Straits of Power (24 page)
Authors: Joe Buff
I
t was the dead of night in Istanbul that same Sunday. Klaus Mohr struggled to keep his brain divided into three totally separate compartments: scientist, traitor, family man. The first two had to stay active at once, while the third he was forced to hold deeply repressed. This was hard enough, but worse yet, the two active parts of his thoughts contradicted each other. The strain of the constant balancing act was terrible in itself, but also posed the problem that all his scheming might fall apart in front of armed witnesses.
“I don’t understand the problem this time,” the Kampfschwimmer lieutenant said. “We did everything the exact same way we always do. We checked the connections over and over.” His team of seven men nodded. Their eyes looked tired, but their bodies held coiled energy, like panthers. Their leader, the lieutenant, like the others was tall and trim and very fit. He had a hooked, pointy nose, and very thin lips, which made his already gaunt face seem more pinched. “We know we drew a good load for the power supply. I thought the ammeter was faulty, but the cables we tapped were live, they sparked.”
Mohr took a deep breath. The Kampfschwimmer all smelled of sweat and sewage, though they’d washed well enough for sanitary purposes. The room held a permanent, stale cooking odor, like rancid grease and strange spices, left over from the previous tenant. Mohr pretended to feel frustrated, as he should have been under these circumstances in his role as a scientist. This part of his act was effective, because his frustration as hopeful defector was vivid enough.
Klaus Mohr was meeting with the Kampfschwimmer field team in a Plan Pandora safe house. Blackout curtains were drawn, and the lighting in the small room was dim. Istanbul, an open, neutral city, had no wartime blackout, but the curtains were essential for security. The furnishings that came with the rented building were sparse, so some of the commandos squatted or sat on the floor, with their submachine guns worn on shoulder straps or cradled on their thighs. Other Kampfschwimmer were elsewhere, inside or outdoors Mohr didn’t know, standing guard. Mohr himself slumped in an easy chair whose stuffing poked through tears in its back. The lieutenant sat on a metal kitchen stool that creaked as he moved. Between them, as the center of attention on the rug-less worn wooden floor, was the portable quantum-computer equipment. The commandos had just returned from a test. Their test had failed, as Mohr intended. He’d set the equipment out of calibration intentionally.
Klaus Mohr had to act like he was surprised by the problem and badly wanted to fix it. Otherwise, his cover would be blown. From his meeting with that Pakistani last week, Awais Iqbal, Mohr knew he needed to stall until Friday, then hold another meeting like this or his entire plan would come unglued.
Mohr had no illusions now: The device he’d created was a new type of weapon of mass destruction.
He’d received permission from his bosses to attend the party on Friday. He needed to tread very carefully so the permission didn’t get yanked when he announced the need for another field test, back-to-back with Iqbal’s affair. The waiting was taking a toll on Mohr’s nerves.
Five more days.
Each day heightened the chances that Mohr’s arrangements for defecting would be found out.
“Everything worked fine last time,” the lieutenant said, trying to be helpful, sounding puzzled both at the equipment trouble and also at Mohr’s blank stare; Mohr snapped out of his introspection. “The systems crashed just like they should have.” The lieutenant laughed. “Total chaos at the Izmir airport for a few hours, till we let them come back up. But this time, at Zonguldak? Cell phones, bank machines, nothing.” Izmir lay on Turkey’s southwest coast; Zonguldak faced the Black Sea.
Mohr nodded, distracted. His feelings of remorse at having to turn against his own country grew stronger constantly. His sense of grief and regret at abandoning his family, and his worry that they’d be punished despite his best efforts to distance himself from them, weighed on him every morning like a boulder squashing his chest. This was the part of his mind he needed desperately to wall off.
He also had another difficult task because of Iqbal. He’d need to describe the layout and defenses of this safe house to his rescuers, in the greatest detail possible. This made him view his surroundings in a whole new way.
Mohr tried to memorize the floor plan and physical arrangements. He tried to gauge the thicknesses of the walls, interior and exterior. He wondered if the floors were thick enough to stop soft-nosed bullets. He wondered if there was an easy way down and inside from the roof.
“Herr Doctor Mohr?” The lieutenant had caught his mind wandering again.
