Kilo Class

by Patrick Robinson

  The Admiral stood up and pushed his thick, wavy, dark hair back in a gesture of exasperation. He walked slowly across the long room, his heels clicking on the marble, like the ticking of a great unseen clock. “I know,” he told his deserted office, “EVERYTHING…and yet, I know NOTHING.”

  Rankov was nothing if not a complete professional himself. He called in his two Lieutenant Commanders and ordered them to organize an immediate search of the lakeshore, fields, and woodlands around the area of the Green Stop of the Andropov.

  “Might we know what we’re looking for, sir?” asked Kazakov.

  “I think we might be looking for five more bodies.”

  “The Americans?”

  “Uh-huh. I have a feeling this hit squad, which blew the barges, was seen by the two crew members, and possibly by the Americans. It is my opinion that the terrorists may well have taken out all seven people. Authorize search parties to go through the woods immediately adjacent to the lake, and to comb the shore, above and below the surface. Get Navy frogmen in there. If you had just killed four old men and their nurse in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, and you were right next to a large lake, my guess is you’d dump the bodies in the water, weighted down somehow. But tell them to check the woods anyhow.”

  Within three hours, a wide search was under way along the area of the Green Stop. Tour ships were moved on, the area along the shoreline was cordoned off, all along the dirt road and back into the woods. The River Police Commandant, working in conjunction with two Commanders from the Northern Fleet who had arrived by helicopter, decreed that a line should be marked off parallel to the dirt road, deep in the woods, more than a quarter of a mile from the shore.

  The police chief objected, since the woodlands were twelve miles long and they were looking at a two-mile stretch. “With five bodies to drag into the undergrowth, they’re not going in there more than a hundred yards at most,” he said. “You draw that line a quarter of a mile in and we’re looking at a search area of one and one-half million square yards. With a hundred men, that’s fifteen thousand square yards each. But we only have a hundred in total, because fifty of our men are working along the water. Therefore we have each of our land searchers taking care of thirty thousand square yards, all of it covered in bracken, dead leaves, trees, and bushes. We’ll be here till Christmas.”

  “If we don’t crack this, we might end up somewhere for a lot longer,” replied the Commander. “Let’s just keep going until someone tells us to stop, ‘the classic old Communist way.’”

  The police Commandant laughed. “You’re in charge,” he said. “A quarter of a mile it is. Let’s get in the woods. You want metal detectors used?”

  “Not searching for bodies. Just rakes, forks, and sharp sticks. I think in pairs is most efficient.”

  “Yessir.”

  Nine days later they had found precisely nothing. Which was scarcely surprising, since the searchers were, even at their nearest point, more than seven thousand miles from the still-breathing bodies of the missing Americans. Not to mention, still three-quarters of a mile from the deeply buried, booby-trapped SEALs canisters, each of which had anyway been thoughtfully metal-stamped by Admirals Morgan and Bergstrom, MADE IN THE UKRAINE.

  Admiral Rankov was almost disappointed. He had talked himself into believing they might actually find the Americans dead. But every instinct he possessed told him the missing Americans were the hit squad that blew out the Kilos. And those same instincts were telling him he was never going to find one shred of positive proof to shed one ray of light on the catastrophe.

  The next question was: should he hand this entire investigation over to the Military Agency in Moscow, which specialized in terrorism? He would have done so without hesitation had he considered any nation had a motive. But there was only one nation that fitted into that category. And the Special Forces, which operate in deadly secret behind the Stars and Stripes, did not count as terrorists. These were the US Army Rangers, or US Navy SEALs, and either one of them was way beyond the reach of any Russian reprisal, short of a shooting war.

  Admiral Vitaly Rankov had never felt more powerless. There could be no admission from the Kremlin of what he knew had happened. No possible confession from his already beleaguered government that Special Forces from the USA had attacked his country, way inside the borders. No disclosure that the old Iron Curtain was now made, essentially, of gossamer.

  And he cursed the ground upon which Arnold Morgan walked.

