Straits of Power

by Joe Buff

  Jeffrey had ordered him not to flee east. Would Parcelli obey, to protect Challenger from detection and possible crippling or destruction? Would Parcelli and his crew maintain their discipline to the last, and knowingly sacrifice themselves? Or, caught in a squeeze, fighting for life, with layer after layer of defenses peeled away and every tactic failing, would Parcelli come toward Jeffrey and bring enemy fire down on Challenger?

  Roar after roar meant more Tomahawk launches. These were probably programmed in antiship mode. They moved ten times as fast through the air as a torpedo moved through the water.

  Heavy concussions pounded Challenger and echoed off the side of the towering escarpment between her and the Malta Channel.

  “Loud explosions! Cannot identify!”

  The acoustic madhouse made it impossible to follow the battle via hydrophones. The tactical plot was useless without updated data from sonar. All Jeffrey could do was wait.

  Eerie moans, and cracks, and sounds like breaking glass came over the speakers, garbled by dull thuds and sharper eruptions.

  “Assess destroyer and frigate sinking!” Bell said with renewed hope. “Assess explosions were Tomahawk hits!” The breaking-glass noise came when the red-hot piping of gas-turbine engines and diesels was hit by cold seawater; the moans and cracks were tormented steel bending and fracturing as the enemy warships broke apart on the outside and from within; the thuds and eruptions were ready-use ammo and entire magazines blowing up.

  Torpedo engines continued to scream. Jeffrey heard another boom-boom-boom, then a rising whine as Ohio herself tried flank speed. He listened to another long series of antitorpedo rocket engines light off. I think Parcelli just fired the last of his rockets. There were sounds like shotgun blasts, and these began to mingle with torpedo warheads exploding singly or in groups. Echoes and reverb were more intense than ever.

  They subsided in a way that felt all wrong, replaced by a two-toned roar—compressed air from an emergency blow, and inward-jetting seawater; the air grew more feeble, the jetting much stronger. It ended with a deafening rumble, louder and distinct from any other sound so far. Crewmen glanced at each other, puzzled or appalled. Jeffrey and Bell grasped at once the special quality of that rumble, like a deep-throated crump that tailed off into a rebounding pshew. The new noise echoed hollowly, and hopelessly—it was the unmistakable signature of a steel-hulled submarine imploding. A terrible silence ruled in Challenger’s control room, broken only by injured crewmen gasping or grunting, and by other crewmen’s sobs.

  “Maybe a few got away in escape gear,” Jeffrey said to no one in particular.

  “Don’t you think the Germans will know that?” Parker snapped accusingly. “Don’t you think they’ll be hunting them down?”

  Jeffrey didn’t answer. His heart told him that, near crush depth, no one could make an ascent from Ohio without fatal bends.

  The corpsman and his assistants arrived with stretchers and first-aid kits. The uninjured people around Jeffrey seemed like they’d just aged ten years. He felt as if he’d aged twenty.

  “What are your orders, sir?” Bell asked quietly.

  “Continue east and go on with the mission. Secure from battle stations in three hours if we aren’t attacked.”

  Chapter 31

  Eighteen hours later, after tending to the wounded and holding a memorial for Ohio, Challenger had crossed the Ionian Sea. Jeffrey’s next job, the final leg before releasing the ex-German minisub bound for Istanbul, was to penetrate the Aegean Sea between occupied Greece and neutral Turkey. To do this, while Parcelli had still been alive, they’d decided to take the closest way in—the wide but shallow Antik´yth¯era Strait, one gap in a ribbon of islands that stretched from southern Greece to Turkey; the largest of these islands were Crete and then Rhodes.

  Lord, I miss Parcelli. Jeffrey bit down his grief. But he kept seeing Parcelli’s face in his mind, and the SEAL commander McCollough, with their egos and strong personalities, both so proud of and caring about their men, brimming with sincerity and confidence, now all gone forever. Jeffrey remembered Parcelli’s cowboy behavior off Norfolk, how the two had argued afterward, taken each other’s measure, and then—on the accelerated time frame common in war—started becoming almost friends. Jeffrey gazed at his right palm, which had shaken Parcelli’s big, warm, reassuring hand. He could still feel that touch, summon up all the sensations of it. Jeffrey’s palm seemed so empty.

