Nimitz Class (1997)

by Patrick Robinson

  “Our agents then searched through every record the Egyptian authorities would provide. In the end they decided he never left Cairo International Airport, stayed there and flew on. That night, we came up with only one ‘Adnam’ who had left Egypt on an international flight. He paid in cash, Egyptian currency, and bought a ticket to Istanbul. I regret to say he was a Russian. Old Soviet passport. Visa for frequent entry into Turkey. Not much help, eh?”

  Arnold Morgan could not believe his ears. “Do the Egyptians have a surveillance camera which may have photographed the passengers for that flight?”

  “They say they do, but it wasn’t working. Anyway our agents considered the trail cold. They do not think the Russian was Commander Adnam.”

  “Well, if he didn’t leave the airport, where the hell did he go? Your guys think he got a job as a customs officer?”

  General Gavron laughed. “No, we think he just picked up a new passport and documents from his masters, and took off. Could be under any name, and now in any country.”

  “Well, why not the Russian?”

  “Our guys just don’t think it feasible. We do not think Ben was Russian. Nor do we think he was Turkish. We think he was an Arab, and we’ve done a lot of research. Why do you think he might have been Russian?”

  “David, I don’t think he was Russian either. But I do think he might have been going there. And since he seems able to conjure up documents and currency anyplace he travels, why not this guy on the Soviet passport?”

  David Gavron ignored the question. And came back with one of his own. “Why do you think he may have been going to Russia?”

  “Because, David, we think the submarine that hit the Jefferson was a Soviet-built Kilo, a diesel electric-powered patrol boat, which Adnam and his masters either bought, rented, or stole, right out of the moribund Black Sea Fleet. I say the Black Sea Fleet because there’s no place else they could have gotten one. Also I’ve checked where every working diesel submarine in the world was on that night. They’re all accounted for—even yours! Except for one, and that’s Russian.”

  “I see. We will continue to do everything we can to assist you. As a nation we do not like sneak attacks, and my people are extremely upset about the aircraft carrier. Even more upset that you even considered blaming us.”

  “David, in our position you have to suspect everyone.”

  General Gavron looked thoughtful as Morgan sipped his silky-sweet wine. The silence between the two men grew, until, finally, General Gavron broke it. “We have an accurate date,” he said. “If that Russian in Cairo airport was Commander Adnam, then he arrived in Istanbul late at night on November 25. If he was using his real name when he left Cairo, I would think he was still using it when he left Istanbul. We should run some checks on the passenger lists—airlines, maybe even ships, out of the city, the following morning.

  “We have three or four good men in place in Istanbul. I suggest my organization gets a search started…then if we get nowhere in, say, three days…maybe your government could persuade the Turks to cooperate.”

  “Good call, David. Right now we don’t want to be seen stirring up anything more than we must.”

  “Very restrained, Admiral…for a man who has, in the last few hours, destroyed the underwater Navy of the Ayatollah of Iran.”

  “Now, hang on, General. I told your colleagues I never left my desk. Anyway, how do you guys know what we did or didn’t do?”

  “I know that only three or four nations could have done it so smoothly. Not us, we’d have caused an international uproar and bombed the place to bits. The British could have. Possibly the Russians. But you have the capacity to achieve that kind of excellence any time you want. The issue is motive. Who wanted to damage Iran? Not us, particularly. Not the British. Not the Russians. Nice job, Admiral. As a nation, we are delighted.”

  Arnold Morgan just smiled at the suave Israeli officer. And he guessed, privately, as he had done a couple of times before, that he was indeed looking at the next head of the Mossad.

  The following morning, August 3, twenty-six days after the disaster, the Saturday papers were still blazing with the story of the lost aircraft carrier but neither the Washington Post nor the New York Times carried even a paragraph about an accident in the Iranian Naval base at Bandar Abbas.

  Admiral Morgan, Admiral Schnider, Lieutenant Commander Bill Baldridge, and Admiral Dunsmore were gathered in the office of General Josh Paul in readiness for a meeting with the President in the White House at 1100. Admiral Morgan briefed them fully on his dealings with General Gavron. But the subject was now more finely focused.

  Scott Dunsmore believed the President would broadcast to the nation this evening at 2100, announcing unprecedented compensation for the families of the men who died in the carrier. Saturday night was most unusual for this kind of activity, but the CNO believed the White House press office had approved it for maximum impact.

  The two Service Chiefs were afraid the President would assume that with the bombing of the Iranian Navy base American revenge was complete and that no further action should be taken, pending the arrival of hard evidence. However, Admiral Morgan’s now rigid belief that the rogue submarine was still out there was uppermost in all of their minds.

  General Paul detailed his CNO to deal with it, to persuade the President that the United States hunt for the nation which had sunk the Jefferson must continue at all costs. “If necessary,” he said, “get Arnold to read him a modest riot act about the implications of the same thing happening to another of our warships.”

