The cruiser SMS Holtzendorff cut through the western Pacific like a prowling god of old, silent, disciplined, and hungry.
No searchlights and no radio chatter, only the soft hum of the gas-turbine engines beneath the deck and the steady rotation of the phased-array radar scanning the dark horizon.
Kapitan zur See Reinhardt stood on the bridge, hands clasped behind him, eyes fixed on the tactical screen before him.
A constellation of blue icons, German assets, held position across a vast grid. And three hundred kilometers to the east, a single red mass crawled westward at nine knots.
The American convoy.
Reinforcements, fuel, ammunition, medicine, radio parts, and wishful thinking wrapped in steel hulls. A lifeline steaming toward the Philippines.
Reinhardt saw something else.
Targets.
"EMCON remains absolute," he ordered quietly. "No active broadcasts unless I authorize it."
"Aye, Kapitan."
