Straits of Power

by Joe Buff

  Mohr didn’t like this. What if Iqbal was captured by German security, and interrogated? What if the substitution of someone else on Friday night is a trap?

  I need to be very careful.

  The strain of it all was becoming too much. Just yesterday, he’d received a message from his wife in Berlin. She’d said she’d heard too much of his shameful philandering with prostitutes. She demanded a divorce, with full custody of their children. Legal papers were being prepared in case he resisted, and to show him she hadn’t the least desire to try to reconcile. The tone of her message was bitter.

  Mohr would curtly agree to all her terms, of course. It meshed with his broader scheme perfectly. This was the ideal way to protect his family from Axis retribution—if he defected successfully, and also if he was caught.

  But the reality of her message pierced Mohr’s soul. He dearly loved his wife and children. If only he could explain. But there was no way he could ever explain.

  Other things troubled Mohr too. Activity in the classified part of the consular facilities was suddenly heating up. He feared the Axis knew there was a leak somewhere. The pressure to finalize everything for Plan Pandora had skyrocketed. He saw that this forced his hand.

  I must be sure the equipment is working smoothly, very soon. No further delaying tactics or I’ll be faced with a guaranteed no-win: Lingering equipment trouble will mean I can’t go out Friday night with the Turk, a trivial matter compared to Pandora from my superiors’ point of view. . . . I might be put under scrutiny for sabotage, or arrested, if the technical work develops further glitches now. . . . And I won’t be able to assure that one Kampfschwimmer team with their crucial gear are in the safe house Friday after midnight.

  That last thing screamed to be Mohr’s top priority. Without the gear, and with the Pandora schedule moved up, his knowledge by itself became quite worthless to the Allies—the same way his special gear, without him alive and present to explain it, would do the Allied cause no good.

  Mohr pondered in near despair . . . Got it!

  I’ll pretend one attack team’s gear set is a lemon. Plagued by gremlins, as the old American expression went. . . . Yes. The set I started fiddling with on Sunday, which I’ll fix but then miscalibrate in a different way before it’s field-tested again in the daytime on Friday.

  Mohr knew he needed to have the other gear sets functioning flawlessly, to save his skin and keep viable his last-ditch hope of defecting—which meant he had no choice but to leave behind for German use ten copies of a working, terrible weapon.

  Mohr’s stomach turned as he had another realization. If he told his bosses about the call he’d just received, they could, for entirely different reasons, refuse to let him go: A last-minute change might make his bodyguards suspicious. Iqbal had been inside the consulate before, and after meeting with Mohr he’d been covertly photographed, then given a discreet background check. Who was this other person? Mohr hadn’t even been given a name. He only knew that Iqbal’s secretary had said Iqbal told her he vouched for the man. Assuming that some clever explanation by the Turk when he showed up, or maybe a note signed by Iqbal—whose signature the lobby log had on file—kept that part from becoming a problem later, the altered invitation gave Mohr’s bosses an easy opening to order him to decline it now, and simply stay on duty and stick to Pandora. . . . Yet if Mohr’s phone calls were monitored by consular security, for him to not tell his bosses early would definitely raise a red flag.

  He’d never dreamed that espionage could be this complicated.

  Mohr had to report the change immediately. He prayed he’d still be allowed to attend the party. Smooth-talking his superiors got harder every time—he was running out of ideas and excuses, and they were getting visibly annoyed.

  The answer stared at Mohr from on top of his desk. His callousness surprised him. He would use the letter from his soon-to-be ex-wife as a tool, as his ticket to go with the Turk on Friday night: Now of all moments, divorcing, he needed thoroughly decadent release to clear his head. But the people he reported to might answer in just the opposite way: Now of all moments, he needed to reserve his head for essential business only.

  If he couldn’t attend the party, but was instead taken directly to the safe house with strengthened bodyguards, he’d never make contact with the Turk, never brief his rescuers on the safe house’s inner layout, or even be able to tell them where it was. Even if his rescuers managed to tail him anyway, he’d never evade his own bodyguards and the Kampfschwimmer—if shooting started he’d probably die in the cross fire. . . . And that assumed his bodyguards and the Kampfschwimmer didn’t have secret instructions to make sure Mohr was never captured alive.

