Straits of Power

by Joe Buff

  After landing, Jeffrey caught the next shipyard shuttle van, and under an awning entered the covered dry dock. Power saws and drills, and loud hammering, battered his ears. On the concrete pier on the far side of the dry dock, a structure was being built from two-by-fours and thicker beams, and big sheets of a stiff but lightweight material, not plywood but something synthetic. Men and women in combat fatigues were climbing all over this structure, strengthening the framing of raw lumber, fastening the sheets to the frame. The thing was almost as long as Challenger, and some of Jeffrey’s crew kept glancing at it skeptically.

  Jeffrey spotted his chief of the boat, whom everyone called COB. COB was a salty bulldog of Latino ancestry, from Jersey City. He was a master chief, the most senior enlisted person in Jeffrey’s crew, responsible for many aspects of keeping Challenger and her people in fighting form. Now COB was keeping a seasoned eye on loading, as weapons went through one hatch from a special crane, food went across from a truck to the ship on a conveyor belt next to another hatch, and spare parts went down a third hatch into the engineering compartment farthest aft. Crewmen stood on the pier, on the hull, and moved up and down the ladders inside the hatches, passing things and scurrying like ants.

  “Hello, Skipper,” COB said. “Wel—”

  COB was cut off by another power saw, whose screeching echoed inside the dry-dock hangar after it stopped.

  “Welcome aboard, sir!” COB had to raise his voice above the hammering that didn’t stop.

  “Who are those people?” Jeffrey pointed across the dock to the opposite pier, some eighty feet away.

  “Seabees, they said.”

  “What in tarnation is that monstrosity supposed to be?”

  COB shrugged. “Looks like a cockamamie barn or something, sir. They wouldn’t tell me, so I let them alone.” COB had a sly sense of humor—in his early forties, he was the oldest man on Challenger. By age and title he held special privileges, and had repeatedly proven himself under fire in Jeffrey’s control room. COB was a plank owner too; he’d been involved in Challenger while she was still under construction. This implicitly gave him even higher status. “If it’s a barn, Captain, maybe it’s for target practice. Get it?”

  Jeffrey groaned at COB’s awful pun.

  COB joined Jeffrey in staring at the structure the Seabees were building. Enough of the near side was done that Jeffrey could see that those large, rectangular sheets came prepainted in different colors, mostly red or blue or green.

  Jeffrey walked along the brow onto his ship, stood forward of the sail, and grabbed a bullhorn from one of his junior officers. The young man had been supervising the shutting of the vertical launch-system hatches, now that the dozen Tomahawks were stowed.

  Jeffrey saw a master chief among the Seabees, talking to some of the workers.

  “What is that?” Jeffrey projected his voice with the bullhorn.

  No one across the dock reacted.

  Jeffrey cursed under his breath.

  “Master Chief! This is Captain Fuller of USS Challenger! What are you doing?”

  The master chief turned and aimed a bullhorn at Jeffrey.

  “Camouflage, Captain.”

  “Camouflage for what?”

  “For you, sir.”

  Jeffrey went below and sat at the little fold-down desk in his stateroom. He read the portion of his orders he was supposed to know before getting under way. Further instructions, to be opened only later and in two stages, were contained in an inner, sealed pouch warning that its contents included incendiary self-destruct antitamper devices. Jeffrey was to now memorize the authorization codes he’d need to disarm these devices, then swallow the edible paper on which the codes were typed. One code was labeled for use as soon as convenient after submerging. A second was intended for after “Peapod occurred” or Jeffrey knew “Peapod would never occur.” Cagey wording, presumably the postextraction egress plan out of the Med. He duly memorized and swallowed, alarmed that small firebombs would be in his safe.

