Straits of Power

in front, it was his duty, and that was why he kept getting killed…. But unlike in real life, he got to see how the battle continued without him. Every time, they failed in their critical goals: Enter without too much disturbance for a neighbor to call the police, and exit with Peapod’s gear intact and not too many friendly losses.

Felix took a deep breath. His team was about to try once more to get inside the mansion without getting slaughtered.

Suddenly, Commander McCollough’s giant face stared at him as if through a fish-eye lens, replacing the scene from the simulator.

This must be the man’s idea of a practical joke.

Most SEALs liked practical jokes, unless the joke was played on them.

“Time’s up,” McCollough’s voice sounded in the earphones of Felix’s virtual-reality helmet. “The minisubs to Challenger will be ready for us soon.”

Felix pulled off the helmet. Underneath, his hair and forehead were drenched in sweat.

He glanced around at what Ohio’s SEALs called, with dry irony, the dance floor: the set of treadmills on turntables. His men stood there, panting, their weapons in one hand and their simulator helmets in the other. The team all looked at Felix. He could see that his chiefs felt discouraged.

“Well,” Felix said, “maybe this time we would’ve made it.”

Costa and Porto were skeptical. His men stared at the deck, their morale visibly low, which wasn’t like them.

“Look sharp!” Felix snapped, showing his displeasure forcefully. “We learned a lot the past few days. Mistakes were corrected and weak habits fixed, so they won’t cost us bad when we go with live ammo.”

But Felix asked himself a tough question: Did they need more men? Should he convince Commander McCollough to lend him another team for reinforcements?

No. Too many operators on something like this gets too complex and conspicuous. Integrating new guys, doubling the number for whom we need to steal local transport, coordinating a bigger group, and then everybody escape-and-evading to a badly overloaded mini…. That’s not the answer.

Felix saw the truth, which he knew Captain Fuller and Gerald Parker would like even less than he did.

They needed a human Trojan horse to have the slightest chance of pulling this off. Gamal Salih would have to do much more than just make contact at the consulate and pick up Peapod for a night of partying. Salih, an ethnic Turk who spoke fluent Turkish and German, would have to be the SEALs’ shill, right there when they assaulted the German safe house. Even then, from these simulations, the outcome stacked up as iffy.

Felix led his men toward the showers built into a lower part of the first two missile tubes, under the pressure-proof lock-out chambers. They’d tidy up before returning to Challenger for the duration of the mission; after days of this practicing with little sleep and even less hygiene, the team smelled like a pack of billy goats.

Chapter 22

Jeffrey and Bell sat in Jeffrey’s stateroom. It was late afternoon on a Sunday — the Sunday before the Friday that Felix’s team, with Gamal Salih, would arrive in the German minisub at Istanbul. The final task-group planning and coordination meetings, held on Challenger, were done with, a final rendezvous with Ohio in the eastern Atlantic completed. Jeffrey and Parcelli had wrapped it up with a firm handshake, determined expressions on their faces, and wishes of good luck.

But we also knew it might be the last time we saw each other alive…. It’s as if we made a contest of it, which of us would outwardly betray less tension or doubt. We were very closely matched. I’d have to call it a draw — we both won…. Not that that changed how we really felt inside.

Among many other items, a set of simplified code words had been agreed on, to supplement the standard list, for the fastest and most unambiguous use of the secure acoustic link, in the special war-fighting conditions the task group might encounter.

Challenger and Ohio would stay in a flexible tactical formation, varied on Jeffrey’s orders as the situation evolved — until that fateful moment when Lieutenant Estabo either did or didn’t return with Klaus Mohr and his special equipment, most likely early on Sunday, a week from now. If things went well, Challenger and Ohio wouldn’t again conduct a rendezvous to exchange any people before then. The task group’s egress orders for after that remained unopened in Jeffrey’s and Parcelli’s safes. Jeffrey had no idea what the orders might say.

At least Gamal Salih welcomed the chance to be more involved in the excursion into Istanbul. Jeffrey knew well from his previous mission involving Salih, where submarine captain and freedom fighter had bumped into each other under fire in northern Germany, that the man was very handy with a pistol or a knife. He had good reasons of his own for craving vengeance, and the killing of German combatants ran in Salih’s blood as a natural talent.

Right now, a nautical chart showed on Jeffrey’s laptop screen. The place, inside the Med but farthest from land, which he’d have to try to reach to self-destruct his ship in a worst-case outcome, was marked on the digital chart by a red dot.

The dot was an abstraction. The dangers and uncertainties summarized by its being there were real.

Bell, sitting patiently, followed his gaze.

Jeffrey noticed this, and said, “We’ll find out soon what the Axis ROEs truly are in this theater. If they identify Dreadnought while she creates a diversion for us using Texas, and the Germans go nuclear less than two hundred miles from land, things might turn ugly fast and spread far and wide from there.”

Bell nodded. He was usually much more talkative in private, especially when under stress, when he seemed to like to verbalize his anxieties. His taciturn conduct emphasized too clearly that the strategic issues hanging in the balance put this mission way beyond any situation they’d dealt with before.

Jeffrey thought of Plan Pandora, whatever exactly it was — he still didn’t know for sure, and only Klaus Mohr could tell him. He thought of those modern ekranoplans that Russia sold to Germany — the ultimate amphibious- warfare assault craft — and of the land offensive, thrust at Israel, that the Afrika Korps seemed on the verge of launching.

He thought of the Israeli atom bombs planted in Germany, and of Israel’s remaining nuclear arsenal, over a hundred warheads at least. Some were deployed on her diesel subs for deterrence. Some were suspected of even being hydrogen bombs.

Jeffrey’s intercom light blinked. He grabbed the handset. “Captain.”

It was the lieutenant (j.g.) in charge of the radio room. Jeffrey listened. “Very well, Radio.”

Jeffrey looked at Bell. “ELF code came through. The Texas and Dreadnought action starts right after sunset. Our extraction mission for Peapod is on, definitely confirmed.”

Bell nodded soberly, but again said nothing.

“You go into Control. Ohio should’ve copied the message themselves, but use the acoustic link to make sure.”

Bell stood. “Man battle stations, sir?”

“Not yet. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Bell left. Jeffrey sat alone in his stateroom, staring at the chart on the computer screen. The shores of Spain and North Africa converged like the mouth of a funnel. The neck of the funnel, the Strait of Gibraltar itself, was seven nautical miles across at its tightest, and twenty long. The Bay of Gibraltar, now a German naval base, was at the far end of the Strait.

Texas and Dreadnought are approaching from the northwest. They’ll be somewhere off Cape Trafalgar soon.

Jeffrey thought of that great battle fought near Trafalgar, by the UK’s Vice Admiral Nelson against a merged French and Spanish fleet, over two hundred years before. Nelson won, but was killed in the battle.

Challenger, with Ohio in company, was approaching the Strait of Gibraltar from the southwest, as prearranged, much closer to Casablanca than Trafalgar.