Barracuda 945 am-6

by Patrick Robinson

  "So, for whom did they buy the submarine? Who could afford it? Had to be a State Government," Admiral Morgan was pondering.

  "In a sense, yes," said Jimmy Ramshawe. "But in another sense, no. Because when you're dealing with international terrorism, you've got all kinds of fucking maniacs involved. Not one country. The Islamic Jihad, which works against us and the Israelis, crosses borders. Look at that fucking nutcase Bin Laden, he had all kinds of nations involved — Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, possibly Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, maybe Syria, and even Jordan.

  "I think that's what we're up against. Oh, sure, we can ask the Chinese what they did with their two Barracudas, but they will never provide a straight answer. And in the end, they'll say that if there is one, off California right now, it has never been within two thousand miles of China. Why not ask the Russians? And Admiral Rankov will say we don't even own the submarine, why not ask the Chinese?

  "And where does that leave us? Nowhere. With options only to nuke Moscow or Beijing, which we are not about to do because we just don't have enough to go on."

  "Well, James," said Admiral Dixon. "What's your conclusion?"

  "There is only one conclusion, sir. Whoever planned and carried out this program was nothing short of a fucking genius. More clever than any terrorist who's ever lived. That's my conclusion."

  Arnold Morgan was thoughtful.

  "I believe you know what I'm thinking, sir."

  "Jimmy, I don't know what you're thinking. But I do know what you and I both are wondering."

  "Yes, sir. Where's that bloody Major Ray Kerman, right?"

  "Yes, Jimmy. That's it. Where indeed?"

  12

  11:15 p.m., Wednesday, March 19, 2008

  The Pacific Ocean

  The most powerful electricity generator within a few miles of the darkened city of Los Angeles was continuing steadily away to the southeast, its big turbines idling along at only five knots, 300 feet below the surface. The lights in the submarine were bright, the refrigeration system perfect, the air clean and fresh, the water pure, and the temperature steady.

  However, the irony of the situation was somewhat lost on General Ravi and Captain Ben Badr's Barracuda crew. They had made the journey across the Pacific and successfully shattered the electric power system of the two biggest cities on the American West Coast.

  They were not, of course, completely aware, but they had left both San Francisco and Los Angeles in chaotic, dangerous darkness, with schools and shops closed, hospitals desperate, and thousands of tons of food rotting without refrigeration. All while Ravi and Ben casually accepted the benefits of their own private nuclear power cell, which, on its own, could have cheerfully restored full electricity to the entire district of Hollywood, and indeed most of Northwest Los Angeles, without missing a beat.

  The navigation officer had them at 28.151 N, 117.00' W, eighty miles southeast of Guadalupe Island, 130 miles off the coast of Mexico. Thus far, they had found no need to avoid or in any way change course for searching U.S. warships or patrol aircraft. Their speed had been five knots all the way, and it was still five knots, leaving no telltale pattern on the surface.

  There were, of course, several U.S. Navy frigates and three Los Angeles Class submarines working off San Diego, listening for the engine beat of a rogue foreign submarine. And a couple of them had ventured south into international waters, but the ocean was too vast, and the Barracuda too slow for a positive detection, and both hunters and quarry knew it.

  Captain Badr had no intention of altering his plans, his direction, or his speed for three weeks. And he and Ravi sat in the Control Room, moving slowly southeast, gleefully going over the plan of escape masterminded for them by the Chinese.

  General Rashood had collected the instructions from the timed safe on board, way back in the Gulf of Alaska. And with Ben Badr, he had made a cursory study of the meticulous orders drafted by the Intelligence Command Center in Shanghai.

  For the moment, it was simple to follow. Maintain submerged course one-three-five… speed five… then periscope depth into the Gulf of Panama. Surface the submarine 08.20' North, 78.30' West… proceed on surface maximum speed to Panama's Pacific Anchorage Expansion… course three-six-zero to latitude 08.51'North, 78.30' West-depth ten fathoms — for rendezvous with PLAN patrol boat 1330,11 April 2008…

  Well, it would be one hell of a long way at this slow speed to the Gulf of Panama, 3,000 miles and about twenty-six days, but at least they knew where they were going. Like everyone involved, the Chinese had a plain desire for the utmost secrecy. In fact, the Chinese had a greater desire than anyone: If anyone even suspected they had been behind the monstrous attacks on the American mainland, that was very probably World War III.

