Barracuda 945 am-6

by Patrick Robinson

  "If we have, the newly promoted Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe's consolidating it along the corridor in his own office. Couldn't have him do it in here. That boy makes more mess than any other five people I've ever met. Paper! Christ, he can fill a room, every day of his life."

  Arnold Morgan grinned. "Shall we get him in here, since he is now your personal assistant?"

  "Sir, I wanted to check something with my Chief of Military Intelligence, Captain Wade. But he's very busy, I've been on the phone to him twice before I got here. I'm going down to his office for ten minutes."

  "OK, George. I'll go pay a surprise visit to James Ramshawe, check he's on the case… "

  Both Admirals made for the door. George Morris headed for the elevator, Arnold Morgan for a big office twenty yards down the corridor.

  The sign on the door read lt. comdr. j. ramshawe, assistant to the director. Arnold did not knock. Arnold did not knock when he entered the Oval Office. He probably would not knock on the Pearly Gates.

  He pushed the door open to find Jimmy Ramshawe in his shirtsleeves, hunched over a table on the left of his room, putting sheets of paper in various stacks, and working his computer with his right hand only. "Wait a minute, whoever the hell you are," he grunted. "Someone's made a blue here. I've gotta fix it before I stand up."

  "What's a blue?" asked Admiral Morgan.

  "Australian for balls-up," replied Ramshawe, still not turning around. "How some people reach the conclusions they do reach, beats the absolute shit outta me."

  "And me," said the Admiral. At which point the young Lieutenant Commander sensed something familiar about the rasping tone of the voice, and just found time to mutter, "Oh, Christ," before leaping to his feet and apologizing profusely for his rudeness.

  Admiral Morgan chuckled and offered a handshake. They had not seen each other for several months, not since a very difficult operation in the Strait of Hormuz, which had led to the National Security Adviser literally telling George Morris to elevate Ramshawe to his present exalted position.

  "Well, the Alaska catastrophe's almost four hours old. I'm counting on you to have a theory, cause and effect, guilt or innocence, fact or fiction."

  Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe loved Admiral Morgan, and he was one of the few people not completely fazed by his disconcertingly tough manner.

  "Sir, right now I have not seen much more than anyone else. But I've noticed the definite evidence pointing to two separate areas of explosion and fire, damn nearly half a mile apart. I have not been able to connect them, mainly because all the phone lines to the oil terminal are down.

  "I have been through to the Police Department, and I've got a computer hooked up to a local radio station, which is interviewing a lot of Amoco people. The fuel farm and the actual terminus went up in flames separately, about ten minutes apart. No doubt about that.

  "Almost all of the key operatives from the plant were in the town asleep, thank Christ, or they'd all be dead. Several of them have been on the radio, and they are all expressing total bewilderment at the fact that two quite separate, totally devastating fires broke out. I've heard three different oil execs say that a flash fire was impossible. Every last barrel in Valdez was crude, and it quite often doesn't burn at all. Not unless something makes it very, very hot, some kind of an explosion, a bloody bomb or something."

  "You've seen the Coast Guard surveillance reports?"

  "Only the prelim. There's no record of any ship movement anywhere in Prince William Sound any time after 2300 the previous night… And that takes care of a lot of ocean… The bloody place is one hundred miles long, out to the one hundred-meter line."

  "Air traffic?"

  "Not even a private aircraft after 2100."

  "Nonetheless, the oil guys must be thinking someone blew the holding tanks up?"

  "They're not saying that, sir. At least not yet. But they must be thinking it. Let's face it, crude oil doesn't suddenly go off bang by itself, does it? And that bloody fuel farm has nothing anywhere near that would cause even a spark, never mind a twenty-acre inferno."

  "Hmmmm," said the Admiral. "No ships, no aircraft, no suspects, no apparent motive, no clues. Not much of a start to an investigation, eh, Jimmy?"

  "No, sir. Not much at all."

  "Who was it said, When you have eliminated the impossible, only the truth remains?"

  "Sherlock Holmes, sir. Front and center."

