Straits of Power cjf-5

by Joe Buff

  He did a mental calculation.

  This’ll be tricky. The tide’s still coming in.

  “Helm, Bridge, rudder amidships. Ahead one third.”

  The water at the back of the dry dock churned madly. Challenger began to move.

  “Bridge, Navigator,” Lieutenant Richard Sessions’s matter-of-fact voice sounded in Jeffrey’s headphones. “First leg down the channel is course one-five-zero, sir.” Sessions, not known for a neat appearance but admired for his high-precision work, came from a small town in Nebraska. He’d been Challenger’s sonar officer when Jeffrey was XO, until Kathy Milgrom was transferred with her valuable battle experience on HMS Dreadnought; then Jeffrey promoted Sessions to navigator, a department head’s job. He’d never once regretted either personnel decision.

  “Nav, Bridge, aye.” As backup for the bridge’s computer display screen, Jeffrey wrote with an erasable marker pen on the Plexiglas cockpit windscreen. With the night-vision goggles, he could read in the dark.

  Challenger came out of the covered dry dock, and her bow began to swing to the right — upstream, north, the wrong way, with the tide. The wind came from the west, and caught the boxy camouflage cover, dragging the bow around more. The sky overhead was crystal clear; there was no sign of any smoke screen, just sheet lightning in the distance, to the southwest.

  “Helm, Bridge, left twenty degrees rudder, make your course one-five-zero.” South-southeast, into the oncoming tide.

  “Left twenty degrees rudder, aye,” Meltzer acknowledged. “Make my course one-five-zero, aye.” The young man always sounded cocky, and owned a walk to match. He liked being given difficult things to do, flawlessly executing unique maneuvers Jeffrey would invent on the spot when in harm’s way — or when piloting Challenger’s minisub to even more dangerous places. Meltzer had the bravery of a lion.

  He’ll need it, steering my ship through a cruise-missile air raid with us as the obvious target.

  Jeffrey turned his head this way and that, assessing everything as Challenger swung leftward compared to the opposite bank of the river. The rate of the turn was uneven, and the ship rolled heavily too, because of the wind and the ungainly camouflage cover. Challenger’s wake curved back behind her, into the dry dock.

  Jeffrey cursed. That wake is a dead giveaway, as long as it persists, if the Axis target sensors are smart enough.

  There was something wrong with his night-vision goggles. When he glanced in the direction of the huge outdoor traveling crane, at the part of the Northrop Grumman shipyard that worked on aircraft carriers — a crane that could lift nine hundred tons, the tallest thing in the area — he saw multiple images. He also saw flashes along the horizon, toward the Atlantic. These might be artifacts of faulty goggles too. He took them off, but the flashes continued, yellow to the naked eye, backlighting the crane. Make that cranes. I see… seven of them?

  Six of them swayed in the wind, their top cross beams making bouncing jerks as they stopped short against their guy wires. Jeffrey realized that these were inflatable replicas of something impossible to hide from either visual or radar. He was impressed by this other method of disorienting the target seekers.

  The first concussions from the flashes, after a lengthy delay, reached Jeffrey’s body.

  More antiaircraft guns, or hits on missiles, or missiles scoring what their software thinks are hits.

  Jeffrey estimated that the guns were thirty miles away, on the Delmarva Peninsula that separated the Chesapeake Bay from the sea. With rocket-assisted projectiles, they could reach out forty miles or more at faster than Mach 3.

  Even so, we need to make tracks, and fast.

  “Lookouts, conflicting traffic?”

  “Negative, Captain. Nothing in sight in the channel.”

  Jeffrey ordered Meltzer to increase speed. With no radar and no tugs and not even any running lights, this dash through narrow waters was very chancy. “Control, Bridge.”

  “Control,” Bell answered immediately, like the others all business now.

  Jeffrey smiled. Danger makes them come alive. I feel Challenger’s soul stirring too, as if she’s throwing off the torpor of her long sleep in dry dock.

  “XO, are we getting the navy air-defense command grid?”

  “Affirmative, sir. Five by five in the radio room.”

  “Patch it into my intercom headset, left ear only. Normal ship circuit, right ear only.”

  “Bridge, acknowledged. Wait one.”

