Straits of Power

by Joe Buff

  “Fire Control, tubes one through seven, target remains Snow Tiger. Program dogleg course past intervening terrain. Launch on generated bearings, at ten-second intervals, shoot.”

  Generated bearings meant the weapon-system computer’s best estimate of an updated firing solution, projecting ahead in time from the last stream of data the Bunga Azul’s antennas could feed. Bell and Torelli did as ordered; it took a full minute from shooting the first fish until the last weapon was launched.

  “All tubes fired electrically!” Torelli said. “Good wires!”

  “All units running normally,” Milgrom confirmed.

  “Helm, put us behind the Bunga Azul, follow her down, be careful of our weapon wires.” Meltzer acknowledged. This would be a very tricky maneuver. Jeffrey had seven wide-body Mark 88 torpedoes dashing through the sea. Their attack speed was seventy knots, and their crush depth was the same as Challenger’s—fifteen thousand feet. Jeffrey had fired at a target he couldn’t detect, even on active sonar, because of where he and the Snow Tiger were, the island’s underwater mass in the way.

  Given Challenger’s torpedo-tube design, if he reloaded, the control wires to the weapons already fired would be cut. They’ll have to search and home on their own. I need to saturate the Snow Tiger’s defenses, to exploit the element of surprise.

  The Bunga Azul hit the bottom with a loud thud, and a final screech of tortured metal.

  “Fire Control,” Jeffrey ordered, “program all units to go to autonomous active search as soon as past Shakir Island.” The gravimeter showed that the seafloor a few miles ahead was wide open, and the slope down to past three thousand feet was smooth. Outside the Shadwan Channel, beyond the mouth of the Jubal Strait, there was nowhere for the Snow Tiger to hide. Bell and then Torelli acknowledged Jeffrey’s order.

  “Fire Control,” Jeffrey snapped, “launch the off-board probe in fiber-optic tether mode. Send it around and past the Bunga Azul’s hulk on a course due east at its maximum speed.” Twenty knots for short sprints on its batteries. “Reload tubes one through seven, high-explosive Mark Eighty-eights, smartly.” A rapid second salvo was everything now.

  “Torpedoes in the water,” Milgrom reported. Outside the host ship, Challenger’s sonar arrays could pick up sound acutely well. They’d registered echoes of torpedo-engine sounds, bouncing off the submerged side of Shakir Island—exactly as Jeffrey had intended, knowing that his bow sphere was blocked from directly ahead by the hulk Meltzer hid behind. “Series Sixty-fives, inbound.” Milgrom gave their bearings and ranges. There were eight of them.

  Had the Snow Tiger’s captain detected Jeffrey’s first salvo coming at him, and launched a salvo of his own? Is he guessing, trying to obliterate the Bunga Azul whatever her condition, or does he know by my fish that I got out of the host ship intact?

  The wire-guided 65s went active. Sweet, metallic tings came over the sonar speakers. Several 65s—their weapons technicians perhaps fooled because of Jeffrey’s previous trick of having the Bunga Azul sit on top of a shoal—homed on reefs or small islands in the distance back behind Challenger. Their engine noises and pinging receded harmlessly up the Shadwan Channel. At least Jeffrey hoped they’d be harmless—it seemed less likely that their target seekers would acquire the spindly pylons of a drilling platform; those people had probably shut down and evacuated to shore at the first sign naval combat was brewing.

  But two 65s detected the wreck of the Bunga Azul, and began to circle around it, as if looking for something hiding there.

  Uh-oh. Jeffrey was glad the Bunga Azul was much bigger than Challenger.

  He ordered Meltzer to move Challenger around the other way, to keep the wreck between them; Milgrom and Torelli fed steering cues to Meltzer’s main display. Jeffrey saw that Meltzer’s hands on the control wheel were white knuckled.

  Jeffrey realized how sore his own fingers felt, from hours of gripping the rail out on the bridge wing of the late and much-lamented Bunga Azul. He looked at his hands, and prayed that the master and all his men had made it into the lifeboats okay.

  It’s not too late for her to save Challenger one more time.

  The torpedoes hit the sunken cargo ship with mighty eruptions. Challenger rocked, and her control-room crew were shaken in their seats. Milgrom had known to turn down the sonar speakers, but the big warheads going off so close were intensely loud through Challenger’s hull.

