Straits of Power

by Joe Buff

  Lieutenant Meltzer began to raise the minisub’s periscope mast above the surface. As the navigation plot indicated, they were through the Sea of Marmara now and had turned left into the Golden Horn, a long and tapering body of water off of the start of the Bosporus Strait. The Golden Horn split the western part of Istanbul in half. The Old City sat along its southern bank, on a hilly peninsula that ended at Seraglio Point, on the Bosporus. The New City sprawled beyond the Golden Horn’s north bank. The remainder of Istanbul, on the eastern—Asian—side of the Bosporus, had a few Byzantine- or Ottoman-era monuments and decrepit castles, but was mostly a series of bedroom communities.

  Bridges spanned the Golden Horn, and also spanned the Bosporus farther north, toward the Black Sea. Ferries shuttled along different routes, threading between sightseeing boats and larger merchant ships. Some of the merchies moved in and out of the Bosporus, aiming for the Black Sea or going the opposite way, toward the Med. Others of these big ships came into the Golden Horn—part of which formed Istanbul’s major industrial port.

  The one thing Meltzer didn’t need to worry much about—every submariner’s dread—was an undetected sailboat on an imminent collision course, gliding silently on the surface by using the wind. Briefing papers said there would be very few pleasure craft in the Golden Horn. Felix soon saw why.

  The periscope photonics head gingerly broke the surface. It took a while for the oil and scum to drain off enough for a clear full-color image to show on the monitor. The sun was bright, the sky overhead was clear, but the Golden Horn was anything but golden. It was terribly polluted. Chief Porto took over and panned the periscope head rapidly in a circle: Nothing big was coming at the mini.

  Felix got his first, dizzying, live view of Istanbul through that video feed. “Dizzying” is a good word for it: Centuries of architecture all jumbled together. Crenelated battlements on dark old fortress walls, mosque minarets that frame the main buildings’ colorful domes, church spires in gleaming gold or weathered copper, and cement, steel, and glass skyscrapers.

  “Wind northwest, eight knots,” Meltzer read off a panel. “Air temperature sixty-six Fahrenheit.”

  “Pilot, proceed to the drop-off point,” Felix ordered.

  Meltzer acknowledged. The waters roiled by passing ships would help disguise the raised periscope. Based on the amount of flotsam and jetsam Felix saw floating around, the photonics sensor head shouldn’t stand out as the mini slowly moved. But this was a double-edged sword, since all that crap up there could foul or break the sensor head. They needed real-time visual cues to see something coming too close—Meltzer and Porto would have to dip the head underwater and turn the mini out of the way. One added hazard, transiting a semi-enclosed working harbor, was a bobbing steel cargo container that had broken loose somewhere and fallen overboard—Felix knew that around the world this happened thousands of times every year. They’d be as silent as sailboats, perhaps with nothing showing on the surface, and the sharp corner of a heavy container might pierce the minisub’s hull.

  “Time to get geared up,” Felix said. “I’m going aft.”

  Felix went into the passenger compartment. On the way he passed Chief Costa, doing tests and eyeing a checklist to get ready to use the lock-out chamber.

  The entire SEAL team had boarded the mini already wearing black wetsuits. These were made of a breathable, quick-drying layered material, so they were comfortable to wear for lengthy periods out of the water. The team’s equipment was all stowed now in waterproof bags that included adjustable floatation bladders; they wouldn’t pop to the surface prematurely, or get lost on the murky, muddy bottom either.

  The men finished taking turns using the head, one last time, at the stern of the passenger compartment. Soon they all did dive-buddy checks. Felix made extra sure Salih’s dive gear was in good order and that he wasn’t getting panicky. But Salih seemed to be enjoying himself.

  The Turko-German tested his Draeger re-breather scuba mouthpiece with confidence, then manfully slapped the titanium dive knife in a scabbard fastened to one of his thighs. “The CIA trained me in all sorts of useful things,” he said to Felix. “I didn’t even know how to swim when I first ran into Captain Fuller. Isn’t that right, Mr. Parker?”

