“Yup. Even if Argentina’s legit regime tries to blame it on some Axis two-pronged sneak attack, you think anybody whose babies have died is going to accept that? You think people lying feverish in their own body waste and gasping for breath, untreated in the parking lot ’cause every hospital in town is overwhelmed, are going to give a damn what the government says?… The more the elected officials deny any blame, the more culpable they look.”
“Again, Captain, what does all this mean to us?”
“The assessment from our national command authorities is that these are just opening moves, to lay the groundwork. Soon the atom bombs will be delivered by the von Scheer. Delivered to the pro-German fascist opposition waiting in Argentina. Waiting to seize control and wage atomic war on Brazil.”
“So what’s Brazil doing now?”
“Arming to the teeth. Expelling the Argentine ambassador and severing relations. Artillery duels have intensified along the border, way down south. The Brazilian Army is confiscating vehicles belonging to foreign citizens and businesses, apparently to augment troop and war-matériel transport. The government in Brasilia nationalized every railroad and port facility too, including ones that were foreign owned. They announced martial law in the border area. The whole city of Foz is being evacuated. That’s a quarter of a million people…. They declared the two-hundred-mile limit as an exclusion zone for foreign warships. Then the leaders dispersed to hardened secret bunkers underground.”
“What about U.S. citizens in-country, Captain?”
“State’s told everybody to leave Brazil and Argentina. They’re being shuttled across the Andes Mountains to Peru or Chile by air.”
“What’s the Brazilian Navy up to?”
“To put it in quaint terms, XO, they sortied the fleet from Rio.” Brazil’s main navy base. “The exclusion zone will be enforced by the São Paulo carrier battle group, apparently.” The São Paulo was the former French Navy’s Foch, refitted and sold to Brazil in 2001. “We have to watch out for her ourselves. Eighteen fighter-bombers plus eight helos. Her escorts are frigate types, some homegrown and some bought used from the Brits…. Fast patrol boats and missile craftare working closer in-shore. To prevent Argentine commando incursions, I think… Argentina responded in kind, declared an exclusion zone of their own. Not that they’ve much to hold it with.” The Argentine Navy’s largest warship was one secondhand British destroyer.
“And Brazil’s atomic weapon status?”
“The CIA still doesn’t know precisely. Circumstantial evidence strongly implies Brazil has the bomb.”
CHAPTER 27
Twelve hours later, after a block of frequently interrupted sleep, Jeffrey was back at the conn. He listened as Sonar reported yet more atomic blasts off Africa. After hours in the deep sound channel, he was starved again for news of the outside world. At the same time he dreaded what another news report might bring.
His crew’s search for the von Scheer, using passive sonar only, had still yielded nothing. Jeffrey’s one remaining reliable secret weapon, Challenger’s new multiline fiber-optic towed array, had caught no clue at all to the enemy submarine’s whereabouts. Whenever suspicious infrasonic tonals were picked up, Jeffrey — or the OOD who’d summon Jeffrey — would bring Challenger toward the contact. Milgrom’s people — every time — identified it as a neutral diesel sub, or a ship on the surface.
Even Ernst Beck, audacious though he might be, would never run von Scheer on the surface as a trick to deceive or elude me. The São Paulo and other surveillance platforms would find him in a snap…. No, at this point the battlemight not open till we’re close to Buenos Aires, where I’m forced to use high-explosive fish alone. That’s probably Beck’s intention. He’d be willing to use his nuclear weapons, with everything else going on, even close inshore, and I’ll be at a big disadvantage…. The battle might not even open until von Scheer has delivered her goods, those crated warheads. If that happens, catastrophe in South America becomes inevitable, and with it comes new catastrophe for the world.
Jeffrey’s greatest quandary was that whatever choice he made, either lingering in one area to do a thorough search for von Scheer or zigzagging to check out more of the open ocean, would most likely just give Beck a better chance to draw irrecoverably ahead.
Challenger was already at her top quiet speed; to go much faster would make her noisy. To change tactics and ping, with no idea of the von Scheer’s location, would also be counterproductive. It would ruin any chance Jeffrey had of surprise: Beck’s acoustic intercept would pick him up going active, at four or five times the range that Challenger could first sniff any faint returning echo off von Scheer. The German captain would then have an easy job to maneuver to avoid.
There seemed nothing to do but keep steaming toward Buenos Aires, remain on high alert, and pray. Jeffrey was glum. He hated playing catch-up ball.
In the worst case, with von Scheer’s advantage of four knots at what appeared to be her top quiet speed compared to Challenger’s, Beck would be drawing ahead of Jeffrey by a hundred nautical miles a day. Three days south of the Rocks now, Challenger was nearing the latitude of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was another thousand miles south-southwest to Buenos Aires, where the coastline of Argentina first began.
If Beck is indeed making a steady thirty knots all along, he’ll be at Buenos Aires in another twenty-four hours.
To cut him off, if all of Jeffrey’s estimates and hunches were correct, Challenger needed to increase speed.
He called up a nautical chart. For something this simple he didn’t ask for the navigator’s help — and Jeffrey wanted to keep these thoughts to himself.
Forty knots would just do it. Forty knots for twenty-four hours and we’re right outside Buenos Aires same time as Beck.
But forty knots would make Challenger a much more vulnerable target. It would also reduce her sonar sensitivity, making the von Scheer that much harder to find.
And because forty knots was dangerously noisy, Jeffrey would need to use sprint and drift. That meant slowing down sometimes, to listen for threats. For part of every hour, he’d have to go even faster than forty knots and be even noisier.
I’ve faced nothing but bad trade-offs before. I’ve been in high-stakes stern chases before — both as pursuer and as pursued. But never have I been forced to choose between such unpleasant alternatives as the ones confronting me now.
The worst of it was, Jeffrey couldn’t even savor the stimulant of imminent battle. The facts offered nothing but grinding uncertainty piled onto grinding uncertainty. The von Scheer’s presence as a looming threat somewhere unseen — intact as a force-in-being — made her more frightening than any opponent he’d ever faced in head-to-head combat. The way Ernst Beck played with Jeffrey’s mind and taunted Jeffrey’s ego, simply hiding and doing nothing, felt like torture, a wounding insult to Jeffrey’s pride.
He decided his best approach had to be: forestall the worst possible outcome. He gave his odds of betting right as less than fifty-fifty. To Jeffrey, this was a losing proposition already. But anything else he could do offered even worse odds.