Authors: Joe Buff
“Of course, sir.”
“Lieutenant Reebeck is not coming with you this time.” Now Hodgkiss gave Jeffrey a quizzical look. Jeffrey realized someone, somewhere, had decided Jeffrey and Ilse had better be separated. Then he remembered he himself considered asking that Ilse be transferred off
Challenger
after his previous mission.
“Lieutenant Reebeck will remain here at my headquarters, with Commodore Wilson, to assist me in divining your probable tactics and intent, since we will frequently lose communications contact with your vessel. Lieutenant Reebeck will also apply her skills as combat oceanographer to help the larger effort.”
Jeffrey digested this. It made good sense from the wider context of the admiral’s tasks and areas of control.
He waited for Hodgkiss to go on.
“No, Lieutenant Clayton and his SEALs are not on
Challenger
. They will not be joining you either.”
“Then—”
“You will be taking on a different team of SEALs, by rendezvous with another submarine’s minisub, as you reach your principal operating area.”
Hodgkiss leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. Jeffrey let down his guard—and instantly regretted it.
“Why aren’t you wearing your Medal?”
Jeffrey hesitated. This was embarrassing. “It was lost, sir.”
“Yes, I know. I know exactly where, and when, and how. The question was purely rhetorical.”
“Sir?”
“Before we resume the other meeting and move on to general business, I wanted to personally make a point to you, Captain.”
“Admiral?”
“This time, once you join
Challenger,
you are
not
to go gallivanting off with the SEALs and expose yourself to enemy fire on land…. If necessary to destroy the
von Scheer,
your ship and crew are expendable.
You,
as an individual, separated from your ship, are not.”
I
n the western Barents Sea, east of Norway, Ernst Beck sat alone in his cabin—the captain’s cabin of the
Admiral von Scheer
. Beck brooded, about what had happened already, and about what his own next actions would be.
The ship’s real captain was dead. And Beck needed to take the
von Scheer
into the sharpest teeth of Allied antisubmarine defenses very soon. By an accident of geography, the only fast way from Norway into the North Atlantic Ocean was through the Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom Gap. This nautical choke point—the G-I-UK Gap—had been a major focus for both NATO and the Soviets during the Cold War. Right now, running this formidable gauntlet was the price Ernst Beck had to pay for the
von Scheer
’s hidden construction up by the bleakest Arctic wastes, so near Russian aid and Russian protection.
Help wipe out a massive Allied convoy to the Central African front. Sink USS
Challenger
once and for all. Which happens first doesn’t matter—just don’t come back to port until they’ve both been done.
Beck knew that even though German submarines had nuked the gap’s SOSUS hydrophone lines at the start of the war, the U.S. and Britain by now would have planted more. They were even using small and stealthy mobile, autonomous, roving multisensor platforms to detect and localize undersea intruders. A large number of the Allies’ very best fast-attack submarines would be deployed in and around the gap. Perhaps a dozen of them at once, each in its own preassigned barrier patrol box…in reinforcing lines on both the near and far sides of the gap. Not to mention airborne and space-based and surface warship surveillance systems—and antisubmarine torpedoes and mines.
Beck rubbed eyes that still burned from the effects of smoke and seawater. He sighed to himself.
My first deployment as captain, the
von Scheer
’s first combat sortie, could end quickly, stillborn. And right now, as per my basic orders, I’m sneaking the ship in the wrong direction—east into the Barents Sea, not west toward the gap—and I don’t even know why.
Beck looked around the cabin. He’d had so little time to adjust to being the man in charge, and even less time to grasp the immensity of the tasks before him. A photo of his wife and sons was attached to the wall, in the same place where so recently another man’s wife and children seemed to stare at Beck accusingly.
The deceased captain’s personal effects had all been left behind at the U-boat base under the mountain up a fjord in occupied Norway. The base admiral’s staff would sort through everything and return the dead man’s possessions to his family with a letter of condolence. Beck was sure the letter would say only that he’d been killed in action defending the Fatherland. Given the victim’s rank, the condolences would probably be signed by someone senior in Berlin—and routed from Berlin too, to reveal nothing about the location, let alone the cause, of this latest tragic loss.