  They left the Pentagon in two staff cars and met the President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the President’s security adviser, and his press officer in the Situation Room, one floor below the Oval Office.

  The President greeted them warmly. “I’ll say one thing,” he said. “You guys sure know how to take an instruction literally. Dare I ask what happened in Bandar Abbas, beyond this Navy signal which Bob here gave me this morning?”

  “Sir,” said Admiral Dunsmore, “you did say you did not really want to know the details of the plan. I guess we took that literally as well.”

  “How large a force went in, Scott?”

  “Nine swimmers, sir, plus the driver in the ASDS.”

  “Is that all? Many casualties?”

  “None for us, sir. We have no idea how many Iranian crew were aboard the floating submarines. But one armed guard was marginalized in the floating dock.”

  “Marginalized?”

  “Yessir. Removed from our area of operation.”

  “Shot? Killed?”

  “Precisely so, sir.”

  “Delicately stated, Admiral,” said the President. “Considering you run the world’s roughest hit squad.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The President shook his head in wonder at the professionalism with which he was surrounded. He then slipped quickly into his own agenda, and, as expected, said he would make a rare Saturday night broadcast to the nation, announcing his plans for special pension funds for the widows and children of the men who died in the carrier.

  “I already know there will be objections from some branches of the Armed Services,” he said. “But no congressman will object, not if he wants to continue working in the Capitol. The newspapers will be forced to applaud us, the public will approve. Also I’m counting on the fact that I’m too good a friend to the military for any of you to upset me!”

  General Paul ventured to say that there would be objections to special pensions from people who had lost fathers and husbands in other conflicts but were not being given special treatment. That was why the military routinely opposed such schemes, and had done so throughout the twentieth century.

  “The worst thing,” the President interrupted, “the very worst thing that could happen to you guys would be for me to be driven from this office in the aftermath of this disaster. You would get a Democratic President, a Democratic Congress, and possibly a Democratic Senate. And
they would have a great time dismantling the Navy, banning nuclear weapons, cutting out our shipbuilding programs, and above all ending the building of aircraft carriers for the foreseeable future. They would then take all of that money and do what they always do—give it away to the poor, the weak, the sick, the incompetent, the stupid, and the idle, and worse, the dishonest.

  “The four billion dollars we spend on building an aircraft carrier each year keeps top engineers, shipbuilders, scientists, and steel corporations in real-time profitable work, honing skills, keeping this country out there in front…with an end product, which, all on its own, helps to keep every American safe.

  “When you build an aircraft carrier you are making this country happen. And you get at least half of it back in taxes.

  “Hey, I’m sorry, guys, you all know my views, and I hope you share them. But you have to help keep me in office. And I know that a special consideration from this government to those Jefferson widows is going to touch a real chord with the public. Besides, I want to do something for them.

  “Now let’s run over the situation regarding the unknown culprit who hit our ship. Do we still think it’s Iran, and have we punished them sufficiently? Josh? Scott?”

  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs nodded, and Admiral Dunsmore stepped up to the plate. “Sir,” he said, “we do think Iran was the culprit, but we do not believe they carried out the hit on the Jefferson with one of their inventory submarines in Bandar Abbas. We think they got their hands on a fourth Kilo from Russia.”

  “Okay,” said the President. “Just remind me why we do not think it was one of the submarines from Bandar Abbas.”

  “Because the two floating Kilos have not moved for several weeks. And the leader of our special forces saw the third Kilo in what he firmly believes to be a major overhaul. He says there was a large section of the hull missing and a major piece of machinery removed from inside. He thinks it impossible that the submarine could have been operational during the month of July.”

  “Yes, I did read that. Do we believe him?”

  “Very definitely, sir. Lieutenant Bennett has been in the Navy since he first went to Annapolis. His father is a fisherman on the coast of Maine. He’s been with boats all of his life, and the disruption he saw to that Kilo left no doubt in his mind. Personally I think the engineers were repairing that submarine for a few weeks in June, before she went into the floating dock on July 2, for completion of the work below the waterline.”

  “Admiral Morgan,” said the President, formally, “do you have a view on this?”

  The Texas Intelligence chief was thoughtful. “Well, sir, in my experience, when a seasoned officer in the United States Navy makes a judgment of a technical matter, he’s normally correct. I accept what the SEALS lieutenant observed.

  “What concerns me more is that I am now very sure the submarine that hit the carrier is still out there. We have not found it, neither has anyone else. None of our overheads nor our surveillance people have seen it.

  “And I am extremely worried that it may strike again. That Kilo probably had two nuclear-tipped torpedoes on board, and no one’s told me he fired any more than one of ’em.”

  “Are you telling me it was definitely a Russian-built submarine?”

