Authors: Joe Buff
“Einzvo. Sonar. We’re about the same size and shape as a U.S. Navy strategic-missile sub, correct?”
“An American boomer?” Stissinger asked. “Er, yes, Captain.”
“Use our active wide-aperture arrays and the bow sphere. Take the sound profiles we have of Allied submarines. On our way up, as we pass through two hundred fifty meters, start making us sound like a barely audible newer
Ohio
-class vessel.”
“Understood,” Haffner said. “Working on it, sir.” He and his sonarmen got very busy.
“Captain?” Stissinger said.
“We know they’ll know we’re here. There’s only one way we stand a chance to get through now unmolested…. We aren’t that far from Holy Loch.”
“The reactivated Allied submarine base?”
Beck nodded. “The strategic-missile subs are controlled by different authorities from their tactical antisubmarine forces. That’s what I’m counting on, delay and confusion while they sort things out. If the Royal Navy and
NR-1
think we’re a U.S. boomer, turning the tables and trailing a pair of Russian fast-attacks to grab some intell, they’ll leave us alone. They’ll be extra careful to not draw attention to us,
especially
if they think we’re exploiting Ivan to hide from the Germans.”
Stissinger exhaled unsteadily. “Remind me to never play poker with you, Captain.”
Crewmen were clearly aghast at the sleight of hand Beck was proposing to pull off. If it worked, they’d soon be free in the NorthAtlantic and could insert into the superbly concealing bottom terrain of the vast Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
But still, if those jettisoned Axis probes are found here by
NR-1
…
“What if your ploy doesn’t work?” von Loringhoven said.
“If the einzvo reports enemy weapons in the water, we return fire and take as many of them with us as we can.”
“You didn’t arm nuclear warheads.”
“That’s correct.” As von Loringhoven turned livid, Beck held up a forceful hand. “There is
no way,
Baron, that I’m going to use atomic bombs so close to civilian population centers, enemy or not.”
F
elix Estabo woke that morning in his coffin-sized sleeping rack aboard the USS
Ohio
. Felix had an uncannily accurate internal body clock—he didn’t have to glance at his watch to tell that it was 0450 local time. Every night, worldwide, no matter the jet lag and season, he decided exactly when to get up—and next morning he would, within a minute or so.
For a few seconds, without stirring, Felix listened to the sounds of the ship, the gentle ventilation and subdued electrical hum. He knew the
Ohio
was running deep, heading northwest, away from South America and into the Caribbean Sea. As always on rising, even before pulling off his blanket and yanking open the privacy curtain of his rack, Felix said a brief prayer.
Today, barely forty-eight hours after rejoining
Ohio,
Felix was especially grateful to be alive. He was sad that his lieutenant had been killed back there in the rain forest of Brazil. He was glad his man with the chest wound had come through surgery okay. The trickiest part had been moving the injured SEAL from the fisherman’s motorboat—as it began to sink once and for all off the mouth of the Araguari—down into the minisub, submerged at thirty feet for stealth. But a one-man pressure-proof transfer capsule was carried in the mini for just that purpose. Held safely inside at a steady one atmosphere, warm and dry, already wounded men were spared the added physiological strains of diver compression and decompression, and of immersion in the sea that might be icy cold or might contain sharks. A navy corpsman was part of the minisub’s crew on combat missions, and the
Ohio
—unlike American nuclear subs in peacetime—carried a medical doctor who specialized in trauma surgery.
The rest of Felix’s team weren’t seriously injured, though shrapnel had to be pulled out of their bodies under general anesthesia, and many, many stitches were required. Ironically, Felix himself was the only man to escape with nothing but minor abrasions from bushes and vines.
Then Felix asked God to protect the
Ohio
and everyone on her. No expert in submarine combat, he did know that the surrounding waters might hold naval mines—planted by infiltrating Axis U-boats or dropped from disguised, pseudoneutral merchant ships. The
Ohio
might even be ambushed by a U-boat at any time. Felix pictured the nightmarish blast and influx of crushing water if the ship hit a mine or was hit by an inbound torpedo. The absolute worst would be getting sunk by friendly fire, in the tragic and wasteful confusion inevitable during a shooting war.
