Nimitz Class (1997)

by Patrick Robinson

  Admiral Morgan knew they had no real record of the man’s obvious brilliance. Everything about Adnam was shaded. To Morgan’s deeply skeptical mind, Adnam did not add up. And there had been an instant conspiracy by the Israelis to shield their man from investigation. Morgan believed General Gavron might not know Adnam’s whereabouts, but he believed there were some people in Tel Aviv who did.

  The digital clock on his wall approached midnight. He sat in his armchair and turned on the television, picked up a West Coast baseball game, checked CNN occasionally. By 0100 he was asleep.

  At 0210 the phone rang, and he reached for it like a striking cobra, wide awake in an instant.

  “Admiral, this is David Gavron.”

  “Shalom, David,” said Arnold Morgan.

  “It took my superiors a while to gather the information you need. I am sorry to call you so late. It is just after 0900 in Israel.”

  “To tell the truth, David, I don’t have anything much more pressing to do,” replied the admiral.

  “No. I suppose not. Anyway I am instructed to inform you that the man you seek left the service of the Israeli Navy in November of 2001, eight months ago. We have no record of his present whereabouts.”

  “What do you mean, ‘left’? Did he resign, desert, or was he fired?”

  “I think it would be better if we spoke face-to-face. Can you come here right away? I’m at the Israeli embassy. I will meet you at the gate.”

  “I’m leaving now.”

  Morgan pulled on his uniform jacket and charged for the door, down the corridor and into his car. This was it. The Israelis were about to come clean. Adnam had plainly skipped town. The question now was, who was he working for? And where the fuck was he?

  Two minutes later the admiral was racing south down the Baltimore-Washington Parkway

  at over 90 mph. He had never put it to the test, but he considered that in a straight fight between the Maryland State Police and the Director of the Office of National Security on an emergency mission, there would be only one winner—not the troopers.

  Five minutes later, the tires of the staff car squealed as he hit the Capital Beltway at Exit 22, heading west across the northern end of the sleeping city. It took him under ten minutes to cover the twelve miles to Exit 33, the Connecticut Avenue

  intersection. He swung south toward Washington, turned off after a couple of miles, and came to a halt at the tall iron gates that guard the entrance to the embassy of Israel, some three miles out of town. Gazing through the dark at the striking stone building, with its great archways and Middle Eastern architecture, Admiral Morgan felt he could have been sitting right in the middle of Jerusalem.

  Silently, General Gavron appeared at the car window and, as the gates swung open, instructed him to drive straight through. The admiral parked the car and stepped out onto Israeli territory. Silentguards observed him from the shadows. As he walked with the general across the great courtyard he could feel the atmosphere of this tough, brave little country, no bigger than the state of New Jersey, so often under attack, and even here in Washington surrounded completely by a protective fence, the iron wrought in the decorative style of the homeland. Everywhere you could feel it, a kind of gallant bracing against the unseen threat.

  They slipped unobtrusively through a door and stepped into a large, airy building, of the type favored by modern Arab sheiks, where thousands of years of desert tradition collide, finally, with modern Western technology. They walked down a corridor, past a portrait of David Ben-Gurion, another of General Moshe Dayan, and into a small anteroom, comfortably furnished, with two sofas and three big, burgundy-colored armchairs. The antique Persian rug, spread on the marble floor, was probably priceless. A white-uniformed Israeli serviceman stood by to bring them tea or coffee. And David Gavron asked the admiral to be seated. He then answered the three questions that Morgan had fired at him on the phone.

  “We do not know what happened to Commander Adnam. He just…er…well…vanished. Into thin air. He was on station one day, and gone the next.”

  “David, are you telling me the absolute truth? Because if you are not, the consequences might well be monumental.”

  “We are a long way past telling lies, Admiral. I swear to you—and this is the solemn word of an Israeli officer, and friend to your country, Commander Adnam vanished. Plainly, I could not have told you this without the highest possible authority. In fact, I did know something of this when we met earlier. But I was under orders to reveal nothing.”

  Admiral Arnold Morgan silently cursed himself for having even considered he was being told the entire truth by a member of the Mossad on the previous evening. But he understood the Israeli’s predicament. And forgave him now that the upper hand was clearly American. “Did anyone conduct an investigation when Adnam was first discovered missing?”

  “Of course. He was our top submarine commander. The Navy was very shocked. There was a time when we thought he might have been murdered. But Adnam had just taken off. We simply never heard anything, ever again.

  “The Intelligence Service had a fairly thorough look. But I spoke to them again, a couple of hours ago. The whole matter remains a mystery. Commander Adnam’s parents were both killed in a small village which was bombed during the October War of 1973. As you know, our Achilles heel is poor records of immigrants. And they found no details of Adnam’s parents beyond about 1965. But there’s nothing suspicious. Except that it is a little unusual that no solid background information would be available on a man so prominent, and in such a sensitive area of our national defense. But that’s how it is for now.”

  “Will your Intelligence services look again?”