  Silence, thy name is Zhang Yushu.

  It was with obvious satisfaction that General Rashood and Captain Badr now contemplated the escape route that lay before them. Both men knew the entire operation was predicated on the fact that China now controlled the Panama Canal, to the horror of the U.S. military, and to the embarrassment of the more astute Democrats who somehow had allowed their party to be represented in the White House by the former Governor of Arkansas.

  Nonetheless, when the United States finally handed over the Canal Zone to the Panamanian Government in 1999, they gave away a great deal more than anyone had bargained for. Because the wily leftist rulers of that sweltering, tropical isthmus at the southern end of Central America, immediately began negotiations with the equally wily rulers of Communist China.

  As a moneymaking scheme, this was a golden goose for the cash-strapped Panamanians. At either end of the Canal was a huge U.S. Naval dockyard/city: Cristobal on the port side of the Atlantic entrance, bordering the primitive and unsafe city of Col6n; and Balboa on the port side of the Pacific exit, bordering Panama City. These two massive U.S. strongholds dominated and controlled the canal for almost a century.

  In addition, the sprawling Rodman Naval Base, exactly opposite Balboa Harbor, formed an impregnable U.S. choke point. Since 1914, ships had transited the Panama Canal only when the United States authorities issued clearance, which was right and proper, since the United States built the gigantic structure in the first place, supplied the manpower, and bound the great concrete walls together with New York cement.

  Without that Yankeee know-how, there would never have been a Panama Canal. It is, to this day, regarded as probably the greatest feat of engineering ever achieved — a canal, eighty-five feet above sea level, into which every ship has to climb a gigantic set of locks to enter, and then negotiate another set of three towering locks that lower it to the exit. The entire process of flooding and emptying the locks is achieved by gravity alone, millions of tons of water gushing through fifteen-foot-wide tunnels. Ships almost 1,000 feet long have made the journey along this 44-mile-long path between the seas, saving 7,872 miles against a voyage around Cape Horn.

  The United States completed the building project in 1914, after taking over from the French, who lost 22,000 men during a catastrophic attempt to build a canal without the help of America. If all the sand, shale, rock, and mud excavated to build the canal were loaded into boxcars, the resulting train would circle the earth four times at the nearby equator.

  In December 1999, the entire operation — the engineering marvel of the Canal, with its locks, dockyards, controls, and great swathes of two cities — was handed over by the U.S. Government to Panama, under President Carter's 1977 Panama Canal Treaty, which guaranteed at all times, expeditious passage for the U.S. Navy.

  In time, it became clear what had really happened. Panama had effectively handed over control of the Canal, plus its former U.S. Navy and Army installations, to President Clinton's Most Favored Nation, Communist China.

  The Panamanians had sold a fifty-year "leasehold" contract for the Cristobal and Balboa dockyards to a multinational corporation, which ended up with the Rodman Naval Station, a portion of the U.S. Air Station Albrook, Diablo and Balboa on the Pacific, Cristobal
Dockyard on the Atlantic, and the island of Telfers. In the year 2006, this leasehold was sold on to a mainland China corporation called East China and Pacific Shipping out of Shanghai, which had run the canal ever since.

  The second contract included "rights" to operate piloting and tugboat services for the Canal, out of Cristobal and Balboa, and to deny access to ports and entrances to any ships deemed to be interfering with East China and Pacific Shipping's business. This latter clause, secretly written into Panama's Law Number Five, was plainly in direct violation of Carter's Panama Canal Treaty. It allowed East China and Pacific Shipping to determine which ships may enter the channel, and has effectively made Communist China the gatekeeper of the Canal, thus enjoying total control of the great U.S.-built waterway, at both ends.

