Wild Boar and Cheetah between them could fire twenty nukes at once. Challenger only had eight tubes. Her better speed and crush depth would be no help against so many twenty-kiloton fission warheads. Russian nukes would surely get through, while none of her puny one-kiloton Mark 88 fish would reach the Russians. Challenger and all aboard her would die. The enraged Akulas would hunt down Carter and then go home and report the terrible truth of American treachery.
Apocalypse Soon, Apocalypse Later, Apocalypse Now.
The decoy that was the Amethyste began to give off the sounds of noisemakers and jammers. Already making flank speed, this was all her imaginary captain could do. According to Jeffrey’s endgame scheme — reinforced by him scolding the Russians about having given away the UGST’s special capability — the Germans had figured out, from seeing the search pattern used by the four torpedoes the day before, that the Russian weapons possessed some way to successfully search for a nuclear submarine hiding quiet and still against the ice. The Russian captains might wonder why the German captain didn’t return fire, but decoys couldn’t launch convincing phony torpedoes — and real torpedoes from Carter had entirely different sound signatures from the weapons used by Amethyste-IIs. Decoys from Carter pretending to be German weapons, coming at the Russians, would never fool them, and would leave irrefutable physical proof that the pseudo-Amethyste was really American.
This was a loophole in Jeffrey’s strategy that he’d simply have to live with — or die with: the German captain would not return fire. Maybe he’d used up his few torpedoes and decoys days ago, approaching Russia, his weapons load drastically reduced to make room for so many commandos. Maybe he’d had a mechanical breakdown in the torpedo room. Or maybe he realized, with the geometries of torpedo maximum ranges versus ship flank speeds, that his countershots had no chance of being effective.
One tactical plot showed twenty-eight torpedoes quickly catching up with the Amethyste. The other plot showed twenty-six torpedoes and two decoys. Everything depended on those decoys doing exactly what Jeffrey needed them to do, exactly when he needed them to do it. They were the last two Mark III brilliant decoys Challenger had. They were preprogrammed, and fully autonomous once launched, with no guidance wire and no way to recover them. If something went wrong and they ran astray they’d be more forensic evidence unmasking Jeffrey’s elaborate subterfuge. The consequences will be far worse than Russians calling me a liar.
Challenger’s Mark 88 fish, launched from tubes one through six, were faster than the UGSTs, making almost seventy knots. Though they’d been fired from much deeper depth, they reached the target first. Jeffrey had counted on this. It was essential that Carter’s decoy be pulverized, but Challenger’s decoys had to survive because their indispensable tasks were yet to come.
Torelli crossed himself, and ordered his people to detonate their warheads via the fiber-optic guidance wires. Their massive high-explosive warhead charges caused tremendous, thundering blasts. Russian torpedoes began to explode right behind them, some command-detonated through intact guidance wires, others because the nearby blasts touched off their warheads sympathetically or spoofed their arming software, and a few because they’d been programmed for contact-fusing against anything solid they hit — including ice bummocks. Challenger was buffeted by many shock waves and strong turbulence.
Did the brilliant decoys survive? Months of mission preparation, weeks of hard work and bloody sacrifice and terrible risks, all came down to the next few moments. And then it happened. The blasts, echoes, and protesting ice cap were drowned out by a much louder sound, the unmistakable implosion of a submarine hull. A shower of wreckage of all shapes and sizes made flow noise as it fell, thudding into the seafloor.
The real tactical plot showed that these last effects were coming from Bell’s two deep-capable decoys, emitting a modified rendition of a recording of the real Amethyste’s death here two weeks before. As they dove for the bottom themselves, the decoys spread apart to give a better illusion on Russian sonars of a three-dimensional debris cloud forming.
The Mark III decoys still had crucial work to do. Jeffrey’s acoustic smoke-and-mirrors ploy wasn’t finished. The Mark IIIs were in the water, they’d eventually exhaust their fuel and might be found, and they needed a damned good excuse for being there.
Both decoys went silent, and rose back to Challenger’s depth. They returned toward her, then altered their courses and headed in opposite directions, north and south. They began to sound and act like Challenger making flank speed — as if just launched to draw off return fire aimed at Jeffrey’s task force.
So convinced were the Russian captains of the danger of German torpedoes — last gasps from the now-dead Amethyste, possibly nuclear, undetected while inbound through the deafening sea — that Wild Boar and Cheetah launched decoys, too.
But no German torpedoes emerged from the echoes and reverb and roiling clouds of bubbles and tumbling, shattered pack ice.
“Ru-ling, signal Wild Boar and Cheetah. ‘Good shooting and well done.’ ” Both Russian captains acknowledged with thanks.
Epilogue
Jeffrey sat alone in the Oval Office with the President of the United States, wearing his dress blue uniform with medals. The two men had had long talks before, starting the day that the President awarded Jeffrey his first, unclassified Medal of Honor.
The President was a retired four-star general, who liked to say he was hardly the first senior military leader to rise to the elected civilian rank of commander in chief — look at George Washington, or Eisenhower, to name just two. He’d taken a shining to Jeffrey, especially since he kept delivering important successes in this war. November was the next presidential election, which he reminded Jeffrey of whenever they met, as if suggesting there might be opportunities someday beyond the U.S. Navy for a war hero of Jeffrey’s caliber. The President would be running for his second term; his winning depended on how the American public perceived the war to be going. Jeffrey was helping keep alive the aura of inevitable triumph and peace.
Jeffrey asked about the amnesty offer to the Axis leaders that was supposed to follow the raid in Siberia; sneaking home submerged until just yesterday, and closely sequestered for security since then, he’d had no access to news reports.
The President told him that the South African reactionary leaders, seeing Germany evacuating North Africa after a recent, major defeat there, read the handwriting on the wall and jumped at the chance. They were already in Paraguay, which had agreed to grant them asylum, and a new interim government had been rushed into place. Jeffrey thought this was outstanding.
“I’m declaring next Monday a national holiday, V-A Day,” the president said with a grin. Victory in Africa. “It takes time to plan the parades and celebrations.”
But the advanced German nuclear sub that had been undergoing repairs in South Africa, the ceramic-composite-hulled Admiral von Scheer, had put to sea and evaded the Allied blockade and was on the loose somewhere. This put a bit of a damper on things. The German dictatorship refused to even consider an amnesty. They vowed to fight to the end at all costs, making threats about new weapons and alliances that would drive the Allies back and force an armistice favorable to Germany. The President declined to go into further details.