Nimitz Class (1997)

by Patrick Robinson

  “Oh, that’s another easy one. They know Iraq would get the blame, and that America would exact a fierce and predictable military revenge. If not Iraq, Iran would get the blame, and suffer the consequences, which the Israelis would almost like more, because Iran, at present, is rather more dangerous. Better yet, you and I both know that this particular American President would not lose one wink of sleep if he had to hit both of them, just to make certain the right one copped it.”

  “Jesus. That’s pretty devious.”

  “There are many devious regimes, Bill Baldridge. But there are no more devious people on this earth than those who work in the Hadar Dafna Building.”

  “The what?”

  “The Hadar Dafna Building. A big tower block in King Saul Boulevard

  , central Tel Aviv. The home of the Israeli Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations. Known to us outsiders as the Mossad.”

  “You think those guys would dare to blow up a U.S. carrier with six thousand people on board merely to get Iraq or Iran into the deepest possible trouble?”

  “Oh, without doubt,” said the admiral. “First of all, you have to understand the deep and abiding hatred there is between Iraq and Israel to get the full picture. Remember Saddam Hussein only once possessed a really serious nuclear reactor—that was back in 1981. He got it from the French…it was his most precious possession—Osirak One. It worked in harmony with two other of Saddam’s cherished nuclear plants. Of course he said it was for nuclear power to make electricity, but what he really wanted was the residue from the process, the end product, plutonium, with which he could manufacture nuclear warheads.”

  “Didn’t the Israelis attack one of his plants?”

  “Attack?” said the admiral. “Six of their fighter-bombers streaked in from the north and blew the entire operation to smithereens. In under five minutes, Osirak One was history. The Mossad takes no chances.”

  “Yes…I remember reading about it.”

  “The Mossad is full of people who believe that Israel has no friends. Just enemies, and those who are neutral.

  “I expect you have read in recent months there have been fears about Iraq beginning a new germ-warfare program. Well, in my view, it would not be beyond the wit of the Israelis to blow up a U.S. carrier, secretly, in the fervent hope Iraq would instantly get the blame, and that America would do their dirty work for them.”

  “Yes, but we think Iran is more likely.”

  “As I mentioned, it would delight the Mossad if America chose to take out the Iranian submarines at Bandar Abbas. They have long felt Tehran was getting a lot too big and aggressive for its own good, and might even be capable of another major strike at Iraq…and if they pulled that off, it would give the Ayatollahs almost total control of the Gulf. The Israelis would not like that, not one bit.”

  “I’m not sure we would be mad about it either.”

  “Nor we.”

  By now the Range Rover had swung left across the northern end of Loch Long, and was making fast time through the Argyll Forest. Up to the right was the 2,700-foot peak of The Cobbler, the same mountain Bill had seen as he had approached the Faslane base.

  “We’re about ten miles out now,” said the admiral. “In a moment we will circle around the narrow end of one of the big sea lochs. It’s called Loch Fyne, runs right past our back door, but causes us to make a huge detour whenever we go anywhere. The lochs and the mountains up here are touchingly beautiful, but they add miles and miles to every journey because you always have to go around them. Down at the base, people used to dread having to drive over and see the Americans at Holy Loch. By sea it’s about seven miles—twenty minutes in a fast boat. By road it’s more than forty miles, right around two lochs, down the side of another, and through a range of mountains.”

  “Sir,” said Bill suddenly, “did you develop the Israeli theory just because you knew I was interested in Lieutenant Commander Adnam? Or had you always considered it a real possibility?”

  “Bill, when you are as old as I am, you will have learned that when anything really shocking happens in the Middle East, then you must look very carefully at the Israelis. Consider always their motives, how events will affect them, and remember always they are much cleverer, much tougher, and much more efficient than every other nation in the area.

  “Also do not close your eyes to the fact that both their government and their Secret Service are crammed full of people with very long memories.

  “Inside the government alone, there are women who just over twenty-five years ago stood on the slopes of the Golan Heights, under terrible fire from the Syrian tanks…they struggled through a night of sheer terror, in lines of frightened girl-soldiers passing artillery shells up to the gunners, helping the Israeli 7th Armored Brigade claw back the land, with heartbreaking courage, yard by yard, up those mountains.

  “Take Benjamin Netanyahu, the most eloquent of the senior Israeli politicians in recent years. Remember his brother Jonathan was the only Israeli killed when the Israeli commandos went into Entebbe Airport to rescue the hijacked airliner. Benjamin never got over that, that’s why he is such a fierce nationalist.

  “There are departmental chiefs in the Mossad who fought shoulder to shoulder with General Avraham Yoffe when they smashed their way through the Mitla Pass, with unbelievable bravery, in the Six-Day War in 1967—six days in which the Israelis destroyed four armies and 370 fighter aircraft belonging to four attacking nations.

  “There are men in the Mossad who stood alongside my great friend General Sharon in 1973, men who were wounded as their comrades fought and died in the desert, trying to throw back the armies of Egypt. None of them ever forgot the hand-wringing response of the West after their costly and frightening victory…accused them of bullying—bullying after the Egyptians stormed across the canal with five hundred tanks, just as the entire Israeli nation knelt in prayer, on their most holy day of the year.