  Admiral Morgan laughed. "What do you have to do around here to get a cup of coffee?"

  "Oh, Christ. Sorry, sir. I'll fix it. The usual… black with buckshot?"

  No one ever forgot Arnold Morgan's coffee requirements, honed during his years in nuclear submarines. No cream, just two or three little white sweetener pills. Buckshot, he called them.

  "Right. Better get some coffee for the boss too. He'll be back in a moment. But before that I want to talk to you, so hurry up."

  Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe picked up the phone and ordered coffee for three, with hot English muffins, since it was now after eight in the morning and the two Admirals had been up half the night.

  He replaced the receiver, then turned back to the President's National Security Adviser. "Lay it on me, sir. What do you need?"

  "Jimmy, in the absence of any further evidence to the contrary, we'd better face up to the fact that some bastard just blew up the biggest oil terminus in the United States."

  "Yes, sir."

  "The total impossibility of an attack by sea or air means that whoever did it must have escaped by land. That means the range of mountains right behind Valdez, correct?"

  "Yes, sir. The Coast Guard will be combing the area with three helicopters by first light in about one hour. I've already spoken to them."

  "Do you think it likely that a bunch of crazed terrorists crept through the snow and ice, down Mount Hogan, and put a few bombs in the oil storage area?"

  "No, sir. And even if they did, they'd get caught pretty sharpish this morning. The place is gonna be alive with helicopters, and anyone making a getaway will be leaving footprints in the snow all over the bloody wilderness, right, sir?"

  "Precisely. The chances are nothing will be found. So what does that leave?"

  "Sabotage," said Jimmy. "By a local person, or persons. Or an enemy attack with at least two missiles, which no one saw."

  "Fired from where, Jimmy?"

  "Well, not from the land. Not from the air. And not from a surface ship."

  "Why not from the land?"

  "Have you seen the size of those storage tanks, sir? And the area that's burning? You couldn't cause that much catastrophe with a handheld missile like a Stinger. If the fires were caused by a missile strike, it was a big, highly explosive, unbelievably accurate guided weapon. Sophisticated military. Nothing less. You don't keep that kind of stuff in a bloody cave."

  "And you can't fire that kind of stuff from a bloody cave," said the Vice Admiral. "There is only one place from which you can fire that kind of stuff. It's known as a warship."

  "And there wasn't one of them within hundreds of miles, sir.

  "Not one that we could see, James. Not one we could see."

  Ramshawe smiled his lopsided Aussie grin. "I was just thinking you might get around to that, sir," he said.

  "Likewise," replied Arnold Morgan. "And this is my real question… When I arrived in this office you were too preoccupied to care whether it was me, the President of the United States, or Jesus Christ. Whatever you were working on was extremely important to you. What was it?"

  "Sir, I don't want to be accused of irrelevance. Not on a day like this."

  "Jimmy," said Admiral Morgan, walking across to the window and staring out over the gigantic parking lot, "what was it?"

  "Well, sir. I arrived at the conclusion that if the culprit was a salvo of big guided missiles, they must have been unleashed from a warship, one that we somehow couldn't see.

  "I've actually been here all night, sir, because I've been working on a minor problem sin
ce yesterday evening… It keeps running through my mind. I've pulled a file up in hard copy, and I've been reading it carefully. When the fires broke out, and the guys on the radio kept saying it could not have happened, I found myself putting two and two together and making about three hundred ninety-five."

  "I know the feeling," said Arnold. "Tell me the minor problem."

  "OK… lemme get these papers in order… Right… On February twenty-first, our Naval attaché in the Tokyo Embassy receives an inquiry from the Japanese Government about U.S. submarine patrols off the Kamchatka Peninsula.

  In particular, about patrols off the Bay of Avacinskiy, you know, sir, that godforsaken place in front of Petropavlovsk?"

  "Got it. Go on."

  "Well, our man in Tokyo makes a few inquiries and discovers no American submarine has been on patrol in the Western Pacific for at least three months. Nothing nearer than the southern waters of the Aleutians. But being a careful and cunning diplomat, he doesn't tell this to the old Japanese. He decides to withhold all information until he finds out why the hell they want to know."

