by Joe Buff
The battle between the relief convoy and Axis forces is definitely heating up…. Still no hint of a contact on the von Scheer.
Then Jeffrey had an awful thought. His feeling of being transcendently alive at the prospect of combat quickly wilted.
He turned to the messenger of the watch. He tried to keep his voice even. “Where’re the XO and Sonar?”
“XO’s sleeping, sir. Lieutenant Milgrom is using the enlisted mess to do a training drill for some of her people.”
“Get them, smartly.”
“Aye aye.” The messenger, a very young enlisted man still pimply-faced from acne, hurried aft.
Milgrom arrived in seconds. Bell showed up a minute later, stuffing his shirttails into his pants. He fast went from drowsy to alert when he read Jeffrey’s expression.
“People, we have a problem. I think it fell through a crack, all the way up the line.”
“Sir?” Bell and Milgrom said together.
“The von Scheer. She’s about the size and shape of one of our boomers?”
“So far as we know, Captain,” Bell said.
“Or one of our boomers converted to SSGNs?”
Bell and Milgrom nodded reluctantly. They saw where the captain was going with this.
“So on ambient or hole-in-ocean sonar alone, we really can’t tell the von Scheer from one of our own Ohio-class boats?”
“We’d need to get close enough to get good tonals, sir,” Milgrom said, “to rule out that possibility. Yes.”
“Not quite,” Bell said. “We’d have their depth and speed. The Ohio ships can’t go below about a thousand feet, and can’t go past something like twenty-five knots, max. Anything deeper or faster has to be the von Scheer.”
“But shallow and slow, a contact could be friend or enemy, correct?” Jeffrey said. “Shifting our operational area to South America throws a wrench in the works. We don’t have any data on our own boomers’ patrol boxes. We don’t have up-to-date data on their or the SSGNs’ en route safe corridors in this part of the ocean either.”
“It would compromise security to give out too much of that info, Skipper,” Bell said. “When we left Norfolk we didn’t have a conceivable need to know. It’s the same old thing, moles and spies and code breaking. This go-round, they might cost us the war.”
“These are special circumstances,” Milgrom said. “Perhaps if we made the request, Captain, Strategic Command would give us what we require.”
Jeffrey frowned. “To ask, we’d need to radiate. We radiate, we make a datum that could get us killed…. And then there’s the very real likelihood our request will be denied…. No, we can’t risk it.”
Bell worked his jaw, thinking hard. “So if we see something huge out there, moving slow and shallow, we need to get in really close to make sure it’s the von Scheer and not a friend.”
Jeffrey nodded.
“What about Russian boomers or SSGNs?” Milgrom asked. “They’re very large.”
“They’re all in their bastions, way up north, playing pure defense. That’s one problem we don’t have.”
“Would von Scheer really go shallow and slow?” Bell asked. “To fool us like that, Captain?”
“Beck can’t hide in the bottom when the Brazil Basin’s abyssal plain goes down twenty thousand feet or more in places. What’s his next-best choice?”
Milgrom and Bell looked at each other. Milgrom said it for both of them. “Ape an Ohio to throw us off.”
“And at eight hundred feet or whatever,” Jeffrey said, “with the water so deep, Orpheus is useless. Even when he steamed right over one, Beck’s hull and the telephone cable would be something like four miles apart.”
Jeffrey saw Bell and Milgrom’s faces fall as he made that last, unpleasant statement.
The intercom from the radio room blinked. Jeffrey picked up his handset. “Captain.”
“Sir,” the lieutenant (j.g.) communications officer said, “an ELF message now coming in with our address.”
“What’s it say? I’ll hold.”
Jeffrey glanced at Milgrom and Bell. “Another ELF message.”
Bell got excited, then confused. “An Orpheus contact report? But you just—”
Jeffrey cut him off as the radio room had more.
“Come to floating-wire-antenna depth,” the lieutenant(j.g.) read off the message’s cipher-block meanings. “Do not radiate. Imperative; no recourse. Commander, Atlantic Fleet sends.”
