Thunder In The Deep: A Novel Of Undersea Nuclear War - Joe Buff - Hardcover

Prologue In mid-2011, Boer-led reactionaries seized control in South Africa, and restored Apartheid. In response to a U.N. trade embargo, they began sinking U.S. and British merchant ships. NATO forces mobilized, with only Germany 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 trap. There was another coup in Berlin. Kaiser Wilhelm's closest heir was crowned, the Hohenzollern throne restored after almost a century; a secret conspiracy planned for years. Germany would have her "place in the sun" at last. Coercion won over citizens not swayed by patriotism or the onrush of events. Covertly, this Berlin-Boer Axis had built tactical atomic bombs. They ambushed the Allied naval task force underway, then destroyed Warsaw and Tripoli. France capitulated at once, continental Europe was overrun, and Germany established a strong beachhead in northern Africa. Germany captured nuclear subs from the French, and advanced diesel submarines from other countries. A financially supine Russia, supposedly neutral, sold weapons to the Axis for hard cash. Most of the rest of the world stayed out of the fight, from fear or greed or both. Now, American supply convoys to Great Britain are suffering in another terrible Battle of the Atlantic. If the U.K. should fall, the modern U-boat threat will prove that America's overseas trade routes are untenable. The U.S. will have to sue for an armistice: an Axis victory. America and Great Britain both own ceramic-hulled fast attack subs such as the USS Challenger, capable of tremendous depths but Germany and South Africa own such vessels, too. Now, as harsh winter approaches in Europe, the British Isles starve, the U.S. is on the defensive, and democracy has never been more threatened.... Twenty years after Desert Storm, in a different sort of war. In the mid-Atlantic ocean, near the Azores Captain Taylor told himself it must have been that convoy battle raging in the distance. The shock wave and noise from yet another tactical nuclear detonation rocked his ship, the USS Texas a steel-hulled Virginia-class fast-attack sub, Taylor's home, his mistress at sea, his relentless yoke of command responsibility. Taylor knew from the feel of the shock that it was an Axis underwater blast, meant to shatter the Allied freighters bottoms, now that their Royal Navy escorts were mostly neutralized. This far off, Taylor's sonar people wouldn't hear the breaking-up sounds or the screams. But by sheer chance the echoes from those A-bombs had given Texas away, mocking the quieting of her machinery, making useless the stealth coatings on her hull. Robert Taylor, a beefy guy, was normally upbeat and jocular, but now he bitterly cursed his luck. The latest undersea blast-front bouncing off Texas would betray his depth and course and speed to the pair of Axis nuclear subs, which had him in a pincers they'd never have spotted Texas without that endless searing thunder off to starboard, from the east. Taylor and his crew, and his Special Warfare passengers, had far more important things to do than tangle with them now. His orders even forbade his helping the U.K.-bound food convoy. Taylor's executive officer said he was ready to open fire. The small atomic warheads on the Advanced Capability (ADCAP) torpedoes were all enabled, the outer tube doors open. The silent stalking was over with. Inside Taylor's head, twenty long years of Navy experience and training and of constant physical risk and separation from his loved ones all became sharply focused on the next few seconds and minutes of mortal combat. "Firing point procedures,Buff, Joe is the author of 'Thunder In The Deep: A Novel Of Undersea Nuclear War - Joe Buff - Hardcover' with ISBN 9780553801361 and ISBN 0553801368.