by Joe Buff
“What are you waiting for?” von Loringhoven said. “We have eight atomic weapons on our tail!”
“Watch closely. You might actually learn something.”
“Order flank speed! They’re moving more than twice as fast as us!”
Beck shook his head.
“But—”
“Baron, if this game is too hard on your pampered constitution, I suggest you retire to your cabin for a nice lie-down and keep out of my way. I must warn you, though, don’t expect pleasant dreams. The ride is about to become much louder and rougher than anything you ever imagined.”
This time it was Beck who sneered — again he surprised himself. But now that battle was joined, the gap between atomic combat veteran Beck’s sum total of experience, and the cushy life von Loringhoven had led, seemed truly unbridgeable. Beck considered ordering the baron to his cabin right now.
No, let him stay where I can see his fear and suffering. Let this be my revenge on him for the terrible things I must do later. Let my crewmen also see his panic and his sweat, as a portal through which to find their own bravery.
“Sir,” Stissinger said, “we should launch our counterfire.”
Beck gave no answer. His ship continued her fast but quiet thirty-knot course due east.
“Evasive maneuvers at least, sir? Make a knuckle in the water?”
Beck looked at the loyal but untested Stissinger. He’d never fired a nuclear weapon in anger, just in a simulator. He’d never been shot at for real, only in training drills.
The captain smiled. “Thank you, Einzvo, but I think not.”
Stissinger was going by the textbook, and doing it well — but men like Beck and Fuller had thrown out the textbook months before.
Beck returned to observing the tactical plot. “Show me the enemy warhead kill zones against us.”
“At what yield, sir?” Stissinger said.
“The maximum for Mark Eighty-eights. I’m sure he’ll use the maximum.”
“One-tenth kiloton.”
Beck nodded.
Little disks appeared around each inbound torpedo symbol. They represented the radius within which their warhead detonations would inflict fatal damage on Ernst Beck’s ship at her present depth. The disks still had some time before they were dangerous to the von Scheer. Though water was very rigid and dense, so that blast force traveled great distances, the warhead yields were small, and the von Scheer was very shock hardened…. And blast force in deep water died off inversely with the cube of the range: ten times as far from ground zero meant only one-one-thousandth the impact. Even a megaton hydrogen bomb set off in the sea could just kill a steel-hulled sub out to a dozen miles or so.
Beck was surprised at his own inner calm as he ran through these cold-blooded facts. But calm was one key part of his plan. He watched the icon on his display that represented Challenger. He listened to her noise coming over the speakers.
Who knows himself and the other man better, Captain Fuller, you or me?
Who remembers more from the last time we met? Who more clearly understands the crucial differences now?
And who learned the most from our previous battle? The victor or the vanquished, you think? I do believe that failure is a sharper, keener tutor than success.
“Master One still maintaining constant course and speed, sir,” Bell reported.
“No countermeasures? No decoys? No torpedoes launched?” Jeffrey was puzzled — a sensation he really didn’t like.
“Negative, Captain.”
“He has to have heard us pinging.”
“I concur.”
“So what’s he up to?” Jeffrey’s common sense set off alarm bells in his head. Beck must be up to something. The German’s total lack of reaction to the surprising presence of Jeffrey’s ship and then to Challenger’s aggressive pinging, and now Bell’s full salvo of oncoming nuclear fish, was the last thing he had expected.
“Sir,” Bell warned, “there’s so little we know about the von Scheer’s design. He may have a nasty trick up his sleeve.”
“Like what, XO?”
“He’s much too quiet at thirty knots for that to be his flank speed. He’s holding something back.”
“You mean you think he might be faster than us?”
“Maybe.”
“Sonar.”
“Captain?”
“What’s von Scheer’s stern look like? One propulsor or two?”
“One large pump-jet propulsor, sir.”
“How many nuclear reactors?”
“Captain?”
“The Russians often use two on their bigger submarines, right? We know the Axis gets help on propulsion plants from Moscow. Does von Scheer have a single reactor, or two?”
