Scimitar SL-2 (2004)

by Patrick Robinson

  “He probably could’ve got the goddamned satellite shut down a helluva lot quicker than us,” added Arnold.

  Cranes, the armies of workers, the endless roar of the huge evacuation trucks made up the steady stream of traffic bearing its citizens to the high ground of the northwest. The University was now closed and the streets in Georgetown were thinning out.

  Fortunately, the nation’s capital wasn’t home to much large-scale commercial business and industry, but at the banks, there was intense activity, with customer records, cash, and safety deposit boxes being shipped to outlying branches.

  On this Sunday, the banks were open until 10 P.M., allowing customers preparing to flee the city at first light Monday morning to withdraw funds or remove valuables. Many law firms, lobbying companies, and stock brokers were moving one large truckload of documents apiece out of the offices and generally heading for the hills.

  Almost all other commercial operations not involved in transportation or in assisting the government with emergency procedures were already closed down, having removed as much stock and hardware as possible. Theaters and cinemas too had locked their doors.

  But Washington’s local television and radio stations were instructed to keep transmitting for as long as possible, under the control of the Pentagon, and, from time to time, they were watched with a beady eye by Admiral Morgan. They would turn off the power only upon the certain information that the Cumbre Vieja volcano had blown itself into the Atlantic Ocean. That was the official time to leave. Nine hours.

  The evacuation of the hospitals was a long and laborious operation. Every ambulance in the city had been running nonstop since Friday, ferrying not-too-sick patients home to leave the city with their families, and driving very sick patients to other hospitals inland, wherever beds could be located. No new patients were being admitted, except for victims of accidents, and other emergencies. The situation was getting extremely difficult, because so much of the best medical equipment had already gone into military storage for safekeeping.

  Any hospital with any spare capacity within 100 miles of Washington was accepting patients from the city. No one wanted to move very sick patients any farther than was absolutely necessary, but the Pentagon had ordered all patients to be out of all hospitals by Wednesday evening. That would entail every ambulance driving well outside the city at the time Ben Badr launched his SL-2s. Admiral Morgan had made it clear he did not intend to lose any ambulances whatsoever, no matter how great the flood.

  For the final forty-eight hours, the Military would provide reserve medical units, out of Fort Belvoir, the gigantic military base south of Alexandria, right on the severely threatened west bank of the Potomac. Emergency treatment centers, staffed by the Army, were already operational in Whitehaven Park, Constitution Gardens, and the Washington Hospital Center.

  A small fleet of U.S. Marine helicopters was on standby to ferry serious cases to a brand-new military field hospital set up in a safe area out near Dulles Airport. Treatment centers in the city would remain open until they received the message that the Hamas missiles had hit home on the faraway island of La Palma. At which point the Marines’ Super Stallion helicopters would evacuate everything and everyone directly to the Dulles area.

  The Police Department in downtown Washington was possibly the busiest place in the city. All leave was canceled, officers were working around the clock, mainly on the streets, patrolling in groups of three and four, especially in areas where widespread evacuation had already taken place. This was not confined just to shops and department stores; the police were vigilantly patrolling and checking on all private homes. The Oval Office, backed by the Pentagon, had made it clear to the public that looters would be shot, if need be.

  “Otherwise this whole damn thing could get right out of hand. We’ve got a bastard of an enemy out there, certainly we do not deserve to fight enemies within. If it comes to that, they can expect no mercy…” Arnold Morgan was not joking.

  And, of course, the hard-pressed police department knew that as the evacuation gained momentum, the traffic problems would multiply. They were already providing information and advice, and escorts for large convoys. Overhead, police helicopters were constantly reporting and issuing a general overview of traffic movement within the city, and helping to direct resources to where they were most needed.

  They were already getting support from thousands of National Guardsmen, who were out on the streets not only assisting with logistics, transportation, and vehicle recovery, but also watching the streets and observing the movements of Washington’s citizens closely. This was, one way or another, a bad time to be an American criminal working the nation’s capital.

  The various fire departments were under orders to stay open and active, providing cover until the very last moment, but reducing their manpower wherever possible. All fire-fighting vehicles were already in working order, so the whole fleet could be withdrawn en masse down the specially cleared highway at the first news that Ben Badr had struck the volcano.

  By far, the most troublesome point of the Pentagon’s evacuation plan was the prisons and the moving of highly dangerous criminals elsewhere in the country. General Scannell had detailed three companies of National Guardsmen—three hundred men—to assist in preparing a disused military base in West Virginia.

  Right now, working under newly installed security lights, they were building high perimeter fences and fitting out accommodation huts. This part of the camp was for prisoners judged to be a menace to the public, and they would be under constant surveillance by armed Army personnel.

  Other less dangerous prisoners would be moved to normal jails with spare capacity, but there was little room for brutal convicted killers, and no one had yet taken Admiral Morgan’s advice to “put the whole lot of them in front of a goddamned firing squad and have done with it.” He’d said it only half-jokingly.

