“Very well,” he said to Torelli. “I have the conn.”
“You have the conn.” Torelli slid over and Jeffrey sat down.
“This is the captain. I have the conn.”
“Aye aye,” the watchstanders acknowledged. Soon the entire watch rotated. A talented lieutenant (j.g.) from Engineering came forward.
Jeffrey settled in at the command workstation conning officer’s console. The lieutenant (j.g.) from Engineering sat next to him, serving as officer of the deck. The OOD’s job was — among other important things — to oversee machinery operations and related procedures inside the ship. This left Jeffrey undistracted, free to monitor the larger picture and make the big decisions on how Challenger should fight.
Jeffrey scrolled through the digital log from the previous watch for the sonar department. The sonarmen had detected a number of loud explosions in the distance, back toward North Africa. These were all identified as tactical nuclear detonations on and under the sea.
The battle between the relief convoy and Axis forces is definitely heating up…. Still no hint of a contact on the von Scheer.
Then Jeffrey had an awful thought. His feeling of being transcendently alive at the prospect of combat quickly wilted.
He turned to the messenger of the watch. He tried to keep his voice even. “Where’re the XO and Sonar?”
“XO’s sleeping, sir. Lieutenant Milgrom is using the enlisted mess to do a training drill for some of her people.”
“Get them, smartly.”
“Aye aye.” The messenger, a very young enlisted man still pimply-faced from acne, hurried aft.
Milgrom arrived in seconds. Bell showed up a minute later, stuffing his shirttails into his pants. He fast went from drowsy to alert when he read Jeffrey’s expression.
“People, we have a problem. I think it fell through a crack, all the way up the line.”
“Sir?” Bell and Milgrom said together.
“The von Scheer. She’s about the size and shape of one of our boomers?”
“So far as we know, Captain,” Bell said.
“Or one of our boomers converted to SSGNs?”
Bell and Milgrom nodded reluctantly. They saw where the captain was going with this.
“So on ambient or hole-in-ocean sonar alone, we really can’t tell the von Scheer from one of our own Ohio-class boats?”
“We’d need to get close enough to get good tonals, sir,” Milgrom said, “to rule out that possibility. Yes.”
“Not quite,” Bell said. “We’d have their depth and speed. The Ohio ships can’t go below about a thousand feet, and can’t go past something like twenty-five knots, max. Anything deeper or faster has to be the von Scheer.”
“But shallow and slow, a contact could be friend or enemy, correct?” Jeffrey said. “Shifting our operational area to South America throws a wrench in the works. We don’t have any data on our own boomers’ patrol boxes. We don’t have up-to-date data on their or the SSGNs’ en route safe corridors in this part of the ocean either.”
“It would compromise security to give out too much of that info, Skipper,” Bell said. “When we left Norfolk we didn’t have a conceivable need to know. It’s the same old thing, moles and spies and code breaking. This go-round, they might cost us the war.”
“These are special circumstances,” Milgrom said. “Perhaps if we made the request, Captain, Strategic Command would give us what we require.”
Jeffrey frowned. “To ask, we’d need to radiate. We radiate, we make a datum that could get us killed…. And then there’s the very real likelihood our request will be denied…. No, we can’t risk it.”
Bell worked his jaw, thinking hard. “So if we see something huge out there, moving slow and shallow, we need to get in really close to make sure it’s the von Scheer and not a friend.”
Jeffrey nodded.
“What about Russian boomers or SSGNs?” Milgrom asked. “They’re very large.”
“They’re all in their bastions, way up north, playing pure defense. That’s one problem we don’t have.”
“Would von Scheer really go shallow and slow?” Bell asked. “To fool us like that, Captain?”
“Beck can’t hide in the bottom when the Brazil Basin’s abyssal plain goes down twenty thousand feet or more in places. What’s his next-best choice?”
Milgrom and Bell looked at each other. Milgrom said it for both of them. “Ape an Ohio to throw us off.”
“And at eight hundred feet or whatever,” Jeffrey said, “with the water so deep, Orpheus is useless. Even when he steamed right over one, Beck’s hull and the telephone cable would be something like four miles apart.”
Jeffrey saw Bell and Milgrom’s faces fall as he made that last, unpleasant statement.
The intercom from the radio room blinked. Jeffrey picked up his handset. “Captain.”
“Sir,” the lieutenant (j.g.) communications officer said, “an ELF message now coming in with our address.”
“What’s it say? I’ll hold.”
Jeffrey glanced at Milgrom and Bell. “Another ELF message.”
Bell got excited, then confused. “An Orpheus contact report? But you just—”
Jeffrey cut him off as the radio room had more.
“Come to floating-wire-antenna depth,” the lieutenant(j.g.) read off the message’s cipher-block meanings. “Do not radiate. Imperative; no recourse. Commander, Atlantic Fleet sends.”
“Very well.” Jeffrey hung up the mike.
“XO, take the conn. Bring us up to floating-wire-antenna depth. Then trail the wire. I’ll be in the radio room.” He ran his eyes over the tactical plot once more. “Have the messenger knock if you run into the slightest trouble out here.”
Jeffrey went to the rear of the control room, to the radio room. The door was posted with dire security warnings — most of the crew were never permitted access. He punched in the combination to the lock and entered.
The compartment was small and crammed with electronic equipment and men. Here were all the transmitters and receivers Challenger could use, covering radio bands from deep-penetrating ELF extremely low frequency, up to SHF super-high frequency used for satellite communications. The radio room also contained Challenger’s encrypting and decrypting gear. This hardware and software, including onetime-use code keys and very advanced data-scrambling routines, were some of the most highly classified materials on the ship.
Despite the strong air-conditioning, the room was warm from the heat of electronics and tense men’s bodies in such close quarters. The junior lieutenant in charge was young and green, and capable but nervous under his captain’s impatient scrutiny. He was assisted by a senior chief — a mature man, cocky and confident of his skills.
Jeffrey read each word as the incoming message was received, then decoded, then displayed on a screen and spat out by a printer; reception was slowed by Axis jamming.
He read in increasing disbelief.
As soon as the last page was finished, he grabbed the hard copy. He left the radio room and made sure the door was locked behind him.
“Sonar, take the conn,” Jeffrey snapped. “XO, my stateroom, now.”
“No Orpheus contacts after all,” Bell said. “So much for Ascension Island. So much for that.” He sounded badly frustrated.
Jeffrey shook his head. “Admiral Hodgkiss sees it too. Beck must have figured something out, or been warned by radio from Berlin.”