Straits of Power

get out of our way. Start a rumor, sound panicky. Scream that the new war has started, Egypt is being invaded, atom bombs could detonate any minute.”

“Haqiqa?” Is this true?

“Yes, it’s true…. And tell the pilot that big canal ships will be main targets. Let him have your launch and tell him to head for the bank and run for his life.”

“Na’am. Na’am.” Picked up by Siregar’s open mike, coming from nearby, on land, Jeffrey could hear the mournful howl of air-raid sirens now.

“Call me back, and make all ahead full, the moment the pilot is gone.”

Chapter 48

Ismailia was left behind and the Bunga Azul was pounding nearer and nearer the Bitter Lakes. Jeffrey had taken command of the sub-transporter ship on its bridge — Siregar had readily agreed; he knew Jeffrey was a combat-seasoned naval officer. Fiber-optic lines connected to laptops let Jeffrey watch the same displays he’d seen in the hidden radio room. But now he could read the Bunga Azul’s radar and sonar directly, and see the world outside through the big tinted windows that wrapped around the bridge atop her island superstructure sixty feet above the water.

Chaos reigned everywhere. The canal authority’s radio net was still dead. The ship-to-ship radios, apparently unaffected by the worm, were swamped with demands and questions and pleading. After forcing one ship ahead of him to the side so he could pass, Jeffrey was now charging south a few hundred yards behind another cargo ship with which his speed was very evenly matched. That ship’s wake, at twenty-four knots, churned the canal surface into a foaming white, contrasting with the sparkling deep blue of undisturbed water farther ahead.

The cloudless sky was a lighter, harsher shade of blue. It was streaked with high white contrails, and black or white smoke, where fighter jets with air-to-air missiles tangled. The white smoke meant a missile trail. The black smoke meant a jet had been hit. Sometimes Jeffrey could see parachutes bloom, from pilots who’d ejected. Sometimes he saw bright red flashes, then streaming orange flame, as no one got out and the aircraft plunged to the ground. In the distance, on either bank of the canal, there were spots of flame and smoke rising from where other planes had already crashed.

Jeffrey couldn’t tell by eye or by the tactical plot who was winning. The aircraft, both Allied and Axis, had twisted and turned and dived and soared to the point that even through borrowed binoculars he didn’t know which planes were which. He did have the impression on the tactical plot that Israeli jets were arriving piecemeal, in an uncoordinated fashion, and that Egyptian aircraft were barely arriving at all. Another bad sign was that the center of the swarming dots and confetti of fresh contrails and smoke trails was moving relentlessly east.

A laptop showed that the ekranoplans were on the move too. German fast-missile boats had darted south from Greece to do battle with the Egyptian and Israeli navies. Jeffrey knew they were clearing a path for the ekranoplans, which had already reached the Libyan coast and turned east just as Jeffrey expected. The naval battle was also confused. The defenders were having trouble massing their forces; it seemed that each vessel looked out for itself, with no central coordination or any strategy.

Jeffrey had watched Israeli tank transporters heading across Ismailia’s soaring Mubarak Peace Bridge as he’d passed under it before. The tank transporters’ tractors belched black smoke from their straining diesels as they worked toward the top, dragging the tanks on flatbeds, then sped like runaway trains on the roadway’s downward slope leading west to the land-battle front. There was no other traffic — the bridge must have been closed to fleeing civilians. It tore enough at Jeffrey’s heart to see crowds of men, women, and children standing all along the west bank of the canal, gesturing for help to cross the water. Some jumped in and tried to swim, with pieces of wood or cushions as improvised rafts — or not even that. A few of these figures quickly tired and went under and didn’t come up. Others were run down by the speeding merchant ships fleeing south, including the Bunga Azul. Jeffrey tried not to look.

The master kept blowing the ship’s horn as a warning to those onshore, but so many ships were blowing horns that it did no one much good. Finally Jeffrey had to ask him to stop, so he could think straight.

The theater operational-picture download from the geosynchronous satellite kept going blank, and then coming back.

Either the Germans have increased their jamming power, or the platforms doing the jamming are getting closer. Or both.

Jeffrey stepped back involuntarily when a pair of fighter jets at almost zero altitude raced by right in front of his ship — moving faster than the speed of sound, there’d been no noise in advance to betray their approach. Violet-white searing flame came from their afterburners. Sonic booms from the shock waves of their flight rattled the armored glass of the bridge windows. Their engines were deafening. Even so, Jeffrey could briefly hear the rapid-fire crack crack crack of an automatic cannon. He saw red flashes and small puffs of smoke from near the nose of the trailing jet. The one in front jinked desperately to avoid the bursts of tracer that were trying to hit it and chew it apart. In an instant both aircraft were out of sight, leaving a minor sandstorm kicked up by the wash of their supersonic passage. The Bunga Azul rushed through the cloud of sand and left it behind.

An image that took him a moment to grasp was frozen in Jeffrey’s mind. The leading plane, the one in distress, wore a blue Jewish star in a white circle on each wing. The one behind it, the one in its six — the one doing all the shooting — bore a black Iron Cross on its fuselage.

The Israeli Air Force and the modern Luftwaffe are fighting to the death.

The canal banks opened out before Jeffrey, at the start of the kidney-bean-shaped Great Bitter Lake. The lake was twenty miles long and up to ten miles at its widest. It was narrowest at its far end, in what used to be the separate Little Bitter Lake — until dredging and canal-widening projects joined them into one.

The theater operational plot vanished from Jeffrey’s screen altogether. He brought up different data to check that the fiber-optic cable connection was still good and that the laptop was working.

He called on the intercom down into Challenger.

“XO, Captain. What happened to the satellite feed?”

“Radio room doesn’t know, sir. The antenna’s good. We can’t tell if it’s jamming or if the satellite got knocked out.”

Jeffrey hung up. Then he remembered the northbound convoy.

Standard canal operating procedure was for the 0100 southbound convoy to anchor to one side in the Great Bitter Lake and let the single daily northbound convoy pass, with those ships doing ten or twelve knots.

The northbound ships will be desperate to reverse their course, but they can’t possibly until they get to a deep and wide enough part of the lake…. Some of them will be massive, laden oil tankers with huge turning circles.

No sooner had Jeffrey framed this thought than he spotted the first oncoming ships in the distance trying to make their U-turns. Two collided, one skewering the other at high speed. Fires broke out and the embracing wrecks began to drift, out of control.

Jeffrey and Siregar watched their radar and sonar displays.

“Can we get through the wrecks and traffic jam up ahead?”

“If groundings and collisions do not block the whole canal. How long can you wait?”

If the Germans suspected that a southbound cargo ship had an Allied SSN with Mohr inside, once they won air superiority they might start bombing anything big enough to be a candidate as Challenger’s host. What Jeffrey had told Siregar to tell the canal pilot before, that ships would be prime targets, was part of a lie to get rid of him. But now Jeffrey thought it might not have been a lie. At least in the Gulf of Suez he’d have room to zigzag and try to avoid dumb iron bombs.

“We can’t wait. We must get through immediately.”

“It will be risky.”

“Take the risks.”

The master had the conn. He began to order the helmsman to put on right or left rudder to avoid other ships, and also ordered the Bunga Azul to slow down or speed up. Jeffrey thought Siregar had a