“You going away with Jo?” he asked.
“Yessir. I’m sailing a sixty-five-foot ketch from Cape Town to Tasmania. We’ll probably have a couple of friends with us, and there’ll be a couple of deckhands and a cook to make it all bearable. We’re really looking forward to it. I’ve never been through those southern waters. And we haven’t had a good vacation for years.”
“Blows a bit, down there.”
“It’d better. I don’t have that long!”
Admiral Dixon smiled, and the two submariners walked over to the chart desk, a big, sloping, high, polished table, which had belonged to the Admiral’s grandfather. On the ledge below were sets of dividers, steel rulers, and a calculator. Spread upon the surface beneath the desk light was a detailed map of the northeastern Atlantic, placed on top of a large map of the world. He was a man who had given the subject a lot of thought.
“Okay, gentlemen,” Admiral Dixon began, “to bring us all up-to-date. Until a few days ago we expected the two Kilos to make their journey home to China on the surface. We now have reason to think that the submarines will dive close outside their workup base, then proceed west out of the Barents Sea along the Russian coastline. We expect them to run on down past the North Cape, off Norway, and straight down the northeast Atlantic.
“From there they might swing through the Gibraltar Strait, where we will be able to see them but unable to do much about it. They would then transit the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, which are also somewhat difficult areas for our purposes.
“They may of course head on south and skip Gibraltar. Though it’s longer, it’s a more straightforward route. They would then head around the Cape of Good Hope, across the Indian Ocean, and through the Malacca or Sunda Straits. By then they may have acquired a close surface escort. We will concentrate on taking them out good and early, somewhere before they get through the GIUK Gap. If they choose to make a covert dived passage all the way to China, and we lose them, the search area becomes hopelessly large. We want them as they approach the GIUK Gap.”
The Admiral referred to one of the most important choke points on this planet—the great narrowing of the waters in the northern reaches of the Atlantic, the tightest point in the entire ocean, where Greenland, Iceland, and the UK’s northern coast form a direct northwest/southeast line 1,300 miles across. Situated directly on this line is the 500-mile-wide island of Iceland, which cuts the navigable waters considerably. This relatively small area—the deep, icy waters where commanding officers have been trained for generations—was the great hunting ground for US and UK submarine strike forces.
Throughout the Cold War all Russian submarines heading for the Atlantic traveled through the GIUK Gap under the watchful attention of their American and British adversaries, deep beneath the surface. Night and day, month after month, year after year, the two great Naval allies watched and waited. Few Soviet submarines ever made their way through the GIUK undetected.
There are three main routes through the Narrows: closest to the UK, east of the Faeroe Islands, which stand four hundred miles northwest of Scotland’s Cape Wrath; west of the Faeroes across the Aegir Ridge; and through the Denmark Strait, which runs between Iceland and Greenland’s Grunnbjørn ice mountain. These are lonely, haunted waters. Only four men survived when the giant forty-two-thousand-ton British battle cruiser HMS Hood was sunk by the Bismark in May 1941.
Admiral Dixon placed his steel ruler across the Gap and muttered, “Somewhere in here, Boomer. We’ll take ’em out just before they head into the Gap.”
“Yessir. And the sooner the better. Actually I had been considering the possibility of the Barents Sea, as soon as they clear the Murmansk area?”
“I don’t think so. It’s a bit too close to their starting point. Ideally, it would be perfect if we could catch them right off the North Cape, right here,” the Admiral said, pointing to the large map spread out before them. “It’s deep water, and it’s off Norway rather than Russia, and they could scarcely avoid it if the buggers are on their way home to China.
“Trouble is we don’t have the time. They’ll be off the North Cape two days after, which will almost certainly be a Monday morning. It might take us till Friday before we realize they’re not coming back. By which time they’ll be well down toward the UK. For our first contact we’ll have to rely on SOSUS.”
The Admiral was referring to the ultra-secret American underwater network of acoustic surveillance, which covers most of the world’s oceans, particularly sensitive areas like the GIUK Gap.
“Once we get a SOSUS fix on ’em, we can use Maritime Patrol Aircraft, MPA, to localize. This is going to take time and a bit of luck, but it’s all we’ve got.
“I think we should first look at a holding area, where you will await your prey. I was thinking of here.” The Admiral pointed to an area in a three-hundred-foot depth of water south of the Shetland Isles, 59.7N right on the two-degree line west, 180 miles due north of Scotland’s granite city of Aberdeen.
“This will put you around four thousand miles from New London, Boomer,” said Admiral Dixon. “If you run at around twenty-five knots across the Atlantic, it’ll take about six and a half days. Right now we think the Kilos will leave in the first week in January. You should be on station southwest of the Shetlands by December thirty-first.”
“Yessir. Hell of a way to spend New Year’s Eve. But before we begin a detailed plan, I should like to ask one question.”
As Boomer spoke, the door swung open and a guard let in the pugnacious figure of Admiral Morgan. “Hey, Johnny, Boomer. How we comin”?”
