“Targeting data, XO,” Jeffrey said. “The Germans want the Rocks to set up a link to get long-range targeting data.”
“Yes, sir, that has to be it.”
Jeffrey’s heart raced. “Data for Ernst Beck to launch his missiles at the Allied convoy, unmolested by the escorts… If the Germans seize control of the Rocks for just a few minutes, our first detect on the von Scheer will be the sound of dozens of Mach-Two-plus missiles salvoing into the air.”
Once her missiles are away, the von Scheer is spent, an empty shell…. To sink her after she launches against the convoy will be no victory.
Jeffrey knew that every second counted badly now, both underwater and on land.
Felix cursed doubly when one of his men was hit by a bullet through his helmet’s soft plastic faceplate. The man began to scream, in English, before he bled out inside his suit from a severed main artery. My first killed-in-action as leader… And so much for our Brazilian disguise.
The kampfschwimmer heard it too. The energy of their assault redoubled.
“Dig in?” one of Felix’s chiefs shouted.
Felix looked at the ground on the slope where they were taking cover. Two inches down it was solid basalt. “We’d need jackhammers!”
More bullets whizzed overhead. The protective suits kept Felix and his men from hearing them well, from feeling their passage disrupting the air — and this added to the danger. The chief was trying to control his team using hand signals alone because they hadn’t taken radios — whose signals would be blocked whenever basalt outcroppings stood in the way, and whose electronics would be damaged by fallout gamma rays. With the SEALs’ fields of vision impaired by the helmets of their radiation suits, near-chaos reigned. Felix heard another SEAL scream in agony. Then one of his people bellowed in triumphant rage — he’d just shot a kampfschwimmer dead.
Felix peeked around a rock for a split second to use his binoculars. He ducked, barely in time, as an incoming three-round burst sent dust and pebbles flying.
“I see no mortars or hand grenades! I think they just have direct-fire weapons like us!” Rifles and pistols.
“They’re trying to outflank us!” the chief yelled back.
Felix looked at the lay of the land, the folds in the slopes, the jagged escarpments.
So this is how it feels to be in full command, as an officer. This is what it’s like to have chiefs taking orders from me.
It was scary, but Felix found he wanted it.
“We have to hold the high ground!”
“Firing line across this side of the island, or circle in an all-around defense?”
Felix looked about again and thought as fast as he could. Razor-sharp spines led down from Southeast Rock’s central saddle in both directions, right into the sea. If his men spread out along the spines and fired down from the top, they might keep the Germans pinned down on the opposite side of the Rock.
But Felix and his men hadn’t come prepared for a major firefight. They only had so much ammo.
If each kampfschwimmer brought just one more magazine than each of my SEALs, we’ve had it. Or if the Germans are only slightly better shots, or have slightly better fire discipline, or use slightly better tactics…
The uncertainty stabbed him in the chest like a bayonet.
So this is the burden of command. I’ve already lost the element of surprise to the enemy. My logistics are inadequate. My commo’s barely functioning. I have to make too many choices at once…. And my men are bleeding and dying.
“Chief, this isn’t Iwo Jima! We have to stop thinking like Marines or infantry!”
Felix grabbed the mike to the minisub. To his relief the line still worked. “We need reinforcements. Every man not needed to run the Orpheus, suit up on the double. Head north underwater, outflank the Germans clockwise, come up on Northwest Rock and support us from there. Take the kampfschwimmer in enfilade.”
The chief in the mini acknowledged. Northwest Rock faced the opposite slope of the central spines of Southeast Rock. From there, fresh SEALs could attack the Germans from behind.
An enlisted SEAL shouted. Kampfschwimmer were charging up the slope in a coordinated rush.
Felix told his chief to get his men spread out along the spines and conserve their ammo but drive the Germans back. The chief made hand signals, and the SEALs began to act. With every weapon silenced, the battle was strangely quiet — but it would be a person’s final mistake to think the bullets were any less deadly.
Felix gestured for the chief to follow him. They belly-crawled across the open ground on part of the saddle and huddled in the ruins of the stone lighthouse. The location would serve as his command post, the pivot point in their battle to hold the Rocks. Felix dragged the microphones along with him. He tried to keep their wires concealed, and tried not to break either mike. But the conspicuous satellite dish was already riddled by the kampfschwimmer, and its preamplifier box was totally smashed. Then the whole dish toppled flat: Felix lost contact with Norfolk. The Germans continued their uphill rush.
Some kampfschwimmer were knocked down by American bullets, but they crawled or hobbled away behind boulders and draws — and Felix saw no blood trails. He realized their suits were lined with Kevlar, like the SEALs’. To stop them, he knew his men had to stick to head shots. He told his chief to give the order.
Over the sonar speakers in the Zentrale, Ernst Beck listened to his acoustic link. The kampfschwimmer chief in the mini-sub, watching the Rocks through the periscope, was relaying Beck a blow-by-blow description of the battle.
“Their charge has been repulsed, Captain! The Americans still hold the high ground!”
“This will never do,” von Loringhoven said.
Lieutenant Shedler was leading from in front, on the St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks. Because he was under fire, his men couldn’t set up a communications link to the minisub, or to Beck. The captain knew he had to do something himself.
Beck and Stissinger peered at a detailed topographical map of the Rocks and surrounding waters.
Beck used the acoustic link. “Chief, shift the minisub’s position south. Send the rest of your men into the water. Have them come up on Southeast Rock and take the SEALs from behind.”
“Jawohl. Moving now.”
“How did the SEALs ever get there?” von Loringhoven asked.
“That’s a very good question,” Beck replied. “More to the point, what do they want? What was that satellite dish for?”
There was an awkward silence.
“Targeting data from SOSUS hydrophones?” Stissinger suggested.
“Perhaps.” Beck considered everything he knew — why he was there by the Rocks, the enemy convoy that was coming, the defense plans U.S. commanders are likely to have made. “If you’re right, Einzvo, that would seem to prove the SEALs came via submarine.”
Von Loringhoven looked like he’d been slapped. “Find it! Destroy it!”
“Baron, you don’t have to tell me how to do my job.”
CHAPTER 21
After another fitful, nightmare-ridden attempt at a few hours’ sleep, Ilse Reebeck had just come back on duty to the console she’d been assigned at the Atlantic Fleet Command Center in Norfolk. The past several days of waiting for news from Challenger had been even more nerve-racking for her than for the others in the big war room because Ilse had served in battles on Challenger three times before. She knew most of the chiefs and enlisted men well. She was good friends with Kathy Milgrom, and the two had had fun “pajama parties” in their shared stateroom on the ship. COB had been Ilse’s mentor and father confessor as she tried to fit into a military hierarchy. And Jeffrey Fuller, of course, was someone she went back and forth between liking and hating — a roller coaster she hoped would continue, for the way it seemed to meet her deeply conflicted emotional needs. She desperately wanted Challenger to win, and Jeffrey Fuller and the others to survive.