  Meanwhile, out in the real battleground, U.S. warships were arriving on station, and by midnight, the USS Coronado had steamed into her holding area 40 miles northwest of the coast of Lanzarote. Admiral Gillmore immediately opened communications with the Elrod and the Taylor, which were positioned north of Tenerife, some 60 miles to the west of the Coronado. The first orders issued by the new Task Group Commander were for these two frigates to patrol close inshore around the islands at first light—tomorrow, that is.

  Monday, October 5, four days before H-Hour—H for Hit.

  Admiral Gillmore did not expect to stumble across the Barracuda by accident. Indeed, he did not believe the Hamas submarine to be in the area yet. But in the next day or so, they needed to familiarize themselves with the local charts. The Admiral wanted more reliable underwater fixings. They needed to identify anomalies and problem spots among the permanent characteristics of this part of the eastern Atlantic basin—areas of water swirl, thermal layering, fish concentrations, rocks, reefs, and ridges—all the myriad subsurface elements that can confuse a sonar operator.

  Nonsubmarine contacts do one of two things: vanish completely, if they are, for instance, fish shoals, or, if they are rocks, remain solidly in place. Submarines are apt to get moving, giving strong signals with marked Doppler effects.

  The initial task of the inshore group was to conduct a comprehensive search of the whole area, mapping the ocean floor as they went. They would use depth charges if anything suspicious came up, and even if no contact was located, their active sonar, sweeping through the depths, would almost certainly drive a marauding submarine out into deeper water, possibly at speed.

  And out into that deeper water, Admiral Gillmore was sending six towed-array frigates, ultrasensitive to the slightest movement, the merest hint of an engine. Their task was to prowl the surface, probing the depths, waiting, listening. This offshore group, effectively a second line of attack, would be working in 30 fathoms or more, 25 miles out from the island beaches.

  The USS Samuel B. Roberts, USS Hawes, the Robert G. Bradley, the De Wert, the Doyle, and the Underwood. The
se were the six submarine hunters designated by Admiral Gillmore to guard the offshore areas, and at the same time watch for the Barracuda if it tried to run in from out of the west.

  The Kauffman and the Nicholas, two of the earliest arrivals in the Canary Islands from the North Atlantic, would take the western half of the inshore patrol, moving into the waters close to the islands of Tenerife, Gomera, tiny Hierro, and, to the north, La Palma itself.

  Because Admiral Gillmore believed the Barracuda was most likely to take a southerly route into its ops area, he felt it was most likely to be detected east of the big islands closest to the shores of North Africa—Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. That’s where he wanted his two first-choice ships, the Elrod and the Taylor.

  These frigates were commanded by two very senior Captains he had known well for many years, Sean Smith and Brad Willett, both dedicated ASW men, sub-hunting specialists like himself, with months of service in the still suspect Atlantic waters up by the GRIUK Gap.

  Like Admiral Morgan, and his immediate boss, Adm. Frank Doran, George Gillmore had arrived at an irrevocable conclusion…the terrorist submarine would have to launch its missiles from a point where it could rush for cover from the tsunami. Before the Barracuda’s comms room discovered the satellites were down, they would surely try the area off the western Sahara for a long-distance launch, and then race for the cover of the eastern shore of Fuerteventura.

  When they did discover there were no GPS satellite coordinates, they would need to creep to the south of Grand Canaria, in the area the Elrod and the Taylor patrolled, before running toward the south coast of Tenerife, and then into the inshore waters around Gomera. From there they would need to regroup, then get a good visual fix and then move in towards La Palma for the launch.

  The Elrod and the Taylor had a chance of detecting the Barracuda as it made its way in from the open ocean, running south of all the islands towards the North African shore. They definitely had a shot at an early detection while the men from Hamas had a mast up while trying to access the GPS. And there would be another opportunity if and when the Barracuda began a move west towards Gomera.

  The U.S. sea operation consisted of four ships inshore, and six standing off, 25 miles out. Admiral Gillmore had done his geometry. Each TA frigate would need to patrol in a radius of 10 to 20 nautical miles…the area measured from the volcano itself to cover the entire band out to 25 miles from the work of the inshore group. The distance around such a circle is about 150 nautical miles. And this would allow the six frigates to cover the entire area continuously. If the Barracuda somehow strayed into those waters, life could quickly become extremely tense for Ben Badr and his men.

  This left Admiral Gillmore with two other frigates, Capt. Clint Sammons’s Klakring and Comdr. Joe Wickman’s Simpson. He would use these to extend the search area whenever it might become necessary, or to prosecute nearby towed-array contacts, or even to thicken up radar coverage inshore. In such a complex operation, George Gillmore knew better than to leave himself without flexibility. At this stage, his task orders were, of course, extremely narrow—sink the Barracuda, however, wherever, whenever, but soon.

  Situated 20 miles to his east was the Ronald Reagan CVBG. The massive aircraft carrier was preparing to rendezvous with the Harry S. Truman, and essentially exchange its fixed-wing aircraft for ASW helicopters. The Battle Group arrived with two LA-class nuclear submarines, but Frank Doran was not anxious to use them in any kind of an underwater hunt.

