Straits of Power

by Joe Buff

  Jeffrey’s problem was getting inside. She was anchored fore and aft to avoid drifting in the breeze or on the current, and her anchor chains created obstacles—plus, there was almost no room under her keel for Challenger to fit.

  And he did not have a lot of time to enter her. Most of the canal was only one way. Ships here did not have free will. The authority sent them through in groups they called convoys. The standard 0100 convoy, south through the canal, would start forming up into single file very soon. If Jeffrey missed it, this hollowed-out merchie had to wait for the 0700 southbound convoy. The next one after that wasn’t until tomorrow, Tuesday—when the Afrika Korps offensive was due to begin, according to Mohr, and the Suez Canal was the last place on earth Jeffrey ever wanted to be trapped.

  Meltzer’s piloting display showed the underwater part of the Bunga Azul, outlined vaguely by Challenger’s starboard wide-aperture array using ambient ocean noises bouncing off the hull, highlighted by acoustic hot spots wherever machinery ran within. The constant scraping of her anchor chains’ big links against each other gave further sonar clues on how to steer, but all of this wasn’t enough.

  “Chief of the Watch,” Jeffrey ordered, “activate all hull-mounted photonics sensors. Passive image-intensification mode.” Stealth now was absolutely paramount; the Egyptian navy would be on guard for enemy subs finding temporary refuge under the convoy before it sailed.

  COB acknowledged. Display monitors came on, but their pictures only showed darkness. Scant illumination pierced the dirty water from the quarter moon up in a cloudless sky.

  “Use amplification factor one hundred thousand.” Now the water by Challenger became barely visible. “Helm, put us directly under Master Six-one. Use auxiliary maneuvering units as needed.” These were small and quiet propulsors near bow and stern that gave Challenger sideways thrust, making her much more nimble in close confines.

  Jeffrey studied the display monitors. The Bunga Azul’s bottom seemed to be sitting on Challenger’s sail; the space between his own keel and the seafloor was too small for a man to stand upright.

  “Helm, engage autopilot in hovering mode.”

  Meltzer acknowledged. Now, Challenger’s computer watched for any drift in the inertial navigation fix. Commands were sent to the auxiliary maneuvering units, as well as to the pump-jet main propulsor, to hold the boat perfectly steady in every dimension except for depth. Depth was maintained by the computer working the variable ballast pumps—which Jeffrey dearly hoped would be mistaken for noises from the Bunga Azul.

  “Sonar, use look-up obstacle-avoidance array to signal we are ready for bottom doors to open.”

  Milgrom acknowledged. Jeffrey watched the monitors.

  Suddenly a deafening noise came over the sonar speakers.

  “Master Six-one is blowing ship’s whistle.” The foghorn, supposedly stuck, was meant to disguise the mechanical transients about to occur. Radio calls would be made to apologize, explain that it wasn’t a sign of distress, and avoid attracting helos and patrol boats. At least, that was the plan.

  Jeffrey knew pumps inside the Bunga Azul would be moving seawater out of ballast tanks that lined her sides like a floating dry dock, using that water to partly flood the central part of the ship without changing her trim. Next, Jeffrey watched as the bottom doors swung down and open. Their edges cleared both sides of Challenger’s sail by inches.

  It was time to surface into the Bunga Azul’s gigantic secret compartment. Jeffrey double-checked the relative positions of his sub and the merchant ship. COB and Meltzer stood ready to take over in an instant if the autopilot malfunctioned. Challenger’s bow dome and her stern parts—rudder, stern planes, pump jet—were delicate, and she could easily be crippled in an upward collision with the Bunga Azul. If things went really sour, and the surface ship’s rudder or screws were hit by Challenger and damaged, Jeffrey’s entire egress ahead of the Afrika Korps offensive would be kaput. Challenger, her crew, Mohr, and Mohr’s computer modules all could go the way of Ohio.

  Jeffrey swallowed hard. “Chief of the Watch, blow all main ballast tank groups.”

  There was a hissing sound, accompanying the foghorn that blew loudly on the sonar speakers. Challenger rose, inside the Bunga Azul. When surfaced, Jeffrey watched the bottom doors close underneath. Rubber blocks came out from both sides of the covert submarine hold, to keep Challenger steady inside her host. The foghorn stopped.

