Tomcat tsf-3

by David E. Meadows

  Only then did Ibn Al Jamal blow ballast and bring the damaged submarine to the surface. Calls to Algiers to send a tug had gone unanswered, but the Oran Naval Base to the west, from which he had originally sailed, heard his call. When he sailed with the A! Solomon at the beginning of the revolution, the two old Soviet-built Kilo-class submarines had departed Oran while the base was under loyalist control. Now. only the city of Oran — twenty kilometers to the west — remained under control of forces loyal to President Alneuf, but the rebels, in a bloody battle, had taken the Oran Naval Base. The decaying bodies of the Algerian loyalists captured during the battle still swayed from the various light poles and cranes, and Ibn Al Jamal even saw one hanging from the balcony of the new rebel headquarters. This was not the Islam he worshiped.

  Ibn Al Jamal mumbled a prayer to Allah and continued his walk around the rampart of the dry dock. He had done this every day. many times a day: reviewing concerns that only a fellow captain of a submarine could understand.

  Bad shipyard work on a surface ship, and the worst thing that could happen was that the ship sat motionless on the surface while everyone scurried about trying to fix whatever was wrong. Bad shipyard work on a submarine, and you ran the risk of never surfacing again.

  He visually checked for any last-minute signs of damage, noted minor cosmetic things that needed doing, and directed the boat’s crew so they kept busy. He looked forward to refloating the Al Nasser. The sooner he was under way and out of the base, the better. He knew he was failing to hide his disillusionment with the rebellion. What a failure he was. He failed in his oath to his country. Like a stupid young man, he had fallen under the spell of convincing orations and ardent exhortations about a new, glorious, Islamic republic, only to realize that true Islam would play no role in the future of Algeria. Just like Hawaii Alneuf, the new leaders lived for power.

  When he and the xealot captain, who commanded the sister submarine Al Solomon, sortied from Oran Naval Base nearly a month ago, Ibn Al Jamal sailed with the belief that the revolution was a religious and righteous one.

  The two submarines sailed undetected through the Strait 98 david E. meadows of Gibraltar, where he left the AI Solomon to guard against an American battle group. When he sailed back through the Strait, the At Nasser had sowed smart mines along the sea-lanes. Smart mines were designed to activate when a certain combination of acoustic and magnetic signatures identified the target as either a large ship or a submerged submarine. These had been (he last mines in their inventory.

  How the USS Stennis managed to get through the minefield perplexed him. The aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt had been sunk in the Red Sea, according to the news report, by the same sort of mines that had been planted in the Strait of Gibraltar, Ibri Al Jamal wrongly assumed.

  He turned the corner near the huge gates of the dry dock. The waters of the harbor rose to within a foot of the top of the gates. Soon the water in the dry dock would be the same level, equalizing the water pressure on both sides and allowing the gates to be slowly opened. The stern of the submarine faced him. He leaned forward and put both hands on the heavy safety chains that ran between metal stanchions encircling the ramparts of the dry dock. The bent shaft had been straightened as much as the yard workers could with the limited resources they had. The Algerian Navy had no spare shafts, depending on Russia to provide them. Considering that the Algerian rebels executed the Russian tech-reps assigned to the Navy, Ibn A) Jamal doubted the establishment of a new spare parts contract any time soon. A new propeller to replace the one damaged during the torpedo attack had been discovered in one of the supply warehouses. They had torqued the shaft and propeller yesterday and pronounced the submarine ready for sea this morning. He sensed the yard workers wanted the Al Nasser finished and under way as soon as possible. The Americans had to know the whereabouts of the submarine. They were completely perplexed as to why the American Navy had not launched an air attack against it or lobbed one of their many cruise missiles into the dry dock. Maybe they were waiting for the Spanish forces approaching Oran from the west to take the port.

