By some miracle, no one was killed, mainly because at 2:30 a.m. no one was working. The train was not scheduled to complete its loading until six o'clock, and the storage tank guards were essentially part of the same squad that was on its collective coffee break. And now they stood, all eight of them, dumbfounded by the magnitude of the explosion. No one knew what to do, except get back to the jeeps, and get on the cell phones, fire, police, and ambulance, and then get into the as yet unthreatened control and monitoring building and start switching off anything that might be releasing oil in any of its forms.
All three decisions were luckily made several seconds too late. General Rashood's second salvo of three RADUGA missiles was incoming fast. The first obliterated the control and monitoring building, killing the duty night operator, plus the night security guard who never left the building, and who at the time was watching television. The outer wall of the building crashed and crushed all four of the security jeeps.
The other two plowed into the fuel farm where the incoming crude from the Alaskan pipeline was stored in great holding tanks, forty of them on a hill behind the refinery on the eastern side. These burst into flames in precisely the same way as those in Valdez, burning fiercely without the massive explosion that accompanies the ignition of refined gasoline or fuel oil.
There was, however, one final, unforgettable blast to come. The heat of the fires finally began to melt the steel of the one remaining fractioning tower, which, seven minutes after the arrival of the first missile, exploded like a nuclear bomb, detonating upward, entirely differently from the other two towers that had been flattened upon impact, and exploded outward.
Tower Three blew ferociously into the sky, steel, concrete, debris, pipes, gantries, stairways, roaring liquid gas, hundreds of feet, straight up into a billowing mushroom cloud of flames and swirling smoke. Never mind comparisons with an atomic bomb, they could very nearly have seen this in Hiroshima.
The astonishing thing was, none of it was identifiable as a missile hit. To the eight refinery security guards, it was impossible to distinguish the missiles in a low sky that was already ablaze by the time they came charging out of the mess room. Each cruise flew its final half mile in three seconds, mainly through black smoke, and the security men were down-range, on the west side of the refinery.
They could not even see the short fiery tail of the RADUGA as it speared into its target. Only if they had been somehow waiting for the first one, staring with binoculars directly into its approach path, could they possibly have suspected a guided missile.
No one did. It just seemed like the end of the world, everything exploding, bursting into flames. The eight men on the ground, still four hundred yards from the nearest fires, made their next decision in double-quick time. The heat was bearing down on them, and growing hotter. Sweat poured down their faces, and like a slower, but just as determined start to an Olympic 100-meters, they turned tail and bolted out of the blocks, eight undertrained U.S. sprinters, going for their lives, arms pumping, legs pounding, along the road to South Arbor, away from the burning air.
Meantime, over in Hoquiam, the Fire Department was mobilizing, though most of the men, staring out across the gleaming silver-and-orange harbor waters to the blazing refinery, had no idea how to tackle such a task. The fire chief was yelling at them to activate all equipment and to be prepared to hold back the inferno from the city of Aberdeen.
The firemen were instructed to drench the entire area in water, especially backyards of clapboard houses containing trees and bushes. They would also instruct all residents to move their automobiles out of the area. There was, plainly, quite sufficient burning gas for one night.
The trouble was, the three little cities surrounding the head of Grays Harbor were joined together by a natural urban sprawl, and the homes of western Aberdeen were meandering along the road toward the refinery. Chief McFadden could not allow the fire to spread and take ahold in that area, not in the gusty prevailing west wind off the Pacific, and if the heat would permit them, his men would make that prevention an absolute priority.
Right now McFadden was on the telephone to the Aberdeen Police Department, and they had already relayed news of the catastrophe to Washington State Police in Seattle. By 3 A.M. every late radio station in the state was alert to the disaster, and news of the fire was on the interstate network to Washington, D.C., where FBI investigators were already on the case.
