Barracuda 945

by Patrick Robinson

  “Are you suggesting we can, and should still, strike against them?” asked the Ayatollah.

  “Only if we want them the hell out of the Middle East on a permanent basis.”

  “I think this would be an excellent time to break for some tea,” replied the Holy Man. “Then perhaps, General, you will give us an idea of the military way forward.”

  “I believe that is why I am here,” replied Ravi. “And I will certainly do my best.”

  Everyone stood, and Commander Badr, the junior ranking officer in the room, walked to a telephone on the wall and ordered tea for ten immediately. Whoever was at the end of the line jumped to it because four minutes later three white-coated Naval orderlies appeared with two large silver teapots, trays of glass cups set in silver holders, sugar bowls, milk, and lemon.

  Iranian tea is without question the national drink. It is served constantly, scalding hot, strong, and, usually, with lemon. It is so bitter practically everyone takes it with sugar. The milk was a concession to Ravi, who everyone knew was English. In a way.

  They spent fifteen minutes talking among themselves, but the Ayatollah had ears only for General Rashood. He made his way across the room, and inquired, “Would you be prepared to come to Tehran if His Holiness so wished? I simply have a feeling you are about to propose something rather out of the ordinary.”

  Ravi smiled and he looked at the fierce but highly intelligent face of the cleric. The high forehead beneath the black turban, the calm, penetrating dark eyes, the slightly cynical turn of the mouth. This was not a man to fool with, Ravi thought. Not a man with whom to take any liberties whatsoever or indeed to underestimate.

  He said, “I anticipate we are about to become brothers in arms. I would not disrespect our leader. And, of course, I would attend his wishes in Tehran. Especially if we decide to embark on a great adventure together.”

  The Ayatollah smiled. “General, we may appear to Western eyes to have deep-seated problems among the nonbelievers and moderates in this country. But in the end, the hard-line clerics hold sway here. The disciples of Grand Ayatollah Khomeini still control the country.

  “We pay lip service to the West when it suits us. But we are always guided by the Koran, and our desire for an Islamic State, stretching along the north coast of Africa, right through the Middle East, and into Asia. This will one day be achieved. And neither the Great Satan nor its vicious little puppets in Israel will stop us.”

  General Rashood stood motionless. “I think I can assist you in achieving those objectives and I have confidence that we will succeed.”

  “Then we will be seated again, and I will call upon you to outline your grand strategy.” The Ayatollah held out both hands and said, “May Allah go with you and with us, General.”

  “Peace be upon you,” said Ravi, paradoxically.

  Two minutes later, he was standing again. And he began with a truly bludgeoning sentence. “I think we should aim to begin work in two years, by taking out the entire electrical-power supply on the West Coast of the United States.”

  Even the battle-hardened Admiral Badr, who had undergone more scrapes with the U.S. Navy than most Gulf Commanding Officers, looked up, startled.

  “They’ve already had some quite serious power cuts in California,” continued Ravi. “And in the next two years there will be millions of barrels of oil traveling down the new pipeline from Alaska, new refineries, new power stations, probably a grid system linking certainly the two biggest cities, Los Angeles and San Francisco, to the same electricity source.”

  What are you proposing, a suicide-bombing raid? Everyone had the same question.

  “No. I am proposing we begin to work on a plan to exact our revenge on them for everything they have done to us. We will start by crippling the new West Coast electricity supply right from the source, at the big refinery in Prince William Sound. Hit the storage tanks, then the actual refinery, then the pipeline itself, then the pipeline underwater along the Washington State coast, maybe three times, then the new refinery they’re building in Grays Harbor, then the main power station, which serves the two cities.”

  You mean all at once?

  “Well, in the course of a few days, we’ll be trying to show no connection between a series of accidents.”

  Accidents! This sounds like World Wars III and IV.