  “Bridge, Nav, two miles to next waypoint,” Richard Sessions’s voice sounded in both ears. “New course will be left turn onto zero-three-five, Captain.” Slightly north of northeast, rounding the sharp corner of the Virginia Peninsula, leaving the waterfront of the shipyard stretching behind.

  “Nav, Bridge, aye.” Jeffrey jotted on the Plexiglas.

  What the…

  Dead ahead lay the I-664 crossing, near the mouth of the James River. Most of it was a causeway bridge, but part was a tunnel — so warships could pass with no fear that bridge debris would ever block the channel. At the north end of the bridge, U.S. Coast Guard buoy tenders and a cutter were at work. They had almost finished unrolling gigantic sheets of floating material, like a sports stadium ground cloth only much larger. The sheets were anchored to the riverbank and to the bridge, and were supported against wave action on their outer edges by buoys… and pulled into place against wind drag by the cutter.

  They’re changing the shoreline, literally. I’ll bet those sheets will look like land on radar, optical, or infrared. They’re shifting the end of the peninsula a quarter mile southeast.

  Analyze that, Axis missiles.

  In a few seconds Jeffrey’s left ear registered crackling voices with different call signs announcing vectors and ranges and air speeds, and giving orders to more and more units to open fire. Antiaircraft missiles began to ripple-fire from ships farther out in the bay, or from batteries on land. Launch flashes pulsated rhythmically, and missile after missile rose on white-hot rocket-motor points of light, gained speed and broke the sound barrier, and raced out to sea. Their smoke trails began to obscure the northeastern horizon. The roars and thuds and booms were closer now, and louder, and overlapped. The latest strobing flashes seemed to freeze, as halting snapshots, a group of rotating, waving, thrashing excavator arms.

  Kwan’s people and their machines are busy.

  But the jet engines of those Axis cruise missiles bring them almost ten miles closer for every minute that goes by.

  And the barge cranes disguising the long south part of the bridge have barely started.

  “Helm, Bridge.” Jeffrey tested his new intercom setup.

  “Bridge, Helm, aye,” sounded at once in his right ear.

  At the same time, in Jeffrey’s left ear, another salvo of six Axis missiles was detected, and plotted, and tracked. The wind in Jeffrey’s face, the rolling of his ship on the surface — at its worst on top of the sail — and the ever-increasing danger gave Jeffrey a strong emotional high.

  Okay, Challenger. Show me your warrior’s heart.

  “Helm, ahead flank.”

  Chapter 9

  Challenger made faster progress at flank speed. Soon she reached the I-64 bridge, designed like the I-664 bridge. From the control room, Sessions fed Jeffrey the next course change, to cross over the tunnel portion of the bridge. Jeffrey relayed the helm orders to Meltzer. The visible causeway parts of the bridge seemed to rotate slightly left as Challenger turned a few degrees to the right.

  Jeffrey had a better view across the lower Chesapeake Bay, to the sea. A blinding flash erupted in the distance, and Jeffrey could see the low-lying Delmarva Peninsula in outline on the northeast horizon. There were cargo ships moored farther up the bay, lit for a moment as if by a flashbulb.

  “Splash one!” someone shouted in Jeffrey’s left earcup. The defenses had hit an inbound missile.

  “Bridge, Control,” Bell’s voice said in Jeffrey’s right ear. In the background, over Bell’s mike, Jeff
rey heard people in the control room cheering.

  “Control, Bridge. XO, quiet in Control. One down means at least eleven are flying.”

  “Bridge, Control, aye.”

  I don’t like playing the heavy, but it’s my job.

  There was another blinding flash, then two more.

  “Splash another three!” a different voice said on the air-defense grid. Sharp, harsh rumbles arrived seconds later through the air.

  The bridge console computer display said the time was 2024.

  The first wave of missiles will get here any moment. We won’t know if they’re nuclear until they start going off.

  “Radio Room, Bridge. Can you pick up the data link and feed me the air situation display?”

  “Bridge, Radio, aye. Wait one, sir.”

  Overlaid on Jeffrey’s navigational chart, there suddenly appeared icons for hostile inbound missiles. Outbound antimissile missiles showed too. Little lines from each icon plotted their courses and speeds. The Axis missiles were coming in Jeffrey’s general direction. The friendly defensive missiles were going the other way, moving much faster, converging on the enemy weapons.

  Two icons appeared to merge.