“I was thinking,” Mohr responded, which was true. He pretended to be annoyed with the Kampfschwimmer. “I’ll need to check through everything carefully. Break each module down, go through systems integration step by step, troubleshoot.”
“How long will it take to fix the gear?”
“I can’t even guess till I figure out what’s wrong.”
“What should we do, then?”
“I’ll have to stay here awhile, to work.”
“Thank you. Should I have one of my men inform the consulate?”
Mohr’s driver and bodyguard, who’d dropped him off near the safe house, would be staying on the move through the streets—parking might attract the wrong attention.
Mohr nodded to the lieutenant, and the lieutenant passed an order to one of the enlisted men, who left.
“Maybe we should get some sleep, sir,” the lieutenant said. “It’s very late. I can use the couch. I’ve slept on much more uncomfortable things. You can borrow my bed. It has the best mattress and pillows.”
“First help me bring the equipment to the clean room. I want to examine a couple of items. Then sleeping sounds like a good idea.”
“Jawohl, Herr Doctor.”
Mohr and the commandos stood. Some hefted the equipment modules. They climbed a flight of stairs and came to one room whose ceiling and walls were completely covered with transparent plastic sheets held on with brown duct tape. More of the plastic sheets, like curtains, hung across the only way in, to keep out dust. This was the improvised clean room. Through the plastic, Mohr could see the table with tools and instruments where he’d tinkered with the equipment before.
“Leave these outside. You’re all too dirty.”
The lieutenant apologized. “We had to get to some rather inaccessible places.”
“I’ll take them from here. I don’t need you or your men now.” Mohr tried to sound imperious, arrogant. Then it occurred to him that if the Americans did assault this building and won, he was talking to a dead man.
Is he close to his parents? Married? Does he miss his wife and kids? . . . Will they miss him?
Mohr cleaned off the module cases in the hallway. The commandos went into other parts of the house. He assumed that, as usual, they’d rotate through security watches while the remainder of the team slept.
Klaus Mohr lifted the first module with both hands, and slipped through the curtains into the clean room.
The high-capacity photon quantum-entanglement unit. How I wish to God I’d never invented the thing.
Jeffrey fretted, pacing in the aisle in
Challenger
’s control room. With the fans turned off for greater stealth, and twenty-plus people squeezed into the compartment, the air tasted increasingly stuffy. It was also getting uncomfortably warm from all the electronics running, even with the water outside the hull at a cold fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit. The lighting was nighttime red, and Jeffrey’s eyes were well adapted by now.
COB and Meltzer sat at their ship control stations with little to do. Jeffrey had his task group in a holding position, drifting silently with the tidal currents, being pulled slowly away from the mouth of the Strait.
He glanced at a chronometer on a bulkhead. “Two hours late. We should’ve heard something.” He was talking mostly to himself.
“They may have a problem on
Dreadnought,
Captain,” Bell said, “like releasing
Texas
from the tow.”
Jeffrey grunted. “If it’s bad enough, it could take them all night. That’s even assuming
Dreadnought
got to her proper place on time.”
“No change in pattern of enemy antisubmarine patrols, sir.”
Jeffrey almost snapped at Bell. He could see for himself exactly what was or wasn’t happening, just by looking at the tactical plot. But Bell, as fire-control coordinator, was doing his job, giving Jeffrey regular updates.
“Very well, Fire Control.”
Much more of a delay and they’d lose the wrong-way tide Jeffrey wanted, and they’d also be forced to cross the deep Alboran Basin just inside the Strait in broad daylight.
On the sonar speakers, Jeffrey heard the churning, swishing noises of surface craft, enemy and neutral, all tracked on the tactical plot. He paced some more, and kept peering at the chronometer as it ticked away each second, on and on.
He heard a sound like distant, rolling thunder.
“Loud explosion bearing three-two-five,” Milgrom shouted. “Underwater explosion, nonnuclear, range one hundred thousand yards!”
Northwest, fifty miles. Exactly where it should be.
Jeffrey rushed to his seat and buckled in. “Fire Control, signal
Ohio:
Get under way, formation for passage through Strait.”