  He ordered battle stations for the passage through the latest strait. Jeffrey was honest with himself that he was nervous—events in the Malta Channel might portend more bad things to come. His crew, still subdued or depressed, went to their positions as if some of them were sleepwalking.

  “Pull yourselves together,” Jeffrey ordered. “XO, put on report anyone who shows the slightest sign of inattention.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bell answered, sounding drained himself.

  This was harsh, Jeffrey knew, but it was appropriate and necessary. Ohio’s heroic crew had set an example of superb dedication and discipline to the end. Her loss, with so many lives, was tragic, but Jeffrey couldn’t permit his people to mope. For him the hardest part was that most of his subordinates, because of security, had no idea why whatever Challenger was doing was so important. Thus they couldn’t understand the reason for leaving fellow submariners to die, while they themselves sneaked away to preserve their own lives. Morale had hit rock bottom.

  Jeffrey needed to take action on this, but he wasn’t sure how. He hoped that as the rest of the mission unfolded—or maybe afterward, if they survived—his people not yet in the know might get some inkling of the immense value to the war effort, and to eventual peace, of what had happened to Ohio.

  In the meantime Challenger had to continue alone. Jeffrey was experiencing an unease he couldn’t shake off. It was partly because of Gerald Parker’s most recent behavior. The man had a persona for every occasion, and put each on like a mask. Now he was suggesting that the loss of Ohio showed that Mohr’s extraction might be a trap after all. It could be that Parker was rattled under his always-poised exterior, or it could be that he was setting things up to distance himself from the mission in case it failed, to preserve his career at Jeffrey’s expense. The latter fit with his outrageous behavior in the control room during the battle. Jeffrey had chewed him out in his stateroom afterward, but he could tell that Parker was unrepentant. He pleaded ignorance of the ways of the sea and the customs of the navy, and claimed that his job on this mission gave him certain authority anyway. He came as close as he dared to insinuating that Ohio’s destruction was somehow Jeffrey’s fault.

  Observing Parker’s conduct, listening to what he said, caused Jeffrey to have his own serious doubts about Klaus Mohr. Jeffrey hated to depend on people he didn’t know he could trust. Was Mohr, as a supposed defector, for real, or was he a phony? Did he even actually exist, or was the identity artificial, only manufactured bait?

  Jeffrey did know better than to second-guess himself on his decisions in and around the Malta Channel. The choice to proceed through there was made in a participative group context, including Parcelli’s wise counsel, and input from seasoned officers and chiefs on both Ohio and Challenger. The final decision had been Jeffrey’s, yes, but he was the task-group commander, and task groups weren’t run by committee. He was sure there would be an inquiry if and when Challenger returned to the States. He’d worry about that later. He had far more compelling issues to occupy—or preoccupy—his attention for a while. It occurred to him that the U.S. might already be aware that Ohio was sunk, if one of her emergency buoys had been released, then worked properly, and its signal hadn’t been jammed by the Axis. Remote sea-surveillance data alone would probably be too ambiguous: A frantic engagement in which Ohio launched so many missiles, with many tremendous explosions under the water, might have served to disguise her escaping. Jeffrey sighed. He knew better.

  Challenger made it through the Antik´yth¯era Strait unmolested. Jeffrey ordered a turn ont
o course zero-seven-six, a bit north of east. Using deeper water, this would start to take them through the labyrinth of other Greek islands that sprinkled the entire Aegean all the way to mainland Turkey.

  Jeffrey wondered how things really stood now between Turkey and Germany. He wondered what effect his mission might have. He realized that a safe house full of dead Kampfschwimmer would raise many questions, beyond those already covered in his briefings with Gerald Parker and Felix. Kampfschwimmer operations on Turkish soil were an act of war. How would Turkey react? Was there another, clandestine level to Jeffrey’s orders, one that had only gelled in Washington after Aardvark made his final report on his meeting with Mohr? Was there a chance to let sovereign Turkey discover for herself egregious German duplicity that the U.S. couldn’t simply put in a diplomatic note?