Everyone was putting two and two together. In the space of one week there had been gigantic oil fires in the Valdez terminus and the Grays Harbor refinery, the main cogwheels in the West Coast energy industry. Plus there had been a massive breach in the pipeline carrying the crude oil from Yakutat Bay nonstop and directly to Grays Harbor itself. All three incidents occurring in the dead of night. This was no accident. This was a real-live crisis. The United States was under attack, by unseen marauders, saboteurs, terrorists, lunatics, Fascists, Communists, Fundamentalists, or some other screwball activists.
Washington now knew that someone had it in for Uncle Sam. The President was awakened at 3:10 a.m. and was in the Oval Office two minutes later in his pajamas. In his opinion, "That someone had better be found and stopped, real quick, before the goddamned lights go out for good."
Admiral Morgan was in his car and headed for the Taft Bridge, driving himself at high speed to the White House, followed by three agents, who were trying and failing to stay with him in a light drizzle and a slick road surface.
By 3:15, Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe was gunning his eleven-year-old black Jaguar up the Washington-Baltimore Parkway to Fort Meade. Rear Admiral Morris was already in his office, with a phone call in to the Pentagon, to the busy line of Adm. Alan Dickson, the ex-Atlantic Fleet Commander who now occupied the chair of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO).
Admiral Dickson was also in his office, talking to Adm. Dick Greening, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, who was away from his Pearl Harbor office, visiting the giant San Diego Naval Base. Stacked up waiting to speak to the CNO, in order, was Rear Adm. Freddie Curran, Commander, Submarine Force, Pacific Fleet; Gen. Tim Scannell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs; and Adm. Arnold Morgan on an encrypted speakerphone from his car.
The last call in was a raging priority for Alan Dickson, and he told Dick Greening he'd call him right back.
Vice Admiral Morgan crossed Dupont Circle like a meteor across the face of the moon, astounding two Washington Police Officers parked on the north side, who nonetheless recognized a black White House staff car when they saw one, and elected to mind their own business.
"ALAN!" yelled the President's National Security Adviser. "Talk to George Morris or his assistant right now and get yourself up to speed. Then don't move, I'll be back in a half hour."
The line went dead, and Admiral Dickson, who was already pretty well up to speed, told a hovering young Lieutenant to call back Admiral Greening and tell him not to move from his desk. Then he hit the encrypted line to George Morris, who was in the call-waiting line, anyway.
Finally, the two men spoke, and Admiral Morris, who sometimes seemed slow of thought and somewhat cumbersome in his assessments, was neither of those things this morning. He said immediately, "Alan, this country is under attack."
"I know," said the CNO. "And I haven't the slightest idea how to proceed."
It was, they both understood, the modern military dread. The unseen enemy, lurking God knows where, planning God knows what, and answering to God knows who: colloquially known as Terrorists.
Both men were interrupted by the red light from the White House, and on both of their hot lines was the voice of Vice Admiral Morgan, who was holding a phone in each ear, a feat of physical and mental dexterity of which he was relatively proud. "SITUATION ROOM, WEST WING, 0700. DON'T BE LATE." Down went the phone. Small talk, blow out thy brains.
Admiral Morris hurried down to Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe's office, looking for a summary of submarine mystery sightings, possible routes into United States wa
ters, and any other data his assistant could provide.
Both men were frantic with concern, all of it heightened because they had, in a sense, been on the case for more than a week. And now, suddenly, in the darkest hours of this night, all of their worst dreads had jumped into Technicolor reality. The bastard had struck again, to deadly effect.
Admiral Morris gathered up every document his young Lieutenant Commander could throw at him, all of it laid out in carefully written detail, from the flight of the Barracuda(s), to the landing of the missiles that had destroyed Valdez. From the obvious insertion of Special Forces to slam the pipeline north of Graham Island, to the sudden, shattering destruction of all the refined fuel oil on the West Coast.
Someone was trying to put out the lights. And the President would be close to panic. Admiral Morris knew they would have to walk him carefully through this intricate and sinister scenario, but he was certain the Navy was on stream with cause, effect, and remedy. Anyway, the President rarely stepped out of line when the craggy face and glinting blues eyes of Admiral Morgan were facing him across the table. He might, however, be bolder this morning. Because the United States was essentially at war. With someone.
