In the dark of night and the stars were dim in the ocean, six slender warships were heading 10 degrees south-east at a high speed of 30 knots. The hunting sea breeze tugged at the collars, sleeves, and trouser legs of every naval officer and sailor in the open air on the ship, and people watched the chaotic dark sea with wary expressions. Strict secrecy is adherence to the principle that most people are unsure of what the important cargo escorted by the fleet is, but the experience of the USS Indianapolis and USS Minneapolis has pointed the way to their reverie (two heavy cruisers delivered atomic bombs codenamed "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" from the continental United States to the Western Pacific in 1945), but it also makes them worry about their fate - the USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine on the way back, Officers and men suffered extremely heavy casualties. It is worth mentioning that its voyage back to the continental United States was actually carried by a lonely ship, and there was not even a single destroyer by its side to escort it.

On this empty sea, after the formation adjustment, the position of the flagship "Boston" has been adjusted to the middle and rear of the fleet, and the pilot ship has been replaced by Allen. The Sumner-class destroyer "Patton" and its siblings have excellent design and sophisticated equipment, and is considered to be the best integrated destroyer built by the United States during World War II, capable of escort, air defense, anti-submarine and other tasks. It was followed by the Cleveland-class light cruiser "Vincennes", which has a standard displacement of nearly 120,000 tons, which can be called "large" in the ranks of light cruisers, and its sufficient tonnage makes it achieve excellent protection performance on the basis of emphasizing maneuverability and flexibility. The Vincennes was followed by the Boston and the Fletcher-class destroyer Anthony, four of which were listed as high-speed sea columns, while the other two destroyers in the fleet, the Gatling and the Sigsby, covered on both sides of the fleet. Sophisticated sea-sounding radars and fire control radars allow them to maintain an appropriate distance from each other even in environments with poor line of sight, which is especially important at high speeds.

Without the thrill of sirens, without the shock of gunfire, in the continuous high-speed voyage, all one could hear in the command room of the Boston was the monotonous sound of waves crashing against the ship and the roar of the engines. The quiet and boring atmosphere gradually wore down everyone's energy and patience, and every half hour or so, the ship's radar officer would come to report on the monitoring of external radar waves.

Those mysterious and strange centimeter-wave pulse radars are invisible but smelly, as if the evil ghosts of the bottom of the sea have surfaced, always haunting the American fleet that is rushing at almost full speed.

In the uneasy atmosphere, time passed not for a short time, and seeing that there were only one or two hours left before dawn, the one who pushed the door in again was finally replaced by the radio communications officer. At this moment, all the eyes in the command room converged on one point.

The communications officer seemed to be astonished by this unexpected state of affairs, and with some hesitation he went to the commander of the fleet, Admiral Jetlika, and reported with trepidation: "Sir, this is a telegram from the Admiralty to you. ”

Captain Anglo got up first, his position just as a relay, took the telegram clip and half-turned, and delivered it to the general.

General Jetlica hurriedly opened the telegram folder, glanced back and forth over the telegram a few times, and then looked at the White House envoy with an incredulous look.

Angelo looked at the text of the telegram in his place, which was a handwritten copy of the original telegram that the telegraph operator had translated from a codebook, and the familiar handwriting was still as good as it was, along the lines of "Ships sailing in the nearby waters have been summoned to support, and in case of emergency, you are given carte blanche to make decisions based on your judgment of reality, but the protection of important cargo must be the first task."

The obvious "you" is obviously referring to General Jetlika as the commander of the fleet.

Thinking of what the White House envoy had said on the bridge of the battle ship earlier, Colonel Angelo couldn't help but turn his head to look at the mysterious guy, and then he suddenly realized that the special envoy Leghall who had been sitting in the command room for most of the night looked not quite right in his eyes and face - at this moment, Leghall was no longer the guy at the dinner table who was pretentious and went his own way, he looked a little confused, as if he was thinking hard about the secrets he was keeping, but he never understood it, and the expression on his face was not only calm. There is even a kind of surprise and trepidation hidden in the bottom of my heart. …,

The awkward and dreary atmosphere continued, and General Jetlica seemed to be trying to find out from the envoy's face what would make him finally make up his mind, but that face now seemed to be counterproductive. After a while, there was another knock on the hatch, and this time it was the radar officer with sweat on his forehead, his pale lips trembling, and a weak voice coming from his throat: "50 cm pulsed radar wave, 18 degrees north-east, 35 nautical miles!" ”

"What the hell!" General Jetlica couldn't help but slap his palm on the table, you must know that this fleet is racing at a speed of 28 knots at sea, and at present, there is no first-class submarine in the world that can exceed 25 knots, but the way these pulse radar wave sources appear is like falling from the sky, but their own ship-based radar has not detected any aircraft or large ships, at such a distance, only the main body is submerged in the water that can avoid the US military's active high-frequency microwave radar from 0 nautical miles, but since their speed cannot catch up with the fleet, What made all the crew uneasy in the middle of the night was the submarines that had been deployed along the road in advance -- considering that the fleet's current position was far away from the established route, the other side would have to deploy submarines in any possible area if it wanted to maintain radar tracking, and the vast Atlantic Ocean was so vast, could it be that the Soviet Navy had hundreds of ocean-going submarines equipped with high-power radars overnight?