  Chapter 47

  COB raised a photonics mast just a few feet, being careful not to hit the top of the hidden compartment Challenger sat in. He set the sensor head in omniscope mode; this gave a 360-degree view, all at once, of their confined surroundings. A pair of men appeared on the catwalk beneath the overhead of the compartment. Both of them carried equipment bags. They waved at the photonics mast. Jeffrey and COB walked to a hatch with some enlisted people and a junior officer. By the time they opened the hatch, the men from their host ship had used a winch to lower an aluminum brow onto Challenger’s hull.

  The ship’s master—the formal title for the captain of a merchant ship—and a radioman introduced themselves in heavily accented English; the master’s name was Pribadi Siregar. They were citizens of Indonesia who, in addition to their native tongue, Bahasa, said they also spoke good Arabic. Siregar was of average height and build, slightly stoop shouldered, and neither handsome nor ugly. He was someone easily lost in a crowd, which was probably one reason the CIA had picked him.

  A fiber-optic connection was made from the Bunga Azul down into Challenger. Jeffrey ordered COB to wake up Felix and his men and Mohr, and have them inject Mohr’s patch into their host’s electronics. Jeffrey still didn’t know for sure that the patch was harmless, or even if it really worked, but at this point, using it was necessary, a precaution against what might happen any hour now in the environment around the canal.

  The radioman, who wore a blue cotton work shirt and jeans, handed Jeffrey a bag of similar clothing, including a red-and-white-checkered kaffiyeh headdress he could use to disguise his face. Jeffrey had studied Arabic in college, enough to get by in casual conversation.

  COB went below. Jeffrey followed the master and radioman up through a tangle of secret passageways inside the Bunga Azul.

  “The canal pilot is aboard,” the master whispered. “They are finished with fitting searchlight. I suggest you go directly to special radio room.”

  The Bunga Azul actually had two radio rooms. One was a standard modern merchant-ship arrangement, while the other, with restricted access through what looked like disused maintenance hatches, held high-tech U.S. Navy equipment supplied by the CIA. Among the ship’s various radio and radar antennas—some of them inside protective radomes on her mast and superstructure—were antennas that could receive broadcasts and data downloads from the navy’s dedicated constellation of submarine communications satellites. These antennas were now linked to Challenger through the fiber-optic line. Decryptions of what was received could be passed from Challenger’s own radio room up into this special compartment. The compartment had its own receivers and decryption gear, for redundancy—in case something on Challenger failed or the connections into the hold broke down or snapped. Display screens here would let Jeffrey observe the theater-wide military situation around him, courtesy of uploads to the satellites from Norfolk or the Pentagon.

  The Bunga Azul’s antennas also fed raw intercepts to Challenger’s electronic support-measures room. Computer interpretations came back for Jeffrey to see and listen to—various radars and radio stations in range of the Bunga Azul, with icons that identified the transmitter types and whether they were military, civilian government, or private commercial. The compartment also contained equipment to maintain these feeds if something went wrong on Challenger. In this soundproof space, Jeffrey had an intercom to talk to Bell and others in his control room, and one to hear from Master Pribadi on the Bunga Azul’s bridge. Instrument readings from the bridge were fed to other displays in the room. These included inerti
al navigation fixes against a chart of the canal, the Bunga Azul’s course and speed, plus copies of readouts from her navigation radar, and forward-looking obstacle-avoidance sonar.

  Having a canal pilot on the bridge forced Jeffrey to avoid that area of the ship as much as possible. The pilot was Egyptian, an employee of the Suez Canal Authority, whose presence was required by the authority; he was not in the know about the Bunga Azul’s true nature. But in an emergency, from this compartment, Jeffrey could be on the bridge in moments.

  This space is like my combat information center, normally buried deep in the bowels of a warship—the position from which a captain fights a naval battle. The only problem is that for all the hours she’s cooped up in the hold, Challenger can’t fire a single weapon. No torpedoes, no land-attack or antiship or antiaircraft missiles, no countermeasures, nothing. . . . And the Bunga Azul is defenseless but for a handful of machine guns meant to fight off modern pirates striking near Java or Malaysia.

