Straits of Power

by Joe Buff

  “It’s man packable by a Kampfschwimmer team, we think, from what our contact was able to tell us. We do know that German battle swimmers are directly involved.”

  “I’m liking this less and less.”

  “The equipment will be at a safe house. The safe house will be used and guarded by the Kampfschwimmer, from what the defector implied. Mr. Salih will pick up the defector at the consulate when the time comes.”

  “I speak fluent German and Turkish,” Salih said. “My job will be to say that Aardvark has been delayed outside the country on his business, and I’ve come instead to take Peapod partying.”

  “It’s gonna be one hell of a party,” Felix said.

  “Affirmative,” Parker responded. “The defector will undoubtedly be tailed by a security escort, to protect him and keep an eye on him. We don’t know if they suspect his loyalty. If they don’t now, they might by next Friday.”

  “Terrific.”

  “Your team will have to reach shore at Istanbul from the minisub without detection, and change into civilian clothes. Obtain transportation. Conceal your weapons and ammo as best you can about your persons or in rented or purloined vehicles. And watch out for Turkish police. They’re everywhere, they’re good, and some patrols go around in armored personnel carriers mounted with heavy machine cannon. Not squad cars.”

  “Where’s the safe house?”

  “We don’t know. The defector and Aardvark dared not discuss more than that it exists. Peapod will have to give you directions, with Salih as his handler until you all can bring the man back to me in the minisub, where I will immediately begin his debrief while we return to Challenger.”

  Felix took a deep breath. “So we have to attack a safe house full of Kampfschwimmer, without damaging fancy computer gear, without getting killed by the Germans or by the Turkish police, and we don’t even know where this safe house is till we get there?”

  “Correct. And without getting Peapod or Salih killed. They’ll need a rally point to hide in with their heads well down, then you collect them there on your way out.”

  “And just for starters there’s the security tail of Germans whom we need to neutralize quickly and quietly, before they can call a warning or summon help and blow the whole deal?”

  “Correct. That part isn’t new.”

  “No. But with more direct action to follow it now, there’s a lot more pressure to this phase. And rather severe consequences if there’s any screwup.” To SEALs, direct action meant combat.

  Parker nodded, deadpan.

  He’s an awfully cold fish when he wants to be, Felix thought. “Do we know the architecture of the safe house building at least? Or the neighborhood it’s in?”

  Parker shook his head. “Too dangerous to have been broached in any way by Aardvark with Peapod. You’ll have to choose your tactics on the spot.”

  “So we use the time between now and next Friday to plan and rehearse a totally open-ended mission profile?”

  “Yes. And while you plan, also take account of Russian and Israeli operatives in the immediate area, who are very interested in our man. Protecting him, or killing him.”

  In front of Parker, Captain Fuller, Captain Parcelli, and Commander McCollough, Felix couldn’t let on how suicidal this whole thing had started to sound.

  I’m sure that’s one reason they’re holding the meeting like this, with all the task-group senior officers present.

  Felix sat there steely eyed, and his men implicitly understood that they should follow his example. Though they were naturally competitive, and welcomed very difficult assignments, this particular one seemed over the top. Felix knew them well enough to see it in their faces.

  “Okay,” Felix summarized. “We sneak ashore, we grab cars to get around a giant city infamous for its traffic jams. We pick up a defector right outside his consulate, and he picks up a tail. We take out the tail without anyone noticing, and then take out a safe house manned by German elite special forces. Except without blowing up computer equipment we don’t know how to recognize, and without hurting or killing innocent civilians or cops in a city of twelve million people. We elude armed Russians and Mossad types who won’t like us mucking around. Then we all scurry back to the minisub and sail merrily away, obeying a speed limit slower than a guy on a bicycle. . . . Did I leave anything out?”

  “Yes, you did,” Parker said.

  “What?”

  “Think.”

  Felix saw it. Oh shit. “Our cover, our legend, for who we were, after we leave a bunch of dead German bodyguards and Kampfschwimmer behind, and Peapod or his corpse can’t be found.”

