Cauldron

Once depth and speed were stabilized, the diving officer nodded silently to Ritter. They were in position.

The captain turned to the fire control officer. “Ready?”

“Solutions checked and valid.”

Ritter wrapped one hand around an overhead support and took a deep breath. Now. “Shoot!”

One after another, eight Seal 3 torpedoes, pushed out of their tubes by a pulse of water, came to life and sped toward their targets. Dual-core wires connected each torpedo to the U-32 and her fire control computer. These wires carried guidance commands from the sub to its weapons. They also allowed the sub to see everything its torpedoes saw.

With so many propellers thrashing the water, the British warships had failed to hear the German submarine as she vented her tanks and came off the bottom. But the high-pitched screw noises made by eight torpedoes screaming in at thirty-five knots were unmistakable.

In seconds, sonar plots aboard all three frigates showed their bearing and probable origin point. But it was too late.

The first torpedoes were already reaching their targets.

Van Dyck, a bulk freighter of twenty thousand tons deadweight, took one torpedo in the bow and another in the engine room. Although each Seal 3 carried a quarter ton of PBX, the vessel was only crippled, not destroyed. Within seconds she was practically dead in the water, listing to starboard. She would have to be towed back for repairs in Great Britain’s already overtaxed shipyards.

Three torpedoes slammed into Falmount Bay, a container ship of the same size. Without decoys, at slow speed, the large ship was an easy target. Three plumes of yellow-stained water and smoke fountained high into the air. Falmount Bay broke in half and sank.

Behind her, only two of three incoming Seals plowed into the container ship St. Louis.

The third missed and ran up the estuary until it ran out of fuel and drifted harmlessly into the mud. But she was smaller than the others and carried a flammable cargo. Internal explosions tore her apart in minutes — sending a huge plume of smoke high into the atmosphere.

Chatham and London raced for the old wreck, sonars blasting, pounding the estuary in a frenzied search. Argyll, in the rear, turned to assist the stricken Van Dyck. She also launched one of her two Westland Lynx helicopters to assist in the hunt.

Ritter didn’t waste time patting backs. Celebrating could come later — once he and his crew were safely back in port. “All ahead flank!”

U-32 was not silent now. Her only hope of escape lay in speed, and she had a lot of it in reserve — twenty-three knots submerged. She darted out from the wreck, right under Chatham as it charged in. That meant risking an over-the-side shot by the British ship’s triple torpedo mounts, but the closing speeds were so high that the frigate didn’t get a solid fix on her until it was too late.

The German sub skipper divided his attention between the sonar display and the plot. Every minute spent at full speed cost him five hours’ worth of battery charge. Like all conventional submarine captains, he had to constantly weigh the advantages of speed with the risks of running out of power.

“All ahead two-thirds.”

Ritter’s escape-and-evasion plan was simplicity itself. If he could break contact with these three warships, the rest of the estuary was clear all the way out into the North Sea. He had the endurance at medium speed to reach open water, where the British would have a very hard time finding him.

Argyll’s helicopter was his undoing. The submarine’s high-speed burst, although only a minute long, created a wake in the shallow water — a wide vee shape streaming away from the fleeing U- boat. Even as U-32 slowed, the Lynx flashed over Chatham at masthead height and dropped two depth charges just in front of the point of the vee.

The depth charges splashed into the water, sank rapidly, and detonated a fraction of a second later. One was just ten meters away from the German submarine’s hull, the other only five. Caught by two bubble pulses of explosive shock and gas,

U-32 tumbled and shook. The twin shocks tore equipment loose from its mountings, bounced the crew off the bulkheads, and even deformed the pressure hull. She lost half her batteries and her AIP engine shut down — badly damaged. Even her fire control system went dead in a shower of sparks and fused circuit boards.

Chatham, cued by the hovering Lynx, heeled over — coming round in a tight, high- speed turn to attack the crippled German submarine. Her active sonar found and fixed U-32 at almost point-blank range. A Stingray torpedo plunged into the water.

Inside U-32, the crew worked desperately to restore her propulsion and her fire control systems. But the British frigate’s sonar pulses were already deafening and growing louder.

Screee.

Panicked faces turned aft, toward the new noise in the water.

“Torpedo! Bearing two four five!” The sonarman’s shouted report was redundant.

Ritter ran his eyes over the plot one last time and then looked at his haggard men. They were finished.

U-32’s damage was too great, and the British ships were too close. There were only twenty-three men in U-32’s crew, but they were as close as brothers. He would save what he could by surrendering. “Blow all tanks! Emergency surface!”

Chatham’s Stingray barely had time to steady up before its active sonar found U-32. The submarine, unable to dodge, lay right in its path.

The British torpedo slammed into the U-32 just as her conning tower broke the surface. The Stingray’s shaped-charge warhead, intended to kill much larger vessels, hit aft and exploded, obliterating the sub’s engineering compartment. With her hull ripped open, U-32’s ballast tanks could not keep her afloat. Only five of her crew, all sailors stationed in the conning tower, managed to scramble out before she slid downward in a maelstrom of bubbling foam, oil, and wreckage — joining her victims at the bottom of the estuary.

MINISTRY OF DEFENSE, LONDON

In a reluctant concession to the war raging across the Channel, the soldiers stationed around London’s famous public buildings and government offices wore combat gear instead of their colorful, full dress uniforms. Bearskin caps and scarlet coats had given way to Kevlar helmets and camouflaged body armor.

Admiral Jack Ward strode out into the Defense Ministry’s inner courtyard between sentries who snapped to attention. Lieutenant Harada, his flag secretary, followed right behind. Their ride out to Heathrow, a tiny British Army Air Corps Gazelle helicopter, sat on the pavement with its rotor already slowly turning. A U.S. Navy Grumman COD — carrier onboard delivery plane — was waiting on the tarmac at the airport, ready to take them back to sea.

He bent low to clear the Gazelle’s rotor blades and hauled himself inside, taking a seat on a narrow folding bench behind its two crewmen. Harada squeezed in beside him and pulled the helicopter’s side door shut.

The admiral leaned forward to speak to the warrant officer piloting the helo. “Anytime you’re ready, mister.”

“Yes, sir. We’ll just be half a tic.” The sandy-haired warrant officer grinned round at him. “We’re only waiting for our clearance from those Nervous Nellies in Air Defense Command. Right, Tony?”

His copilot looked up from flicking switches and nodded. “The bloody Frogs and Jerries are at it again, Admiral. Over Southampton this time. It’s a right mess, they say.”

Ward grimaced and sat back impatiently. He couldn’t afford to get stuck ashore under enemy air attack — not now. Events were moving too fast.

The sudden surge in French and German attacks against British airfields and harbors had come as a very unpleasant, though not wholly unexpected, development. Stymied in every attempt to sink Ward’s juggernauts, his three carrier battle groups, the EurCon high command had apparently decided to concentrate their air and naval resources against the weakest link in the sea line of communications to Poland — the United Kingdom itself.

Cost-cutting and the end of the cold war had slowed the U.K.’s efforts to rebuild its long-neglected air defenses. The RAF’s E-3 Sentries, a few, overworked squadrons of Tornado interceptors, and Patriot missile