“Jesus. Yeah, I remember. Remind me, what were they called?”
“There was the Varyag, which I think they got rid of locally, and there was the Admiral Gudenko. And she’s still sitting right there at the Chernomorsky Shipyard in Nikolayev while the governments of Russia and the new Ukraine argue about who owns her, and who’s going to pay for her completion. The answers to both questions are the same: no one. Which has been a major blow to the local shipbuilding industry. People ended up almost starving in that town.”
“And?”
“Not much happened for a long time. The Admiral Gudenko had been launched, but she was covered in scaffold, and they eventually moved her out to one of the unused piers in the south of the yard, where no one much goes. Then someone had a brainstorm — let’s sell her to some country that will pay for her completion. Who was the first name on the list?”
“China, as we know.”
“Right. They wanted her, but they could not really afford her, thank Christ. And again things went a bit quiet. But we just learned yesterday that terms have finally been agreed, and China will buy the Admiral Gudenko, for around two billion US dollars. Which you can guess is sensational news all around in Nikolayev and effectively puts the yard right back in business. We learned, however, that there is one condition on which this huge order depends.”
“Oh no,” groaned Joe Mulligan. “They gotta deliver the last seven Kilos?”
“You got it.”
Admiral Mulligan shook his head. “I assume the State Department is pulling all its strings?”
“Sure are. Travis had the Russian ambassador and two Naval attachés in there early this morning. Read ’em a kind of velvet-coated riot act. I understand he was planning to try all kinds of persuasion, trade agreements, and God knows what else. I also understand that none of it worked.”
“Bob MacPherson was talking to someone in Moscow round about the time I was leaving for Norfolk,” Admiral Mulligan said.
“I had a talk myself with an old sparring partner in the Russian Navy at 0400 this morning,” added Morgan. “Admiral Vitaly Rankov. Used to be head of their Intelligence. He’s pretty high up in the Kremlin now, and he knew all about the problem. Even said if it was left up to him, he would not risk alienating the United States by fulfilling that order for the Kilos. Unhappily, it is not left up to him.”
“Arnold, what do you think the chances are of dissuading the Russians?”
“I think we might have a shot at stalling them for a short time, while we talk about it some more. But in the end no Russian president is going to risk the wrath of the entire Ukrainian nation by scuttling the Chinese order for the big carrier. I’d say the completion of the Admiral Gudenko represents a kind of Slavic ‘mission critical.’
“They gotta build the fucking Kilos. Whatever we might say. Also, I hear the Chinese are paying three hundred million US dollars each for those boats. That’s a hell of a lot of dough for an impoverished Russian shipping industry. We know at least two of them are almost ready for delivery — the ones up near Murmansk — and five more are under construction, in two different yards.”
Joe Mulligan frowned. “I don’t suppose the situation is helped any by the endless bullshit between Russia and Ukraine over the remnants of the Black Sea Fleet. It’s been going on for ten years, and in my view will keep on going until the ships rust to bits. I can’t think of a single thing they ever managed to agree on except that Russia will somehow lease the big base at Sevastopol, and the Ukrainians will build some kind of a headquarters up in Balaclava Bay.”
“You’re right, Joe. Ever since Ukraine decided to put together a Navy of her own, we hear every few months about a major agreement between the two Navies. Then it gets blown out of the water by the politicians. Moscow and Kiev, deadlocked again. Right here we have two near-penniless countries arguing like hell over warships neither of ’em can afford to run.”
“That’s correct, Arnie. But they both know they have to preserve a spirit of goodwill and cooperation. And I agree with you: that aircraft carrier project with the Chinese in Nikolayev will go ahead. The only way either Navy can survive is to export ships for cash.”
“Right. And the most commercial property is the Kilo Class submarine. Every Third World despot wants one. Or three.”
“Or ten.”