C
hallenger
and
Ohio
began to approach the Strait of Gibraltar. For now they made ten knots, the fastest they dared go here if they hoped to retain their stealth, to try to beat the clock on the all-important changing tides. Challenger’s eight torpedo tubes held six high-explosive ADCAPs and two brilliant decoys.
Ohio
’s four tubes held three ADCAPs and one decoy.
Ohio
’s twenty-four eight-foot-diameter missile tubes bristled like an underwater battleship’s big guns. Her dozens of SEALs were geared up for action, with both of her ASDS minisubs already loaded and ready to deploy on a moment’s notice to harass the nearby African coast if needed; more SEALs could lock directly out of the ship in scuba very quickly.
Ohio
’s hundred-plus Tomahawks would already be programmed for targets on land or at sea that might threaten Jeffrey’s task group. The silo containing
Ohio
’s forty-two Polyphem missiles had its top hatch open, to ripple-fire immediately at anything in the air that could drop torpedoes, depth charges, or sonobuoys within dangerous range of herself and
Challenger.
Ohio
’s crew and SEAL company were set on a hairpin trigger. All Parcelli and McCollough needed were acoustic-link orders from Jeffrey. The mouth of the Strait loomed closer by the minute.
But if we do have to open fire, our goose is cooked. At this of all places we
must
stay invisible. The prearranged diversion by
Dreadnought
and
Texas
simply
has
to work.
Jeffrey kept his focus roving between the displays on his console and the crew sitting or standing all around him in the control room. High tension and anxiety were visible on faces and in body language. COB’s and Meltzer’s necks and shoulders seemed unnaturally stiff as they sat with their backs to Jeffrey, steering the ship and controlling her buoyancy. Some crewmen had growing crescents of sweat around their underarms. Others used pieces of toilet paper, kept handy for cleaning their touch screens, to dab at their foreheads instead. A few of the newer people endlessly squirmed in their seats, or gripped their armrests much too hard. One youngster started to wipe his console screen repeatedly, compulsively, causing a pile of wadded tissue to accumulate on the deck—until a senior chief squeezed his elbow and whispered reassuring words.
The inner effects of fear and worry, or excitement and battle lust, that people around him were feeling, Jeffrey was unable to see. Thoughts of home and family, prayers, grim determination, or daydreams of valor and glory? He could only guess. Tightened chests, churning stomachs, cramping intestines, these he imagined all too well from how his own body protested.
Jeffrey knew he had to say something, do something, for himself and for everyone else.
“Chief of the Watch,” Jeffrey ordered in as calm and routine a tone as he could muster, “put gravimeter display and tactical plot on all periscope-imagery monitors.”
COB acknowledged. The unused, darkened screens around the control room came alive.
Now at least they all saw what Jeffrey saw. He couldn’t make the risks and the burdens any less than they truly were, but he could make this gesture of sharing. Sharing the one thing that, as warriors with no turning back now, they’d crave the most: information, situational awareness, the big picture of what was going on outside the hull and beyond the narrow horizons of their individual consoles.
The gravimeter showed the shorelines of occupied Morocco and Spain. It showed the hills and mountains beyond, and the folds and humps and pillars in the seafloor under the water. It showed Morocco and Spain getting closer and closer together, and the water ahead getting shallower.
Another distant rumble sounded over the sonar speakers.
“Loud explosion bearing three-two-five,” Milgrom reported, “non-nuclear, range ninety thousand yards.” Closer than the previous blast; Milgrom’s voice was controlled, but subdued.
“Captain,” Bell said, “enemy platforms converging on site of explosions.”
Jeffrey watched the tactical plot on his screen. Crewmen without the same data on their consoles glanced at the monitors very briefly, when they dared shift their gazes from fixating on their own displays.
German airplanes and helos were dashing to join the escalating fight between their brethren on the one hand, and
Dreadnought
and
Texas
on the other. Enemy surface warships went to flank speed, and headed northwest like the aircraft. Merchant shipping altered course to stay well clear.
“Sonar, status of any submerged contacts to northwest?”
“No submerged contacts held, sir.”
It was too far, and
Dreadnought
and the sacrificial hulk of the semi-salvaged
Texas
were too quiet. Jeffrey knew he’d asked a dumb, impatient question: New contacts were always reported immediately, without prompting from him.