  “I don’t want to sound like a retired Israeli general, but I am warning you, and your colleagues, to take a damn close look at anything which might involve the Israelis. I believe it is perfectly possible they might have taken out your carrier—just to watch the U.S.A. exact a fierce revenge on either Iraq or Iran, or for that matter, knowing your President, both of them.

  “Ask me who drove their submarine? I should say without any hesitation—Benjamin Adnam. There are very few commanders who have the talent for such an operation. But he had it. Did he ever.”

  “How good was he, Admiral? What was it about him?” asked Baldridge.

  “I think there was a fanaticism about him. There was something that drove him. He did not just want to be the best in his class, he wanted to be the best there had ever been. He had the most phenomenal memory…the first time I ever tested him on the periscope…you know, giving him a thirty-second all-around look at the surface picture, he could recall every single detail. The submarine commander’s greatest asset is his ability to store a photograph of that view in his mind. Ben Adnam could hold that picture better than anyone I ever taught.

  “He had an instinct for a submarine, for what it would do, and what it wouldn’t. We have one exercise where we send three frigates away, and then have them turn around and come back toward us.

  “The frigates often come straight at the Perishers, so they have to dive to safe depth underneath. They are instructed to do so with exactly one minute to go before collision. Even then, the noise of the frigates’ propellers rumbling overhead is damned nerve-racking. There are always chaps who fail the course right there. You can see them with their eyes shut, praying the overhead warship will not slam into the conning tower.

  “Adnam was absolutely fearless. Consciously so. He knew the distance, he could make all the calculations in his head, quickly and effortlessly. It would never have occurred to him that a frigate could hit his ship. He would have made bloody certain it didn’t.

  “He had his own private sixth sense. I remember standing with him one lunchtime w
hile the frigates were going away. Suddenly, for no reason, he said, ‘I believe the frigates have turned, sir.’

  “Now I knew they had turned. I had discerned the faint change in the Doppler of the sonar. That comes with about twenty years of being a submarine officer and commander. I plainly knew they had turned, but God knows how he knew. Nonetheless, he did. I tested him on it. He was always correct. He was a submarine genius. Of that there is absolutely no doubt.

  “He had a sound grasp of all the workings of the ship underwater…hydrosystems, mechanics, electronics, weaponry, missiles, torpedoes, and gunnery. He could navigate as well. I once lectured them on the art of the classic sprint-and-drift submarine attack. At the end of it he came and had a chat with me about the finer points.

  “No Perisher in my entire experience ever demonstrated a more thorough grasp of the subject. Even at that comparatively young age—around twenty-eight—he was safe. He was steady. And he could handle his machine as a weapon of war.

  “He just had an instinct for underwater warfare, and he was, technically, its master. But there was something more. He had a gift. And I always knew he was ruthless. I can tell you this, if he had been British, and if he had stayed in the submarine service, he would have become FOSM—and if we had ever had to send the Submarine Flotilla to war, Ben Adnam would have been a very good man to command it.”

  “Aside from that, I guess he was pretty average all around?” chuckled Bill. “Did he have any weakness at all?”

  “Only one.”

  “Oh…what was it?”

  “He was in love with my daughter.”

  The laid-back Kansan manner of Bill Baldridge fell from him in an instant. He turned quickly to the admiral and asked, “Is she still in touch with him?”

  “She is now a highly respectable lady, married to a wealthy Edinburgh banker. Two children.”

  “Yes, but is she still in touch with Adnam?” Bill persisted.

  “I’ve always been afraid she might be,” replied Admiral MacLean. “You can ask her yourself in a minute. She ought to be arriving with the children at about the same time as we do.

  “I always wondered whether their affair went on after she was married, long after he returned to Israel. She once left mysteriously for a short vacation, and my wife found an entry to Cairo in an old passport. However, I shall deny I ever said those last sentences. You’ll have to ask her.”

  “You wouldn’t mind if I did?”

  “Certainly not. If my daughter has a line of communication to perhaps the most ruthless mass murderer in recent history, I will insist she recognizes her duty.”

  At this point the car pulled into the drive of a white Georgian house on the outskirts of Inveraray. Bill guessed that the admiral had not purchased it on the proceeds of his Navy salary, any more than he himself could have purchased the Baldridge Ranch out in Pawnee County. He either inherited this, or else Lady MacLean is loaded, was his considered opinion, as he climbed out of the Range Rover.

  The admiral seemed to read his thoughts. He loosed the three Labradors who charged around the house toward the loch. He grabbed Bill’s suitcase, and said, “Inherited this. It belonged to my father and my grandfather. Family have lived around here for generations. I retired a couple of years ago—they weren’t going to make me First Sea Lord, but they would have offered me Commander-in-Chief Naval Home Command.

