Straits of Power

by Joe Buff

  “You think they—”

  “Yup. They must have had refueling support. Probably a class Two-fourteen long-endurance modified milch-cow sub.”

  “Oh boy. Undersea replenishment.”

  “If you were that Two-fourteen, where would you plan your next refueling meet with the Two-twelves?”

  “Generically? The last place the Allies would look.”

  “And where is that place, specifically, today?” Jeffrey’s role as CO was to teach his subordinates constantly. Making them answer probing questions was an effective way to do that.

  The teaching and learning don’t stop just because there’s a war—they become more indispensable than ever.

  “Can I close Ohio’s message and bring up a chart?”

  “Go ahead.” Jeffrey and Bell often worked like this, elbow to elbow, sharing one or the other’s console. Such brainstorming had always been vital in the Silent Service, and Jeffrey prided himself on being especially good at it—when the other party played ball.

  Bell tapped keys. A nautical chart appeared on the screen. “I’d have to say, sir, if I were them, rendezvous close to the bottom, to hide in folds in the seafloor terrain.”

  “That still covers a lot of ground,” Jeffrey said. “Now that you have the map, where would you pick the place?”

  “If I was some devious admiral in my office in Berlin, I’d tell the Two-twelve attack subs and their Two-fourteen meal ticket back to the fatherland to get it on closer to Norfolk than the point where they launched the cruise missiles.”

  Jeffrey stared at the chart. “XO, I concur.” Then he frowned. “This means we have a problem.”

  “There’s a third Axis sub in the area, and Parcelli doesn’t know it. And the Two-fourteen has her own torpedoes, ready to fire.”

  “Our task group companion allows us no choice, XO. We’ll have to run interference for Ohio, and take some risks ourselves.” Jeffrey cursed to himself all over again. None of this had been part of the plan. Now anything could happen thanks to Parcelli . . . including Zeno being stranded, and Pandora running wild. “What do we have in the tubes?”

  “Weps?” Bell asked Torelli; Weps was the nickname for weapons officer.

  “Six high-explosive ADCAPs, tubes one through six. Two brilliant decoys, sir, tubes seven and eight.” Torelli spoke with a thick southern accent; he’d grown up near Memphis.

  “Perfect,” Jeffrey said. Navy practice demanded that a captain always state his intentions. “We’ll use snap shots from tubes one and two if something sudden and bad happens. Be ready on the antitorpedo rockets. . . . Sonar? Nav? Fire Control?” Milgrom and Sessions turned; Bell and Torelli remained attentive.

  I’ve got to think fast with my people, and make up a search-and-attack scheme on the fly.

  “Ohio is heading northeast at her flank speed to engage the pair of class Two-twelves that launched those missiles. We will proceed in Ohio’s support. There might also be a class Two-fourteen in the area, and if so, I need to know it, and I need them to know I know it before they draw a bead on Ohio. Sonar, I want to go active on maximum power.”

  “Sir,” Sessions added, “we also need to watch for uncharted wrecks or hummocks on the bottom as we move.” As navigator, Sessions always had direct access to Jeffrey; part of his job was keeping the ship from running aground—especially underwater—or colliding with something.

  “Concur, Nav. Clearance here is narrower than a shoe box.”

  “Understood,” Bell and Milgrom said together.

  “Chief of the Watch, Helmsman, rig for nap-of-seafloor cruising mode. Activate chin-mounted obstacle-avoidance sonar.”

  COB and Meltzer acknowledged and worked a few switches. A false-color image of the seafloor contours, in an arc ahead of the ship, popped onto their vertical console screens. The high-frequency obstacle-avoidance sonar had sharp resolution, to identify mines, but could see on direct paths only.

  The muddy bottom was rolling and rutted, a fact that was emphasized visually by the shadowed areas on the display.

  Any one of those shadows could hide a Two-fourteen. I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. . . . But what else is new?

  “Very well. Sonar, one ping.”