  It had been a Black Operation. And Admiral Rankov knew that Black Operations were designed to leave no footprints. That had been the case when the two Kilos vanished in the North Atlantic. And it was most certainly the case now. The Chinese had not as yet caused a huge fuss, but they wanted their $300 million back.

  The Russian Admiral was a loyal member of the Naval high command, and he cared deeply about the service in which he had worked for all of his life. If the Chinese pulled out now, he knew it would cause shocking hardship in every corner of the Russian shipbuilding industry, and indeed among the Navy personnel.

  The priority, he believed, was to save the order from Beijing for the unfinished aircraft carrier in the Ukraine, and to come up with a foolproof scheme to deliver the final two Kilos to China. With some luck, he thought, we might even get them to hold over the $300 million, maybe even roll over the order for more Kilos. “Just as long as I can come up with a method of delivering them,” he thought. “Without that fucker Morgan and his bandits sinking them first.”

  He sat alone in his office, gazing at a large map of the Northern Oceans, those to the south of the floating Arctic wasteland that flows around the North Pole. He looked again at the unfathomable areas where the surface waves rolled over a twelve-thousand-foot depth. And he checked his calendar for the weeks when the ice would be at its northern summer limits. Then he looked at the availability of the largest nuclear submarines this world has ever seen, which were built, he thought proudly, in the old Soviet Union…their own massive platform for sea-launched, intercontinental, ballistic missiles…no one, not even the USA, would monkey around with one of these. They could operate under the ice if necessary, a thousand feet below the surface, and were capable of smashing through ice ten feet thick.

  Admiral Rankov gazed with some satisfaction at the map, thinking about…his twenty-one-thousand-ton colossus of the underwater world, which packs the punch of nearly forty torpedoes and antisubmarine missiles. Powered by two massive nuclear reactors, it can run swiftly beneath the waves at almost thirty knots.

  “Just let him try,” growled Admiral Rankov. “Just let him fucking well try.”

  10

  More than three hundred relatives and friends attended a memorial service for Dr. Kate Goodwin at St. Francis Church, Brewster, yesterday. Dr. Goodwin was one of twenty-nine Americans presumed dead after the Woods Hole research ship Cuttyhunk vanished in the Southern Ocean off the island of Kerguelen eighteen months ago. The principal reading was delivered by Mr. Frederick J. Goodwin, the senior feature writer on this newspaper, and a first cousin of the deceased.

  —Cape Cod Times, June 28

  THE SHARPLY WORDED MESSAGE SUMMONING Admiral Zhang Yushu back to Beijing had an unusual urgency about it. The regular helicopter flight from the Navy’s Southern Fleet Headquarters at Zhanjiang up to Canton, and then a commercial flight north, would not be fast enough.

  Which was why the Commander in Chief of the People’s Liberation Army-Navy, in company with his South Sea Fleet Commander, Vice Admiral Zu Jicai, had commandeered one of his Navy’s 700 aircraft to use as a taxi, and was presently ensconced in a TU-16 Badger making five hundred knots forty thousand feet over the Changjiang Lowlands. Neither of the two senior officers had any idea why they had been summoned to the capital, but the meeting they were scheduled to attend was set to start at noon, and it was now 0700. They were eight hundred miles due south of Beijing, and the converted bomber was flying directly above the central reaches of the Yangtse,
where the great river threads its way through a sprawling network of inland lakes, dams, gorges, and canals. Down below the Yangtse flowed muddily eastward beneath dark gray clouds, its water slashed by a torrential downpour.

  “What d’you think, sir? The submarines?” asked Admiral Zu.

  The C in C was thoughtful. “No, Jicai. I don’t. When all of this started we had seven Kilos trying to make it back to China. Five of them have been destroyed, and the other two are not yet ready to leave Russia. I can’t think of any possible development as urgent as this obviously is.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, it must have something to do with Taiwan. It seems to me, always Taiwan when the politicians get anxious.”

  “That is true. But I’m not sure what this is all about…still, we’ll know soon enough.”

