“Master One still maintaining constant course and speed, sir,” Bell reported.
“No countermeasures? No decoys? No torpedoes launched?” Jeffrey was puzzled — a sensation he really didn’t like.
“Negative, Captain.”
“He has to have heard us pinging.”
“I concur.”
“So what’s he up to?” Jeffrey’s common sense set off alarm bells in his head. Beck must be up to something. The German’s total lack of reaction to the surprising presence of Jeffrey’s ship and then to Challenger’s aggressive pinging, and now Bell’s full salvo of oncoming nuclear fish, was the last thing he had expected.
“Sir,” Bell warned, “there’s so little we know about the von Scheer’s design. He may have a nasty trick up his sleeve.”
“Like what, XO?”
“He’s much too quiet at thirty knots for that to be his flank speed. He’s holding something back.”
“You mean you think he might be faster than us?”
“Maybe.”
“Sonar.”
“Captain?”
“What’s von Scheer’s stern look like? One propulsor or two?”
“One large pump-jet propulsor, sir.”
“How many nuclear reactors?”
“Captain?”
“The Russians often use two on their bigger submarines, right? We know the Axis gets help on propulsion plants from Moscow. Does von Scheer have a single reactor, or two?”
“Wait, please,” Milgrom said.
Jeffrey turned to Bell. “What’s your guess?”
“He might have two.”
“I know he might have two. I need a specific best guess.”
“One big propulsor seems to suggest one single big reactor.”
Jeffrey bobbed his head around as if he was thinking about what Bell said and wasn’t sure if he agreed with his XO or not.
“Sonar?” he pressed. He felt worried and impatient.
“Impossible to tell number of Master One reactors on-line from the sound profile available.”
Jeffrey looked at Bell. “So he may be running at whatever top quiet speed he can get out of just one reactor, with another held in reserve, idling in quick-start-up power range. He might suddenly throw both on-line at full power and zoom away from us.”
“But from our torpedoes, sir?” Bell said. “The Mark Eighty-eights do seventy knots.”
Jeffrey fought hard not to lose his temper as he went on: “And the Russian Shkval undersea rocket torpedoes do two hundred knots. And we know even back in the Cold War, the Russians worked on slippery long-chain polymers they’d squirt from the front of the bow dome to lower hull friction in order to help them outrun inbound fish.”
Bell nodded reluctantly. “So at least for short periods, sir, the von Scheer might be able to run at seventy knots.”
Something in Jeffrey’s spirit sagged. “If that’s true, we’ve already lost this contest. If Beck is waiting for just the right moment to shove all his throttles hard against the firewall, and he really is able to sprint that fast, we don’t have a weapon aboard that can stop him.”
“Our Tomahawks do hundreds of knots.”
“You know they’ve all been loaded just for high-explosive land attack.”
Bell stared at his screens. Jeffrey realized his XO had run out of useful ideas. He felt his own throat start to go dry; he had to pucker to summon saliva. A few uncomfortable minutes passed.
“Sonar, Fire Control,” Jeffrey said, “any change whatsoever on Master One?”
“Negative, sir,” Milgrom said. “No change in tonals, no mechanical transients at all.”
“Contact’s course and speed continue steady, sir. Due east at thirty knots.”
Jeffrey looked at the tactical plot. His eight atomic weapons were drawing closer to the Admiral von Scheer. Very soon they’d be in lethal range, and Ernst Beck had to know it, and Ernst Beck wasn’t doing anything to save himself.
Unless he has a way to sprint even faster than my torpedoes. Is he rubbing it in now, reading my mind, and showing me his contempt?… Or does he have a whole new secret weapon, and he knows that I don’t know it, and he’s not the least bit worried about me or my inbound fish?
Maybe Beck has something awful, an entire new technology — and he’s about to deal with me and my torpedoes once and for all, the same way a horse would use its tail to swat down pesty flies.
For almost the first time in his life in the navy, Jeffrey began to feel genuine, gnawing, soul-crushing fear.
“I think we’ve toyed with Fuller’s mind enough,” Ernst Beck said, and cleared his throat. “Achtung, Einzvo, target one Sea Lion at each incoming Mark Eighty-eight. Set all Sea Lion warhead yields to maximum, one kiloton.”
“One kiloton, sir? Doctrine is to make defensive countershots at lowest yield.”
Beck smiled again at Stissinger, then shrugged theatrically. “So I’m a nonconformist.”
“Maximum yield, jawohl,” Stissinger acknowledged.
“Load firing solutions.”
“Loaded.”
“Close all inner doors. Flood tubes.”
“Closed and flooded, Captain.”
“Equalize to sea pressure. Open all outer doors.”
“Equalized and doors open.”
“Achtung, tube one, los!” Go!
Stissinger relayed the firing command.
“Tube one is fired.”
“Unit is operating properly,” Haffner called.
“Tube two, los!”
“Tube two is fired.”
“Unit is operating properly.”
Beck fired all eight tubes. He glanced at the tactical plot. There were eight new icons, friendly torpedoes outbound. Once freed from the tubes, they looped around and headed back past von Scheer’s stern, aiming west under wire-guided control. One Sea Lion ran at each inbound Mark 88. The net closing speed of each interception was almost 150 knots.
Beck knew he had a key advantage over Fuller: unlike Challenger, the von Scheer could close her outer torpedo tube doors to reload without losing the wires to weapons already launched. In what Beck planned to do next, this would be crucial.
“Reload all tubes, Sea Lions, preset warhead yields to maximum.”
Jeffrey listened as Milgrom and Bell reported that the von Scheer had launched countershots at Jeffrey’s torpedoes.
“Finally,” Jeffrey said. “He played that close.”
“So he’s using conventional tactics after all,” Bell said. “We shoot, he countershoots.”
Jeffrey nodded. “This fight’ll be one really hard slugfest.”
I mustn’t tell the crew, but we hold a crucial advantage. We’re expendable in a double kill, and von Scheer isn’t. That lets me be more flexible, more aggressive than Ernst Beck.
“New mechanical transients on Master One!” Milgrom called. “Launch transients! One, two, three… Eight more torpedoes in the water!”
Jeffrey studied the tactical plot — there were now sixteen enemy weapon icons moving away from the hostile-ship marker.
“This new bunch is aimed our way,” Bell said, pointing at the plot.
Jeffrey saw what he meant. Of Beck’s second salvo of eight atomic torpedoes, four each were curving north and south of the wide arc formed by Jeffrey’s own eight fish.
Beck watched the tactical plot with considerable self-satisfaction. “Achtung, Einzvo. Detonate all sixteen warheads now.”