Tidal Rip

Axis with sufficient excuse right there? That we, gathered here in this room, by holding this meeting and making the decisions that Captain Fuller presses us to make, may very well create the provocation for war?”

Jeffrey blushed. He hadn’t thought of that.

Da Gama is smart. Scary smart. But Jeffrey would not be put off, even by such powerful rhetoric.

“Mr. President, viewing everything as a whole, I think we need to take the risk.”

“I appreciate more and more why your head of state sent you, Captain. You’ve been in nuclear combat several times.”

Jeffrey nodded.

“You’ve dealt and taken atomic blows. You’ve seen and felt the horror firsthand. An envoy, a diplomat, an embassy man I could dismiss too easily as a mere theoretician. You, however, speak to me with total credibility.”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. President.”

“I know you do not urge active involvement upon me lightly. But still I must reject your premise of risk. I begin more and more to consider the opposite view. That to act, with no harder information to go on, would be our gravest possible error. I must think of my own people first, Captain, and not get caught up in adventures based on American whim. Brazil is a democracy, and I cannot on my own either perform or condone what amounts to a declaration of war, especially not at the behest of a foreign power, the United States. My people, our congress, they know nothing of the threat of nuclear fighting on this continent. To convince them, to have any constructive effect, seems an impossible task when I’m not convinced myself.”

“Sirs,” Jones broke in, “may I suggest we take a short recess?”

Da Gama nodded curtly. He got up to leave the room, followed by his officers. Once they were gone, Colonel Stewart and Mr. Jones came over to Jeffrey, who remained seated. He felt exhausted and beaten by the verbal fencing that had gone nowhere.

“Well, at least you’re trying,” Stewart said.

“Be careful,” Jones said in an undertone. “We have to assume this room is bugged, and they’re recording everything we say.”

“Fine,” Jeffrey said. “We don’t have anything to hide, do we?”

Stewart and Jones shook their heads.

Jeffrey walked up to the map of Argentina. He studied it from top to bottom.

Where would the American warhead come ashore? Where would they detonate it? How can Estabo’s SEALs effectively interdict a kampfschwimmer team? How best could Challenger intercept von Scheer ?…What if von Scheer landed her warheads too soon?

He began to form a plan. “Colonel Stewart? Mr. Jones? Either of you know how to work this map-displayer thing?”

“What do you want to see?” Jones asked.

“A different area. Run from Mar del Plata up to Paranagua.”

“Remind me where’s Paranagua.”

“South of Rio. On the coast.”

“And?”

“Go inland enough to show Buenos Aires, and all of the border between Brazil and Argentina too.” The border stretched about three hundred miles.

Jones played with the controls. He cursed once or twice, but soon had the new map on the screen.

Da Gama and his men returned to the room.

Da Gama saw the map had changed. “What are you looking at, Captain?”

“We need to see this more from the German point of view. We know time is critical for them because of Challenger’s presence.”

“Are they sure your ship is nearby? We took great precautions bringing you here.”

“They have to at least make allowances for the possibility.”

Da Gama nodded. “They too must look at different scenarios.”

“When transporting anything, time interchanges with distance, and distance with time.”

“Of course.”

“The Germans knew from the beginning that they wouldn’t have forever, or even very long…. Their target needs to be some where on this map, I think. Somewhere within easy range of Mar del Plata, which stands out as the closest port or naval base to wherever the von Scheer might be.”

“Easy range by what means?”

“If the target isn’t either Mar del Plata or Buenos Aires themselves — for all the various reasons we discussed and agreed on before — it has to be someplace inland to make any sense.”

“Transport by truck, or plane, or helicopter,” da Gama stated.

“Yes. All of which can be tracked by one of our airborne reconnaissance platforms.”

“So, Captain?”

“Our mistake before was fixating on the map of Argentina alone, thinking of Argentina in isolation. I think the target’s going to be somewhere on the border, close to the border.”

“There’s nothing there but jungle and swamps. We already moved the civilians out of Foz, with great difficulty.”

“Foz. That’s near the Triple Border, where Brazil and Argentina touch and both also meet Paraguay?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Scratch that, then. But there are troop concentrations all along the border, right? All the way south from Paraguay to Uruguay?”

“Yes. On both sides, ours and Argentina’s. We’re running low on artillery shells already…. So are the Argentines, from what our intelligence sources indicate.”

“Then that’s it,” Jeffrey said decisively. “They’ll set off the American bomb somewhere just on the Argentine side of the border. Kill some of their own troops, but not damage any primary fascist assets. Make it look like Brazil brought the bomb to the border from your side, Mr. President, and snuck it across, and you set it off as prelude to a breakthrough assault through the hole you punch in Argentina’s shaken defensive front lines.”

Da Gama stared at the map for a very long time. Finally, he nodded. “Our paradigm, our perspective, was wrong. They don’t intend to use the stolen device as a weapon of terror. They plan to use it as tactical nuclear arms were designed to be used, on a military battlefield…. It makes their scheme to implicate Brazil and the U.S. wholly plausible to world opinion this way…. What do you want us to do?”

“When the hovercraft change shifts at Paranagua, while they escort my submarine south, I want my SEAL team to sneak off Challenger and come ashore at Paranagua. That’ll put them in better striking distance of anywhere on the border, hours sooner than otherwise.”

“Why SEALs, Captain?” da Gama said.

“The border is mostly defined by major rivers in full flood.”

“Yes. The Iguazu. The Uruguai. The bridges were blown and the ferries burned, days ago now.”

“That makes the warhead recovery a riverine operation, sir. That’s one thing SEAL teams do. It’s our warhead; let it be our people who fight to get it back or disarm it.”

“I’m not sure.”

“If there must be a border incursion, Mr. President, it should be by Americans. Later you can deny you’d ever approved — in order to defend Brazil’s neutrality.”

“We have our own troops on the border. The core battalions are very well trained. Professionals. I’m hardly the only one who studied with your U.S. Army.”

“Sir, no slight on your men is intended, or implied. But my team have recent live experience on an actual nuclear battlefield. They’ve gone up against kampfschwimmer hand to hand and they did well.”

“Yes?” Da Gama sat thoughtfully. “It does make sense the Germans would use kampfschwimmer to plant the