by Joseph J. Buff, ![[IMAGE]](http://www.ussdevilfish.com/threatvector/cpwrt.gif)
2006
An Excerpt
Prologue
By the middle of 2011, the Global War on Terror had flared up and died down repeatedly, with serious losses in treasure and blood. Personal freedoms in many countries had also been eroded, while international friendships more and more were a thing of the past. Most Third World economies teetered on the edge of ruin, even as some long-standing or emerging major players thrived; the divide between the haves and the have-nots gaped like an open, festering wound. Whole peoples turned inward, or turned against their own past, as pride became dogma and moderation was crushed under cynical rhetoric. All this was the cost, and the legacy, inflicted or triggered by those whose highest goals were senseless destruction and death. Then, just as the worst of terrorism seemed to have been contained, that struggle was eclipsed by a shocking new conflict of much greater magnitude.
In July 2011, Boer-led reactionaries seized control of the government in South Africa, which was in the midst of social chaos, and restored apartheid. In response to a UN trade embargo, the Boer regime began sinking U.S. and British merchant ships. U.S.-led coalition forces mobilized, with only Germany and Russia holding back. Troops and tanks drained from the rest of Europe and North America, and a joint task force set sail for Africa -- into a giant, coordinated trap.
There was another coup, this one in Berlin, and Kaiser Wilhelm's great-grandson was crowned, the Hohenzollern throne restored after almost a century -- on paper. Ultranationalists, exploiting American unpreparedness for such all-out war, would give Germany her "place in the sun" at last. A secret military-industrial conspiracy had planned it all for years, brutal opportunists who hated the unfettered cross-border mixing of the European Union as much as they resented what to them was seen as America's arrogance and bullying. Big off-the-books loans from Swiss and German banks, collateralized by wealth to be plundered from the losers, funded the stealthy buildup in a perverse form of voodoo-economics bootstrapping and accounting fraud. The kaiser was the German shadow oligarchy's figurehead, purely to legitimize their new order. Coercion by the noose won over citizens not swayed by patriotism or the sheer onrush of events.
This Berlin-Boer Axis had covertly built small, tactical atomic weapons, the great equalizers in what would otherwise have been a most uneven fight -- and once again America's intelligence community was clueless. South Africa, during "old" apartheid, ran a successful nuclear arms program, canceled around 1990 under international pressure. Preparing for new apartheid, and working in secret with German support, the conspirators assembled many new fission devices. Compact, energy-efficient, very low signature dual-laser isotope separation techniques had let them purify uranium into weapons-grade in total privacy.
The new Axis, seeking a global empire all their own, used low-yield A-bombs to ambush the Allied naval task force under way, then destroyed Warsaw and Tripoli. Those decades of Cold War division by the overbearing superpowers into East Germany and West Germany -- armed camps in a tinderbox face-off pitting brother against brother -- in hindsight debunked the post-reunification fairy tale of German pacifism. The most warlike nation in modern history was on the warpath again.
France, stunned, followed NATO's recognized nuclear strategy option of preemptive capitulation, and surrendered at once. Continental Europe was overrun. Germany won a strong beachhead in North Africa, while the South African army drove hard toward them to link up. The battered Allied task force put ashore near the Congo Basin, in a last-ditch attempt to hold the Germans and well-equipped Boers apart. In both Europe and Africa the fascist conquest trapped countless Allied civilians: traveling businesspeople, vacationing families, aid workers, student groups on summer tours. Americans and Brits were herded into internment camps next to major Axis bases, factories, and transport nodes, and were held as hostages and human shields.
It was unthinkable for the Allies to retaliate against Axis tactical nuclear weapons, used primarily at sea, by launching ICBMs loaded with hydrogen bombs into the heart of Western Europe -- especially when the murderous fallout of H-bombs dropped on land obeyed no nation's overflight restrictions. The Axis shrewdly avoided acquiring hydrogen bombs of their own. The U.S. and the UK thus were handcuffed, forced to fight on Axis terms on ground of Axis choosing: the mid-ocean, with A-bomb-tipped cruise missiles and torpedoes. Information-warfare hacking of the Global Positioning System satellites, and ingenious jamming of smart-bomb homing sensors, made Allied precision-guided high-explosive munitions much less precise. Advanced radar methods in the FM radio band -- pioneered by Russia -- removed the invisibility of America's finest stealth aircraft.
