A report from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, which had high-tech facilities to re-create model waves created by landslides, stated flatly, “If the Cumbre Vieja were to collapse as one single block, it would lead to a mega-tsunami.”
So far as the scientists understood, the volcanoes on the southwest flank of La Palma erupted about every two hundred years. And there was no evidence that one single eruption would cause the landslide. In fact, it might take five eruptions. There was, of course, no section in the report that dealt with the probable effects of a couple of 200,000-ton nuclear warheads blowing up in the middle of the Cumbre Vieja crater.
Admiral Morgan had another fearsome little aid to his presentation — a two-foot-square, 18-inch-high scale model of the volcanoes on the southwest corner of La Palma. It came from the University of California and had been flown in to Andrews by the U.S. Air Force, arriving at the White House by helicopter.
The model showed the seabed to the top of the peaks, the steeply sloping volcanic cliffs falling away from the mountains, way down below the surface of the water. The shoreline was marked, highlighting the sudden sweep of the land into the depths. It showed the probable zones of the landslide on the seabed, and it starkly illustrated the tremendous impact such an avalanche would create upon the water.
On the top of the model were the great peaks of Caldera de Taburiente, Cumbre Nueva, and just below them, Cumbre Vieja, sitting atop a massive craggy rock wall 2,000 feet above the ocean, which, the model showed, shelved down to a 4,000-foot depth.
“Jesus Christ,” said Admiral Doran. “That puts a pretty sharp light on it, eh?”
“Just look at the position of the Cumbre Vieja, perched up there on top of the wall,” said Arnold. “Just imagine what a nuclear bomb could do…Holy Shit! We gotta find this bastard!”
“I’ve just been reading a damn good book by Simon Winchester about Krakatoa,” said Admiral Dickson. “Been meaning to read it for years. That was one hell of an explosion…goddamned mountain blew itself to pieces, punched a damn great hole in the ocean, wrecked three hundred towns and villages, and killed 36,000 people. And you know what? Almost all the destruction, and absolutely all of the death, was caused by the tsunami. And the son of a bitch was nothing like the size of the one we’re looking at.”
“Jesus, Alan. You’re making me nervous,” said Arnold. “But I guess we have to face the reality, otherwise we’ll all end up under medical supervision at Camp David.”
“Okay,” said Alan Dickson. “We’ve dealt with the President. We’ve taken care of the French. Nearly. Now we’re about ready to sort out the ships. Maybe Frank could give us a rundown on the Atlantic Fleet as it stands.”
“Perfect,” said Arnold. “Lemme just call the President. He’d better sit in on this. Since he has been C in C of the armed forces for all of four hours.”
He called upstairs to the private residence, and within five minutes, Paul Bedford was back in the Oval Office, listening to the rundown of the Navy situation. He had never forgotten his days as a frigate Lieutenant, and he often recalled the excitement of being a young officer, racing through the night at the helm of a U.S. warship.
And predictably, he asked questions no civilian would ever dream of. “Frank, these Oliver Hazard Perry frigates. They were brand-new when I was serving, and I haven’t kept up…good ships?”
“Excellent, sir…3,600 tons, 41,000 hp…couple of big gas turbines, single shaft, 4,500-mile range at 28 knots, need refueling when they reach the ops area. But that’s no problem. They pack a pretty good wallop too…four McDonnell Douglas Harpoon guided missiles, homing to 70 nautical miles at Mach zero-point-nine…plus ASW torpedoes.”
“Beautiful,” said President Bedford. And he really meant it. “That little son of a bitch comes to the surface, he’s history, right?”
“Just so long as we can see him,” replied Admiral Doran. “And we are putting a lot of faith in the helicopters…You know, each frigate carries two of those excellent Sikorsky SH-60R Seahawks…They got state-of-the-art LAMPS Mark III weapons systems. They’re just great machines, 100 knots, no sweat, up to 10,000 feet.
“They’re exactly what we need…airborne platforms for antisubmarine warfare. That Barracuda shows up where we think he’ll be, we got him. Those helos have outstanding dipping sonar, Hughes AQS-22 low frequency.