  Jeffrey felt sudden movement and vibrations through the deck, confirmed by the ship’s speed and other data he did have. The master had said that because the Bunga Azul was fast, maneuverable, and in good condition, she was third in line—one of the very first ships in the convoy of almost fifty. The convoy formed up promptly and headed into the canal.

  More displays came alive. Jeffrey began to integrate the images and numbers into a three-dimensional picture within his mind. Ahead and underwater, he could see the sides and bottom of the channel on the Bunga Azul’s simple sonar. He knew unarmed Egyptian minesweepers went through the canal far out in front of every convoy, just in case, but was glad he had a mine-avoidance display. Challenger’s arrays were of no use enclosed in the secret submarine hold.

  Over the years, the bottom had been deepened to more than seventy feet. The canal was six hundred feet wide here, but safety required that the ships stick to the middle and keep a rigid separation distance between each and the next; this was the job of the pilots. The wartime speed limit for canal convoys was twelve knots.

  We’ll meet Monday’s 0500 northbound convoy in the Bitter Lakes, after the halfway point of the canal at Ismailia. We anchor while they keep going, to avoid any chance of a head-on collision.

  “Like coffee, Mr. Captain, sir?” The radioman offered Jeffrey a thermos bottle.

  “Thanks.” Jeffrey needed it. He wouldn’t let himself sleep until they went out the other side of the canal, crossed through the 160-mile-long, narrow and shallow Gulf of Suez, then dived from inside the Bunga Azul when they reached the Red Sea itself.

  Despite the cup of coffee, Jeffrey yawned.

  “Why not to go on deck small while? Stretch legs and get fresh air. Once sun up, very hot and you be obvious. . . . Go near stern so pilot not be seeing you.”

  Jeffrey thought it over, then nodded.

  Jeffrey stood on deck near the stern. The deck vibrated beneath his feet more strongly here. The air was humid but cool—the desert on either side of the canal got cold at night. He could see glare from the searchlight, fitted to the bow of the supertanker immediately astern, shining toward him and illuminating the landscape to port and starboard. The Bunga Azul had a similar searchlight aimed ahead from her bow. The equipment was provided by the canal authority, and served as just what they seemed to be: giant headlights. Each ship in the convoy had one, by law.

  Jeffrey kept to the shadows beside the base of a loading crane. Gazing up, once his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could see countless stars. Except for directly overhead, where the Bunga Azul’s exhaust fumes and heat distorted the view of the heavens, the desert stars were breathtakingly brilliant and perfectly sharp.

  Jeffrey looked around, trying to relax his mind as well as his body. He felt on pins and needles, knowing what he knew about the strategic situation. Yet for a while he was forced into a totally passive role, and he hated it. The Bunga Azul and the other ships continued moving south.

  Immediately to port he saw big, reddish-brown weathered berms of earth and sand, at least thirty feet tall, with intermittent gaps between and sometimes roads paved up them. On that bank, Jeffrey also saw occasional shacks and patches of scrub brush. This was the west edge of the Sinai Peninsula.

  Along the opposite bank, the African side, the narrow strip of land lit by the supertanker’s headlight was mostly flat. Sand dunes and more scrub stretched beyond an asphalt road. Along the edges of the canal, where water lapped and splashed from the wakes of the passing ships, Jeffrey could make out the tips of concrete walls that lined the canal to keep the sand and loose soil from caving in.

  Jeffrey returned to the secret radio room while it was still night outside. He did feel somewhat refreshed, and had another cup of hot coffee to stay energized. He glanced at a clock: 0430 local time.

  As expected from reading his egress orders, a theater-wide operational plot began to be broadcast from the U.S. via satellite—not just for Jeffrey but for all Allied forces in Egypt and Israel and the Central African pocket. The egress orders had said that a spy satellite would be diverted to watch the sailing of the 0100 Monday southbound convoy. Since the Bunga Azul’s master had been instructed not to take the canal unless Challenger was securely inside, her movement was the signal that Jeffrey was leaving the Med.

  He realized that, because of his continued radio silence, his superiors probably had no idea what had happened with his mission. Although the Bunga Azul possessed the equipment to send a message burst to Norfolk, doing so now, with Axis electronic warfare surveillance at its peak, might too readily give the host ship and its passenger sub away. That would make them a valid military target to the Axis, and could draw immediate lethal fire while trapped inside the canal.

