He wanted to move in closer, get a better look, and a positive ID for whatever the thing was. A year or two earlier, he might have done that, and let his desire for personal involvement get in the way of making the right tactical decision. He was smarter than that now.
The truth was that Liv Peary was better suited for the task. She moved more quietly, and her eyesight was a little sharper than his. Not much, but possibly enough to make a difference.
Webb swallowed his personal pride and gave Liv the signal to close in.
She covered the fifty yards at a snail’s pace. If she made a sound, it never reached Webb’s ears.
Slowly she reduced the distance by half, and then reduced it by half again.
From a vantage behind a tree, she peered into the undergrowth for half a minute. And then she began a slow creep back to Webb’s position.
When she was an arm’s length away, she came in closer and put her lips next to Webb’s ear. Her voice was barely audible. “False alarm. Old abandoned truck. No wheels. Looks like it used to be a campsite.”
Webb nodded, but didn’t speak. The presence of an old truck didn’t necessarily prove the absence of missile launchers.
They crept forward together, until he was at an angle and distance to see for himself. Sure enough, it was an ancient deuce and a half truck. Nineteen fifties, or maybe even forties. True to Cuban tradition and mechanical ingenuity, it had long ago been stripped of all useful parts.
There were also some old corrugated tin sheets tossed around at random, like playing cards dropped on the floor. Lying half-buried in the dank leaf mulch. Rusted through, black with mold and the final stages of oxidation.
This was what the surveillance drones had cued on. Heat trapping from the old truck and the vaguely rectangular silhouettes of the discarded tin sheeting. Thermal images of obviously manmade shapes bleeding through the tree canopy.
Still, there was no reason to let down his guard now.
He motioned for Liv to continue her creeping search. He followed her, and they both combed the area, moving cautiously and quietly.
At last, Liv shot him an inquiring look and he nodded. “It’s a bust,” he said, speaking aloud for the first time since entering the woods.
“Shit,” said Liv. “I really thought we were on to something.”
“So did I,” said Webb. “But there’s no reason to stick around here. Let’s head back.”
The trip out of the forest was much faster, now that they no longer had to move in silence.
When they got to the road, Webb reached out to hold Liv’s hand. He put on a smile that he definitely wasn’t feeling. “Happy faces,” he said. “We are happy tourists, doing happy tourist things.”
Liv squeezed his hand and put on her own fake smile. “Happy faces,” she repeated.
They walked down the road toward the town of Playa La Playita, laughing, holding hands, and looking very much like a carefree little couple.
Webb was already mentally composing the report he would make over the satellite phone when they got back to the Foxy Roxy.
Point Yellow was a false alarm. Wherever the North Korean missiles were, they sure as hell weren’t here.”
CHAPTER 55
While Horace Hunley and his associates were learning from their early failures in the American South, on the far side of the Atlantic, a Bavarian inventor and engineer named Wilhelm Bauer was adding to the composite knowledge of submarine technology with his own string of failures.
Bauer was an artillery engineer in the Bavarian Army. After witnessing his country’s troops surrender the German state of Schleswig-Holstein to Denmark following a prolonged siege, he was impressed by the Danish Navy’s effective blockade of the Prussian coastline.
He left the Bavarian Army to build a submarine, which he called the Brandtaucher (Fire Diver). His low military rank and lack of social standing made it hard to attract investors to finance his design. Eventually he developed a working miniature of the submarine and a series of successful demonstrations convinced government sponsors to fund construction at full scale.
Although the hull form of the Brandtaucher was unusual, the mechanics of the submarine were similar to other designs of the period. The only significant departure was a hand-spun flywheel propulsion mechanism in place of the more common hand-cranked shaft. This difference was not enough to make the craft seaworthy.
The Brandtaucher sank during a test dive near the port city of Kiel. Trapped on the bottom of the harbor for six hours, Bauer and his crew were finally able to escape when enough water had leaked into the crippled submarine to equalize surrounding water pressure. At that point it became possible for Bauer and his men to open the hatch and swim to the surface.
Bauer’s next submarine, the Seeteufel (Sea Devil), was financed by the grand prince of St. Petersburg, Russia. The design was vastly superior to the Brandtaucher, and the Seeteufel is known to have made more than 130 successful dives before it also sank.
Once again, Bauer and his crew were able to escape. It was after this second major failure that he began advocating for a propulsion mechanism to replace human power. He became fixated on building a submarine powered by an internal combustion engine.
At roughly the same time, the French Navy fielded the first submarine that was not reliant on human power. The Plongeur was equipped with a reciprocating engine which drew compressed air from 23 tanks at a pressure of approximately 180psi. The Plongeur’s promise on the drawing boards did not translate into practicality. The French submarine was nearly unmanageable when submerged, with a top speed that disappointing.
Undeterred by the lackluster performance of his French competitors, Bauer continued to advocate for internal combustion engines in submarine propulsion. He spent more than a decade trying (and failing) to find a government sponsor for the idea.
In 1866, two years after Bauer began his fruitless quest for a new kind of submarine — and also two years after the Hunley’s successful attack against USS Housatonic—a British-born naval engineer named Robert Whitehead built the first self-propelled torpedo.
Whitehead called his invention the automotive torpedo or locomotive torpedo. Supporters and critics tended to ignore his chosen titles and insisted on calling it the Whitehead torpedo. By any name, the self-propelled weapon was a quantum leap in naval warfare.
It was no longer necessary to tow a floating torpedo into the keel of an enemy ship, or ram the weapon against the target ship’s hull at the end of a long spar. With a propeller powered by compressed air, Whitehead’s new torpedo could be aimed toward the target and released to run on its own. It could cross hundreds (and later thousands) of yards of open water to reach and kill the intended vessel.
Like most new technologies, this one was plagued by numerous engineering difficulties. Whitehead struggled for years with depth control issues and steering challenges. But one-by-one, he solved each problem and his torpedoes continued to increase in range, firepower, and tactical effectiveness.