This latest of many, many a tragic loss.
Beck listened as
von Scheer
’s air circulation fans issued their reassuring hushing noise from the ventilator grilles in the overhead. The air had that familiar smell of a nuclear submarine submerged: pungent ozone, oil-based lubricants, enamel paint on hot metal, nontoxic cleansers, warm electronics, and stale human sweat. The ship was running as deep as the local bottom terrain would permit: three hundred meters, about one thousand feet. A strong blizzard raged on the ocean’s surface. Beneath thick overcast, the waves topside were high. But the
von Scheer
’s deck was rock steady as she moved at an ultra-quiet fifteen knots.
Weather here in the Barents Sea is almost always dreadful this time of year—off the Kola Peninsula, Russian turf, their chunk of the Scandinavian landmass, near Polyarny and Murmansk…and the major installations of Russia’s Northern Fleet.
Beck looked up from reading his orders when a messenger knocked. He stood and cracked the door so the messenger couldn’t see the classified documents stacked on his cabin’s little fold-down desk.
The messenger was very young, perhaps eighteen. He snapped to attention and handed Beck some standard reports from the ship’s engineer. Beck eyed the forms on the old-fashioned clipboard. All was in order with the
von Scheer
’s twin nuclear reactors. The big pump-jet propulsor at her stern was working perfectly. So was everything between, from the steam generators to the main turbines and condensers, to the massive dynamos the turbines spun, to the solid-state power-control circuits, to the permanent-magnet DC motors that made the propulsor shaft turn. Beck initialed the forms in all the proper places—a captain’s paperwork burden never ceased.
Beck gazed at the messenger’s face. He saw someone youthful but hard, obedient and proud—yet somehow shallow in spirit, not given to introspection or philosophy or moral doubt.
A well-honed fighting machine, like the
von Scheer
herself, except made of human flesh. A component of a weapon system, really, more than a person. Trained, to the finest standards of classic German craftsmanship and discipline, but with little development of underlying
self
…A member of my crew.
Outside, in the passageway, personnel traffic quickly became more hectic. The watch was changing, as it did every six hours. The midnight watch was coming off duty; the morning watch was coming on. One of Beck’s more experienced officers would be passing the deck and the conn to one of the others, according to a preestablished schedule. That officer would decide on all aspects of internal ship’s machinery status, and direct the
von Scheer
’s movements as well—but formal accountability, and ultimate blame, always lay on Beck’s head as commanding officer.
The cooks would be in the middle of serving breakfast now. Beck took a deep breath and savored delicious odors wafting from the galley: fresh-baked bread, ham, scrambled eggs. It made his stomach rumble, but he had work to do. He’d grab a light snack later, or maybe just wait until lunch.
Beck opened his cabin door another few centimeters while the messenger stood there stiffly. He wanted to see his men as they went by, toward the control room and the torpedo room forward, or aft to the wardroom or enlisted mess and the berthing spaces. Farther aft was the big missile compartment with its vertical cruise-missile launch tubes, and then came the shielded reactors, with the engineering spaces toward the stern.
Some chiefs nodded politely to Beck; the enlisted men mostly avoided meeting his eyes; the few officers he saw mouthed a polite
guten morgen
. Good morning.
Overall, Beck liked what he saw. Although this was the
von Scheer
’s maiden combat patrol, covert shakedown cruises and training exercises had melded these men into a sharp team. Now, by their facial expressions, their postures, their crisp appearances, they showed they were eager and ready for battle. There was a collective excitement to put more Allied ships where they belonged: at the bottom of the sea, in fragments.