  Wednesday morning, Captain Johansen, with Admiral Hodgkiss himself, came into Ilse’s workroom. Ilse stood to attention, surprised to see the admiral there in person.

  “At ease, Lieutenant,” Hodgkiss said, “though nothing about this will be easy.”

  “Yes, sir.” Ilse was crestfallen. She had an idea of what was coming. She was also frightened—to land in the clutches of America’s overstretched, imperfect criminal-justice system as an accused foreign spy in a war could be the end of her.

  “The director of the FBI has gone over my head to try to convince the CNO to pull your security clearance and sever your relationship with the United States Navy.”

  “What now?”

  “I placed my reputation on the line to back you up. This bought us time, but not a lot. The FBI is having an indictment drawn up against you for espionage. They say they had enough to go to a classified-level grand jury. The CNO told JAG to use some Byzantine jurisdictional issues to delay the indictment as long as they can. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has also formally complained that they weren’t involved in the FBI’s work up to now, and the CNO is using that but it’ll only give us another few days. Overall, things don’t look good. The FBI director can bypass the Department of the Navy, bypass the whole Department of Defense, and cut straight to the cabinet level on matters of homeland security. He’s started to already, using something against you for which you aren’t cleared, which is circumstantial but he presents as damning, more persuasively each time he recites it. There’s also the issue of how the Axis knew when Challenger would sail. It might have been by HumInt, and your name remains on the dwindling shortlist of suspects.”

  “Don’t my prior contributions count for anything?”

  “That’s one of the problems. Your most valuable services of all, things you did several months ago, are top secret and highly compartmented. Candidly, Naval Intelligence and the CIA both feel maintaining that secrecy is crucial to the outcome of the war. So crucial, in fact, that it outweighs anything else you might do for the Allies going forward. I’m sorry.”

  “You mean they’re willing to cut me loose? Leave me out in the cold after everything I did for them?”

  “From the perspective of military necessity, it does make sense to keep an ironclad lid on your old contributions. Especially since it’s obvious that enemy agents are working somewhere close to the rest of this, given the incriminating evidence against you that’s being manufactured lately. Perhaps not just to negate your effectiveness now, but also force open files that any mole would love to get his hands on.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your two recent technical errors, or let me call them apparent or alleged errors, with METOC, don’t help your case.”

  “I know. So what should I do?”

  “Lieutenant, I trust you implicitly, partly because I do know all you’ve done to aid the Allied cause, and partly because I know Captain Fuller trusts you implicitly and I trust him.”

  “Yes, sir. But what does that mean I should do?”

  “Give me and JAG and the NCIS and the CNO more ammunition. Do something else, something more, of unquestionable significance to prove which side you’re loyal to.”

  Ilse perked up. “Like go on another commando raid?”

  “No. You’re limite
d to this workroom, your quarters, and the direct route in between. Adequate food will be brought to you. You’re not even to visit other parts of the base without prior written permission from Captain Johansen.”

  “From now on,” Johansen said, “the marine bodyguards will continue to escort you everywhere, but their tasking is changed.”

  “You mean they’re jailers.”

  “The FBI insisted, as a precaution,” Hodgkiss said. “Be glad I won the fight to even still give you a work console. And we’re not sure how much longer that will last.”

  “You may not communicate on any substantive issues with persons other than myself,” Johansen said. “All phone calls or e-mails from this room or your quarters to anyone on or off the base will be blocked. Electronic equipment in your quarters has been confiscated, including your cell phone and personal laptop. Data access from this console has been narrowed.”

  “Solitary confinement, or nearly so. Do I get a lawyer?”

  “Only after the indictment is unsealed. Then an attorney will be provided. When things get that far, in a week at the outside, your solitary confinement will be genuine, and total. The gears of the legal process will then begin to grind dispassionately, and as I say at the moment the weight of admissible evidence hangs rather heavily against you.”