  Two nights ago his disillusionment with the rebellion had been completed. Evening prayers had turned into a political call for the heads of non-Muslims and a holy war, death against all Westerners. The passionate discussions included talk about religious cleansing, shocking him; genocide under any name is still genocide. Algeria was a nation of Sunni Moslems, but the words he heard reverberated with the Shiite philosophy prevalent in Iran and Afghanistan. He wanted no part of it. When he met Allah, he would meet Him with a pure heart and soul.

  Ibn Al Jamal removed his hat and ran his sleeve across his forehead, wiping the sweat from his eyes. The motion of a waving hand from the submarine caught his attention.

  His executive officer stood on the conning tower of the submarine, exaggerating a hand wave to catch his attention.

  He tossed his hand up in acknowledgment. A good man among good men. Ibn Al Jamal had done a good job protecting his officers and crew from the rebel inquisitions.

  He thought the radical captain on the now destroyed Al Solomon had been the exception. Instead, he had discovered that, once the true leaders emerged from cover and felt they had nothing to fear, zealotry was the norm.

  So many through history had used the guise of religion to gain power. He now believed the new leaders had little religious leanings with the exception of abusing Islamic beliefs to obtain and keep power.

  He should have seen it. How could a man his age fall for such guile? Ibn Al Jamal pulled his hat back on and continued his slow walk around the boat, slopping periodically to make an entry in his small notebook. The workers near the bottom moved quickly, scurrying up the various ladders and stairs as the water rose. He looked at his watch. By two o’clock this afternoon, they would exit the dry dock and depart the port. He shook his head. Yes, if he had been the American admiral, he would have bombed the AI Nasser while she was vulnerable and unable to escape. The only thing he could figure was that the Americans were unaware it had been his submarine that had attacked them. He knew if he was in charge of the American battle force, the Al Nasser would be in pieces now. This dry dock would be a burning inferno. He looked at the sky, half expecting to see the contrails of an inbound cruise missile. No, the Americans believed in reaction, so they must be unable or unwilling to equate the underwater actions against them as coming from the new Algerian Navy. Never underestimate your adversary, he learned as a junior officer. The Americans never underestimated their adversaries; they just underestimated themselves.

  The sound of metal on metal caught his attention. He leaned over the chain and saw one of the dockworker supervisors beating the safety catch of the starboard aft block away. Yes, he thought, today they would leave the dry dock and head to the open sea again. The rebel leadership had ordered him to attack the USS Kearsarge, the new amphibious earner leading the relief for the American Marines occupying Algiers. The rationale was that if they sank the Kearsarge, with its huge two thousand plus complement of Marines, the American public would lose its will for fighting in North Africa. The American public, manipulated by the media, would discover its voice and demand a pullout. Ibn Al Jamal had nearly laughed at the idiocy of the leaders, none of whom was military, all of whom were rebellious intellectual upstarts with miles of aberrant philosophy behind them and not one ounce of common sense or the ability to accept a difference in opinion.

  He felt honor bound to carry out the orders. Honor bound as every Navy officer in every Navy throughout the world feels honor bound to the traditions of the sea and the governments who send them onto it. But his heart was not in it. They had miraculously survived the American attack by Allah’s grace.

  What, for him, had begun as a religious revolution had been revealed as a political rebellion. A political one that would obviate every successful reform the nonreligious government of Hawaii Alneuf had implemented. He stumbled over a bolt head jutting a few inches above the walkway and caught himself
on the chain. On the other side of the chain lay sixty meters of air and about a meter of water. It would have been a quick death, he thought.

  Ibn Al Jamal straightened and brushed his hands on his uniform coat. He reached up and loosened his tie, pulling it down and unbuttoning his white shirt. Before the rebellion, he would never have done such a thing. He would have suffered the heat in silence rather than see a stitch of uniform out of place. What a fool he had been! What an utter, old fool! To listen to words without ever considering them as lies. Now he was committed to the rebellion.

  He had been a vainglorious fool with thoughts of bringing a religious government into existence, a government raised to the glory of Allah. He even reconciled his traitorous actions with his oath to protect Algeria from enemies both foreign and domestic. The government of Hawaii Alneuf had been domestic enemies. He had fallen prey to a rebellion led by a middle class that had lost control to the fanatics.

