by Joe Buff
“Admiral?” Da Gama gestured.
The admiral worked the video player again. A map of Argentina appeared on the big screen.
“Where would the fascists detonate an American warhead so as to serve as adequate provocation?” da Gama asked.
Jeffrey studied the map.
“You needn’t answer,” da Gama said. “My staff have been studying the issue. This is where my understanding is stymied. If they set off the bomb, or bombs, in a wilderness area, the detonation lacks military value from our perspective, and thus begs the question of our practical motive or goal, if we truly were the culprits. Such a blast also has little effect on Argentina as a whole, except for possible fallout, which is quite invisible to the average citizen. So it would hardly serve to incense the Argentine people, and therefore would not help the fascists much.”
“I have to agree,” Jeffrey said.
“Yet to detonate the bomb on an Argentine military facility, or on a major Argentine urban center, while certainly making Brazil look like a great villain, also does terrible harm to the Argentine fascists themselves and to their supporters…. Most of the population of that country is concentrated right around Buenos Aires. The fascists might wish to dispose of the shantytowns, or of the Jewish quarter, but to use a nuclear bomb would do massive damage to other people and establishments the fascists would want to protect. And again, it raises the problem of credibility for the entire ruse. Why would Brazil want to kill people in Argentina who oppose the fascists?”
Jeffrey saw that da Gama was making very telling points. He began to wonder himself if he and his superiors had misjudged the entire basis of Axis intent, and began as well to better understand how da Gama had earned his reputation as a charismatic and spellbinding orator and debater. Da Gama also displayed his trademark combination of working-class pragmatism and ex-army skills as organizer and administrator. No one could have poked holes in the American arguments with greater clarity or fewer words.
But Jeffrey was utterly convinced of his own position. He knew the von Scheer was out there.
“I don’t want to put you on the spot unfairly, Captain,” da Gama said. “I have no doubt that Argentina verges on a fascist coup. I have no doubt they would welcome support from the Axis. And I don’t question that an attack by them from the south would be a distraction and a nuisance to Brazil. But they couldn’t possibly defeat us, given the correlation of forces and the distances involved and the mounting logistic difficulties for them as they advanced.”
“Sir, that’s just it. If the Argentines had atomic weapons, the correlation of forces would be very different, wouldn’t it?”
Da Gama frowned. “Yes.”
“And a fabricated provocation of some kind, as an excuse for Germany to give the Argentines a supply of such weapons, would be consistent with their history. German history.”
Da Gama nodded. “The Nazis dressed concentration-camp inmates in Polish Army uniforms, then shot them outside a German radio station on the border. They said, ‘See, Poland has attacked us.’ Then they invaded Poland. Yes, it’s in every history book…. But that was many years ago. Andthe current regime in Germany aren’t Nazis.”
Mr. Jones cleared his throat. “We seem to be at an impasse.”
“The impasse may be irrelevant,” da Gama said. “Captain Fuller, if we come right to the point, assume von Scheer and the latest German plot are real, what would you have us do that we aren’t already doing?”
“Warn your people and evacuate main cities.”
“And cause tremendous panic while attempting something that our own computer modeling and traffic analysts have shown cannot be done?”
“Sir?”
“The people living in and around Rio de Janeiro, and our business and commercial center in São Paulo, and the new capital city Brasilia, total close to fifty million. The best roads in the whole country connect these three cities only to one another. How do we evacuate fifty million people? Where do we send them?”
“What about the trans-Amazonian highway?”
“Largely a daydream from our era of dictatorships. Hardly comparable as a civil defense asset to America’s interstate system, or as a military conduit network to Hitler’s Autobahn. Parts of this so-called highway through the Amazon are nothing but mud holes in the rainy season; they aren’t even paved. And many paved parts get washed out every time the Amazon floods, which it does each year as part of the normal seasonal cycle…. Please, Captain, be realistic.”
“Then the only option, Mr. President, is interdiction.”
“Captain?”
“Help us interdict the Germans when they try to bring the atom bomb ashore.”
“How much more help can we give? Do you think we don’t know that half of the tankers sent to refuel your AWACS in midair are really electronic warfare reconnaissance planes? And that your AWACS aircraft’s orbit is suspiciously close to the Argentine border? Not to mention, shall we say, today’s varied naval activities?…To work directly on Argentine soil, or in their territorial waters, would constitute an invasion itself, an act of war. We’d start the very thing we all seek to avoid.”
Jeffrey glanced again at Jones and Stewart and saw that neither man had anything to say. Figuring he held the momentum himself, he kept talking.
“Give us permission, Mr. President, to stage our assets from your soil. More sophisticated reconnaissance drones of our own and Special Forces.”
“For what purpose?”
“To be better poised to halt the German detonation of an American atom bomb. It’s only fair we be allowed to reclaim our dangerous stolen property. Our transterritorial right of hot pursuit.”
“You would cross the border into Argentina yourselves, staging from Brazil?”
“It’s the least evil of the unattractive choices available, sir.”