  “Absolutely not. We have a fire caused by an unknown source at the main storage and pumping station. The breaches in the underwater pipe will be a source of total confusion. Another fire in the refinery at Grays Harbor would also be unattributable. Certainly not to us, fifteen thousand miles away.”

  You’re talking over land and underwater—How?

  “Gentlemen. We need a submarine. Actually, we probably need two.”

  “General, we already have three,” said the Admiral. “Excellent diesel-electric-powered, silent under five knots. Perfect inshore attack boats. But I simply cannot imagine them creeping undetected down the West Coast of the United States, 15,000 miles from home. The U.S. Navy would catch us, for certain. And then it would not have been worth it. Because they could repair their stupid crude oil system. But we would not be allowed to replace the Kilos, nor could we replace the men who drove them.”

  “Admiral,” said the General, “your Kilos would be useless on such a mission. We need a large, fast nuclear submarine, which could neither be detected nor caught.”

  “Nuclear!” The Admiral was genuinely astonished.

  “You mean nuclear-powered, not an ICBM submarine, carrying nuclear weapons.”

  “No. Not nuclear weapons. Nuclear-powered.”

  “Well, before I ask how, let me ask why.”

  “Mostly because a nuclear submarine does not need to be refueled. It has an infinite capacity to run on its reactor, right around the world if necessary, no rendezvous with tankers. A big nuclear submarine can commit an attack in the Pacific and then head at high speed straight for the Indian Ocean, or the Atlantic, or even the Antarctic. The fact remains, no one knows where it is. Its range is so vast it just gets lost in literally millions of square miles of water, running quietly, running fast and deep. Invisible to any pursuer.”

  “Well, I do see that. We could not get a Kilo to the West Coast of the United States and back without refueling five or even six times, and of course she has to snorkel frequently to keep her batteries charged.”

  “Absolutely,” replied the General. “She has to stay at low speeds to remain silent. She’s vulnerable in many ways. And in my line of business, vulnerable is bad. In my opinion, the nuclear attack submarine is the finest weapon this world has ever seen. Her speed and mobility are unmatched. Her reactor provides everything—heat, light, power, fresh water—and it gives her the capacity to run deep, almost indefinitely.

  “A good one can fire guided missiles from beneath the surface, hitting targets hundreds of miles away with a weapon that appears to have been fired from nowhere. To return to the mundane little objective I just mentioned, a nuclear submarine could fire and hit those American fuel storage tanks in Prince William Sound in total secrecy.

  “No one would know why they had exploded, nor whether it was an act of war. And even if they did, they could never know who had committed it. There would be suspicion, but little else. We would not be among the suspects because we have no obvious access to such a submarine.”

  The General glanced around the table, assessing the reaction of his audience. The four men from Hezbollah sat enraptured. The clerics betrayed nothing, but the Ayatollah was leaning forward on his elbows, his head resting on his upraised fingers. He had not been sitting like that before.

  Commander Badr, leaning back in his chair, right next to Ravi, had a thin smile on his face as he listened to the Hamas Commander delve into the future.

  The General spoke again. “I am drawn to the conclusion that we must have a nuclear ship. Without it we are almost powerless. We cannot attack anything from the surface because that will result in instant identification.
We cannot use Special Forces beyond the Middle East because we have no way of delivering them or retrieving them after a mission.

  “And we certainly cannot attack anything or anyone from the air, because again that represents instant detection. We could, I suppose, copy the methods of Bin Laden and infiltrate Western countries, but that is very clumsy, and if our operatives get caught, the United States will not hesitate to lambast the country they think is the country of origin. And they wouldn’t even care if they were wrong! They’d still do it.

  “The acquisition of a nuclear submarine, gentlemen, changes everything. We can strike in deadly silence, unseen and unknown. And if we can be quick and decisive, the chances of anyone catching us are close to zero. No modern nation with an agenda such as ours has ever had a nuclear submarine. And it is my opinion that should make all efforts either to buy or lease one, under whatever deceptive means we can.”