  An undulating siren noise sounded, rising and falling in pitch. It would stop for a second, then resume, interspersed with sharp clicks and deep foghorn tones. It made loose things in the control room vibrate, and the fillings in Jeffrey’s teeth hurt. This mix of noises was used to get the most amount of information possible, while making it unlikely that a target could mask the return echo with active out-of-phase emissions of their own. Intentional bounces off the surface and bottom would even probe the places masked from the chin-mounted sonar; data on local water temperature and salinity gradients were used to interpret the complicated paths that sounds at different frequencies took.

  The speed of sound in water was five times as fast as in air, but the signal still had to make the whole round-trip to a target and back for Challenger to hear any echo. It would take a full minute to search out to twenty-four miles. Longer for the complex returns off terrain and sea life to be sifted through by the signal processors and Milgrom’s sonar men, to find traces of an Axis U-boat.

  Jeffrey fidgeted. He might have just tipped off the 214, and drawn incoming fire.

  “No new submerged contacts, Captain,” Milgrom said.

  Which means no Axis torpedoes in the water, either. . . . Yet.

  “Nothing on Ohio?”

  “Negative, sir. She must be too far ahead of us. Sound propagation conditions in these shallows are rather poor. My assessment is that she’s stern on to Challenger, not trailing a towed array because of terrain proximity, and due to her self-noise at flank speed her acoustic intercept might not have heard our ping.”

  Parcelli doesn’t know I’m covering his ass. . . . But he might assume I am, because he forced me to. Cripes, his recklessness makes me be extra cautious, which really isn’t my style.

  “Very well, Sonar,” Jeffrey said, formally acknowledging Milgrom’s report. “Fire Control, prepare a laser buoy.”

  Bell looked surprised.

  “We need to protect against a blue-on-blue.” “Blue-on-blue” meant a friendly fire accident.

  “Wouldn’t our coastal hydrophone nets detect us and Ohio?”

  And, by implication, warn off American antisubmarine platforms.

  “They should. The captain of Ohio seems to be counting on that.” To be fair, Parcelli couldn’t launch a laser buoy himself, it would compromise his stealth; no one’s supposed to know he’s even here. And I can’t ask that orders be sent to him to break off his chase, because if our comms are penetrated, I could get him killed.

  “Things malfunction, XO, and people make mistakes, and news might not get where it needs to go soon enough.”

  “Understood. Buoy-transmission time delay, sir?”

  “To the enemy our stealth is gone, so . . . short. Make it one minute.”

  “Message?”

  Jeffrey thought hard. He dared not name Ohio in his message, but he needed to work in clues so Hodgkiss could figure out what was happening and issue the proper commands, pronto.

  This should do it. Subtle, but Hodgkiss, a submariner, is very smart. . . . I won’t identify myself in the message either, just in case some clerk in the loop is an Axis agent, but the admiral will know it’s from Challenger because of this location.

  Gamal Salih had said it well: spies and lies. Jeffrey had never thought he’d need to be so paranoid. He cleared his throat—the dust he’d breathed in still bothered him.

  “Flash, personal for ComLanFlt. Am in necessary pursuit U-boats that launched missiles. Base course zero-four-five.” I say necessary pursuit, and say base course, not my base course, suggesting that someone else’s course is involved. “Prob Two-fourteen in area.” That’s the zinger. “Urge friendly coastal-defense units weapons tight.” No launching of torpedoes or depth charges. “Allied submarines st
and clear.” Friendly fire could work in both directions, and Jeffrey didn’t want to sink one of his own kind by mistake. Coastal defense units excludes Ohio. Hodgkiss, knowing what he knows, ought to catch on. “Surface, airborne platforms limit sonar search above layer. Report contacts via signal sonobuoys.” To me for prosecution. “Fuller sends.”

  A signal sonobuoy, dropped from an aircraft, emitted a series of loud tones, like Morse code. They could send simple information one way only. But though the U-boats might not be able to read the code, the signal could be heard for miles. It would further telegraph Jeffrey’s position to the enemy, but this fit with his need to divert the 214’s attention away from Ohio.

  Bell finished typing Jeffrey’s message to Hodgkiss. He arranged for a tight-beam satellite-communications laser buoy to be programmed with the message in code, then launched through a countermeasures tube.

  “Sonar, I intend to head for the edge of the continental shelf for better sound-propagation conditions.”

