Straits of Power

by Joe Buff

  Epilogue

  Two Weeks Later

  USS Challenger was staying stealthy, submerged well outside the major naval base at Perth, in southwest Australia. Minisubs, diving from covered piers at the base, shuttled spare parts and provisions to the ship, and brought her crew ashore in batches for liberty.

  Jeffrey was pleased by the state of his crew’s morale, and the condition of his ship. In this, his fifth combat mission, Challenger had taken no significant battle damage. She needed little maintenance because her propulsion plant had almost never gone anywhere near flank speed.

  Jeffrey himself had been enjoying some leave on dry land, in a beautiful country where even during wartime the people were very friendly. He’d been able to briefly hold a private chat-room talk with his parents, using U.S. Navy infrastructure, including encryption and decryption at both ends, so they could have a nice typed conversation without fear of enemy eavesdropping. But Michael Fuller had said there were rumors in Washington that Ilse Reebeck had been arrested as a spy. Jeffrey was dismayed, but wasn’t sure what to do about it yet.

  Klaus Mohr and his equipment, and Gamal Salih and Gerald Parker, were already on their way back to the United States by the safest possible transport: an American nuclear submarine. Felix and his men, including the wounded and the bodies of the dead, flew to the U.S. soon after Challenger arrived at Perth.

  Now, after a satisfying dinner, Jeffrey was unwinding in the bachelor officers’ quarters on the Royal Australian Navy’s base at Perth. Much had happened during his covert transit of the Indian Ocean. He was sitting in the lounge of the mess, having beers with some newly made pals in the Royal Australian Navy, and the television was on. Jeffrey was watching a video recording, for the third time in a row.

  The broadcast had been copied off Al Jazeera TV. The speaker was the president of Egypt. He’d held a press conference in Cairo over a week ago, while Jeffrey had been busy running silent and deep.

  The president spoke in Arabic. The tape had English subtitles added by Allied translators, but Jeffrey just listened to the man’s voice.

  He said that the Egyptian-Israeli counteroffensive against the Afrika Korps had taken two German generals prisoner, with their headquarter vehicles intact. Analysis of computer files and documents found in those vehicles made it clear that the original German offensive had been intended to roll right through Israel and the Palestinian Territories, and keep going and take the Persian Gulf oil fields by force. Paratroopers and other commando units were tasked to prevent the nations who owned those fields from setting fire to the wells, and death squads would brutally discourage insurgents from trying to damage pipelines or refineries.

  The two German generals were paraded before the cameras. Both looked weary, frightened, and humiliated, but not mistreated. The president of Egypt then held up a captured map of the Middle East. The camera zoomed in. The words were all in German, but the intended lines of advance were clearly marked and unmistakable: Germany’s goal was to occupy not just Egypt and Israel, but Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran.

  The president put down the map, and grew more impassioned. He accused the Germans of being modern Crusaders. He said their botched offensive, and their grandiose goals of conquest, proved that they were the true mortal enemies of the Muslim world, not the U.S. or Israel. He called on the leaders and the people, of all the countries marked down as planned German prizes, to join in what Egypt had already done months before—declare war on the Axis, to drive these new Crusaders back where they came from, and wipe out the hostile regime that reigned from Berlin in the name of a trumped-up puppet kaiser.

  The video recording ended. “Enough gloating,” Jeffrey said. “I think watching that three times in a row is plenty for today.”

  “More tomorrow,” somebody said.

  “More beer now,” someone else said.

  Fresh beers were passed around. Jeffrey, along with the local naval officers—men and women—drank a toast to eventual Allied victory.

  The important thing was that the Egyptian president’s broadcast had worked, supported by hectic back-channel moves between heads of state and ambassadors and influential clerics. The Muslim and mostly Muslim countries ranging from Turkey and Syria all the way to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Indonesia—each with their own forms of government and their rivalries and internal ethnic strife—put their differences aside and one by one did join the Allied cause. Though tough negotiations would be needed to create lines of reporting and to agree on effective decision-making hierarchies, vast new quantities of manpower, wealth, and natural resources were arrayed on America’s and the British Commonwealth’s side. Not wanting to be left out, India joined the Allies too. A wide land route, from the western Pacific through southern Asia and then the Middle East, up Turkey and into Europe’s underbelly, was open at last.

