“Even the Iranians would not much want to try shipping nuclear warheads right under our noses into their Navy yards, with the U.S. satellites watching above, and our guys on the ground. That, they know, might just cause us to get downright ugly.”
“Yeah,” said Jeff Zepeda. “I agree with that. I don’t think they would have risked the China deal. It’s too complicated, too far away, and too chancy. Plus the fact they are a nation that lives with screw-ups on almost every level. I can’t see them even attempting something that tricky, not with such a big margin for error, and, potentially, a huge downside to their own interests.”
“If I were an Ayatollah and I wanted to hit the American Navy,” said Baldridge, “I know what I would do. I’d reopen my lines to Soviet Russia. I’d either buy or rent a fourth Kilo-Class submarine from out of the Black Sea, I’d pay for it in cash, U.S. dollars, and it would have to contain a full outfit of torpedoes, at least two of them armed with nuclear heads.
“I’d send my team there to deal directly with one of those Russian captains who haven’t been paid for about two years. And I’d suborn him with a sum of money beyond his wildest, and then my very best commander would move in and bring the submarine out secretly through the Bosporus, underwater, with some amazing cover story to keep the crew in line. Remember, a hundred million bucks might be a lot of cash to the Mafia, but it’s peanuts to the government of a major oil-producing nation. Anyway, that’s what I’d do.”
“So,” said Admiral Morgan, “would I.”
“One minor problem,” said Ted Lynch, who was one of those Army officers who had spent several years attached to U.S. embassies and consulates in the Middle East. “It’s not legal. You have to give the Turks two months’ notice if you want to bring any warship through the Bosporus. That’s Turkish territory on both banks.
“If you hit the bottom and got stuck, the Turks could quite legally claim salvage rights, throw up their hands and say, ‘But you had no right to be there, especially with nuclear weapons, unannounced in Turkish waters.’
“There’s an old military saying which has stood the test of time since the Ottoman Empire. Actually I can’t remember it, but it means, translated from the Greek or Latin or something, ‘Fuck not around with brother Turk. Because he gets real pissed off, real quick.’ Trust me. Hit a shoal in the Bosporus, you’d never get your ship back.”
“Yeah, but the towelheads are fanatics,” said Admiral Morgan. “They believe in their God, Allah. They believe his kingdom beckons for the righteous, and that it would be a privilege to die in such a cause. Death means less to them than it does to us. Much more, spiritually. They would try something like this, if they really wanted to cast a monster blow against ‘The Satan USA’—because broadly that’s what they think of us.”
The four men were silent for a moment, each one of them pondering the possibility of anyone daring to run the gauntlet of the Turks. “The other thing you do have to remember,” said Baldridge, “is that such a journey would take you straight through the middle of Istanbul harbor! Can you imagine that? Plowing through the ferry lanes—the periscope leaving a huge white wake?”
“There are ways around all of that,” said Admiral Morgan.
“Yeah,” said Baldridge. “But not when you’re fucking around in about a hundred feet of water, with old wrecks and God knows what else on the sea bed.”
“Yes, there are,” said Morgan again. “The key question is, could Iran, or any Arab nation, come up with anyone good enough even to start such a mission? There are damn few submarine officers anywhere in the world who could pull it off. And they are probably British…the U.S. Navy hasn’t operated small diesel submarines for years.”
“There’s a lotta blind alleys here,” said Zepeda. “And they all lead us to a very clever Arab, who we don’t think exists.”
“Well, it’ll please the Pentagon guys this afternoon,” said Lynch. “You just know the brass wants to stick to the accident theory. And the politicians will not waver from it. You could tell the President does not believe it. But he really has no choice. An accident is a bitch and all that. But a nuclear hit on a U.S. ship…Christ! That could be war, and the populace might panic. The media would definitely panic. Or at least they would look as if they were panicking.”
“I think that is correct,” said Morgan. “And in a way that’s good for us. Because we are going to be asking a lot of questions. I’ll coordinate all the data on where every submarine in the world has been in the past three months. We’ll get a long way by elimination—I’ll pull up all the files on all detections. A lot of ’em will be whales, but we just might hit something. There was something a couple of months ago which kinda baffled me. I’d like to find out some more about that.
“But before that I’d like to talk to Ted about tracing large amounts of cash.”
“That gets harder each year. So many foreign banks, wire transfers, with no one paying attention.”
“Yup,” said Morgan. “But I think we might be talking about 10 million bucks minimum, in greenbacks. That lot had to come from somewhere.”
“Sure did, Admiral. I can’t promise record speed. But I think we get can some kind of a handle on that.”
“How do you start, Ted?”
“Well, we’ll make a few discreet inquiries in the naval ports around the Black Sea, particularly those where we know there are submarines. Big sums of money in small close-knit communities tend to become pretty obvious pretty quickly. But, if we are correct in our assumptions, it won’t be that surprising to find a few recipients. The hard part will be finding where that money came from, and precisely who distributed it. But it’s a whole bundle of cash, and it’s hard to hide a whole bundle of anything.”