Thoroughly relentless, Germany grabbed nuclear subs from the French. She also seized advanced diesel submarines that Germany herself had exported, augmenting those stockpiled in quantity at her shipbuilding contractors' yards. Multiple crews had trained in secret by rotating through the two dozen subs of the active-duty German Navy, or during shakedown trips for the hundred boats supposedly awaiting foreign buyers -- hypermodern team simulators honed vital skills between at-sea cruises. Seemingly out of nowhere, a world-class U-boat fleet was born, and manned, and bared its teeth.
These superbly quiet diesels with fuel-cell, air independent propulsion needn't surface or even raise a snorkel for weeks or months at a time. Some were shared with the Boers, whose conventional heavy-armaments industry -- a world leader under the old apartheid system -- had been revived openly during the heightened global tensions of the early twenty-first century. A financially shaky Russia, supposedly neutral yet long a believer in the practicality of limited tactical nuclear war, traded weapons, oil, and natural gas to the Axis in exchange for special bonds that promised a share in the hard-cash loot after final victory. Autocratic and ambitious, Russia was more than glad to take on America by proxy once again -- this time she'd let the Axis do her dirty work. Most of the rest of the world stayed on the sidelines, biding their time out of fear or greed or both.
American convoys to starving Great Britain are being decimated by the modern U-boat threat, in another bloody Battle of the Atlantic. Tens of thousands of merchant seamen died in the Second World War, and Allied casualty lists grow very long this time too. On land, in theaters of combat and intrigue ranging from the South Pacific to South America, to Central Africa and the Middle East, the Axis has waged campaigns of calculated daring and astonishing callousness, based on razor-thin margins between success and atomic holocaust.
In early summer of 2012 -- almost a full year into the fighting -- U.S. and other Allied personnel and their equipment are exhausted. Russia, still claiming neutrality but drastically stepping up her arms and materiel support for the Axis, helps Germany and South Africa recover and regenerate quickly after each major battle. Such biased trading by a neutral with only one side in a clash of belligerents is perfectly legal under international law -- repeated American diplomatic efforts to sway the Kremlin have failed completely. The U.S. is on the strategic defensive, and democracy has never been more threatened.
With so many atom bombs set off at sea by both sides, and the oil slicks from many wrecked ships, oceanic environmental damage is rapidly growing severe. The repeated, ever-closer brushes with Armageddon have themselves become an intentional tool in the Axis warfighting doctrine, a weapon of psychological terror like none ever seen before. Presented with everything short of outright invasion, and nuclear weapons not used against the United States homeland quite yet, the U.S. may be forced to sue for an armistice, recognizing German and Boer territorial gains: a de facto Axis victory. A new Evil Empire would threaten the world, and a new Iron Curtain would fall.
America and Great Britain each own one state-of-the-art ceramic-composite-hulled fast-attack submarine -- such as USS Challenger, capable of tremendous depths -- but the Axis own such advanced vessels too. Then a destabilizing wild card was unmasked by surprise during combat: A whole new class of nuclear subs, with many breakthrough technologies, is being custom-built covertly in Russia exclusively for German use. This latest treacherous move by a coldly manipulative Moscow could tip the balance of power decisively. Allowing it to continue is militarily unacceptable in Washington. Something must be done to force the Russians to back off, and undermine Imperial Germany at her core -- before the entire planet goes up in a forest of mushroom clouds and then freezes to death in a nuclear winter.
In this terrible new world war, with the mid-ocean's surface a killing zone and elite commando teams sometimes more effective than whole armies, America's last, best hope for enduring freedom lies with a special breed of fearless undersea warriors. . . .
