Authors: Joe Buff
The laptop screen came alive. Red and green icons peppered the map of the eastern Med and the countries around it.
Things did look grim. German tank divisions were racing across Egypt’s western desert, toward El Alamein. Israeli and Egyptian tanks were in the wrong place, useless, too far south to stop them, on the other side of the impassable Qattara Depression—150 miles long from east to west.
Aircraft were fighting now over the eastern Sinai; the Israeli Air Force seemed unable to keep the Luftwaffe squadrons from shoving ever forward. The ekranoplans were moving past the Nile Delta now, continuing east. With their speed of three hundred knots, they could be unloading around Tel Aviv in under an hour. It looked like the Germans were going to achieve the unthinkable—air superiority inside Israel’s borders, and naval superiority along her coast. With Israel’s armored brigades so far away and so slow, the country was in imminent danger of being overrun.
There were no icons denoting tactical nuclear explosions—yet. A counter in a window in one corner of the display showed zero atomic detonations in Germany so far.
How much longer will Israel’s top commanders wait? When will the counter in that window start to climb above zero, toward ten, if Israel begins to set off the A-bombs she planted in Germany?
For all the situational awareness the digital displays gave him, Jeffrey loathed his current status as a spectator. He understood much better what senior people like Admiral Hodgkiss, or the president, must be going through, onlookers in war rooms with largely passive roles as distant battle was joined—a battle over which they no longer had any input or influence. Jeffrey too had already done his thing, made his decision and now would live or die by it, his ordering of the SEALs to take Mohr into Israel secretly.
Something strange began to happen on the screen. The Israeli aircraft formations, like scattered pieces of a ruined jigsaw puzzle, started to assemble themselves into a perceivable, rational pattern.
Icons for air-search radars suddenly came alive all over the Sinai and in Israel’s Negev Desert. Other icons, for surface-launched supersonic antiaircraft missiles, popped onto the screen as if from out of nowhere.
Another icon joined the crowd, an unmanned aerial reconnaissance and communications-relay drone, out over the Mediterranean.
A dot appeared in the middle of the drone icon. Jeffrey knew this meant it completed a network-centric data linkup between a target and one or more shooter platforms.
Jeffrey observed all this, confused. Was this data phony, inserted into the Allied net by the Germans? Had Jeffrey become delusional from sleep deprivation and guilt, and was he seeing things that weren’t there, things he wanted to see more than he wanted to face real life?
More green icons showed on the display, so many now that the computer-generated imagery refreshed itself, and grouped nearby similar icons into one, with a head count beside it. Clumps of Israeli F-16s became one symbol with a number showing the formation size, such as 4 or 12. New icons quickly separating from Israeli corvettes and fast-patrol boats in the Med updated to show they were Gabriel-III advanced naval-attack missiles, with their radio retargeting links in good working order. These too regrouped and the number beside the Gabriel icon grew as waves of cruise missiles tore southwest. First 16, then 32, then 48, then 64. . . . Slowly the Gabriel-III count rose to over 100.
The Egyptian and Israeli armored brigades south of the Qattara Depression split into two groups. One headed west at high speed, and the other turned back east. Their timing was perfect.
They were going to get the Afrika Korps armor caught in an inescapable pincer, with the Med on one side and the huge Qattara Depression on the other—by looping around the depression itself to come at the Germans from in front and behind simultaneously.
Jeffrey felt a mixture of glee and immeasurable relief.
Israel’s and Egypt’s commanders are geniuses. It was
they
who set the world’s biggest trap! They realized this morning that the Axis had tried a new information-warfare computer attack when it failed except in remote areas—because of Mohr’s patch—but they pretended it truly succeeded and acted as if all their major systems were down.
They’d lured the German planes into a killing zone of seemingly paralyzed ground-to-air defenses that were only biding their time. They’d decoyed the German armor into a different sort of killing zone.
To Jeffrey, those commanders’ ability to think on their feet at lightning speed, and the discipline of their troops at every level, was astonishing.
And the Germans knew it. They began retreating everywhere.
The counter in the window monitoring Israeli nukes going off in Germany stayed at zero. Jeffrey gave thanks to God.
