Authors: Joe Buff
Von Loringhoven was using the executive officer’s cabin. He’d been quite insistent on this. For mission security, he said. If the acting einzvo was a mere lieutenant, used to sharing a cabin with two junior officers aboard the crowded
von Scheer,
let him continue doing so.
Now von Loringhoven seemed to want to sneak around, and not even walk the two meters through the corridor and mingle with the crew.
“Come.” Beck projected his voice toward the stainless-steel door to the head and tried to hide his annoyance. He felt the deck nose down a few degrees as the
von Scheer
—with Stissinger’s new weapons officer at the conn—followed a dip in the seafloor, still hugging the bottom for stealth. With a quick dart of practiced eyes, Beck checked the readouts on his cabin console: latitude 71 degrees 58.37 minutes north, longitude 31 degrees 24.08 minutes east. Course 041 true, depth 324 meters, speed 15.0 knots. Course 041 was roughly northeast, farther into the Barents Sea, into Russian home waters.
Only ship’s course and speed on the console were steady. The little red digital figures showing the
von Scheer
’s position and depth changed rapidly.
All this ran through Beck’s head with no effort, in a fraction of a second. He realized he was avoiding the main issue: his first private discussion with Rudiger von Loringhoven.
Von Loringhoven came into Beck’s cabin. He showed none of the respect or awe one would anticipate from a nonmilitary guest in a nuclear submarine commander’s inner sanctum. In fact, von Loringhoven was too blasé about the whole experience of being on the
von Scheer,
as far as Beck was concerned. He thought there was something quietly amoral about the set of the man’s eyes.
“Ach,” von Loringhoven said. “I see you’ve begun to open your orders.”
Beck tried to be pleasant. “Are you ready for me to unseal the inner envelope?”
“Yes.”
“Please sit. Is there anything you need in your cabin, to be more comfortable? Can I have something brought from the wardroom for you?” Beck hoped the diplomat would say yes to the last point so he could get some solid food himself.
Von Loringhoven used the guest chair. “No. The relief convoy from America to Central Africa will be moving very soon. Our land offensive in Africa, to crush the enemy pocket and link with the Boers, should begin any day. Other things must be carefully coordinated. Time is of the essence. Let’s proceed.”
Beck opened the envelope. Inside were several typed pages, a high-density data disk, and another sealed envelope. The typed pages began by instructing Beck not to open this new sealed envelope until he had completed the mission task detailed on the latest pages, as supported by the intelligence and oceanographic information on the disk.
Beck furrowed his eyebrows. He looked at von Loringhoven. “How many more envelopes-within-envelopes are there here?”
“Several.”
“Why is it being done like this?”
“Security.”
This guy is playing it too tight-lipped for my taste. Is he baiting me? Rubbing in from the start the difference in social class between us?
The restoration of the Hohenzollern crown had driven a resurgence of acute elitism among Germans of noble blood. The
von
before someone’s last name marked his family as aristocrats. Some people enjoyed this side effect of having a kaiser on the throne again—whether the kaiser was a figurehead, pressured into taking the job, or not. The glitter of court life had great appeal to those who could now openly call themselves a baroness or count and have it mean something…. It was also a great incentive for outstanding achievement and valor, since hereditary titles could be newly awarded to deserving individuals whatever their prior background.
“You ought to appreciate the reason as much as anyone,” von Loringhoven said.
“What?” Beck caught his mind wandering.
Or was I daydreaming?
“For the step-by-step security. It’s possible as captain, if something went wrong, that you might not go down with the ship. Last time, as first officer, you didn’t. You could be captured and interrogated. What you don’t know you can’t reveal under sweet talk or torture.”
“But what about you?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You have full knowledge of
all
the orders?”
“I do.”
“What if something goes wrong and
you
don’t go down with the ship?”
Von Loringhoven withdrew a palm-sized pistol from his pocket. “To avoid capture, I am to shoot myself in the head.”