“Just started,” said the Admiral. “I have selected a holding pattern for Columbia, but Boomer has a question. Commander?”
“Sir, do we expect the Kilos to be armed?”
“Yes, you’ll have to assume they’ll be armed, Boomer. Fully armed,” Admiral Morgan answered. “And you can expect each of them to be equipped with its full complement of torpedoes—twenty-four each. These two hulls we are looking at are older than the remaining five, but I think we should assume they have been fitted with the newest Russian system. They probably have wire-guided torpedoes that can be fired in pairs, and engage two targets simultaneously.”
“Yessir. Got that, Admiral. Seems they’re catching us up all the time. I guess I need to plan for the worst case, like they’re both dived when we meet up. D’you think they’ll be on the surface, or will they make the whole journey dived?”
“We can’t be sure. The three Kilos the Chinese now have all went by freighter. Brand-new submarines are normally delivered on the surface because it’s much more fuel efficient, less wearing on machinery, and safer. But this is a bit different. We have two Chinese crews training in Russia for several months, and as we speak they are working the boats dived, out in the Barents Sea. I gotta hunch they might be planning to make this journey underwater.”
Boomer nodded. “Either way we have no options,” the Admiral continued thoughtfully. “I just spoke to the President again. He is very clear. We cannot allow ourselves to be shut out of the Taiwan Strait and permit another power to dominate the sea in that part of the world. Right here I’m thinking not only of Taiwan, where we have billions of dollars invested, but of our friends in South Korea, and our trading partners in Japan. They are more worried than we are. That Chinese Navy is a world-fucking nuisance. They have two hundred and fifty thousand people in it.
“The President thinks this issue is about the balance of power in those waters. If China gets a working submarine fleet, they will call the shots on every level. We would be impotent in the Taiwan Strait; the risk to our ships and people would be too great. We’re not going to let them have those submarines.
“Columbia will be lying in wait. It’s our ambush. You must strike fast and decisively. Take ’em out, and right there fourteen percent of a bitch of a problem will be over. There’ll be five left. And not all of them will be your problem. Maybe none.”
“Nossir. I g
uess the only real difficulty could be getting ’em both at once. Can’t loose off one weapon active too quick, or it’ll alert the other Kilo, which will then have time to go silent and fire back. Maybe even get away long enough to tell his base what’s happening. Still, my team is well trained, and unless the Chinese have the Kilos more than four or five miles apart, or less than five hundred yards apart, we should be okay. Just need to wait till they’re close enough to separate on the screen.”
“I’m assessing they’ll make their passage in loose company, Boomer—about two thousand yards apart—which they’ll know is good for low-power underwater telephone, but not so close they have to worry about running into each other. I just can’t see ’em having time to get one off themselves.”
“But I can’t count on that, sir. They got one off in the South Atlantic. Damn quick.”
“Yeah,” Admiral Dixon interjected. “But didn’t they have that Israeli commander on board?”
“Not according to Baldridge. He says the Russian captain got one away.”
“Hmmmm. We’ll have to trust you to get it right, Boomer. I do not want Columbia fired on,” said Admiral Dixon. “I do not want anyone even to know she is there. We’re looking for a silent, sudden, and deadly trap.”
“Meantime I think we ought to run through the broad outlines of the search phase,” said the Admiral. “We have Admiral Morgan right here, and I’ve a feeling we could use his help.
“For starters, we want one of our special-fit fishing trawlers in place, as near as they can get without being arrested, to the entrance to the bay. You know, the one which leads right down to Pol’arnyj, just in case the Kilos do, after all, stay on the surface. We also want the regular Barents Sea SSN on standby, though I don’t want to sink ’em right there. Too many ears in the water, right in the Russian backyard.
“The MPA boys will work out their own plan. But they cannot start too far east, or the Russians will see what they’re up to. And, we don’t want to start too far west, or south, or we might use up two years’ worth of sonobuoys in a week and still not get ’em. I guess we’re agreed, the GIUK Gap is the last resort.”
Arnold Morgan stared at the chart desk. “No alternative to those thoughts,” he said. “We have to get these guys as early as we can, without being caught. If they stay on the surface the Gap is the sensible place. If they dive, we want them as soon as we can, after they round the North Cape. The MPA boys can work there without being obvious, if, as I suspect it will, the Barents Sea SSN either misses or loses them.
“And Johnny, they’re gonna need a mass of support close to the op area. You have any idea yet where we’re gonna work from?”
“Well, it’ll be from the UK. I’ve penciled in my choice, a perfect spot, but we’ll need some clearance in Whitehall.”
“Don’t sweat it, Johnny. I’ll fix it.”
“Excellent. I’m looking at Machrihanish, an old disused former NATO air base. It’s stuck right down on the southwestern Atlantic corner of the Mull of Kintyre, opposite Campbeltown Loch, an old submarine haunt on the west coast of Scotland. But it’s a quiet place.
“I’m working on the theory that we’ll probably want six MPA for two weeks. More would be suspicious, and fewer wouldn’t cut it. They’ve gotta operate passive, without their radars. Keep Ivan in the dark, right?
