Straits of Power

“You men there, cease all loading. Single up all lines. Challenger people get onboard. Everyone else get off. Retract the brows and the loading conveyors. Remove the handrails and toss them onto the pier.” There was no time for such niceties as stowing those dozens of heavy handrails below. Jeffrey turned the other way. “Seabees, get the camouflage cover positioned and cleated down now…. Maneuvering, Bridge, stand by to answer all bells. Helm, Bridge, stand by on the auxiliary maneuvering units. We don’t have time for tugs…. Shore party, get the forward dry-dock blackout doors and caisson gate open smartly.”

Jeffrey’s world darkened for a moment as the long Seabee’s camouflage box loomed overhead, then was lowered into place. Now Jeffrey could see why the thing’s forward and aft roofs sloped: to give him better visibility. Its many weight-bearing feet and pads, both fore and aft, held it high enough over the top of the hull to leave some room for cascading water as Challenger cut through the seas.

The lighting inside the dry dock dimmed to dull red. As the covered dry dock’s forward doors retracted to full open, Jeffrey heard air-raid sirens in the distance outside. He felt dull thuds in his gut, from heavy antiaircraft guns far off.

Two lookouts and a phone talker began to quickly climb the ladder through the sail trunk. All three wore night-vision goggles and battle helmets. The phone talker was already wearing his bulky sound-powered backup intercom rig, and trailing its wire; the lookouts had on flak jackets, and nighttime image-intensified binoculars swayed from straps around their necks. As he climbed, the phone talker held an extra helmet with night-vision goggles in one hand, for Jeffrey. These were some of the newest junior enlisted men on the ship, but they seemed eager, ready for anything, and proud to do their part.

Bell’s voice crackled on the intercom speaker. “Bridge, Control. Ready to maneuver in all respects.” Bell added that twelve Axis missiles were now in the air.

“Very well, Control. Helm, move us ten feet rightward, on bow and stern auxiliary maneuvering units.”

Lieutenant (j.g.) David Meltzer, the ship’s battle-stations helmsman, acknowledged. His familiar rough Bronx accent made Jeffrey feel better amid the crisis, but not for long.

How did the Axis know we were sailing tonight?

Why did the U-boats sneak in so close?

And why did they launch their missiles so early?

What did these tactics mean? Was there a spy?

Without any visible churning from the small auxiliary propulsors on the lower parts of the hull, Challenger slowly slid sideways to gain some room from the nearer dry-dock wall. Jeffrey put on his helmet, lowered the night-vision goggles, and adjusted the focus and brightness settings.

“Chief of the Watch, Bridge.”

“Chief o’ the Watch,” COB’s calm voice answered. He manned the ballast and hydraulics panel, next to Meltzer.

“Raise all masts except the snorkel mast.”

COB acknowledged. The masts, retracted as part of the engineering tests, rose silently out of the top of the sail.

Behind Jeffrey, the lookouts clipped their safety harnesses into the fittings and then stood atop the roof of the sail, forward of the masts. Jeffrey pulled on his intercom headset and plugged in the wire. This cut off the loudspeaker and handheld mike.

He did a mental calculation.

This’ll be tricky. The tide’s still coming in.

“Helm, Bridge, rudder amidships. Ahead one third.”

The water at the back of the dry dock churned madly. Challenger began to move.

“Bridge, Navigator,” Lieutenant Richard Sessions’s matter-of-fact voice sounded in Jeffrey’s headphones. “First leg down the channel is course one-five-zero, sir.” Sessions, not known for a neat appearance but admired for his high-precision work, came from a small town in Nebraska. He’d been Challenger’s sonar officer when Jeffrey was XO, until Kathy Milgrom was transferred with her valuable battle experience on HMS Dreadnought; then Jeffrey promoted Sessions to navigator, a department head’s job. He’d never once regretted either personnel decision.

“Nav, Bridge, aye.” As backup for the bridge’s computer display screen, Jeffrey wrote with an erasable marker pen on the Plexiglas cockpit windscreen. With the night-vision goggles, he could read in the dark.

Challenger came out of the covered dry dock, and her bow began to swing to the right — upstream, north, the wrong way, with the tide. The wind came from the west, and caught the boxy camouflage cover, dragging the bow around more. The sky overhead was crystal clear; there was no sign of any smoke screen, just sheet lightning in the distance, to the southwest.

“Helm, Bridge, left twenty degrees rudder, make your course one-five-zero.” South-southeast, into the oncoming tide.

“Left twenty degrees rudder, aye,” Meltzer acknowledged. “Make my course one-five-zero, aye.” The young man always sounded cocky, and owned a walk to match. He liked being given difficult things to do, flawlessly executing unique maneuvers Jeffrey would invent on the spot when in harm’s way — or when piloting Challenger’s minisub to even more dangerous places. Meltzer had the bravery of a lion.

He’ll need it, steering my ship through a cruise-missile air raid with us as the obvious target.

Jeffrey turned his head this way and that, assessing everything as Challenger swung leftward compared to the opposite bank of the river. The rate of the turn was uneven, and the ship rolled heavily too, because of the wind and the ungainly camouflage cover. Challenger’s wake curved back behind her, into the dry dock.

Jeffrey cursed. That wake is a dead giveaway, as long as it persists, if the Axis target sensors are smart enough.

There was something wrong with his night-vision goggles. When he glanced in the direction of the huge outdoor traveling crane, at the part of the Northrop Grumman shipyard that worked on aircraft carriers — a crane that could lift nine hundred tons, the tallest thing in the area — he saw multiple images. He also saw flashes along the horizon, toward the Atlantic. These might be artifacts of faulty goggles too. He took them off, but the flashes continued, yellow to the naked eye, backlighting the crane. Make that cranes. I see… seven of them?

Six of them swayed in the wind, their top cross beams making bouncing jerks as they stopped short against their guy wires. Jeffrey realized that these were inflatable replicas of something impossible to hide from either visual or radar. He was impressed by this other method of disorienting the target seekers.

The first concussions from the flashes, after a lengthy delay, reached Jeffrey’s body.

More antiaircraft guns, or hits on missiles, or missiles scoring what their software thinks are hits.

Jeffrey estimated that the guns were thirty miles away, on the Delmarva Peninsula that separated the Chesapeake Bay from the sea. With rocket-assisted projectiles, they could reach out forty miles or more at faster than Mach 3.

Even so, we need to make tracks, and fast.

“Lookouts, conflicting traffic?”

“Negative, Captain. Nothing in sight in the channel.”

Jeffrey ordered Meltzer to increase speed. With no radar and no tugs and not even any running lights, this dash through narrow waters was very chancy. “Control, Bridge.”

“Control,” Bell answered immediately, like the others all business now.

Jeffrey smiled. Danger makes them come alive. I feel Challenger’s soul stirring too, as if she’s throwing off the torpor of her long sleep in dry dock.

“XO, are we getting the navy air-defense command grid?”

“Affirmative, sir. Five by five in the radio room.”

“Patch it into my intercom headset, left ear only. Normal ship circuit, right ear only.”