“Very well.” Jeffrey hung up the mike.
“XO, take the conn. Bring us up to floating-wire-antenna depth. Then trail the wire. I’ll be in the radio room.” He ran his eyes over the tactical plot once more. “Have the messenger knock if you run into the slightest trouble out here.”
Jeffrey went to the rear of the control room, to the radio room. The door was posted with dire security warnings—most of the crew were never permitted access. He punched in the combination to the lock and entered.
The compartment was small and crammed with electronic equipment and men. Here were all the transmitters and receivers Challenger could use, covering radio bands from deep-penetrating ELF extremely low frequency, up to SHF super-high frequency used for satellite communications. The radio room also contained Challenger’s encrypting and decrypting gear. This hardware and software, including onetime-use code keys and very advanced data-scrambling routines, were some of the most highly classified materials on the ship.
Despite the strong air-conditioning, the room was warm from the heat of electronics and tense men’s bodies in such close quarters. The junior lieutenant in charge was young and green, and capable but nervous under his captain’s impatient scrutiny. He was assisted by a senior chief—a mature man, cocky and confident of his skills.
Jeffrey read each word as the incoming message was received, then decoded, then displayed on a screen and spat out by a printer; reception was slowed by Axis jamming.
He read in increasing disbelief.
As soon as the last page was finished, he grabbed the hard copy. He left the radio room and made sure the door was locked behind him.
“Sonar, take the conn,” Jeffrey snapped. “XO, my stateroom, now.”
“No Orpheus contacts after all,” Bell said. “So much for Ascension Island. So much for that.” He sounded badly frustrated.
Jeffrey shook his head. “Admiral Hodgkiss sees it too. Beck must have figured something out, or been warned by radio from Berlin.”
“How would Berlin know about Orpheus?”
“Like you said, code breaking or moles. Or both.”
“Crud.”
Jeffrey held up the radio message. “At least the good admiral had the presence of mind to warn us. ‘StratCom indicates large contacts may be friendly.’ The rest of that, Hodgkiss seems to be leaving to our imagination or guesswork.”
“Ohio boats in our area after all…Which is the worst possible tactical picture for our side.”
“That’s not the worst of it,” Jeffrey said. “Things in Africa and Europe are going from bad to worse.”
“What do you mean?”
“We better sit down.”
Jeffrey and Bell used the chairs by his desk. Jeffrey put the message papers on the desk and tapped them for emphasis. “It seems that as the fighting at sea nears Africa, and tactical nuclear combat has begun, and the Axis land offensive will get rolling any day, Israel has decided to play a trump card.”
“Sir?”
Jeffrey knew Germany had made a nuclear no-man’s-land when they nuked Tripoli in Libya, then invaded North Africa after overrunning Europe—while America was still reeling from the shock of the opening nuclear ambush off western Africa the previous summer. Now Egypt and Israel, as two of the Allies, formed a bulwark against German advances across the Suez Canal toward the Middle East oil supplies.
It’s like Montgomery versus Rommel all over again. El Alamein, the Afrika Corps, Tobruk…
Except this time the no-man’s-land is protected by Israel’s
nuclear umbrella.
Jeffrey took a deep breath. “Norfolk informs us that Israel made an announcement several hours ago. Issued an ultimatum, one that’s causing a furor worldwide…Israel indicates that at some time in the unspecified past, they brought a dozen atomic warheads onto German soil, and concealed them just in case.”
“My God.”
“I’m guessing,” Jeffrey said, “but I’ll bet they did it when the Mossad worked with Germany in the War on Terror. While helping to close the borders to weapons of mass destruction, Israel sneaked in weapons of their own.”
“What for?”
“As life insurance. When they say never again, they mean it.”
“But—”
“Listen. It’s hardly the first time the Mossad looked out for number one and didn’t tell the U.S. everything. You and I know that firsthand.”
“How do we, how does Germany, know it isn’t a bluff?”