  There was another blinding flash. The deep, rumbling concussion arrived much sooner than before. Jeffrey saw flames rain onto the sea — burning missile fuel.

  Then things became so hectic, the battle was hard to follow.

  Antiaircraft guns on the Hampton shore joined those on the outer peninsula. Missile batteries near the Norfolk navy base commenced firing. The Axis missiles were caught in a pincers. Icons moved fast on the bridge console screen. The noise from all around in the distance was loud even through Jeffrey’s headphones. The flames and flashes were so constant he raised his night-vision goggles; he could see more easily without them.

  A missile streaked overhead from Norfolk, its motor bright but with no sound. Then the sonic boom punched Jeffrey hard, followed by a tearing roar. To the left, over the bay, the missile detonated. An instant later there was a tremendous explosion in the air, and the radiant heat was searing — an inbound German missile destroyed by a defensive missile’s proximity fuse. Jeffrey ducked instinctively. Smoldering shrapnel and debris pelted Challenger’s special camouflage cover. More missile and antimissile parts splashed into the water all around. Burning pools of fuel were floating too close for comfort off Challenger’s port side. The air was filled with smoke and an acrid, choking stench.

  “Lookouts below!” Jeffrey ordered hoarsely. It was getting too dangerous up here.

  The two men slid down off the roof of the sail, shimmied past Jeffrey and the phone talker, and descended the sail-trunk ladder. Jeffrey thought they looked disappointed. But they were much too exposed on the roof. At least the cockpit sides were armored.

  Jeffrey turned to the phone talker. “Keep your head down!”

  Jeffrey shut one half of the streamlining clamshells, which closed off the top of the cockpit whenever the ship was submerged. This gave the phone talker protection from above — Jeffrey had realized that his ship could be badly hurt as collateral damage, even if no inbound missiles scored direct hits.

  There was an awful detonation behind Jeffrey, on the land. One from the first wave of missiles had gotten through, and been shot down or homed on something.

  The Virginia Peninsula. A 1,000 pound warhead. People may have just been killed.

  Jeffrey’s deepest regret was that civilians might die so his ship could escape. He looked back as flames rose higher and higher on the land. He gritted his teeth till his jaw hurt.

  God help them, those poor people, because I can’t.

  Jeffrey’s latest lesson in military necessity was no less painful than his many earlier ones had been. He hoped the diversion measures had lured the missiles to crash in parks and not on dwellings — but from the size of the spreading fires, and the countless secondary explosions, it didn’t look that way.

  Gas tanks in cars. Oil tanks by houses, and oil in electric transformers on poles. Natural-gas supply pipes, and propane tanks in backyards, and hydrogen in anything equipped with fuel-cell drive.

  Pandora’s cost is already high.

  Jeffrey almost jumped out of his skin as another enemy missile detonated in the sky while a different one hit land near the shipyard, simultaneously. The rumbles reached Jeffrey ten seconds apart, because the first missile had been closer. There was more fire on the water, and on the land. The fires lit up the sky. Fresh and stale smoke trails intertwined like strands of fluffy spaghetti. The constant glare and flashes drowned out the stars.

  Sessions called again with a slight course correction. Jeffrey passed orders to Meltzer. Ahead of Challenger now lay the famous Lucius Kellam, Jr. Bridge-Tunnel. It ran for seventeen miles from near Norfolk to the south tip of the Delmarva Peninsula, carrying U.S. Route 13 across the whole mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. This bridge had two tunnel sections, each about one mile long, that ran between man-made islands. Challenger would use the southern tunnel channel, to round the point of Virginia Beach as rapidly as possible.

  As they drew close, Jeffrey saw that the ten-acre islands at each end of the tunnel were surrounded by lines of tethered barrage balloons. Between the thick tethers of the helium-filled balloons were suspended meshes of thinner, lighter wires, like hurricane fencing.

  Probably spun monofilament fibers. The mesh would stop an incoming cruise missile cold…. A warhead down the throat of a tunnel would sever the vital logistics artery — all seventeen miles of it — for much longer than just knocking out a prefab bridge section would.

  Out beyond this final barrier lay the open Atlantic Ocean. The water was still much too shallow to dive.

  Challenger continued racing seaward on the surface of the water. Ten minutes later, as the antiaircraft cacophony diminished behind Jeffrey but fires still lit the sky, he wondered why the U-boats hadn’t launched another salvo yet. Between them, they could have up to twelve more missiles.