  "Good man," said Arnold. "Rear Admiral Whitehouse, I believe?"

  "That's him, sir," said Jimmy, long accustomed to Arnold Morgan's encyclopedic memory. "He tells the Japanese Government they can count on full U.S. cooperation, but first they have to explain why they want classified Naval information. We don't just bandy this stuff around, right?

  "Anyway, he gets what he asks for. The Japanese Ministry tells him they have received a very large claim for compensation from the master of a one thousand five hundred-ton trawler out of Ishinomaki, that's Honshu. The Japs not only tell him, they enclose full, signed affidavits from Captain Kousei Kuno and his senior crew members, who all claim they were damned nearly dragged to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean by a submarine that charged straight into their trawl net."

  "What made them think we were the prime suspects?"

  "That's the thing, sir. They didn't. They went straight to the Russians, and got a surprisingly fast and comprehensive reply. The Pacific Fleet Commander immediately cited a Sierra Class Barracuda nuclear boat that they said left Petropavlovsk early that very morning, 9 February, bound for the South China Sea.

  "Their memorandum said the ship had turned south, immediately beyond their restricted area, outside the bay, and could not possibly have collided with any fishing boat some fifteen or twenty miles north of the Petropavlovsk area. And it just so happens I've been watching that particular ship for several months — followed it on the satellite all the way from Murmansk — and right here, sir, I have a dated photograph."

  He handed the Admiral a black-and-white ten-by-eight-inch print. "See that, sir — it did leave Petropavlovsk on that day, very early because we take satellite photographs at around 0730. And it did turn south — there it is, right there, sir. Check the GPS. It really was exactly where and when they said it was."

  "Then what did the Japanese do?"

  "They checked with the Chinese, who told them they have not had a submarine in that area for more than six months. Nothing beyond the Yellow Sea."

  "So what's vexing you, Jimmy? As if I don't know."

  "That's right, sir. I've checked the boards. I've had Naval Intelligence check every goddamned submarine in the world. And they've found them all. Either the Japanese fishermen are lying, just because they lost their net, or something bloody weird is going on."

  "And then you sat here twisting and turning over what hit the oil tanks, and you couldn't get that phantom submarine out of your mind, correct?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Just then a waiter tapped on the door, and entered bearing the coffee and muffins. These were immediately followed by the entry of the Director himself, George Morris, clutching a sheaf of papers, every last one of them containing statements by Alaskan oil execs who were unable to come up with a reason between them as to how the oil fires could possibly have started.

  Arnold Morgan himself filled in the details of the discussion for Admiral Morris, who nodded thoughtfully. "If it was one fire in one place," he said, "we'd be pursuing the accident theory. Two fires, in two places, same time, same area, doesn't make any sense. If it wasn't sabotage, someone just hit us. Simple as that."

  "I don't think sabotage is entirely out of the question. Possibly someone in the pay of a terrorist organization… " Arnold Morgan was pensive.

  "Sir, when the bloody fires cool off," said Jimmy, "there's gonna be some evidence of some kind of incendiary device. If it's a couple of bombs there should be something for the forensic guys to identify. Missiles are more difficult because they tend to blow themselves into much smaller pieces. Plus the heat from those fires will melt everything — but they'll probably find clues."

  "As far as I am concerned," said Admiral Morgan, "we should already, between ourselves, as the senior Military Intelligence academics in this country, be considering the possibility of a military strike against us as an absolute priority. We should also accept that if we were hit, we were hit by missiles fired from an enemy submarine. And that possibility will magnify over the next few days when we discover exactly how far away the nearest foreign warship was."

  "Which makes the word of the Captain of the Mayajima another priority," added Jimmy. "I've read a translation of his evidence, and it's pretty convincing. He has produced the broken end of the warp that held the trawl net — snapped about fifty feet from the boat, way underwater, plastic reinforced by steel, almost two inches thick. You couldn't break that stuff with a buzz saw, never mind pull it clean in half."

  "What else does he say?" asked Admiral Morgan.

