Then came the event that spurred these machines into action. On June 28, 1914, Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie Maria, were gunned down in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo.
A month after his assassination, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Russia mobilized in support of Serbia, after which Germany invaded Belgium and Luxembourg and began moving towards France. World War I had begun, and the hour of the submarine had come at last.
Within weeks, Germany’s U-boats achieved dominance of the seas surrounding Europe, stalking Allied warships and cargo ships, and sinking them at will.
The submarine became an instrument of terror. The U-boat captains of the Imperial German Navy raked their enemies with salvos of deadly torpedoes, spreading fire and destruction wherever they went. The bottoms of the North Sea and East Atlantic Ocean were transformed into graveyards for broken ships and the bodies of uncounted sailors.
From its position on the far side of the Atlantic, the United States, adopted a policy of strict isolationism. That changed on May 7, 1915, when a German U-boat torpedoed the British ocean liner Lusitania. Among the passengers killed in the attack were 123 American citizens.
Fueled by a rising demand for revenge, the United States entered the fight and the scope of the conflict became global. Before the First World War ended, the death toll would top 20 million, with the number of wounded reaching almost as high. But even this — the bloodiest conflict in the history of the planet — was only the beginning.
The interval between the end of that war and the start of the next was not a time of healing and peace. It was a respite in which the battered militaries of the world armed themselves for an even greater battle.
By the start of the Second World War, attack submarines were faster, deeper diving, longer ranged, more powerful, and many times more lethal. They would become still more deadly throughout the war, and in all the decades to follow.
The ship-devouring man-killing sea monsters of ancient myth had become real, and we had built them ourselves.
CHAPTER 56
Chaz Bradley signed the bottom of the document, ending the signature with his customary flourish. “That wraps up the Counterterrorism Summit, at least for the moment.”
He closed the document folder and handed it back to White House Chief of Staff Jacqueline Mayfield. “What else have you got for me, Jackie?”
The chief of staff shuffled the folder to the bottom of a short stack and opened the one on top. “Looks like… the first draft of your press remarks for the oil spill in Prince William Sound.”
Chaz waved the folder away. “I don’t want to look at that yet. What’s next?”
The rejected folder went to the bottom of the stack and another one was opened. “Let’s see,” said Jackie. “We’ve got… the State Department’s latest markup of the Malaysia Free Trade Agreement.”
Chaz accepted the new folder and rocked back in his chair. “How many times are we going to have to do this one?”
Jackie gave him a wan smile. “As many times as it takes, Mr. President. We’ve got to get this thing figured out; Malaysia is our nineteenth largest trading partner.”
“You think that by itself would be enough to get their attention,” Chaz said. “Before Muhyiddin Yassin put the brakes on negotiations in 2009, Malaysia was our tenth largest trading partner. Now they’re down to number nineteen and still falling. While they’ve been busy playing the protectionism game, they’ve lost trade share to Brazil, India, the Netherlands, Italy… Even Belgium is kicking their butts.”
“I’m sure they’re trying to do the right thing for their people, sir.”
“Well they’re going about it a funny way,” said Chaz. “Because we’re still their number one trading partner. Which means that the people who are mostly getting hurt by this are the Malaysians themselves.”
“That’s not something we can fix,” Jackie said.
“I suppose not,” said Chaz, and turned his eyes to the red-lined document.
His reading was interrupted by the opening of the door.
There were only a handful of people who could walk into the President’s study unannounced. National Security Advisor Frank Cerney was one of them.
He closed the door behind himself and nodded in greeting. “Afternoon, Mr. President. Jackie. Can I have a moment of your time, sir?”
“That depends,” said Chaz. “Is it gonna be something more interesting than the Malaysia Free Trade Agreement?”
Cerney smiled. “That’s not my place to say, sir.” He held out a folder. Not the blue embossed leatherette of a presidential briefing binder, but white cardboard edged with diagonal red stripes.
Chaz laid the trade notes on his desk and accepted the offered folder. “An update on the Cuba situation, Frank?”
“Two updates,” said the national security advisor. “First, a P-8 Poseidon ASW aircraft out of Jacksonville detected and attacked the North Korean submarine about an hour ago. The engagement occurred northeast of the Cayman Islands, not quite two hundred nautical miles from the previous last known encounter with the sub.”
“That thing gets around,” said Chaz.
“Yes it does, sir. Literally like nothing anyone has ever seen before.”
Chaz flipped up the cover sheet and looked at the after-action summary. “Holy cow! They dropped six torpedoes on this thing?”
“That’s right, Mr. President. Six Mark-54s, all with fair-to-good placement. Against a normal target, any one of those weapons would have gotten a kill.”
“Meaning that we didn’t get any hits?”
“No hits, sir. Just like all previous engagements, our torpedoes were able to acquire the target, but they couldn’t catch the submarine at supercav speed.”
“Well, we’re consistent,” said Chaz. “We’ve got that much going for us.”
He thumbed to the next tab in the folder. “Tell me that your second item is good news.”
“Maybe partial good news, sir,” said the national security advisor. “The Marine Corps Security Force Company out of Guantanamo has successfully inserted their scouting team into Cuba. They’re checking out some of the five potential missile sites identified by satellite imagery and drone surveillance.”
“That sounds promising to me,” said the chief of staff. “What’s the not-so-good part?”
“The report just came in from the first potential site, designated as Point Yellow. It’s negative. Our Marines crawled all over the area. No missile launchers.”
“Not the news I was hoping for,” said Chaz.
He closed the folder and tossed it onto his desk. “We can’t kill this damned submarine, and we don’t have confirmed locations for any of the missile sites. Congratulations, Frank. You’ve somehow managed to turn the Malaysian trade mess into the high point of my day.”
“Mr. President, it’s not as bad as it sounds,” said Cerney. “Point Yellow had the lowest confidence rating of any of the potential sites by a wide margin. Also, it was the only one that didn’t correspond to the rough coordinates provided by Major Ri.”
“Give us some calibration,” said Chaz. “What was the confidence level for the site that turned out to be a false alarm?”
“The National Reconnaissance Office rated Point Yellow at sixty-two percent.”
“And the other four locations?”
As usual, Cerney had come prepared. “Point Red and Point Blue are both rated at ninety-six percent plus. The Joint Chiefs believe that’s high enough to justify suppressive bombing or missile strikes, and I concur. So does the Secretary of Defense.”