Straits of Power

by Joe Buff

  “Sir,” Bell reported as evenly as he could, “Ohio signals, deploying three off-board Seahorse Mod Five probes.”

  It was time to implement the next part of the plan.

  “Very well, Fire Control,” Jeffrey said very formally. “Signal Ohio, ‘Commander Task Group acknowledges. Challenger now deploying two LMRS probes.’ ”

  “Ohio acknowledges, sir.”

  The LMRS probes were launched through torpedo tubes, and controlled by fiber-optic wire or via acoustic digital link. The Seahorses were larger, because they could be carried in triplets in one of Ohio’s big old missile tubes. They were fully autonomous, had much longer range and endurance, and their sensors were much more capable than the smaller ones on an LMRS; with a minisub in its in-hull hangar, Challenger couldn’t accommodate even one Seahorse probe—another reason Ohio was so vital as an escort.

  By using acoustic links, both ships could see the data from all five probes. The off-board unmanned vehicles moved on ahead, searching stealthily for obstructions or hazards, like five fingers feeling their way for items lost under a dresser. The probes’ low-probability-of-intercept super-high-frequency active sonars, and passive image-intensification cameras, did most of their work. Transiting the Malta Channel, these feeds were indispensable.

  Fishing nets could extend for miles from a trawler, Jeffrey knew. An uncharted wreck could lie on the bottom, with the top of its mast or superstructure rising many feet up from the floor. Loose or misplaced mines, or even unexploded ones left from World War II, could also be anywhere.

  In conditions like these, an Axis U-boat might be anywhere.

  Jeffrey watched his console as all the data kept pouring in. Murky black-and-white pictures showed him trash strewn on the channel floor—liquor and beer bottles, big tin cans with their opened lids bent back, and empty oil drums were common.

  Then some probes found the edges of debris fields leading to wrecks. The control-room mood became grim, fatalistic. A shiver went up Jeffrey’s spine as his task group passed each drowned graveyard. He got an all-too-explicit tour of a World War II cargo ship, lying on its side with a huge hole punched below the waterline. The styling of the ship looked Italian or German, not British.

  Probably hit by a Royal Navy sub, in the era of the battles for Tobruk and El Alamein.

  Now and then Jeffrey needed to change course, coordinating with Ohio, to avoid one danger or another in their path. He asked Milgrom to turn on the sonar speakers.

  The racket he could hear was reassuring. These waters were noisy indeed.

  Milgrom reported aircraft overflights. These included military helos—identified by their engine power and transmission-gear ratio—and fixed-wing maritime patrol planes—also identified by their engine and prop sounds.

  Jeffrey did what he could to steer away from the projected path of each aircraft. The formation’s own plotted path on his chart became a confusing zigzag, headed vaguely east. It was nearing local noon; the sunshine would aim straight down at them.

  Milgrom announced another patrol plane.

  Too close. “Hard left rudder! Due north!”

  Bell typed frantically and Meltzer yanked his wheel. The task group made a panic turn to clear the zone beneath the aircraft.

  “Natural-gas platform dead ahead,” Sessions stated between clenched teeth.

  Jeffrey ordered another sharp turn, back on course, just as the aircraft flew by.

  Two dozen people collectively held their breaths and waited forever.

  “No depth charges dropped or torpedo-engine sounds,” Milgrom whispered hoarsely once her chief and his men were positive.

  Everyone, including Jeffrey, tried to breathe normally.

  We sure are doing the unexpected. No nuclear submarine captain in his right mind would go through the Malta Channel if he had any choice. The deep water with its seamount maze was a much more logical tactic.

  Not for the first time, Jeffrey asked himself if he’d done the right thing choosing to steer this way, or if he’d let down everyone whose survival depended on his leadership judgment.

  And then, before his eyes, the bottom suddenly dropped off to 600 feet, then 1,500, then 6,000, and then 10,000. Jeffrey had been so preoccupied that he was startled to see that they were through the Malta Channel, safe. The Ionian Basin beckoned, the deepest part of the Med.

  “Yee-haw,” the exhausted assistant navigator, a senior chief from Galveston, murmured under his breath. He typed and called up a different chart on the digital-plotting table, repeated on Jeffrey’s console screen; the Malta Channel vanished.