  A shout ahead of him caught his attention. The supervisor of the dockworkers waved at him and motioned him to join him and several others. He headed slowly toward them while recalling the conversation with his executive officer last night after the gathering where the two of them, in a moment of confidence, had shared their private concerns on the rebellion. It had been a slightly nervous conversation between the two until they realized the similarity of thoughts as to what the rebellion had become.

  Ibn Al Jamal had been surprised to discover the man felt as he did and felt honored to discover that the executive officer never believed in the revolution; he believed in Ibn Al Jamal. Loyalty to him overrode the initial misgivings of his number two. What they should have done when the revolution broke was sailed the Al Nasser to Malaga, Spain, as the better officers of the Algerian Navy had done. He mentally saluted them as the true, honorable Navy officers. When the moment arose where honor and loyalty required him to make the right decision, he had failed. His cards had been cast with the rebels, but tonight he sailed to correct this destiny.

  The supervisor bowed slightly and took Ibn Al Jamal’s arm. The man was very proud of the twenty-four-hours-a-day job done to return Al Nasser to service. He went through the motions of congratulating the supervisor and his department heads on a job well done. They had. Before the revolution, nothing like this would have been accomplished.

  Ibn Al Jamal believed the unsaid threat of an American air strike provided the added incentive for the workers to achieve this event. He looked at the sea of smiling faces surrounding him and cringed at how their beliefs were being manipulated, how they would someday blame themselves for believing the rebel words. He saw several workers glance repeatedly at the cloud-covered sky, probably hoping to be away before the clouds dissipated, and the American satellites were able to see that the Al Nasser preparing to get under way.

  The supervisor briefed the captain of the Al Nasser on the water rate and estimated another six hours before the submarine would float free of its blocks. Six hours meant a slight delay of thirty or forty minutes from the scheduled dry dock departure time of fourteen hundred hours.

  He had lines out on both sides of the boat connected to the top of the dry dock, to hold it steady as the water rose.

  The numbers one and two lines crossed each other like the letter X with the numbers three and four lines doing the same. As the water rose, sailors on both sides of the submarine took in the slack on the eight lines, keeping the Al Nasser steady in the center of the dry dock.

  The voice of the supervisor faded from his attention as his mind turned to how he intended to maneuver the submarine out of the dry dock and into the main channel of the harbor. For the first time in days, he felt a sense of eager anticipation — a feeling he had whenever he set out to sea. The maneuvering of the boat, the precise heading and rudder changes necessary to guide the submarine through the center of the passage. Mariner skills developed from long years of experience. A skill Ibn Al Jamal enjoyed demonstrating. The captain of the Al Nasser estimated that, within an hour after the gates were opened, he would be out of dangerous political waters and in the free, open sea of the Mediterranean. He would have more time for prayer and retreat. Above all, it was time for him to recognize his dishonorable actions and reassert his oath as an Algerian Navy officer in the hopes of correcting some of the mistakes he regretted.

  Last night, he had been regaled as a true hero of the revolution and had suffered in grateful silence the admiration, back slaps, and hand shakes of those around him for his at-sea feats. No one had taken on the Americans and survived to tell about it, but he had. He had challenged the American Navy on the high seas and won — if surviving means winning. Few could fail to take some pride in that accomplishment, even him.

  However, he had his own version of the truth. Allah had protected him for a higher reason than the revolution or for the attack on the American force. How could he be a hero? He took two submarines to seal Only one returned.

  He mined the Strait, but the carrier still entered the Mediterranean. He attacked the American task force but sank not one ship, though they nearly sank him. No, the rebels were grasping for heroes. People need heroes.

  Symbols to rally around and validate their support. Algiers was in American hands. The Spanish invaded Morocco with a massive army that even now bore across west Algeria, heading toward Oran.

