Straits of Power

Jeffrey turned off his laptop. He glanced one last time at the picture of his parents, taped to a bulkhead. He touched the photo gently, and traced the two figures on it longingly with his index finger. He knew how badly it would tear them up if they outlived him, their youngest child, their only son.

He paused to listen to the gentle hushing from the air-circulation vents — soon they’d be turned off for added stealth, to prepare for battle. Jeffrey’s senses were heightened, colors appeared more vivid, and he thought he could hear his heart as it beat.

He looked at his hands while he held them out in front of his body. They were perfectly steady, but his fingers felt ice cold. He rubbed them on his pants legs so the friction would warm his palms.

He opened the door to the corridor, and strode into his control room. He stopped near the command console, where an officer from Torelli’s weapons department had the conn. Bell already sat at the console, next to the lieutenant (j.g.).

“This is the Captain,” Jeffrey announced to everyone in the compartment. “I have the conn.”

“Aye aye,” the watch standers said. The junior officer got up and Jeffrey took his place. The seat was still warm, and Jeffrey adjusted it to be more comfortable for himself. Satisfied, he projected his voice clearly and evenly.

“Chief of the Watch, sound silent battle stations antisubmarine.”

“Silent battle stations, ASW, aye.”

COB had found some excuse to kibitz in the control room, inspecting and checking the readings and settings on different equipment, something usually done by a junior crewman. COB immediately took the seat at the ship’s control console, as battle-stations chief of the watch.

Jeffrey couldn’t help smiling.

“Fire Control, pass the order to Ohio, man silent battle stations antisubmarine.” Bell was now fire-control coordinator.

Bell repeated the message back to avoid misunderstanding or error, then saw to having it sent.

“Ohio acknowledges, sir, manning battle stations ASW.”

“Very well, Fire Control.” Parcelli was obviously expecting the word any minute. He’ll know what to do from here for a while. Jeffrey refocused on Challenger business.

“Chief of the Watch, rig for ultraquiet.”

“Ultraquiet, aye.”

COB spoke to the phone talker, who repeated the message, then held down the switch of his sound-powered mike and passed the order around the ship.

“Chief of the Watch, rig for depth charge.”

“Rig for depth charge, aye.”

As COB and the phone talker ran through their litany again, Lieutenant (j.g.) Meltzer hurried into the control room to relieve the man at the helm.

“Ohio has signaled us, Captain,” Bell reported. “All stations manned and ready.”

Jeffrey glanced at a chronometer. “Acknowledge and tell Ohio I say, ‘Quick work, well done.’ ”

Jeffrey windowed the nautical chart, the gravimeter display, and the tactical plot on his console screen. The gravimeter would be most useful as they approached the coasts and the water got shallower.

From a depth now of five thousand feet, the seafloor would quickly slope upward toward the continental shelves of Europe and Africa as they converged. Currents and countercurrents, and tectonic collision and folding, had gouged a notch 2,000 feet deep or more through most of the Strait. But along the western approaches, the water went down only six hundred feet. The deep path through the strait itself was studded with seamounts — extinct undersea volcanoes — rising almost a thousand feet from the bottom.

On the tactical plot, amber icons showed neutral shipping moving in and out of the Strait. Red icons that crossed the plot at greater speed were small Axis surface warships patrolling the waters outside. Aircraft were sometimes detected in the distance, streaking across the sonar waterfall displays like comets or meteors.

Lieutenant Milgrom’s technicians identified any new contacts, and Lieutenant Torelli’s fire-control technicians tracked them all for the plot. The minefields outside the Strait showed on the tactical plot and the nautical chart. Their positions had to be announced by international law; neutral ocean rovers verified the data.

Jeffrey’s greater concern was antisubmarine minefields inside the Strait, ones the Germans might not have announced. Challenger and Ohio carried remote-controlled probes designed to scout ahead for such hazards, but his intended tactics precluding using them. He was also concerned about bottom sensors, and hydrophone arrays, sprinkled around and stretching across the whole floor of the Strait. Then there was the biggest unknown: the whereabouts and intentions of Russia’s Snow Tiger.

For all this, and more, Jeffrey’s and Parcelli’s officers and chiefs had developed careful plans in intensive working sessions each time they’d rendezvoused.

Jeffrey knew from bitter experience how rapidly plans could come undone. He’d seen that the most crucial tactics usually had to be dreamed up on the spot…. But doing so, repeatedly, for more than six months with too little leave to rest had begun to deplete him.

Something’s missing. I see what it is.

I don’t have my usual relish for combat this time — I feel stale and weary.

I’ll just have to gut it out. Performing while exhausted is a constant aspect of war, and almost four hundred lives on two vessels depend on me.

Jeffrey spoke again to Bell, but knew everyone in the control room could hear him.

“Now we wait for the sun to go down, then the tide to begin running out. Then the shooting starts, hopefully well northwest of us, near Cape Trafalgar.”

Chapter 23

Ilse Reebeck sat at the console in her private workroom. It was starting to feel like solitary confinement. To take a break, she called onto her screen a situation map for the Med, a duplicate of what would loom large now on a wall in the war room, and would also be closely watched by top brass at the Pentagon.

The display showed four Allied nuclear submarines in the eastern North Atlantic, coming in two pairs toward the Strait of Gibraltar. The types of icons used showed that the positions were only estimates, based on prearranged operational plans. The plot didn’t name the individual subs, and Ilse hadn’t been told what their intentions were. But she assumed that soon at least some of them would try to force their way past Gibraltar and into the Med. She also knew that one of them was Challenger.

Part of the map displayed different identified enemy units, all around the Med, belonging to the various branches of the German armed forces. Enemy lines of communications — routes of logistics support — were also shown on the maps, along with known depots and data on their contents. The map showed the array of military units in Egypt and Israel too, dependent for resupply on air transport and the shipping route up through the Red Sea. The map was so large scale that it even reached down to Ethiopia, where the Great Rift Valley formed the northeast flank of the beleaguered Allied pocket in Central Africa — cut off from Egypt by German forces and local auxiliary fighters holding Sudan.

Ilse figured that this picture was assembled from many forms of intelligence, including visual and infrared surveillance, radar, signals intercepts, message decryptions, human-agent reports, plus expert conjecture and surmise at the CIA, the NSA, and the Pentagon’s own various intelligence offices. She knew that hundreds of sensor platforms, and thousands of clerks and analysts, were needed to keep the big picture reasonably complete and up to date.

She called up another display that she found even more interesting, though disturbing, an ever-changing collage of visuals from spy satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles. These would zoom in on a crowded harbor in occupied Italy, or a group of German tanks on the move in the Libyan desert, or a rail yard in Greece choked with rolling stock. These pictures made the icons on the tactical plots seem much more concrete. Ilse reminded herself that many millions of people lived in these places, would be involved directly in fighting the war, or would be