Chapter 1
Late June, 2012
War isn't hell, it's worse that hell, Commander Jeffrey Fuller told himself. He sat alone in his captain's stateroom on USS Challenger, whose ceramic composite hull helped make her America's most capable nuclear powered fast-attack submarine. But Jeffrey was not a happy camper. Despite his many successes in tactical atomic combat at sea in a war that the Berlin-Boer Axis started a year ago -- and despite his repeated brilliant achievements in special operations raids against hostile territory -- very recently, for complicated reasons, Jeffrey had felt like a has-been. His two Navy Crosses, his Medal of Honor, his Defense Distinguished Service Medal, and his whole crew's receipt of a Presidential Unit Citation some months ago, all put together couldn't dispel his present dark mood.
Challenger was five days out from Pearl Harbor, deeply submerged and steaming due north, already past the Aleutian Islands chain that stretched between Alaska and Siberia. She was bound for the New London submarine base, on Connecticut's Thames River, having been sent by the shortest but most frigid possible route: through the narrow Bering Strait choke point looming a few hundred miles ahead, separating the easternmost tip of pseudo-neutral Russia from mainland Alaska's desolate Cape Prince of Wales. Jeffrey would sail way up and past Alaska and Arctic Canada. Then he'd sneak through the shallow waters between Canada and Greenland, into the Atlantic, to arrive at home port in two weeks for a reception that he already dreaded.
No one from Challenger -- including Jeffrey -- had even been allowed ashore at Pearl. Taking on minimal supplies and spare parts, and embarking five somber, tight-lipped passengers -- an inspection team maybe, or investigators from JAG? -- had occurred entirely by minisub. Challenger hid underwater, off the coast from Honolulu, frustratingly near its enticing beaches, bars, nightclubs, and more. No fresh fruit or vegetables were provided by the Pearl Harbor Base, to replenish what had already run out since the ship's last port of call. This was supposed to be for security, but Jeffrey thought that was just an excuse. It felt much more like punishment. It was as if, after his most recent mission, despite his major contributions to the Allied cause, he'd become a pariah, shunted out of sight and out of mind by the powers-that-be.
Forget about me, it's an insult to my crew's dedication and courage.
Jeffrey was smart and self-aware. He knew his unpleasant mood wasn't due to exhaustion, usually a chronic problem the way he drove himself. He and his men had had ten days of wonderful leave in Australia, including much consumption of the excellent local beer -- cut short by sudden orders to proceed with greatest possible stealth to Hawaii. Also cut short, alas, was his newly made contact with a Royal Australian Navy commander named Melanie, of whom he carried deliciously vivid memories . . . but missing her wasn't the cause of his funk. He'd been gone from her now for a longer stretch than he'd known her.
He wasn't morose either, after the fact, for the adversaries he'd killed. His soul adjusted better than most to this dehumanizing cost of war. Nor was his mood caused by concern for his crew's survival, for the outcome of an impending battle that Jeffrey might well lose -- he'd long since mastered these stresses and strains of command through brutal experience. The cruise home should be a milk run.
But there were no new medals awaiting Jeffrey at Pearl Harbor for the latest tremendous things he'd accomplished, despite an earlier message implying there would be. No admirals came to shake his hand, no squadron commodore gave him a pat on the back. And Jeffrey was sure he knew why.
He'd broken too many unwritten rules -- too many even for him -- on that fateful mission spanning half the globe. He'd stepped on too many toes, made too many new and well-placed political enemies in Washington, while exercising initiative that had seemed to make sense at the time: He'd won a vehement shouting match quashing a civilian expert whose advice he was supposed to respect. On his own accord he'd clandestinely violated a crucial ally's sovereignty, leaving the seeds for what could still become a disastrous diplomatic incident. Worst, while obeying orders he knew he could have chosen to ignore, he and everyone else on Challenger had had to listen, horrified, doing nothing but flee while dozens of good men -- friends and colleagues -- died under Axis attack in the Med.
The real price of that ambivalent inaction under fire only began to show on the transit across the vast Pacific from Australia to Hawaii. Challenger should have steered in the opposite direction, toward Boer-controlled South Africa, to engage and eliminate front-line Axis naval units there; eager to clear their names via further mortal combat against a hated foe, the crew grew restive at being banished toward a safe rear area.