  Jeffrey got more sleep while he could as Challenger traversed the Aegean. Then he took the conn and sounded battle stations. The loading of equipment and weapons into the minisub was finished. Meltzer would be the mini’s pilot; he’d boarded already and powered up the vessel and its controls. At a depth of two hundred feet, inside Turkish territorial waters, Jeffrey bade good luck to Parker, Gamal Salih, and Felix and his SEAL team. Jeffrey avoided melodrama. No one felt like giving a speech. Everybody understood what hung in the balance. It made people tight-lipped, their conversation terse and clipped, their eyes hooded and hard. Jeffrey watched as they climbed the ladder inside the lock-out trunk. Hatches swung shut and were dogged. Crews ran through final checklists. The minisub was released.

  Chapter 32

  In the dim, red, postmidnight lighting of the minisub’s control compartment, Felix looked over David Meltzer’s shoulder at the navigation display. The upcoming strait was only the first part of the fifteen-hour trip to their destination, and in many ways it was the scariest. The unforgiving Dardanelles ran forty relentless miles, never more than two miles wide, with nasty twists and turns, and wrecks in the most inconvenient places. Two hundred and fifty feet deep at best, it shoaled to barely seventy-five just before opening onto the Sea of Marmara.

  The minisub was too small to have a gravimeter. It held no off-board probes for scouting ahead. It wasn’t even armed.

  Turkey was neutral, and merchant shipping used the Dardanelles constantly. Challenger had already done the work of penetrating hostile defenses. But the minisub wasn’t neutral, and its unannounced submerged presence was an outright violation of recognized international treaty law. If detected, Turkish patrols had every right to shoot to kill.

  “I’m activating sonar speakers,” the copilot SEAL chief Costa said, even more dour than usual; the mouth of the strait was upon them. The now-familiar sounds of churning and swishing, hissing and pounding, growling and humming of surface ships passing back and forth on the moonlit surface filled the tiny compartment.

  “Turning into outbound shipping lane,” Meltzer stated. The digital gyrocompass readout became a blur, then steadied, but didn’t stay steady for long. The mini, only 8 feet high on the outside and 60 feet long, began to pitch and roll. Even down at 150 feet, the endless movement of big ships made the restricted channel not just noisy, but rough. There was almost no current or tide here, but hulls and screws caused wakes that reflected strongly and chaotically off the steep shorelines on both sides of the strait; this shoved kinetic energy deep down into the water trapped between.

  The effect of the noise and the turbulence made Felix think of being caught in a giant Jacuzzi.

  Felix watched as Meltzer and Costa fought their controls. The inertial navigation system marked their gradual progress. Felix, standing crammed in behind Meltzer, grabbed the back of the pilot’s seat for support. Chief Porto, who would relieve Chief Costa later, stood behind him, shoulder to shoulder with Felix.

  Now and then the mini’s acoustic-intercept array would pick up active sonars coming toward them. The frequency band and other technical aspects of these pings showed that they came from commercial obstacle-and-mine avoidance sonars used by modernized merchant ships. Felix hoped that if the mini couldn’t steer aside in time, out of detection range of one of these ships, the crewman watching the sonar readout would think they were only waterlogged debris, or an ocean rover, or just wouldn’t care.

  Felix decided to go into the passenger compartment and grab some sleep. While a master chief, he’d qualified in ASDS piloting, then on this mission had learned to handle the German mini too, giving better skills redundancy to his team’s mix of personnel. He planned to relieve Meltzer for a while, later on. Who knows when I’ll be able to rest again after that. He was grateful for the corpsman’s antiseasickness pills.

  “Copilot,” Felix said, “mind your trim. I’m going aft.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Costa acknowledged. The mini had variable ballast tanks, just like a full-size submarine.

  Felix inched his way past Porto standing next to him—no easy task in such cramped quarters. Porto, typically upbeat, seemed overflowing with energy, and Felix hoped he didn’t peak too soon emotionally. Felix undogged the pressure-proof hatch into the central hyperbaric lock-in/lock-out chamber. He stepped over the hatch coaming, then gently pulled the hatch closed and dogged it. He moved slowly and smoothly through the lock-out chamber; the ride was choppy enough without his shifting weight making things worse. At the aft end of the chamber, he opened the hatch into the passenger compartment. He held tight as the mini was jostled and tossed.