  “This has been discussed at the highest levels in the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon. We need to befuddle the Germans as long as possible as to what happened and who actually did it, to buy time for us to receive and debrief the defector and harness his help. We also need to assume that the Turks will conduct full investigations of their own, both law enforcement and counterespionage.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Lead them away from suspecting the U.S. or Israel. Israel is most directly under threat from the impending Axis offensive, and our relations with her are strained. The last thing we can afford to do is have multiple shoot-outs on Turkish soil, and leave Israel holding the bag with the slightest inkling that Americans were responsible.”

  “The Mossad are too good, and they probably have better relations with Turkey than we do.”

  “Affirmative. Their outright diplomatic relations, and clandestine human intelligence contacts, far exceed ours.”

  “So what’s the answer? We pretend we’re from some other Islamic country?”

  “No. We need the Muslim nations staying neutral. We can’t try to stick them with a crime they’ll know they didn’t commit. If we want a prayer of getting them to join the Allies, ever, we have to leave them out of this.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  “You and your men are all Brazilian-Americans.”

  Felix and his guys looked at each other and shrugged. “We know that.” Brazilians were a varied mix of white and black and native Indian blood; Brazil’s official language was Portuguese.

  “You and your specific team are hearing this, assigned to this, not simply because you worked successfully with Captain Fuller on Challenger before, though that’s certainly a big part of why you were picked.”

  “What’s the rest of it?”

  “You’ll operate there as Portuguese expatriates. Stranded in Turkey by the war when your mother country was occupied. . . . Few Turks can tell apart Portuguese accents from Brazil versus Portugal, or notice any American tinge to the speech. . . . That was the plan all along, when the only issue was taking out Mohr’s bodyguards. Now you’ll be leaving a much bigger footprint, with a safe-house assault involved. So your motivation, your legend, has to be amplified. You’re a splinter faction of self-appointed partisans, incensed at the Germans for occupying Portugal, and you’re getting even. Heckler and Koch MP-5 submachine guns are made under license in Turkey. That’s the reason you were issued the particular MP-5 versions you have, with Czech-manufactured shells, and thus appropriate shell-case markings, to add to the confusion.”

  “Freedom fighters?” Captain Fuller asked. “A scratch resistance group that nobody heard of before?” He seemed to buy into the concept.

  Parker nodded. “A savage hit-and-run raid, hurting Germans where they’re most exposed, at the edge of territory where they have any real control. . . . An e-mail will be sent to an Istanbul newspaper after you’re gone, taking the credit.”

  “There’s just one problem with all that,” Felix said.

  Parker hesitated. “I don’t follow you.”

  “Probably because it’s so obvious you can’t see it. . . . How do you think this’ll look to the Turks?”

  “I just told you how it’ll look. I’ll be providing you all with casual clothes made in Turkey, falsified Portuguese passports, phony Turkish ID cards,
internee visas, and the rest.”

  Felix knew the CIA had warehouses full of foreign goods for use on special ops, and extremely talented document forgers. The SEALs had all been given what Felix now realized—from glancing at Gamal Salih—were Turkish-style haircuts before joining Challenger.

  “You left out one little detail,” Felix said.

  “Lieutenant?”

  “Mr. Parker, you can glorify the cover story by calling us freedom fighters if you want, but the Turkish authorities will think we’re terrorists. Their military is strong. The minute we start stabbing and shooting and blasting down doors in some house in some suburb, they’ll send their very best rapid-reaction teams. They’ll have helicopters, to look down and shoot down and fast-rope down and leapfrog over gridlock in the streets. They’ll do everything they can to wipe us out, and we’re not even allowed to shoot to kill to defend ourselves.”

  Parker opened his mouth to continue just as someone knocked on the door. It was Ohio’s communications officer.

  “Captain Fuller, Captain Parcelli, we’ve just gotten an ELF message. We’re ordered to use our periscope raft, raise the SHF mast, and copy a high-baud-rate data dump from the satellite.” SHF meant super-high-frequency radio.

  This took Jeffrey by surprise, and made him uncomfortable. Even the stealthy raft could be noticed by an enemy on or above the surface.