It was then that some of Jeffrey's men began to have nightmares so bad that they'd wake up screaming, reliving the deafening battle from which Jeffrey ran. Tragic, yes, but unacceptable on a warship that needed to maintain ultraquiet. There was little that Challenger's medical corpsman, a rotund and normally jolly chief, could do for them. Six of Jeffrey's people were offloaded, also by minisub, at Pearl as psychiatric cases. Not one new crewman transferred on, odd in itself since rotation of U.S. Navy personnel was a common procedure -- and in this situation another bad sign.
Jeffrey was working more short-handed even than that. One of his star performers, Lieutenant Kathy Milgrom of the UK's Royal Navy, who'd served as Challenger's sonar officer on the ship's most vital missions, had been summarily detached. Jumped two ranks to Commander, she was now an influential advisor on the Aussie naval staff in Sydney. This was terrific for Milgrom, and Jeffrey was very glad for her, but he'd been miffed that he found out about it only when she got the orders directly and then told him; the way it was handled violated correct protocol. Now, that incident seemed like the first harbinger of Jeffrey's abruptly downgraded status in the eyes of his superiors.
Also during his Australian leave, Jeffrey found out from his father -- who'd rocketed from dull bureaucrat to a very senior position in wartime homeland resource conservation at the Department of Energy -- that Jeffrey's ex-girlfriend, edgy and self-reliant Boer freedom fighter Ilse Reebeck, was under arrest for treason, an alleged double agent for the Axis. Before deploying to the Med, Jeffrey was grilled about their relationship by the Director of the FBI in front of the President of the United States, with the director slinging rhetoric that made Jeffrey look pretty bad. The president had taken a shining to Jeffrey at the Medal of Honor presentation, followed by a private chat, earlier in the year. He had no idea where he stood with his commander in chief these days. The rumors of Ilse being held in solitary confinement, leaked to him by his dad but neither confirmed nor denied through normal channels, were another contributor to Jeffrey's mounting sense of trouble. His tentative moves intervening on Ilse's behalf had been curtly rebuffed, with sharp instructions for him to stay within his proper sphere -- undersea warfare, not domestic counterespionage.
So Challenger was back to having an all-male crew, which should have simplified his leadership problems, but the effect on morale wasn't positive when word got around. The men admired Milgrom's talent, and Ilse's as a combat oceanographer, and they believed -- with the strength of sailors' superstition -- that Ilse's being on board in the past had brought the ship good luck.
Privacy was scarce-to-nonexistent on a sub. Scuttlebutt and gossip -- and wild speculation, too -- traveled fast. His crew, each a hand-picked volunteer who'd passed the toughest imaginable screening, were seeing the same tea leaves that Jeffrey was trying to read. They could sense what he was feeling, no matter how hard he bottled it up to do his duty as their captain and carry on as if all were routine. When he offered quick words of greeting or encouragement, as he moved around his ship that bustled like a snug beehive -- with everyone as familiar to him as if they were part of his family -- the words rang hollow.
Jeffrey was easy to read; deceit in face-to-face interactions simply wasn't in him. He'd found out the expensive way, early in his Navy career, that he was awful at poker. In stark contrast, the personal anonymity from the opaqueness of the ocean -- combined with getting inside an enemy sub captain's mind through a sixth sense that Jeffrey possessed in uncanny abundance -- posed the sort of contest, the winner-take-all blood sport, that he excelled at and most craved. The higher the stakes the better, at this type of game, and Jeffrey never felt so alive as when nuclear torpedo engines screamed and their warheads erupted, while he snapped helm orders to maneuver Challenger like a fighter jet under the sea.
On his latest missions the stakes had been as high as they could come, possibly shaping the outcome of the whole war. But this last time, it appeared, Jeffrey had gone too far in some ways, and not far enough in others. He suspected there were whispers in the corridors of the Pentagon that he was an uncontrollable cowboy, a loose cannon who second-guessed others too much -- and when it mattered most, his jealous rivals would be saying, he'd shown a streak of cowardice. Jeffrey knew he'd done the right thing at every stage of that mind-twisting mission, but what he knew inside didn't count. He was on his way into professional obscurity, dead-ended at the rank of commander, bound for some desk job far from the action. His own worst nightmare was coming true: He was being beached, before the war had even been won.