  Parker nodded, very reserved. Salih gave Felix a wink. Felix got the impression that all further details were classified.

  Parker and Meltzer shook hands with the team and wished everybody good luck. The mini would stay still for now in the Golden Horn and hide, submerged in hotel mode—running only its environmental control systems, to preserve the precious fuel supply. Late tonight it was to begin moving back and forth between the north and south banks, at predetermined places, and listen for a high-frequency homing beacon the SEALs would deploy.

  Everyone squashed into the lock-out chamber, trying not to step on each others’ big combat swim fins. They made sure all hatches were fully dogged. By intercom, Felix told Meltzer they were ready. The air pressure started to rise; Felix felt his ears crackle. He and the others held their noses with one gloved hand, kept their mouths closed, and shoved air up from their lungs. Their cheeks swelled. They did this until the air pressure steadied; their sinuses and ear canals stayed clear this way. Meltzer confirmed that the hyperbaric chamber was equalized to the outside water pressure at the level of the bottom hatch, twenty feet of seawater. Costa knelt and undogged the hatch. It dropped down on its hydraulically damped hinges. Through the hatch coaming was a pool of dark and smelly water. A feeling of expectation, a thrill, passed through the grouped men almost physically. This got Felix over his last-minute nerves.

  The team pulled on their dive masks, put their regulators into their mouths, and performed a final buddy check. Their closed-circuit re-breathers gave off no bubbles, for stealth, but also had longer endurance than older compressed-air scuba—and had become popular even with recreational divers, so being seen in them on the surface would not raise suspicion. One by one they sat on the edge of the hatch coaming, rolled forward into the water, and disappeared. Felix went last.

  Deciding where to leave the water had needed careful thought. The rushed nature of the mission forced the minisub to arrive at Istanbul in broad daylight. The size of Istanbul’s developed waterfront precluded sneaking onto land in a wilderness area—too much distance to cover to the German consulate.

  Felix popped his head above the tepid saltwater, not being the least bit subtle or furtive about it. Meltzer had done an excellent navigation and piloting job; Felix saw what he expected—and needed—to see. On the Golden Horn’s northern, New City edge, only a few feet in front of him, were an acre’s worth of big concrete water-aerating tanks, several gas burn-off towers that flared periodically, an office and a garage building in the mid-distance, and a convenient ladder for getting ashore. The alien setting and the danger gave Felix a wonderful rush.

  He smiled, and tugged twice on the lanyard connecting him to Chief Porto, his dive buddy. Porto looked around, tugged on his other lanyard, and Gamal Salih appeared. They unclipped the lanyards and climbed the ladder. Nearby stood outdoor, screened-off showers meant for maintenance divers.

  Soon Felix’s team were all ashore, stripped naked behind the screens, showering thoroughly and rinsing off their dive gear. Aside from the filth of the water, they needed to remove the last little trace of forensic signs—U.S.–made cloth fibers, dust particles from inside a submarine, whatever—that clung to their hair and in the nooks and crannies of their bodies. They dried themselves with towels made in Turkey, and dressed in casual clothes also made in Turkey. In the week leading up to departing from Norfolk, even their dental work had been redone to Portuguese or Turkish standards.

  Salih put a small but heavy velvet sack into his shirt pocket. In deference to local cultural sensitivities—and so to better blend in—none of the men wore hats. They donned cheap watches and synchronized with Felix—3:42 P.M. They checked their forged ID papers and counted their real local money one last time, and slipped o
ut their Turkish-made weapons.

  The MP-5s were model A-3s, with collapsible buttstocks and no protruding silencers on their barrels. Slung downward by the adjustable strap in one armpit, and held along the side of their bodies, the firearms became invisible when the men pulled on thin windbreakers—especially with no protruding magazines loaded into the weapons yet; these they slid into pants pockets. They strapped fighting knives near one ankle, under a pants leg.

  They picked up their equipment bags, with dive gear plus flak vests, helmets, pistols, and more ammo inside—and a disassembled sniper rifle for long-range work—and sauntered out of the sewage-treatment plant. It was one of the least guarded or hardened targets in Istanbul—raw sewage went into the Golden Horn from other sites anyway. Nobody challenged them.