  Admiral Gillmore was aware of that, and both men felt the destruction of the Barracuda would be achieved by the ASW helicopters. The Truman was expected to arrive on Monday morning, and the exchange operation would begin immediately. As the sun came blazing out of the clear African skies to the east, there was still no sign of the second carrier, but they knew it was under 100 miles away. And the Elrod and the Taylor were already on their way to their inshore search areas.

  By 0900, the Truman had made its Atlantic crossing and was 30 miles off the northwest coast of La Palma, steaming east towards the rendezvous with the Ronald Reagan. The sea was calm, and a brisk, warm southeast wind blew off the coast of Africa. In the next three hours, this was forecast to shift southwest and bring in a succession of rainsqualls throughout the afternoon. Which was not perfect for the large-scale carrier-to-carrier transfer of aircraft, scheduled to begin at 1400.

  Shortly before 1030, Admiral Gillmore completed his deployment of ships for the offshore operation, and, led by USS Hawes, under Comdr. Derek DeCarlo, the six frigates set off for their respective search circles in the wide band of ocean between the islands of La Palma and Hierro and the 25-mile outer limit of their operations area.

  The Kauffman and the Nicholas made their way into the inshore waters of La Palma and Hierro, where they would move slowly around the coastlines, mapping the ocean bottom and recording the appearance of sudden shoals of fish or the perfectly stationary sea ridges. Then they would move on to Gomera and Tenerife, always watching the computer screen, which would betray a creeping nuclear submarine.

  0800, Monday, October 5

  Mid-Atlantic, 27.30N 24.50W.

  The Barracuda still ran slowly, at just under six knots, still 500 feet under the surface, transmitting nothing. Adm. Ben Badr checked their position and noted that they were 240 miles out from the most westerly Canary Islands, La Palma and Hierro, around 18.50W. They were on a due easterly course, which would take them 20 miles south of the seven volcanic islands that jutted up separately from the ocean bed.

  So far, they had heard no searching submarines, no warships. They had twice ventured to periscope depth to make certain the GPS was in sound working order, and found no problems. They had two more days to run before they slid quietly into the area that Admiral Gillmore’s ships were currently combing.

  As soon as the Barracuda slipped by its first landfall, the island of Hierro, it would be within 19 miles of the Nicholas, unless Capt. Eric Nielsen had already moved on to the southern coast of Tenerife, into the waters once scanned so thoroughly by the honeymooning Admiral Arnold Morgan.

  If the Nicholas moved, the chances of the Barracuda remaining undetected were doubled, because even the south shore of Tenerife lay 25 miles farther north than Hierro. This would put the Barracuda 44 miles south of the nearest U.S. warship, but the day, and the game, were both still young.

  Three and a half thousand miles away on the U.S. East Coast, the sun was battling its way out of the Atlantic into cloudy skies. And it was not just the big cities that were trying to empty themselves, but all along the seaboard, rural communities were frantically making their preparations to escape the wrath of the coming tidal wave.

  It was cold on the rocky, tree-lined islands off the coast of Maine, and most of the summer people had stored their boats and vanished south to escape the notoriously chilly Maine fall. Inland, the cold was, if anything, worse. There’s usually snow in the outfield by the first week of November at the University of Maine baseball park, home of the Black Bears.

  The islands were effectively left to the Maine lobstermen, one of the most intrepid breed of cold-water fishermen in the world. Yet there was not a single safe harbor along this coast.

  It was essential to either haul the lobster boats and get them to higher ground or, more daringly, anchor them in the western lee of one of the 3,000 islands that guard the downeast coast. These rocky, spruce-darkened islands are mostly hilly—great granite rises from the ocean, which may not stop a tidal wave but would definitely give it a mild jolt. On the sheltered side it was just about possible that the tsunami might roll right by, perhaps leaving a high surge in its wake, but not dumping and smashing large boats on beaches 10 miles away.

  The seamen of the Maine islands were accustomed, more than any other fishermen on the East Coast, to terrible weather. And for three days now, they had been moving the endlessly scattered fleet of lobster boats to anchorages out of harm’s way.

  Boats from Monhegan, North Haven, Vinalhaven, Port
Clyde, Tennants Harbor, Carver’s Harbor, Frenchboro, Isleboro, and Mount Desert headed inshore, their owners praying that if the giant wave came, the islands, with their huge granite ramparts, would somehow reduce the power of the waves.

  Similar prayers on precisely the same subject were almost certainly being offered by somewhat less robust people—librarians, politicians, and accountants, 600 miles south in Washington, D.C. The Library of Congress was also made out of granite from the Mount Desert area. So was the House of Representatives and the Treasury Building.

  Out in the deep water, 15 miles from the coast, the three great seaward guardians of Maine’s stern and mighty shoreline—the remote and lonely lighthouses of Matinicus Rock, Mount Desert Rock, and Machias Seal Island—were left to face the coming onslaught single-handedly. According to local scientists, the mega-tsunami would sweep more than 100 feet above them. Whether they would still be there when the water flattened out was anyone’s guess.

  Meanwhile, the fishermen and their families were being ferried on to the mainland, where relatives, friends, and volunteers were lined in packed parking lots, waiting to drive them to safety. Maine is a tight-knit, insular community off-season, with fewer than one million residents. At a time like this, they were all brothers and sisters.