The ekranoplans had turned back west, but were so heavily loaded their top speed was 150 knots slower than the Gabriel-IIIs. With real-time adjustments for the cruise-missile courses provided by Israeli drones, the Gabriels couldn’t miss. Jeffrey looked on as the red and green icons connected.
It all seemed so abstract, like a video game someone else was playing. But he knew that what the icons stood for were real aircraft with real aircrews, real tanks, real passengers—and real, live, powerful cruise-missile warheads. It didn’t take long before the ekranoplan-group icon counter dropped from 24 to 12 to 6 to 0, and disappeared from the laptop screen.
Jeffrey, his fingers loosened up now, used the intercom to call Bell.
“Tell Klaus Mohr I could kiss him.”
“Sir?”
“Everything worked. Better than we could ever have expected.”
“It’s wonderful news, Captain. We can see on the theater-status display down here.” Jeffrey heard his people cheering, in the background over Bell’s mike.
“Wait one.” Something had caught Jeffrey’s attention out of the corner of his eye. “XO, rig for dive. We’re almost in the Red Sea. I should be in the control room very soon.”
Jeffrey double-checked the
Bunga Azul
’s nautical chart against her inertial-navigation readout, dead-reckoning plot, and a fix obtained by a crewman making sightings on the relative bearings to different islands in the Strait of Jubal. He eyed the ship’s radar and sonar displays. The water beneath the keel was 100 feet deep, but within 6 miles—14 minutes at 24 knots—the bottom dropped to a comfortable 700 feet. The Sinai peninsula ended just ahead, to port. The African coast of Egypt continued endlessly south, to starboard.
His curiosity aroused, Jeffrey, with powerful image-stabilized marine binoculars, went out on the port bridge wing. Movement and black specks he’d noticed before resolved themselves into helicopters that were hovering or circling over a spot in the water on the horizon off the
Bunga Azul
’s port bow.
Above cobalt blue water where wavelets glinted yellowish gold in the afternoon sun, beneath an azure sky, he saw that two of the helos had cables dangling into the water. Two other helos dropped small things that hit the water and made little splashes.
Dipping sonars, and sonobuoys. Antisubmarine helicopters?
He looked higher in the sky and did a systematic search, spotting two twin-engine maritime-patrol aircraft.
He went back inside and used his laptop to scroll down the screen. Up to now he’d only been looking at the theater network-centric status plot farther north—the counter for nukes in Germany read 0; none had gone off in the Middle East.
Scrolling more, he found the Jubal Strait, where the Gulf of Suez let out into the northern Red Sea. He saw the group of icons. Two helos were Israeli. Two were Egyptian. The maritime-patrol planes were American, working at extreme range, from a carrier strike group far southeast in the Arabian Sea.
These icons were all in green. There was one other icon, in amber. Jeffrey felt as if he’d been electrocuted.
The amber icon was a PROBSUB, a probable submarine contact. The amber color meant that its nationality was unconfirmed. But next to the icon was text that gave a tentative identification of the suspected submarine, and the text said “SNOW TIGER.”
If the Snow Tiger is so stealthy, how did they even know she was there?
As Jeffrey watched, the network data-satellite feed was updated. The PROBSUB became a CERTSUB—a definite submarine contact was localized. Strangely, its color stayed amber.
He wondered why the German wasn’t firing. The aircraft practically had him cornered. Surely he had Polyphem antiaircraft missiles. He could swat the helos and drive off those patrol planes easily.
Oh. Rules of engagement. He isn’t stupid. He won’t shoot first. Which means the helos and planes can’t drop depth charges or antisubmarine torpedoes first.
Either that, or the Snow Tiger is a nosy Russian after all, not German. Maybe Hodgkiss’s information was wrong on that one rather crucial detail.
The intercom connection from
Challenger
buzzed. Jeffrey answered; it was Bell. “Sir, Milgrom reports we’ve been pinged by a sophisticated sonar. Our arrays could hear it right through the
Bunga Azul
’s side ballast tanks and bottom doors.”
What the—
That’s
how they knew he was here. He’s been going active, probing every ship headed south big enough to hold an SSN.
“XO, Captain, go to battle stations antisubmarine.”
“Battle stations, ASW, aye.”
Then the planes did drop torpedoes, on white parachutes to ease their impact with the water, just as the CERTSUB turned red and new icons appeared on the screen. Two submarine-launched torpedoes were coming right at the
Bunga Azul.