“They all have USY-2 acoustic processors, upgraded ESM and Integrated Self-defense. Plus APS-124 search radar…and twenty-four sonobuoys. Those helos carry three Mk-50 torpedoes, an AGM-114R/K Hellfire Missile, and one Penguin Mark-2.”
“I just hope the French cooperate,” said the President.
“They will ultimately not be a problem,” said Arnold Morgan. “If they won’t shut the damn thing off, we’ll shut it off for them. I was not joking when I first said that. We’ll shoot it down, because we don’t have any choice.”
“This means,” said the President, “you have entirely abandoned the idea of a wide search out in the Atlantic, west of the islands?”
“Again, no choice,” replied Arnold. “With a hundred ships out there in deep water, we could still miss him easily. It’s too vast an area, hundreds of thousands of square miles of water.
“So we’re sticking to a small force of just twelve frigates, plus the carrier group. Perhaps, Frank, you could let the President know where we are with the fleet right now?”
“Sure,” said Admiral Doran, flicking the pages of his notebook. “We just diverted two ships from the Gulf of Maine on a southwest course to the Canaries, that’s USS Elrod, under the command of Captain CJ Smith, and USS Taylor, under the command of Captain Brad Willett.
“The Kauffman and the Nicholas were both in the North Atlantic, and have been heading south for the past three days. Comdr. Joe Wickman’s Simpson was off North Carolina, and we sent him east two days ago. Tonight, seven more frigates are due to clear Norfolk by midnight.
“That’s the old Samuel B. Roberts, commanded by Capt. Clay Timpner — rebuilt, of course, since she hit a mine in the first Gulf War; USS Hawes under Comdr. Derek DeCarlo, the Robert G. Bradley, under a newly promoted young Commander, John Hardy, from Arizona. Then there’s USS De Wert, commanded by Capt. Jeff Baisley.
“My old ship, the Klakring, will be ready next. She’s now commanded by Capt. Clint Sammons, from Georgia, who’ll probably make Rear Admiral next year. The Doyle’s already on her way under Comdr. Jeff Florentino. And the USS Underwood, commanded by Capt. Gary Bakker, will be the last away. She only came in yesterday morning.”
“How about the helos for the carrier deck?”
“We’re sending the Truman out from Norfolk with fifty Seahawks on board — they’ll transfer to the Ronald Reagan flight deck as soon as possible, then bring the fixed wings home.”
“So that’ll give us over seventy Seahawks active over the datum?”
“Correct, sir. We’ll be flying a lot of patrols around the Islands, as from midnight on October 7. He sticks that mast up for more than a few seconds any time in the next two days, we’ll get him. If he doesn’t have any satellites, he’ll need time to get an accurate range.”
“How accurate does his damn missile have to be?”
“If it’s nuclear, which we’re sure it will be, he can hit within a half-mile of the Cumbre Vieja, and the impact would be terrific. But I think he’ll try to bury those babies right in the crater. Remember, he’s trying to blow the volcano wide open. He’s not trying to knock the cliff down…because that won’t be enough. He’s vowed to erupt the Cumbre Vieja, and he’ll need time to set up for an accurate fix. And that’s our chance…while his periscope’s jutting out of the water, and we’re sweeping the surface with radar.”
“There’s a lot riding on this, Frank,” said the President. “A whole lot riding on the skill and sharpness of your boys.”
“Yes, sir. But if it can be done, they’ll do it. Of that I’m in no doubt.”
President Bedford and Admiral Morgan refused all
requests for interviews via the White House Press Office. There was a hot line established between the National Security Agency and the Oval Office. And Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe was constantly combing the myriad of U.S. intercepts for anything that might give a clue to the whereabouts of the phantom Barracuda.
At eleven o’clock on the first morning of Paul Bedford’s Presidency, he got one — vague, coded, and not much use to anyone. But the U.S. listening station in the Azores had picked up something that arrived from the satellite of the Chinese Navy’s Southern Fleet. A short signal transmitted at 0500 (DST) on Tuesday morning…a cruel sea for the songbirds.
There was something about it that caught Ramshawe’s attention. He stared at it, pondered its possible meaning. Cruel sea…a cruel sea…the cruel sea…novel about the Navy…Nicholas Montserrat! Holy shit! On the day the island volcano blew.
Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe did not have the slightest idea of the different spelling. This may have been a message from anyone, to anyone. But it was in English, and it was on the Chinese Navy satellite. And it must have meant something to somebody.
So who’s the bloody songbirds? He did not waste any more time thinking. He picked up the phone to his boss, Admiral George Morris, and recounted the signal. George thought slowly. Eventually he spoke. “Jimmy,” he said. “That’s very interesting. Especially if those songbirds turned out to be canaries.”
“Hey! That’s a beaut, sir. You got it. Can’t be sure what it means, but it surely suggests the bloody Barracuda is on its way to La Palma.”
Neither of them knew that a new signal had just hit the Chinese satellite. Again brief…RAZORMOUTH 71.30N 96.00E. General Rashood, operating from Bandar Abbas, did not yet think that the Americans had already cracked the Barracuda/Razormouth code many months previously. And in any case, the Americans, who picked up the new signal, would not understand the coded global positions. The code 71.30N 96.00E put the submarine somewhere in the landlocked foothills of the North Siberian Plain.
They should have read 21.30N (minus 50 degrees) 48.00W (divided by 2). Which put the Barracuda precisely where Admiral Badr had her…steaming at 15 knots hard above the eastern shoulders of the North Atlantic Ridge, right over the Kane Fracture Zone, more than 900 miles east nor’east of the island of Montserrat. She was making a beeline for the Canary Islands.
When he went deep again after his transmission, Ben Badr would order a reduction in speed down to nine knots in 600 feet, above the somewhat noisy waters of the Ridge. He would cut it further as they continued eastward, running softly over the quiveringly sensitive underwater wires of SOSUS.
“Well, Admiral,” he said, “At least we know where the little bugger is headed. You want to call the Big Man, or will I do it?”
“You go ahead, Jimmy…I’m just looking over the comms plan for the command ship…We’re using the Coronado, an old warhorse, newly converted.”
He referred to the 17,000-ton Austin-class former Landing Platford Ship, which acted as Flagship Middle East Force in 1980. The Coronado was the U.S. Navy’s Flagship in the first Gulf War, and Flagship to the Third Fleet in Hawaii in the 1980s.
Commissioned in 1970, she had undergone three major conversions in a long life. A massive rebuild in the late 1990s saw her emerge virtually brand new. They turned her well deck into offices, with a three-deck command facility, and accommodation for four Flag Officers.
She was twin-shafted, driven by a couple of turbines that generated 24,000 hp. All her combat data systems were state-of-the-art, including an automated planning air-control system and wide-band commercial. She used Raytheon SPS-10P plus G-Band for surface search, and carried two helicopters.
After the turn of the century, the Coronado became the U.S. Navy’s sea-based Battle Lab, to act as test bed for new Information Technology systems.
At nine o’clock that morning, the CNO Adm. Alan Dickson announced from the Pentagon that Rear Adm. George Gillmore, a former hunter-killer nuclear submarine CO, had been appointed Search Group Commander, Task Group 201.1. He would report only to Adm. Frank Doran (CTF 201—CINCLANT), who now represented the Front Line contact, through which Arnold Morgan would remain close to all developments off the Canaries.
Admiral Gillmore had been the outstanding submariner of his year, along with Capt. Cale “Boomer” Dunning, a fellow Commanding Officer from Cape Cod. When he took his first surface ship command aboard the frigate Rodney M. Davis, George had quickly proved one of the best ASW officers in the Navy, in a class of his own in almost every exercise.
He had all the right qualities, including the ability to concentrate for hours at a time, the sharpness to react instantly to even a sniff of an underwater contact, and the courage to act decisively when he was sure he’d found one. His long years underwater served him well. Admiral Gillmore could always recollect what he would have done, had he been the hunted rather than the hunter. And he had an almost uncanny knack of being correct in his predictions. Bad news for Admiral Badr and his men.
A tall, bearded disciplinarian, George was based in the Atlantic Fleet, and he had already sailed for the Canaries from Norfolk in the small hours of Wednesday morning two days previously, several hours before President McBride left the White House. It was the fact that such an act of open defiance towards a sitting President had been necessary that had convinced Admiral Morgan and General Scannell that McBride simply had to go.
