Straits of Power

Criminal Investigative Service has also formally complained that they weren’t involved in the FBI’s work up to now, and the CNO is using that but it’ll only give us another few days. Overall, things don’t look good. The FBI director can bypass the Department of the Navy, bypass the whole Department of Defense, and cut straight to the cabinet level on matters of homeland security. He’s started to already, using something against you for which you aren’t cleared, which is circumstantial but he presents as damning, more persuasively each time he recites it. There’s also the issue of how the Axis knew when Challenger would sail. It might have been by HumInt, and your name remains on the dwindling shortlist of suspects.”

“Don’t my prior contributions count for anything?”

“That’s one of the problems. Your most valuable services of all, things you did several months ago, are top secret and highly compartmented. Candidly, Naval Intelligence and the CIA both feel maintaining that secrecy is crucial to the outcome of the war. So crucial, in fact, that it outweighs anything else you might do for the Allies going forward. I’m sorry.”

“You mean they’re willing to cut me loose? Leave me out in the cold after everything I did for them?”

“From the perspective of military necessity, it does make sense to keep an ironclad lid on your old contributions. Especially since it’s obvious that enemy agents are working somewhere close to the rest of this, given the incriminating evidence against you that’s being manufactured lately. Perhaps not just to negate your effectiveness now, but also force open files that any mole would love to get his hands on.”

“Yeah.”

“Your two recent technical errors, or let me call them apparent or alleged errors, with METOC, don’t help your case.”

“I know. So what should I do?”

“Lieutenant, I trust you implicitly, partly because I do know all you’ve done to aid the Allied cause, and partly because I know Captain Fuller trusts you implicitly and I trust him.”

“Yes, sir. But what does that mean I should do?”

“Give me and JAG and the NCIS and the CNO more ammunition. Do something else, something more, of unquestionable significance to prove which side you’re loyal to.”

Ilse perked up. “Like go on another commando raid?”

“No. You’re limited to this workroom, your quarters, and the direct route in between. Adequate food will be brought to you. You’re not even to visit other parts of the base without prior written permission from Captain Johansen.”

“From now on,” Johansen said, “the marine bodyguards will continue to escort you everywhere, but their tasking is changed.”

“You mean they’re jailers.”

“The FBI insisted, as a precaution,” Hodgkiss said. “Be glad I won the fight to even still give you a work console. And we’re not sure how much longer that will last.”

“You may not communicate on any substantive issues with persons other than myself,” Johansen said. “All phone calls or e-mails from this room or your quarters to anyone on or off the base will be blocked. Electronic equipment in your quarters has been confiscated, including your cell phone and personal laptop. Data access from this console has been narrowed.”

“Solitary confinement, or nearly so. Do I get a lawyer?”

“Only after the indictment is unsealed. Then an attorney will be provided. When things get that far, in a week at the outside, your solitary confinement will be genuine, and total. The gears of the legal process will then begin to grind dispassionately, and as I say at the moment the weight of admissible evidence hangs rather heavily against you.”

“So in effect that’s my deadline to somehow clear myself.”

Hodgkiss nodded. “No more than a week, maybe less. After that you’ll be incarcerated, awaiting trial as a spy. Captain Fuller isn’t here to testify in your defense; he won’t be for some time, assuming he comes back at all. The FBI knows this and is clearly railroading procedures through in his absence.” Hodgkiss pointed at the console. “Apply your technical skills with dispatch to the projects I previously assigned you. Be the first on anyone’s staff to come up with something really good, to exonerate yourself and forestall that indictment.”

Chapter 29

Two and a half days after Challenger and Ohio passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, there was still no sign they’d been detected. For much of that period, Jeffrey had the task group secure from battle stations, so captains and crews wouldn’t be worn ragged. Both ships returned to their regular watch-keeping schedules, with good meals and adequate sleep and recreation, for the one-thousand- nautical-mile trip paralleling North Africa. In water mostly ten thousand feet deep, they resumed the cruising formation they had used in the Atlantic, at a speed of eighteen knots.

To pass the time, a checkers tournament was held in the enlisted mess; an electrician’s mate, the odds-on favorite, won, as expected. His reward was to pick the toppings for the pizzas baked for midrats, an extra meal served every day at midnight. The chiefs, in their separate quarters, played bridge or cribbage; some were wickedly good at both. The wardroom, with Jeffrey joining in now and then, went on a binge of watching old cowboy movies on the wide-screen video monitor on the bulkhead there, as each officer’s workload allowed.

Despite the more relaxed atmosphere, and the lack of sounds of battle from outside, reminders of the impending Afrika Korps offensive never ceased. The on-watch control-room crew tracked noise from a large number of merchant ships, some of them neutral and some of them enemy owned. Many cargo vessels plied the routes between the underside of Europe and ports in Africa. Sonar men reported that most of these rode deep, heavily laden, if going to Africa, but rode shallower, in ballast, heading back north. Jeffrey sometimes wondered what the Allies intended to do to interfere. This logistics buildup made the Afrika Korps stronger every day. As tempting as it was, Jeffrey’s orders were explicit: Hold your fire unless first fired on by the enemy and evasion gives no recourse. Avoid at all cost any event that might compromise the Zeno extraction.

Over the deep Alboran and then Algerian Basins, the prevailing currents had been in the task group’s favor, and they used this to make better time. Then they passed through the strait between westernmost Sicily and Tunisia’s jutting Cape Bon — at almost 100 miles wide, spacious compared to Gibraltar. They steamed on toward Malta, the little island now coming up fast. Malta lay between southeastern Sicily and western Libya. All three places were firmly in German hands. Jeffrey ordered his task group to go to battle stations.

Because of the timing forced on him by his mission, it was broad daylight. Visual observations by the enemy would be much easier, Axis personnel would be more lively and alert, and worst of all there was LASH. It turned the sun itself into a mortal threat for submarines while shallow. The acronym seemed apt. The mere thought of it made Jeffrey feel as if he was getting flogged, the skin and flesh on his bared back being flayed by an unseen adversary. LASH really might be the end of them all.

Jeffrey hoped to God that he was doing the right thing. He could no longer put it off; he warily eyed his displays.

North of Malta was a broad bank that extended to the Sicilian coast, barely fifty miles away. The bank rose like a hump from the bottom to less than 300 feet. The water over this hump was the Malta Channel.

South of Malta lay a short stretch of deep water, studded with seamounts in close proximity behind which anything might be hiding — moored hydrophones, antisubmarine mines, or German class 212s. Then came the vast Tunisian Plateau, where all the water was even shallower than in the Malta Channel.

It’s time, again, to do the unexpected — according to plan.

“Nav, recommend a course through the Malta Channel. Down the middle.”

“Zero-nine-seven, sir.” Just south of due east. Sessions obviously had the answer ready before Jeffrey asked.

“V’r’well, Nav,” Jeffrey said briskly. “Helm, on my mark, left five degrees rudder, make your course zero- nine-seven.”

Meltzer acknowledged.

“Fire Control, signal Ohio.” Jeffrey gave the information for the course change, on