  “I considered it…but decided I didn’t much want a desk job in the bloody dockyard in Portsmouth. Preferred to come home really, and spend my declining years playing a bit of golf, fishing, sailing on the loch, and doing a bit of shooting. An admiral’s pension is perfectly adequate for living in Scotland, and Annie and I have a lot of friends up here. When they didn’t offer me the top job, it just seemed the right time to go. So I went.”

  They walked through the front door to be greeted by the same three Labradors, who had charged right around the house, and were now skidding over the big Persian rug in the hall, being yelled at by a trim, elegant, blond lady in a tartan skirt, white shirt, and camel-colored sweater.

  “I’d be so grateful if you could control these bloody animals,” she said to her husband, as all three began leaping up on the American visitor.

  Then turning to Bill, she introduced herself. “Commander Baldridge? Good evening. I’m Annie MacLean. I’m delighted to meet you. Leave your case right there. I’ll get Angus to take it upstairs in a minute.”

  She must, thought Bill, have been the perfect admiral’s wife. Very like Grace Dunsmore in manner. Brisk, confident, and friendly. High-ranking Navy officers usually have wives of that type; poised and highly skilled at making people feel at home. It goes with the territory. Years of nursing young officers and their wives through daunting social occasions, knowing they are terrified of one’s husband. Meanwhile Bill leaned down and managed to greet Fergus, Samson, and Muffin all at once, patting them with a practiced, friendly roughness, the way Labradors expect to be treated.

  “You a countryman, Bill?” asked the admiral, observing his ease with the boisterous dogs.

  “Yessir,” replied the Kansan. “I’m from the Midwest. Family raises cattle out there.”

  “They do? Then you’re a real countryman.”

  They chatted for a while about the High Plains, and then the admiral said, “Now, why don’t you go upstairs and move into your room, and then meet me in there in fifteen minutes.” He pointed to a white-painted door on the left side of the hall, and added, “I’ll pour you a decent glass of malt whisky. Don’t dress.”

  Bill correctly assumed this meant no need for uniform at dinner, so he climbed the stairs hoping the unseen Angus had dealt with his suitcase. He had. Everything had been unpacked and placed in a tall Sheraton tall boy, dirty clothes removed, washing kit laid out in the bathroom.

  The bedroom itself overlooked Loch Fyne. And although it was still light, there was a thin beeswax-colored mist laying low across the water. The room was decorated with English chintz, bluish and pink in tone, but the main window was a bay, with a little antique desk and chair. There was no shower in the bathroom, so he tipped half a jar of fragrant blue crystals into the tub, filled it with hot water, and hopped in. When he emerged five minutes later, he dressed in dark gray slacks, white shirt and tie, with a dark blue blazer. Downstairs the admiral had poured the promised malt whisky. “Water?” he asked as Bill came in the door.

  “Thank you, sir,” replied the American.

  “I am no longer a serving officer,” Admiral MacLean said. “Please call me Iain. My wife expects you to call her Annie. My daughter, when she shows up in a minute, is Laura.”

  Because Bill Baldridge had grown up with a certain amount of deference, as the son of one of the biggest ranchers in central Kansas, and later as a highly respected submarine weapons specialist in the Navy, not to mention his entitlement to be addressed as “Dr. Baldridge”—certainly within the hallowed confines of MIT—he never gave a thought to the sudden intimacy he now enjoyed with this very grand Scottish family.

  He was unaware of the rigidity of the British class system, how by some unknown radioactivity, Admiral Sir Iain MacLean and Lady MacLean both knew instinctively that he was, despite the huge distance apart of their worlds, of their class.

  But before either the wife or the daughter arrived, there was one question Bill wanted to put to the admiral. He sipped his whiskey, interested in its deep smokey flavor, and said, “Admiral, tell me something. Which nation do you think hit the Jefferson?”

  Iain MacLean smiled and said quietly, “I do not like answering a question with a question. But you’ve obviously checked whether all three of the Iranians’ Russian Kilos were still anchored at Bandar Abbas?”

  “Yes, we have. There were three of them on the Friday before the hit. But only two on the following Wednesday.”

  “Then I make Iran my number-one suspect. It is possible to hide a Kilo. And if they have done so, then I would consider they had made the hit from another source. Maybe a fou
rth Kilo we do not know about yet. Either way I would consider their behavior suspicious in the extreme.

  “Also we should remember the unprecedented activity there has been from the Iranian Navy in recent years. Back in 1993 they conducted thirty-six exercises in the Gulf. They have now conducted more than sixty. They have conducted joint exercises with Pakistan. And they are making closer and closer ties with Oman, with whom they control the Strait of Hormuz.

  “They are the only Gulf state to have a known, workable submarine capability. I expect you remember three years ago, when there was a delay in the U.S. Carrier Battle Group arriving on station in the Arabian Sea, the U.S. put eighteen F-16 fighter aircraft on Bahrain as a precautionary measure. Remember also, the Iranian Navy operates under a single command—that of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

  “This is only a personal opinion from an old, fairly unimportant submarine driver. But if I were the President, I should consider that now would be a very timely opportunity to frighten the living daylights out of them. And I’d be inclined to do it very, very soon.”