Admiral Gillmore’s overall task would be to coordinate the search frigates, helos, and the Carrier Battle Group ships in an intense and complicated operation that might explode into action at any moment. He would have a staff of more than one hundred men, eighteen officers.
Right now, as the announcement was made, Admiral Gillmore was familiarizing himself with the new systems on board the Coronado. He was assisted by two Lieutenant Commanders and three Lieutenants as he toured the ship’s ops rooms, checking the comms, the sonar room, the radar, the navigation area, and the GPS, which he alone knew would go dark at midnight on Wednesday, October 7.
The Navy Press Office issued a release to the media announcing the appointment of Admiral Gillmore, but a few doors down the corridor, in the Office of the CNO, there was a major disturbance. They had just received a communiqué from the French. On no account would they close down the European GPS. They cited the consequences to the world’s shipping, the obvious hazards to yachtsmen, and the prospect of beached freighters and tankers. They could not, in conscience, agree to such a course of action.
Immediately, Admiral Dickson prepared to go to Plan B, which would entail Admiral Morgan speaking to — or yelling at — the French Foreign Minister on a direct line to Paris.
Admiral Dickson was quite certain that the American Admiral was capable of frightening the French into submission, which, under the circumstances, would be a wise course of action. There was no question in Alan Dickson’s mind that Arnold would blow the Helios satellite clean out of the stratosphere if there was not immediate cooperation from France.
As the evacuation process continued, it quickly emerged that Washington’s treasures posed a huge problem, mainly because the capital city was entrusted with the preservation of the national heritage, and all that the nation holds dear. Of the 750,000 residents of Washington, D.C., 70 percent were employed by the Federal Government, which meant that a broad structure was already in existence for easy dissemination of information and execution of the evacuation plans.
The greatest concern by far, in the city itself, was the vast range of fine art, documents, and items of priceless value that record the birth, development, and history of the nation.
Across the Potomac, a Special Ops Room was established inside the Pentagon in the U.S. Navy department. A large computerized screen occupied an entire wall, and two Lieutenant Commanders were marking out the west-nor’westerly direction of the incoming tsunami as it would come driving forward off the Atlantic. So far as they could tell, the one certainty was that the initial impact would be borne by the pen
insula of land stretching south from Salisbury.
The path of the tsunami would proceed straight across the outer islands, on to the eastern shore of Maryland, a 150-foot wave taking out Salisbury completely. From there it would roll clean across the flatlands, drowning the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, and into the wide estuary of Chesapeake Bay. Speed: approximately 300 mph, causing massive flooding all the way north up the main channel and causing a tidal surge up the Potomac of 120 feet minimum, IF the jutting headland of Pautuxet was able to remove some of the sting from the wave. By now it would have leveled probably fifty small towns and villages.
Minutes later, the great city of Washington, D.C., would go under water. Scientists on the line from the University of California were telling the Pentagon Ops Room they could expect a rise of at least 50 feet throughout the course of the Potomac River as far upstream as Bethesda, where it should begin to decrease to maybe 20 feet, up near Brunswick.
The waters would, of course, recede within a few days, but the damage would be inestimable, and on no account should anything be left to chance. Washington itself was particularly low-lying; indeed, the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials were built on land that was formerly a swamp. Some of the great city buildings might survive, but not many, and no human being should risk standing in the way of the tidal wave.
The Treasury, the Supreme Court, the Department of Defense, and the FBI were effectively out of action for any new business. The CIA, perilously situated just north of the Georgetown Pike, on the west bank of the Potomac, where the river sweeps downstream to the right, was beginning a massive salvage operation of some of the most sensitive documents in the country, not to mention the kind of high-value equipment and files that could cause a world war, should they wash up in the wrong place.
Like their colleagues in Federal Government offices, the CIA were packing and dispatching computers, hard drives, documents, archive material, and other valuable records. Departmental staff were packing the stuff into military cases, all numbered and recorded, before making the journey under armed guard to Andrews Air Force Base over in Prince George’s County. From there they would be flown under guard in the giant C-17 transporters to carefully selected U.S. Air Bases beyond the reach of the floodwaters. Those cases would be stored in Air Force hangars, closely guarded around the clock by Federal troops with orders to shoot intruders on sight.
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