H.M.S. Unseen am-3

by Patrick Robinson

  “Not long, sir,” Admirals Morgan and Mulligan answered in unison. And the national security advisor added, “In my view probably less than two weeks. I think the media will stick to their theory that there’s a ‘Bermuda Triangle’ out on the edge of space…until it finally sinks in that Air Force Three was downed from a much lower altitude, in a very different place. Then they’re going to try and connect all three crashes in some other way…all with big U.S. interests. No other nation harmed, except the Brits, who are considered by our enemies anyway to be the fifty-first state. All the flights were easy to locate by departure times etc….

  “Then there’s going to be one tiny whisper out of somewhere that Concorde’s pilot tried to shout ‘MISSILE.’ Then there’ll be a tiny leak of the last call from Air Force Three. Then there’ll be a barrage of inquiries demanding to know if there was anywhere the missile could have been fired from. Then the captain of that merchant ship will sell his story to a tabloid and the headline will read: ‘WERE ALL THREE AIRCRAFT SHOT DOWN BY MISSILES?’ Then one of the defense correspondent guys will actually wonder whether it could have been launched from a disappearing submarine.

  “At which point we would have to run the risk of looking very, very foolish if we dismiss that as a possibility. That’s a worst-case scenario, but we want to be ready.”

  “That, Arnold is not good. Not good at all.” The President was frowning deeply, his face displaying profound worry. “The ramifications are simply horrific. Imagine the press arriving at the conclusion that there is a rogue submarine, undetected, out in the middle of the Atlantic, knocking down passenger airliners. The mere fact that they got to that conclusion before we did will make us look criminally careless.

  “Then they will go after us, dumb-ass military, dumb-ass politicians, etc. Then there will be a real crisis of confidence. There will be calls for my resignation and probably all of yours, too. Then there will follow a world airline crisis, with some passenger carriers refusing to make the North Atlantic run. That kind of stuff can bankrupt airlines, and passengers will cancel flights wholesale.

  “That will cause a stock-market crash of every industry connected with airlines. You’ll see big, publicly held stocks cave in; corporations who build planes and aircraft parts will see staggering losses. Banks who are owed big sums of money from airlines and plane makers will go into a collective tailspin, if you’ll excuse the pun. The whole thing could turn into your worst nightmare.”

  “Specially if that bastard Adnam bangs out another one,” growled Morgan.

  “Jesus Christ,” groaned the President. “And you know the media are gonna just love it. They’ll come at us like a pack of starved dogs. And they’ll demonstrate all their familiar traits…ignorance, naïveté, innocence dressed up as ferocity. I guess they’ll never learn that the games governments play are usually much deeper than the games they pretend to play.”

  “Nossir,” replied the national security advisor. “They won’t ever learn that. But they’ll always love wading in and upsetting the applecart. Despite the obvious fact that any damn-fool hack can upset an applecart. That’s easy. It’s understanding the entire picture, then acting carefully, that’s hard. And anyway, the press don’t have time for that.”

  Admiral Dunsmore, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, spoke next in his usual calm and thoughtful way. “Despite our general disapproval of the way the media are about to behave,” he said, “I think we can be sure they won’t do much tomorrow. They’ll be too busy handling the news story. But we should take very definite steps to keep the lid on this for as long as possible. No good can possibly come out of a public uproar.

  “So far as I can tell, we have two objectives. One, to seek and destroy HMS Unseen before she strikes again. Two, to bottle up the situation, tight, until we do so. Even then we might never be able to announce what has happened.”

  “Expertly stated, Scott,” said the President. “Please continue.”

  “Thus I think we should have patrols organized around Iceland and right across the GIUK Gap. We should keep the John C Stennis group in the area and have them work east from 30 West, then move south for maybe 200 miles before heading west again. That way we might just push Unseen into an area covered by SOSUS. I would also like to see three more frigates up there, and I suggest Joe Mulligan and I have a strategy meeting as soon as possible.