  "Plenty," replied Jimmy. "He wants $200,000 compensation. Says he lost his trawl net, and his entire catch, because he had to let go the remaining warp. He says the submarine was dragging them backward at more than twelve knots, pulling the stern of his ship down. He says water was piling in over the stern, flooding some interior areas. He enclosed Polaroid photographs that he took immediately after the ship righted itself."

  "I suppose the other crew members confirm his story?" said George Morris.

  "Of course they do, sir. And on the face of it, you'd have to believe them. The question is, what submarine was it? Because a submarine it most certainly was. There's no doubt in my mind."

  "Nor mine," said Admiral Morgan. "That was a submarine, all right. It's got all the classic signs of what happens when a big underwater ship hits someone's net. Doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's pretty well obvious."

  "But according to the Russians, the only submarine within hundreds of miles was their own Barracuda. And that was almost twenty miles from the datum, and definitely headed the wrong way."

  "Just remember one thing, young James… the words of my old friend Admiral Sandy Woodward, the Royal Navy Commander who won the Falklands War for the Brits in 1982. He was giving evidence about the sinking of the General Belgrano, and he faced questions from some half-assed know-nothing politician who was telling him the Belgrano was 180 miles away, and going slowly in the wrong direction, anyway, away from the Royal Navy Fleet.

  "Admiral Woodward just said, 'The speed and direction of any enemy ship is irrelevant, because both can change in a matter of seconds.'"

  "Jesus. That's right too," said Jimmy. "Are you suggesting, sir, the Barracuda could have dived, turned around, and headed northeast?"

  "Yes, I am. Because it easily could have. And there was no other submarine that could possibly have hit the trawl net. There is no other explanation. And nor can there ever be. If missiles hit Valdez, they must have been fired from that Barracuda. One sneaky little bastard, I think we'll discover."

  1:00 A.M., Sunday, March 2, 2008

  53.15' N 13139" W,

  The Dixon Entrance North of Graham Island

  Lt. Arash Azhari and his six highly trained members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were making their exit from the submarine, which was positioned thirty feet below the pitch-black surface of the water. One
by one they went into the exit chamber, which flooded down, and then opened, allowing them to float out onto the casing of the motionless Barracuda.

  Each man carried black French-made scuba gear, and a frogman's suit distingushed by extra-large flippers and a working flashlight set onto the tight-fitting rubber helmet. They were unarmed, save for fighting knives, but four of them carried strapped to their backs below the breathing equipment a powerful "sticky" bomb, magnetized, with a twenty-four-hour timing device.

  By 1:15 all six frogmen grouped in the icy water, around twelve feet below the surface, right on the escarpment of the underwater cliff that forms the Overfall Shoal. They were just 300 yards from the south-running pipeline out of Yakutat. And if they swam due east, they must run over it sooner or later. This was the choke point, the narrow waters over the shoal, across which the pipe must run, according to the minute calculations of Mrs. Shakira Rashood.

  Lieutenant Azhari led the way, checking his wristwatch compass every three minutes. They kicked long, hard, slow strokes with the big flippers, conserving their air, heading for the shallowest part of the shoal. And shortly before 1:30, the beam of Azhari's flashlight picked out a wide, dark shape on the seabed, more or less where Shakira's map said it would be, snaking out of the Dixon Entrance and down the Hecate Strait.

  All the men could see down through the clear, unpolluted water, and the pipeline still rising toward the surface. Right now it was around eighteen feet below them, and Azhari gave the signal for two of the men with bombs to join him almost directly below. Like the other four, they were experts in underwater demolition.

  Swiftly, they kicked down eighteen more feet, and then they undipped the two bombs and set both timers for twenty-two hours. The four-foot-wide pipeline was encased in steel and carried no barnacles in these very cold waters. The first bomb clamped on magnetically with a dull clump sound.

  The second was placed exactly opposite on the other side of the pipe, the timer reversed three minutes and twenty-one seconds, the precise time Lieutenant Azhari's stopwatch measured between the fixes. The bombs would detonate simultaneously, shortly before midnight tomorrow.