O
n the bridge of the
Bunga Azul,
Jeffrey took the conn and glanced at the nautical chart. “Helmsman, right hard rudder! Get us over this shoal marked as forty-six feet!”
“But—” Siregar tried to disagree.
“Do it!” If the chart was inaccurate, or the ship drew a couple more feet than she was supposed to—with USS
Challenger
in her hold—they’d run aground.
It would be a tight race as it was. The torpedoes fired by the Snow Tiger were almost certainly Russian export-model Series 65s; with neutral Saudi Arabia less than fifty miles away, Jeffrey doubted the Snow Tiger would go nuclear. But the latest versions sold to Germany boasted a maximum attack speed of seventy-five knots, three times the speed of the
Bunga Azul.
Conventional Series 65s had high-explosive warheads that weighed a ton, three times the size of an ADCAP Mark 48’s.
Jeffrey knew that the standard strategy for an antiship torpedo attack wasn’t to actually
hit
the hull, but to detonate the warhead
under
the hull. A hole in a ship’s side might not be a fatal blow. A blast beneath her would snap her keel, and maybe even break the ship in half instantly.
I can’t let one of those weapons get under the
Bunga Azul.
I have to force them to go for her side after all.
There was some extra protection there, because the ballast control tanks, partway empty now since the submarine hold was flooded, made a sort of double hull, or spaced armor. And the false bottoms of the cargo holds were one continuous structural deck, giving the vessel added strength and stiffening.
Jeffrey grabbed the intercom for
Challenger.
“XO, Captain, collision alarm! Rig for depth charge!”
Bell acknowledged.
Jeffrey told Siregar to sound his collision alarm. The master pulled a lever. The ship’s whistle began to sound shrill blasts, and gongs came over loudspeakers.
Jeffrey examined the obstacle-avoidance sonar display.
“Helmsman, all stop. All back full until our way comes off, then all stop.”
The master stared at Jeffrey. “We sit here and take two torpedoes?”
“They might miss or they might malfunction. If we’re stopped right over a shoal next to a coral reef, they might not see us if their guidance wires break.”
“Please Allah, let it be so.” There were other shoals and reefs, plus a maze of long but narrow islands, and half-exposed rusting wrecks, both ahead of and behind the
Bunga Azul
in this area outside the main shipping channel.
With bone-shattering concussions, and towers of flame and filthy water, first one and then the other Series 65 slammed into the
Bunga Azul
’s port side. Even by following Jeffrey’s example—holding on to something with one hand while standing on tiptoes with both knees bent, to absorb the force and avoid a fractured spine—the bridge crew were knocked to the deck. The
Bunga Azul
rolled hard to starboard and was brought up sharply when her flat bottom hit the top of the reef. She rolled heavily to port and her bottom slammed into the rocky shoal. The whole ship vibrated and flexed.
Jeffrey shook off the numbness that gripped his arms and legs, then shook his head to reduce the pain in his ears and get his eyes to refocus. It seemed to be raining. He realized that this was the many tons of water thrown upward by the torpedo blasts, now coming back down. Then he smelled smoke—burning paint, wood, plastic—mixed with the stink of torpedo explosive. Still feeling disembodied, he vaguely registered men shouting and more alarm bells sounding. Armored bridge windows were cracked; manuals and coffee mugs and laptops were strewn on the deck; phone handsets, hanging dislodged, bounced and swayed by their wires.
Jeffrey rushed to the engine-order telegraph, and rang up all ahead full. Someone at the other end of the telegraph acknowledged, and the ship began to vibrate in an ugly new way—but she moved.
The master and helmsman began to revive.
“Steer one-eight-zero!” Jeffrey yelled to the helmsman, who took the wheel. Due south. “Get us behind Shakir Island, into the Shadwan Channel. Then steer one-three-five.” Southeast, down the middle of a small side channel between the island and Africa, leading to deep water in the Red Sea.
The
Bunga Azul
was already listing ten degrees to port.
Jeffrey grabbed Siregar by both shoulders and looked right into his eyes. They urgently needed to lighten the ship and keep her from rolling onto her side. “Pump out all your ballast control tanks. Pump the submarine-hold water level down eight feet. Then counterflood the starboard tanks just enough to keep your list to five degrees.”