  “In the light of what you said to me, we consider the matter to be critical. We are reasonably sure Adnam is no longer in Israel. If he was, we’d have found him.”

  “Will you keep me informed?”

  “Of course. You have our deepest sympathy for the men who died on the carrier. As you know, we do not approve of surprise attacks for no apparent reason.”

  Morgan smiled. He stood up and explained that he must go at once.

  General Gavron said he understood, of course, and he escorted the American back, past the guards, to his car. It was 0320 when Morgan pulled through the gates, with the window down. And he heard General Gavron say very firmly, “Admiral, we did not hit your carrier. Do not waste your time thinking we did. And you can count on our support for anything you may need.”

  Admiral Morgan saluted him as he left. And he could see the Israeli still standing alone, beyond the embassy fence. A nice man, he thought, in a big and dangerous job. “And now, I believe, a truthful man, which I suspect he likes better.”

  He drove at a more leisurely pace back to the parkway, swinging off to his home in Montpelier, a few miles before the turning to Fort Meade. He lived now in an official government residence close to his office complex, but he still owned and often visited the small, secluded, single-story frame house he had lived in while married. These days he had a housekeeper five mornings a week, and the place was spotless, but it looked and felt like a Navy officer’s wardroom. Admiral Morgan had never been long on chintz and deep sofas.

  He poured himself a deep glass of bourbon on the rocks, called the Pentagon, and asked a duty officer to relay a message to the CNO after 0600 that he would be awaiting him in his office at 0700, with information of a highly sensitive nature. He then put in a call to the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet to check the arrival of Vice Admiral Rankov, and was agreeably surprised to hear he would be in Novorossisk later today.

  He hardly touched the bourbon, and at 0420 Arnold Morgan hit the sheets and set his alarm for 0530. It had been a long night, but his adrenaline was still high, and most of the seventy minutes of rest he had allocated himself were wasted. His mind kept racing over the same questions. How long would it take the Mossad, and the USA, to find Commander Adnam? And where was he now and, worse yet, where was his fucking submarine? Had young Baldridge been
right when he had suggested the unnamed enemy might strike again? Admiral Morgan was out of bed before the alarm even considered awakening him. He was showered, shaved, and dressed, and on the phone to Baldridge before 0540. Told his new field officer to be at the Pentagon by 0640 for a briefing.

  Inside the Pentagon, he and Bill Baldridge pondered the revelations of General Gavron. “It’s changed the rules, hasn’t it, sir?” said the younger officer. “Either Adnam helped the Iranians get one of their Kilos into action very quietly—Bandar Abbas being so damned close to where the CVBG was working. Or he helped them get a new Kilo out of the Black Sea. And, if we accept he could have helped the Ayatollahs, I guess he could have helped anyone else do the same thing. It brings Iraq right back into the picture…and Libya…Syria…Egypt…Pakistan…any of ’em. Because if any one of those nations had Adnam, the only other thing they needed was money.”

  “Yeah. To rent or buy a Russian boat and crew. But we still have to look at motive. And the nations with the most powerful motives are Iran, and, I guess, Iraq. The others are lightweight for something this big, and also would be much more afraid of the consequences. I don’t think we should take our eyes too far off the most obvious ball.”

  “No. Guess not. And do you write the Israelis out of the list of suspects now?”

  “Almost. I’ll make another couple of calls this morning. See if I can get Lessard on the line. Then we’ll have to see whether they found their lost commander. Or at least found out who he really is. Meantime I think we should brace ourselves for the fact that this President wants action. Right now. And I’m not sure what to advise. When you are as big and strong as we are, it’s damn difficult to punish someone on a large scale without starting World War III.”

  At 0710, the Chief of Naval Operations walked through the door. Admiral Dunsmore beckoned both men to follow him into his office and ordered coffee, which was rapidly becoming a staple of Arnold Morgan’s diet. He then ordered the Intelligence Admiral to tell him everything.

  The conversation lasted about five minutes. Admiral Dunsmore said little, absorbing every detail. Then he called General Josh Paul and said he thought they should meet with the President at the earliest possible time. He replaced the phone, and it rang within five minutes. The CNO just said, “I’m leaving now. I’ll be by your office in three.”

  Admiral Morgan then called the Navy Intelligence office and left a message with an assistant to Admiral Schnider that Lieutenant Commander Baldridge would be working out of Fort Meade for the remainder of the week. Bill shrugged, and the two men headed for the garage. By the time they made it, General Paul and Admiral Dunsmore were already bound for the White House.

  Seated in the back of the staff car, Scott Dunsmore ran over the situation with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told him of the rising suspicion that Benjamin Adnam was the commander of the submarine which they now believed had destroyed the Jefferson. He informed him of the defection of the Israeli Navy officer, how they had been promised the support and help of a very worried Mossad, and how Iran remained the prime suspect.

  General Paul asked one question. “Do you guys think that this Adnam could have got one of the Iranian Kilos out through the Strait of Hormuz, hit the Jefferson, and then got back into Bandar Abbas without us knowing?”