They gathered in President Reagan's old Situation Room in the West Wing shortly before 7 a.m. The President, dressed now but not shaved, was the first to arrive in company with his Secretary of State, Harcourt Travis, and the Defense Secretary, Robert MacPherson. General Scannell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, arrived with the CNO, Admiral Dickson, and the last man through the big soundproof double doors was Admiral Arnold Morgan, in company with Admiral Morris, whose notes he was reading.
Four Marine guards were on guard in the corridor, and every White House security system was in place. As highly classified meetings go, this one ranked at the top level. The SWAT team that normally patrolled the roof of the building while the President was in residence had organized a team of four heavily armed agents to seal the elevator that moved to and from the lower level where the Situation Room was located.
The subject was, of course, one which dare not speak its name beyond the four walls that now surrounded the most powerful men in the country. Admiral Morgan had placed at one end of the room a huge computer screen on which was an illuminated map, showing the Asian side of the North Pacific, all the way across to the West Coast of Canada and the United States.
"Good morning, gentlemen," said the President. "Because this is about to develop into a military meeting, I am going to appoint my National Security Adviser to act as Chairman… Arnie, perhaps you'd take the seat at the head of the table… I'll sit here with my fellow politicos Bob and Travis next to me. I imagine I'm kinda lagging in the most up-to-date information, so maybe Arnie will brief me."
Admiral Morgan, who was unsmiling, still engrossed in Jimmy Ramshawe's notes, muttered, "I'll be right there, sir. And I'll do it a lot better if someone can lay hands on a cup of coffee."
Bob MacPherson walked to a house phone and ordered coffee and English muffins, since everyone present had been up half the night, most of them zigzagging around the city in the rain.
"Okay, sir," said Admiral Morgan. "I want to start with the first bang, up there in the oil terminus at Valdez in Alaska, early hours of last Friday morning, February 29. Every report we have suggests two separate sets of detonations — one at the terminus itself and one minutes later at the fuel farm. There is no evidence of any attack by land, there was nothing military or civilian in the immediate airspace, and no warship from anyone's Navy within a thousand miles.
"A massive search for clues has produced nothing. The only thing we know is the two areas did not go off bang all by themselves. And we have a couple of eyewitnesses who claim to have seen missiles coming overland south through central Alaska toward Valdez. We believe their evidence is sound, because their timing was accurate to within seconds and they could not have known that."
The Admiral paused. "Forty-eight hours later, we have a massive breach in the new pipeline that carries the crude out of Yakutat Bay all the way down to the Grays Harbor Refinery. No evidence of skullduggery, but suspicious, to my mind, the breach happened at an obvious choke point, where the pipeline rises up to cross a shoal."
"Why suspicious?" asked the President.
"If you wanna blow a hole in a pipeline, you need underwater guys to get down near it. Funny it happened in the near-perfect place in the whole five hundred miles of undersea construction."
"Okay," said the President. "Press on."
"Sir, at this point we were already considering the possibility that the Valdez Terminus was hit by maybe a half dozen cruise missiles. Just because there can be no other explanation. Something big hit the terminus, and it did not come from the land or air. There was no surface ship within reasonable range. Which leaves a submarine, submerged launch."
"Jesus," said the President. "But whose submarine?"
"Well, that's where it becomes somewhat complicated," said the Vice Admiral. "And if I may, I'd like just to continue to the next hit, which, as you know, happened a few hours ago. Suddenly we got the same scenario. BAM! Up goes another huge oil installation, this time the biggest fucking refinery in the country. Grays Harbor.
"What did it? Don't know. Evidence? None. Except once more I'm hearing about two separate sets of detonations. One knocked out two fractioning towers, then something slammed into the fuel farm. Again no warships, again no aircraft, and again no possibilities over the land.