  “Now we just have to find a way to march on Berlin and Johannesburg without mass destruction on two or three continents,” one of the Australians said, a bit less drunk than everyone else.

  “And without body counts in the millions,” Jeffrey said.

  People nodded, as soberly as they could under the circumstances. Jeffrey was worldly wise enough to know that the Muslim states each acted for purely selfish reasons. The ominous vision of an Iron Crescent ascending into the heart of Europe began to encroach on his pleasant buzz of euphoria.

  “Russia has to stop selling the Germans arms,” someone else blurted out as Jeffrey listened. “Those ekranoplan things were bad enough. That bloody Snow Tiger was simply too over the top. It’s the damn Russians we put the pressure on next, I say. Undercut Germany.” The man belched. “Make Russia be really neutral, is the key to it all from here. The bloody Boers are a bloody sideshow now. We beat ’em a hundred years ago, we’ll beat ’em again, nukes or no nukes.”

  Jeffrey had to excuse himself when an enlisted messenger found him and gave him an envelope. As he got up from the couch, he was handed another beer by a rather attractive female commander.

  “One for the road, you Yanks always say? Take it back to your room. Maybe I’ll stop by later and knock, make sure you didn’t get bad news from home. Cheer you up.”

  “Cheers indeed, all,” Jeffrey said, holding up the beer bottle and gesturing around the lounge.

  Waves of alcohol-lubricated comradeship washed over him in return.

  Jeffrey went to his room and put the beer on the desk. The sealed envelope had nothing but his name typed on the outside and a red rubber stamp, PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL. He opened it clumsily, from being tipsy now for several good reasons.

  The envelope contained a single sheet of paper in plain text. The sender was Admiral Hodgkiss, Commander, U.S. Atlantic Fleet. Jeffrey swallowed hard. He’d written a formal patrol report while crossing the Indian Ocean, telling everything, trying to explain his reasons for doing what he had done. That report would by now be in Hodgkiss’s quite unforgiving hands.

  Jeffrey skimmed the page. The gist was simple: Well done, proper judgment and initiative shown at all stages of extremely difficult task-group mission. Medals pending, further details and new operational orders to follow in several days.

  Jeffrey felt very happy, and for once also felt at peace with himself. He was sure the beer was part of it—he hadn’t had any alcohol for weeks.

  That last sentence from Hodgkiss began to tickle his brain. New operational orders? There was still Ernst Beck’s von Scheer to deal with.

  Then Jeffrey began to wonder about something else, what one of the Australians had said in the lounge. That Russia had to be made to stop selling arms to Germany. Jeffrey knew the Snow Tiger—amply confirmed by a salvage survey as having been built in Russia, but commissioned as Grand Admiral Doenitz and operated by German officers and crew—set a dangerous precedent. Missiles and torpedoes without their warheads, even ekranoplans, were one thing. Entire state-of-the-art nuclear submarines, with fueled reactor cores, were an entirely separate and very provocative step i
n support of the Axis while claiming neutrality. Also, Russia’s geographic placement let her threaten the flank of the new Allied land route to Europe.

  Why can’t I do something up in Russia like I did in Istanbul and Zichron Yaakov, with SEALs or other special forces? Make a clandestine penetration that produces results but, in addition, this time, sends a message. Something sneaky and really nasty, with plausible deniability, yet unmistakable meaning on the receiving end, saying to back off. . . .

  Well, it’s not for me to decide.

  Jeffrey took another swig of his beer.

  There was a knock on the door. “You in there, Yank?” It was a woman’s voice, Australian—the commander with the bedroom eyes from the lounge.

  Jeffrey folded the paper and locked it away in the desk. He got up and opened the door.

  “It’s not healthy to drink alone,” she told him very assertively. “Much less fun, anyway.” She held a beer in one hand. She sidled past Jeffrey into the room, then glanced back over her shoulder. “I never told you, my first name is Melanie.”

