Beck read on. The kampfschwimmer team and von Loringhoven were ordered to leave von Scheer immediately, using Beck’s minisub, along with the one working U.S. atom bomb. Once Beck and von Scheer proceeded farther south, the minisub was to ping on the frequency commonly used by Argentine diesel subs. Sonobuoys being dropped from an Argentine seaplane would thus locate the minisub by triangulation, a simple process. While a two-man crew stayed aboard the mini per standard procedures, everyone else would swim out and deploy a rubber raft to the surface. The seaplane would pick them up and return with them to Mar del Plata as if they were Argentine submariners or commandos on an exercise or an emergency personnel transfer. Then the mini would return to the von Scheer covertly, and Beck would wait beyond the continental shelf.
Beck grew concerned that the Allies might indeed be on to the plan. If so, with the enemy forewarned, able to take active countersteps or even just prepare a firm and persuasive-enough denial, the Axis scheme might begin to unravel. Beck appreciated now why Berlin saw the need to hurry. He dressed.
Beck left his cabin and knocked on von Loringhoven’s door.
President da Gama left the room to attend to other duties — Jeffrey reminded himself the man had an entire country to run.
Lunch was brought in. Jeffrey and Colonel Stewart made small talk with the two Brazilian generals. The admiral and Mr. Jones were working in another part of the underground bunker.
Jeffrey let Colonel Stewart set the tone, but the inconsequential chitchat was driving him crazy. Every neuron in his brain tingled for news of the stolen warhead, and every nerve in his body screamed for him to get back to his ship.
The Brazilians said they were having communications and mechanical difficulties making final arrangements for Jeffrey’s clandestine departure.
Jeffrey exerted tremendous self-control to master this latest lesson in command and diplomacy: patience.
But his self-control only went so far. He couldn’t help glancing often at the TV screen on the wall. Now it was set up to show a master status display. Estabo’s team had landed at Paranaguá and were airborne, heading west toward the inland border in a Brazilian helo; another Brazilian Navy hovercraft was dashing south, presumably with Challenger making forty knots right under it; the U.S. Air Force B-1 bomber launched from Venezuela was over the Rio de la Plata estuary now, its supersonic dogleg sprint out past the coast of Brazil complete.
Mr. Jones burst into the room. “The warhead’s come ashore!”
CHAPTER 32
Adrenaline surged through Jeffrey’s body, and he fought hard not to ball his fists in frustration. The generals were very apologetic, but there were continuing snags getting Jeffrey away. They hinted darkly at message jamming, even sabotage, by Axis agents inside Brazil.
In the meantime, Jeffrey could do nothing but watch. He was stuck deep underground, yet ironically had a bird’s-eye view of the action.
The data from several of the CIA’s bottle-cap gamma-ray detectors was conclusive. According to other intelligence — of some undisclosed kind but probably visual recon — a group of men had carried the suspect package from a flying boat onto a small corporate transport jet at Mar del Plata. Now powerful radars on the B-1 and the AWACS were tracking that jet as it neared Buenos Aires at over four hundred knots. The B-1 and AWACS were also tracking Estabo’s helo, which was making for the border at barely half that speed.
The map showed that it was 720 nautical miles from Mar del Plata to the middle of the Brazil-Argentina border — with Buenos Aires as a way point a third of the distance along the route. It was half that far, coming from the opposite direction, to get to the border from Paranaguá.
Half as far, but barely half the speed.
It was a toss-up whether the bomb or the SEALs would reach the border first.
Jeffrey, Colonel Stewart, and the Brazilian admiral were getting all the information they could as to where that flying boat at Mar del Plata had come from. All that was known was that it first appeared on radar miles out at sea on a course due west. Jeffrey was sure the flying boat had somehow rendezvoused with the von Scheer or her minisub. This was his first datum of any kind on the German submarine since the encounter at the St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks days ago. Jeffrey was busy working backward from what he knew — using clues about the flying boat and time elapsed and the maximum range and speed of German minisubs — to pin down a circle on the nautical chart where the von Scheer had to be.
Everything’s coming to a head at once…. I need someway to warn Bell.
And Christ, I must get back to my ship.
An aide rushed into the conference room. In heavily accented English he told Jeffrey that Admiral Hodgkiss was calling. He handed Jeffrey a cordless phone, whose shielded signal was patched into the bunker’s main communications center.
“Commander Fuller speaking. Yes, sir.”
“Captain,” Hodgkiss said from distant Norfolk, “we’re having a lot of trouble keeping in touch. It’s not just radio jamming. Our basic communications-management software is under information warfare attack. We’re fighting back, but it’s as if the Axis can find and block our most important voice and data links. I may lose you soon.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Captain, I want you to—”
The line went dead.
“Admiral? Hello?” Nothing. I said before, “Unless otherwise directed.” He wants me to do what? Or not do what?
Jeffrey gave the phone to the aide. “Thank you. See if you can reestablish the connection quickly, please.”
“Look!” Colonel Stewart pointed at the TV.
From a control room in the bunker, a technician was feeding in live video, windowed in a corner of the wall screen.
“This must be coming from the B-one,” Stewart said, “from its long-range visual-observation sensor pod.”
The main status plot showed the B-1 at the inner edge of international waters in the estuary off Buenos Aires. The angle of the view suggested it had ascended to very high altitude.
Jeffrey saw an aircraft that looked like a Learjet or a Gulf-stream putting down on a civilian airfield at La Plata, a town right on the water forty miles southeast of central Buenos Aires. The tarmac and hangar areas held a number of other small planes. He figured these were corporate jets, or aircraft Argentina’s rich elite used for pleasure flying.
The jet with the kampfschwimmer and warhead aboard slowed at the end of a runway, turned onto a taxiway, and met a refueling truck. As Jeffrey watched, another truck drove up to the plane.
Several men got out of the plane and began removing bulky packages from the back of the truck, carrying them onto the plane. The packages looked like rectangular canvas sacks. Another man got out of the plane and climbed in the back of the truck and stayed there, out of sight.
“Argentine liaison, probably,” Jeffrey said, meaning the man who wasn’t returning to the plane.
“Uh-oh,” Stewart said. “I think those sacks are parachutes.”
“You mean in case they’re shot down?”
“No,” Stewart said sourly. “That’s not what I mean.”
Then Jeffrey understood. Kampfschwimmer, like SEALs, were airborne qualified. “With chutes they can deploy just about anywhere with the warhead, by jumping right out of that plane.”
Jeffrey looked at the map, unfolded on the conference table, of airfields on the Argentine side of the border. The paved ones, long enough to handle a corporate jet, had been circled with a red marker by someone on the Brazilian staff. “I guess we won’t be needing this now,” Jeffrey said with concern and disgust.