Straits of Power

He also had another difficult task because of Iqbal. He’d need to describe the layout and defenses of this safe house to his rescuers, in the greatest detail possible. This made him view his surroundings in a whole new way.

Mohr tried to memorize the floor plan and physical arrangements. He tried to gauge the thicknesses of the walls, interior and exterior. He wondered if the floors were thick enough to stop soft-nosed bullets. He wondered if there was an easy way down and inside from the roof.

“Herr Doctor Mohr?” The lieutenant had caught his mind wandering again.

“I was thinking,” Mohr responded, which was true. He pretended to be annoyed with the Kampfschwimmer. “I’ll need to check through everything carefully. Break each module down, go through systems integration step by step, troubleshoot.”

“How long will it take to fix the gear?”

“I can’t even guess till I figure out what’s wrong.”

“What should we do, then?”

“I’ll have to stay here awhile, to work.”

“Thank you. Should I have one of my men inform the consulate?”

Mohr’s driver and bodyguard, who’d dropped him off near the safe house, would be staying on the move through the streets — parking might attract the wrong attention.

Mohr nodded to the lieutenant, and the lieutenant passed an order to one of the enlisted men, who left.

“Maybe we should get some sleep, sir,” the lieutenant said. “It’s very late. I can use the couch. I’ve slept on much more uncomfortable things. You can borrow my bed. It has the best mattress and pillows.”

“First help me bring the equipment to the clean room. I want to examine a couple of items. Then sleeping sounds like a good idea.”

“Jawohl, Herr Doctor.”

Mohr and the commandos stood. Some hefted the equipment modules. They climbed a flight of stairs and came to one room whose ceiling and walls were completely covered with transparent plastic sheets held on with brown duct tape. More of the plastic sheets, like curtains, hung across the only way in, to keep out dust. This was the improvised clean room. Through the plastic, Mohr could see the table with tools and instruments where he’d tinkered with the equipment before.

“Leave these outside. You’re all too dirty.”

The lieutenant apologized. “We had to get to some rather inaccessible places.”

“I’ll take them from here. I don’t need you or your men now.” Mohr tried to sound imperious, arrogant. Then it occurred to him that if the Americans did assault this building and won, he was talking to a dead man. Is he close to his parents? Married? Does he miss his wife and kids?… Will they miss him?

Mohr cleaned off the module cases in the hallway. The commandos went into other parts of the house. He assumed that, as usual, they’d rotate through security watches while the remainder of the team slept.

Klaus Mohr lifted the first module with both hands, and slipped through the curtains into the clean room.

The high-capacity photon quantum-entanglement unit. How I wish to God I’d never invented the thing.

Jeffrey fretted, pacing in the aisle in Challenger’s control room. With the fans turned off for greater stealth, and twenty-plus people squeezed into the compartment, the air tasted increasingly stuffy. It was also getting uncomfortably warm from all the electronics running, even with the water outside the hull at a cold fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit. The lighting was nighttime red, and Jeffrey’s eyes were well adapted by now.

COB and Meltzer sat at their ship control stations with little to do. Jeffrey had his task group in a holding position, drifting silently with the tidal currents, being pulled slowly away from the mouth of the Strait.

He glanced at a chronometer on a bulkhead. “Two hours late. We should’ve heard something.” He was talking mostly to himself.

“They may have a problem on Dreadnought, Captain,” Bell said, “like releasing Texas from the tow.”

Jeffrey grunted. “If it’s bad enough, it could take them all night. That’s even assuming Dreadnought got to her proper place on time.”

“No change in pattern of enemy antisubmarine patrols, sir.”

Jeffrey almost snapped at Bell. He could see for himself exactly what was or wasn’t happening, just by looking at the tactical plot. But Bell, as fire-control coordinator, was doing his job, giving Jeffrey regular updates.

“Very well, Fire Control.”

Much more of a delay and they’d lose the wrong-way tide Jeffrey wanted, and they’d also be forced to cross the deep Alboran Basin just inside the Strait in broad daylight.

On the sonar speakers, Jeffrey heard the churning, swishing noises of surface craft, enemy and neutral, all tracked on the tactical plot. He paced some more, and kept peering at the chronometer as it ticked away each second, on and on.

He heard a sound like distant, rolling thunder.

“Loud explosion bearing three-two-five,” Milgrom shouted. “Underwater explosion, nonnuclear, range one hundred thousand yards!”

Northwest, fifty miles. Exactly where it should be. Jeffrey rushed to his seat and buckled in. “Fire Control, signal Ohio: Get under way, formation for passage through Strait.”

Chapter 25

Challenger and Ohio began to approach the Strait of Gibraltar. For now they made ten knots, the fastest they dared go here if they hoped to retain their stealth, to try to beat the clock on the all-important changing tides. Challenger’s eight torpedo tubes held six high-explosive ADCAPs and two brilliant decoys. Ohio’s four tubes held three ADCAPs and one decoy.

Ohio’s twenty-four eight-foot-diameter missile tubes bristled like an underwater battleship’s big guns. Her dozens of SEALs were geared up for action, with both of her ASDS minisubs already loaded and ready to deploy on a moment’s notice to harass the nearby African coast if needed; more SEALs could lock directly out of the ship in scuba very quickly. Ohio’s hundred-plus Tomahawks would already be programmed for targets on land or at sea that might threaten Jeffrey’s task group. The silo containing Ohio’s forty-two Polyphem missiles had its top hatch open, to ripple-fire immediately at anything in the air that could drop torpedoes, depth charges, or sonobuoys within dangerous range of herself and Challenger.

Ohio’s crew and SEAL company were set on a hairpin trigger. All Parcelli and McCollough needed were acoustic-link orders from Jeffrey. The mouth of the Strait loomed closer by the minute.

But if we do have to open fire, our goose is cooked. At this of all places we must stay invisible. The prearranged diversion by Dreadnought and Texas simply has to work.

Jeffrey kept his focus roving between the displays on his console and the crew sitting or standing all around him in the control room. High tension and anxiety were visible on faces and in body language. COB’s and Meltzer’s necks and shoulders seemed unnaturally stiff as they sat with their backs to Jeffrey, steering the ship and controlling her buoyancy. Some crewmen had growing crescents of sweat around their underarms. Others used pieces of toilet paper, kept handy for cleaning their touch screens, to dab at their foreheads instead. A few of the newer people endlessly squirmed in their seats, or gripped their armrests much too hard. One youngster started to wipe his console screen repeatedly, compulsively, causing a pile of wadded tissue to accumulate on the deck — until a senior chief squeezed his elbow and whispered reassuring words.