  No, there’s nothing useful I have to say to anyone, or to ask them.

  The data download did tell Jeffrey several things. German forces of all types were massing in Libya, at what seemed like logical jumping-off points for an assault to the east in North Africa—targeting Alexandria and Cairo, then the Sinai, and then Israel. Other German forces were on high alert in Greece and Italy.

  Jeffrey scanned wider parts of the big-picture plot.

  Turkey’s defenses were strengthening along her western border with German-occupied Bulgaria and Greece, to dissuade the Axis from getting too ambitious there at Turkey’s expense.

  Egypt and Israel were also on maximum alert. Israeli armor, with Egyptian permission, was moving through the Sinai Peninsula on high-speed tank-transporter tractor-trailers, to add to the tanks already arrayed well west of the Nile to meet any German offensive out of Libya. Jeffrey was still worried that Israel might have tunnel vision: Attacks on them in the past, from the west, always came through the Sinai. And some of their greatest land-battle victories were won in the Sinai, or by penetrating into the main part of Egypt. Those ekranoplans, with their tremendous mobility, might indeed go for the pivotal flank attack at Tel Aviv that Jeffrey feared.

  Israel is well aware that the German-owned ekranoplans exist. No warning I could give would tell them something they don’t know.

  According to the data, so far there were very few air skirmishes, or artillery or cruise-missile duels.

  “Sir Captain,” the radioman said, “text message coming. Is for you.”

  “Who’s the sender?”

  “Not yet . . . Bad enemy jamming. Garbled. Message repeating.” It took several more tries before the message burst with Challenger’s classified address came through properly.

  The message was decrypted quickly. Jeffrey asked the radioman to look away.

  “I smoke now. Yes?” The young Indonesian left.

  Jeffrey read. The message was from Admiral Hodgkiss. It told Jeffrey that a new Russian fast-attack sub, the first of the 868U class, code name Snow Tiger, was almost certainly German owned. The message said her propulsion plant was lined with layers of a composite that suppressed her tonals at flank speed.

  Jesus.

  The Snow Tiger had a double titanium hull, a sing
le cowled pump-jet propulsor, twin liquid-metal-cooled reactors with silent pumps, and a super-slippery hull coating. An acoustic anomaly detected off Somalia confirmed that the Snow Tiger was able to move at sixty-plus knots with only minimal flow noise as her signature—and was heading toward the Arabian Sea.

  Hodgkiss warned Jeffrey that the Snow Tiger might have been ordered to lurk near the strategic Bab el Mandeb choke point, to destroy American submarines heading inward to support the defense of Israel and Egypt.

  Jeffrey nodded to himself. During the opening phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, the U.S. had had twelve fast-attack subs positioned in the Red Sea at once, launching Tomahawks, with overflight permission, at Iraq.

  And since the maximum range of the newest Tactical Tomahawks was about 1,500 miles, to reach the threatened Egyptian frontier from the Indian Ocean, any U.S. subs would have to enter the Red Sea again. Then there were the carrier strike groups—with more Tomahawks on their cruisers, destroyers, and frigates—whose air wings, with multiple midair refuelings, might barely reach the active battle front from outside the Red Sea without violating now-neutral Saudi Arabian or Yemeni airspace.

  It was a curse on the Allies, which the Axis was making full use of, that the Boers had nuked Diego Garcia early in the year. It was a double curse that now the Allies didn’t have one usable land air base in that direction closer than Australia.

  The next part of the message, his new ROEs, made Jeffrey almost physically sick. If he encountered the Snow Tiger, he was forbidden to shoot first since its true nationality remained unproven; to sink a genuine Russian-owned sub could start a full-scale World War III. An ELF code was specified as the signal to him that other forces had been shot at, confirming that the Snow Tiger was enemy. Only if he received this code was he allowed to shoot first—unless the Snow Tiger had already opened fire on him.

  The last part of the message was the worst: The Germans might be aware that the Allies had ships like the Bunga Azul, since, as the Allies knew from experience, the Axis owned such covert sub transporters too. The Snow Tiger, Hodgkiss said, might have orders from Berlin to watch for SSNs heading out of the Red Sea.