  Without waiting for the cacophony to die down, Jeffrey shouted, “Sonar, does off-board probe detect propulsion noise from Snow Tiger?” The probe was miles ahead, with a broad view out to deep water.

  “Affirmative! Snow Tiger is at high speed, appears unable to achieve sixty knots for effective tonal masking. Hull singing suggests damage to outer hull from air-dropped torpedoes or depth charges.”

  “V’ r’well, Sonar.”

  He’s been banged up by those helos and planes. It’s the cost of coming shallow and going active, to attack a host ship before its guest submarine could depart. If he’d opened fire from out in deep water instead, his weapons would’ve had a twenty-mile run up into the shallows, and his intended victim might have gotten too much warning. . . . He did exactly what I would’ve done.

  The Snow Tiger’s captain paid a price for his tactics, but he was full of fight and acting very aggressively, and his 65s were dangerous—one solid hit would crack Challenger’s hull.

  “Tubes one through seven reloaded,” Bell said.

  “Fire Control,” Jeffrey rapped out, “firing point procedures, Mark Eighty-eights in tubes one through seven. Target is the Snow Tiger. Make tubes one through seven ready in all respects including opening outer doors. . . . Tubes one through seven, launch on generated bearings, at ten-second intervals, shoot.”

  When his seven new fish were launched, Jeffrey had Meltzer hover behind the wreckage of the Bunga Azul, as an antisonar and antitorpedo shield. The wires to Jeffrey’s second salvo, and to his off-board probe, were his front-line eyes and ears. Because of the islands, reefs, shoals, wrecks, and gas-drilling platforms all around, he was in a cluttered environment—and inbound torpedoes ought to have trouble finding him. The wounded Snow Tiger, in contrast, by choosing to go deep to outdive the air-dropped Mark 54s, and by moving fast to reach the Shadwan Channel and use the German’s own sonars to locate his prey, had discarded any chance of terrain or acoustic concealment. Jeffrey was trying to overwhelm him with a barrage of fourteen Mark 88 torpedoes coming all at once, each with a warhead twenty times the size of a Mark 54’s.

  “Sir,” Bell said, “I must caution that Snow Tiger captain might adopt more aggressive tactics now that he knows he failed to sink us inside the carrier ship and he is not able to maintain quiet flank speed.”

  “What do you mean, more aggressive? This guy’s arrogant, impetuous, impatient as it is. He thought he could outsmart everybody. He didn’t allow for our side having smart people too, XO, so our platforms knew what to listen for as he rushed north through the whole Red Sea.” The Snow Tiger’s flank-speed flow noise that lacked tonals would be distinctive once understood. That had to be how the carrier-based antisubmarine planes knew early enough to head toward this location. It explained why they were ready to help the local helos when the German started pinging southbound merchant ships.

  “That’s my point, sir. Things haven’t gone his way, and he’s impetuous. He may feel egged on to score a last-ditch victory if he knows by ELF that the North African offensive collapsed. . . . He might go nuclear here.”

  “That’s why he discarded acoustic stealth? He wants to lull me into a false sense of confidence and then one of his Sixty-fives has a nuke? But we’re too close to Saudi Arabia.”

  “It’s my duty to state that he may see things differently, Captain. We do not know his current rules of engagement, or his willingness to violate them if given sufficient cause.”

  Over the speakers, Jeffrey and his crew heard the echoes and reverb from distant blasts. The Snow Tiger was using its antitorpedo rockets
to smash his inbound fish. There were louder blasts when the rocket warheads set off the Mark 88s.

  “Assess all units from first salvo intercepted!” Bell said.

  This won’t be nearly as easy as I thought. And now he’s really egged on, because only my ship carries Mark Eighty-eights. He knows that he’s up against Challenger.

  “Second salvo has acquired the Snow Tiger!”

  “Torpedoes in the water! Eight torpedoes, Series Sixty-fives, inbound.” The German launched another salvo too.

  “Captain,” Bell said, “we can’t tell if a Sixty-five is nuclear until it detonates. Our only defense is a nuclear countershot to smash his torpedoes at a safe stand-off distance. If we use nukes for defense, we should for offense also.”

  “It is against our own ROEs!”

  “Sir, with Mohr and his gear aboard, and his honest intent and his equipment’s effectiveness proved now, we dare not let ourselves be destroyed! We’re low on high-explosive ammo. We might run out before the Snow Tiger does. We can’t be sure with her double titanium hull that our conventional Mark Eighty-eights will have the hitting power to stop her even if any get through!”