  The immediate-action items were his required time of departure, 2200—ten P.M.—and the point for joining Ohio underwater. The rendezvous was southwest of Virginia Beach, down the coast and well out to sea. But the specified place was on the shallow continental shelf, which extended much farther out before dropping off suddenly to thousands of feet. Challenger would have to dive in water less deep than her length—which was 360 feet from bow dome to pump-jet cowling. This was usually forbidden during peacetime. It gave scant room for the slightest error: The ship might crunch into the seafloor, or be rammed by a deep-draft merchant ship. Both were nightmarish outcomes, but now, submerging early was a necessity. Caution had to be traded for strategic and tactical stealth. The sooner Challenger dived, the safer, in the larger sense, she’d be.

  And the calmer the surface, the shallower the place where I can first dare diving at all, and the less we’ll be slowed getting there by having to fight the swells of a storm-tossed sea. Good reasons to leave in front of the bad weather.

  Jeffrey grabbed his phone and called the control room.

  “Control,” responded the lieutenant (j.g.) who was the in-port duty officer.

  “Control, Captain. Find the XO and have him report to my stateroom.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” The lieutenant (j.g.) hung up. Jeffrey locked his orders in his safe. A moment later, the 1MC, the ship-wide public-address system, blared, “XO, please report to captain’s stateroom.” Jeffrey shook his head in disapproval.

  Bell arrived in a minute, very concerned.

  “What’s the matter, Captain?”

  “Nothing in that sense, XO. Get that kid’s head straightened out, will you? We have messengers for finding people. The 1MC is not a paging system.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bell said sheepishly. He took full responsibility for the violation of standard procedure. “We’ve gotten a little sloppy, sir, spending so long in port.”

  “Have the crew lose the sloppiness, smartly.” The XO was responsible for crew training and discipline.

  “Yes, sir.” Bell was contrite.

  “Lock the door.” Jeffrey asked Bell for a general status report. The reactor was critical in the power range and carrying ship’s loads, as ordered earlier.

  “Excellent work, XO. Outstanding job. Give Willey and his department my compliments too. You might see him before me.” Lieutenant Willey was the ship’s engineer, a lanky and straight-talking man; Jeffrey had been an engineer himself, on his own department-head tour. He liked Willey and understood his perpetual air of intensity and his all-important fine attention to detail.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mr. Parker and the SEALs all squared away?”

  Bell explained the arrangements. Since he’d been sharing his XO stateroom, which had a fold-down VIP guest rack, with the ship’s sonar officer—Lieutenant Kathy Milgrom, on exchange from the Royal Navy—complicated sleep schedules were needed to accommodate another rider and an eight-man SEAL team. Some junior officers, like the most junior enlisted men, had to hot rack—share bunks—which was rather unpopular, but Challenger had done this before. There was no room for people to sleep in the torpedo room; the huge compartment was crammed to the gills with weapons.

  Next, Bell overviewed with Jeffrey the ship’s other major systems and inventories, using Jeffrey’s laptop hooked up to the onboard fiber-optic local-area network.

  “Good. Now, be careful how you act. I’m sure the enlisted people and junior officers got the feeling that something is up. I don’t want imaginations running wild, or a morale crash either. It’s bad enough they can’t know where we’re going till we get there.”

  “Where are we going, sir?”

  “After we submerge. We get under way at 2200. Pretend that’s when our nonexistent dignitary from Washington is due for his alleged inspection. Get done whatever needs getting done before then. Secure shore power and other shore connections now, except the telephone. A readiness drill, remember, and absolute radio silence. . .
. Don’t let me keep you further. Thanks.”

  Bell left quickly.

  Satisfied so far, Jeffrey walked the few feet forward of his cabin to his control room. The change since this morning was astonishing. Almost everything was back in place, reassembled and tested. He kept going and took a steep ladder up one deck, and reached the bottom of the watertight trunk that led farther up through the sail. Both the upper and lower hatches were open. Jeffrey decided to climb, to eye everything from the vantage point of the bridge cockpit atop the sail. This ladder was perfectly vertical, with a tricky offset halfway to the top.

  Jeffrey clambered up with practiced skill. He knew all experienced crewmen could make the thirty-foot climb one-handed; their other hand would often clutch a cup of coffee.

