Straits of Power

by Joe Buff

  Felix’s mind raced, trying to think of where they could steal an acetylene cutting torch.

  “No,” Mohr whispered. “This is good. It means we’re in the proper area. We need to trace the cable’s route and find one kept open for quick repairs and testing. You see?”

  Felix nodded. He considered splitting up his team to search in opposite directions. But this would probably waste as much time as it saved, since he needed everybody when the work began. His instinct told him to go north.

  After snaking for blocks through the streets of Zichron Yaakov, they found another manhole for the fiber-optic line, also welded shut. Felix’s frustration level was almost unbearable.

  Then it dawned on him. Technology-dependent firms would want to be close to the fiber-optic main, to have the shortest, least expensive, reliable high-baud-rate connections. To find the main he had to find such companies. A commercial area would be busier too, so a manhole there might not be sealed against tampering like these unguarded ones in quieter residential districts. Felix led the way southwest, to an office park near the modern town center. Following curving streets that ran steeply uphill and down, they located what they needed.

  In plain sight of people on the street, and of others who might glance out the windows of their offices, the team put down their equipment bags. Chief Costa and his three enlisted SEALs—da Rosa, Azavedo, and Magro—opened the bags, chatting as casually as they could in Portuguese to keep up their cover as hired guest workers. Meltzer began to fuss about, pretending to be their foreman, waving his arms, pointing, and issuing commands in English and monosyllabic Hebrew. He understood conventional fiber optics from qualifying on Challenger’s systems. The supposed cable-maintenance crew removed eight uninflated orange life jackets, which everybody put on as if they were traffic-safety vests. The team donned hard hats brought from the ship.

  Costa pulled out a crowbar. Rosa, Azavedo, and Magro stepped into the street, and began directing vehicles around and away from the manhole. Costa used the crowbar to lever the sectional covers off; Felix and Salih helped him slide each awkward piece to one side in a pile facing oncoming cars. Below these was a sheet-metal pan for channeling rainwater into drains. Costa lifted it, exposing an opening into cool, musty blackness. Mohr climbed down the ladder with a flashlight, and the SEALs passed him his modules one by one, then his tool kit. As his team manhandled the cases, Felix saw the silicone that plugged the holes in the power unit where the German bullet had gone through. He thought to himself that the repairs made on Challenger had better work—or they, Israel, and the world were in trouble.

  Felix and Salih climbed down to help Mohr, then Meltzer went down partway. Like this, Felix could see his alleged foreman standing above, in a rectangle of tree-shaded daylight, with torso exposed, watching for any problems at street level. Meltzer tried to appear as matter-of-fact as he could, not furtive. He’d be the team’s liaison with any locals, and while underground Felix needed someone on the ladder to be surveillance and verbal communications relay for the surface element of the group.

  The maintenance space itself, beneath the manhole, was maybe four times the size of the three-foot-by-six-foot entry hole. Felix found a light switch, flicked it, and weak bulbs came on, leaving the crowded and dank space in semi-shadow. Thick cables emerged from the concrete wall in a side of the prefabricated chamber, entered a floor-mounted unit that Mohr said was a fiber-optic signal amplifier, and then the cables disappeared into the wall on the opposite side. Thinner cables ran from junction boxes to the amplifier and through the other sides of the chamber. There were old spiderwebs in the corners by the low ceiling that supported the street. Mohr, tallest, brushed the top of his hard hat against the roof when he stood up straight.

  Mohr crouched and opened the modules with help from Salih. He removed neat wire coils and furiously started to hook together his gear, then plugged a cord from the power unit into a 220-volt utility socket in the chamber wall. Lips pursed, very tense, Mohr pressed buttons on the modules, starting the first complete, all-up test allowed by a protective Captain Fuller since the damage in Istanbul. The modules began to hum and whine. Indicators glowed, green and amber. “All self-check correctly.”

  Felix thought he might feel something being so close to the quantum-entanglement process. A tingling, a numbness, distorted vision? . . . Weird stuff is going on inside those cases. But the only sensation he noticed was one of relief.

  The next step would be to tap into the Israeli trunk cable.