  “Who gave the order?”

  “ComLantFlt, to Commander, Task Group 47.2, imperative, no recourse, and smartly.”

  Admiral Hodgkiss had just told Jeffrey to use Ohio’s raft, and use it now.

  “Very well,” Jeffrey said. “We’re coming.” He and Parcelli hurried into Ohio’s control room.

  Parcelli was tight-lipped. He didn’t like having to break stealth, even by the slimmest margin. He made sure the sonar men and fire-control men held no contact on nearby subs or ships or planes. “You want to take the mini back to Challenger before I float the raft?”

  Jeffrey almost said yes. But as task group commander he was supposed to be as cool as a cucumber, no matter what. The tactical uncertainties would only get worse as the mission progressed.

  “No. Let’s both see what the good admiral has to say.”

  Parcelli told his XO to take the conn and get ready to deploy the antenna raft. Jeffrey asked for a message to be sent to his own ship by the acoustic link, to inform Bell of what was going on; this was quickly done.

  “Captain,” Parcelli said, “join me in the radio room?”

  Ohio’s radio room was a compartment off of the control room. Its door was thick, and was equipped with two different mechanical combination locks and one electronic handprint scanner. A big red sign warned unauthorized personnel to never enter.

  Parcelli turned the combinations and held his hand to the scanner. Jeffrey preceded him in, then Parcelli locked the door behind them.

  Jeffrey felt it strange to see blue lighting instead of the red he was used to—red or blue were used to make staring for hours at console screens easier on watch-standers’ eyes. Otherwise, the radio room wasn’t much different from Challenger’s. The SSGN’s special communications gear for SEAL operations, and for connectivity with surface action groups, carrier battle groups, or amphibious strike groups, were in other spaces, aft.

  This radio room was small, crowded with technicians and state-of-the-art equipment, and was warm from the heat that human bodies and racks of black boxes gave off.

  The lieutenant (j.g.) who was Ohio’s communications officer oversaw things as his people did final checks on the receivers and the decryption gear. They also tested the connections to the raft antenna, threading inside the winch cable on its drum in Ohio’s sail. All was in order. Every transmitter was cold, long switched off, and would stay switched off, to avoid the slightest chance of an accidental signal being sent out that would ruin the undersea task-group’s stealth.

  “Raft on the surface,” a technician announced a few minutes later. “SHF mast deploying. . . . Good contact on the satellite.” Equipment in the small space came alive. Recorders began to run, digital signal-strength meters fluctuated, and red and green indicator lights flickered rapidly.

  Parcelli addressed the radio-room phone talker as the download came in. “Chief of the watch is to prepare to retract the raft on my order.”

  The phone talker spoke into his mike, then listened. “Chief of the watch acknowledges, retract raft on your order, aye.”

  “Download complete!” the communications officer called out, sounding jumpy.

  “Phone talker,” Parcelli snapped. “Retract the raft.”

  “Chief o’ the watch acknowledges raft retracting, sir.”

  “Very well . . . Radio, decrypt the download.”

  “Header decoded, sir. Message is to Commander, Task Group 47.2, personal, copy to CO, Ohio, personal.”

  “Sir,” the phone talker said, “XO reports no threats detected yet.”

  “Very well,” Jeffrey said. Maybe we got away with it. Nobody noticed the raft. “Give me the disk when the decrypt is completed. Captain Parcelli, may we use your stateroom?”

  Jeffrey waited while the decoding computers continued to run. The time they were taking suggested that either an extremely long text message had come in, or the message included a heavy amount of supporting numerical data. Or both.

  “Decrypt complete, sir,” a senior chief said.

  “Give the disk to Captain Fuller,” the lieutenant (j.g.) ordered.

  Jeffrey took the disk in his hand, holding it by the edges so he wouldn’t get fingerprints on its surface. They left the radio room and went into Parcelli’s cabin. They used Parcelli’s laptop to read the disk.

  The message began with a cover memo that referenced a number of attachments. Several were raw acoustic recordings from a Los Angeles submarine’s sonars. Those would be very data intensive, for sure.