“How will you even track this warhead? Don’t tell me your AWACS or your ECM planes or drones can see a shielded tactical nuclear warhead from such a vast distance away. The Atlantic coast of Argentina is fifteen hundred miles long!”
“Sir, I’m honestly not aware of our true capabilities there. I do know my superiors believe such staging access, if you grant it, could make some difference.”
Mr. Jones cleared his throat. “I think I can add something here.”
Everyone turned. Jones took an object from his pocket and put it on the conference table.
“What is that?” da Gama said.
The Brazilian generals passed it to their president.
Da Gama looked at it. “This is a bottle cap?”
“Mr. President,” Jones said, “how often have you walked by one of those on the sidewalk and paid it no mind? Ignored it altogether? Not even noticed it?”
“Why, I don’t know. There must be millions of bottle caps strewn everywhere each day.” South American bottling companies used and reused glass much more than aluminum cans.
“Precisely,” Jones said. “Only this isn’t really a bottle cap.”
“What is it?” Da Gama turned it over in his hand.
“It’s a gamma-ray detector. With a built-in radio transmitter. The microbattery is recharged daily by solar power.”
“And…?”
“These have been strewn, as you put it, sir, all around the waterfront of Mar del Plata, and Buenos Aires, and other ports of possible infiltration into Argentina such as Bahía Blanca farther south.”
“I’m impressed,” da Gama said.
“Can I see?” Jeffrey asked.
Da Gama slid the bottle cap along the table. Jeffrey looked at it carefully. Probably has a loop antenna built into the rim. “What’s the range of the radio link when this thing decides to sound the alarm?”
“I don’t know,” Jones said. “That’s above my clearance level.”
“Mr. President,” Jeffrey said. “Everyone. I think the way to break our impasse is to stop thinking in terms of certainties when we face so many unknowns. We need instead to consider scenario
s. One possible scenario is the one we’ve all described, that the von Scheer is real and close and will deliver an American warhead, intending to detonate it as the excuse to then present German warheads to Argentina.”
Da Gama looked at Jeffrey. “Have you considered, Captain, that this whole train of thought we’ve been following is a very clever Axis trick to dupe us all and have us do their work for them? That, in fact, the Germans want us to think just this, and then an American incursion on either Brazilian or Argentine territory presents the 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 Paranaguá.”
“Remind me where’s Paranaguá.”
“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 Paranaguá, while they escort my submarine south, I want my SEAL team to sneak off Challenger and come ashore at Paranaguá. 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 Iguazú. 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 bomb…. Very well, I give you my permission.”
Jeffrey wondered how much da
Gama knew about the Rocks.
“I’ll get on that for you, Captain,” Colonel Stewart said. “I’ll help get the commo links set up, here and in the States, and we’ll get your orders to Challenger by low-frequency radio.”
“And Mr. President?” Jeffrey said.
“Captain?”
“Can you have a long-range transport helicopter put on alert at Paranaguá, please, for use by my SEALs? Their lieutenant’s name is Felix Estabo. He and his men are all Latino, fluent in Portuguese or Spanish or both. They won’t arouse suspicion. They’ll blend in.”
“And then what?”
“If nothing more happens, then nothing, and your country is blameless. Or at least subjected to no more possible blame beyond right now.”
“Yes.”
“If the American warhead does come ashore in Argentina, sir, we need to lock on by aerial recon and track it and the kampfschwimmer carefully. Send my SEALs in your helo on an interception course, on the Brazilian side of the frontier.”
“A race to meet, and fight at close quarters?…It doesn’t sound like very much to go on.”
“I know, Mr. President…. We need a way to harass and distract the bad guys. Something that intimidates, confuses, but nonlethal and without a premature border violation…If I understand the mind-set of the Argentine rebels, sir, their leaders are rash, incautious.”
Da Gama nodded.
“I want us to put more pressure on the Argentines and Germans. Breathe down their necks and let them know it, bad. If they start to worry that we’re catching on to them, it might force our opponents to rush and make hasty decisions, maybe even commit some revealing mistakes…. Less time to work with also heightens the dangers for our side. It’s a risk we’ll have to accept…. Mr. Jones, how far up the Riode la Plata estuary do international waters go?”
“The twelve-mile limit? Pretty far up. It’s a hundred miles wide at its mouth.”
“And what platforms monitor your gamma-ray detectors?”
“I’m guessing we have operatives in Argentina, or across the estuary in Uruguay, with proper equipment. Out on the water in boats, on top of mountains, I don’t know.”
“Okay…Colonel Stewart, invoke the code name Mercury, and use that to make some drones available, fast. Predators, Global Hawks, whatever. And a U.S. Air Force B-One-B bomber based from Venezuela, something really conspicuous but well able to defend itself. It can follow a dogleg course out over the ocean, we don’t need to think about overflight rights. It’s supersonic, it can be at the estuary very quick. Have it fitted with a recon sensor pod. Visual and infrared especially…And have the bomber loaded with active sonobuoys; don’t worry about the receivers, this part is just for effect, to slow von Scheer and her minisub.”