Siregar understood. He issued orders over an intercom. He listened, examined display panels on the bridge, then turned to Jeffrey. “Only half our fire mains can be pressurized. Wheat in the aft-most cargo hold is in flames, with the hatches blown off, and many smaller fires may grow and join between the engine room and the superstructure. Fuel oil leaking near the stern, and fuel bunkers threatened by fires. Injured men reduce our chances of fighting the fires. Our radar and our sonar are knocked out.”
Jeffrey called down to Bell. “Do you still have the satellite feed?”
“Affirmative.”
“Give me a damage report.”
“No significant damage to
Challenger.”
She was very shock hardened, and loose objects had been carefully stowed.
“Status in the hold?”
“Port-side inner bulkhead bulging inward in two places aft. Plates and welds have failed, we’re getting heavy spray of seawater into the hold. . . . We can hear the host ship’s ballast pumps, they’re not keeping up with the flooding into the hold.”
“Stand by.”
Jeffrey turned to Siregar; the pain in the master’s eyes said he knew his ship was going down. “We need that satellite feed to
Challenger
for as long as humanly possible. We need it to target the enemy submarine.”
“I understand.” There was iron in Siregar’s voice.
Jeffrey glanced at the nautical chart. Siregar’s navigator stood up, favoring his left arm. He saw Jeffrey erect and determined and ran to the chart, but the man was half dazed. Jeffrey called rudder orders to the helm, to zigzag past shoals and reefs on either side. The bulk of Shakir Island hid the helos and patrol planes from view.
Jeffrey grabbed his laptop off the deck—built to navy ruggedness specs, it hadn’t broken. He studied the tactical plot. A pull-down menu gave details about the aircraft battling the CERTSUB: More depth charges and air-dropped torpedoes were attacking the Snow Tiger. It was heading south in water over three thousand feet deep, near the bottom, accelerating. The plot claimed two probable torpedo hits, and six depth-charge near misses. But even the latest U.S. air-dropped torpedoes, the Mark 54s, had a warhead that weighed only 100 pounds. They could harass a double titanium hull, and shake up the crew—certainly harm the stern planes or rudder or pump jet if they got lucky—but not by themselves score a hard kill on the Snow Tiger. Air-dropped depth charges, which fell but didn’t home, also had to be lightweight; at worst they’d be a nuisance against a target with such good sensors and such high speed.
The Snow Tiger’s captain knows that. He’s gone deep, too deep to launch his Polyphems because the little missiles have shallow crush depth. But the latest mod of Mark Fifty-fours implode before three thousand feet themselves.
That’s
why he didn’t try to shoot down the ASW helos. He’s picked sure self-protection over risky antiaircraft attack.
And he’s trying to go to flank speed. He’s heading south of Shakir Island, which for now is sheltering me from him on sonar. He’ll block the Shadwan Channel outlet, and fire at me again.
Though Jeffrey knew nothing whatsoever about the enemy submarine’s captain, and didn’t even know his vessel’s real name, to Jeffrey the contest had already become very personal.
His available information showed the water under the
Bunga Azul
was 110 feet deep.
Still too shallow for
Challenger
to escape.
Challenger
’s host ship was laboring. The deck vibrations were heavy, and the highest speed she could manage was eighteen knots instead of twenty-four.
Jeffrey gave another order. The helmsman turned his wheel. The
Bunga Azul
turned left and steadied on a course southeast. The eight-mile-long Shakir Island sat close on the ship’s port side; other islands, and gas-drilling platforms, lay astern or off the starboard bow. Shakir Island was an arid reddish-brown hill sticking out of green water. The chart said its peak rose eight hundred feet high. Jeffrey still couldn’t see the friendly aircraft, but their data continued coming in. With the naked eye, out the bridge windows, the edge of the island’s coral reef could be seen looming to port. The
Bunga Azul
was riding visibly deeper in the water. Her subdivided ballast control tanks had helped absorb and contain the blasts, but her wounds were mortal. Thick black smoke was boiling out of the after holds and trailing behind the ship. The smell of burning was stronger in the air, and Jeffrey smelled leaking diesel fuel too. The diesel fuel would catch fire at any moment.
In 2 miles the water would drop suddenly to 650 feet. In 20 miles it would reach past 3,000 feet; the Snow Tiger was still rushing south at that depth, to outflank the island.