  Away from the plant, the men split up into smaller groups. In their heads were maps and routes and schedules, plan phases and fall-back arrangements, thoroughly memorized. The whole team knew what to do. Some would hail taxis. Others would ride on city buses. Felix and Salih, and Chief Costa and an enlisted man, would walk and then hop aboard a municipal electric trolley.

  Chapter 34

  Felix and those with him survived their half-mile walk to the trolley—something never guaranteed. Istanbul traffic drove on the same side of the road as in the U.S., but beyond that the vehicular rights-of-way were fought for driver to driver, in a perpetual game of chicken whose outcome was left to the will of Allah—literally. Pedestrians had no rights at all other than to be run over. The sidewalks were safe enough, most of the time, but the streets and intersections were maiming zones for people on foot. Red lights were seen as suggestions, often ignored if no policeman was near. Spillback, gridlock, blaring horns, squealing brakes, and frustrated cursing went on nonstop. One car rear-ended another with a loud smack and the sound of scattering headlight glass, barely ten feet from where Felix warily paced. The drivers argued, but not violently. Fender benders seemed a matter of course, frequent accidents a normal part of the daily routine here.

  And exactly as the briefing papers said, Felix thought, taxi drivers are so conscious of crashes that they have their blood types painted on the outsides of their cabs. Terrific.

  They threaded their way through milling crowds. Felix and his group passed tea sellers with big silver samovars strapped to their backs, and vendor stands offering fresh-caught seafood, pastries, stews, or mouthwatering lamb. Ever concerned about detection and surveillance by a number of potentially hostile non-American operatives, for security and countersurveillance the SEALs and Salih pretended to not know each other. Their gym bags were different shapes and sizes and colors for this reason. They used the reflections in windows of shops and the windows and mirrors of parked cars to make sure they hadn’t already picked up a tail.

  At last on the jam-packed trolley, they stood near enough to watch each other’s backs and guard against pickpockets. At one stop they shuffled off, covertly taking careful looks at everyone else who left the trolley there. They waited for the next tram to come down the line, and made sure no one else from the previous one had loitered and got back on when they did.

  Along the way, in odd snatches when he wasn’t preoccupied with remaining clandestine or simply staying alive amid the traffic mayhem, Felix got more of an up-close view of Istanbul’s New City. The architecture varied from shiny office buildings to millennia-old monuments whose stone was now blackened by air pollution. The odors of exotic spices wafting from shops and restaurants blended with the bite of vehicle exhaust fumes. Lute and zither music clashed with Arab-style quarter tones and homegrown Turkish evolutions of rock and jazz. Men and women, dressed in Western casual or business attire, mixed freely with others who observed Islamic public-apparel guidelines with different levels of strictness that seemed completely a matter of personal choice. The Turkish tongue that most of them spoke sounded vaguely like Hungarian, but Felix knew there was no linguistic connection.

  And modern Turkish was written with English-style letters, as Felix could see on trolley and bus destination boards, street signs, storefronts, and product advertisements everywhere.

  Felix kept noticing the large number of Japanese tourists. As on his last mission, on a different continent, they seemed to take an almost voyeuristic glee in getting as close as they could to a tactical nuclear war in which, so far, they were neutral; Tokyo’s recent announcement that they had their own atom bombs, proved by an underwater test, was just one more destabilizing factor in the present increasingly unstable world.

  These particular Japanese may be a lot closer to tactical nuclear combat than they realize.

  Felix, Salih, and the two SEALs got off the trolley again, this time at their stop. After more death-defying sprints through traffic at what were supposed to be crosswalks where they had the light, the foursome walked on briskly, blending into the crowd and the hubbub. They arrived at their first destination, the storefront of a two-story yellowed limestone building. They did another check for any surveillance tail. None. Together, they went inside the upmarket executive-protection rental company.

  Felix acted as their leader at the rental company. On the trip from Norfolk, with help from Salih, he’d mastered some phrases of the Turkish language, and learned about local conversational gestures.