"Unbelievable, this is unbelievable!" When Colonel Angelo said this, his eyes were fixed on the White House envoy, and the guy who seemed to have lost his soul finally raised his head, and there was some fear in his eyes. Before he could speak, he asked everyone except General Jetlika, Colonel Angelo, and Dr. Mante to leave the command room.

"Well, gentlemen, as you know, the heavy cruiser Indianapolis, which used to transport atomic bombs, sank on the way back, which made the top brass very worried about the reliability of the ship transportation, and at one time made up their minds to change to aircraft transportation, and for some time after we declared war on the Soviet Union, we have been secretly transporting atomic bombs to Europe through the B29 Superfortress, but this route has been in great trouble since two months ago." Envoy Legerhall looked around at the three of them with his hands folded, "You may have heard rumors about flying saucers, it is not a lie made up by hostile countries to create an atmosphere of panic, they did fly freely over the continental United States, no fighter or anti-aircraft gun could shoot them down without even harming their fur, and in fact, before the end of World War II, our pilots encountered these strange flying machines many times when they bombed Germany."

Although there has never been a record of them actively attacking our fighters, it does not mean that they will not ...... Yes, as you may have guessed, the B29, which recently delivered atomic bombs to Europe, was hit by this indescribable flying machine one after another. What is surprising is that no matter how large the escort formation is, they can calmly fly close to the group, and the machine guns and rockets are simply willow wielded in the hands of children. Our pilots were completely unprepared to cope with the situation, and on two occasions they almost made fatal mistakes due to nervousness and panic, so the top management decided to suspend the transportation of the aircraft. ”

The envoy sat down again, and the command room was as quiet as if empty—a great surprise that seemed to make people forget to breathe.

The first to break the silence was Admiral Jetlika, the fleet commander who looked at the envoy and asked, "Then why not submarines?" ”

"Two weeks ago, the crew was terrified that a submarine that was supposed to secretly transport an atomic bomb to Europe was also encountered by a flying saucer during its commissioning voyage." The envoy's hearsay directly answered the general's question, and also deepened people's surprise and confusion.

"What the hell are they? Cutting-edge technology from the Nazis? General Jetlika no longer had the anger he had slapped the table, and his face was a tangled expression of confusion and apprehension.

After saying so much, the envoy's expression had softened, and he continued: "At first, we thought they were either Hitler's new toys or advanced civilizations outside of our knowledge, but then our spies photographed them in a remote valley in the Ural Mountains, where there was also a facility that was suspected to be a secret base, so we have reason to believe that they are now under the control of the Soviet authorities. ”…,

"If the enemy has such an invincible weapon, will we not lose this war?" Colonel Angelo expressed the logical speculation that everyone thought in their hearts but did not want to say.

"If this ultra-high-altitude, ultra-high-speed flying technique had been applied to fighters and bombers, we would not have been able to continue this battle anyway, and this goes back to our original guess as to why they just appeared, approached, and never attacked." As the White House envoy, Legerhall talked about depression the more he said it was like the horror of the traveler who had just found himself in the ghost realm had not yet fully revealed, and he had already begun to give up on himself.

"Maybe they're not suitable for carrying weapons, or maybe they don't have a physical body at all, just a fantasy created with strange technology... Have they ever been detected by radar? Angelo asked.

"Yes," the envoy sighed, "whenever they appear, we are not only able to detect their fast-moving images through the radar, but we are also able to pick up strong radio waves, sometimes even causing our precision instruments to temporarily malfunction. ”

"At least that means it's not such a terrible thing that uses radar to detect our location." General Jetlica analyzed.

"Even if it's not." "With their speed and range of motion, it's definitely easy to find us with the probe's guidance," the envoy said, squeezing his throat. ”

"Probe? You say it's not submarines that bother us, but probes? General Jetlica asked.