  “XO, I can’t go nuclear here!”

  “Captain, if we don’t we could lose Challenger and Klaus Mohr and the Allies could lose the war!”

  Bell’s concerns are valid. The Snow Tiger defeated my first salvo, and I don’t have a lot more I can shoot. I need something to give me an edge.

  “Sir,” Bell pressed, “remember Ohio! She succumbed with all hands against a superior force, using every weapon she had and every tactic Captain Parcelli could think of! To us, with the bottom at three thousand feet, the Snow Tiger could represent a superior force without going nuclear!”

  Jeffrey’s next salvo was drawing close to the Snow Tiger.

  “He’ll just swat them with more antitorpedo rockets, sir! We can’t afford to wait any longer.”

  Was Bell right? Did Jeffrey need to go nuclear, before the German captain had a chance to?

  “I have my ROEs! Nukes are forbidden!”

  “You disobeyed orders before when you thought it was best!”

  “How will Saudi Arabia take it when she sees American mushroom clouds so near her shores? We can’t go nuclear!”

  Jeffrey’s high-explosive weapons were very close to the Snow Tiger now.

  Jeffrey had an idea, something he’d never thought of before. Maybe it came to me from being on the Bunga Azul in the canal.

  “All right, XO! I want to try one more tactic. If it fails we switch to nuclear Mark Eighty-eights.”

  “Sir?”

  “Put our fish into formation as close as you can to line ahead without loosing the wires.” “Line ahead” meant that the units would follow each other, evenly spaced in single file. “Have formation jink in unison each time lead weapon is intercepted.”

  Bell, surprised, acknowledged. Torelli issued orders and his technicians worked their joysticks. Explosions began, more antitorpedo rocket warheads and Mark 88 warheads.

  “Unit from tube one destroyed!”

  Jeffrey waited and watched his chronometer. The next fish would be ten seconds behind the first. Ten seconds passed, then fifteen, then twenty. Another blast.

  “Unit from tube two destroyed!”

  Jeffrey’s eyes flitted to his chronometer again.

  Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Thirty. A blast.

  “Unit from tube three destroyed!”

  Jeffrey’s plan was working, so far. Each exploding rocket and torpedo warhead made a giant, persistent disturbance in the water; the Snow Tiger’s sonars getting target data for her rockets were blinded by a wall of bubbles and turbulence. They had to wait for the next jinking fish to charge somewhere through that wall, then acquire it, then launch another rocket—which had to cover some distance to reach the latest inbound weapon.

  “Unit from tube four destroyed!”

  Each time, Jeffrey put a torpedo closer to the German sub. But would the salvo of seven be large enough to get at least one all the way to the Snow Tiger’s hull?

  “Unit from tube five destroyed!”

  Not good. “Weps, obtain the nuclear-weapons arming tool, smartly.” Torelli ran to Jeffrey’s stateroom; as part of his job he knew the safe’s combinations.

  Jeffrey’s sixth torpedo connected with the Snow Tiger, a direct hit. His seventh hit the German in the same place.

  Jeffrey no longer needed wire-guided control on those expended weapons. “Reload tubes one through seven, nuclear Mark Eighty-eights. Preset warhead yields on one and two to maximum.” One kiloton, for offense. “Preset yields on three through seven to minimum.” One one-hundredth kiloton, for defense.

  Bell acknowledged, relieved but still troubled. The phone talker said Torelli had the arming tool, and was in the torpedo room.

  “Sonar, assess damage of conventional Mark Eighty-eight hits on Snow Tiger.” Sent off to one side and then slowed for a better acoustic-surveillance vantage point, the off-board probe detected a new signature, above the echoes and reverb of all the explosions and the engine noise of the enemy’s 65s still inbound.

  “Flooding sounds, Captain!” Milgrom called out. “Mechanical transients! Assess as bilge pumps and an emergency blow! . . . Propulsion plant noises have ceased!”

  The speakers filled Challenger’s control room with the high-pitched hissing of a submarine trying to blow its main ballast tanks, combined with the lower-pitched roar as seawater shoved its greedy way into ruptures in the pressure hull.

  “It could be fake, sir!” Bell shouted. “That noise could be from their sonar emitters!”