  “May we presume you would not wish our acquisition of a nuclear submarine to become public knowledge?”

  “You may, Admiral. I would not even want it to enter an Iranian port or any other Islamic port.”

  “And I must also assume you are recommending we have an accomplice in this operation, another country whose facilities we can utilize.”

  “Of course. And the nation to whom we should turn for help is obviously China.”

  “Are you also suggesting we purchase a nuclear boat from them?”

  “No. They do not have one good enough for our purposes.”

  “Have you made any kind of study of the possibilities?”

  “Yes, of course. And our options are very limited. We plainly can’t buy from the West because they wouldn’t sell. China does not yet have sufficient technology. Which leaves India, Pakistan, and Russia. India and Pakistan are too afraid of each other to sell anything as critical as a nuclear boat. Which leaves, all alone, Russia, which happily will sell just about anything to anyone.”

  “That may be so,” replied Admiral Badr. “But Russia is a very strong signatory to all aspects of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. They were among the first to sign it back in 1968. They don’t approve of nuclear tests, underground or underwater, they have always voted to limit the spread of nuclear weapons of any kind, and they have never gone back on that. They even made certain that Belarus, Kazakstan, and the Ukraine signed up for the NPT.

  “Certainly they’ve never sold a nuclear submarine to anyone. Nor have any of the Big Powers, the U.S.A., Great Britain, and France. It would be an earthshaking move if they suddenly sold a nuclear attack submarine to Iran.”

  “That would depend largely on how it was done,” replied the General. “I think an element of subtlety might be in order. We would not be involved in any way.”

  “That might be difficult,” replied the Admiral.

  “That would depend on how hard we seek out the Achilles’ heel of each party,” said General Sharood. “Russia is easy. They need money desperately and will sell just about anything to get it. Their biggest customer by far is China. You may assume what China wants, with its big checkbook and smiling face, China will get.

  “Their Navy already has nuclear submarines, which will assuage Russian conscience. If we want to buy a submarine, China will have to do it for us.”

  “And why should they?”

  “Well, I think we are China’s Achilles’ heel. It is very hard for her to refuse us for several reasons:

  China understands the advantages of a full-scale Sino-Iranian partnership, which is already in place because of the pipeline from Kazakstan to the Strait of Hormuz.

  China does not want to disturb that friendship with Iran, since we guard the gateway to the Gulf, and without our cooperation it would be difficult for them to operate their new Hormuz refinery efficiently.

  Their partnership with Iran provides an excuse for their warships to roam at will in the northern Arabian Sea and in the Gulf itself.

  There are many oil and gas contracts coming up in the next two years all around the Gulf, and China knows that with our support and influence they have a very good chance of landing them.

  Under American pressure, the Chinese reneged on their contract over the C-802 missile, which was supposed to be supplied to Iran. They are fervently hoping it has been forgotten. I think this might be an occasion for a timely reminder that Iran has not forgotten. And China most certainly owes the Islamic State a very big favor.”

  The Ayatollah looked very thoughtful, reminded as he had been of the still-vexed and still-simmering bad feeling between the two nations over the C-802.

  This sleek, jet black, near supersonic cruise missile was built by the China National Precision Machinery Import and Export Corporation. But for its range of a little over eighty miles, it relied on an excellent French-built engine, manufactured by Microturbo in Toulouse.

  The entire saga took place over several months, but Iran was counting on this Exocet look-alike, ultimately to threaten ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz to the Persian Gulf. The C-802 had the capacity to carry the most sinister types of warhead, and the Americans were pressuring China not to fulfill the orders from Tehran.

  But Iran had a contract, with heavy front money, and ended up raging at the Chinese Ambassador and anyone else who might have been able to unclog the deal. Communications between Tehran, Beijing, Hong Kong, Toulouse, and Washington were almost blocking the airwaves at the height of the dispute. The National Security Agency in Fort Meade was eavesdropping on everyone. Admiral George Morris’s men were the only people who knew precisely what was happening.