  Within another week, the Hawaii Alneuf forces in Oran would be augmented by one of the strongest armies in the Mediterranean. Since the death of Franco, Spain had truly grown into a regional power worthy of fear, but the rebels last night laughed at the Spanish and believed the boasts that one Algerian in battle was worth ten Spaniards. Had not they once occupied and governed the whole Iberian Peninsula?

  Spain came because of the natural gas pipelines. None of the rebel leaders foresaw how Spain would react over a threat to those pipelines. The pipelines ran from the oil fields of Algeria through the Atlas Mountains, over the countryside of Morocco, and beneath the waters of the Strait to emerge on the Spanish side. The pipelines made their revolution a grand strategic concern to the Spanish.

  Why didn’t anyone see that? Where were the thinkers who led this revolution? Did they believe they could cut off the energy supply to Europe, and Europe would passively sit by, wring its hands, and allow it?

  Over 70 percent of the natural gas used on the Iberian Peninsula arrived through pipelines originating in Algeria.

  No one thought the Spanish would intervene. Not once could he remember ever hearing anyone consider Spain a threat. However, they were here, and in every combat with rebel forces, they had easily rolled over them and continued their advance. They had invaded Algeria — his Algeria!

  And part of the blame for this rested on his shoulders for betraying his country. If he could turn time back to recapture the moment when he cast his cards with the rebels—

  The supervisor touched him, causing him to jump slightly, and asked if he was all right. Ibn Al Jamal acknowledged the concern and passed off the inattention to determining how he would maneuver Al Nasser once the boat was refloated. The bedeviled captain thanked the supervisor again, excused himself, and crossed the gangway to the boat. He would rejoin his crew and remain on board until they were under way.

  The executive officer met him, and their eyes locked for a few seconds, confirming the new camaraderie established last night. His number two looked so young, with the dark black hair and brown eyes. Even the mustache lacked the gray that speckled Ibn Al Jamal’s hair.

  For a moment, Ibn Al Jamal’s paranoia surfaced as he wondered if his XO was in reality a rebel informer who tricked him to reveal his misgivings. He shook his head a couple of times, touched the XO on the shoulder, and whispered softly, “Thank you.” If the XO had been an informer, Ibn Al Jamal would already be in some dark, dank cell somewhere, waiting for the inquisition to begin. As it was, the two of them could be hanging from some unused light pole by the time the sun set if anything went wrong or someone suspected what they planned.

 
Captain Ibn Al Jamal, lately of President Hawaii Al neuf’s Algerian Navy, invited the young man below to his cabin, where they could talk. He wanted to talk. He needed to talk. He needed someone who could lift this burden from his soul. Even as they disappeared belowdecks, he knew the burden was his, and only Allah could lift it. It was unfair to throw his guilt onto the shoulders of the young man. As he passed beneath the edge of the top hatch, he also knew the needs of the Al would make whatever they discussed short.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Attention on deck!” shouted Clive when the door to the officers’ wardroom opened and the new commander, Joint Task Force African Force marched into the compartment.

  The man was impressive. General Leutze Lewis stood nearly six foot four, with a muscular barrel chest that seemed to grow directly from his chin. His small waist seemed ill portioned in comparison. Clive doubted the man could stand on one foot without toppling over. The upper arms on the general stretched the sleeves of the light green Army shirt. Standing at attention with his hands ramrod straight along the seams of his trousers, Clive touched his thighs. The General’s arms were about the size of his thighs. The Army high and tight haircut seemed in place with the sharp nose and jutting cheekbones.

  The general stared straight ahead as he made for the podium as if assaulting an occupied hill.

  Most flag officers give an at-ease command upon entering a room. It was not lost on Clive, or the others — he saw the quick side glances exchanged by the officers near him — that General Lewis kept everyone at attention as he moved through the compartment. It dawned on Clive, about the time the general reached the raised podium where the lectern stood, that the man was a showman. He didn’t walk into the room. He swept across the floor with a calculated cadence to draw attention to himself. Admiral Cameron took a couple of steps forward and extended his hand when the general reached the front of the room.