  Glossary

  Acoustic intercept: A passive (listening only) sonar specifically designed to give warning when the submarine is “pinged” by an enemy active sonar. The latest version is the WLY-1.

  Active out-of-phase emissions: A way to weaken the echo that an enemy sonar receives from a submarine’s hull, by actively emitting sound waves of the same frequency as the ping but exactly out of phase. The out-of-phase sound waves mix with and cancel those of the echoing ping.

  ADCAP: Mark 48 Advanced Capability torpedo. A heavyweight, wire-guided, long-range torpedo used by American nuclear submarines. The Improved ADCAP has an even longer range, and an enhanced (and extremely capable) target-homing sonar and software logic package.

  AIP: Air Independent Propulsion. Refers to modern diesel submarines that have an additional power source besides the standard diesel engines and electric storage batteries. The AIP system allows quiet and long-endurance submerged cruising, without the need to snorkel for air, because oxygen and fuel are carried aboard the vessel in special tanks. For example, the German class 212 design uses fuel cells for air-independent propulsion.

  Ambient sonar: A form of active sonar that uses, instead of a submarine’s pinging, the ambient noise of the surrounding ocean to catch reflections off a target. Noise sources can include surface wave-action sounds, the propulsion plants of other vessels (such as passing neutral merchant shipping), or biologics (sea life). Ambient sonar gives the advantage of actively pinging but without betraying a submarine’s own presence. Advanced signal-processing algorithms and powerful onboard computers are needed to exploit ambient sonar effectively.

  Auxiliary maneuvering units: Small propulsors at the bow and stern of a nuclear submarine, used to greatly enhance the vessel’s maneuverability. First ordered for the USS Jimmy Carter, the third and last of the Seawolf-class SSNs (nuclear fast-attack submarines) to be constructed.

  Ceramic composite: A multilayered composite foam matrix made from ceramic and metallic ingredients. One formulation, called alumina casing, an extremely strong submarine hull material significantly less dense than steel, was declassified by the U.S. Navy after the Cold War.

  Corvette: A type of oceangoing warship smaller than a frigate (see below).

  Deep scattering layer: A diffuse layer of biologics (marine life) present in many parts of the world’s oceans, which causes scattering and absorption of sound. This can have tactical significance for undersea warfare forces by obscuring passive sonar contacts and causing false active sonar target returns. The layer’s local depth, thickness, and scattering strength are known to vary by many factors, including one’s location on the globe, the sound frequency being observed, the season of the year, and the hour of the day. The deep scattering layer is typically several hundred feet thick, and lies somewhere between one thousand and two thousand feet of depth during daylight, migrating shallower at night.

  Double agent: A spy who works for both sides in a conflict. Often one side believes the spy works exclusively for them, when in fact the spy’s loyalty is to the enemy, or only to him- or herself. Double agents in your employ can thus provide valuable information about the other side’s intelligence operations. But they might instead (or simultaneously) represent a serious threat to your security by providing good information about you to the other side, or by intentionally misleading your side with false but plausible information.

  Ekranoplan: Originally, the name of a very large Soviet military “wing in ground effect” aircraft. More generally, ekranoplans, also known as wiggies, are a hybrid sea-skimmer airplane. They fly just above the sea surface or level ground while obtaining significant extra aerodynamic lift by riding on a cushion of air trapped between the ground and the underside of the wings. Their speed can reach several hundred knots, and their huge cargo capacity can exceed five hundred tons. Smaller civilian wiggies are built in the U.S. for use as water taxis. Military versions can serve as powerful amphibious landing craft because of their excellent mobility and payload, and their ability to fly through marshes or up onto beaches.

  ELF: Extremely low frequency. A form of radio that is capable of penetrating seawater; used to communicate (one way only) from a huge shore transmitter installation to submerged submarines. A disadvantage of ELF is that its data rate is extremely slow, only a few bits per minute.

  EMCON: Emissions control. Radio silence, except it also applies to radar, sonar, laser, or other emissions that could give away a vessel’s presence.

