeffrey heard a powerful clattering roar and the whine of twin-engine turbines. A helicopter was approaching him from the north, skirting the forward edge of the oncoming storm. But the waterspout and the squall line were advancing rapidly too. It seemed a toss-up which would reach him first.

The helo-engine noise grew very loud and the aircraft passed right overhead, its rotor downwash lashing the surface into a rippling foamy white. Someone in the helo, standing in an open door, was searching the water.

The helo banked, turned back, and came in at less than twenty feet. Jeffrey recognized a Sea King, wearing Brazilian Navy insignia. It slowed. One after another, seven men in black wet suits and Draegers leaped from the door and into the water. The Sea King rushed back north.

Jeffrey ducked beneath the surface.

He activated a weak sonar transponder, worrying that the ultrasonic signal might draw sharks.

Soon six men were swimming toward him underwater. Their technique, their form, their team discipline, all were outstanding. Submerged, the men surrounded Jeffrey. He was unarmed except for his dive knife — an