The morning sun found its way through a hole in the clouds, and Gröeler squinted slightly. The skin around his eyes was crosshatched with heavy crow’s feet. Not laugh lines, but rather a cumulative network of wrinkles caused by thousands of hours spent peering through periscopes and attack-scopes.
He was a short, solidly built man, with ice-blue eyes that moved quickly and missed very little. Behind his back, the men called him das Armkreuz—the spider. Under another circumstance, the nickname might have been disparaging. But Gröeler knew that his crew considered it a compliment. It signified their respect for his skill as a hunter. He moved quietly, worked meticulously, and killed quickly.
He rummaged in the pocket of his gray Deutsche Marine coveralls for a cigarette. Smoking was forbidden at the ammunition piers, but he was in command here. It was his submarine, they were his torpedoes, and the gray-coveralled crewmen working down on the deck were his to command. He lit the cigarette with a slender butane lighter made of good German steel. He drew a lung full of smoke. It was a stupid rule anyway.
The plasticized-hexite explosive used in the torpedoes was incredibly stable. Without a precisely measured electrical charge from an arming mechanism, it was just so much harmless chemical modeling clay. With the proper initiating charge … well, that was a different matter. But ten cartons of smoldering cigarettes and a hundred butane lighters couldn’t hope to set one of those weapons off.
He took another hit off the cigarette, exhaling fiercely through his nostrils. Still, it was good to have such rules. They gave the men direction: road signs for separating acceptable behavior from unacceptable behavior. And it was good for the men to see their kapitan breaking such rules. They needed to be reminded that his was the final word on all subjects. As commanding officer of the wolfpack, his orders were not subject to question. He, and he alone, would decide when to follow regulations and when to break them.
He looked at his watch. They would finish with the torpedoes shortly, and then they could begin loading the missiles. It was obvious that his crew would finish ahead of schedule. He stepped away from the railing, executed a precise turn to the right, and began walking with a crisp, deliberate stride.
It was time to inspect the other three submarines under his command and check the status of their weapons on loads. No doubt they would also be ahead of schedule, but probably not so far as his own crew. He had, after all, personally selected every one of his men. They were, quite literally, the best that the German Navy had to offer. And after six months of intensive pre-mission training, they meshed like the proverbial well-oiled machine.
As he walked, Gröeler pulled off his officer’s cap and rubbed his fingers briskly through his blond crew cut. There was more than a little gray in his hair now. That too was a good thing. The other wolves in the pack should be reminded that the lead wolf was the oldest and wisest, as well as the strongest.
He pulled his cap back on and straightened it with a practiced gesture: no wasted motion. Let his men see the outward evidence of his self-assurance. Let them note the steadiness of his hands and the easy grace of his movements. They would take confidence from these things, and they were going to need that confidence, along with every scrap of advantage they could get.
The mission was achievable; he was certain of that. It would require exceptional skill and more luck than he cared to think about, but it could be done. He knew the tactics of the American Navy and the capabilities of their hardware. He could bluff the Americans. Avoid them. And if he couldn’t …
It wasn’t failure that worried him. He had made every possible preparation. His men were handpicked and expertly trained. His boats were in superb condition. All of the necessary support mechanisms were in place. The plan could work. He would make it work.
But what about afterward? Would the Americans really react as the Bundeswehr’s military Security Council predicted? Did his superiors really understand the Americans at all? Gröeler certainly didn’t, and he’d been studying them and their military tactics for his entire adult life.
The Japanese had critically misjudged the Americans in 1941, hadn’t they? Their attack on Pearl Harbor had devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
The mission had succeeded. But the Americans had not sued for peace, as the expert strategists and tacticians had assured the Japanese High Command. The carnage inflicted at Pearl Harbor had enraged the normally placid Americans in ways the Japanese psyche could not even comprehend. The Americans had risen from the wreckage of the attack and crushed Japan like an insect. Finally, it had taken the nuclear extermination of over a quarter of a million Japanese citizens and the utter destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to slake the American thirst for revenge.
Japan had nearly been destroyed as a result of wishful thinking on the part of its leaders. And now, the chancellor and his cronies in the Bundeswehr seemed to be poised to make the same mistake. They were gambling the fate of Germany on their projections of how the Americans would react. What if their guesses were wrong? What if the American response was military instead of political?
Gröeler shook his head. He had spent his entire life in submarines. He didn’t know much about international politics, but this whole thing struck him as the worst sort of wishful thinking. The kind by which nations were destroyed.
He had nearly turned the mission down. For the first time in his life, he had come within a centimeter of refusing to obey his orders. Only one thing had stopped him — the knowledge that the Bundeswehr would find someone else to carry out the plan. Someone less capable. Success might bring consequences that the Bundeswehr and the chancellor had not foreseen. But, if the mission was botched, the consequences would be ungodly.
Gröeler shook his head again. Either his superiors had forgotten their history, or they hadn’t noticed the date. The seventh of May. The anniversary of the Nazi High Command’s unconditional surrender to the Allies at the end of the Second World War. Germany had lain in ruins then, Berlin still burning from the American fire bombs, the countryside torn by the boots of soldiers and the treads of tanks. And the Bundeswehr had selected this date to launch their operation. Had they done so out of blind ignorance? Or was their choice of dates intentional? Some delusion that Germany was destined to recapture its former glory? Gröeler couldn’t decide which idea was more frightening.
He sucked a last lung full of smoke from the cigarette and thumped it over the rail into the water. In the split-second before the butt left his fingers, he caught a glimpse of the brand name: Ernte 23.
The name brought a bitter smile to Kapitan Gröeler’s mouth. Ernte meant harvest. And, if the mission didn’t go as planned, there would be a harvest all right. A harvest of blood and fire. He looked down at the piers where the young sailors were rushing to carry out his orders and wondered if any of them would survive it.
CHAPTER 4