  When Jeffrey got there, the wooden scaffold around the top of the sail was gone, so the crew and yard workers wore safety harnesses. They were doing the final checking to see that all of Challenger’s photonics masts and antennas, and her emergency ventilating snorkel, raised and lowered and rotated properly.

  Weapons loading was finished, and that hatch had been returned to use by personnel; it gave convenient access forward, and its ladder was the least steep. Jeffrey glanced at his watch: 2000, 8 P.M., right on schedule so far.

  Jeffrey turned to look at that barn the Seabees were building, along the pier on Challenger’s starboard side. Well, they’re as busy as bees, that’s for sure. Jeffrey thought for a second.

  Eh, what the heck.

  He verified that power was on to the bridge console. He palmed the mike for the ship’s loud hailer. He turned the volume all the way up. Someone has to test it, right?

  “Master Chief Seabees, ahoy.” Jeffrey’s voice boomed almost deafeningly.

  That got the man’s attention. He looked up, and saw Jeffrey leaning over the top of Challenger’s bridge.

  He aimed his bullhorn at Jeffrey. “Captain?” The battery-powered bullhorn couldn’t compete with Challenger’s loud hailer, backed by a 250-megawatt nuclear reactor plant.

  “Explain what that thing does.”

  “It’s a big cover.” The Seabee chief gestured at the overhead traveling crane that straddled the dry dock. The chief tapped the side of the cover. “On crude visual, and radar, it makes you look like a smallish container ship. It rests on your hull on padded feet, held in place by ropes tied to your retractable deck cleats.”

  “How do I get the danged thing off?”

  “It floats. Untie it when the moment comes, then sink straight down.”

  “Submarines don’t ‘sink,’ Chief. They submerge.” Jeffrey understood more now about why he had to leave in the dark and before the storm; in decent light this cover would fool no one, and in high winds with breaking waves it would be a liability—assuming the structure didn’t fail altogether, leaving Challenger badly exposed at the very worst time, with its wreckage hitting her stern planes and rudder and pump jet.

  “Uh, sorry, Captain. Submerge.”

  “Is it ready?”

  “Almost. From up there I think you can see the opening for where you’ll be standing on the conning tower, like now.” The chief pointed at a spot on the roof of the barnlike thing. There was indeed an opening there; Jeffrey had thought before that it was just an unfinished portion.

  “Test it.”

  “Sir?”

  “Test it.” Jeffrey pointed at the traveling crane. “Lift it, then drop it.”

  “It’s not designed for that, Captain.”

  “No, no. I don’t mean drop it on the concrete. I mean lift it up, let it drop ten feet in free fall, and brake the crane. Stress the frame. I want to see that it doesn’t fly to pieces.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The master chief turned with his bullhorn and started issuing orders. The traveling crane moved. Men atop the camouflage cover rigged cables to the built-in lifting eyes on the cover’s roof. They scrambled off using tall extension ladders, then removed the ladders.

  “Lift it,” Jeffrey said through the loud hailer.

  “Wait,” someone yelled.

  Jeffrey turned. On the near-side pier, where the crew from Challenger labored at loading supplies, Jeffrey spotted Commander Kwan.

  He palmed the mike. “Hello, Commander. What do you want?”

  Kwan cupped his lips to his mouth. “To watch. This is what I came for. The bounce test.”

  “Oh. . . . Sorry to step on your toes.”

  “No problem, Captain. She’s your ship!”

  “You take over. I’ll watch.”

  Kwan had shouted across the water to where Challenger lay. Jeffrey was impressed—the man could project a very strong voice.

  Needs it, in his line of work.

  “Captain!” someone else shouted. Jeffrey looked around, confused.

  “Captain! Sir!” Jeffrey glanced straight down. Through the grating he was standing on, way underneath him on the deck below the bottom of the sail trunk, he saw the in-port duty officer staring up at him.

  “What is it? Can’t you use the intercom?” Jeffrey heard telephones ringing, on the piers on both sides of the dry dock.

  The lieutenant (j.g.) filled his lungs and bellowed up the sail trunk.

  “Vampires, vampires, vampires inbound!”