  “Understood,” Milgrom said.

  “Helm,” Jeffrey ordered, feeling more like a task-group commander every minute. “Make your course zero-four-five.” Northeast. “Ahead flank.”

  Chapter 11

  Jeffrey gripped his armrests as Challenger moved through the water above the continental shelf at her flank speed, fifty-three knots. The ship shook roughly, as she always did when moving so fast, from the immense power being put through her propulsion shaft and into the pump-jet rotors in their cowling behind the stern. Mike cords danced as they dangled from the overhead. Light fixtures and consoles made small squeaking sounds as they jiggled and bounced. Now and then more bits of construction dirt, including that colorful electric insulation, worked their way out of nooks and crannies and fell onto people or onto the deck. Pens, pencils, and computer-screen styluses rattled and rolled.

  Everyone was silent now, fixated on their readouts and controls. Tension filled the compartment. Jeffrey could feel it, and see it: COB’s and Meltzer’s neck and shoulder muscles were knotted tight. Meltzer’s hands were white knuckled on the wheel as he piloted Challenger at a dangerous speed for such shallow water. COB worked switches and knobs on his panel constantly, juggling the ship’s buoyancy as she hit one halocline after another—places where salinity, and hence water density, varied because of freshwater outflow from all the rivers and bays along the Virginia and Delaware coasts with their endless series of barrier islands. Everyone else showed concern and traces of fear in the way they sat, in the set of their faces.

  Jeffrey too wasn’t the least bit pleased. This charge into battle against an unseen enemy, forced because of Parcelli’s behavior and now the presence of a class 214 somewhere near, came as a complete surprise. Challenger’s people had barely had a chance to catch their breath and slow their pulses from their pounding by the near-miss Axis cruise-missile barrage, and now this. Jeffrey, like any CO, hated surprises. And like any proper warrior, he always craved surprise be on his side in combat. Worst of all, at flank speed, even Challenger with her state-of-the-art sensor suite was half blinded by her own flow noise as she tore through the ocean.

  Jeffrey studied the nautical chart and the tactical plot on his console. He did some mental arithmetic. If the pair of class 212s moved toward Ohio at high speed, and Ohio kept moving toward them as Parcelli had said he intended, then from the moment of those first missile launches as Challenger sat in the dry dock, to the moment Ohio and the 212s would be in torpedo range of each other, would be about three hours. Half of that interval had already passed. Because of Ohio’s head start, the rest of the time might run out before Jeffrey could get very close to Parcelli.

  And right now Jeffrey had no choice but to slow down. He needed to find the 214 before the 214 drew a bead on Parcelli. There was a very real possibility that the captain of the 214 already had good firing solutions locked in against both Challenger and Ohio, and was awaiting his optimum moment to open fire: whenever his torpedoes had short target runs and could come at both ships from angles that gave the German all the advantages.

  “Sonar, stand by to check our baffles and do a passive search on the wide-aperture arrays.”

  “Baffles check on wide arrays, Sonar, aye,” Milgrom responded. “Baffles” meant the blind spot behind a submarine’s stern.

  “Helm,” Jeffrey ordered. “Slow to ahead one third, make turns for four knots.”

  Meltzer acknowledged. Challenger gradually slowed.

  “Helm, left five degrees rudder.”

  “Left five degrees rudder, aye, sir,” Meltzer said.

  Challenger gently began to swing in a circle. Meltzer reported every ten degrees of course change. The ship’s wide-aperture arrays, their sweet spots pointing off to either side of the ship, scanned the waters all around as Challenger turned, her low speed giving their hydrophones maximum sensitivity.

  Milgrom went to work with the senior chief sonar supervisor and the enlisted sonar men. Jeffrey waited for reports.

  Meanwhile, he tried to put himself in the faceless class 214 captain’s shoes.

  Where is he? Which way will he have moved since getting whiffs of Parcelli and me racing along at our very noisiest—and probably also hearing me ping? He’ll guess that we’re after the pair of Two-twelves. But he won’t know I know that he’s here.

  Where would I lurk if I were him? He has six torpedo tubes. When would he shoot?