He’s faster than me but has farther to go. . . . Will I remain afloat for another two miles?
The
Bunga Azul
had slowed to fifteen knots. Two miles at this speed would take eight minutes.
The water was still too shallow for
Challenger
to leave the hold through the bottom doors. Jeffrey’s best place right now was here on the freighter’s bridge, doing everything he could to make sure the
Bunga Azul
reached deeper water.
Bell called on the intercom. “Sir, seawater in the hold is rising faster now. We’re floating off the support blocks. I’m afraid we’ll drift and damage the stern parts or the bow dome. What do you want me to do?”
Jeffrey thought hard. He could have his crew tie the ship to cleats in the sides of the covert hold, but then she’d be trapped inside the
Bunga Azul
as the host ship sank.
“Work the propulsor and auxiliary maneuvering units if you have to.”
Again Jeffrey looked at the chart. He watched the inertial-navigation position plot, advancing at a pace that was much too slow. Minute after minute dragged on. The
Bunga Azul
shook harder and settled deeper and handled sluggishly. Jeffrey was afraid her shafts or engines would completely fail, stranding
Challenger
inside so that the cargo ship became her coffin in a horrifying burial at sea. Then more torpedoes would tear in and pound the
Bunga Azul
’s hulk and
Challenger
to pieces.
All at once they were off the shallow shelf, with Shakir Island still to port and a huge coral reef to starboard.
“Master, stand by to open the bottom doors. If you don’t hear from me or my crew in five minutes, open the doors regardless.” With Siregar’s ship in bad shape, once those doors were open, Jeffrey might never make it to
Challenger.
But he needed a fail-safe arrangement now, so
Challenger
could get away even without him.
“Understood,” Siregar said.
“Good-bye. Good luck. Thank you. And remember, keep the satellite feed in operation as long as you possibly can.”
“I’ll do it myself. Go now. Go with God.”
“Go with God,” Jeffrey responded, knowing how literal this was—Siregar might go down with his ship. He noticed that the master wore a wedding ring, and wondered if he had children.
Jeffrey tore himself away. He hurried through the tunnels down to
Challenger.
In some places lightbulbs had shattered from the torpedo concussions, and he needed to swipe the bigger pieces of glass aside with his forearm so he could keep crawling on hands and knees. In other places AFFF—aqueous fire-fighting foam—dripped from above and made puddles. The slippery white foam was hot. Something up there was busy burning. Using foam suggested a flammable liquid. Jeffrey caught whiffs of gasoline. For deck-mounted winches? He waited for the gas tank somewhere above him to explode. The deeper in the ship he went, the heavier the vibrations from her engines.
When he came out onto the catwalk in the hold,
Challenger
sat there before him, long and sleek and black. Water jetted loudly into the hold through inward-bulging jagged cracks, and the hold was filled with the tangy mist of saltwater spray. Jeffrey tasted it on his lips, he smelled it, and it got in his eyes. He also smelled the acrid, toxic fumes of spent torpedo warheads, and tried not to breathe in too much.
The seawater surrounding
Challenger
’s free-floating hull was choppy, and kept sloshing back and forth and from side to side. This was called free surface during damage control. It made the
Bunga Azul
much less stable. She could capsize at any moment.
Jeffrey started running down the brow. But the weapons-loading hatch was shut. He saw why: The in-rushing water was washing right over the hull.
Bell shouted from atop the sail. “Up here, sir! We shifted the fiber-optic connect to stay in touch as long as we can as the hold fills!”
Jeffrey noticed that the photonics mast was lowered. There was little headroom now between the overhead of the hold and the top of the sail. He heard throbbing and roaring amid the other sounds, as the master kept trying to pump the water back out of the hold—a losing battle. Jeffrey hit the switch to retract the brow; the remote-control system still worked. The brow’s near end raised up, but this robbed him of any handholds.
Warm seawater lapped at Jeffrey’s shoes, then a wave of it drenched him up to his knees and almost swept him away. He lunged and grabbed a safety harness and lifeline that crewmen were lowering. He strapped them on, and the crewmen, with Jeffrey helping as much as he could, pulled him up the twenty feet to the top of the sail—there were no ladder rungs outside the sail because they would cause bad flow noise.