Von Scheer
’s control room was cramped, with more than twenty men sitting at consoles or standing in the aisles. The overhead was low, covered with a maze of pipes and cables and wires. The lighting was dim red, to make the screens easier on watchstanders’ eyes, and also to emphasize that the ship was at battle stations—just in case. Other colors, blues and greens and yellows, danced on different console screens.
Beck sat down at the two-man desk-high command console in the middle of the control room. He studied his screens. The gravimeter display showed the shape of the seafloor in detail, derived from a real-time analysis of gravity fields in different directions, as measured in widely spaced spots on the ship. This instrument was very valuable, because it emitted no signals at all, was not impaired by loud noises and atomic bubble clouds in the sea, and—just like gravity—it could see through solid rock. The gravimeter’s one disadvantage was that it couldn’t detect a moving object, such as an enemy submarine’s dense reactor shielding and core.
Beck took the conn—decisions on ship’s depth and course and speed, from minute to minute, were now his to make. He noticed von Loringhoven standing nearby but outside the main flow of crew traffic through the Zentrale, watching with measured curiosity; Beck put him out of his mind.
Beck studied the other data on his screens, to establish full situational awareness. The seafloor here was a gently rolling plain. Bottom sediments varied almost randomly, with patches of sand, or gravel, or mud in different places. Because the atmosphere above the sea was so near freezing, and the water was mixed by continual storms, the water temperature was nearly constant from the surface to the bottom. It was impossible for convergence zones to occur in the south Barents Sea. The water was much too shallow for a deep sound channel to form. The currents were confusing at all depths, as the last tendrils of the Gulf Stream ran north along the coast of Norway, in conflict with the Arctic’s wind-driven counterclockwise gyre.
Sound propagation here was very poor. The subtle signs of
von Scheer
’s passage would go undetected except at point-blank range.
Beck was satisfied. This was a good place for his ship to hide while on the move.
He glanced to his right. There sat the einzvo, Karl Stissinger. Beck knew he’d grown up in East Germany, under long and dreary domination by the Soviets. Stissinger’s father had been a sergeant in the East German Army, a member of a motorized rifle regiment, and would surely have been killed quickly if the Warsaw Pact and NATO had gone to war. To Stissinger’s father’s generation, and to Stissinger’s as well, the Soviet collapse must have seemed like some kind of miracle. But freedom in the east at first brought a new type of poverty, and high unemployment, and when Stissinger came of age he joined the navy.
Beck looked at Stissinger in profile. He would be very important to the captain—as any einzvo is. And if something should happen to Beck—serious injury, illness, or death—he would need to assume command, the same way Beck had done.
Could Stissinger handle it, if I’m put out of action, vaulted
that
far beyond all his training and experience?
Stissinger’s face was lit by the red of the overhead fluorescent lights and by the different displays on his console. He was handsome, tall, blond, with a flat abdomen and narrow hips—everything Ernst Beck was not. Stissinger was unmarried, and quite a ladies’ man ashore, from what Beck heard. Stissinger had served in diesel subs in the Bundesmarine, the peacetime German Navy, after East and West Germany were reunited in 1991. In more recent years, he’d been assigned to help, from the beginning, on the secret construction of the
Admiral von Scheer
. He received training on nuclear submarine technology and tactics from experienced Russian instructors. Some of those instructors were ex-submariners, veterans of the Cold War against America and Great Britain, who welcomed the chance to pass on their knowledge to an appreciative new audience—they also liked the generous steady paychecks for their services. Their government enjoyed getting German payment in diamonds and gold while having someone else take on America and cut her down to size.
Beck knew America only ever had five SSGN guided-missile nuclear-powered submarines; the purpose-built one was long gone to the scrap yard, and the four modern ones had been modified from
Ohio
-class ballistic-missile subs, so-called boomers. But Russia had been building SSGNs in quantity for decades—the
Kursk,
one of eleven sister ships in the
Oscar II
class, was an SSGN. In any armed conflict with the United States, these SSGNs were intended to trail American carrier battle groups and then take out the carriers and their escorts using salvos of supersonic antiship cruise missiles.