  There were also several reports and analyses attached, including—this caught Jeffrey’s attention—one that mentioned work performed by Ilse Reebeck.

  But the cover memo itself was enough.

  Jeffrey and Parcelli looked at each other.

  “So the Russians have a new, extremely quiet fast-attack sub loose somewhere in the Atlantic.” Parcelli’s usually unflappable expression seemed worried. “Our paths might cross. This isn’t good. We know too little about her. She might detect us and we wouldn’t even be aware of it.”

  “Concur,” Jeffrey said. “At least she won’t fire on us. . . . But she may pass a contact report to her base, and from there to Moscow, and from there to Berlin. If she sees us in the North Atlantic, steering east, our cover of heading south to Durban is ruined, totally blown. The Germans could deduce real easy from our latitude that we’re aimed for the Med. And the Texas sacrifice by Dreadnought right outside Gibraltar? Instead of a diversion, it becomes the circumstantial proof that we’re definitely there.”

  “What are your orders?”

  “Like Hodgkiss says, press on. Be doubly on our guard.”

  “And pray.”

  “Yeah,” Jeffrey said. “It’s a very big ocean around us. We might not come within a thousand miles of the 868U.”

  “But what if the Axis or their Kremlin friends suspect our side will be doing something aggressive, given the German buildup on the eastern North Africa front? What if this Snow Tiger is abusing her neutrality to establish a barrier patrol outside Gibraltar? What if instead of a very big ocean, she’s been deployed specifically to hunt for something like our task group at the most obvious, the only choke point? She doesn’t need to fire at us. She just needs to warn the Axis defenses by radio or a laser buoy. The Germans in the Med can take care of themselves if they know what to look for. Once we’re caught inside there, it’d be like them shooting fish in a barrel.”

  “Get me two copies of this disk to take back to Challenger. Your sonar people and mine can each go over the sound profile of the Snow Tiger, and I want to examine what’s on here myself alone in my state
room.” Jeffrey exhaled, displeased by the ever-mounting complications. “I’ll leave Estabo and his SEALs with you and McCollough until our next rendezvous. They need the special-warfare planning and rehearsal facilities now more than ever. The simple existence of this Snow Tiger requires more caution, but caution would cost us time in the Atlantic and then in the Med, which could give the extraction team too little slack when they get to Istanbul.”

  Parcelli nodded soberly. “The master schedule’s locked in. The Texas business and then the defector snatch, hopefully soon enough for Peapod to help us before Pandora is launched. Hodgkiss sees what we see. He knows that if there’s any delay, our entire effort might collapse on itself.”

  “I’ll grab my officers and Parker and Salih and head back to Challenger at once. Recall your ASDS from visiting my ship.”

  “And then?”

  “We resume our tactical formation for steaming east. You high, me low, and I range ahead as the scout. You trail your towed array, I use terrain for concealment. The key to eluding this Snow Tiger lies in who detects whom first.”

  Chapter 21

  Late that same afternoon, alone at her private console, Ilse was deeply immersed in seemingly self-contradictory data about the new Snow Tiger. Studying on-line references about known and historical Russian submarine design approaches made her even more confused.

  Johansen burst into the room. Ilse stood up and mentally pulled herself together. “Sir?”

  “METOC won’t admit it, but it appears that they need you after all.”

  “You want me back in the war room?”

  “No. Continue here. Take this.”

  Ilse reached out and palmed a disk. “What is it?”

  “That’s what METOC wants to know. You tell me, and I’ll tell Admiral Hodgkiss.”

  “But, I mean, what is it?”

  “It’s a sound. Something strange. They’re not even sure it’s real. It might be an artifact of the signal-processing algorithms having a flaw, or electronic noise internal to the system and they just can’t pinpoint the defect.”

  “Such things happen.”

  “Don’t let what I say bias you. The admiral thinks it would be opportune if you could identify the sound for sure, and soon. Think outside the box. He said you’re supposed to be good at that. . . . I have a meeting. Good luck.”