  “What happened about the submarine money?” asked Admiral Zu. “Are the Russians cooperating.”

  “Not much choice for them,” said Admiral Zhang. “They could hardly expect us to forfeit a three-hundred-million-dollar deposit on three Kilos that somehow fell off their own barges right in the middle of Russia.”

  “Did we ask for cash back?”

  “No, we just agreed to roll the money over for the final two…meaning we pay three hundred million dollars more when they arrive safely in Chinese waters—that completes the deal. Admiral Rankov is working on an escort program that he swears will be impregnable…even by the American bandits.”

  “It would be expensive for his government if they fail again, eh?”

  “Very. They have agreed to repay the three hundred million dollars in full, if those submarines fail to arrive in a Chinese port for any reason.”

  “Were they as reasonable over the loss of the first two in the North Atlantic?”

  “Not quite. They held us to the letter of the contract. We’d paid two hundred million dollars down, and two hundred million more at the completion of sea trials, which were deemed to have concluded when the Kilos dived and left Russian waters. The final payment was due, naturally, when they arrived in Xiamen. Unhappily we had the second payment on an automatic transfer through the Hong Kong-Shanghai Bank, direct to Moscow on a specified date. We paid it, and three or four days later the Kilos were lost.”

  “An ill wind,” said Admiral Zu.

  “Yes. And the Russians were within their rights. They said it was unfortunate but that they were not asking for any favors. The contract was specific. The sea trials were completed successfully, and the money was theirs. They had, after all, built the submarines, and the ‘accident’ was not their fault.”

  “So we’re out seven hundred million dollars on the deal so far?”

  “Correct. If they manage to deliver the last two safely, we will have paid one billion dollars for two submarines. Very expensive, hah?”

  “Yes. But will we receive compensation if the Russians can successfully prove to the United Nations that America was responsible?”

  “We will. I personally wrote that clause into the new agreement. Russia will demand repayment in full—one and a half billion dollars for five submarines. We’ll get our four hundred million dollars back. The Americans will also have a huge bill for reparations to the Belomorski Canal, and I imagine the Russian government will demand colossal compensations for the loss of life caused by the deliberate acts of US piracy.”

  “Will we claim damages for the hundred men we lost in the first two Kilos?”

  “Oh, undoubtedly…if the Russians manage to prove anything.”

  “Does their investigation go well, sir?”

  “Those villains in the Pentagon are remarkably clever. My view is that nothing will be proved…I just hope that Admiral Rankov is able to get the final two Kilos here without further trouble. Then we will have five…almost sufficient for us to be very dangerous to any cruising American aircraft carrier…that’s what I want. The three Kilos we have are simply not enough. Two of them are in dock for repairs. The third is awaiting overhaul.”

  The big Navy aircraft with its two solitary passengers came lumbering into Beijing airport shortly before 0900. A Navy staff car was waiting at the edge of the runway when the plane came to a halt. The Admirals were on the road to the city within six minutes of touchdown. The aircraft refueled and left immediately for Canton.

  Admiral Zhang told the driver to go straight to his official residence, where he and Admiral Zu would shower, change into fresh uniforms, and have some breakfast. He would like the car to wait and drive them to the Great Hall of the People at 1130. The Paramount Ruler disliked lateness, and he would make no exception—even for two very senior military figures who had raced 1,300 miles from the southern borders of China that same morning.

  Admirals Zhang and Zu arrived at Tiananmen Square at 1150, and were greeted by a Navy escort of four guards, who accompanied them down the long corridors to the committee room. Inside, already seated, was the General Secretary of the Communist Party. He sat next to the Chief of the General Staff, and the two men were speaking to the rarely seen head of the central Chinese Intelligence agency. The new Political Commissar of the Chinese Navy, Vice Admiral Lee Yung, was also in attendance, and was deep in conversation with the East Sea Fleet Commander, Vice Admiral Yibo Yunsheng.

