Tidal Rip

The enlisted man swam up and out from under the hovercraft. Jeffrey swam down and joined the other diver from Challenger. Together they closed the clamshells and went through the hatch and dogged it. The sail’s lockout trunk was drained dry. Jeffrey opened the bottom hatch and climbed down into his ship.

His XO, Bell, was standing below the hatch, with a broad smile on his face. He welcomed Jeffrey warmly. “We were so shallow, Skipper,” he said, “we heard a call through our on-hull VLF antenna saying to trail the wire. The call came from the Brazilians, and then they told us all about Lieutenant Estabo and the bomb.”

Jeffrey nodded. “It’s real good news, XO. It makes our life much simpler. Now we head south and go after the von Scheer.”

The two men walked through the control room. Lieutenant Torelli, Weps, had the deck and the conn.

Gratified to see how happy everyone was to have him back, Jeffrey went into his cabin, pulled off his wet suit, and took a shower. He decided to reward himself and let the steaming hot water run over his body delightfully. His stiffness from tension and travel loosened up, and he began to feel refreshed.

Now that he was alone in the phone-booth-sized stainless-steel stall, everything sank in more. He felt a wave of elation bordering on ecstasy.

My excursion was a smashing success! Met a foreign president, won his and his armed forces’ covert support, deployed a winning SEAL team under my orders, saved a continent from nuclear war… Talk about your joint and combined operations, and projecting seapower on land!

Dad, you’ll be just thrilled. This’ll look so good in my service jacket. Did I get my ticket punched today big time, or what?

Jeffrey came back to earth and calmed down. He dried off, shaved, combed his hair, and put on fresh khakis. He checked himself in the dressing mirror.

Well, Ernst Beck, who’s got the upper hand now?

I respect you, and I’m gonna kill you.

Jeffrey went to the control room. The mood there continued to be celebratory. Bell seemed especially charged up, both from having held independent command of Challenger, if only for half a day, and also from anticipation of combat with von Scheer.

Jeffrey let Torelli keep the conn.

Then he cleared his throat and tried to assume a more levelheaded demeanor. “We’ll give the people up there a few more minutes to go through the motions.” He pointed at the overhead, meaning the fake repairs to the hovercraft. “Sonar, put it on speakers, please.”

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Milgrom said.

“Navigator,” Jeffrey said, “bring up a chart that goes from here to two hundred miles south of Mar del Plata, and extends from the coast five hundred miles at sea.”

“Aye aye,” Lieutenant Sessions said.

Over the sonar speakers, Jeffrey heard banging and clanking. Then he heard a muffled clatter and roar as the Brazilian helo returned to pick up the two-man “repair crew.”

The helo noises changed pitch and then diminished. Milgrom’s sonarmen and Torelli’s fire-control technicians tracked the departing aircraft. Jeffrey saw its icon moving away on the tactical plot.

“Sonar speakers off.” The hovercraft would be loud enough as it was, once it got going. Right through the hull, Jeffrey heard the rumble and growl as the diesel engine revved toward maximum power. Torelli issued helm orders.

Meltzer used his engine order dial to hold Challenger under the hovercraft as both vessels picked up speed. Meltzer and COB had their hands full controlling the ship, as her speed topped forty knots up on the shallow continental shelf. The slightest error in trim could cause a collision with the hovercraft, or with the muddy bottom studded with new and old wrecks.

The renewal of risk and responsibility helped Jeffrey sober up more. It’s time to practice my primary trade. His mind-set switched to envisioning undersea warfare tactics.

CHAPTER 37

Much to Ernst Beck’s distaste, but as had been planned all along, Rudiger von Loringhoven was back on the von Scheer.

He was happy enough to stir up nuclear war on another continent, but he lacked the intestinal fortitude to linger once the plan unraveled.

The baron’s return to the ship had been simple enough: While friendly Argentines sent out the flying boat as a diversion, von Loringhoven flew in an old army transport plane in a different direction. The baron used a parachute that opened at low altitude to land in the sea and get picked up by the von Scheer’s minisub.

Although showered now and freshly dressed, von Loringhoven was fuming exactly as much as he’d done when he’d first gotten back. U.S. Navy SEALs had foiled the plot to set off the stolen American warhead. A German-supplied Predator drone had seen the entire thing while von Loringhoven watched from the mansion on the grounds of his Argentine friend’s ranch.

The secure radio room called Beck on the intercom. A message was coming in on ELF, courtesy of the transmitter owned by the Kremlin. Beck listened, then hung up. He turned to Karl Stissinger, sitting next to him in the Zentrale.

“We’re ordered to bring the ship to floating-wire-antenna depth in listen-only mode.”

“More local news developments?” Stissinger asked. He didn’t look happy. The baron paced about, still enraged. To himself, Beck had to admit that he wasn’t entirely displeased that the nasty scheme had failed.

Beck issued the piloting orders to come shallower, then had the antenna wire deployed — if the ship was too deep the wire couldn’t properly reach near the surface.

The radio room copied a much longer message. Again Beck listened on the intercom, then hung up. He was suddenly rather dismayed. The broader situation was distressingly in flux and unstable. No one can predict, from the clean and tidy plans made in advance, how the people who made those plans will behave when things come unglued in the heat of action.

“Berlin says, pending clarification of events in Argentina, that the delivery of our supply of nuclear warheads is on hold.”

“On hold, not canceled?” von Loringhoven demanded.

“We’re to remain well outside Argentina’s Exclusive Economic Zone.” An EEZ was the farthest type of beyond-the-coast jurisdiction recognized by global treaties. This two-hundred-mile limit also happened to coincide with Argentina’s declared war exclusion zone. “Brazil announced that USS Challenger transported the SEALs that disarmed the bomb, and Jeffrey Fuller played a significant part on land in planning that operation.” Beck heard von Loringhoven sputter in disgust, and hesitated. “We’re told to stay on alert regarding certain new contingency plans.”

This delay increases the danger that Challenger and Jeffrey Fuller might find us — he obviously wants me to know he’s here.

It also puts off my return to the Central African front to destroy the Allied relief convoy before it makes the shore. At least that battle fits the professed Axis operational doctrine, of clearly limited tactical nuclear war at sea .

And worst of all, this message raises sinister new possibilities just when I thought our purpose near Buenos Aires had collapsed.

“So we still might be ordered to deliver the crated warheads,” von Loringhoven stated. “Good. Very good.”

Beck was angered but not surprised by this reaction.

“Baron, it’s one thing if we’re seen publicly as the defenders of the downtrodden, once America and Brazil are labeled as dastardly aggressors here. But for us to be exposed as the actual culprits in a premeditated provocation, and then even so we give bombs to local fanatics?… It would