  The Panamanian contract with the Chinese could plainly have been severely obstructed, and then slammed into oblivion, had there been a proper Republican President in the White House, rather than a self-serving left-winger, who will always be remembered as the ideal President for China's ambitions. President Clinton was a man open to their attempts at bribery, tolerant of their transfer of weapons to questionable areas, helpful in modernizing China's military, and oblivious to a weakening of the U.S. military, spread thin because of his own reckless humanitarian peacekeeping missions all over the globe.

  Panama highlighted another side of that particular Democratic President, that of the weak and vacillating negotiator, utterly reluctant to follow through with hardheaded American threats, or even to act decisively, except against those powerless to resist. The snafu in Panama was precisely the kind of international disaster that invariably happens when a major power votes into office a President who dislikes the military, as Clinton, to his country's very great cost, most certainly did.

  General Ravi Rashood, as a former serving commander in the SAS, knew the entire background to the Panama situation, and he had been able to explain to Ben Badr why they would be safe in the former Canal Zone.

  "The Chinese can open and close the channels from either end, at will," he said. "My guess is that once we're in, they'll shut it off to all shipping on some pretext or other. And it's pretty clear we'll be flying home from somewhere in Panama. The United States will probably catch sight of us, but by then it will be too late. The Chinese will just slam those lock gates shut. And that's one hell of a barrier, those doors weigh eight hundred tons each. It's the one fact I remember about the canal."

  "But what about my ship, Ravi? What happens to that?"

  "I don't know, but I understand all final instructions will be given when the Chinese pilot boards at Balboa before we move into the Canal."

  "Did you make any recommendations before we left? It was your project in the first place."

  "Yes, I did. I told them the submarine would have to be dumped, in a place where it would never be found and from where it would tell no tales."

  "What?! This beautiful ship that can strike against the Great Satan at will?"

  "Ben, this ship is now poisonous. Its very presence is a threat not only to us, but to Russia and China, and world order. It certainly does not suit our purposes for China and the United States to be at war. Because that way everyone would be caught up in the fallout.

  "It would be in our best interests for this ship to vanish, leaving the Americans uncertain of what happened, the Chinese with their heads down, and the Russians denying anything and everything. That way we would have taken some very large steps toward an American exit from the Middle East, and made some very large profits for the Gulf States in the oil industry. Some of which will find its way into the coffers of Hamas."

  "I see that, Ravi. But tell me one thing. How do you dump a nuclear submarine of this size without spilling radiation all over the place and alerting everyone on the planet to the submarine's location?"

  "Not easily. I have recommended we shut the reactor down and just let the Barracuda sink into the mud in some totally inaccessible, uninhabited place with heavy rainforest cover. Seal it off and then abandon it. The Chinese could camouflage the sail, if it was still showing, and in a few months it would be completely gone."

  "Someone would probably find it in the end," said Ben.

  "Yes. But that might take fifty years. And who the hell cares?"

  "Not I," said Ben. "But I regret we have only managed one operation in this superb ship."

  "I, too. But, remember, we do have another one."

  The late March temperature in the West Wing of the White House was hovering near the red zone. The President was absolutely furious, unable to comprehend the impotence of the U.S. Navy in finding the rogue submarine.

  No amount of words by the CNO, no amount of logic from God knows how many admirals could convince him of the sheer impossibility of locating a nuclear submarine traveling at a very slow speed, in an unknown direction, in a million square miles of ocean.

  Admiral Morgan, tired of the President's ranting and raving, ended up taking him aside and privately telling him to "try to get a goddamned grip of yourself."

  "You got the best Navy brains in the country right here in the White House," he growled. "They are wrestling with the problem night and day. If it could be done, we'da done it, so get ahold of yourself. And do some listening."

  The President had never been spoken to, not quite like that, by anyone, except the unimpeachable, unsackable, Arnold Morgan. He did not much enjoy the experience. But a walkout by his revered National Security Adviser at a time like this would finish him, particularly as that might precipitate a further walkout by his Chiefs of Staff. Or even an unthinkable military takeover by the Generals and Admirals, who might judge him incompetent to lead the nation in a time of crisis, and obvious emergency.