  “So in effect that’s my deadline to somehow clear myself.”

  Hodgkiss nodded. “No more than a week, maybe less. After that you’ll be incarcerated, awaiting trial as a spy. Captain Fuller isn’t here to testify in your defense; he won’t be for some time, assuming he comes back at all. The FBI knows this and is clearly railroading procedures through in his absence.” Hodgkiss pointed at the console. “Apply your technical skills with dispatch to the projects I previously assigned you. Be the first on anyone’s staff to come up with something really good, to exonerate yourself and forestall that indictment.”

  Chapter 29

  Two and a half days after Challenger and Ohio passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, there was still no sign they’d been detected. For much of that period, Jeffrey had the task group secure from battle stations, so captains and crews wouldn’t be worn ragged. Both ships returned to their regular watch-keeping schedules, with good meals and adequate sleep and recreation, for the one-thousand-nautical-mile trip paralleling North Africa. In water mostly ten thousand feet deep, they resumed the cruising formation they had used in the Atlantic, at a speed of eighteen knots.

  To pass the time, a checkers tournament was held in the enlisted mess; an electrician’s mate, the odds-on favorite, won, as expected. His reward was to pick the toppings for the pizzas baked for midrats, an extra meal served every day at midnight. The chiefs, in their separate quarters, played bridge or cribbage; some were wickedly good at both. The wardroom, with Jeffrey joining in now and then, went on a binge of watching old cowboy movies on the wide-screen video monitor on the bulkhead there, as each officer’s workload allowed.

  Despite the more relaxed atmosphere, and the lack of sounds of battle from outside, reminders of the impending Afrika Korps offensive never ceased. The on-watch control-room crew tracked noise from a large number of merchant ships, some of them neutral and some of them enemy owned. Many cargo vessels plied the routes between the underside of Europe and ports in Africa. Sonar men reported that most of these rode deep, heavily laden, if going to Africa, but rode shallower, in ballast, heading back north. Jeffrey sometimes wondered what the Allies intended to do to interfere. This logistics buildup made the Afrika Korps stronger every day. As tempting as it was, Jeffrey’s orders were explicit: Hold your fire unless first fired on by the enemy and evasion gives no recourse. Avoid at all cost any event that might compromise the Zeno extraction.

  Over the deep Alboran and then Algerian Basins, the prevailing currents had been in the task group’s favor, and they used this to make better time. Then they passed through the strait between westernmost Sicily and Tunisia’s jutting Cape Bon—at almost 100 miles wide, spacious compared to Gibraltar. They steamed on toward Malta, the little island now coming up fast. Malta lay between southeastern Sicily and western Libya. All three places were firmly in German hands. Jeffrey ordered his task group to go to battle stations.

  Because of the timing forced on him by his mission, it was broad daylight. Visual observations by the enemy would be much easier, Axis personnel would be more lively and alert, and worst of all there was LASH. It turned the sun itself into a mortal threat for submarines while shallow. The acronym seemed apt. The mere thought of it made Jeffrey feel as if he was getting flogged, the skin and flesh on his bared back being flayed by an unseen adversary. LASH really might be the end of them all.

  Jeffrey hoped to God that he was doing the right thing. He could no longer put it off; he warily eyed his displays.

  North of Malta was a broad bank that extended to the Sicilian coast, barely fifty miles away. The bank rose like a hump from the bottom to less than 300 feet. The water over this hump was the Malta Channel.

  South of Malta lay a short stretch of deep water, studded with seamounts in close proximity behind which anything might be hiding—moored hydrophones, antisubmarine mines, or German class 212s. Then came the vast Tunisian Plateau, where all the water was even shallower than in the Malta Channel.

  It’s time, again, to do the unexpected—according to plan.

  “Nav, recommend a course through the Malta Channel. Down the middle.”

  “Zero-nine-seven, sir.” Just south of due east. Sessions obviously had the answer ready before Jeffrey asked.