  Jeffrey stared at the maps and icons displayed on his console. He saw his own ship and the estimated locations and courses and speeds of the class 212s and Parcelli.

  Then it all became too obvious.

  The 214 would proceed generally north, staying in very shallow water, to support his two friends. He’d try to catch Jeffrey and Parcelli from the inshore flank, from the west, as they were both preoccupied looking down the throat of a dozen other German torpedo tubes aimed at them from the northeast. Inshore, the 214 could hide on the move, where sonar conditions were poorest.

  On this part of the Atlantic Coast, the shoreline ran north-northeast, along a line of roughly 030 on the chart. The distance from Jeffrey’s ship to the shore was opening only gradually.

  “Sir,” Meltzer reported, “my heading is zero-four-five.”

  “Very well, Helm. Rudder amidships.” Challenger had turned in a complete circle, but Milgrom’s people and the ship’s supercomputers found nothing.

  Jeffrey ordered Milgrom to ping on active, using very-low-frequency noise this time, ideal for finding diesels when ocean surface and bottom lay so close together. The resulting ping was a deeper tone than any foghorn; the entire control room and all in it shivered in resonance. Jeffrey waited for returns from the newest acoustic blast to be received and interpreted. He waited for Milgrom to tell him something useful, something on which he could act. He began to drum his fingers on his armrest, but stopped when Bell noticed and subtly shook his head.

  This made the waiting harder. It felt as if a torturer were turning a giant corkscrew through Jeffrey’s navel and straight into his abdomen. He wasn’t sure which he dreaded more, Milgrom reporting the 214’s torpedoes in the water, or her reporting nothing.

  Torpedoes at least would mean the fight was joined, and I could fight back.

  Again, no hostile contacts. Ohio was racing northward, at the extreme range of active sonar detection in slightly deeper water, with no sign at all of stopping to check for local threats like Jeffrey was. This meant that for now Parcelli was drawing ahead of Challenger.

  For a moment Jeffrey felt reassured that, since the 212s had launched so many cruise missiles in their attack, they couldn’t have very many torpedoes left. But then he remembered that for years before the war, the 212s could also carry an external harness that held up to two dozen mines. If this harness had been adapted to hold and launch cruise missiles instead, the U-boats might still have plenty of torpedoes.

  Now Jeffrey felt as if the devil had yanked out the corkscrew, and pulled half of Jeffrey’s insides with it. He for
ced himself to stay rational, and analyze all that he knew.

  If the 214’s captain gets the geometry and ambush timing just right, when the undersea brew up begins it’ll be three versus two in submarines, and eighteen to twelve, against, in loaded tubes.

  Tubes to the front of us, tubes to the left of us. . . .

  Jeffrey’s brain changed gears. Now came the really hard part. He knew he needed to make a choice, then stick with it to the bitter end. The fact that Milgrom hadn’t detected the 214 with her latest ping suggested that it was farther away than he’d hoped, probably still heading north-northeast along the shore.

  To break away from Ohio and do an independent pursuit of the 214 would violate that prime war-fighting rule, concentration of forces. Head to head, in isolation, Challenger could overwhelm the milch cow, but he’d leave Parcelli against the 212s outnumbered two to one in vessels, and outgunned twelve to four in tubes. No amount of arrogance and fancy tech on Parcelli’s part would make up for such long odds.

  No, I have to stay on Parcelli’s tail, and keep acting as his wingman, like it or not. When we draw closer, I can try to reach him via secure undersea acoustic link. Then he’d better do what I say, and I can properly coordinate the engagement.

  “Helm, maintain course zero-four-five. Ahead flank.”

  Meltzer acknowledged. Challenger began to regain speed.

  Jeffrey pursed his lips.

  I can feel each one of these half-blind, nerve-racking sprints take a toll on my cardiovascular system. This can’t be good for my health.

  But, what the heck? We could all be dead in an hour anyway.

  At times like this, Jeffrey knew, an hour was an eternity.

  “Fire Control,” Jeffrey addressed Bell by his formal role during an approach and attack. “How many torpedoes could those Two-twelves still have? Assume they used an external harness to carry some of their cruise missiles.”