  “Yee-haw is right,” Jeffrey answered out loud. Challenger’s course remained steady, east. The African coastline veered away south, while the heel and toe of Italy lay far north. Well ahead stood occupied Greece.

  “Chief of the Watch, secure from battle stations.” Officers, chiefs, and other enlisted crewmen began to unwind, waiting for their regular watch-standing reliefs to arrive.

  Two minutes later, Gerald Parker strolled in. “May I observe, Captain? Sheer curiosity. I’ve barely seen your control room since we set sail.”

  Jeffrey wished Parker would just go away. The chemistry between the two was bad and not getting better. Their personal styles, their outlooks on life, the professional worlds in which they moved were too different. Dinner chitchat in the wardroom kept making this painfully clear. Jeffrey tried every human-relationship management tool he’d been taught over the years as part of his navy training, but Parker saw through them at once. He always bobbed and weaved, as if he were subtly taunting Jeffrey. His attitude stayed adversarial, and he never let down his guard. His goal appeared to be to show Jeffrey that the CIA man was vastly sharper at reading personalities, spotting needs and motivations, and exploiting weaknesses to manipulate people. He never gave an inch, never offered a single gesture of trust, and never tired of verbal jousting—he actually seemed to enjoy it.

  But Jeffrey couldn’t exactly lock Parker in a stateroom between meals and head visits, and the man had an important role to play soon as Peapod’s handler. Jeffrey felt an obligation to respect him, but he didn’t have to like the guy. He showed Parker where to sit without getting in anyone’s way—at the unused photonics mast-control console, aft of the navigation table.

  More crewmen arrived to take the places of those who’d been manning battle stations. Sonar men pulled off their headphones and handed them to fresh people when the new arrivals stated they were ready to relieve them. Lieutenant Milgrom waited until last, as a senior chief stood there to take over from her. She suddenly reacted, as if she’d been hit with a baseball bat.

  “Aircraft overflight!” she shouted. “Multiple inbound aircraft! Helos and patrol planes converging from west and north! Sonobuoys! Active sonobuoys at very close range!”

  Chapter 30

  Jeffrey cursed, guessing instantly what had happened: That previous near-miss overflight carried LASH, and saw at least one of the submarines. It radioed in a report, a German commander somewhere made a decision and issued orders, and now armed aircraft were swarming in coordinated, overwhelming force.

  “Battle stations,” Jeffrey snapped. “Sonar, suppress the hull echoes.”

  “Echoes suppressed! Port wide-aperture array detecting sonobuoy echoes off Ohio rudder and screw!”

  If Milgrom can hear them, the Germans might too.

  There was pandemonium in Jeffrey’s control room, caught transitioning from battle stations to regular watch keeping and suddenly going to battle stations again. Challenger crewmen who’d just left ran back. Everyone tried to trade places at once. The compartment became much too crowded. A lieutenant (j.g.) tripped and fell as he passed the helm to Meltzer. Meltzer stepped on the other man’s kneecap to get buckled in at the wheel. Bell dashed from aft and practically tore a junior officer out of the fire-control-coordinator seat.

  “More air-dropped active sonobuoys,” Milgrom called out.

  “Rig for deep submergence!” Jeffr
ey shouted. “Rig for depth charge!” COB acknowledged. “Helm, emergency deep! Down-bubble forty degrees! Increase speed to twenty-six knots.”

  Meltzer acknowledged, his Bronx accent thick, always a sign that he felt stressed. He pushed in on his control wheel until it was almost flush with his instrument panel.

  Challenger’s bow nosed steeply down—uncomfortably, desperately so. Jeffery hated doing this, but the ship came first, not the people aboard her. Crewmen still playing musical chairs lost their balance or their grips on fittings. They grabbed for each other, for anything, or slid forward on the treacherous ramp that the flame-proof linoleum deck had become. The unlucky or clumsy ones lay piled in a heap at the front of the space. Two essential fire-control-men stations ended up empty. A stocky chief, dancing to try to stay upright as his shoes couldn’t hold against gravity, crashed into the tactical plot on the bulkhead—now tilted wildly off vertical—next to COB’s position. The display screen went blank. Jeffrey’s seat belt bit into his abdomen, and he was almost folded double while his console top sloped away from him at an outrageous angle.

  Challenger gained speed and kept plunging deeper.