  Frequency agile: A means of avoiding enemy interception and jamming, by very rapidly varying the frequency used by a transmitter and receiver. May apply to radio, or to underwater acoustic communications (see Gertrude, below).

  Frigate: A type of oceangoing warship smaller than a destroyer.

  Gertrude: Underwater telephone. Original systems simply transmitted the voice directly, with the aid of transducers (active sonar emitters, i.e., underwater loudspeakers), and were notorious for their short range and poor intelligibility. Modern undersea acoustic-communication systems translate the message into digital high-frequency active sonar pulses, which can be frequency agile for security (see above). Data rates well over one thousand bits per second, over ranges up to thirty nautical miles, can be achieved routinely.

  Hole-in-ocean sonar: A form of passive (listening only) sonar that detects a target by how it blocks ambient ocean sounds from farther off. In effect, hole-in-ocean sonar uses an enemy submarine’s own quieting against it.

  Instant ranging: A capability of the new wide-aperture-array sonar systems (see below). Because each wide-aperture array is mounted rigidly along one side of the submarine’s hull, sophisticated signal processing can be performed to “focus” the hydrophones at different ranges from the ship. The target needs to lie somewhere on the beam of the ship (i.e., to either side) for this to work well.

  Kampfschwimmer: German Navy “frogmen” combat swimmers. The equivalent of U.S. Navy SEALs and the Royal Navy’s Special Boat Squadron commandos. (In the German language, the word “Kampfschwimmer” is both singular and plural.)

  LASH: Littoral Airborne Sensor Hyperspectral. A new antisubmarine warfare search-and-detection technique, usually deployed from aircraft. LASH utilizes the backscatter of underwater illumination from sunlight, caught via special optical sensors and processed by classified computer software, to locate anomalous color gradations and shapes, even through deep seawater that is murky or dirty.

  LIDAR: Light Direction and Ranging. Like radar but uses laser beams instead of radio waves. Undersea LIDAR uses blue-green lasers, because that color penetrates seawater to the greatest distance.

  METOC: Meteorology and Oceanography Command. The part of the U.S. Navy that is responsible for providing weather and oceanographic data, and accompanying tactical assessments and recommendations, to the navy’s operating fleets. METOC maintains a network of centers around the world to gather, analyze, interpret, and distri
bute this information.

  Naval Submarine League (NSL): A professional association for submariners and submarine supporters. See their Web site, www.navalsubleague.com.

  Network-centric warfare: A new approach to war fighting in which all formations and commanders share a common tactical and strategic picture through real-time digital data links. Every platform or node, such as a ship, aircraft, submarine, Marine Corps or army squad, or SEAL team, gathers and shares information on friendly and enemy locations and movements. Weapons, such as a cruise missile, might be fired by one platform, and be redirected in flight toward a fleeting target of opportunity by another platform, using information relayed by yet other platforms—including unmanned reconnaissance drones. Network-centric warfare promises to revolutionize command, control, communications, and intelligence, and greatly leverage the combat power of all friendly units while minimizing collateral damage.

  Ocean interface hull module: Part of a submarine’s hull that includes large internal “hangar space” for weapons and off-board vehicles, to avoid size limits forced by torpedo-tube diameter. (To carry large objects such as an ASDS minisub externally creates serious hydrodynamic drag, reducing a submarine’s speed and increasing its flow noise.) The first ocean interface has been installed as part of the design of USS Jimmy Carter, the last of the three Seawolf-class SSNs to be constructed.

  Ocean rover: Any one of a number of designs, either civilian or military, of a small, semiautonomous unmanned submersible vehicle that roves through the ocean collecting data on natural and man-made phenomena. This data is periodically downloaded via radio when the ocean rover comes shallow enough to raise an antenna above the sea surface. Powered by batteries or fuel cells, ocean rovers move slowly but can have an endurance of days or weeks before needing to be recovered for maintenance, reprogramming, refueling, etc. One U.S. Navy ocean rover is called the Seahorse, and is shaped like a very long, very wide torpedo.