Jeffrey issued orders to shoot. He watched a periscope monitor. One by one, the missiles broached the surface, riding a solid-fuel booster rocket. The flame was bright yellow against the blue sky. The exhaust smoke was dirty brown. The rocket noise came through the hull.
The first cruise missile’s wings unfolded. The rocket got the missile up to speed, then dropped away. A jet engine in the Tomahawk took over. Bell called out every step of each launch. Soon all eight Tactical Tomahawks disappeared beyond the horizon. They could be redirected in flight by other Allied platforms, such as fighter-bombers or recon drones or satellites, via radio. Enemy units on the attack, on the move, would thus have much more trouble decoying or spoofing the warhead final-homing sensors.
Now for the vertical-launch-system salvo.
The launch noise was louder now. One by one, twelve more Tomahawks rocketed into the air, dropped their spent boosters, and transitioned to level flight. When the last one was away, before it even reached the horizon, Jeffrey ordered the photonics mast lowered. Torelli and the fire controlmen expressed proud satisfaction in their work despite the risks involved: that everything should have gone just right, that twenty out of twenty missiles made fully successful takeoffs, said much about the Weapons Department’s months of training and constant hard work on equipment maintenance. Jeffrey gave them a heartfelt “Well done.” Cluster minelets, fuel-air explosives, bunker busters were all on their way to the enemy. And now we reap what we have sown. “Helm, emergency deep.”
Meltzer acknowledged and down the ship went, fast. Jeffrey needed to dodge the supersonic cruise missiles he was sure would be inbound from von Scheer. Her passive sonars had to have heard those Tomahawk-missile launches. From the first launch, enough time had passed for Beck to order von Scheer shallow in relative safety, enter good firing solutions, and send nuclear missiles after Jeffrey at Mach 2.5. Those missiles would have plunging warheads, designed to survive a hard impact with the surface and go off underwater.
Then there was the unknown factor: In what form would retaliatory fire come from other Axis forces on land or at sea? Cruise missiles, subsonic or supersonic? Torpedoes from diesel U-boats?
Jeffrey ordered evasive maneuvers among the seamounts in desperation.
But nothing happened.
He realized the Axis forces must have other priorities, or were afraid they’d damage the von Scheer by mistake, or were simply out of position for an effective counterattack.
“Why didn’t Beck shoot?” he asked Bell after a while.
“Protecting his stealth? Saving all his missiles for the convoy, maybe? Figures he can get us with Sea Lions alone?”
“He’s an awfully confident SOB if he thinks that.”
“There’s one other factor, sir.”
Jeffrey nodded. “Missiles could easily miss, and badly muddle acoustic conditions in this whole area. Beck wants good clear water for his final tangle with us.”
CHAPTER 42
Ernst Beck listened in disbelief as Werner Haffner reported a series of cruise-missile launches directly ahead, shallow, amid the Valdivia Seamounts. “Is it some kind of trick?” he asked. “A new type of noisemaker, to act as a decoy?”
Haffner replayed the recording of the launch noises on the sonar speakers. Beck listened to each set of watery whooshes and rumbles, each booster rocket suddenly cut off, the diminishing whine of each jet engine as it receded into the distance, and the final hard splash as each discarded booster hit the surface at hundreds of knots. He counted a salvo of eight torpedo tube launches, then twelve vertical-launch-system shots.
An ELF radio message from Berlin soon confirmed that radio transmissions had been intercepted from the launch location right before the launches, on two different bands. One transmission suggested a two-way floating wire antenna in use. The other was a high-baud-rate antenna — presumably a handshake and an error check.
“I can’t imagine any decoy that can do all that,” Stissinger said.
“Concur,” Beck said.
“Could it be a different submarine, not Challenger?” von Loringhoven asked.
“I don’t think so. The Allies would give Challenger a clear playing field, to avoid sonar contact confusion or any risk of friendly fire. And we expected Challenger to be in the Valdivia Seamounts by now.”
“Then why would they launch missiles when they must know we’re very near?”
“Baron, I’m sure they were ordered to from above. The course of the missiles, toward the southern flank of the Allied pocket, suggests the land offensive has opened and the Allies are in dire straits. The convoy is still very far from landing any reinforcing troops or tanks or ammo.”
“That’s good to hear.” Von Loringhoven smiled.
Beck nodded. “Let’s take care of Jeffrey Fuller once and for all.”
Beck glanced at his chart and at the gravimeter. The closest edge of the seamounts was almost in maximum Sea Lion range. But even at seventy-five knots, it would take a Sea Lion half an hour to cover those thirty-five sea miles from the von Scheer.
Beck decided to wait to get closer. He intended to use more off-board probes to feel around for Challenger. If that didn’t turn up anything, he would fire Sea Lions from closer in, to force a response. The same seamount maze that von Scheer could use in order to disappear from Jeffrey Fuller might just as nicely serve as a way to box Fuller in.
Let me see. Eight Sea Lions approaching the Valdivias from different bearings… Yes, he’d have to shoot back or go to flank speed, or both, and either way I’ve got him.
I’ve got him because I hold one decisive advantage. Challenger cuts her guidance wire to a weapon every time she shuts the outer torpedo tube door to reload. Von Scheer has better tube architecture. We can fire repeated salvos through a tube and not cut any wires…. Our fire-control systemsare designed to control more eels in the water at once than we can even fit aboard. And our technicians are highly trained in handling such a weapon-rich environment. It was hard for Beck to not feel smug.
“Torpedoes in the water,” Haffner screamed. “Eight torpedoes in the water, inbound at our depth and pinging! New sonar contact, submerged, flank-speed tonals, Challenger! Challenger’s relative bearing is steady, range is closing fast!”
Beck watched his tactical screens in shock. Mark 88s were coming at von Scheer in a wide fan spread, converging from every point on the compass between east and northwest. The Mark 88s were attacking at seventy knots. Challenger was charging at Beck, right behind Fuller’s torpedoes.
“Hydrophone effects!” Haffner yelled. “More torpedoes in the water. One, two, three… six, eight more torpedoes in the water, pinging!”
Jeffrey gripped his armrests as Challenger made her rough flank-speed vibrations. The final death ride had begun.
His plan was very simple. Hodgkiss’s orders pushed Challenger into another odd reversal of roles: it was she, not the von Scheer, who had needed to come shallow to conduct a missile launch. Forced to make lemonade from this unexpected lemon, Jeffrey saw a way his Tomahawk strike could help him trap the von Scheer: such a conspicuous datum, exactly as Admiral Hodgkiss said, would make very sure Ernst Beck knew precisely where Jeffrey was. Rather than have to think up some credible ploy of his own, the missile launch — under the present strategic circumstances — was believable by itself. The datum would strongly confirm Beck’s likely hunch about Jeffrey’s next tactic, that Challenger would make a stand amid the Valdivias. Beck’s recollection of Jeffrey’s final gambit the last time they clashed, before Christmas, would work to Jeffrey’s advantage now.