  “Merhaba,” he spoke in Turkish to the man at the counter. Hello. The man wore an off-the-rack business suit that didn’t fit very well, and had a black mustache and a receding hairline. He chain-smoked, as witnessed by an overflowing ashtray on the desk behind the counter; the air had the strong but not unpleasant odor of tangy Turkish tobacco. A stereo played, of all things, classical music—Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, a lively, fast-paced section of the piece. Two leather couches with a newspaper tossed on one formed a waiting area.

  “Iyi aksamlar,” the attendant responded. Good evening.

  “Ismim . . .” My name is. Felix pulled out his Portuguese passport and gave his false name. In Portuguese, he mentioned Awais Iqbal and his firm, and said they had a reservation.

  The man shook his head from side to side.

  Felix knew he wasn’t saying no. He meant he didn’t understand. He didn’t speak any Portuguese. “Almanya?” Did Felix speak German?

  “How about English?”

  “Yes, English is good.” Most Turks who did business in Istanbul spoke at least one foreign language pretty well.

  “You should have two cars for us.” Felix explained that Mr. Iqbal had been delayed outside the country, and they were standing in for him. Felix gave the reservation number Iqbal had passed on to his handler, which eventually reached Gerald Parker on Challenger by radio. This was to confirm Felix’s identity as a genuine associate of the absent Iqbal.

  The man bowed his head once. This meant yes. “Still not wanting bodyguards?” His English had hints of a British accent, not American, a common thing in this part of the world.

  Felix lifted his head back and raised his eyebrows. This was how Turks conveyed no. “We have our own.” Felix made sure to speak with a Portuguese accent as best he could; this was another part of his cover that he’d been practicing for days. He gestured at Chief Costa and his enlisted man, who stayed quiet. They were supposed to be bodyguards. They looked the part.

  “This your principal?” The attendant glanced at Salih.

  “Evet.” Turkish for yes. Felix went back to English. “We’re taking someone to a party.”

  The man reached under the counter and gave Felix a pile of forms to fill out, and a pen. “Please show me your documents. All.” He cast his eyes over the group.

  The SEALs and Salih placed their passports, visas, international driving permits, and other papers on the counter. Salih was pretending he was a Turkish citizen, although both he and his parents had been born and raised in Germany. Salih translated each box on the form for Felix, and showed him where to sign.

  While Felix filled out the forms, the man turned to his computer and entered the passport numbers. He seemed sa
tisfied that none of Felix’s group had a criminal record, or was a wanted terrorist, or whatever. If anything came back saying the passport numbers were invalid, he didn’t react.

  He typed on his keyboard again. A printer spat out an invoice.

  Felix made a tsking sound, a sign of disapproval. “Too high.”

  The man leaned across the counter. “This basic rate for the cars. Overnight is two days. Not negotiable. This for insurance, also two days.” All insurance rates were steep, with the war. “This for full petrol tanks.” Gasoline prices were also astronomical. “This is surcharge because you not taking our bodyguards to go with cars.”

  “Why a surcharge? You do less work.”

  “Because, my friend, when customers use own bodyguards, cars come back with more damage.”

  Felix didn’t argue. He pushed the filled-out forms across the counter.

  “How payment?”

  The team did not bring credit or debit cards, since Parker had said providing valid ones in-country, with false names, was too difficult and would leave a trail. Large amounts of cash were problematic too, because Turkey suffered hyperinflation even before the war, and international currency rates were fluctuating wildly. Precious goods had become a reliable form of exchange amid so much financial instability.

  Salih reached into his pocket, and opened the velvet sack. He offered two high-quality emerald rings. The stones were large, and more valuable than diamonds.

  The attendant called someone from an office, then took another puff on his cigarette. This second man, younger and thinner than the first, also wore a business suit, except with the obvious bulge of a pistol holster under his left armpit. He used an eye loupe to assess the stones. “Iyi.” Good. “Guzel.” Beautiful. He went in back and put the rings in a safe.

  “Will you need weapons?” the attendant asked.

  “No. We have.”

  The front-desk man eyed the team’s windbreakers and gym bags.