Just then the telephone rang and the call was for Admiral Morgan. He picked it up, and both Admiral Mulligan and Commander Dunning suppressed laughter as the new NSA rasped, “Yeah right, George. Forget the geography lesson. I know where the fucking place is…” Morgan then regained his composure and demanded, “Give it to me straight and quick, George. No bullshit. We are dealing right here with the topic of the week, if not the year.”
“Yeah…right…fuck it.” At which point Admiral Morgan replaced the receiver and, turning to the CNO, reported, “That was about that damned freighter we spotted in the Malacca Strait.
“She’s under escort running northeast, about four hundred miles into the South China Sea. We got some decent measurements on her. Whatever’s under the cover on the deck is exactly two hundred and forty feet long, the exact length of a Kilo.
“They put one over on us this time. Still, we couldn’t have done much about it, save for instigating an act of war. You wanna nail a submarine, you wanna get the sonofabitch under the water. That way there’s less chance anyone knows what the hell’s going on.”
“Anyhow,” said Joe Mulligan, “the Chinese now have three Kilos. And there’s not a whole lot we can do about that. I suspect our new preoccupation will be the other seven. And since we are almost certainly looking at a potential Black Operation, I suggest we give ’em a name. The two at Pol’arnyj…right now I guess they gotta be K-4 and K-5.”
It now occurred to Boomer Dunning that Columbia was being designated the Black Ops submarine in the US Navy — the one no one knew about, not where it was, or where it was headed. That way, if it disappeared, it would be a long time before its demise became common knowledge. Maybe never, since most of the time its whereabouts were unknown anyway. Boomer’s thoughts began to wander out to the deep dark waters in which he and his team operated on behalf of this nation. The sudden voice of Arnold Morgan took him by surprise.
“I’d say we’ve just about reached the point where we’re gonna need a plan,” he was saying. “Since Boomer here is the man we want to carry out the operation I guess he might as well start work on it.”
“Right, sir,” said Boomer. “As far as I can see there are three quite definitive possibilities. One: the submarines have never dived, therefore the Chinese crews and their Russian advisers are planning to head home on the surface, which makes life very simple for us. Two: they plan to dive the boats in the not-too-distant future, then spend around three weeks training for basic safety and operational procedures, and head home probably dived some of the way. Not much of a problem there for us either.
“Three: the Chinese plan to wait out the winter working up in the Barents Sea, which does not freeze, and then head home as a fully operational, combat-ready unit, prepared to fight and defend against any enemy. I don’t like this last possibility nearly so much.”
“You got it, Boomer,” said Admiral Morgan. “You got it right there. If it’s number one, we don’t have a problem. We can catch ’em anywhere down the Atlantic. If it’s two we’ll have to keep our eyes open and have Columbia on station ready to strike. If it’s three, that’ll just be two to the power of ten. Meantime, if it’s okay with you, Joe, I’d like Boomer to work on that — the trap for K-4 and K-5. I just don’t want one more of those damn things to reach Chinese waters. Three’s all they’re getting.”
“Right. Boomer will stay here, make a preliminary plan, and bring it back when he’s done,” said Mulligan. “You probably want to get back to the White House and inform the President we will now need his formal approval.”
“He’s more anxious than anyone. That’s not going to be difficult. We’ll talk later.”
Arnold Morgan headed out the door, onto corridor seven, swung left onto E-Ring, the great circular outer-thruway of the Pentagon, where the senior commands of all three services operated, the Army on the third floor, the Navy and Air Force on the fourth. The President’s National Security Adviser knew this mighty labyrinth as well as he knew the inside of a Los Angeles Class submarine. He made straight for the office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and asked the Flag Lieutenant if anyone minded if he used the private elevator he had used when entering the building.
The young officer practically fell over himself organizing a guard to escort the legendary Intelligence admiral to the garage, where “Charlie’s waiting for me — if he values his life, career, and pension, that is.”
