picked and well paid.
Officially, the Bunga Azul was heading to Indonesia with a cargo from Ukraine. In actuality, she had much more in common with the Glomar Explorer, the ship built in the 1960s in secret by Howard Hughes, so the CIA could salvage a sunken — and nuclear armed — Soviet Golf—class diesel sub that had been lost in the Pacific under suspicious circumstances. The Glomar Explorer was designed to float with her bottom open, to lift the Golf off the seafloor and into her hold, all unseen.
From above, the Bunga Azul was filled with wheat, but the holds all had false bottoms. Under that was a space large enough to accommodate a submarine the size of USS Challenger.
Jeffrey’s problem was getting inside. She was anchored fore and aft to avoid drifting in the breeze or on the current, and her anchor chains created obstacles — plus, there was almost no room under her keel for Challenger to fit.
And he did not have a lot of time to enter her. Most of the canal was only one way. Ships here did not have free will. The authority sent them through in groups they called convoys. The standard 0100 convoy, south through the canal, would start forming up into single file very soon. If Jeffrey missed it, this hollowed-out merchie had to wait for the 0700 southbound convoy. The next one after that wasn’t until tomorrow, Tuesday — when the Afrika Korps offensive was due to begin, according to Mohr, and the Suez Canal was the last place on earth Jeffrey ever wanted to be trapped.
Meltzer’s piloting display showed the underwater part of the Bunga Azul, outlined vaguely by Challenger’s starboard wide-aperture array using ambient ocean noises bouncing off the hull, highlighted by acoustic hot spots wherever machinery ran within. The constant scraping of her anchor chains’ big links against each other gave further sonar clues on how to steer, but all of this wasn’t enough.
“Chief of the Watch,” Jeffrey ordered, “activate all hull-mounted photonics sensors. Passive image- intensification mode.” Stealth now was absolutely paramount; the Egyptian navy would be on guard for enemy subs finding temporary refuge under the convoy before it sailed.
COB acknowledged. Display monitors came on, but their pictures only showed darkness. Scant illumination pierced the dirty water from the quarter moon up in a cloudless sky.
“Use amplification factor one hundred thousand.” Now the water by Challenger became barely visible. “Helm, put us directly under Master Six-one. Use auxiliary maneuvering units as needed.” These were small and quiet propulsors near bow and stern that gave Challenger sideways thrust, making her much more nimble in close confines.
Jeffrey studied the display monitors. The Bunga Azul’s bottom seemed to be sitting on Challenger’s sail; the space between his own keel and the seafloor was too small for a man to stand upright.
“Helm, engage autopilot in hovering mode.”
Meltzer acknowledged. Now, Challenger’s computer watched for any drift in the inertial navigation fix. Commands were sent to the auxiliary maneuvering units, as well as to the pump-jet main propulsor, to hold the boat perfectly steady in every dimension except for depth. Depth was maintained by the computer working the variable ballast pumps — which Jeffrey dearly hoped would be mistaken for noises from the Bunga Azul.
“Sonar, use look-up obstacle-avoidance array to signal we are ready for bottom doors to open.”
Milgrom acknowledged. Jeffrey watched the monitors.
Suddenly a deafening noise came over the sonar speakers.
“Master Six-one is blowing ship’s whistle.” The foghorn, supposedly stuck, was meant to disguise the mechanical transients about to occur. Radio calls would be made to apologize, explain that it wasn’t a sign of distress, and avoid attracting helos and patrol boats. At least, that was the plan.
Jeffrey knew pumps inside the Bunga Azul would be moving seawater out of ballast tanks that lined her sides like a floating dry dock, using that water to partly flood the central part of the ship without changing her trim. Next, Jeffrey watched as the bottom doors swung down and open. Their edges cleared both sides of Challenger’s sail by inches.
It was time to surface into the Bunga Azul’s gigantic secret compartment. Jeffrey double-checked the relative positions of his sub and the merchant ship. COB and Meltzer stood ready to take over in an instant if the autopilot malfunctioned. Challenger’s bow dome and her stern parts — rudder, stern planes, pump jet — were delicate, and she could easily be crippled in an upward collision with the Bunga Azul. If things went really sour, and the surface ship’s rudder or screws were hit by Challenger and damaged, Jeffrey’s entire egress ahead of the Afrika Korps offensive would be kaput. Challenger, her crew, Mohr, and Mohr’s computer modules all could go the way of Ohio.
Jeffrey swallowed hard. “Chief of the Watch, blow all main ballast tank groups.”
There was a hissing sound, accompanying the foghorn that blew loudly on the sonar speakers. Challenger rose, inside the Bunga Azul. When surfaced, Jeffrey watched the bottom doors close underneath. Rubber blocks came out from both sides of the covert submarine hold, to keep Challenger steady inside her host. The foghorn stopped.
COB raised a photonics mast just a few feet, being careful not to hit the top of the hidden compartment Challenger sat in. He set the sensor head in omniscope mode; this gave a 360-degree view, all at once, of their confined surroundings. A pair of men appeared on the catwalk beneath the overhead of the compartment. Both of them carried equipment bags. They waved at the photonics mast. Jeffrey and COB walked to a hatch with some enlisted people and a junior officer. By the time they opened the hatch, the men from their host ship had used a winch to lower an aluminum brow onto Challenger’s hull.
The ship’s master — the formal title for the captain of a merchant ship — and a radioman introduced themselves in heavily accented English; the master’s name was Pribadi Siregar. They were citizens of Indonesia who, in addition to their native tongue, Bahasa, said they also spoke good Arabic. Siregar was of average height and build, slightly stoop shouldered, and neither handsome nor ugly. He was someone easily lost in a crowd, which was probably one reason the CIA had picked him.
A fiber-optic connection was made from the Bunga Azul down into Challenger. Jeffrey ordered COB to wake up Felix and his men and Mohr, and have them inject Mohr’s patch into their host’s electronics. Jeffrey still didn’t know for sure that the patch was harmless, or even if it really worked, but at this point, using it was necessary, a precaution against what might happen any hour now in the environment around the canal.
The radioman, who wore a blue cotton work shirt and jeans, handed Jeffrey a bag of similar clothing, including a red-and-white-checkered kaffiyeh headdress he could use to disguise his face. Jeffrey had studied Arabic in college, enough to get by in casual conversation.
COB went below. Jeffrey followed the master and radioman up through a tangle of secret passageways inside the Bunga Azul.
“The canal pilot is aboard,” the master whispered. “They are finished with fitting searchlight. I suggest you go directly to special radio room.”
The Bunga Azul actually had two radio rooms. One was a standard modern merchant-ship arrangement, while the other, with restricted access through what looked like disused maintenance hatches, held high-tech U.S. Navy equipment supplied by the CIA. Among the ship’s various radio and radar antennas — some of them inside protective radomes on her mast and superstructure — were antennas that could receive broadcasts and data downloads from the navy’s dedicated constellation of submarine communications satellites. These antennas were now linked to Challenger through the fiber-optic line.