He listened to the steady rushing sound that came from the air-circulation vents in the overhead of his cabin. The air inside the forward parts of Challenger was always cool, to keep the electronics from overheating. Jeffrey was very used to it, but this evening for some strange reason he felt chilled into his marrow. Then he understood.
The cycle of death-defying adrenaline rushes, followed by high-level awards and attention, had for him become addictive. Jeffrey was experiencing the symptoms of withdrawal, leaving him utterly empty inside.
He looked up for a moment at the bluish glare of the fluorescent fixtures, like plant grow-lights to keep submariners healthy while deprived of any sun for weeks on end. He glanced at the grayish flame-proof linoleum squares that covered his stateroom deck, then gazed around at the fake-wood wainscoting veneer, and bright stainless steel, lining the four bulkheads of his tiny world. He pulled a standard-issue brown sweater out of a clothing drawer, one made of wool with vertical ribbing, putting it on over the khaki uniform blouse and slacks he always liked to wear while under way. He was still cold.
Outside his shut door, in the narrow passage, he heard crewmen hurrying about now and then, on their way to different stations to perform the myriad tasks that helped the ship run smoothly every second of every minute of every single day. There was no margin for error on a nuclear submarine. Jeffrey dearly loved this endless pressure, much as he'd grown accustomed to the constant, potentially killing squeeze of the ocean surrounding Challenger.
He sighed. Too soon another man would sit at this little fold-down desk, sleep in this austere rack, put up photos of wife and children, and assert his own personality and habits onto the crew. Challenger would have a different captain, because Jeffrey's run of luck as captain had finally run out.
Someone knocked.
"Come in!" Jeffrey welcomed any distraction.
His executive officer entered, Lieutenant Commander Jackson Jefferson Bell. A few inches taller than Jeffrey, but less naturally muscular, Bell was happily married and had a six-month-old son to look forward to seeing again, once they reached home port. Cautious in his tactical thinking when Jeffrey was super-aggressive, Bell complemented Jeffrey perfectly in the control room during combat. Often he'd played devil's advocate in engagements where split seconds mattered, when the waters thundered outside the hull and Challenger shook from stem to stern as if tossed by an angry sea monster -- and Jeffrey's crew looked to him to somehow, some way, keep them alive, while an Axis skipper did his damnedest to smash their ship to pieces and slaughter every person aboard.
Right now Bell seemed uncomfortable, as if he could tell that their prior working relationship would end soon. Comings and goings, joinings and separations, were a normal enough part of life in the Navy. This time, though, it was different. Jeffrey and Bell's parting would not be a happy one for Jeffrey, and he knew he'd miss Bell a lot. Their hair's-breadth survival so many times, the shared exhilaration with each added victory, had brought the two men close.
Jeffrey grimaced to himself. Bell will have a new boss.
Jeffrey understood Bell's perspective. He needed to attend, first and foremost, to his own future career. Bell had a family to support. If he survived the war and wanted to stay in the Navy, he'd require as much space between himself and Jeffrey's now-tainted reputation as he could get.
Bell had arrived to give his regular evening 2000 -- 8 p.m. -- report as XO to his captain. Bell's words held no surprises. He wrapped up crisply and left, pulling the door shut behind him. Toward the end of his verbal update on the status of the ship and her machinery and equipment and personnel, Bell avoided making eye contact. It was as if he was embarrassed for Jeffrey, and tried to hide it, but the more he tried to hide it, the more he made things worse.
Two more weeks of this before they got to New London, Jeffrey told himself. He was a lame duck in every sense of the word. He didn't like the sensation, not one bit.
At least they didn't relieve me of command right there at Pearl. Probably only because nobody with the right credentials was free.
Jeffrey needed something more than meaningless paperwork to keep busy. He refused to start mental rehearsals for the court martial which might be coming -- that was just too defeatist, too morbid. There'd be plenty of time for it later if need be, and as a decorated war hero -- a national celebrity -- such drastic measures were unlikely. No, exile to semi-oblivion in some token land activity was a more probable disposition for a commander who'd become an awkward case to those on high, key officials not just at the Pentagon but in the CIA and the State Department too, coming together at the Cabinet level.