They drove out of the dark gloomy garage into an equally dark and gloomy December day. The driver sensed his passenger was in more of a hurry now than he had been earlier, so he drove as fast as he could back across the Potomac and into the downtown traffic. It was raining hard now, and the highway was swept by spray from speeding cars. “Keep going. I’m used to deeper water than this,” the admiral ordered as Charlie gunned the White House limousine straight down the fast lane.
Back at his office in the West Wing, the Admiral was handed a communication requesting his presence in the Oval Office. He picked up the phone and checked with the President’s secretary and was told to “report right away.” There were many problems to deal with this winter, but this President knew the difference between a problem and a potentially life-threatening international incident.
He was staring out at the rain-swept south lawn when Admiral Morgan arrived. He was clearly preoccupied, but he smiled and said, “Hi, Arnold. I’m glad to see you. Anything new in the Malacca Strait?”
“Yessir. It’s the third Kilo all right. Steaming northeast about four hundred miles into the South China Sea. Under Chinese escort. Heading for Haikou, I’d guess.”
“Damn,” the President whispered before looking up at his National Security Adviser. “Nothing much we can do, right?”
“Not without causing a fucking uproar,” replied the Admiral. “But there is one thing we must do.”
“Uh-huh?”
“We must make certain that goddamned Kilo, on that goddamned Dutch freighter, is the last goddamned Kilo they ever get.”
“No doubt about that, Admiral. What do you need me to do?”
“You have to inform me, as your NSA, and Admiral Mulligan as the professional head of the United States Navy, and your CJC, that you, and your most senior political colleagues, Bob and Harcourt, authorize the Navy to ensure that not one of the seven remaining Kilos on the China-Russia contract ever arrives in a Chinese port. You must further authorize Joe Mulligan that he has Presidential authorization to use any means at his disposal in order to ensure this instruction is carried out. Save, of course, for either declaring or causing a world war. It will of course be a Black Operation.”
“Right. Do you have any feeling about the diplomatic route?”
“I’d say nothing at the moment, sir. I do not want too many people to realize how worried we are.”
“Yes, of course. I’m seeing the Defense Secretary and the Secretary of State in the next hour. There’ll be a classified memorandum to both you and Admiral Mulligan by the end of the afternoon.”
“Yessir.”
“Oh, Arnold. I do have two questions. First, how much of a grip do we have on the other five Kilos?”
“Sir, there are two hulls under construction in Severodvinsk, not nearly so far advanced as the two we’re worried about. And there are three others at Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga. All of these are close to completion. If we are right, we will have located the final seven for China, and you may assume they will all be on the move by the end of next summer. Your other question, sir?”
“How much risk is there to our own submarines?”
“Some, sir. But every possible advantage is with us. I do not anticipate a major problem.”
“Thank you.”
Eight days passed, and then on the morning of December 12 Arnold Morgan received a phone call from Fort Meade suggesting he might like to drive out to see some newly arrived satellite pictures. Putting the phone down, the Admiral yelled through his open door for someone to get Charlie “on parade real quick.”
Including four minutes to cancel a lunch date, it took forty-one minutes to reach the Fort Meade exit on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway — which was about five minutes off the Admiral’s own record for the White House-Fort Meade dash. Knowing how urgent the situation was, he was a bit disgruntled at how long it had taken them to get to Fort Meade but not as disgruntled as he would have been had Charlie broken his record.
At the entrance to the NSA, Admiral Morgan told Charlie to go get himself some lunch. “I’ll be at least one hour, maybe three. Be here.” As he strode through the door, at least four members of the staff stood rigidly at the mere sight of their former boss.
The Director’s office at Fort Meade, which represents the front line of America’s world military surveillance network, has housed some hard-nosed chiefs in its history, but none quite so pitiless in his pursuit of truth as Arnold Morgan.
The new man in the big chair had been handpicked by Morgan himself before he left for the White House. A New Yorker, Rear Admiral George R. Morris had previously been on patrol in the Far East, in command of the Carrier Battle Group of John C. Stennis, a 100,000-ton Nimitz Class ship commissioned in December of 1995.
