Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

22 JEFF EDWARDS
destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to slake the American thirst for
revenge.
Japan had nearly been destroyed as a result of wishful thinking on the
part of its leaders. And now, the chancellor and his cronies in the
Bundeswehr seemed to be poised to make the same mistake. They were
gambling the fate of Germany on their projections of how the Americans
would react. What if their guesses were wrong? What if the American
response was military instead of political?
Gröeler shook his head. He had spent his entire life in submarines. He
didn’t know much about international politics, but this whole thing struck
him as the worst sort of wishful thinking. The kind by which nations were
destroyed.
He had nearly turned the mission down. For the first time in his life, he
had come within a centimeter of refusing to obey his orders. Only one
thing had stopped him—the knowledge that the Bundeswehr would find
someone else to carry out the plan. Someone less capable. Success might
bring consequences that the Bundeswehr and the chancellor had not
foreseen. But, if the mission was botched, the consequences would be
ungodly.
Gröeler shook his head again. Either his superiors had forgotten their
history, or they hadn’t noticed the date. The seventh of May. The
anniversary of the Nazi High Command’s unconditional surrender to the
Allies at the end of the Second World War. Germany had lain in ruins
then, Berlin still burning from the American fire bombs, the countryside
torn by the boots of soldiers and the treads of tanks. And the Bundeswehr
had selected this date to launch their operation. Had they done so out of
blind ignorance? Or was their choice of dates intentional? Some delusion
that Germany was destined to recapture its former glory? Gröeler couldn’t
decide which idea was more frightening.
He sucked a last lung full of smoke from the cigarette and thumped it
over the rail into the water. In the split-second before the butt left his
fingers, he caught a glimpse of the brand name: Ernte 23.
The name brought a bitter smile to Kapitan Gröeler’s mouth. Ernte
meant harvest. And, if the mission didn’t go as planned, there would be a
harvest all right. A harvest of blood and fire. He looked down at the piers
where the young Sailors were rushing to carry out his orders and wondered
if any of them would survive it.