Beck nodded to himself. You could tell a lot from body language, when over one hundred men lived in such close quarters inside a submarine’s pressure hull, with no windows and no mental or physical privacy at all. He’d known most of these men for about eight weeks, the intense time since he joined the
von Scheer
from recuperation and leave, after his previous mission. There was much yet to be done, to test the men and test himself, but they seemed prepared to begin the ultimate testing. They’d accepted his role as new captain seamlessly. Beck’s reputation as a strong tactician preceded him, spread by those few among the crew who’d been with him before and survived. The Knight’s Cross around his neck—which he wore even with his workaday black at-sea submarine coveralls—empowered him with much credibility. Its sparkling inlaid diamonds were a visible reminder to each man aboard that Beck had gone places, done things, made decisions, scored kills that most of them could only dream about.
This aura and mystique is something that, as their commanding officer now, I fully intend to maintain and exploit.
Satisfied with the engineer’s report and everything else, Beck dismissed the messenger. Then, on second thought, he told the youth to have someone bring him a fresh cup of hot tea.
The empty tea mug sat on the deck off to one side of Ernst Beck’s desk. On his desk now was the large envelope with the secret-mission orders given him by the rear admiral, the orders that Rudiger von Loringhoven had helped to write. The envelope was open.
Beck was not at all pleased. The envelope contained a brief letter of instructions, and another thick envelope within it. The letter stated that von Loringhoven was to serve as a special adviser to the
von Scheer
’s captain, on matters pertaining to the ship’s broad patrol routing and target priorities. Von Loringhoven, though a civilian diplomat, was seasoned at working with naval attachés of Germany and several foreign powers. He’d been thoroughly briefed on the overall war situation by the Foreign Ministry. He’d conducted background discussions with the grand admiral, commanding, Imperial German U-boat Fleet, to prepare him for this cruise. He was well versed on the latest Axis stratagems and war aims.
Fine. But none of this says why von Loringhoven is here.
The letter told
von Scheer
’s captain to open the second envelope, the one under the cover letter, only in von Loringhoven’s presence. While exercising final discretion as commanding officer—to assure the ship’s successful completion of her mission and to preserve her safety as much as the rigors of war would allow—
von Scheer
’s captain was nevertheless to render von Loringhoven every assistance that tactical circumstance permitted.
Wheels began to turn in Ernst Beck’s head.
This letter is addressed to a dead man, who outranked me, and who knew things I don’t know. It would have been irksome enough for a full commander to have a civilian breathing down his neck. My deceased former superior owned the jovial personality, and the proven leadership skills, to make such an arrangement work. I’m less senior, and not feeling nearly so jovial.
Beck decided to begin by standing on ceremony. Von Loringhoven, as a diplomat, should appreciate this. He picked up the intercom headset for the Zentrale—the control room.
A response came immediately. “Acting first watch officer speaking, Captain.” This was the weapons officer, Lieutenant Karl Stissinger. Beck had given him the job as acting executive officer and moved the assistant weapons officer, a junior-grade lieutenant, into the weapons officer’s position. Then a senior chief became acting assistant weapons officer, and everyone else in that department moved up a slot. Though the men were saddened to lose their captain, and some still seemed a bit stunned or disturbed by the death and its cause, overall they were pleased. Everyone had in essence been promoted, and if this patrol was successful these promotions were sure to be made permanent.
“Einzvo,” Beck said, “please send a messenger to my cabin.”
“Jawohl.”
“And you don’t need to call yourself ‘acting.’ You’re the einzvo, period. It’s better that way both for you and the crew.”
“Jawohl.”
Stissinger sounded confident, and pleased.
It felt strange for Beck to be calling someone else einzvo.
I’ll just have to get used to that, myself.
The messenger arrived. This one also was young, fit and trim, intelligent but obviously not a deep thinker.
Is he old enough, in years and life experience, to understand the true meaning of mortality? Is he wise enough to grasp how absolutely final his own death would be?…Does he think at all of the Hereafter, or is he preoccupied as I am with the constant living purgatory of this godforsaken war?
“Ask our official passenger to join me here.”
In a few moments Beck heard a knock, not at his cabin door but at the door to the small shower and toilet he shared with the executive officer’s cabin.