“Nature of detonations?”
“No torpedo engines detected yet. Conjecture weapons expended were Axis mines or depth bombs.”
“Very well, Sonar.”
Did
Dreadnought
use an off-board probe to set off a mine on purpose? A faked blunder to draw attention, as was her job?
Jeffrey hated not knowing what was happening with the two Allied submarines forty-five miles away. “Fire Control, status of communications with
Ohio
?
”
“Acoustic-link carrier waves still open in both directions, sir.”
Jeffrey’s task group was keeping in formation with each other, and maintaining a sonar signature with as few changes as possible, by sending a steady stream of random numbers through the low-probability-of-intercept acoustic link. The transmissions served as navigation beacons or running lights that—hopefully—only the task group units could hear, and that neither unit would lose.
“Sir,” Milgrom called out, “aspect change on Master Four-two.” Master 42 was a passive sonar contact held on the bow sphere and the port wide-aperture array. She was a German antisubmarine frigate, of the modern
Brandenburg
class. “Master Four-two relative bearing now constant, signal strength increasing.”
“Master Four-two is approaching us, sir,” Bell reported.
“Blade-rate increase on Master Four-two,” Milgrom said. “Flank-speed blade rate, sir!”
The tactical plot showed the Brandenburg accelerating toward thirty knots—faster than
Challenger
dared go because she’d be too noisy, and faster than
Ohio
could possibly go. The frigate, a formidable type of warship somewhat smaller than a destroyer, was coming from west-northwest, pinning Jeffrey’s task group against the African shore. She was only twenty nautical miles away, closing fast, and she carried four torpedo tubes and a pair of Super Lynx sub-hunting helos.
Jeffrey regretted having put the tactical plot on the unused periscope monitors: A shock wave of consternation ran through the control-room crew, more than would have been the case without all those reminders of the peril that was increasing for
Challenger
and
Ohio
every moment.
Barely at the portal to the Strait, and already we’re detected and trapped.
As if to foreshadow their doom, another loud explosion sounded in the distance, and Milgrom reported Axis torpedo engine noises near where
Texas
and
Dreadnought
would be.
“Captain,” Bell said, interrupting Jeffrey’s thoughts, “
Ohio
signals, ‘What are your intentions regarding Brandenburg?’ ”
“Signal
Ohio,
‘Steady as you go.’ ”
Bell looked surprised, but repeated the message aloud and then had it sent. Parcelli acknowledged.
Milgrom reported more explosions in the distance, and Allied as well as Axis torpedo-engine sounds.
The Brandenburg was still closing.
As the reverb from the distant torpedo warheads died away, Milgrom reported two airborne contacts approaching at over a hundred knots.
The Brandenburg’s sub-hunter helos, working as a team, just like in our own standard doctrine.
“Contact on acoustic intercept,” Milgrom almost shouted. She steadied herself. “Axis air-dropped active sonobuoys.”
“Close enough to detect us?” Jeffrey demanded. He couldn’t hear them on the speakers.
“Not yet, sir. But helo search pattern developing suggests high risk of detection at their closest point of approach.”
“Sir,” Bell said,
“Ohio
signaling, ‘Repeat, Flagship, what are your intentions?’ ”
“Fire Control, reply to
Ohio,
‘Repeat, steady as you go.’ ”
“Sir,” Bell objected, “you heard what Sonar said, they’ll be on top of us any minute.”
“Send the message to
Ohio
as I dictated.”
Bell acknowledged, and then Parcelli acknowledged receipt.
“Listen up, people,” Jeffrey said. “We don’t know for sure that the Brandenburg knows we’re here. The Axis might just be checking this area in case the two Allied subs they’re fighting off Trafalgar are a diversion.”
“But, sir, that means the diversion failed.”
“No, XO, it means the Axis aren’t stupid. We’ll have to make a mini-diversion of our own and hope our stealth holds up.”
“Captain?” Bell was obviously confused.
“They’re working hard to make a contact on any Allied sub or subs near Morocco, correct? Let’s satisfy their appetite. Give them something to detect.”
“Sir?”