The
von Scheer
could serve a similar purpose, or direct some or all of her missiles at targets on land. The Russians were very good teachers of SSGN tactics against the U.S. Navy—and against the convoys that navy would try to protect. Beck had learned much from them recently too. But one key aspect of SSGN operations had deeply troubled him and still did.
Once an SSGN begins to launch her missiles, even submerged, she tosses aside any vestige of stealth and gives her position away completely. A murderous counterstrike would be quick in coming from a ferocious First World opponent, especially during tactical atomic war.
Beck seriously questioned how he could keep the
von Scheer
’s very first salvo from being her last, once the engagement with the enemy began.
Beck turned his mind back to Stissinger. In battle, Sonar and Weapons reported to the einzvo. Stissinger would play a crucial role in attacking hostile targets and evading inbound fire. His fire-control technicians and weapons-system specialists worked consoles along the Zentrale’s port side; other men were stationed in the
von Scheer
’s large torpedo room below.
Stissinger was a stickler for detail with his men. They seemed to like to work for him because they always knew exactly where they stood. He trusted his chiefs and gave them the independence they needed to do their supervisory jobs properly. He inspired his junior officers by keen example, and made sure they constantly got better and steadily matured at
their
jobs. The ship’s other two full lieutenants, the engineer and the navigator, had readily accepted Stissinger’s new seniority above them—they were professionals too.
Perhaps most important of all to Beck, Stissinger was loyal. In the last two months he’d always taken orders well from Beck when Beck was first watch officer. Stissinger displayed an ideal blend of obedience and initiative; his initiative showed in the shrewd and efficient ways he got things done. He never transgressed the boundaries of what Beck told him to do or not do. As einzvo, Beck thought, Stissinger ought to be excellent at helping him run a tight ship.
I’ll soon know how well Stissinger and the officers and chiefs and men stand up to the rigors of nuclear combat…. And I’ll see how well this von Loringhoven holds up under pressure too.
Beck waited to begin the first task in his mission orders. If there had been some misunderstanding between nameless, faceless persons on shore, this impending meeting could lapse into a sudden, vicious exchange of nuclear fire. It was bad enough that he still hadn’t had the chance to put the
von Scheer
’s latest dockyard work through proper testing under way.
“Einzvo!” Werner Haffner called out. He sat at the forward end of a line of eight sonar consoles that lined the starboard bulkhead of the control room.
“Yes, Sonar?” Stissinger asked.
Beck caught himself. He’d almost answered Haffner himself, from old habit.
Get a grip. Von Loringhoven still watches, calm and catlike. And the crewmen observe my every move, reacting to each inflection in my voice, taking cues from me on what to think and feel and do.
“New passive sonar contact on the starboard wide-aperture array,” Haffner reported. “Bearing is one-three-five.” Southeast. “Range is ten thousand meters.” Five sea miles. “Contact is submerged.”
“Contact identification?” Stissinger asked, doing his job.
“Nuclear submarine,” Haffner said. “Possibly two nuclear submarines.”
“Why was first detection made so close?” Beck broke in. Sound-propagation conditions had improved in the last few tens of sea miles. The
von Scheer
’s passive listening sonars were very powerful. Beck was testing Haffner and Stissinger as their first real wartime mission began.
“Contacts have just rounded Tiddly Bank, Captain,” Haffner said. “Previously were obscured by intervening terrain rise.”
“Very well, Sonar.” The correct answer—Beck had been watching the shallow water of the bank on the gravimeter. The two new contacts’ positions popped onto his main situation plot.
Von Loringhoven, standing patiently in the aisle, nodded complacently.
This civilian doesn’t appreciate how precarious things are. Are these new contacts simply sticking to the plan, or were they lying there in ambush to outnumber me two to one? Has Russia even changed sides and I’ve been too out of touch to know it?
“Einzvo,” Beck said. “Give me new own-ship course leg to determine contact course and speed. I want target motion analysis, to validate the instant ranging data from our wide-aperture array.” It was always best to cross-check the systems and algorithms—especially at the start of a cruise.