  “Fire Control,” Jeffrey shouted, “to Ohio, break formation. Commence full evasive measures. Weapons free at your discretion.” Jeffrey had his orders from Hodgkiss; so did Captain Parcelli.

  Bell typed madly on his keyboard. “Ohio acknowledges! . . . We can’t just abandon them, sir!”

  “We need to, we can, and we will.”

  “Surface impacts!” Milgrom yelled. “Depth-charge pattern!” The range and bearing she gave were almost identical to Ohio’s.

  Rumbling detonations sounded at shallower depth. Challenger shook but kept diving. She passed through five thousand feet.

  “Helm, take her to the bottom, make your course due east!”

  “You’re running?” Gerald Parker yelled as the depth-charge reverb died down. “You can’t just leave them there defenseless!”

  “They’re not defenseless,” Jeffrey snapped.

  “Sir,” Bell said, “we need to do something. They have Ohio localized! . . . Acoustic link to Ohio broken!”

  “We’re doing what we’re supposed to do, XO.”

  More depth charges went off. Challenger’s disarrayed crew was buffeted violently. Men tried to claw their way uphill against the tilt of the deck to reach their stations.

  “Torpedoes in the water,” Milgrom screamed. “Air-dropped, export-model Mark Forty-sixes.” Used by the Germans. “Ranges and bearings indicate the aircraft have Ohio surrounded.”

  Jeffrey heard the torpedo engines scream. Then he heard gurgling, bubbling sounds. Parcelli launched noisemakers.

  Above the other racket he heard dull booms.

  “Reactor check valves,” Milgrom stated.

  “Ohio’s going to flank speed,” Bell said, in disbelief that this whole thing was happening.

  “Negative!” Milgrom said. “More check valves, different bearing!” Jeffrey couldn’t hear them this time. He still had a tactical plot on his console but the data was unreliable.

  Where the hell is Lieutenant Torelli? I need his first-squad tracking team. Two fire-control men who should have been to Jeffrey’s right at battle stations instead lay badly hurt down by the forward bulkhead. Jeffrey saw the jagged white bones of compound fractures to arms and legs. He saw the bright red blood as shipmates tried to use tourniquets on the wounded.

  “Decoys,” Bell said. “I think they’re both decoys. Ohio’s trying to throw the Germans off.”

  Jeffrey nodded. “He’s probably gone as deep as he can and stopped to drift so he can play possum.”

  The control-room deck began to warp from the outside pressure as Challenger dove deeper and deeper at her top quiet speed. Near nine thousand feet, Milgrom called out, “Hull popping.” Challenger’s ceramic-composite hull was protesting the punishment. There was no way to avoid this. Jeffrey worried that the crunching sounds would give his ship away—he hoped they’d be drowned out by the wild action raging almost two miles above. He feared a sudden cannonlike influx of the sea. This was the deepest Challenger had gone since departing Norfolk; a flaw undiscovered till now in the latest repairs would have horrible consequences. Unforgiving blasts shattered the ocean again.

  “Torpedoes have detonated,” Milgrom yelled, projecting her voice above the ever-rising noise.

  Jeffrey waited to hear the thing he dreaded most aside from a flooding alarm—the sounds of a sinking submarine.

  “Assess both decoys destroyed!” Bell called out.

  Ohio had only two decoys. The Germans would know they hadn’t hit her yet—decoys gave off no floating wreckage, no bodies, no telltale oil slick. Because she’d been quiet, she couldn’t have moved fast, couldn’t have gotten far. More sonobuoys pinged high above. Challenger kept racing east. The melee behind them was at such shallower depth that the angles involved let the wide-aperture arrays pick up what was happening.

  Sonobuoys continued pinging. Jeffrey eyed the gravimeter. He was heading into the Ionian Basin, south of Italy and Greece. Ohio was cornered against the steep rise leading up to the Malta Channel. Parcelli had contingency orders from Jeffrey that if the two ships needed to separate under attack, Challenger would head east and Ohio should avoid heading east. If Parcelli went west, back toward Malta, he was dead. His choices were to stay still or make a move either north or south. Jeffrey thought that south would be better: The water was much more open there.

  Parker slammed hard against the back of Jeffrey’s seat, then leaned on it for support.

  Jeffrey was livid. “Get back to your position.”

  “I need to know what’s happening.”