  “In regard to keeping the story tight, I think we should have our ambassador in Dublin pull a few strings to ensure the Irish understand that it was our Vice President who died, our two senators who were lost, that the aircraft was U.S. military, and that the entire matter is regarded as classified by both ourselves and the UK.

  “I think we should also prevail on the Brits to shut up that merchant ship captain. That may take a threat, but Whitehall is very expert at that. I believe we have the black-box recording from Concorde under tight control, so if we are careful, we might be more successful than Arnold believes at shutting this story down.”

  “Christ, I hope so, Scott,” replied Morgan. “Also I have instructed George Morris to beef up our satellite surveillance on that part of the Atlantic, and SOSUS is already fully in the picture. Trouble is, Unseen is undetectable if she stays slow and deep. Even when she snorkels she’s a whole lot quieter than a Kilo. And if she’s being driven by Adnam, there’re gonna be no mistakes. He won’t even snorkel in good SOSUS water if he can help it.”

  “What are your instructions to our commanding officers, Joe?”

  “Uncompromising and closely controlled, sir. If they locate a diesel-electric boat showing an unequivocal Upholder-Class signature, anywhere near the area, sink it.”

  “Christ, what if they sink the wrong one? The owners will be seriously pissed off.”

  Admiral Mulligan chuckled. “Sir, the Royal Navy have no diesel-electrics at sea. They only owned four of these boats. They sold one to Israel, and we know that’s in Haifa. Two are out of commission in Barrow-in-Furness. The last of the four is Unseen. I’ve already spoken to the First Sea Lord. The Royal Navy has its own frigates out there as well. If they trip over a diesel-electric with a U-Class signature, they’ll sink it.”

  Arnold Morgan interjected, “Sir, it would be better to hunt the boat to exhaustion, then capture it on the surface. That way we could catch Adnam and his crew and hang the fucking Iraqis out to dry. That way no one would object to whatever reprisals we may wish to take. But we may prefer not to risk that with this bastard, sir. He’s too slippery. We just might lose him.”

  “Yes, Arnold. I do see that. By the way, what precisely do you mean by ‘hunt to exhaustion’? I’m not familiar with that.”

  “It’s a submariners phrase, sir. It means setting out a kind of dragnet on the surface, using a mass of radar, and keeping the target submarine submerged, with his battery getting lower and lower. Every time he comes to periscope depth, he picks up a surface ship or aircraft ready to detect his snorkel mast. He has no option but to go deep and hope that the coast will be clear when he comes up later. But his battery will eventually get very low, and he’ll have to come up again. He may get lucky, maybe snorkel for twenty minutes, until he is caught again. But it’s not enough…he can’t submerge for long enough to get away…someone’ll catch him on radar. Then the real hunt is on. You bring in a surface ship, real close, something that can knock off his snorkel mast, cut off the air supply to the engines.

  “Right then, he’s nearly finished. He has to surface. And that’s when we bang a couple of shells through his sail, as a gesture of our interest. Then we’d accept her surrender, board the submarine, and interrogate the crew.”

  “Well, if I was driving the submarine, gentlemen, I’d sink the surface ship with a torpedo,” said the President.

  “Sir,” said Admiral Mulligan, “we have many ways of avoiding torpedoes if we have good prior warning. Especially if we know precisely where our enemy is located. In such a case, if our commanding officer believed there was a real danger from the submarine
, we would simply attack first. Those are the orders my men have at this moment. And to me they make military sense.

  “However, Arnold has political obligations. He wants to find out who the hell they are. And he’s right. I’ll change the orders to my COs. Delete ‘sink on sight.’ Substitute, ‘hunt to exhaustion.’”

  At that moment the President’s private line rang and confirmed he would broadcast briefly to the nation at 2100. Giant television-monitoring screens were being erected all through the parkland to the south and southwest of the White House, where there were now an estimated half million people gathered in tribute to the dead Vice President and his staff.

  Dick Stafford, the press secretary, was waiting outside the Oval Office, preparing to go over the speech with the Chief Executive. Clearances were being requested for the forthcoming memorial service for Martin Beckman, which would be held in the massive greystone edifice of Washington’s National Cathedral, 3 miles to the northwest of the White House. The great bells of the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul would toll for Martin Beckman throughout the night.