  “Mah zeh?” a man snapped from somewhere above.

  Meltzer glanced down the ladder and said that meant “What is this?” He left the hole. Felix heard him speak in Hebrew, to a person who answered sternly, unsatisfied.

  Felix feared that the inevitable confrontation with authorities had struck much sooner than he’d hoped. “Keep working,” he said to Mohr. Felix climbed the narrow ladder. He smiled, which was the only thing he could do under the circumstances. Right there was an Israeli policeman, on foot patrol. He was thirtyish, muscular, and had a swarthy complexion with unreadable predator’s eyes. His body posture told Felix enough. The man kept his fingers poised by the butt of a hefty pistol in his belt holster. His radio crackled, a staticky voice, then was silent, pregnantly.

  “He’s asked to see our work papers and IDs,” Meltzer stated to Felix in English, deadpan. “I’ve explained that I’m an American engineer helping on cable-system upkeep since everybody else is in the army, and you lead the work gang assisting me.”

  “What are you wearing?” The cop fingered Meltzer’s orange life vest.

  He speaks some English. He’s establishing more control.

  “For emergencies. Flash floods, in sewers . . .”

  “I want to see your passport.”

  Something had to be done, and Meltzer waited for a SEAL to do it. Chief Costa was standing behind the cop. Costa sneaked in a hand sign asking Felix if he should knock the guy out.

  The policeman’s free hand began to reach for his radio mike. Felix envisioned the entire scheme falling to pieces, with them all arrested for sabotage. Costa couldn’t attack the cop in broad daylight, in the middle of the street. Pedestrians were glancing too attentively as it was.

  Felix counted on the cop not wanting to swamp his headquarters with yet another false alarm about what could be perfectly legitimate newcomers to the area. Felix faked a noisy sneeze, then begged pardon in Portuguese—a prearranged signal. The enlisted SEALs continued directing the sparse road traffic, but they moved subtly to block the manhole from the view of the nearest civilians on the sidewalks beyond parked cars. Felix gestured for the cop to approach him. Costa backed off. The policeman walked nearer, touching his pistol. His expression was opaque, hard. He unsnapped the nylon strip holding the weapon snug in its holster; he was preparing to draw.

  Felix held up a hand to the policeman as if to mean, Please wait a moment. “I bring you all the documents. They’re with our things in the hole. Okay?” He hammed up hesitant English, in his thickest Portuguese accent, displaying his sweetest smile.

  Felix climbed down before the cop could object. Inside the maintenance space he whispered urgently to Salih. “Your turn. Take my place. Charm the guy and lure him in real close.”

  “Plan B?”

  Felix nodded curtly. The next few seconds were critical. “Keep working,” he hissed to Mohr.

  Salih stood on the ladder and spoke in gabby Turkish, trying to convey to the cop that he was a foreign guest-worker technician; he said “Turk Telecom” repeatedly, but that was all Felix could understand. The idea in this contingency—at least as briefed in the hectic mission rehearsals—was to try to puzzle a cop just enough, by a seemingly innocent barrage of different languages and people going in and out of the manhole. This mental sleight of hand, a jack-in-the-box show, was a long shot, and improvising under pressure would be key. From the shadows, peering up, Felix saw the cop look into the manhole, past Meltzer and Salih to where Mohr fiddled
with his modules.

  Felix smoothly reached and grabbed the policeman’s ankles and yanked him past Salih and into the opening. The cop yelped and tumbled through feet first; Felix grunted with effort as he and Salih caught him. Felix chopped him in the side of the neck with the edge of his palm, and lowered the stunned policeman to the floor. He barely fit, taking up most of the free floor space.

  “You all right?” Meltzer yelled into the manhole. He pretended to wait for the policeman to answer. “Yes?” Meltzer said. “Good . . . Here’s your hat.” He held the hat below the lip of the manhole, then let it go; it dropped. This pantomime was supposed to make locals think the policeman had been clumsy following Felix into the manhole, and was safely inside examining documents. Meanwhile, Felix had grabbed a roll of duct tape from Mohr’s tool kit. He swiftly bound and gagged the cop before the man could regain his senses. He tugged the pistol from its holster and placed it on top of the waist-high amplifier: a newly acquired firearm, a possible asset for his team, kept in reserve. Felix would use it only as a last resort. He held his breath, listening for hints of alarm from above. Salih went up to check.