  Zhang and Zu arrived two minutes before the Paramount Ruler himself, and everyone stood as the great man walked in, escorted by two senior assistants. He smiled and nodded his greetings to his most trusted colleagues. The eight armed guards who attended him at all times were already positioned in the corridor.

  The Ruler wished everyone a good morning and said that he would like General Fang Wei, the Intelligence chief, to address the meeting and to bring them up-to-date with a developing situation in Taiwan. Admiral Zu turned to his C in C and nodded discreetly as the General stood up and began to recount the results of a report he had just received from one of his field officers operating under deep cover on the island of Taiwan.

  It concerned the continuing disappearance of some of the most eminent nuclear physicists in the country, many of them attached to the permanent faculty of the most distinguished universities in Taiwan. Professors had suddenly vanished from such academic strongholds as the National Central University in Chungli; the National Chengchih University in Taipei; the National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu; the National Chunghsing University in Taichung; and even from the National Taiwan in Taipei, and from Tamkang University in Tanshui.

  “At first,” said General Fang, “we noticed nothing.” There was no information, he reported—no one knew anything. Not friends, colleagues, nor even relatives. “But then we noticed that after two or three years, the professors were suddenly, quite inexplicably, back in their university posts, as if nothing had happened. And still no one could learn what was going on.

  “Then,” he said, “about a year ago, I tried to tighten our grasp on the senior nuclear scientists and engineers, checking about twenty-five of the top men every twenty-four hours. Three months ago, two of them suddenly disappeared on the same day. They have never been seen since. And no one knows where they are. At least, no one is telling us.

  “We did of course run all the routine checks—airports and seaports—and there is no record of them leaving the country. But Taiwan is a small and surprisingly talkative place. It is not possible that these men remained on the island without someone knowing something. Nor is it possible for such people to disappear without relatives or friends bringing it to public notice…unless they’d been told not to. And in this case, we had, at one time, a total of eleven truly distinguished Taiwanese scientists, all nuclear physicists, all missing.

  “Now, as you know, we have been aware of this situation, in various degrees, for several years—since we are always concerned that our irritating neighbor may take it upon itself to develop its own nuclear capability. But we have never had any evidence. And it’s been very hard for us to pinpoint dates of departures and arrivals back…I should mention that the illustrious Professor Liao of the Taiwa
n National University has vanished twice, for around eighteen months each time.

  “Now, to bring you to my point…one week ago we were secretly informed that two of the professors who disappeared, Liao himself, and Nhung of Tamkang, would be returning to work within two days. And we watched every incoming flight, every arriving ship. We checked every passenger list. And there was nothing. Then by some miracle the two professors arrived back at their universities exactly when our contact said they would.

  “We were absolutely mystified. Where had they been? We decided, therefore, that their mode of transport must have been military, but there were no military aircraft or ships arriving from abroad at the appropriate time, barring only their submarines. And, sure enough, we were informed that a Hai Lung had docked at the Taiwanese base in Suao three days previously, following an eleven-week absence.

  “That fitted our inquiry. It was the only oceangoing vessel that could possibly have brought the professors back at the right time. We then checked its departure date, April fifth. And we discovered a real coincidence. Remember the two professors I mentioned? The ones we had under surveillance, who disappeared on the same day…they vanished on April fourth.”

  The General paused and looked at his audience, before adding slowly, “It is therefore my conclusion that the scientists are leaving Taiwan, and returning, by submarine. If we knew where the Hai Lungs were going, we would know where the nuclear scientists were.”

  The Paramount Ruler nodded his head gravely. And when he spoke, he addressed Admiral Zhang. “We do know something of the activities of the Hai Lungs, I believe?”

  “We do, sir. But I am afraid, not enough. We have established their sailing pattern…the eleven-week tour of duty mentioned by the General is accurate. The Hai Lungs dive very quickly once out of the harbor at Suao, and we have never seen them again until their return eleven weeks later. We have concluded their probable speed is eight or nine knots dived…and that they are covering around two hundred miles a day. That would mean a thousand miles every five days.