“We’ll fly the aircraft in, Orion P-3C’s. They’ve got a pretty good long endurance, about fifteen hours. Then we’ll need a Galaxy transporter to bring in possibly as many as eight thousand sonobuoys, and all the support equipment. We’ll need a ton of fuel for the aircraft. But there are NATO stocks on the field. We ought to be able to rely on that, so long as we pay. The problem is, what do we tell the Brits? And what do we tell NATO?”
“Nothing we have to tell NATO. The Brits, they probably know too much already. But they might help us out on fuel.”
“Okay, Arnold. How do you suggest we move things forward?”
“I’ll get on to our London embassy and tell ’em to assign a Naval attaché to go directly to the Ministry of Defence. Meantime I’ll do some groundwork as high up as I dare to make sure it goes through quickly.”
“What’s our cover story?”
“Try this: we’re running a big exercise to show that we can still deploy MPA anywhere in the world, to vestigial support airfields, and operate for at least two weeks. It’s something we don’t do very often, but we’re deliberately conducting this training in Europe, in mid-winter, thousands of miles from a home base.”
“Hey, that’s good. Will the Brits believe it?”
“Anyone would. Except the Brits. Cynical bastards. They’ll suspect the worst, and they’ll be right. But they’ll cooperate anyway.”
The meeting adjourned at 1600. Arnold Morgan telephoned London, attempting to contact an old friend he usually found at his London club, the UK’s Deputy Chief of Defence (Intelligence) Rear Admiral Jack Burnby, a man who had the dubious experience of watching his ship burn and sink in the Battle for the Falkland Islands twenty years previously. Admiral Burnby had just dined and was in amiable mood on the telephone, as Arnold Morgan knew he would be. He was delighted to hear from his old American ally, whom he had come to know at Fort Meade. He listened carefully to the short request, which essentially required him to do nothing except not get terribly excited when six big American patrol planes, plus a cloud of C5A Galaxys, came lumbering out of the night sky to land on the Mull of Kintyre two weeks from now.
Eventually, the Royal Navy Admiral said, “I don’t see any difficulties with that. I’ll speak to a couple of people tomorrow, and you’ll have clearance in forty-eight hours, direct from the MOD to your Naval attaché in Grosvenor Square
.
“Need any positive help from us, Arnie?”
“No thanks, Jack. Just your goodwill. Like always.”
“Feel free to call if you do need anything.”
“Appreciate it, Jack.”
“By the way, old man, you don’t happen to feel like telling me why you really want that disused base in Kintyre, do you?”
Three thousand five hundred miles away, Admiral Morgan’s eyes rolled heavenward. “You don’t need to know, Jack,” he said quietly.
“Very well. I’ll do my best not to even make an educated guess, in the event. I might get it right, hmm?”
“Bound to, I guess. You normally do.”
“Well, good night old chap, hope to see you in the summer. By the way, your boys ought to know we’ve gone metric over here since we joined Europe; everything’s measured in meters now…and kilos.”
“Is that right, Jack? Well, damn me. Anyway, ’bye…and thanks.”
Just then the door was unlocked for the second time, and the Navy guard crisply announced that the CNO’s helicopter had landed. Four minutes later, Admiral Joe Mulligan walked through the door. “Gentlemen,” he said, “Johnny, Arnold, Boomer. How do we look?”
“Not too bad,” said Admiral Dixon. “But I’m glad you’re here, sir. We were just getting into the detail of how to catch Kilos. And I’d appreciate your input.”
“Let me take a look at that chart. Any coffee? I missed lunch and to the best of my knowledge there is no one in the United States Navy who gives one thin dime whether I starve to death or not.”
Everyone laughed, and Commander Dunning’s navigation officer, the junior man among the senior officers in the room, picked up the telephone and ordered coffee. “And cookies for the CNO,” he added, jauntily.
Meanwhile they all gathered around the big North Atlantic chart. Joe Mulligan familiarized himself with the projected route of the Kilos and the preliminary plan Johnny Dixon had mapped out for entrapping them on the assumption they would travel beneath the surface.
The Admiral anticipated that the Kilos would make between seven and nine knots through the water dived, and that it could take up to five days for the surveillance to determine whether they had indeed sailed, and were on their way home to China.
; “First contact is almost bound to be SOSUS, sir,” he said. “When we get an approximation of their position, we’ll vector the MPA’s, and they’ll begin to localize, using passive sonobuoys only.
“The main trouble is those Kilos need to snorkel for only an hour or so every day. And it’s only while they’re snorkeling that we have any real chance of catching them. One hour is very tight for decent localization if the MPA can’t use radar to pick up their masts.”
“We’re just gonna have to get used to it,” interjected the CNO. “To the fact that it’s gonna take several days before we know the rough speed of their advance, and their approximate course. But with luck a pattern will emerge, which will speed things up, and nail ’em down. That ocean’s a fucking big place, right?”
“Sure is. But by the sixth night, we should have enough data to clear Columbia to proceed to the next battery-charging area.”
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