  Nonetheless, China saw the danger in alienating the Americans, and over several months, despite a great deal of very nifty foot-work claiming things were beyond their control, they elected not to fulfill Iran’s order for the missile.

  Iran hit back by stripping down one of the C-802s they did own, and going in for a spot of “reverse engineering”—rebuilding it from scratch with parts they made themselves. Thereafter, Tehran clammed up, and it was assumed by all parties they had found a way to manufacture their own cruise missile, without further recourse to China National Precision Machinery.

  There had been a lot of bad blood and mistrust. It was China that wished to repair the damage, and General Rashood had pinpointed an area where the Dragon of the East might wish to ingratiate itself with the Ayatollahs, perhaps even make amends by acquiring a nuclear submarine for them.

  Admiral Badr, however, still thought the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty would prove to be a major stumbling block. “I realize that the Treaty only covers the matter of nuclear weapons, not nuclear power,” he said. “But the nations that do have nuclear weapons are very sensitive about letting anyone else get their hands on them.

  “And a ship’s nuclear reactor contains a substantial mass of uranium, the residue of which is weapons-grade U-235 from which nuclear bombs can be made. That’s one reason no country with a nuclear submarine has ever even considered selling a ship, with its reactor room full of live uranium, to any other country. No one has ever purchased a nuclear submarine. Anyone who has one, built it.”

  General Rashood nodded his understanding of the subject. Then he said firmly, “If we can persuade China to make an offer for two Russian nuclear boats, I would not expect them ever to enter a Chinese port, and most definitely not an Iranian port. I would expect them to make their journey either from the Baltic or from the Northern Fleet and find their way to one of the Russian bases on the Siberian coast, probably Petropavlovsk.

  “There would be no need for anyone to know they had even been sold. I don’t think a regular submarine movement along the Arctic waters north of Russia, heading east, would even attract anyone’s attention. They’d just think it was a straightforward Fleet transfer. The Russians do it all the time.”

  “You mean our mission would leave from a Russian port?”

  “Correct. And not even they would know where we were going.”

  “Well,” said the Ayatollah, “t
his all sounds very intriguing. And so far I am not opposed to any of these advanced ideas. My only question is, do we have a crew that could handle such a submarine?”

  “We do have three commanding officers who have undergone several months of training in Russia—and I believe that a part of the course did involve working in a nuclear boat…. Ben?”

  “Yes, it did. We found there were a lot of similarities anyway in a diesel electric. It’s mainly the power plant that is different. We were shown the rudiments of how it works, and we were at various times shown in some detail the differences in driving these much bigger ships. But, of course, we were there to perfect our commands of the Kilos.”

  “How long would it take a diesel electric Commanding Officer to learn to take a nuclear ship around the world?” asked the Ayatollah.

  “Probably nine months of intensive training. Maybe six months for a top man.”

  “Like yourself, Ben?” asked the Ayatollah, smiling.

  “Thank you, sir,” said Commander Badr, seriously. “Probably six months. Actually, I think a group of submarine officers could quickly become quite proficient at moving the ship around the oceans. Diving procedures, torpedoes, even missiles, navigation, gunnery, hydrology, air cleansing—they all operate on much the same principles. It’s the nuclear reactor, sir. The toughest job on that boat is the Nuclear Engineer’s. And he needs to have a half dozen men around him who know what they’re doing. On a project like this, we might need a couple of Russian engineers on loan for a while.”

  “Or even Chinese,” said the Ayatollah. “They have trained men for nuclear boats. And they might be more sympathetic to our cause.”

  “Sir,” interrupted General Rashood. “I do not plan to tell anyone what our cause is. Certainly not a nation like China, which has already betrayed Iran once, entirely in its own interests, and may well find it agreeable to do so again.”

  “Of course, General. Forgive me. It is taking me a little while to grow accustomed to a complete professional on an international level. I might say I am enjoying the experience.”