  Jeffrey gripped the side of the bridge cockpit with both hands. Vampires meant antiship missiles.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Confirmed. Confirmed. Inbound, Mach 0.7, launch point bears zero-five-zero true.” Roughly northeast. “Range less than two hundred miles and closing.”

  “What?” It didn’t make sense. That was much too close. Jeffrey could hear other shouting on the piers now.

  “Confirmed. ETA enemy missiles less than thirty minutes! Two separate launch points, sir, simultaneous launches.”

  That means there must be two U-boats.

  “How many missiles?”

  “Six, they think, sir.”

  Six so far out of maybe two dozen.

  “Get back to the control room! Have COB sound battle stations!” That would at least have damage-control parties assemble with their gear—including a handful of radiation suits.

  Jeffrey glanced at his wristwatch. It was barely 8:30 P.M. He heard the battle-stations alarm ringing raucously inside Challenger. Torn, Jeffrey made the only choice he could: He’d put to sea early and hope for the best.

  A moving target is always harder to hit. And every ounce of spoofing and diversion has to help.

  Jeffrey used the loud hailer.

  “Commander Kwan, commence all deception measures.”

  Kwan held up a phone handset and nodded that he already had. He hung up the phone, gave Jeffrey a thumbs-up and a wave farewell, and jumped into a waiting Humvee. The driver floored the accelerator and the Humvee roared along the pier. It tore right through the blackout curtain of the vehicle entryway at the rear of the dry dock.

  Jeffrey held the loud-hailer mike in one hand and grabbed the intercom mike in the other. He dialed the ship’s internal 1MC. His voice sounded everywhere now.

  “This is the captain. I have the conn. Station the maneuvering watch, smartly. Vampires inbound, this is not a drill. XO, take the deck in Control.” Jeffrey glanced over the port side of the bridge. “You men there, cease all loading. Single up all lines. Challenger people get onboard. Everyone else get off. Retract the brows and the loading conveyors. Remove the handrails and toss them onto the pier.” There was no time for such niceties as stowing those dozens of heavy handrails below. Jeffrey turned the other way. “Seabees, get the camouflage cover positioned and cleated down now. . . . Maneuvering, Bridge, stand by to answer all bells. Helm, Bridge, stand by on the auxiliary maneuvering units. We don’t have time for tugs. . . . Shore party, get the forward dry-dock blackout doors and caisson gate open smartly.”

  Jeffrey’s world darkened for a moment as the long Seabee’s camouflage box loomed overhead, then was lowered into place. Now Jeffrey could see why the thing’s forward and aft ro
ofs sloped: to give him better visibility. Its many weight-bearing feet and pads, both fore and aft, held it high enough over the top of the hull to leave some room for cascading water as Challenger cut through the seas.

  The lighting inside the dry dock dimmed to dull red. As the covered dry dock’s forward doors retracted to full open, Jeffrey heard air-raid sirens in the distance outside. He felt dull thuds in his gut, from heavy antiaircraft guns far off.

  Two lookouts and a phone talker began to quickly climb the ladder through the sail trunk. All three wore night-vision goggles and battle helmets. The phone talker was already wearing his bulky sound-powered backup intercom rig, and trailing its wire; the lookouts had on flak jackets, and nighttime image-intensified binoculars swayed from straps around their necks. As he climbed, the phone talker held an extra helmet with night-vision goggles in one hand, for Jeffrey. These were some of the newest junior enlisted men on the ship, but they seemed eager, ready for anything, and proud to do their part.

  Bell’s voice crackled on the intercom speaker. “Bridge, Control. Ready to maneuver in all respects.” Bell added that twelve Axis missiles were now in the air.

  “Very well, Control. Helm, move us ten feet rightward, on bow and stern auxiliary maneuvering units.”

  Lieutenant (j.g.) David Meltzer, the ship’s battle-stations helmsman, acknowledged. His familiar rough Bronx accent made Jeffrey feel better amid the crisis, but not for long.

  How did the Axis know we were sailing tonight?

  Why did the U-boats sneak in so close?