“Fire Control,” Jeffrey snapped, “program brilliant decoy in tube seven to sound like HMS
Dreadnought.”
Jeffrey studied the tactical plot, and weighed the range and speed of the Brandenburg and her two helos. The picture was kinetic, dynamic, making it very hard to project ahead.
“Captain,” Bell said,
“Dreadnought
is presumed detected well northwest. Enemy will know our decoy is a decoy.”
“Exactly. Have decoy run at stealthy speed due north for five minutes.” For Jeffrey’s trick to work, he couldn’t rush it, but five minutes was cutting things close. “Then have decoy go to
Dreadnought
’s flank speed on course zero-eight-zero.” Toward the mouth of the Straits; the real
Dreadnought
was as fast as
Challenger.
Lieutenant Torelli’s weapons-system specialists went to work. He downloaded the full acoustic profile of
Dreadnought
from Milgrom’s people, from their huge database of different vessels’ signatures. The brilliant decoy was programmed.
“Fire Control, Weps,” Torelli reported. “Decoy ready.”
“Decoy ready, aye,” Bell said. “Captain, decoy ready.”
“Decoy ready, aye. Firing-point procedures, decoy in tube seven.”
Bell and Torelli began reciting orders and acknowledgments and status reports.
“New contacts on acoustic intercept,” Milgrom said. Her voice was an octave lower than the first time they’d been pinged, but now she was gritting her teeth. “Air-dropped active sonobuoys, much nearer to
Challenger
task group.”
This is going to be tight.
“Fire Control, make tube seven ready in all respects, including opening outer door.”
Bell acknowledged and passed orders down the line. Torelli announced when tube seven was flooded and equalized and the outer door was open.
“Tube seven,
shoot.”
“Tube seven fired electrically,” Torelli said.
“Unit is running normally,” Milgrom said
“Five minutes till that decoy starts making a racket,” Jeffrey thought out loud.
Five minutes in which either helo’s sonobuoys, or their dipping sonars, might find us.
“Signal from
Ohio,”
Bell said. “ ‘Decoy will reveal task group’s presence.’ ”
“Signal
Ohio,
‘Message received. Steady as you go.’ ”
“But—”
“Send it, XO.”
Bell did as he was told.
Jeffrey glanced at a chronometer.
Still four minutes before the decoy starts to get rambunctious, as its built-in active sound emitters give off conspicuous noise.
Enemy sonobuoy pings began to be audible over the sonar speakers.
“Attempting to suppress hull echoes,” Milgrom stated. Using active out-of-phase emissions.
“Don’t attempt,” Jeffrey told her. “Do it.”
“Sonar, aye.”
Now Jeffrey could hear, fading in and out, the roar of helo engine turbines and the clatter of their rotor blades.
We’re dead ducks if they find us.
He looked again at the tactical plot and the chronometer. It was a race against time, and a test of each side’s technology and tactics, whether the sonobuoys would see through
Challenger
’s and
Ohio
’s acoustic masking before the brilliant decoy kicked in.
Jeffrey’s people were all on the edge of their seats. The control-room air was stifling from so many overstressed bodies packed so close. For now, there was nothing they could do but wait. A few of them were so sweat soaked that Jeffrey was concerned they’d become dehydrated. There were nervous coughs from dry throats, stifled desperately to maintain ultraquiet.
Suddenly, pings came very close—some of the crew were jolted in their seats. There were also distant explosions, as other German forces battled with
Dreadnought.
Milgrom made her usual announcements, and gave assessments. Underneath her impressive self-control, Jeffrey knew she had to be very worried for the safety of her Royal Navy friends.
Inside his own control room, Jeffrey saw that a few men’s hands were trembling. The phone talker and some others with not enough to keep themselves busy stared at the overhead in abject fear, as if waiting for a depth charge or a torpedo from a helo to be dropped right down their throat—inside the arming radius of
Challenger
’s antitorpedo rockets, and coming at a very unfavorable angle for using noisemakers. Jeffrey sympathized with how they felt. He had to force himself to not rock back and forth in his seat with his fists clenched, as if to physically urge his decoy to do its thing soon and do it well. The Brandenburg was still charging in their direction.
