Undersecretary Mitchell spoke up. “The diplomatic situation between Germany and Britain is deteriorating rapidly, Mr. President. Chancellor Shoernberg has publicly refused to apologize for the attack on HMS York and HMS Chatham. He claims that Britain defaulted on all existing treaties and agreements the second the Royal Navy tried to impede the passage of German submarines through international waters. He’s calling for a formal apology from Prime Minster Irons, and he’s demanding reparations for the aircraft that were destroyed and the pilots who were killed. He’s really pitching a fit over the German warship, the Sachsen.”
“Reparations? I don’t see that happening,” Doyle said.
“I don’t either,” Mitchell said. “The average British man on the street has blood in his eye right now. They were already mad as hell over the attack on their embassy. They’re ready to hurt somebody, and the shooting match with the Germans has just given them a target for all of that anger. Prime Minister Irons is addressing Parliament this afternoon.
The grapevine says she’s going to ask for suspension of diplomatic ties with Germany.”
The president grimaced. “Not good. When countries stop talking …”
“They have a tendency to start shooting,” the national security advisor finished. “Sad, but true, Mr. President. And from the looks of things, both sides are gearing up for it. Military bases on both sides of the English Channel have been ordered to increased states of readiness, and air activity for both countries has picked up by about fifty percent.”
“Is the naval operating tempo increasing as well?”
“Not yet, sir,” Brenthoven said. “But that’s probably coming.”
“What’s the latest on the submarines?”
“No word on their current location, sir. Fifth Fleet has assigned four ships to intercept them south of the Strait of Hormuz. I have to tell you, Mr. President, it’s going to take a lot of luck to pull this off.”
“Unfortunately,” Doyle said, “luck has been in rather short supply around here lately.”
The president nodded. “Right now, we’re looking at about eighteen different ways the world could go to shit.”
Undersecretary Mitchell smiled weakly. “Well, at least it can’t get any worse.”
CHAPTER 33
Chief McPherson ran her fingers down the back of one of the Mark-54 torpedoes. She’d been chasing submarines for nineteen and a half years, first as an Ocean Systems Technician Analyst, then as a Sonar Technician, but she had never fired a torpedo.
The weapon’s anodized metal skin was smooth and cold, perhaps as cold as the bottom of the sea. As cold as the torn, lifeless bodies of the German Sailors would be.
First would come the fire, the shaped charge blasting through the steel hull, burning everything its white molten plasma jet passed close to. Then the sea would burst in through the broken hull, flooding compartments with the roar of a tidal wave, drowning the few men not already killed by the explosion, or crushing them to a pulp. And then the cold would come, the intense cold of the sea. Quenching the fierce heat of the man-made volcano, leaching the warmth from the still-twitching bodies of the crew, until everything — the twisted steel, the mangled flesh, the terrified screams of dying men — were all the same temperature as the frigid water of the ocean bottom.
Behind her, the air drive motor started up with its characteristic hiss.
The huge armored door to the torpedo magazine began to swing slowly open.
Chief McPherson looked over her shoulder. Who would be coming into the magazine at this time of night?
She popped to attention as soon as she recognized the figure standing in the widening gap of the doorway. “Good evening, sir.”
Captain Bowie smiled and stepped into the magazine. “Carry on, Chief.”
The chief relaxed and turned back toward the rack of stowed torpedoes.
She laid her hand on the top weapon again. “I can see their faces, sir.”
The captain waited a second before asking, “Whose faces?”
“The faces of the German submarine crews.” She took a heavy breath and released it. “I’ve been chasing subs as long as I can remember, and I’ve always pictured them as these sort of dark, foreboding shapes, sneaking through the depths, hiding in the shadows.” She patted the torpedo twice with the palm of her hand. “I’ve been training to kill submarines, and talking about killing submarines, and planning the best ways to kill submarines since I was nineteen years old. And now that I’m going to actually do it, I can’t picture the submarines at all any more. All I can see are the faces of those German Sailors. Faces of people I’ve never even met before … never will meet.”
The captain nodded slowly. “What do these faces look like?”
Chief McPherson’s eyes locked on the captain’s for a half-second and then flitted away. “Young, sir. Trained and confident. More than a little scared, but trying like hell to be brave. But young. Too goddamned young to die.” She looked up at her captain again. “They look like the faces of our crew, sir. And in a few hours, I’m going to have to kill them.”
The captain was silent for several seconds, and Chief McPherson began to wonder if she had said too much. “I’m sorry, Captain,” she said, finally.
“Maybe this is a woman thing. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’ll do my job when the time comes. I’ll be ready, sir.”
“I know you will,” the captain said. He laid his own hand on the back of a torpedo. “And don’t worry. It’s not a woman thing. It’s a human thing. And believe me, Chief. You are not the only one feeling it.”
CHAPTER 34
In Combat Information Center, Ensign Patrick Cooper stood near the Computerized Dead-Reckoning Tracer and looked down at the digital flat-screen display that covered the unit’s entire upper surface. Five feet wide and nearly six feet long, the CDRT display screen was much too large to fit on a regular operator’s console. It had to be large, because Anti-Submarine Warfare was complex and intricate. Displayed on a normal-sized operator’s console, a typical ASW engagement would clutter the screen with so many tracking symbols and trial target geometries that it would quickly become impossible to sort anything out. The large CDRT display allowed the symbols to spread out enough to remain legible.
Cooper shifted his weight from his left leg to his right. The large size of the display had a downside. It was impossible to see the entire screen clearly from a sitting position. To take in the complete display, it was necessary to stand close to the unit and look down, directly into the screen.
Consequently, the CDRT was the only watch station in Combat Information Center without a chair for the operator. Cooper had been on watch for less than an hour, and he could already feel his leg muscles beginning to tighten up. The hours of standing made for some long watches.
Ensign Cooper shifted his weight again and scanned the display.
Friendly ships appeared on the display as small green circles, each with a single line sticking out from its center, like the stick of a lollipop. The lines were called speed vectors. The direction of each vector indicated the course of the ship it represented, and its length indicated the ship’s speed through the water. Fast-moving ships had long speed vectors; slower ships had shorter vectors. The circles and lines were called NTDS symbols, short for Naval Tactical Data System. (Although the NTDS system itself had long been superseded by more advanced technology, its easy-to-read catalog of symbols had carried its legacy into the twenty-first century.) The particular NTDS symbol that represented USS Towers was marked by a bright green cross that divided the circular part of the symbol into four equal quadrants.