Straits of Power

he was indescribably glad that at last it was done. He thought the Russians were pigs, slobs, idiots. The food they ate was crap, and for years he’d lived on the same crap. They were all alcoholics and Schneider didn’t drink. They were dreadful company.

But now it’s time to get out of this place, forever.

Schneider took another quick break to rest his writing hand and try to get warmer.

For now, Beck is like flypaper. The Allies would have to keep him bottled up, blockaded. They knew that, some week soon, von Scheer would come out. By then USS Challenger was expected by Axis naval intelligence to be on the scene, waiting near Durban. She was the fly that Schneider intended to catch. She was the only submarine that could take on von Scheer head-to-head and have a chance to win.

Except for one thing. In water less that 1,200 meters deep, Challenger’s crush depth of four times that was irrelevant. Doenitz held every advantage.

And more 868Us were coming. A second one was almost ready for commissioning and then her shakedown cruise.

By the time the Allies realized these warships were owned and operated by the Imperial German Navy, it would be too late. In the meantime, acting as if they were Russian was Schneider’s ideal disguise. He could hide in plain sight, and as a neutral the British and Americans had to leave him alone.

Until I surprise and sink Challenger, and help Beck break out, and then apply my achievements in battle and my contacts in Berlin to have Beck relieved so I can take over Admiral von Scheer. The things I could do with her! A ceramic-composite hull’s crush depth, dozens of advanced torpedoes, a hundred-plus Mach 2.5 antiship cruise missiles, and her two Mach 8 anti- carrier-battle-group unstoppable scram-jet missiles — all armed with tactical nuclear warheads.

Schneider finished signing the forms. He got up from the desk. The yardmaster had left him a bottle of excellent vodka, as a parting gift. It sat on the desk unopened, and Schneider left it there. Fuck the yardmaster.

Schneider pulled on his parka and gloves, raised his fur-lined hood, and went outside.

It was almost midnight, yet the sun was barely below the horizon. It’s unnatural. The yard complex was brightly lit. No blackout precautions needed here in neutral Russia. The sky above was overcast and had a yellow tinge; the air held the bite of coal smoke. As Schneider trudged down to the pier, through slush and scattered trash, the din of the giant shipyard surrounded him. Welding torches sparkled, cranes turned while their hydraulics whined, flatbed trucks rumbled by. He heard a locomotive whistle somewhere in the distance, high pitched and plaintive.

By the time he reached the pier where Doenitz sat low in the water, tied up, it had begun to snow. He cursed. It’s May already, and this close to the Arctic Circle it snows. He went through the motions of saluting the Russian flag that flew from a gaff by the cockpit atop Doenitz’s broad, squat, streamlined sail. A handful of Russian submariners were already in position there. Have to keep up appearances, in case of prying eyes. Behind those men, the sail’s roof bristled with raised photonics masts — the modern version of periscopes — and radio and radar antennas, and passive electronic countermeasures masts.

The Russians would remain aboard once under way, to help in the further training of Schneider’s well- practiced crew, and to assist in fixing anything that broke. They’d also be there to play-act if human interface was needed with the outside world. Schneider intended to hold them at arm’s length and let Knipp be his liaison.

Two weather-beaten tugs were already coming alongside, to help the 868U maneuver away from the pier. Then they’d escort her out to deep water, common Russian practice. Black diesel soot belched from their funnels, and white water gushed at their sterns as the tug captains put their screw props into reverse.

Hit my ship too hard, you lousy Russian sorry excuses for sailors, and I’ll personally have you shot.

Schneider used the removable metal walkway — the brow — from the pier onto his ship. The narrow strip of broken ice and seawater in between was oily, and it stank. He climbed through an open forward hatch, down into his submarine. Waiting there were two crewmen, as he expected, ready to thoroughly inspect the hatch and dog it shut for a very long time.

Schneider thought ahead as he walked a narrow, red-lit passageway. The overhead was low. Bundles of pipes and cables made the headroom even tighter, but Schneider wasn’t tall enough to care.

Once they submerged he’d get some sleep. He wanted to be wide awake when Doenitz transited the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap. He’d sound his active sonar as he approached, just like the Allied notice to mariners said to do, to show himself as neutral. Then he’d pause, submerged at thirty meters, while antisubmarine forces looked Doenitz over to verify that she was Russian, not Axis. Schneider was sure they’d pay close attention to the first 868U they’d have a chance to see and listen to from so nearby. He wouldn’t turn on his anti-LIDAR and anti-LASH capabilities. They were top secret and there’d be no reason to use them…. But the joke would be on the Allies.

He’d probably pick up a tail right away, a conventional fast-attack sub. Schneider was sure he would lose it easily. If he was doubly lucky, he’d be able to draw a bead on the Royal Navy’s HMS Dreadnought, their only ceramic-hulled sub, and put her on the bottom without the Allies ever knowing he was involved.

Schneider strode into his control room. Crewmen sat, intent on their instruments and console screens. None looked up, but he easily noticed how the men became more alert with him present, and he sensed their thinly suppressed camaraderie and pride.

They’re following in their forefathers’ footsteps, and they know it and they’re glad. For the third war in a century, another German submarine puts to sea and steers into battle.

Manfred Knipp approached, respectfully awaiting orders.

“Einzvo, take the conn. Call up to the bridge and tell the Ivans to start moving. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Chapter 5

After the meeting broke up late that day, Wilson and Hodgkiss told Jeffrey he’d be briefed on his mission soon — at least on those specifics that anyone could possibly plan in advance, under the circumstances. Wilson returned to New London; Hodgkiss and Jeffrey took separate shuttle helos back to Norfolk that evening. Jeffrey grabbed some fitful sleep in the transient bachelor-officer quarters on the base. He mostly lay awake in the dark, behind the blackout curtains of his room, his mind racing.

Long before dawn Jeffrey caught a courier helo across the James River to the Newport News shipyard. Beneath an infrared-proof cover the size of a gigantic hangar, the dry-dock slip was flooded, allegedly for engineering tests. Challenger floated beautifully in a surfaced condition, riding on the buoyancy from her air-filled ballast tanks. She was freed now from the rows of blocks that supported her weight when the caisson at the river end of the slip had been positioned and the water inside the dock pumped out. Instead, yellow nylon ropes — called lines — and portable rubber bumpers — called fenders — held her 8,000 tons of streamlined bulk in place.

Aluminum brows provided access onto the curving black hull. Cables and piping for shore electrical power, fresh water, and other needs connected Challenger to housings on the indoor pier, which stretched farther than the length of a football field. Scaffolding surrounded the top of her sail, and Jeffrey saw sparks from a noisy grinding wheel where someone wearing a face shield smoothed the seam of a newly made weld. That scaffolding goes pretty soon.

Jeffrey went aboard and climbed down inside without formalities. Each time he met one of his ten officers or sixteen chiefs, he said a quick hello but told them not to let him distract them. Some of them looked like they hadn’t slept in two days — and they probably hadn’t. Jeffrey did a painstaking walk-through of his ship, wriggling deftly past crewmen and contractors who were hastily wrapping up whatever tasks they could finish before the end of the day. The excuse they’d been given yesterday was a fact-finding visit from someone rather senior at the Pentagon,