Jeff Zepeda said he would get busy with various Iranian contacts and agents to see if he could smell out any such plot to demolish an American carrier.
Bill Baldridge seemed preoccupied with the problem of the mysterious Arab commander. “My view is this,” he said. “I may be wrong, but I really do not think the Iranians would have used one of their very public submarines—the three Russian-built Kilos in Bandar Abbas—to attack an American Battle Group.
“I mean, Jesus, that’s not terrorism, that’s like trying to start a goddamned war. I think it is so much more likely they will have gone for a fourth boat, purchased or hired from the Black Sea, and crept quietly around the globe until they found the Thomas Jefferson.
“I do realize that thereafter the problems become almost insurmountable, on a sheer technological basis. But there is one problem that refuses to budge from the very front area of my brain. You know what it is? They must have had someone—a brilliant Arab submariner, a guy who could creep through the Bosporus, the Gibraltar Strait undetected, past all the U.S. surveillance, on and under the surface, in the sky, and on the ships.
“This is a truly brilliant guy. Who could it possibly have been? They must have had someone in charge and that someone must have been one of their own, in the submarine, in the control room, calling the shots. But who trained him? Was he an American traitor? A British traitor? It is almost impossible to believe such a man could exist. But not, guys, as impossible as trying to establish that fucking uranium went off by mistake.”
The more Admiral Arnold Morgan heard from Baldridge the more he liked him. Actually he liked all of the men sitting with him in the corner booth of this little restaurant on the waterfront of colonial Alexandria. But it was Baldridge he really warmed to. Baldridge was a terrier, with a clear mind, and he was after a rat, and he was very, very focused, wrestling with the problem himself, assuming the responsibility was his.
“Einstein with a red-and-white dishcloth on his head,” Baldridge mused. “That’s who I’m after.”
Admiral Morgan chuckled, noting the Kansas scientist said “I” not “We.”
“Don’t let this eat you up, son,” he said. “Might affect your judgment.”
Lieutenant Commander Baldridge made no reply, gulped
his coffee, and muttered absently, “The thing is, so far as I can see, the fucker’s still out there.”
What the American people are entitled to know is the precise odds against such an accident happening again. While selfsatisfied Pentagon staffers—particularly in the Department of the Navy—walk around making up absurd excuses for the catastrophe—there are fathers and mothers out there with boys trying to make it through the Academy at Annapolis. And those American parents want to know the risks of further accidents. Indeed they may rise up and demand to know the risks. It is one thing to make a statement talking about “a one-in-a-billion chance,” as the President did—but what is the reality? For how many more of our boys does the U.S. Navy represent a nuclear death trap?
EDITORIAL PAGE
—SAN FRANCISCO TIMES
Admiral Morgan, without getting involved in a debate, ordered a big bowl of Caesar salad and French bread for the table. “Let’s hit this and get back to the Pentagon,” he said. “Then we can spend four hours listening to the highest military brains in the country discuss an accident not even they believe happened.”
Everyone laughed. And an uneasy silence took over as they chomped their way through about four acres of beautifully dressed lettuce, munched the hot bread, and sipped the coffee.
Afterward, they slipped through the “No Entry” door, down the stairs, into the staff car, and were gone within fifty seconds, racing north up the Washington Parkway
toward the Pentagon.
Inside the Chairman’s conference room, the meeting had not yet been called to order, but Admiral Dunsmore was reading out a report filed from Hawaii by Captain Barry, detailing the death and injury toll on the other ships. By far the worst of these was Port Royal, which had been operating within four miles of the carrier. Ten of her crew had been killed in the general carnage of flying glass and steel which occurs when a big warship is nearly capsized. Twenty more were injured, nine of them seriously. Only the freak angles of the waves had somehow flung Port Royal back onto her keel, otherwise she would have gone to the bottom, in short order. Right now she was limping back, toward the American base at Diego Garcia.
There were only minimum injuries on board the Vicksburg, but the O’Kane and O’Bannon, which had also been operating close-in, now had four men dead and another forty hospitalized, with severe burns, cuts, bruises, broken ribs, arms and collar-bones, sustained when the destroyer broached in the deep trough of the first huge wave from the blast. They too had cheated death, but like Port Royal, were making painfully slow progress back to Diego Garcia.
According to Captain Barry, the nuclear contamination had moved in the classic manner, down range, opening up into a fifty-mile-long trumpet shape. Several ships had not been in the path of the lethal radioactivity. Nonetheless, it had been an extremely difficult night, with Captain Barry operating in the pitch dark and fog, with unreliable communications.
Somehow he had managed to round up a couple of working helicopters to fly surgeons to the stricken ships, two of which were operating on small emergency lights only. There had also been a shortage of nursing staff, since the main hospital facilities had been on the carrier herself. None of the senior officers in the Pentagon envied Captain Barry his task that night.