“Wait, please,” Milgrom said.
Jeffrey turned to Bell. “What’s your guess?”
“He might have two.”
“I know he might have two. I need a specific best guess.”
“One big propulsor seems to suggest one single big reactor.”
Jeffrey bobbed his head around as if he was thinking about what Bell said and wasn’t sure if he agreed with his XO or not.
“Sonar?” he pressed. He felt worried and impatient.
“Impossible to tell number of Master One reactors on-line from the sound profile available.”
Jeffrey looked at Bell. “So he may be running at whatever top quiet speed he can get out of just one reactor, with another held in reserve, idling in quick-start-up power range. He might suddenly throw both on-line at full power and zoom away from us.”
“But from our torpedoes, sir?” Bell said. “The Mark Eighty-eights do seventy knots.”
Jeffrey fought hard not to lose his temper as he went on: “And the Russian Shkval undersea rocket torpedoes do two hundred knots. And we know even back in the Cold War, the Russians worked on slippery long-chain polymers they’d squirt from the front of the bow dome to lower hull friction in order to help them outrun inbound fish.”
Bell nodded reluctantly. “So at least for short periods, sir, the von Scheer might be able to run at seventy knots.”
Something in Jeffrey’s spirit sagged. “If that’s true, we’ve already lost this contest. If Beck is waiting for just the right moment to shove all his throttles hard against the firewall, and he really is able to sprint that fast, we don’t have a weapon aboard that can stop him.”
“Our Tomahawks do hundreds of knots.”
“You know they’ve all been loaded just for high-explosive land attack.”
Bell stared at his screens. Jeffrey realized his XO had run out of useful ideas. He felt his own throat start to go dry; he had to pucker to summon saliva. A few uncomfortable minutes passed.
“Sonar, Fire Control,” Jeffrey said, “any change whatsoever on Master One?”
“Negative, sir,” Milgrom said. “No change in tonals, no mechanical transients at all.”
“Contact’s course and speed continue steady, sir. Due east at thirty knots.”
Jeffrey looked at the tactical plot. His eight atomic weapons were drawing closer to the Admiral von Scheer. Very soon they’d be in lethal range, and Ernst Beck had to know it, and Ernst Beck wasn’t doing anything to save himself.
Unless he has a way to sprint even faster than my torpedoes. Is he rubbing it in now, reading my mind, and showing me his contempt?… Or does he have a whole new secret weapon, and he knows that I don’t know it, and he’s not the least bit worried about me or my inbound fish?
Maybe Beck has something awful, an entire new technology — and he’s about to deal with me and my torpedoes once and for all, the same way a horse would use its tail to swat down pesty flies.
For almost the first time in his life in the navy, Jeffrey began to feel genuine, gnawing, soul-crushing fear.
“I think we’ve toyed with Fuller’s mind enough,” Ernst Beck said, and cleared his throat. “Achtung, Einzvo, target one Sea Lion at each incoming Mark Eighty-eight. Set all Sea Lion warhead yields to
maximum, one kiloton.”
“One kiloton, sir? Doctrine is to make defensive countershots at lowest yield.”
Beck smiled again at Stissinger, then shrugged theatrically. “So I’m a nonconformist.”
“Maximum yield, jawohl,” Stissinger acknowledged.
“Load firing solutions.”
“Loaded.”
“Close all inner doors. Flood tubes.”
“Closed and flooded, Captain.”
“Equalize to sea pressure. Open all outer doors.”
“Equalized and doors open.”
“Achtung, tube one, los!” Go!
Stissinger relayed the firing command.
“Tube one is fired.”
“Unit is operating properly,” Haffner called.
“Tube two, los!”
“Tube two is fired.”
“Unit is operating properly.”
Beck fired all eight tubes. He glanced at the tactical plot. There were eight new icons, friendly torpedoes outbound. Once freed from the tubes, they looped around and headed back past von Scheer’s stern, aiming west under wire-guided control. One Sea Lion ran at each inbound Mark 88. The net closing speed of each interception was almost 150 knots.