  Felix rubbed a painfully bruised shoulder.

  Mohr looked at him. “Wonderful. Now what?”

  “Keep working. How much more time do you need?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  The cop, wedged beside the amplifier cabinet, fought against the tape. “Relax,” Felix mumbled. “Be quiet and we won’t hurt you.” The Israeli glared and fought harder. Felix raised a hand, threatening another karate chop. The policeman levered his bound legs, fast, and almost clobbered Felix on the chin. He ducked under the man’s flailing heels and dealt him another, much sharper blow to the side of the neck as he tried to bodily smash Mohr’s equipment. The Israeli slumped, in a stupor. Felix removed his gear belt, tossing it out of reach.

  “What are you going to do with him?” Mohr asked as he applied his tools to one of the fiber-optic cables.

  “Leave him here,” Felix said, securing the cop’s feet to one drainpipe and his upper arms to another with lots more duct tape.

  “And no one will notice that he went in, but didn’t come out even after we finish?”

  “Passersby who saw him go down won’t be around to not see him climb back up. They’ll have passed by.”

  “And people in offices? They won’t have passed by.”

  Crap. “Keep working.”

  Mohr peered at whatever he was doing, frowning. “You already said three times to keep working.”

  The policeman’s radio crackled again. Something about the tone of the voice made Felix wary. He stuck his head out to where the others were making sure no one drove into the manhole. He caught Meltzer’s eye; Meltzer came inside.

  “The radio. Translate next time they broadcast.”

  “Right.” Meltzer perched on the base of the ladder.

  “Anything I can do to help?” Felix prodded Mohr.

  “Yes. Stop interrupting me.”

  The radio voice repeated, talking longer than before. Meltzer listened. “A policeman hasn’t made his regular check-in. The town station dispatcher is asking other patrolmen if they know where he is.”

  “What are they saying?”

  “I can’t tell. I think these portable radios are only strong enough to talk back and forth to the station’s big transceiver. We won’t hear another cop until he’s real close.”

  The dispatcher spoke again. Meltzer translated. “They’ve asked some other policemen to look for the missing cop.”

  “And, we know exactly where he is,” Felix said dryly.

  “Yeah,” Meltzer said, fretting.

  “Sit tight. Glue your ears to the radio.”

  Felix turned to watch Mohr, for lack of anything better to do. Mohr’s elbows bobbed up and down as he tightened a dozen small nuts one by one with a ratchet wrench. The nuts held a boxy clamping device in position around the trunk cable. Mohr assembled lengths of interconnecting, rigid photon-wave guides, a bridge between the device and one of his modules. He shifted his stance, and began to operate controls on another module. He studied the readouts and didn’t look happy.

  “Problem?” Felix asked. Please, no.

  “I have other things to try first. Do not interrupt.”

  Felix bit his tongue. Mohr was breathing harder and starting to sweat. The work chamber had gotten uncomfortably warm, from all the body heat plus Mohr’s equipment running. Felix wondered if Mohr’s intent all along had been to damage Israeli systems, not aid them. He remembered Captain Fuller’s orders to kill Mohr if the German behaved with deviousness. Felix tried to figure out what a devious Klaus Mohr would look like, as opposed to an absorbed Mohr or a worried Mohr. He drew a blank, having only annoyed Mohr by staring at him.

  The radio spoke again. Before Felix could ask, Meltzer said the dispatcher was dealing with other routine business, not the missing cop.

  Felix made a face. “There’s a point at which they’ll announce a town-wide alarm.”

  “I know,” Meltzer said.

  Mohr told them both to be quiet. He needed to concentrate.

  “Turn off the radio,” Felix ordered.

  “What?” Meltzer was surprised.

  “Turn it off. It isn’t helping any of us.”