“The Israelis planned for that. They disclosed the location of one of the bombs. German internal security found it. They verified the bomb was in good working order. It had a detonator that could be set off from nearby through remote control.”
“How do we know this last part?”
Jeffrey shrugged. “The CIA must have their ways…. The yield was estimated at twenty kilotons…. Some mayeven be in office towers, to go off as airbursts. City busters.”
“That leaves eleven bombs in place?”
“Supposedly. They’re all uranium gun-bomb designs, with very long shelf lives. Israel says they’re well concealed in big German cities or major military sites, and the Germans will never find them in a million years. And Mossad agents are in-country, ready to set off the bombs. If Germany violates the no-man’s-land in northeast Africa. Kablooey, and at the cost of the agents’ own lives, if the Israeli homeland is threatened.”
“So Israel has their own form of mutual assured destruction with Germany now. And the Germans know it.”
“Pretty much.”
“So what does this mean for us?”
“Just that things are getting more destabilized. The announcement, according to this message from Admiral Hodgkiss, has triggered riots in Buenos Aires, between pro-German and pro-Israel activist groups. There’ve been shootings and bombings already.”
“Civil war in Argentina?”
“They’re getting closer and closer to it. There are other suspicious signs of an organized influence orchestrating increasing chaos down there.”
“Such as?”
“Chemical and biological warfare.”
“My God.” Bell looked ashen. “On land in Argentina?”
Jeffrey nodded. “Insidious, camouflaged, so the locals don’t even know. That’s the worst part. The Germans, or so the CIA and our own Centers for Disease Control are telling us, have expanded the envelope, broken the mold.”
“You’re losing me, Skipper.”
“I’m starting to have the feeling I’m lost too. But here are the bare facts as we know them, according to this message. There’s an outbreak of dengue fever in Buenos Aires.”
“So? It happens now and then in that part of the world.”
“Except. The outbreak started in several places at once, miles apart, and the strains of the germ are identical. The CIA got samples, and the CDC says this strain is the same exact one, genetically, that led to an epidemic in Guatemala seven years ago.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It does, if the germ was cultivated, cloned in a lab, and then released in Argentina now, as a stealth weapon.”
“Why would anyone do that? Dengue isn’t even all that contagious or lethal, if you get medical help.”
“It’s lethal enough to infants and old folks and the malnourished poor, XO. The purpose, the CIA conjectures, isn’t to kill per se. It’s to further undermine the government in Argentina, the president and the mayor of Buenos Aires, and the governor of greater Buenos Aires province….”
“This really is total war, isn’t it, sir? In a whole new form.”
“There’s more.”
“Sir?”
“The shantytowns around Buenos Aires are also having a sudden epidemic of asthma.”
“Asthma?”
“That combined with a dose of dengue is completely overwhelming their health-care system. And opposition factions are using this to call on the president of Argentina to resign. The place is ripe for a coup.”
“How in heck do you cause an epidemic of asthma? It isn’t even something you catch!”
“Chemical warfare, XO. Sneaky, almost invisible, by hiding in plain sight…In a manner of speaking, you have to admire them.”
Bell sat there, waiting for details.
“Cockroach saliva.”
“What?”
“There’s a protein molecule in cockroach saliva which happens to be the most allergenic substance known to man. In purified form, in large-enough doses, it’s deadly to people with sensitivity. This message from Norfolk, the assessment from the CDC, says it’s powerful enough to debilitate healthy adults who didn’t even think they had asthma.”
Bell shook his head. “I’m still missing something.”
“Crop-dusting planes.”
“Oh, Lord.”
Jeffrey nodded. “The locals thought they were spraying for mosquitoes. The shantytowns are mostly on low ground. They get a lot of flooding in rainstorms. Puddles. Stagnant water. Breeding ground for insects. Drug-resistant malaria has become more and more of a problem. Only now, the CIA is pretty sure, somebody with the right connections and the wrong agenda imported a batch of artificial protein like the one in cockroach saliva. They got it into the crop-duster loads. And public health is collapsing.”