  “There is no longer any doubt about that, sir. The only submarine in all of this world which was missing on the night of July 8 was the Kilo they thought had sunk in the Black Sea. Well, they were wrong, which they now admit. That Kilo got out of the Black Sea. I believe it torpedoed the Jefferson…and I believe it’s still out there, possibly just hiding, but possibly awaiting another opportunity.

  “Mr. President, we have to find and destroy that submarine.”

  “Yes, Admiral. I see that. But how did it get out? Every expert I talk to says it is impossible to transit the Bosporus underwater. No one has ever done it. And you tell me the Turks say no Russian diesel boat has exited the Black Sea on the surface for five months.”

  “All true, sir. But it did get out. We have to assume that. Someone got it out. Some submarine genius drove it out under the surface, through the Bosporus. We are on the trail of the man we think did it. But we must assume he first achieved the impossible and took a submarine where no submariner ever took one before.”

  “That’s a tall order for me, Admiral. And before I commit additional resources to another military reprisal, I am going to propose something to you. I want you to prove to me that it could have happened. I want you to select a couple of the best submariners we have, and arrange for them to make an underwater transit through the Bosporus from the Black Sea in a diesel-electric boat. If they make it, I will agree to put into operation a worldwide hunt for the missing Kilo, until we find and sink it, whatever the expense may be.

  “If, however, they fail to make that transit for any reason, or get caught by the Turks, I will deem that the destruction of the Jefferson was a pure accident, and there the matter will rest.”

  Arnold Morgan gulped. “Sir, we don’t actually own a small diesel-electric any more. We’d have to borrow one from the Royal Navy.”

  “Excellent. Go do it.”

  “Sir, may we use your authority to put this operation into action?”

  “Of course.”

  “Sir, if they are forced to surface, and end up in a Turkish jail, may I assume you will use your best efforts to get the submarine back, and get the men out…both British and American?”

  “Admiral, you may assume I will get them out. And I’ll get the submarine back. But I don’t want the Turks to know this is happening, and then to turn a blind eye. Otherwise it won’t count, will it? I want our submarine to face the precise hazards your Commander Adnam faced. No bullshit.”

  “Very well, sir,” said Admiral Dunsmore. “We will proceed on those precise lines. If our best men cannot do it, assisted by the best in the Royal Navy, then we will deem the entire thing to have been impossible all along. The sinking of the Thomas Jefferson will become an official United States Navy accident.”

  “Correct, Admiral…and unless anyone has anything else to mention, I would like to get back to my office and work on my speech for tonight. Thank you all…and by the way, I think that goddamned submarine is still out there, and I want our Bosporus mission to succeed, so let’s get it done.”

  By mid-afternoon, Admiral Morgan and Bill Baldridge were back in Fort Meade, plotting and planning for the ride through the Bosporus. Baldridge would go as the official observer on behalf of the Pentagon. And he would reopen his talks with Admiral Elliott, and probably Admiral MacLean. Arnold Morgan had him booked out of Washington on a Sunday night flight to Heath row. He put in a call to the duty officer at Northwood Navy headquarters to ensure the British Submarine Flag Officer was ready to receive him. They confirmed the arrangements in twelve minutes.

  “Okay, Bill, you happy with all this?”

  “Yessir. But I’ll tell you one thing, I’d be happier running through the Bosporus with Admiral MacLean somewhere below the periscope.”

  “Well, have a chat with Admiral Elliott on Monday morning. I know the CNO is going to talk to the First Sea Lord in London tomorrow, and the Royal Navy will do everything they can. I just hope they’ve got one of those Upholder Class boats of theirs in some sort of shape so we can borrow it.”

  Bill Baldridge left the Fort Meade office in the early part of the evening, but Admiral Morgan settled in for what he described as “a long night.” He would listen to the President speak at 2100, but his real business would take place in his office at 0200 in the morning.

  In separate rooms, in separate places, the Navy’s investigative spearhead, Admiral Scott Dunsmore, Admiral Arnold Morgan, and Lieutenant Commander Bill Baldridge, sat and listened to the President of the United States speak on television. They watched him walk to the podium in the White House briefing room, and they saw him take a sip of water, before beginning:

  My fellow Americans, tonight I stand before you to share with you my thoughts and pra
yers for the families of the men who died on Thomas Jefferson last month.

  I expect that many of you are already aware that it has been the policy of generations of American governments not to single out certain special cases for those of our naval and military men who die in the service of their country.

  The official viewpoint has always been that even in the military, a life is a life, and none is more precious than another in the eyes of God. Therefore no President and no United States Congress has ever awarded financial benefits to those families left behind in what are always the cruelest of circumstances.

  Tonight I intend to break with that tradition. I intend to break with it after days and days of soul-searching with my Chiefs of Staff, and knowing that veterans’ organizations all over the country will support me.