  Stranger things have happened. Commander-in-Chief the President might be, but that always presupposes the goodwill of the Armed Service Chiefs toward the White House. That goodwill had never been seriously tested, not even with Clinton. But equally there had never been a serious military threat to the U.S. mainland, not by a foreign invader. Ever. But there was one now, and the military was edging into the inner circle of government, and the Chief Executive had to tread warily.

  "Arnie, I'm sorry," the President said. "But to a layman like myself, it's unthinkable that the Navy of the United States cannot find a submarine that has been attacking our shores."

  "Sir, no one can find a nuclear boat that is traveling at five knots or under, three hundred feet below the surface. Not without tripping over the damn thing by accident. No terrorist has ever used a nuclear boat before, and we have to find out whose fingerprints are on it. Sooner or later he'll make a mistake, and we'll be waiting. Meanwhile, we've got a lot to think about."

  The Admiral was correct about that. The price of oil had tripled, to $76 dollars a barrel, and stayed there. The world's fuel markets were in an uproar. So were the Dow Jones Industrials, the Footsie, the CAC 40, the Nikkei, the DAX, and the rest.

  Stocks collapsed on a global scale. Shares in any public corporation that was dependent on oil or fuel, any transportation, were just about unsalable. The two big California cities, unattached to the main state grid, were bereft of electricity. And the remnants of the power station at Lompoc were still burning. A mass exodus of millions from San Francisco and Los Angeles to outlying districts had caused chaos on the freeways, as drivers struggled to get into an electricity zone.

  Every hotel, every motel, was packed with families who had fled the endless dark that surrounded nighttime San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles. Thousands of people moved in with friends and relatives out in Concord, Liver-more, and Modesto; Ventura, Santa Clarita, Moreno Valley, and Palm Springs. Many thousands more bought airline tickets at spiraling prices, from airlines with small emergency generators for computers, and battled their way out of the two international airports in the daylight hours. They had to be sharp, before the massive jet-fuel storage areas ran completely dry.

  There was no question of key executives trying to commu
te their way into the city centers. Modern business runs on computers, and great office high-rises cannot function without electricity. There was no light, no elevators, and no security systems. There was a danger that law and order could break down. Every evening at twilight, gangs of youths roamed the streets. Looting was becoming commonplace. The Los Angeles Police Department, lit by three small generators, struggled to keep these mobs of amateur criminals under control. Emergency fuel was coming in by road in Exxon tankers to gas up the police cruisers.

  The military were being called in, to mount street patrols and to guard the downtown buildings. Water supplies to both cities, dependent on electricity plant for purifying systems, were becoming stretched to the limit. Consumption was down, but the greater Los Angeles system still had to cope with the demands of a population cut by two-thirds, but still three million strong.

  The Governor was safe in his Sacramento Mansion. But the mighty film studios were closed. All West Coast television transmission was down, which hardly mattered since no one could turn on their sets. If Troy Ramford was going to receive his Oscar, publicly, any time soon, it would have to be somewhere out beyond San Bernardino, where the power was on. His Malibu home was dark, like the rest of the beachfront properties of the film and television talent.

  The President, guided and supported by his Energy Secretary, Jack Smith, was putting emergency measures into operation as fast as possible. The San Francisco and Los Angeles electricity-supply companies were being connected to the main California grid, with two massive power line hookups, out in Simi Valley, north of Los Angeles, and to the west of San Jose, south of San Francisco. Jack Smith estimated power for the cities inside twelve days, which the President considered inordinate.

  With the refinery gone at Grays Harbor, there was no further possibility of refined oil running south into the West Coast states of Oregon and California, but there was a definite capability for U.S. tanker fleets to start shipping refined oil through the Panama Canal and north to Los Angeles immediately. The fuel, colossally expensive, was subsequently government-subsidized. And, of course, the huge diesel engines of the tankers themselves were sloshing back fuel that cost almost the same as cheap Scotch whisky.