  “V’r’well, Nav,” Jeffrey said briskly. “Helm, on my mark, left five degrees rudder, make your course zero-nine-seven.”

  Meltzer acknowledged.

  “Fire Control, signal Ohio.” Jeffrey gave the information for the course change, on his mark.

  Bell acknowledged, then said that Ohio acknowledged receipt of warning of the turn.

  “Mark.”

  Challenger turned and Ohio followed. The formation turn was executed smoothly, no easy maneuver since Ohio handled differently from Challenger.

  I have to give Parcelli his due. His people learn well from even the slightest practice.

  The Malta Channel area teemed with fish, and with fishing boats and their nets. The shoals and banks of the channel also teemed with offshore natural-gas drilling platforms, which made all sorts of machinery noise—and undersea pipes, which gave off flow noise.

  Challenger and Ohio continued on course for the channel. They adjusted their depth for the rising local topography.

  As the water became more and more shallow, the background-noise level rose. The highlight, in Jeffrey’s mind, was Mount Etna, a live volcano on Sicily 11,000 feet tall. Magma shifted constantly in widespread underground chambers, and vibrations too subtle for people on land to notice threw valuable extra decibels into the sea. The channel’s current made even more noise, as its lower portions flowed over jagged protrusions from what the chart indicated as “Numerous Wrecks,” or it gushed past platform pylons. The magma displacements created magnetic anomalies.

  Merchant shipping continued to churn the waters overhead.

  Jeffrey went through the whole series of orders and responses with Bell and Meltzer, to command the task group to slow to five knots. The reduced speed was necessary for several reasons. In shallower water, as the outside pressure lessened, to go much faster would make Ohio’s screw begin to cavitate. This was the submarine equivalent of a car burning rubber from too much torque to the tires and not enough road traction. Cavitation threw off a characteristic hissing, a dead giveaway to the vessel’s presence; Challenger’s cowled pump jet was much less prone to this than Ohio’s huge bronze screw. And too shallow, if they didn’t slow, both subs would create a moving hump on the surface above their hulls, with a subtle propulsor wake that trailed behind. Even in choppy water in a busy shipping channel, enemy forces processing special radar bounced off the surface could eke out the truth that something submerged was there
.

  The blend of these factors robbed Jeffrey of an important option for the next several hours: They dared not put on a burst of speed to avoid a potential problem. To do so would tell the Axis exactly where to zero in.

  Everyone in the control room knew it too. People hunched tensely over their consoles. Whenever a fresh, unidentified sonar contact was listed, some of the newer men cringed.

  Challenger and Ohio entered the thirty-mile-long channel. The clearance between the surface and the bottom became even narrower. This impaired sonar performance, because sound paths bouncing repeatedly between the waves and the seafloor muck lost signal strength before they could spread very far. A double-edged sword. The same bad propagation that muffled the task group’s signature also made both vessels partly blind.

  We won’t have much advance notice of ships on a possible collision course. A supertanker’s keel is still as dangerous to us as the unseen part of an iceberg would be to that tanker.

  Jeffrey’s primary worry remained optical detection—including LIDAR and LASH. LIDAR, at least, was active, and photonic sensors on Challenger’s and Ohio’s hulls could warn if a laser emitter was near. The water in the channel was turbid—cloudy—from biologic waste, erosion silt, particles from undersea volcanoes, dust blown from the deserts of North Africa, and human pollution. So a laser would scatter light in all directions, tipping off the task group to move to one side before the hostile emitter could get a measurable return.

  LASH, on the other hand, was completely passive. The sunlight of Sicily this time of year was infamously strong. No storm had brewed up to give fortuitous cover. The weather, confirmed acoustically and photonically by Challenger, was fine.

  About LASH, Jeffrey could do nothing but sweat and continue to pray. He did both, in deadly earnest. He patted his forehead with his handkerchief unashamedly; when it became too soggy, he used the cloth to squeegee further perspiration down the sides of his temples, away from his eyes.