Straits of Power

“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 in 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.”

Late June, 2012

War isn’t hell, it’s worse than hell, Commander Jeffrey Fuller told himself. He sat alone in his captain’s stateroom on USS Challenger, whose ceramic composite hull helped make her America’s most capable nuclear powered fast-attack submarine. But Jeffrey was not a happy camper. Despite his many successes in tactical atomic combat at sea in a war that the Berlin-Boer Axis started a year ago — and despite his repeated brilliant achievements in special operations raids against hostile territory — very recently, for complicated reasons, Jeffrey had felt like a has-been. His two Navy Crosses, his Medal of Honor, his Defense Distinguished Service Medal, and his whole crew’s receipt of a Presidential Unit Citation some months ago, all put together couldn’t dispel his present dark mood.

Challenger was five days out from Pearl Harbor, deeply submerged and steaming due north, already past the Aleutian Islands chain that stretched between Alaska and Siberia. She was bound for the New London submarine base, on Connecticut’s Thames River, having been sent by the shortest but most frigid possible route: through the narrow Bering Strait choke point looming a few hundred miles ahead, separating the easternmost tip of pseudo-neutral Russia from mainland Alaska’s desolate Cape Prince of Wales. Jeffrey would sail way up and past Alaska and Arctic Canada. Then he’d sneak through the shallow waters between Canada and Greenland, into the Atlantic, to arrive at home port in two weeks for a reception that he already dreaded.

No one from Challenger—including Jeffrey — had even been allowed ashore at Pearl. Taking on minimal supplies and spare parts, and embarking five somber, tight-lipped passengers — an inspection team maybe, or investigators from JAG? — had occurred entirely by minisub. Challenger hid underwater, off the coast from Honolulu, frustratingly near its enticing beaches, bars, nightclubs, and more. No fresh fruit or vegetables were provided by the Pearl Harbor Base, to replenish what had already run out since the ship’s last port of call. This was supposed to be for security, but Jeffrey thought that was just an excuse; it felt much more like punishment. It was as if, after his most recent mission, despite his major contributions to the Allied cause, he’d become a pariah, shunted out of sight and out of mind by the powers-that-be.

Forget about me, it’s an insult to my crew’s dedication and courage.

Jeffrey was smart and self-aware. He knew his unpleasant mood wasn’t due to exhaustion, usually a chronic problem the way he drove himself. He and his men had had ten days of wonderful leave in Australia, including much consumption of the excellent local beer — cut short by sudden orders to proceed with greatest possible stealth to Hawaii. Also cut short, alas, was his newly made contact with a Royal Australian Navy commander named Melanie, of whom he carried deliciously vivid memories…but missing her wasn’t the cause of his funk. He’d been gone from her now for a longer stretch than he’d known her.

He wasn’t morose either, after the fact, for the adversaries he’d killed; his soul adjusted better than most to this dehumanizing cost of war. Nor was his mood caused by concern for his crew’s survival, for the outcome of an impending battle that Jeffrey might well lose — he’d long since mastered these stresses and strains of command