Felix pushed these morbid thoughts from his mind. He knew that the
Ohio,
as a former strategic-missile sub, was slow by modern standards but was also exceedingly quiet, and her refitted sonars were state-of-the-art. Her officers and men—it was the Blue Crew for this rotation—inspired total confidence.
The ending of his prayer was for the safety and well-being of his family.
Felix got out of bed and stood up straight; because of his seniority, he had the middle rack in a tier of three—the easiest to enter and exit. He was careful to not make noise, since people around him still slept. But the advantage of the
Ohio,
as an ex-boomer, was her roominess. She carried a powerful complement of SEALs: sixty-six men, including command and planning staff, plus communications and logistics personnel. Each SEAL had his own rack in a dedicated bunk area, with separate climate control from the rest of the ship. The air at the moment was kept warm and humid; Felix was lucky not to have to risk a chest cold or worse coming back from the jungle to the dry and freezing air of a typical fast-attack sub.
He was still very stiff and sore from his physical exertions on the bloody but successful mission, and his whole body ached, as if he’d run a competitive ultramarathon—which, indeed, he had. His chest was black-and-blue from the impact of enemy bullets against his flak vest. Even after almost ten hours of uninterrupted sleep, he felt weary and drained. But he knew from experience that strong hot coffee and a nice big breakfast were just the thing to restore his vigor and spirit.
Felix answered the call of nature, then shaved and showered, in the well-equipped multiple-person head belonging to SEAL country on the
Ohio
. His shower was very short, to save water, and he had to be careful not to bang his elbows as he scrubbed himself: each stainless-steel shower cubicle was barely the size of an old-fashioned phone booth. He also had to be careful when flossing his teeth, or he’d poke the guys at the sinks next to him in the face; the other SEALs, all early risers, were also awake. The head got crowded and busy fast—the air was filled with drifting steam from the showers, and with profane locker-room humor from SEALs wearing towels. Felix admired his neighbors’ tattoos, and sometimes saw scars from old wounds; he himself wore no tattoos, just a necklace crucifix.
After dressing, Felix made the rounds of his team, to cheer up the wounded who were confined to their racks and speak with the ambulatory wounded, to buck up everyone’s morale. Even on the spacious
Ohio,
there was no separate sick bay, just a cramped cubicle used by the ship’s corpsman to dispense medicine for routine complaints. The
Ohio
’s wardroom table, where ship’s officers ate their meals and did briefings and paperwork, doubled as an operating theater; the tables in the enlisted dining compartment became the triage center; seriously hurt personnel, including the SEALs, used their own narrow sleeping racks as the closest thing to a hospital bed available. While clandestinely violating neutral territory, the ship could not afford to betray her presence by evacuating badly wounded men to any surface ship or shore facility—everyone involved knew it and understood. A walled-off part of the ship’s food freezer had been turned into a morgue.
Felix’s men appreciated the visit from their master chief. They were visibly more chipper as he teased and joked with them all. They’d held a brief memorial for their lieutenant the day before—and life simply had to go on. Felix left each man feeling much better, with smiles on their gaunt, pain-drawn faces and their depression dispelled. Mourning was a luxury Felix had scant time for. He knew his men’s biggest problem of the moment would be boredom, with all the tricks it could play on one’s mind. Because of their wounds they couldn’t really exercise to burn off energy, and for now they weren’t on active mission status—so they had no immediate combat tasks to get ready for. Instead, they could watch movies, or play video games or checkers or cards, or talk or sleep or read or listen to music. Felix resolved to make sure his men’s needs were attended to so they wouldn’t go batty. It was hard enough for most SEALs to deal with the claustrophobic confines running submerged in a nuclear sub at the best of times.
Here I go again, Felix the mother hen caring for my brood.
Felix himself enjoyed the coziness and intense companionship aboard a submarine, but other SEALs thought he was strange.
To stretch his legs and get some kinks out of his body, Felix took a quick trip around the multidecked missile compartment. It filled the whole middle portion of the submarine’s hull, and he was impressed by its dimensions.