  “No. We don’t really. But since we thought the carrier was just about impregnable, and we were wrong about that, I suppose we have to accept the possibility that the guy who successfully got into the Battle Group, might also have successfully chugged in and out of the harbor without being spotted by the overheads. ’Specially during the monsoon.”

  “Yeah. Guess so. We’re still not seeing three boats in Bandar Abbas. Just the two, right?”

  “Uh-huh. But the third one still might be in that big covered floating dock. We just can’t get a look in there.”

  The car pulled up to the West Wing entrance. The Secret Service men were there to meet them, hand over their passes, and escort them immediately to the same conference room they had used for the breakfast meeting with the President eight days previously. When they arrived, the Defense Secretary, Robert MacPherson, and the Secretary of State, Harcourt Travis, were already seated. The National Security Adviser, Sam Haynes, arrived within moments. Five minutes later the President himself walked in accompanied by his press chief, Dick Stafford. The doors were shut firmly behind them by the Marine guards, who remained on duty immediately beyond the door.

  A military quorum of five was now seated around the table; five men who, if they acted in harmony, had the power to do almost anything they wished on the international front. They were five men whose unanimous decision could unleash the terrifying power of the U.S. Navy on an enemy. The sixth man, Travis Harcourt, was there to supply wisdom on a wide international base; the seventh, Dick Stafford, to ensure, professionally, that their actions would always be perceived by the American nation as justified.

  The President sat at the head of the table, flanked by Mr. MacPherson and Mr. Travis. General Paul and Admiral Dunsmore sat next to them, opposite each other, with Sam Haynes and Dick Stafford at the end of the table. The President greeted everyone by their first names, and thanked them for coming. He then requested that Admiral Dunsmore brief the meeting formally with the latest update on the list of suspects.

  It took about ten minutes, since the President and his cabinet officers had not yet been appraised fully of the situation regarding the drowned Russian sailor, nor of the importance of Commander Adnam, nor of the grave consequences of the Israeli admission of his disappearance.

  “Scott,” the President said at the conclusion of the CNO’s briefing, “we have a submarine, sealed up tight, going along under the water, trying to stay quiet and remain undetected. Since they are all locked up inside, how can someone fall overboard and drown?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the CNO explained. “We should have made that clear. If someone should drop a hammer on a metal deck inside the submarine, that clang could be heard for possibly fifty miles under the water. The enemy of the stealthy submarine is noise…any noise…it is regarded with immense concern by every member of the ship’s company.

  “Remember, every bit of machinery in a submarine, bar the propeller, is set upon heavy rubber mounts, all designed to deaden noise and vibration…to ensure that the hundreds of rotating parts throughout the ship make no more racket collectively than the hum of your computer. At least, not beyond the hull.

  “Now suppose something, a bracket, a wire, even an old oil can, gets loose somewhere up in the casing and it starts to rattle. The moment that noise is heard, something has to be done about it. Invariably, the submarine must come to the surface as soon as it is safe to do so. And fix it.

  “A party must go up on deck and stop that rattle no matter what. In a big sea at night, that is really dangerous. Whenever there is a man overboard on a submarine, we assume it’s probably something like that. If they had not bothered to fix it, that rattle would have served as a beacon to anyone listening within fifty miles.

  “No competent submarine commander would ever make that kind of mistake—even if it cost the life of one of his crew.”

  “Cost more than that,” replied the President. “But I’m grateful to have it cleared up.”

  He then asked the same question General Paul had asked. “Could Commander Adnam have piloted one of those Kilos out of Bandar Abbas, and then back in again, without being seen by the U.S. satellite reconnaissance systems?”

  Scott Dunsmore gave him the same answer he had given the General. Highly unlikely, but not absolutely impossible. After all, the guy had somehow achieved the impossible anyway, by getting into the heart of the invincible CVBG.

  There were no other questions at this time, because it was clear the President himself was thinking very carefully. It was almost one minute before he spoke, And when he did, a tense silence gripped the table.

  “I am proposing, gentlemen,” he said, “to take those three Iranian Kilos
out of our lives for good. I want them destroyed. And I want it done fast. By the time it is done, we may know we have hit the exact culprit. If not, we may still have hit the right nation, because the chances are they merely used another submarine we do not know about. Let’s start by getting rid of those Kilos. I expect you all remember, my predecessor tried to stop them being delivered in the first place. But the Russians somewhat outwitted everyone.

  “Those submarines have been a pain in the ass ever since. They have caused us to start moving squadrons of fighter aircraft into Bahrain for the second time in five years. And now we know they may have attacked a U.S. warship. I’m sick to death of this crap.

  “Those three Kilos are a continuing threat, an endless problem to everyone. Get rid of ’em. All three of them—if all three of them are there. If not, hit two, and we’ll get the third one when the sonofabitch returns home.”

  Robert MacPherson spoke first. “Mr. President, I want to clarify just one thing. Are you proposing we just fire up a fleet of fighter-bombers and go in and destroy the entire Naval base, straight in the front door and take the place off the map? Not that it would be any problem.”