Beck knew he had a key advantage over Fuller: unlike Challenger, the von Scheer could close her outer torpedo tube doors to reload without losing the wires to weapons already launched. In what Beck planned to do next, this would be crucial.
“Reload all tubes, Sea Lions, preset warhead yields to maximum.”
Jeffrey listened as Milgrom and Bell reported that the von Scheer had launched countershots at Jeffrey’s torpedoes.
“Finally,” Jeffrey said. “He played that close.”
“So he’s using conventional tactics after all,” Bell said. “We shoot, he countershoots.”
Jeffrey nodded. “This fight’ll be one really hard slugfest.”
I mustn’t tell the crew, but we hold a crucial advantage. We’re expendable in a double kill, and von Scheer isn’t. That lets me be more flexible, more aggressive than Ernst Beck.
“New mechanical transients on Master One!” Milgrom called. “Launch transients! One, two, three… Eight more torpedoes in the water!”
Jeffrey studied the tactical plot — there were now sixteen enemy weapon icons moving away from the hostile-ship marker.
“This new bunch is aimed our way,” Bell said, pointing at the plot.
Jeffrey saw what he meant. Of Beck’s second salvo of eight atomic torpedoes, four each were curving north and south of the wide arc formed by Jeffrey’s own eight fish.
Beck watched the tactical plot with considerable self-satisfaction. “Achtung, Einzvo. Detonate all sixteen warheads now.”
“All sixteen, sir?”
“Sixteen. Please.”
Jeffrey leaned forward with anticipation. Any second now it would be time to detonate his fish as they closed fast to lethal range of von Scheer.
Red warning lights flashed across Bell’s console. “Lost the wires, all tubes!”
“What the—”
The signals through the fiber-optic guidance wires from the torpedoes traveled at the speed of light — instantaneously. The blast force of undersea nuclear weapons took a little longer to arrive.
A tremendous crack resounded, a thunderclap that rattled the ship like the first impact of an unfolding earthquake. The warheads had detonated all at once, but from the geometries and distances involved, their shock fronts through the water got there one by one a few moments apart.
It was as if a giant’s jackhammer began to smash at Challenger’s hull. Vibrations inside were so strong and so vicious, Jeffrey’s vision blurred. He could barely see his instruments as standing crewmen were thrown from their feet. He was jolted hard against his seat belt and his headrest. The entire vessel shivered and rolled as conflicting turbulence from different bearings punished her amid unendurable shaking and ungodly noise.
The continuing decibel level quickly became so loud that Jeffrey lost all hearing. The scene of chaos and pain around him refused to relent, but now it showed itself in an otherworldly silence. He felt booms and rumbles deep in his gut, telling him what constant eruptions his eardrums were simply too overloaded to pass through the nerves to his brain.
Light fixtures shattered. Console screens went dark. Cabinets that were locked burst open; manuals, breather masks, laptops, and pencils went flying. Jeffrey ducked. He began to cough as the air was filled with choking dust from flaking paint and heat insulation.
Sadistic aftershocks hit, reflections of the original blasts off the surface and the bottom. Jeffrey held his armrests in a cringing white-knuckled death grip. The aftershocks sent grating tremors up his ass and tried to crush his spine. He stamped the deck with his feet involuntarily as his leg muscles forfeited any control and his lower limbs flailed about wildly.
Each of the sixteen atomic fireballs pulsated in a process Jeffrey knew too well. They started at the instant of fission at a temperature of a million degrees, swelled outward fast against the deep-sea pressure, then fell back as the pressure took charge. They rebounded outward violently, sending out a whole new shock front. The merciless throbbing happened over and over: the spheres of steam and vaporized weapon parts were buoyant. Each raced for the surface and rebounded outward again. Once more each reached a limit, then was squashed back in by the weight of the sea. Once more each sphere collapsed, only building up strength to rebound. Again each rebound threw off more concussive force.
