Straits of Power

burst with Challenger’s classified address came through properly.

The message was decrypted quickly. Jeffrey asked the radioman to look away.

“I smoke now. Yes?” The young Indonesian left.

Jeffrey read. The message was from Admiral Hodgkiss. It told Jeffrey that a new Russian fast-attack sub, the first of the 868U class, code name Snow Tiger, was almost certainly German owned. The message said her propulsion plant was lined with layers of a composite that suppressed her tonals at flank speed.

Jesus.

The Snow Tiger had a double titanium hull, a single cowled pump-jet propulsor, twin liquid-metal-cooled reactors with silent pumps, and a super-slippery hull coating. An acoustic anomaly detected off Somalia confirmed that the Snow Tiger was able to move at sixty-plus knots with only minimal flow noise as her signature — and was heading toward the Arabian Sea.

Hodgkiss warned Jeffrey that the Snow Tiger might have been ordered to lurk near the strategic Bab el Mandeb choke point, to destroy American submarines heading inward to support the defense of Israel and Egypt.

Jeffrey nodded to himself. During the opening phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, the U.S. had had twelve fast-attack subs positioned in the Red Sea at once, launching Tomahawks, with overflight permission, at Iraq.

And since the maximum range of the newest Tactical Tomahawks was about 1,500 miles, to reach the threatened Egyptian frontier from the Indian Ocean, any U.S. subs would have to enter the Red Sea again. Then there were the carrier strike groups — with more Tomahawks on their cruisers, destroyers, and frigates — whose air wings, with multiple midair refuelings, might barely reach the active battle front from outside the Red Sea without violating now-neutral Saudi Arabian or Yemeni airspace.

It was a curse on the Allies, which the Axis was making full use of, that the Boers had nuked Diego Garcia early in the year. It was a double curse that now the Allies didn’t have one usable land air base in that direction closer than Australia.

The next part of the message, his new ROEs, made Jeffrey almost physically sick. If he encountered the Snow Tiger, he was forbidden to shoot first since its true nationality remained unproven; to sink a genuine Russian-owned sub could start a full-scale World War III. An ELF code was specified as the signal to him that other forces had been shot at, confirming that the Snow Tiger was enemy. Only if he received this code was he allowed to shoot first — unless the Snow Tiger had already opened fire on him.

The last part of the message was the worst: The Germans might be aware that the Allies had ships like the Bunga Azul, since, as the Allies knew from experience, the Axis owned such covert sub transporters too. The Snow Tiger, Hodgkiss said, might have orders from Berlin to watch for SSNs heading out of the Red Sea.

In the worst case, given everything that’s coming, I’ve got the dirty-bomb problem all over again — spreading radiation from Challenger’s reactor core around the Suez Canal, or right near Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and Africa.

Jeffrey blanked his message screen when someone knocked on the innermost door: the radioman, back from his smoke break. “Come in.”

Jeffrey devoted part of his mind to the implications of Hodgkiss’s new information, and the other part to watching the theater-operational status display. A clock said it would be getting light outside, with full sunrise soon.

“Mr. Captain?”

Jeffrey turned. The radioman, confused, annoyed, then sheepish, pointed at the electronic support-measures console. Many of the radars and radios plotted on it before had suddenly gone off the air — including the whole canal-authority voice and data net. Jeffrey grabbed the intercom for Challenger. “Get Klaus Mohr on this line.”

“He’s still sleeping, sir,” Bell said.

“Get him on this line.”

The radioman, badly puzzled now, was trying to tune to civilian Egyptian stations. The convoy was nearing Ismailia, halfway through the canal. The city had a population of over one million. The news or a morning talk show should be in range. Nothing. A quick self-check showed that his black boxes were working correctly.

The radioman had a computerized list of station frequencies. His digital tuner tried them. He turned on a speaker, making a helpless gesture. Station after station showed zero signal strength on his digital meters; Jeffrey heard nothing but silence or static. Then the radioman’s equipment, reset to autosearch, found a radio station that still worked. Jeffrey knew enough Arabic to understand what the anchorman was saying. Parts of Ismailia, in no clear pattern, had lost electrical power. Internet servers in scattered parts of the country had also crashed. The newsman said his producers were getting fragmentary reports of power outages and cell phone failures.

“Captain Fuller? This is Klaus Mohr.”

Jeffrey described what was happening. “What have you done?”

“It makes sense…. Quantum decoherence would cause the effects to be somewhat random at this distance from Zichron Yaakov. Some areas would get the patch, but not the worm, intact, while others would get the worm but not the patch.”

“In plain English!”

“Pandora has started, Captain. Berlin moved up the attack. And there’s no way to know from what we’re seeing locally who got into Israel’s main systems first, us or the Kampfschwimmer.”

Jeffrey slammed down the phone in frustration and horror.

Challenger was right in the Afrika Korps offensive’s path, stuck inside the Bunga Azul, inside the canal — and Israeli and German tactical nukes could start to detonate soon.

The download from the satellite continued, for now. New display icons appeared as German aircraft and cruise missiles took to the air. Other icons were added or modified as Egyptian and Israeli jets in groups changed course and speed, or left runways and fought for altitude. Allied cruise missiles launched in retaliation for the German ones. The aerial-situation plot quickly became a muddled mess of red and green symbols charging at each other at supersonic speed. They looked bound for a head-on clash, somewhere between the Nile and the Suez Canal.

What if the worm and Mohr’s patch each grabbed hold in different places, not just in small cities in southern Egypt but throughout the entire theater? Or what if there was no patch, and Mohr was a liar or had been deceived? What if it was all a worm, one that didn’t work everywhere because of strange quantum effects even Mohr couldn’t fathom?

What if Germany thinks Israeli command and control is crippled, but Israel thinks enough of it isn’t, and both are sure but neither is right — because everything’s like Swiss cheese? What happens next? Do they grapple and inadvertently pull each other into the abyss?

Jeffrey scrolled to the situation plot for the Indian Ocean. The nearest supercarrier was more than 3,000 miles away, still placed to help protect the oil-tanker route from the Persian Gulf to the Pacific.

That was six or ten times the combat radius of the carrier’s planes. The midair refueling assets needed to make a difference in blunting the Afrika Korps from so far away simply didn’t exist. U.S. Air Force heavy bombers, operating at extreme range, couldn’t be a factor before tomorrow at the earliest.

The Germans had decisively beaten any Allied spoiling attack. Egypt and Israel were on their own when it mattered most, the vital first twenty-four hours of a multidimensional blitzkreig — and governments in Berlin, Cairo, and Jerusalem all knew it. Jeffrey snatched the phone handset to the Bunga Azul’s bridge. He asked in his best Arabic for Siregar.

“Is the pilot able to hear you?” Jeffrey said in English.

“Na’am,” the master answered in Arabic. Yes.

“Then listen carefully. The German offensive has started early. We have to get past the suspension bridge at Ismailia before one side or the other blows it and the canal becomes blocked in our face.”

“Na’amal E?” What should we do?

“Make radio contact with the ships ahead. If radio doesn’t work, fire a flare to get their attention and use a loud hailer. Tell them you accidentally picked up some broadcasts, and get them to go to their maximum speed or