Bell thought for a very long time. “In World War One, the Germans gave us poison gas and the flamethrower. In World War Two, they gave us V-Two rockets and V-One buzz bombs. Now they’re using germs and chemical weapons on neutral civilians. In a way that no one in-country can even tell, or ever be certain about. To bring down a national government.”
“Yup. Even if Argentina’s legit regime tries to blame it on some Axis two-pronged sneak attack, you think anybody whose babies have died is going to accept that? You think people lying feverish in their own body waste and gasping for breath, untreated in the parking lot ’cause every hospital in town is overwhelmed, are going to give a damn what the government says?…The more the elected officials deny any blame, the more culpable they look.”
“Again, Captain, what does all this mean to us?”
“The assessment from our national command authorities is that these are just opening moves, to lay the groundwork. Soon the atom bombs will be delivered by the von Scheer. Delivered to the pro-German fascist opposition waiting in Argentina. Waiting to seize control and wage atomic war on Brazil.”
“So what’s Brazil doing now?”
“Arming to the teeth. Expelling the Argentine ambassador and severing relations. Artillery duels have intensified along the border, way down south. The Brazilian Army is confiscating vehicles belonging to foreign citizens and businesses, apparently to augment troop and war-matériel transport. The government in Brasilia nationalized every railroad and port facility too, including ones that were foreign owned. They announced martial law in the border area. The whole city of Foz is being evacuated. That’s a quarter of a million people…. They declared the two-hundred-mile limit as an exclusion zone for foreign warships. Then the leaders dispersed to hardened secret bunkers underground.”
“What about U.S. citizens in-country, Captain?”
“State’s told everybody to leave Brazil and Argentina. They’re being shuttled across the Andes Mountains to Peru or Chile by air.”
“What’s the Brazilian Navy up to?”
“To put it in quaint terms, XO, they sortied the fleet from Rio.” Brazil’s main navy base. “The exclusion zone will be enforced by the São Paulo carrier battle group, apparently.” The São Paulo was the former Frenc
h Navy’s Foch, refitted and sold to Brazil in 2001. “We have to watch out for her ourselves. Eighteen fighter-bombers plus eight helos. Her escorts are frigate types, some homegrown and some bought used from the Brits…. Fast patrol boats and missile craftare working closer in-shore. To prevent Argentine commando incursions, I think…Argentina responded in kind, declared an exclusion zone of their own. Not that they’ve much to hold it with.” The Argentine Navy’s largest warship was one secondhand British destroyer.
“And Brazil’s atomic weapon status?”
“The CIA still doesn’t know precisely. Circumstantial evidence strongly implies Brazil has the bomb.”
CHAPTER 27
T welve hours later, after a block of frequently interrupted sleep, Jeffrey was back at the conn. He listened as Sonar reported yet more atomic blasts off Africa. After hours in the deep sound channel, he was starved again for news of the outside world. At the same time he dreaded what another news report might bring.
His crew’s search for the von Scheer, using passive sonar only, had still yielded nothing. Jeffrey’s one remaining reliable secret weapon, Challenger’s new multiline fiber-optic towed array, had caught no clue at all to the enemy submarine’s whereabouts. Whenever suspicious infrasonic tonals were picked up, Jeffrey—or the OOD who’d summon Jeffrey—would bring Challenger toward the contact. Milgrom’s people—every time—identified it as a neutral diesel sub, or a ship on the surface.
Even Ernst Beck, audacious though he might be, would never run von Scheer on the surface as a trick to deceive or elude me. The São Paulo and other surveillance platforms would find him in a snap…. No, at this point the battlemight not open till we’re close to Buenos Aires, where I’m forced to use high-explosive fish alone. That’s probably Beck’s intention. He’d be willing to use his nuclear weapons, with everything else going on, even close inshore, and I’ll be at a big disadvantage…. The battle might not even open until von Scheer has delivered her goods, those crated warheads. If that happens, catastrophe in South America becomes inevitable, and with it comes new catastrophe for the world.