  “The task group is coming unglued, is what’s happening.”

  Meltzer pulled back on his wheel. Challenger began to level off at almost twelve thousand feet.

  More depth charges detonated. Milgrom reported more torpedo-engine sounds. Then she reported more pings, coming from the type of sonar on ASDS minisubs. Ohio had released them, so they could lure the inbound torpedoes away from their parent. Parcelli was using his minisubs as last-ditch improvised decoys; Jeffrey pitied the crewmen aboard them. But jettisoning the minis let Ohio go faster—less flow resistance and noise.

  “You can’t just leave two hundred people to die,” Parker yelled in Jeffrey’s ear.

  “My orders are explicit! If detected and attacked in the Med, Ohio is expendable and Challenger must get away.”

  “You can’t play God like this! We still need all those SEALs and probes and weapons on Ohio.”

  “For now they’re on their own. We need Challenger in one piece so we have the German mini with the range to get Peapod.”

  “You’d sacrifice Ohio for a minisub?”

  “You’re out of line, Mr. Parker! Get back to your post!” Jeffrey pointed at the photonics-mast console. The constant pings and blast reverb and screaming of torpedo engines made their conversation surreal.

  “You’re the famous Captain Jeffrey Fuller! You’re supposed to be the man who never gives up, who does the impossible! Pull another trick out of your ass before it’s too late!”

  “Get back to your post.” Jeffrey resisted shoving Parker.

  The ocean was rent by a giant thunderclap, then another.

  “Assess both ASDSs destroyed,” Bell shouted, horrified.

  “More torpedoes in the water,” Milgrom said. “Mark Forty-sixes.”

  “Sir,” Bell pleaded, “we all have friends on that ship. You can’t just let them die. You saved Ohio twice before, near Norfolk and then with a Dreadnought decoy.”

  “I have my orders,” Jeffrey said coldly, torn up inside.

  “I’ve seen you disobey orders, Captain.” Tears were coming to Bell’s eyes. “Please.”

  There was a new screeching roar on the sonar speakers. It was overlaid by other, similar ones. They would stop, and then more would occur, repeatedly.

  “Ohio is launching Polyphems,” M
ilgrom said.

  Many crewmen turned to Jeffrey, their faces asking him to achieve a miracle. They knew those Polyphems would point right back at Ohio. The German aircraft that weren’t shot down would known exactly where to aim. Parcelli was making his last stand.

  Deeper, ripping roars drowned out the higher-pitched screeching ones.

  “Tomahawk launches, Captain,” Bell whispered, all choked up.

  “Loud surface impacts,” Milgrom reported. “Chaotic flow noise, increasing in depth. Assess as aircraft shot down.”

  There were more blasts from depth charges. Noisemakers gurgled in vast profusion, some old and some fresh, trying to confuse torpedoes. More Polyphems screeched, more Tomahawks roared. Parcelli might still fight his way out to safety.

  “New surface contact! Brandenburg tonals identified!” A frigate had joined the battle. Much louder pings sounded now above everything else. “Brandenburg has gone active!” The frigate had a sonar mounted under her bow. It was much more capable than any battery-operated sonobuoys. “More torpedoes in the water! ADCAP Mark Forty-eights!” Ohio was engaging the Brandenburg.

  “More torpedoes in the water! Mark Forty-sixes!” The Brandenburg was shooting back. Both vessels had four torpedo tubes. Ohio’s weapons were faster and smarter.

  There were different roars that ended in sharp detonations—Ohio’s antitorpedo rockets.

  Parcelli still has a chance.

  Jeffrey heard an extremely powerful ping, on the opposite side of Ohio from the Brandenburg frigate’s bearing.

  “New surface contact! Contact is ex-Italian de la Penne–class destroyer!” Taken over by the Imperial German Navy.

  “Six tubes on a de la Penne, Captain,” Bell said flatly.

  “Help them!” Parker shouted from the rear of the control room. “For the love of heaven, use your Mark Eighty-eights!”

  “They’d be a dead giveaway, you fool!” Jeffrey looked at the best-guess plot. The frigate and destroyer had Ohio in a pincers, one from the north and one from the south, each making over thirty knots. Parcelli was badly outgunned, ten tubes to four, and must be running out of ADCAPs. If he went west to shallow water now, he was surely doomed. His only escape was east.