Seas of Crisis

the bottom themselves, the decoys spread apart to give a better illusion on Russian sonars of a three-dimensional debris cloud forming.

The Mark III decoys still had crucial work to do. Jeffrey’s acoustic smoke-and-mirrors ploy wasn’t finished. The Mark IIIs were in the water, they’d eventually exhaust their fuel and might be found, and they needed a damned good excuse for being there.

Both decoys went silent, and rose back to Challenger’s depth. They returned toward her, then altered their courses and headed in opposite directions, north and south. They began to sound and act like Challenger making flank speed — as if just launched to draw off return fire aimed at Jeffrey’s task force.

So convinced were the Russian captains of the danger of German torpedoes — last gasps from the now-dead Amethyste, possibly nuclear, undetected while inbound through the deafening sea — that Wild Boar and Cheetah launched decoys, too.

But no German torpedoes emerged from the echoes and reverb and roiling clouds of bubbles and tumbling, shattered pack ice.

“Ru-ling, signal Wild Boar and Cheetah. ‘Good shooting and well done.’ ” Both Russian captains acknowledged with thanks.

Epilogue

Two weeks later

Jeffrey sat alone in the Oval Office with the President of the United States, wearing his dress blue uniform with medals. The two men had had long talks before, starting the day that the President awarded Jeffrey his first, unclassified Medal of Honor.

The President was a retired four-star general, who liked to say he was hardly the first senior military leader to rise to the elected civilian rank of commander in chief — look at George Washington, or Eisenhower, to name just two. He’d taken a shining to Jeffrey, especially since he kept delivering important successes in this war. November was the next presidential election, which he reminded Jeffrey of whenever they met, as if suggesting there might be opportunities someday beyond the U.S. Navy for a war hero of Jeffrey’s caliber. The President would be running for his second term; his winning depended on how the American public perceived the war to be going. Jeffrey was helping keep alive the aura of inevitable triumph and peace.

Jeffrey asked about the amnesty offer to the Axis leaders that was supposed to follow the raid in Siberia; sneaking home submerged until just yesterday, and closely sequestered for security since then, he’d had no access to news reports.

The President told him that the South African reactionary leaders, seeing Germany evacuating North Africa after a recent, major defeat there, read the handwriting on the wall and jumped at the chance. They were already in Paraguay, which had agreed to grant them asylum, and a new interim government had been rushed into place. Jeffrey thought this was outstanding.

“I’m declaring next Monday a national holiday, V-A Day,” the president said with a grin. Victory in Africa. “It takes time to plan the parades and celebrations.”

But the advanced German nuclear sub that had been undergoing repairs in South Africa, the ceramic- composite-hulled Admiral von Scheer, had put to sea and evaded the Allied blockade and was on the loose somewhere. This put a bit of a damper on things. The German dictatorship refused to even consider an amnesty. They vowed to fight to the end at all costs, making threats about new weapons and alliances that would drive the Allies back and force an armistice favorable to Germany. The President declined to go into further details.

Jeffrey asked about his former lover Ilse Reebeck, and the status of the Axis mole. The president said that Lieutenant Reebeck had been known all along to be innocent; her arrest over a month ago was a ruse to help catch the mole. She’d just returned to her native Johannesburg, and was serving on a reconstruction and reconciliation commission under UN auspices. The real traitor had been identified, and confessed in return for the death penalty being commuted to life without parole. Jeffrey didn’t need to know who the mole was, except it wasn’t a senior official after all. It was a secretary who did it for the money.

Jeffrey’s parents waited elsewhere in the White House, as did Dashiyn Nyurba and his parents, and Captains Bell and Harley and their parents and wives and kids, and Sergey Kurzin’s parents. For security, Secret Service agents made sure that no one saw them. None of the relatives had any idea what their sons, husbands, or fathers had done to earn a meeting with the President, or how two of them were injured or killed — if secrecy held up as it needed to, they’d never find out, either.

“I think this sets a record,” the President said. “Four Medals of Honor in one day. The toughest part for me is always giving one posthumously.”

“I never got to know Colonel Kurzin, sir, but what I did see impressed me.”

“Too bad you can’t tell that to his folks.”

“Yes, sir. I know.” He looked at his hands, confused by mixed emotions. Jeffrey himself was receiving his second Defense Distinguished Service Medal, unclassified, for his superb management of a complicated mission that involved as much diplomacy as combat tactics, some of it public knowledge already.

Someone knocked on the door. “Come!” the President yelled.

It was the White House Chief of Staff. “Sir, the Russian Ambassador is here.”

“Show him in.” The President and Jeffrey stood.

Jeffrey had never met the Russian ambassador before. The man was short and fat and jolly. Some of that good mood, Jeffrey assumed, came from the suddenly improved relations between the United States and Russia. Some of it, though, seemed the man’s natural personality.

The ambassador held a small velvet case in one hand.

“May I?” the ambassador asked the President.

“Please.”

Jeffrey got the impression that the two had already talked about this, and something was being stage- managed here. An official White House photographer entered the room, followed by Jeffrey’s parents, who walked over and stood next to him. They both were beaming. Jeffrey’s father elbowed him proudly in the ribs.

“Captain Jeffrey Fuller,” the ambassador said very formally, “it is my great privilege, in the name of the grateful people of my country, to award you this highest recognition that the Motherland has to give, the Gold Star Medal of the Hero of the Russian Federation.”

Glossary

Acoustic intercept: A passive (listening-only) sonar specifically designed to give warning when the submarine is “pinged” by an enemy active sonar.

Active out-of-phase emissions: A way to weaken the echo that an enemy sonar receives from a submarine’s hull, by actively emitting sound waves of the same frequency as the ping but exactly out of phase. The out-of-phase sound waves mix with and cancel those of the echoing ping.

ADCAP: Mark 48 Advanced Capability torpedo. A heavyweight, wire guided torpedo used by American nuclear submarines. The Improved ADCAP has even longer range and an enhanced (and extremely capable) target homing sonar and software logic package.

AIP: Air Independent Propulsion. Refers to modern diesel submarines that have an additional power source besides the standard diesel generator and electric storage batteries. The AIP system allows quiet and long-endurance submerged cruising, without the need to snorkel for air, because oxygen and fuel are carried aboard the vessel in special tanks. For example, the German Class 212A design uses fuel cells for achieving AIP.

Ambient sonar: A form of active sonar that uses, instead of a submarine’s pinging, the