  The President called his meeting with his advisors to a close, thanked everyone for their efforts, and approved their recommendations. He went on to say he wished he was leaving with them to work on the plan to eliminate, finally, the specter of Commander Adnam.

  But that was impossible. As the President phrased it, “Guess I have to stay right here and mind the store.” And as Bob MacPherson added, lingering behind for a few moments, “Minding the store might be a lot better than helping these guys. They’ve got an uphill struggle…and if they fail to catch him, and he hits again, heads are gonna roll.”

  Meanwhile the three admirals were all headed in different directions…Morgan to Fort Meade, Mulligan to COMSUBLANT in the Norfolk yards, and Dunsmore to his house along the Potomac. Arnold Morgan would spend the entire evening with Admiral George Morris, watching the satellite reports, praying for a breakthrough, just a sighting of the missing British diesel. They would also watch the Presidential broadcast, and then, sometime after midnight, the national security advisor would call his old sparring partner in the Kremlin, Admiral Vitaly Rankov, chief of the Main Staff, the third most powerful man in the Russian Navy. It was a call to which he was not looking forward.

  The evening passed swiftly. Arnold Morgan and George Morris pored over charts, studied photographs, tried to get into the mind of Ben Adnam. Which way would he go? Or was he still lurking five hundred feet below the surface, right above the Atlantic Ridge where SOSUS might not be quite so efficient? Every two hours satellite reports came into Fort Meade. At 2035, shortly before the President’s broadcast, a picture from Big Bird confirmed that Chinese submarine 093 was cruising east through the Shanghai Roads. Neither of the American admirals was surprised.

  The Presidential broadcast highlighted the television coverage, which was relaying routine messages of condolence from heads of state all over the world. They were all sympathetic, all complimentary, all despondent about the future of world harmony without Martin Beckman. But none of them contained the pure cry from the soul that was echoed in the words of the President of the United States.

  No one would ever forget his unscripted concluding passage. “I never once briefed Martin on any issue that involved the poor and the underprivileged…there are no words to convey to such a man the depth of the despair of the Third World. He needed no words, no paper, no files, no parchment, no rules to play by…because his rules were written on his heart…and I don’t quite know what we’ll do without him.”

  On the following day, no fewer than eight major East Coast city tabloids printed their front page edged in black. The tone of the media, was for once, pure shock, as if none would dare to offend one single citizen, with a smart-ass, tasteless headline. The New York Times led the way with two massive lines, straight across the top of page one, which read:

  MARTIN BECKMAN, OUR MAN OF PEACE, DIES IN MYSTERIOUS CRASH OF AIR FORCE THREE

  The New York Post stated simply:

  DEATH OF THE PRINCE OF PEACE

  Almost all of the broadsheets divided the front pages into two stories, one dealing with the actual demise of the aircraft, the evidence, the height, position, and speed, whatever quotes there were. The second, much bigger story, was devoted to Martin Beckman, and how a huge, dangerous shadow hung over the world because of his death.

  Arnold Morgan had to wait until 0800(EST) to reach Admiral Vitaly Rankov in Moscow. He made the call from his office on the old secure line into the Kremlin. The Russian officer greeted him in English with polite reserve, concerned, as he always was, that when Morgan called there was trouble, somewhere, for someone.

  “Arnold, a nice surprise to hear from you. And how are things at the hub of the world’s last remaining superpower? Not so good today, ha? I am very sorry, Arnold. He was a very special man.”

  “Yeah, Vitaly. It’s too bad. Left a big gap here. Everyone liked Martin.”

  “But what about the aircraft, Arnold? My God, it was nearly new, wasn’t it? What went wrong?”

  “Who knows, old buddy? Damn thing just crashed.” The American was struggling to get out of this drift in the conversation. He wanted only to check on the whereabouts of the two missing Russian submarines. But Rankov was making that awkward.