Admiral Dunsmore called the meeting to order and briefly recapped the preliminary report from Captain Barry, which confirmed that a nuclear blast had destroyed the carrier, and very nearly taken two other warships with her. The report also contained information from the CIC of USS Hayler, in which the Anti-Submarine Warfare Officer had recorded the fleeting event of 11:45 A.M. on the morning of July 7, the day before the explosion, when one of his operators had come up with a new track, 5136, a disappearing radar contact, picked up on four sweeps but with no opportunity to discern course or speed.
As the CNO spoke, Admiral Morgan looked up sharply. “Did they put it on the link?” he asked, almost brusquely.
“Sure did,” replied Admiral Dunsmore. “Captain Baldridge acted on it too. Sent up two Seahawks, scanned the area to the stern of the carrier, dropped a sonobuoy barrier into the water—according to this, eighteen active buoys went down. All our ships in the area were alerted, but the line was never broken. Nothing came through, which suggests it was probably a whale.”
“Unless it was a diesel-electric submarine on battery power, at periscope depth,” interjected Baldridge. “A little further astern than we thought, and they actually saw one of the buoys, then turned away. To wait.”
“Surely, if they’d been at periscope depth, we would’ve picked them up on radar?” said Jeff Zepeda.
“We did,” replied Baldridge softly. “Track 5136, I believe.”
A profound silence suddenly enveloped the huge table deep in the Pentagon. There was something unreal about the young lieutenant commander’s words. How on earth could any submarine have got this close to the carrier and not been nailed? The two CIA men glanced at each other grimly. The commanders from the Pacific Fleet stared at their reports. Admiral Morgan glowered, and Scott Dunsmore frowned.
The CNO was about to speak when a Marine guard opened the door, slammed his heels together, and announced, “The President of the United States.” The Chief Executive entered accompanied by his security chief, and the Secretary of Defense. This particular President was in and out of the Pentagon more than any of his immediate predecessors. Not since Eisenhower had an occupant of the White House taken such a fervent interest in military affairs. And none of them had ever faced a more nerve-racking crisis than the one unfolding right here in Washington in the high summer of 2002.
“Sorry to be a couple of hours early,” he said. “But right now this thing is taking over. I may broadcast again either tonight or tomorrow, and I want to stay right on top of the situation. Fill me in, please?”
“Well, sir,” said Admiral Dunsmore. “We were just going over Captain Barry’s report, which mentions a radar contact on the previous day, spotted by one of our destroyers and checked out by our helicopters. Nothing very strong. The operators picked up on only four sweeps.”
“That’s about what you’d expect with a top guy,” said Baldridge, with a sudden urgency in his voice, and absolutely no regard for protocol. The President, however, was getting used to the careless but calculating manner of Jack Baldridge’s kid brother.
All eyes were now on the lieutenant commander. But the President spoke first. “Elaborate on that, Bill?”
“Well, sir, any submarine, on such a mission, is going to operate in a very clandestine way. I’d guess she would be moving at no more than three knots, at which speed a Russian Kilo is totally silent. Picture this: she is listening to the sounds of the U.S. Battle Group. She can hear the networks, pick up the sounds of the propeller shafts, especially the giant one which is louder than the rest, and belongs to the carrier.”
Right here, Admiral Morgan, the ex–nuclear submarine commander, interjected, “The submarine knows in which direction the surface ships are, but not precisely how far away the carrier is. With time, he will develop a fair idea of their course and speed. But only when he thinks he might see something will he slide up to periscope depth.
“The captain takes a good look down the sonar bearing in less than seven seconds. In the monsoon conditions, visibility’s poor. He probably sees nothing. He may then try the ESM to see if there’s radar anywhere on the bearing, but only for three seconds. This is very dangerous for him, because he might be spotted. He lowers the mast, real fast, and goes deep again, at which point the submarine has vanished without trace.
“Remember, if you will, her radio masts were never exposed for more than seven seconds; which translates, roughly, to four sweeps on Hayler’s radar. That’s when she picked up just two feet of the submarine’s big search periscope jutting out of the water. Then nothing…but she’s still there.”
“Shit,” said the President.
“Yeah, and that’s not all,” added Admiral Morgan. “Remember how slowly she’s going, si
lently at three knots, probably in a racecourse pattern over about four miles. If her commander is as smart as I think he is, he will just position himself upwind of the carrier, always upwind…because if the carrier is flying aircraft, she must be heading upwind for takeoff and landings. If the submarine stays upwind, the carrier will eventually come to him.
“When Captain Baldridge ordered up the choppers and dropped the buoys, the submarine commander may have heard them. He may even have seen them doing it. But more likely he came back in, a couple of hours later, came to periscope depth and actually saw one of the buoys, or even heard it transmitting. He just turned away again. And waited, perhaps for twenty hours, while the buoys ran out of steam and sank to the bottom. Then he came in again, moving closer to the carrier.”
“Jesus Christ,” said the President.
“Yessir,” said Morgan, adding, “I am not describing anything magical. I am just describing advanced operational procedures by atop class submarine commanding officer. The problem, at the beginning of this thing, was the same as it is now. Where the hell did the goddamned Arabs get such a man? I’m just afraid he might be American. Or British. No one else could possibly be that good.”
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