  Jeffrey reluctantly acknowledged that Bell was right. It might all be a deception tactic, the German only pretending he’d been sunk. Jeffrey’s throat and lungs felt as if they were being seared by the flames of Hell as he issued more orders. “Firing-point procedures, nuclear Mark Eighty-eights in tubes one and two, target is Snow Tiger. Fire Control, enter your arming code.” Bell and Jeffrey typed their special-weapon passwords.

  “Passwords accepted,” Bell shouted. “Warheads preenabled!”

  “Make tubes one and two ready in all respects, including opening outer doors.”

  “Inbound Series Sixty-fives approaching lethal range if set at maximum yield of one kiloton!” Four thousand yards.

  Jeffrey knew he needed to launch defensive nukes very soon.

  But what if Bell was wrong? What if those real direct hits by high-explosive Mark 88s in a one-two punch had burst through the Snow Tiger’s pressure hull after all? How could Jeffrey tell for sure? His probe was too far away to give him more data in time, even if he sent it on another high-speed dash. Was the Snow Tiger—sitting on the bottom now with no pumps or ballast-blow noises—lying doggo, or was it dead? We’re only fifty miles from neutral Saudi Arabia.

  But what if Bell was right? What if the Snow Tiger was still very much operational or her inbound weapons were nukes?

  Jeffrey saw a way to buy his ship a few precious seconds. It meant the end of his career no matter what happened, either death, or court-martial for sure, but other factors vastly outweighed his career. “Tube one, shoot. Tube two, shoot.”

  His nuclear fish were on their way to the Snow Tiger. He carefully watched the data on the inbound 65s. Their lethal circles at a kiloton were drawing awfully close. Were they nuclear? Were the weapons technicians on the other end of their wires alive, or drowned? Would they explode them the moment the 65s were in range, or would they let them get closer to Challenger to guarantee a score? Were they set on a dead man’s switch, with decision rules already programmed in?

  The 65s kept coming, as Jeffrey’s Mark 88s charged at the Snow Tiger. The off-board probe showed that the German wasn’t reacting. That Jeffrey had fired only two fish, not seven, would imply that they might well be nuclear. Time passed, an eternity.

  Still the German didn’t react. The 65s were now in lethal range of Challenger if their warhead yields were only on
e-tenth kiloton. Was this a clever trick to get Jeffrey to not set off his Mark 88 nukes? . . . Jeffrey’s fish were in lethal range of the German at their preset yields of one kiloton. He ordered his warheads to be preset to explode at half their remaining range to the target. Bell acknowledged; from here, if their wires broke for any reason, the weapons would have a mind of their own. Jeffrey was taking a monumental gamble, but at least if both sides used nukes it would be a double kill. Jeffrey intended to absorb the first blow, because the Saudis would know the truth by the relative position and timing of the blasts, and by analyzing the fallout. Challenger would be obliterated, but so would the German: a military draw—an even exchange—and a slight diplomatic advantage for Allied relations with the Saudis.

  The 65s rushed up the Shadwan Channel, homed on terrain, and detonated; they weren’t nuclear. The Snow Tiger sat there, inert.

  “Safe the units, tubes one and two! Shut down their engines!”

  The ocean outside grew much quieter. Now and then, above his racing heart, Jeffrey heard a pop or a bang as some item inside the Snow Tiger’s hulk succumbed to the merciless squashing by the sea more than a kilometer beneath the surface. There could be no remaining doubt: The German sub was destroyed.

  “Overflight!” Milgrom shouted. “Low-flying helos, Israeli!”

  The aircraft might not grasp what was happening. This meant serious danger of friendly fire—and it was ten minutes at flank speed to water deeper than a Mark 54’s crush depth.

  “Fire Control, launch a radio buoy with Allied recognition code, smartly.” Bell’s face showed he understood the stakes. Challenger had to get their nationality into the data net, ASAP.

  “Aircraft noises receding,” Milgrom said a minute later.

  “Nav, relay fire-control position of Snow Tiger wreck, and location of our shut-down nuclear Mark Eighty-eights for recovery. They’re in international waters, just barely.” Jeffrey told Bell to launch a buoy with this data, encrypted by a deeper code. A U.S. decontamination and intell salvage group was sure to be mobilizing already. “And you realize, XO? This is our first combat mission where not one nuclear weapon went off.”