  Chapter 45

  As each minute went by, the heat building up in the work chamber grew more oppressive. Meltzer, with his fiber-optic expertise, would be a better aide for Mohr if he needed assistance. Felix popped his head out at street level to take a breather. The office buildings that had before been his guide to finding this manhole now seemed like vigilant sentries lined up against him. The street itself, his team’s route of escape, felt instead like a path that would lead more cops—or soldiers—directly to them. He wondered how much longer it could possibly be before someone looking out a window noticed that something was amiss. How soon before a patrol car searching for the cop drives by, and then stops? He worried that one or more of the Kampfschwimmer teams might be compromised somewhere, impairing Pandora but triggering a national alert that would rob Mohr of a chance to finish his job soon enough. These issues, Felix told himself, were beyond his ability to influence, so agonizing further would do no good.

  Felix did the most reassuring, visible thing he could think of to delay any curious observers from grabbing a phone to dial 100, the Israeli national police. He left the manhole and sat down on its edge, his legs dangling inside; he stretched his arms, took a deep breath, and relaxed. He forced himself to not glance at his watch. He really didn’t want to know what time it was. So long as Mohr succeeded in injecting his quantum-teleportation computer patch, Israel would be protected, and their priority mission goal would be achieved. After that, making it back to Challenger was highly desirable, but basically was gravy. A pitched battle against armed Israelis would serve no purpose. It was better in that worst-case scenario to just surrender, and then try to keep mum long enough so the patch, designed to hide itself, couldn’t be removed before Germany’s worm took effect. The Mossad or Shin Bet would never believe the truth, as Felix understood it. They’d fixate on Mohr’s presence right away. Felix had to let Mohr be taken alive if this happened, presuming he still trusted Mohr by then, because Mohr’s knowledge was too valuable for him to die unnecessarily on Israel’s soil.

  Felix asked himself, if it came to that, whether Mohr would be the first one to cave during interrogation or torture, or the last. Mohr was the oldest person on the team, had tremendous strength of character, and had already been tested emotionally in ways far beyond the best-imaginable SEAL training.

  Felix sighed. A pleasant evening was coming on. He tried to enjoy what might be his last moments of freedom, or of life. To clear his mind, he gazed up at the sky.

  “He’s finished.”

  Felix was startled.

  “He’s finished,” Meltzer repeated from the bottom of the ladder.

  Felix flashed Meltzer a grin that, for the first ti
me today, wasn’t faked. “Ready to pack up?”

  Meltzer nodded. Felix waved to Salih, who’d taken charge of the part of the team that had stayed in the street. Felix helped heft the equipment cases through the manhole opening. Mohr climbed out, tired but satisfied.

  Felix went in to do one last inspection. He made sure no tools were forgotten. The pistol sat on the amplifier; carrying it around, even concealed, would be too risky, too easily noticed or detected. Guile needed to serve from here on, not gunplay. The policeman, well cocooned by duct tape, very thoroughly secured, followed Felix with angry eyes.

  “Someone will rescue you soon.”

  The team made a beeline for the hostel where the dig van had dropped them off. The straight route was much shorter than the zigzag they’d taken in search of a useable manhole. Even so, it was mostly uphill, and the better part of two hours’ high tension in Zichron Yaakov had already been as draining as physical labor. Felix told everyone to think and behave as if a keg of cold beer awaited them at the hostel. This way they posed as a private maintenance crew just coming off duty, sweaty from a day in the field, eager for refreshment. Felix repressed the knowledge that soon, if not already, the police in and around the town would sound a full alert for their missing comrade—quickly leaving the cop’s assigned town-center patrol area was the only thing that had let the SEALs avoid an unpleasant encounter so far. But if they didn’t find the cop quickly, and release him to describe his attackers, they’d conclude he might have been kidnapped by terrorists, and a brutal manhunt would be on; neither scenario favored Felix’s team.

  Felix also tried to squelch his lingering doubts about what Mohr had done, or failed to do, in the manhole with his quantum equipment.

  At the hostel, Meltzer went inside to find a phone and call the van at the dig to come pick them up—American cash used at the hostel desk would buy him telephone tokens or a prepaid card.

  We’re about to find out if cell phones have already died because of Kampfschwimmer quantum-hacker meddling.