"Sir, whatever wiped out the refinery was big and powerful, and it must have been launched from a ship. Because there is no cruise missile in the world, so far as we know, with the range to get either Alaska or California from land.
Unless it was ballistic, in which case we'd have tracked it and shot it down.
"Right here we're talking about the fucking Marie Celeste. Because there was no ship. Again, sir, I come back to the likelihood of submerged launch missiles from a submarine. And I come back to it because I'm a devotee of Sherlock Holmes. When you have eliminated the impossible, only the truth remains."
"Arnie, have we established, among everyone at this table, that the damage inflicted on Valdez, the pipeline, and Grays Harbor, must have been military?"
"Well, I haven't had time to ask everyone, sir. But there's no doubt in my mind. Whatever hit us packed an unbelievable wallop, and the delivery of such a device could scarcely have been achieved by a civilian."
Everyone nodded in agreement. "Which brings us to the next subject," said Arnold. "Timing. Which, as in all crimes, is critical. OK, now the missiles were fired at Valdez a little after midnight on Friday morning. The pipeline blew probably just before midnight on Sunday. That's a gap of about seventy-two hours, all day Friday, all day Saturday, pipeline busts late Sunday.
"We have to assume the pipeline was hit by a sticky bomb or sea mine of some kind. And it was obviously primed around twenty-four hours before it exploded. Anyone with a lick of sense would be as far away as possible from the spot they inserted their frogmen.
"We're probably looking at maybe thirty-eight hours from the datum between firing and fixing the stickies, right?"
Again everyone nodded in agreement. "So, whoever fired at Valdez fired from within a couple of hundred miles of the hit point on the pipe, because, believe me, that submarine is moving real slow. And they had a lot of preparation for the insertion of the frogmen.
"So, gentlemen, we got a fucking interloper right near the coast of Canada. At least, we know exactly where he was at midnight on Saturday, right near the Overfall Shoal. And next thing we know, there's a major hit at Grays Harbor this morning — that's a little over seven degrees of latitude south, 430 nautical miles, plus eighty miles to get out of the Dixon Entrance… that's 510 miles."
The Vice Admiral rose to his feet and walked to the computerized chart. "I'm talking right here," he said, pointing to the shoal. "And right here," he added pointing to Grays Harbor. "And the time difference between the pipe burst and the refinery h
it is just about five days — at five knots, he makes 120 nautical miles a day. That's four days and then some. But he's not stopping at latitude forty-seven, is he?"
"Why not?" asked the President. "He wants to be near the target for his missiles, right?"
"Sir, his missiles can be accurately fired from one thousand miles away, so he'll almost certain go further south than he needs just to get distance from the hit. No one wants to be near an uproar zone. He's probably another hundred miles further south, which would take him almost exactly five days to the hour. Down here somewhere… "
Arnold pointed further down the chart and added, "He'll want to be well offshore maybe one hundred fifty or two hundred miles. So my guess is, he was somewhere in here when he launched. From our point of view, right on time."
He described a circle on the chart with his right hand. Then he stepped back and spread both hands apart, pausing for a moment, before saying, "Christ knows where he is now. That was possibly accurate five hours ago. I'd guess he was still real slow, but I have not the slightest idea where he is now."
"You mean he could have fired these things from the middle of the Pacific?" asked the President.
"Sure could, sir. But I don't think so. He came inshore for the Alaska attacks. And he came south for the refinery. My guess is he's now headed inshore to noisy water, staying as deep as he can, and as slow as he can."
"What the hell's noisy water?" asked the Secretary of State.
"Oh, that part of the Pacific is very awkward, Harcourt," replied Arnold. "Cold currents from the north, warm currents from the south… produces some strange thermal effects, currents which 'bend' the sonar rays. And it's always much more noisy near the shore… creates a kind of audio 'fog' effect… hard to hear anything. He'll probably creep along the coast, with one hundred feet under his keel, and if he's slow enough no one will detect him.
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