  Seven seats were taken: Gamal Salih and Gerald Parker had the front row. Felix’s five enlisted men sat farther aft. Salih and Parker were going through briefing files as best they could, for last-minute brushups on mission details. The enlisted men—who viewed the turbulence as a challenge that made things more interesting—were cleaning their MP-5s for the umpteenth time, or sharpening fighting knives that were already as sharp as a surgical scalpel. The combined tone of this activity was notable tension, barely subdued.

  Fifteen hours is a long time to sit. It’s like flying nonstop from New York to Tokyo.

  The chairs, meant for lengthy transits, were plush, and reclined like airline seats. Everyone looked up from what they were doing when Felix came in. “Don’t mind me,” he said. He took the empty seat, then spoke to the enlisted SEAL across the aisle. “Make sure I’m up in four hours. Wake me if anything happens before then.” A supply clerk somewhere had failed to provide enough pillows. Salih, always so considerate of those around him, was first to hand Felix his own.

  The mini shimmied and dipped in the swirling confines of the strait, but Felix had learned to sleep through worse in C-17s or smaller aircraft.

  By the time they’d enter the more open Sea of Marmara, the windowless minisub compartment would feel claustrophobic, the novelty of leaving Challenger would’ve worn off, and the ride should become much smoother. At that point, Felix would make sure everyone rotated taking good naps. For now his people had too much adrenaline.

  Felix tilted his seat back, and put his left arm across his eyes to help him fall asleep.

  He wondered if he would dream. The past couple of days he’d been having nightmares, about submarine hulls imploding: the inside air temperature rising like an oven as the atmosphere compressed, Commander McCollough and sixty-five other SEALs bursting into flames before the seawater quenched the crematorium Ohio had become in her death throes.

  Then Felix recalled that this minisub had been captured from a Kampfschwimmer team by a SEAL team staging from Challenger. The Kampfschwimmer were all killed in that action. Rumors back in Norfolk said the SEAL lieutenant and chief from that team were killed on a later op. Men now dead sat in these seats once, and men now dead once trod this deck.

  The idea caused Felix unease. The metallic scraping and clicking of weapons being cleaned and sharpened didn’t make it any better. Felix went to sleep surrounded by ghosts of SEALs and Kampfschwimmer. His last conscious thought was of the families, widows and orphans, forever mourning and missing men lost in this godforsaken war.

&nb
sp; “Contact lost with Minisub Charlie,” Lieutenant Milgrom reported.

  “Very well, Sonar.” Jeffrey studied his tactical plot; there were no threats. “Chief of the Watch, secure from battle stations.”

  “Secure from battle stations, aye.” COB passed the order through the phone talker.

  It was in the wee hours of Friday morning, local time. Allowing an adequate interval for Felix to reach Istanbul, do his thing there, and then—God willing—make the long trip back with Peapod and his gear, Jeffrey expected them sometime between dusk and midnight on Saturday.

  As per the plan, for ultimate stealth, Challenger was observing total radio and laser-buoy silence. No summons came through on ELF to trail their floating wire, to listen to any updated intell or orders—the U.S. had had nothing for Jeffrey since Ohio went down with all hands, at least not yet. He knew from Gerald Parker that spy satellites would make passes over the Dardanelles and Istanbul to watch for unusual happenings from Friday dawn into Saturday evening.

  “XO,” he said to Bell, “the best thing we can hope for now is nothing. That we hear nothing for the next day and a half.”

  Chapter 33

  Hours later, submerged beneath the daylight of midafternoon, Felix expectantly watched a blank monitor screen. The tactical plot was crowded and uncertain. The water was not very deep, and the busy inlet was less than one mile wide. There was little room for the minisub to maneuver, to avoid being run down while at periscope depth. For Felix and the others in the control compartment, the pucker factor was high. Sonar propagation was bad and signal to noise was high, and the inertial navigation system by now had drifted into too much error for their purposes—pinpoint positioning would be crucial for what came next.