Jeffrey realized his thoughts were going in circles.
To stay occupied, however briefly, and hear the sound of another human voice, Jeffrey picked up his intercom handset for the control room. The messenger of the watch answered, one of the youngest and least experienced crewmen, someone who was still working hard to earn his silver dolphins, the coveted badge of a full-fledged enlisted submariner; officers wore gold. Jeffrey wondered if the messenger, like Bell, would survive this horrendous war or not -- assuming civilization and humanity survived.
"Give me the Navigator, please," Jeffrey said, keeping his tone as even as he could.
"Wait one, sir," the still-boyish voice of the teenage messenger said.
"Navigator here, Captain," Jeffrey heard in his earpiece. Despite himself, he smiled. Lieutenant Richard Sessions was one of the most unflappable people he'd ever met, inside or outside the military. From a small town in Nebraska, Sessions was the type of guy whose hair and clothes were always a little sloppy, no matter what he did. But his indispensable work as head of the ship's navigating department -- an extremely technical area -- was without fail beautifully organized and precise.
"Nav, when do we pass through fifty-five north, one-seventy-five west?" In mid-Bering Sea, on the way up to the strait. It was at that point, and only then, that Jeffrey was to open the sealed orders in his safe, containing the recognition signals and other data he'd need to finish his last trip without becoming a victim of friendly fire.
"Hold please, sir," Sessions responded, as earnest as ever.
At her present stealthy speed of twenty knots, and heading due north, Challenger would cross one degree of latitude every three hours. Jeffrey had a detailed readout on the computer screen by his desk, so he always knew the ship's exact position to an error usually measured in tens of feet -- depth was displayed to the nearest foot. He could have done the calculation easily in his head. Calling Sessions was make-work, for both of them. And it wasn't like anyone would know or care if he opened those orders an hour early or late.
But punctuality was valued -- and demanded -- in the Navy. It had been thoroughly ingrained in Jeffrey from the time, almost twenty years ago, when he'd done college in Navy ROTC at Purdue, an electrical engineering major. Now, in his late thirties, even in the midst of emotional doldrums, the impulse to stick to a printed schedule died hard.
Sessions had the answer for Jeffrey quickly. "At local time zero-three-twenty tomorrow, sir." The wee hours of the coming morning.
"Okay. Thanks, Nav." Jeffrey hung up.
Aw, what the heck.
As an act of rebellion against those seniors who'd used him, drained him, and cast him aside when the going got rough, Jeffrey stood and opened his safe.
He withdrew the bulky envelope. It contained a seawater-proof incendiary self-destruct charge, to cremate the classified contents in case of unauthorized tampering. This precaution was normal for submarine captains' order pouches in this war. As Jeffrey knew painfully well, American subs could be sunk in battle. And just as the U.S. had done more than once to derelict Soviet submarines, Axis salvage divers or robotic probes could rifle through Challenger's wreckage if something went wrong, compromising crucial codes and revealing priceless secrets.
Jeffrey very carefully entered the combination on the big envelope's keypad, to disarm the self-destruct. The last thing he wanted was to set it off by accident. Aside from ruining his orders before he could read them, fire on a submerged submarine would be terrible. None was ever considered small until after it was out. When the ship was prevented, because of the need for perpetual stealth, from surfacing or snorkeling to clear the smoke, at best the crew would have to spend long hours in uncomfortable respirator masks, until the air scrubbers removed the toxins and soot. At worst, men would die. No, Jeffrey did not want to further mar this voyage by starting a fire.
The envelope opened safely. Jeffrey emptied its contents on his desk. His heart began to pound.
Among the papers and data disks, and another, inner, sealed envelope, were two metal uniform-collar insignia -- silver eagles, which meant the rank of Captain, United States Navy, the next rank above commander. The actual rank of captain, not just the courtesy title that every vessel's skipper received. Jeffrey snatched up the hard copy orders and read them as fast as he could, almost desperately.
He realized his mind had been playing nasty tricks, in the vacuum of feedback from above, running toward paranoia that was probably a symptom of his own lingering reactions to his drastic decisions and their traumatic effects in the Med.