  Had they been sunk? Or had they used the first few missile launches to make the U.S. reveal the deception schemes and give away the antiaircraft ships’ and defensive batteries’ positions to spy satellites?

  They would need time for such data to get to Moscow and be transmitted to the submerged U-boats by the Kremlin’s extremely-low-frequency antenna. Then the U-boat captains would have to work out their next moves. Jeffrey wondered if this was why there was a delay. He asked himself if it might explain why the U-boats didn’t shoot two dozen missiles as fast as they could, to try to swamp American defenses and overwhelm their target all at once — but have no second attack wave remaining.

  Jeffrey’s left earcup crackled. There were no kills claimed on the U-boats yet. They kept avoiding maritime patrol aircraft and helicopters that aggressively dropped depth charges and lightweight homing torpedoes near where the missiles had first risen from the sea. The U-boats used noisemakers to divert all the torpedoes, and applied skillful tactics to evade the depth-charge drops. Jeffrey could hear frustration rise in the voices on the radio circuit.

  As the undersea noise and reverb from wasted torpedoes and depth bombs diminished, fresh sonobuoys seemed to show that the U-boats had spread farther apart — to make the antisubmarine forces cover a wider search area and split their efforts in two.

  A new report came in. Jeffrey was electrified. Four more cruise missiles had just taken off, two from each of two places. The U-boats were definitely alive, definitely still fighting.

  Once again the American antisubmarine aircraft closed in. This time the U-boats stung back. They launched Polyphems. The airplanes and helos scattered, using defensive countermeasures and escape tactics of their own.

  Jeffrey was angry. If Challenger was there, those U-boats would be dead by now.

  Then another call sign spoke, one that Jeffrey had figured out was from an air force AWACS plane, patched into the navy command circuit, overseeing the whole battle with its powerful radar dome atop the fuselage.


  The latest salvo of Axis missiles was aimed in a different direction, more to the south, staying over the sea.

  Jeffrey watched the new icons on the bridge-console computer display. They were on a collision course with his ship.

  The air force joined the battle in earnest now: The AWACS vectored a squadron of F-22 Raptors, state-of-the-art supersonic fighters, to try to shoot the cruise missiles out of the sky.

  There’ll be around a dozen planes in that squadron.

  “Bridge, Control.”

  “Control, Bridge, aye.”

  “Captain,” Bell reported, “four vampires inbound, bearing zero-three-two, range one seven zero miles, approach speed five hundred knots. ETA twenty minutes.”

  “Very well, Control.”

  Jeffrey could see this for himself on the bridge computer, and he’d already heard it over the radio link, but it was Bell’s job to tell him anyway, for redundancy and clarity.

  Jeffrey watched the newest icons, for the Raptors from Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington. Their speed vectors were long, suggesting they were on afterburner. Their course arrows pointed southeast.

  Someone very senior decided to leave the capital less protected, to try to aid my ship…. But it’s touch and go as to whether the Raptor icons will get to the cruise-missile icons and stop them in time.

  As if the U-boat captains were reading Jeffrey’s mind and wanted to shake his confidence, the radio reported that four more cruise missiles had been launched. Jeffrey watched his screen. Their course was the same as the previous four, as if they too were chasing Challenger.

  “Nav, Bridge.”

  “Bridge, Nav, aye,” Sessions answered.

  “Give me a course to the deepest water we can reach in ten minutes at present speed.” On the surface, at flank speed, Challenger did over twenty knots — but energy wasted by wave making kept her from going nearly as fast as when submerged.

  Jeffrey lifted his left earcup and strained to listen to the open air. He heard the sound of water churning up and over Challenger’s forward hull, hitting the support legs of the camouflage cover and swirling past the base of the sail. He heard the whistling of the wind over the Plexiglas windscreen and also through holes in the camouflage cover; panels knocked loose on the cover banged as Challenger rolled. The entire cover made a constant wooden creaking noise. But no guns fired, no antimissile missiles launched. Jeffrey knew that cruise missiles and Raptors were in a race beyond the horizon. He asked himself over and over if those missiles were aimed at what the enemy now knew to be Challenger, or if they followed a different approach course to have a better chance of clobbering the dry dock they didn’t realize he’d left.