Admiral Morris, always a serious, concerned kind of an individual, was a bit jowly in appearance and was known for his rather lugubrious sense of delivery. Right now, as Arnold Morgan was shown into his office, the new Fort Meade Director had taken on the appearance of a lovesick bloodhound.
“Things aren’t looking too clever up in the Barents Sea,” he said, standing to greet Admiral Morgan. “Take a look at this sequence of pictures. They’re in order.”
Admiral Morgan stared down and pushed the pictures closer together, checking the times. “Jesus!” he said. “That’s the Kilos. They’ve dived. How old are these?”
“A few hours, picked ’em up on Big Bird. About five minutes before you arrived I received a message saying they had surfaced about twenty miles offshore and were headed back toward harbor.”
“At least they haven’t left for good.”
“No. Guess not. Looks like they’re continuing to check the boats out and train the Chinese crew.”
“I don’t know how good the Chinese submariners were when they arrived, but if they want to drive those things home safely they have a lot to master. Just to operate the Kilos safely underwater is at least a three-week program. And by the time they start diving they ought to be competent with the hydroplanes, the diesels, the electric motors, and the sensors, the sonar radar, and the ESM. No one in his right mind would dive a submarine without understanding how it works.
“I’m not certain they will have had time to tackle all of the combat systems after just three months, but I do think that by the first or second week in January they will certainly know enough to go home underwater, even if they won’t be a fully trained front-line fighting unit.”
“I suppose, Arnold, the longer they stay in Russia, the more competent and dangerous they become.”
“Correct, George. Our interest is that they leave as soon as possible. And since they haven’t been in any hurry to get those Kilos underwater, my guess is they will clear Pol’arnyj in the next three weeks.”
“I assume we do not plan for the Kilos to reach China?”
“Correct, George. But this is Black. You plainly have to know. But inform no one else.”
“Nossir.”
Admiral Morgan picked up the safe line to the Pentagon, direct to the office of the CNO, and requested Admiral Joe Mulligan to expect him within the hour on a matter of high priority. He also requested that Commander Dunning be there as well. He then left Fort Meade as swiftly as he had arrived
, telling Charlie to step on it.
Back at the Pentagon, Joe Mulligan was waiting. Admiral Morgan came through the inner door without knocking. “This might be it, Joe,” he said. “K-4 and K-5 both dived today for the first time. Worked offshore for a while, then headed back in. They may be here for the entire winter, but my instincts tell me they’re gonna be on their way home, under their own power, in three weeks. Straight out of harbor, sharp left, and on down the Atlantic. With six Russian submariners on board each boat to assist them. Six weeks from their departure date they’ll be in Canton. That’ll mean exactly one-half of the ten-Kilo contract will have been fulfilled.
“Fort Meade is watching the situation on an hourly basis. We have to move real quick. I’m assuming our plans are in order.”
“Yeah. As well as they can be with no real start date,” replied Admiral Mulligan. “I suppose there’s no earthly point trying to put the arm on Beijing, is there?”
“Well, we might just be able to blackmail them on trade issues, but that’s not the problem. What’s holding us back is the fact that we don’t want to let ’em know how much we care.”
By this time Admiral Morgan was pacing the office. “I just hope,” he was growling, “that we do not have to take out all seven of them. The Chinese are a lot of things, but they’re not stupid. I think they’ll get the message early in the proceedings. They’ll buy the Admiral Gudenko, which is not terrifically good news. But if we nail K-4 and K-5, they’ll almost certainly bag the order for the last five Kilos.”
“I wouldn’t be absolutely certain of that, Arnold.”
“I’m not absolutely certain, for Christ’s sake. That’s just my best guess. Meanwhile I better tell Harcourt to get the Russian ambassador in there right away and warn him what the subject is gonna be, so’s he brings the right aide.”
The Admiral picked up a telephone, got through to the office of the US Secretary of State immediately. A few minutes later Admiral Mulligan heard him sign off by saying, “Okay, I’m on my way.”
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