Each new shock front reached for Challenger, hitting the ship and her crew with a seemingly conscious intent to shatter them. Sixteen separate fireballs did this, over and over without end.
Jeffrey’s body grew numb from the ongoing punishment, yet the unforgiving ocean still raged and swirled. At last the fireballs broke the surface. There was one final series of tremendous jarring blows, and the fireballs leaped into the air.
Survival had to come first. When the kampfschwimmer made no rapid counterattack, after they’d withdrawn into the water, Felix decided he needed to change tactics. He regrouped his men deeper inside the cargo-ship hulk’s superstructure. Additional layers of steel, he knew, would further block the impending gamma rays.
He also told his men to huddle in a circle, on one charred compartment’s deck. Since the human body was mostly water, and water gave some shielding against gamma rays and neutrons, one SEAL’s body could help to further protect another’s. This huddling was a common-enough SEAL practice, but normally it was done for mutual protection against bad weather: wind and cold.
Well, we’re on an atomic battlefield now.
Felix, as the officer in command, felt an obligation to maintain his situational awareness. He peered out the nearest porthole, which was almost totally black from caked soot and faced east. He had a hunch the action would happen in that direction. Africa was east.
Leaning against the bulkhead next to the porthole to help support the weight of his body and his equipment, he studied the spiderweb of cracks in the armored porthole glass. He felt horribly thirsty and hot. His mind began to play tricks, and Felix became obsessed with licking his own sweat off the inside of his protective-suit helmet. He knew this was the worst thing he could do: the sweat was not only salty, but held other bodily wastes, and to drink it would make him even more dehydrated than he already was. But it was very hard to resist taking at least a little lick.
Face it, we’re in pretty desperate straits here.
Then Felix felt the thing he’d dreaded, a series of tremors through the deck of the cargo-ship hulk. He saw the surface of the ocean churn a foaming white.
The underwater shock wave always comes first.
There was a blinding glare from outside and he had to look away. He dashed toward where his men were sitting together and placed his body between theirs and the glare.
Soon the glare subsided and was replaced by an eerie quiet. Tremors continued to come through the water and rattle the hulk.
Felix was overcome by curiosity. He went back to the porthole.
Through the soot, he made out a staggering number of glowing golden-yellow fireballs. Each was rising higher and higher into the air. Beneath each widening fireball was a solid pillar of white. He knew this was water and steam — and fission by-products from the warhead itself, the worst form of nuclear waste. Felix knew the mushroom clouds would be horribly radioactive: neutron bombardment by the initial weapon flash while underwater would act on metals dissolved in the sea — sodium especially — transforming their atomic structure into unstable isotopes. Those isotopes would decay, giving off alpha and beta and gamma rays, and more neutrons.
The wind is from the east. That stuff is coming right at us.
Felix barely had time to form these thoughts when the airborne shock waves hit. They pounded the hull of the burned-out cargo ship, in a repetitive hammering action that was a result of the mushroom clouds being different distances away. The hulk rocked back and forth. The cracked porthole bulged inward. Rust and ash and blistered paint were shaken loose and drifted in the air like an infernal blizzard; it was harder to see inside the compartment where he and his men had taken shelter. Their suits were sprinkled and dusted by the clinging unholy black snow. Felix’s well-trained eardrums felt the air pressure constantly change; his suit faceplate was squashed or made to swell as the overpressures and following partial vacuums plucked at his lungs. As each shock front passed over the Rocks, the compounded noise of all the explosions increased. The noise made talking impossible.
The noise makes thinking impossible.
Then Felix saw the thing he dreaded most. The thing his protective suit could offer no protection from. The thing from which the hulk’s steel plates gave no real shelter at all.
In the distance, a long stretch of the horizon seemed oddly higher than before. Felix watched in morbid fascination as this strange phenomenon drew near.
It was the expanding tsunami, not a true seismic tidal wave but a huge wall of water kicked up by the force of the sixteen atomic blasts.
He yelled for his men to hold on. But there was little to hold on to besides one another.