  “But how did it crash? There’s nothing up there to collide with, right? That’s three bad crashes, all unexpected, in the past five or six weeks. All unexplained. What’s going on, Arnold? Is that what you called about?”

  The admiral knew he was walking a road that would cause him to level with Vitaly Rankov, and although he did not particularly wish to do so, he was not unduly bothered by the prospect. Rankov was the former head of Soviet Naval Intelligence, and he knew about secrets. Also he might be able to help. The two men had cooperated before.

  Nonetheless, Admiral Morgan elected to keep his powder dry. “It was not exactly what I called about, Vitaly. But I would appreciate you marking my card if you could.”

  “Very well, Arnold. How can I help?”

  “According to our surveillance, there are two Russian submarines we cannot see or hear. I don’t want to know specifically where they are or what they’re doing. But I want to ask you to tell me roughly where they are, unless, of course it’s a state secret, and then, of course, I’ll understand.”

  “I doubt it, these days. Which two?”

  “Northern Fleet Typhoon TK-17. Northern Fleet Delta IV K-18.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  Admiral Morgan held on the line, drawing little submarines on his writing pad, as he usually did in times of stress. But in less than four minutes the Russian was back.

  “The Typhoon’s in the Pacific, way south of the Bering Strait, heading for Petrapavlosk. You’ll probably pick her up there on overheads tomorrow. The Delta IV’s in refit in the Baltic. Covered dry dock in St. Petersburg. That’s why you can’t see her. What else? I am anxious there should be no misunderstanding between us.”

  “Not much really. Pretty routine inquiry.”

  “Arnold, dear Arnold. On the day after your Vice President is killed in the crash of no less an aircraft than Air Force Three, probably the best-maintained passenger jet in the world…you get up at God knows what time to call me to ask about a couple of submarines that are doing no harm to anyone, especially the one that’s in hospital? I have leveled with you, my friend. Now you must level with me; otherwise, a very useful friendship for both of us will begin to lose its foundation.”

  “Crafty Russian motherfucker,” murmured Morgan, but not quite softly enough, not on the new crystal-clear international phone lines. He heard at the other end a roar of laughter from the giant ex — Soviet international oarsman.

  They both laughed, and Morgan knew he had to say something, although he was not sure precisely what that ought to be.

  Admiral Rankov saved him a lot of trouble. “Arnold, you don’t think someone shot those aircraft down, do you? And if the answe
r’s yes, you couldn’t possibly think it was us, could you?”

  “Vitaly, I do think someone shot them down. But I never thought you had anything to do with it. I now know you could not have had anything to do with it.”

  “Why? Because the two submarines are now accounted for?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you believe the aircraft were shot down by a missile launched from a submarine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus. Who has such a submarine? Not us.”

  “Nor us. But someone has. You haven’t fitted a surface-to-air system on someone else’s boat, have you?”

  “If we have, no one’s told me.”

  “Well, Vitaly old buddy, the last time there was an almighty calamity, the one involving our aircraft carrier, you’ll recall it all started with a missing submarine of yours.”

  “I’m unlikely to forget that.”

  “Well, if you have anything in the North Atlantic and it happens to trip over a diesel-electric boat with engine lines from a couple of British Paxmans, do me a favor, will you? Sink the sonofabitch, before it knocks out another airliner.”

  “Arnold, is this classified information? I presume you do not wish a word of this to get out?”

  “Vitaly. It’s as secret as any secret I have ever confided in you. Don’t let me down, will you?”

  “I would not dream of it, my friend. Basically you are telling me that someone stole or hijacked the Royal Navy’s Upholder-Class boat that went missing a year ago? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Correct.”

  “And he’s somehow converted it to have an antiaircraft missile, and now he’s out there, causing havoc?”

  “Correct. And remember, if they can hire one of yours, they can surely steal one from the Brits.”

  Admiral Morgan could not, of course, see it, but there was a broad smile beginning to decorate the Russian’s face. “Arnold, what kind of security do you have on Air Force Three? You do, of course, have missile jammers, decoys, and not just some kind of chaff?”