The modified
Ohio
was a hybrid warship, and even with her massive size, space was at a premium. Many of her huge missile tubes, which once held sub-launched ballistic missiles tipped with thermonuclear warheads, now carried seven Tactical Tomahawk cruise missiles apiece. Ten of those two dozen tubes were dedicated to Special Warfare operations: two for air locks that SEALs could use to board minisubs or directly enter the sea in diving gear, two for explosives and ammunition storage for their missions, and up to six for other SEAL equipment stowage. The missile compartment also now had decontamination showers, and areas for postmission rig and weapon wash-down and cleaning—and an extremely good physical-training exercise and weight room. Virtual-reality practice aids helped keep the SEALs’ marksmanship and battle reflexes sharp while they traveled impatiently from place to place—squeezed inside a giant sardine can that had no windows.
The
Ohio
did have four tubes in her torpedo room, with a supply of war-shot fish that was small—only about a dozen—but deadly nevertheless.
Felix made his way forward. The corridors were narrow, functional, and stark. During the morning change of watch, the passageways and ladders were very crowded. Often men had to stand sideways in order to jostle past one another. If two submariners had potbellies, this clearance was awkwardly tight. Including the SEALs, there were two hundred people aboard the
Ohio
. The watch was changed every six hours, round the clock.
Even before he reached the enlisted dining space, Felix noticed the delicious smells of breakfast. He heard the subdued noise of clattering plastic plates and the enthusiastic babble as crewmen chatted over their meals. He waited in line, cafeteria-style. The mess-management specialists already knew him well—even without the old facial scar, Felix’s compact muscular build and his upbeat personality would cause him to stand out in any crowd. The cooks piled plates high with the foods they knew he liked most, now that he’d been released from the bland pre-packaged jungle warfare odor-control diet regimen.
Felix took his tray and sat at the six-man booth that was unofficially reserved for chiefs. Now, at 0545 ship’s time, oncoming watchstanders had already eaten, and it was the offcoming watchstanders’ turn to dine. The atmosphere was a little more relaxed. Felix talked with a friendly mix of his own SEAL peers and some of the
Ohio
’s submariners. They traded the standard joshing, each saying he thought the other was utterly crazy for his career choice. Felix’s answer, as usual, was that both SEALs and submariners were undersea warriors, so to the rest of the naval community—and to the outside world at large—both types of men must seem mad. Beyond that, the chiefs avoided shoptalk, as was the custom at meals. They mostly spoke of their families: how their kids were doing in school, wives and cars and pets and housing and overdue bills and such. By long-practiced tacit agreement, they left their worries unvoiced—of death, or escalation, or a spouse who might ask to divorce.
As Felix finished his breakfast, a messenger came and asked him to report to the Special Warfare command and planning center. Felix gulped the last of his coffee, bussed his dirty dishes, and headed aft.
He took a steep steel ladder down one level. The Special Warfare command center was a compartment that once held electronics needed to fix the
Ohio
’s exact position and then coordinate launching her two dozen Armageddon rockets. The very thought gave Felix the creeps. With all that equipment removed, the SEALs now had different consoles and workstations to support the various missions U.S. Navy frogmen trained for. Many of the consoles in the blue-lighted compartment were manned. Message traffic was monitored through
Ohio
’s low-observable floating-wire antenna. Upcoming SEAL sorties from the sub were mapped out and then rehearsed, using simulators and planning software. Felix made a point not to look, in order to maintain mission security.
Running into the master chief of the ten-man SEAL command and communications staff, he was told, “Commander McCollough wants to see you.” The chief pointed to a small meeting room. The door was closed.
Felix knocked and entered. McCollough sat at a worktable, going over status reports and briefing documents; the commander wore neatly starched and precisely creased khakis, with his rank insignia on the collar tabs. When he saw Felix, he stood. As a chief, Felix also wore khakis—the main difference was the anchor on each collar tab, instead of bars or oak leaves.
“Morning, Master Chief,” McCollough said.
“Morning, sir.” In the SEALs, relations between officers and enlisted men were informal—the navy didn’t salute indoors anyway. The room they were in was drab, linoleum floor tiles and painted metal bulkheads—a study in gray on gray.