No more dentist appointments squeezed in between long months at sea. No more weekly haircuts in spit-and-polish assignments in the Pentagon. No more anything at all.
Jeffrey’s intercom light blinked.
“Captain.”
“Radio room, sir. ELF message with our address.” Each entire sentence was conveyed by a very short letter-group cipher. “Come to two-way floating-wire-antenna depth. Imperative, no recourse. It says that last thing twice.”
Jeffrey acknowledged and hung up, then turned to Bell. “We’re ordered to two-way floating-wire-antenna depth.”
“Last-minute change of orders?” Bell asked.
Jeffrey could see the needfulness in Bell’s eyes.
“We have to find out,” he said noncommittally. His own emotions were swinging wildly too.
Jeffrey studied his charts. He gave Meltzer helm orders to bring Challenger shallow enough. Since he intended to remain acoustically stealthy, and also stay masked by the bulk of the seamounts around him, he told Meltzer to rise on autohover and pivot the ship to face south-southeast. This would aim Challenger into the Benguela Current, which ran up from South Africa.
Jeffrey told Meltzer to order just enough turns on the main pump-jet propulsor to hold the ship steady against the one-knot current. He told COB to play out the two-way floating wire antenna and let it stream behind the ship, into the current.
Jeffrey gave Bell the conn. He went into the crowded and dimly lit radio room.
The communications officer — the lieutenant (j.g.) — and the senior chief were in charge, as usual at battle stations.
“We have a message relayed from Norfolk, sir,” the senior chief said. “Authenticators check out. Commander, Atlantic Fleet, wants to talk to you.”
The lieutenant and senior chief seemed worried, and confused. Challenger was being ordered to break radio silence in the middle of a major battle. Jeffrey didn’t like it either.
Have the people in Washington or Norfolk lost their minds?
Has some unified commander or carrier-battle-group admiral with no grasp whatsoever of the realities of undersea warfare made an insistent but stupid request? Jeffrey felt disgusted, betrayed — but orders were orders, to the last.
He put on a communications headset and positioned the lip mike. There was a switch on the wire, past the alligator clip meant to attach the wire to his belt. If he pressed that switch, he’d be live on the air, transmitting.
Jeffrey heard Admiral Hodgkiss’s voice in his earphones. The voice was flat and scratchy from the encryption processes, and there was heavy background noise — hissing, sirens, buzz-saw sounds — because of attempted enemy jamming.
“Challenger, respond,” Hodgkiss ordered impatiently.
Jeffrey pressed the switch. “This is Challenger, over.”
“I’ll make this fast and you aren’t going to like it. The Axis land offensive to pinch off the pocket shoreline has begun. The Boers are making a strong drive up the coastal strip, with armor. Our exhausted troops will soon be overrun.”
“Why do I need to know this, Admiral?”
“The situation is desperate. The convoy is taking a beating. The escorts and the air force are running very low on high-explosive land-attack cruise missiles, and from their current positions the transit times to launch and impact would be too late. I think the Boers know this too; that’s why they’re doing what they’re doing where and when they’re doing it…. With Lieutenant Reebeck’s help, we’ve been following your tactics and actions, and watching the string of mushroom clouds between you and the von Scheer. We knew you’d be in the Valdivias now. Your location is ideal, you’re much closer to the crisis area than our forces guarding the convoy from farther north. Your conventional-warhead ammo load-out is perfect. You are hereby ordered to conduct an immediate Tactical Tomahawk strike against the advancing Boer forces…. You’re our best hope.”
“Sir, this will completely compromise my stealth.”
“The survival of the pocket has to come first. Warships exist to inflict loss on the enemy by taking risks. The Valdivias put these emergency coastal targets well within your Tomahawks’ fifteen-hundred-mile maximum range.”
“The von Scheer will hear my launch datum.”
“The same way the convoy is lure for other U-boats, Challenger is bait for von Scheer. You absolutely must stop the von Scheer. Beck might not have figured out where you are. This will bring him to you, positively. I’m trying to do you a favor…. And we simply can’t let Boer tanks break into the pocket.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I remind you that your ship is expendable in an equal exchange with von Scheer as a last resort. You have very little time to launch your Tomahawks and sink the von Scheer. Fail, and everything in this theater will come apart at the seams. Let that happen, we’ve lost the war. Good luck to you, Captain. Out.”
Jeffrey went back to the control room. He ordered Meltzer to bring the ship to periscope depth. He told Bell to stand by for a Tactical Tomahawk land attack. The XO was speechless.
“Everything’s happening together,” Jeffrey said. “The pieces interlock. Convoy, von Scheer, land offensive — they’re all part of one whole. For now we play network-centric warfare.” Firing weapons using real-time targeting and sensor data from distant platforms.
Meltzer called out when Challenger reached periscope depth. Jeffrey ordered COB to raise a photonics mast; mounted above the optical scanners on the mast was a small passive signals-intercept antenna. Bell quickly reported no visual threats on imagery coming down from the mast; the outside world showed on monitors in the control room. Via the sigint antenna, the Electronic Support Measures room gathered data from the ether above the surface, and analyzed it with special receivers and software. New contacts came onto Jeffrey’s tactical plot, showing the range and bearing to far-off hostile radars. Safe enough. Jeffrey told COB to raise the two-way high-baud-rate antenna.
The digital handshake was made with a command vessel in the convoy escort group, via satellite. Data began to pour in. Detailed targeting information and route way points were sent for every Tomahawk launch. The data gave precise three-dimensional mapping of land topography each missile should follow by using its built-in look-down radar. The data also included visual and infrared video of the targets, whether tanks or artillery batteries or formation-headquarter vehicles or hasty bunkers. It all took many megabytes…. The download was complete.
Jeffrey ordered the antenna mast lowered. Bell and Torelli went to work with the combat-system specialists to preprogram each missile for the emergency strike. Challenger had twelve high-explosive Tomahawks in small individual silos in her vertical launching system, built into the forward ballast tanks. She had eight more in the torpedo room on the holding racks. One Tomahawk was quickly loaded into each torpedo tube. Now comes the scary part.
Jeffrey decided to fire the torpedo room’s missiles first. They could all be in the air in less than two minutes. They would make a god-awful racket, and be utterly conspicuous as they launched. Each was subsonic, as fast as a jumbo jet, with a range of about fifteen hundred miles — this put Jeffrey in striking distance of the African coast, even though von Scheer’s faster but shorter-legged supersonic missiles couldn’t yet reach the convoy at sea.