From this angle, with the top of the periscope just above the sea, the St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks didn’t look like much.
A jumble of stones sticking out of the water. Four main chunks, plus a few tiny islets. Barely eight hundred feet from end to end, running north-south. Barely a football field’s worth of total dry-land area, and barely two square feet of it flat. More than five hundred miles from mainland Brazil. Just over a thousand from Africa. Not a place someone would ever choose to go.
The minisub rocked gently in the minor swells. Felix could make out white water where the swells broke here and there against the edges of the rocks. The weather forecast was good, and he could already see it would be a nice day. The lightening sky was clear and azure blue, with scattered high fluffy clouds that glowed pink in the sunrise. The sunrise was happening fast, even as Felix watched through the digital periscope display. The Rocks were only thirty miles north of the earth’s exact equator.
“I better get suited up,” he said. This was the part he wasn’t looking forward to at all.
Beck stood near the bottom of the lockout trunk that led into the von Scheer’s pressure-proof internal hangar for her mini-sub. The rest of the kampfschwimmer group, and their equipment, were already loaded. Beck was saying good-bye and good luck to Lieutenant Shedler; the two of them were alone by the heavy watertight door that sealed the entrance to the trunk.
“I appreciate what you’re doing for us.” Beck gripped Shedler’s hand in both of his firmly. “Godspeed to you.”
“You make it sound like a suicide mission, Captain.”
“Whatever our friend the baron said back there in the wardroom, Lieutenant, the moment you and your men break the surface, the clock begins to run out on all our lives.”
“If we come under attack by air,” Shedler said, “we can pull back underwater and take shelter in the minisub. It’s combat-hardened, remember.”
“What about nuclear bombs?”
“The Rocks are already a radioactive wasteland. We’re prepared to deal with that. We’ll just have to work quickly, and get you the targeting data you need before the Allies have time to retaliate. With luck we’ll be up and down, out and back, before they ever know what hits them.” Shedler, always so sure and optimistic, turned serious. “Just promise me one thing, Captain, if you can.”
“Name it.”
“If something does go wrong, don’t leave us behind.”
Beck and von Loringhoven were making small talk in the wardroom. Beck drank hot tea, Von Loringhoven black coffee. They used expensive china cups and saucers; the wardroom silverware was exquisite sterling; the embroidered tablecloth was antique, imported from old Persia.
“French coffee is good,” von Loringhoven said idly, “but the coffee in Buenos Aires is much better.”
“You’ve been stationed in Argentina?”
“Once, earlier in my career, before the war.”
Beck felt the von Scheer’s deck tilt as the ship nosed down. He watched the readouts on the captain’s console next to his end of the table. The ship’s depth mounted steadily.
Stissinger returned from the control room. “Minisub safely away, Captain. In-hull hangar pressure-proof doors are closed and sealed. We’re heading back to the bottom. Navigator has the conn.”
“Very well, Einzvo,” Beck acknowledged formally.
“Thank you for joining us,” von Loringhoven said to Stissinger.
“Thanks for inviting me, Baron, but I’m still not sure why I’m here.”
“My instructions are that the next portion of your captain’s secret orders are to be opened and read in your presence. I thought that three of us in the captain’s cabin might be crowded. The wardroom gives us space to spread out. The large flat-screen display lets us look at maps and charts together in comfort.”
Beck interrupted. “We need security.”
“At your convenience, Captain.”
Beck grabbed the intercom handset and called the control room. He asked the chief of the boat to have a senior enlisted man posted outside the main wardroom door, and another outside the door that led from the wardroom into the pantry. “Chief, tell the guards to admit no one without my permission.”
In a few minutes, the guards were posted outside.
“Open the next envelope whenever you like,” von Loringhoven said.
Beck’s curiosity was aroused by the change in procedure. “Why now, before we’ve completed our next mission task, the Rocks and the convoy? And why with my einzvo this time?”
“Once Shedler and his men reach the St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks, things will move very quickly.”
Beck nodded. That’s putting it mildly. We’ll soon go from daintily sipping coffee and tea under fine oil paintings in gilded frames to dealing out supersonic mass death, and then become absorbed in a fight for our lives.
“Management of the battle time line, by our side, is now more essential than ever,” von Loringhoven said.
“Granted,” Beck replied.
“In order to destroy the convoy, and achieve our broader war aims, and utterly defeat the Allied Powers, many things must be delicately coordinated and synchronized. Lieutenant Shedler will help us seize the tactical initiative. We three here, Captain, have a broader duty, to seize the larger, strategic initiative. Destroying the Allied convoy, alone, will not win us the war. It will just bring the enemy closer to losing. The convoy is not the last of your mission tasks on this vessel’s deployment.”
Beck glanced at Stissinger, who shrugged.
“Once you read the orders,” von Loringhoven said, “you will understand. Contingency plans have been carefully made in Berlin. You both, as the von Scheer’s senior officers, must study those plans in detail now. Now, before Shedler’s sudden appearance on the Rocks is noticed by the Allies, and that event in turn begins an unforgiving contest, and starts an inexorable race.”
“And I’m to take these new directives into account, in shaping my further decisions after the von Scheer’s missiles are launched?”
“Precisely. And I assure you, these orders are valid, from the highest levels in Berlin. You can double-check the authenticator codes against your private passwords on your computer if you wish. If you prefer, I’ll leave the wardroom while you do so.”
Beck ripped open the latest envelope. Hastily, he began to read. Before Stissinger even had a chance to move close to look over his shoulder, the captain felt his heart begin to pound.
As he read further, he could feel himself turning livid. He put down the hard-copy orders. He could see Stissinger reading now, staring at the papers in disbelief. Beck turned to face von Loringhoven accusingly.
“What this says is an outrage! It’s a crime against humanity!”
CHAPTER 19
Felix’s minisub was nestled in a sheltered area where the four main chunks of the St. P and P Rocks formed a west-facing U-shaped lagoon. The water here was very shallow, less than thirty feet. The minisub, weighing sixty-five tons and all of fifty-five feet long, was trying, for stealth, to pass for a dead whale. This was believable, Felix knew, because there were two dead whales, real ones, washed up and stranded against the rocks, decomposing.
Felix wore his Draeger rebreather and diving mask, swim fins, and knives. He had his firearms — his MP-5 submachine gun and his backup Beretta pistol and ammo — in a waterproof equipment bag. He also wore a full-body rubberized antiradiation protective suit, colored flat black and with shreds of ragged cloth and plastic for camouflage. This suit included thick gloves and boots, thoroughly sealed to the main part of the outfit. Felix’s Draeger oxygen rebreather — the latest prewar German model enhanced by an American contractor — had a nominal endurance of twelve hours. It would double as his respirator once he reached the land — a compressed air tank, in comparison, would weigh the same but give him only thirty minutes. A regular gas mask might have been most convenient, but it had two big flaws: The filters needed changing now and then, and changing them required a clean environment, and the Rocks were anything but clean. And a gas mask was useless for scuba diving.