The envoy closed his eyes and shook his head: "No, the probe could be a submarine or some other form of equipment, I'm not sure about that, but it definitely has a radio communication function, and the radio waves we intercepted earlier are estimated to be used to provide location parameters to the command." ”

General Jetlika bit his lip: "Since we are in this unmanageable predicament, why don't we simply apply to the Naval Operations Department to cancel the operation?" We could drop the atomic bomb to the bottom of the sea at a depth of several kilometers and return to our home base. ”

This may sound too far-fetched, but instead of denying it, the envoy supports it: Perhaps the only way to save the lives of our fleet and more than 2,000 naval officers and men may be the enemy's target must be the two atomic bombs on our ships. ”

Captain Anglo didn't speak, and Dr. Mante struggled with logical contradictions, and it was Jetlica himself who raised the objection: "Wait, Mr. Legerhall, and the Colonel, Doctor, you help us think about it, what will happen next if we don't run away in a long way in a panic, but go to Europe at cruising speed according to the original course?" ”

The envoy was the first to say these conjectures, which seemed to be the question that had tormented him this night: "The enemy will find the right opportunity to launch a deadly attack with submarines, and they have captured the best silent submarine from the German Navy, the most powerful underwater hunter, and I suspect that their flying saucers will also appear to disturb our vision at the critical moment." In fact...... There is nothing wrong with our air transport lines, their flying saucers are not able to launch direct attacks, and we don't know which one in a cluster of dozens of aircraft is the one that is loaded with special cargo...... Oh, damn it! I should have thought of this a long time ago! They want us to transport atomic bombs on ships so they have a chance to do it, and surface ships are easier to detect the exact location than submarines! ”

Envoy Leghall suddenly realized in his analysis, and General Jetlica seemed to have figured it out.

"As long as they sink us in a sea area that is not too deep, they will be able to send divers to pick up the atomic bombs on the ship, and ordinary and sea water will not damage them." The general cast a verifying glance at Dr. Mante.

Dr. Mante's complicated expression was the same as that of the envoy Leghall just now, and he was sweating profusely: "Well・・・・・・ ordinary explosions will not theoretically detonate atomic bombs, and in order to ensure safety, we have indeed installed the detonating devices separately on another group of ships, but if our warship has a very violent explosion, it may also cause the enriched uranium raw materials to reach the critical value of the chain reaction... ・・・This process is equivalent to using a detonator, and two K-class atomic bombs are enough to destroy an entire fleet. ”

Admiral Jetlika frowned suddenly, and as a senior rear admiral, he would never have imagined that such an important burden would suddenly fall on his shoulders. Thinking for a moment with a heavy expression, he laughed at himself: "If that happens, the enemy will never want to get the atomic bomb from us, and our sacrifice will at least save the lives of thousands of Allied people...,

Infected by these words, Colonel Angelo put on an open-minded posture: "Let them come!" Those flying saucers with no offensive power are dazzling balloons, and we will do our best to see if the enemy submarines will sink us one by one or if we will destroy them all! ”

General Jetlika laughed, turned to the envoy Leghall and said: "Trouble Mr. Special Envoy, you draft a telegram that can explain the situation, so that the senior leaders of the White House can also see through the enemy's conspiracy As for us・・・・・・ if the White House agrees that we will drop atomic bombs without detonators into the deep sea, we will find a place where no one can dive to the bottom and throw them down, and if we do not agree, we will escort them to their destination without hesitation." ”

Leghall resolutely replied: "Good! I'll take care of the cables to the White House, and they're sure to wake up the president and his bickering aides to a real dream. ”

With that, the envoy took out a pen from his pocket and took the telegram clip from the previous communications officer, preparing to draft the telegram in the blank space of the telegram. Seeing the content of the telegram fed back by the Naval Operations Department, he thought for a while: "General, maybe we can slow down appropriately now and gather destroyers operating nearby to strengthen the anti-submarine force, in today's Atlantic waters, the enemy can use to attack ships is submarines, and there are certainly not many of them!" ”

"That's a great idea!" General Jetlica took out a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat beads on his head, the western Atlantic in early spring in early March has gradually shaken off the cold of winter, so the air conditioning is not turned on on the ship, and the temperature at night should be suitable for sleeping, but the atmosphere in this command room is in a dull state most of the time, in the emotions of apprehension, anxiety, surprise, panic, and amazement, he turned around, and only when he came back to his senses did he suddenly feel a strange soreness and weakness in his limbs.

The envoy, Leghall, was still writing in the telegram, but Admiral Jetlika did not call anyone else in, and while he was thinking, he said to Colonel Angelo: "Give orders to the ships: keep the current formation unchanged, the speed will be about to 20 knots, the combat alert will be lowered to the air defense and anti-submarine alert, and the crews will be arranged to rest in shifts." Send a telegram in the Navy's cipher code to the escort aircraft carriers, destroyers, and frigates that can maintain a combat voyage of at least three days within 200 nautical miles, and politely decline their kindness if they are contacted by friendly ships. ”

Colonel Angelo wrote down the instructions one by one, and then asked, "Do you keep your current course or adjust back to the original route?" ”

General Jetlica opened his mouth to speak, but it seemed that he had temporarily changed his attention, and he thought for a moment: "Maintain the current route for the time being, and wait until dawn to see the specific situation." "Min