Challenger had indeed been ordered to mask her presence at Pearl Harbor because of security. The trip to the U.S. East Coast was a cover story. His five mysterious passengers belonged to a Seabee Engineer Reconnaissance Team; SERTs were elite shadow warriors from among the Navy's mobile combat construction battalions. They gathered unusual intell and did mind-boggling tasks at the forward edge of the battle area. Interesting.
Jeffrey was hereby promoted to the rank of Navy captain -- the rank immediately below rear admiral. He was also awarded a second Medal of Honor for what he'd done in the Med, though this award was classified. There'd be no bright gold star, for the blue ribbon with small white stars already adorning his dressier uniforms, to denote the second Medal. But selection boards for rear admiral, Jeffrey reminded himself, would certainly know about it when the time came. Plus, Challenger's whole crew had been awarded another Presidential Unit Citation, although this was also top secret outside the ship.
Good. Excellent. Morale will skyrocket.
He skimmed more. Once through the Bering Strait, gateway to the Chukchi Sea, he still would turn toward Canada. Then, in the ice-choked, storm tossed Beaufort Sea, above the Arctic Circle, Challenger would rendezvous with USS Jimmy Carter. Carter was an ultra-fast and deep diving steel-hulled sub of the Seawolf class, uniquely modified with an extra hundred feet of hull length -- room to support large special operations forces commando raids, plus "garage space" for oversized weapons and off-board probes.
Bell was being promoted to full commander. He'd take over Challenger from Jeffrey, who from now on was commanding officer of an undersea strike group consisting of Challenger and Carter. Bell and Carter's captain would be his subordinates. To avoid confusion between all these different roles and ranks, Jeffrey was granted the courtesy title of commodore.
He was positively delighted. Whatever he'd done, good or bad, his supporters in upper Navy echelons -- and the White House too? -- outweighed and overruled his detractors. He wasn't being banished after all. Jeffrey read further into his orders, more slowly now to absorb every detail. Crucial portions of the mission required that two submarines be involved, but there was much more to it than Challenger and Carter together having more total firepower, while covering each other's back. This piqued Jeffrey's curiosity; no explanation was given of what it meant. Even more cryptically, Jeffrey was told to brush up on the Russian he'd studied in college, and to practice his poker face. The SERT guys would help him on both counts, starting right away. His eyebrows rose, involuntarily, as he took this in.
After the rendezvous and a joint briefing to be held aboard Carter, he would lead his two-ship strike group westward, into the East Siberian Sea -- Russian home waters. His assignment was to do something that would force Russia once and for all to stop supporting the Axis against America while Moscow outwardly kept claiming legal neutrality. Specifics were inside that inner envelope, to be opened only once the rendezvous was made.
Jeffrey's entire demeanor changed. This was exactly the sort of important and dangerous undertaking he really enjoyed. Revealing the whole plan only in stages, for security, was something he'd gotten used to. He couldn't wait to tell Bell the great news about their twinned promotions. Jeffrey was fond of Navy traditions and pomp; he'd been so, almost obsessively, since discovering naval history in a local St. Louis library as a child. He was impatient to hold the formal change of command ceremony, in the enlisted mess -- the biggest meeting space on his ship. No. Correct that. On Captain Bell's ship.
One thing puzzled, disturbed Jeffrey. For this mission, he came under the control of Commander, U.S. Strategic Command, a U.S. Air Force four-star general. In the present wartime military organization, that general oversaw the readiness and possible use of America's thermonuclear weapons -- hydrogen bombs. Challenger carried no H-bombs, and never had. Her nuclear torpedoes bore very low yields, a single kiloton maximum. H-bombs had destructive power a thousand times as large, and vastly greater deadly radioactive fallout that drifted globally.
The Axis, shrewdly, owned no hydrogen bombs and made sure the whole world knew it. This kept America from escalating past tactical atomic fission devices set off only at sea -- not that anyone sane in the U.S. would want to further escalate this war.
Jeffrey began to suffer a dreadful unease. Why am I suddenly reporting to Commander, U.S. Strategic Command?
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