Stissinger paced aft and stood with Beck and von Loringhoven at the plotting table. Beck explained to the navigator what he wanted to see.
A display appeared of the now-familiar land and undersea terrain in this theater: the western African coast, the Walvis Ridge, the Angola Basin, the Bight of Guinea — St. Helena chain of seamounts to that basin’s north, and the Cape Basin to the Walvis Ridge’s south.
An animation appeared, showing the convoy moving toward the shore of the Allied pocket in the Congo Basin.
Beck cleared his throat. “The convoy’s base course is roughly east. Our own base course, because of the ridge, has to be more like northeast. To converge on the convoy before it’s too late, we need to better the convoy’s average speed by almost fifty percent.”
The animation began again, with the convoy moving at twenty knots and the von Scheer making the same twenty knots. The icon of the von Scheer closed the range to the convoy as it moved up along the ridge on the chart — but not fast enough.
The animation repeated, with von Scheer doing thirty knots. Now a red circle around the own-ship icon showed the range of her Mach 2.5 cruise missiles — five hundred miles; a green line marked the atomic rules-of-engagement two-hundred-mile limit from land. At thirty knots, the red circle enveloped a big part of the convoy before the convoy reached the two-hundred-mile limit.
Von Loringhoven watched all this. “Very clear explanation. It seems at thirty knots, which I believe is your top quiet speed, we should achieve our goal.”
“It isn’t quite that simple. We need to allow extra time for appropriate caution and self-defense. And we need to allow for the flight time of our missiles. Even at Mach Two point five, hugging the wave tops, it takes about fifteen minutes to achieve their maximum range. Baron, in fifteen minutes a nuclear-powered supercarrier going all out can cover ten or more sea miles, wider than the lethal burst zone of our missile warheads. So we have to build into their flight paths autonomous searching-strategy patterns, unless we can receive good and accurate targeting data in advance. And those patterns looping and zigzagging after their prey use up even more time.”
“So why don’t we get the data?”
“We’d need a high-baud-rate radio link. To download firing solutions for a hundred-plus missiles is a complex and painstaking task. To get that link established, without a kampfschwimmer team on an island and an acoustic connection into the water to us, we’d have to come to periscope depth and raise a mast ourselves, well in advance of when we launch. The Allies already know we’re somewhere in the Walvis Ridge, thanks to the mushroom clouds above the surface marking our skirmish with Challenger. It’ll be bad enough with the datum we make as our missiles all take to the air.”
“You’re saying we need to fire our missiles half blind, to have the best chance to survive to fire them at all?”
“Yes. Thus we need to get as close as humanly possible to the convoy, and that burns up even more time.”
“What is your intention now?”
“I know Fuller well enough to know he won’t give up until one of us is destroyed…. Navigator, overlay the Subtropical Convergence.”
The navigator typed some keys. A broad and fuzzy yellow ribbon snaked along the map. It crossed the Walvis Ridge at an angle, three hundred sea miles northeast of the mountain pass that von Scheer had just left behind. Beck pointed to that spot, where the Subtropical Convergence intersected the Walvis Ridge.
“Fuller has the same information we do. He can read the same maps. His natural impulse and best strategy is to set up another ambush for us, here.” He tapped that spot on the chart. “The same confusing sonar and oceanographic conditions we used to our advantage as we crossed the South Atlantic from the Rocks to Mar del Plata apply at this point equally well.” In the hemisphere-girdling zone where frigid currents from Antarctica clashed and merged with warm ones from the equator.
“If he hides inside the convergence,” Stissinger said, “we might be able to sneak past him.”
“So he’ll either wait for us in front of the convergence, or behind it,” von Loringhoven said.
“The question is which,” Beck said, “in front or behind? Fuller needs to slow us down as much as possible. He knows, so far, that each of our direct encounters has been indecisive, a draw. The Rocks, and then this Walvis pass. Therefore, he’ll wait in the ridge terrain for us behind the convergence.”
“Why behind?” the baron asked.
“May I?” Stissinger said.
Beck smiled and nodded. He noticed that Stissinger had been following his lead for the past few days, accepting the baron’s presence without rancor — and allowing their passenger-guest to join in some command discussions as a useful third voice.
Stissinger really is the perfect einzvo: loyal and very capable, yet also keenly adaptable to changing conditions on the ship — responsive without being prodded as my own political thinking and the social dynamic evolve.
“If Challenger waits for us on the closer side of the Subtropical Convergence, Baron,” Stissinger explained, “Jeffrey Fuller runs a serious risk. If we break contact for just a short while, say using the extreme acoustic sea state of torpedo blasts, the convergence gives us sanctuary. It’s an ideal place for confusing sound-propagation qualities to offer us excellent cloaking, even from active pinging by a desperate Challenger. We’ll have gotten between Fuller and the convoy. But, if Fuller seeks to engage us next on the far side of the convergence, that sanctuary becomes irrelevant. If we try to use it then, we run the wrong way, farther from our priority target, the Allied convoy. And we still have to come back and fight our way past Fuller all over again.”
“Your logic seems inescapable,” von Loringhoven said.
Beck patted Stissinger on the shoulder. He had a selfish motive here, besides giving his XO well-deserved praise. He was showing the baron he ran a skilled and talented crew — and again, it was best for them all to close ranks in front of their seniors in Berlin about the South American mess. Von Loringhoven seemed to get the point: his aloofness and his arrogance appeared to be finally gone for good.
Stissinger continued. “So long as Challenger is believed to have survived, Allied antisubmarine forces are hobbled. In the difficult terrain conditions within the ridge, they dare not attack any very deep contact, lest it be Fuller and not us.”
“You mean,” von Loringhoven said, “so long as Fuller is alive, that keeps us safe from Allied bombardment?”
“Precisely,” Beck said. “We use Fuller’s mere existence for our own purposes, for now.”
“And then what’s your intention?”
“Move quickly to the convergence. Turn Fuller’s ambush plans against him yet again, from there.”
It was ten hours later. Jeffrey released the crew from battle stations a few at a time so they could use the head, drink coffee, and eat. He had black coffee and a ham sandwich brought to him at the command console. He thanked the messenger, gulped everything down while the youngster stood there, and handed back the empty mug and plate.
Jeffrey returned to his harrowing vigil, waiting for the von Scheer to pierce the Subtropical Convergence as Beck moved his way along the Walvis Ridge.
He glanced at the picture of Ernst Beck on his screen.
Well, buddy. Soon one of us is gonna die. I intend for it to be you.
The crew around Jeffrey were tired and tense. But they all knew well from training drills, and from at-sea full-scale tactical exercises fought against U.S. or Royal Navy subs before the war, that waiting at battle stations — doing nothing yet not relaxing for hour after endless hour — was sometimes a vital part of a submariner’s job — even if the submarine he was on was called a fast-attack.