H.M.S. Unseen

by Patrick Robinson

  “There’s only one man in all the world to fit that list. But, if I am to believe my American friends, that man’s dead.”

  “If I believed that, I would not be sitting here with you. Iain, I think he’s still alive, and I think he’s out there, driving Unseen.”

  “So, since you mention it, do I. Have for some time now. How about another glass of port?”

  “I think we may need another glass of port. Since we have more or less established that some kind of an Arab homicidal maniac is riding round in a silent submarine waiting to do something big. I cannot tell you what it will be like back home if he strikes again. It will finish this Republican administration.”

  “Shouldn’t wonder. Trouble is, I don’t know how to catch him. We don’t know where he is within 10,000 miles. Still, she was only on safety workup…she would not have much on board in the way of serious weaponry.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Dick Birley and I came to much the same conclusion. But it’s kinda tiresome, just sitting still, waiting for something to happen.”

  “I don’t really think you have a choice, Arnold. What can anyone do? Unless he makes a mistake. But judging by his track record, he’s not especially prone to those.”

  “I can get the Navy to put everyone on a heightened alert, for some spurious reason. But my fear remains, despite the apparent lack of weapons, that Adnam plans to hit another aircraft carrier.”

  “You think his luck might hold that long? I doubt it. I think if he tried again, you chaps would probably get him. Nonetheless, it is a worry. But there’s not much to be done…we just have to hope to God he makes a mistake.”

  The two admirals retired for the night at 2330. And Arnold Morgan lay next to the sleeping Kathy, trying to think of the glorious stretches of water they would see the next day on Sir Iain’s boat. Trying to cast from his mind the specter of Ben Adnam at the helm of another rogue submarine.

  201200MAY05. 15.52S, 55.10E. Course 360. Speed 9.

  The Santa Cecilia refueled Unseen for the final time shortly after midnight, 200 miles off the Bay of Antongil on the northern coast of Madagascar, close to the remote French Island of Tromelin. There remained just seventeen days of the journey back to Bandar Abbas, running deep up the Indian Ocean to the Gulf of Iran.

  The submarine had run perfectly all the way, but they were very short of food and water, and Commander Adnam was pleased to restock the galley.

  Back at Bandar Abbas, eagerly awaiting the arrival, was Admiral Badr. His plans to get the submarine home, without the prying eye of the U.S. satellite seeing them, were well in place. He was confident no one would see Unseen enter the new dry dock, and confident no one could possibly photograph her once she was inside.

  The Iranians had a very good hold on the U.S. satellite patterns and were able to predict accurately enough the gaps in overhead coverage. The submarine must make its 14-mile surface run across the shallow water to the harbor at 0130. That way she’d be in by 0245—thirty minutes before the next satellite would pass overhead.

  That was how they had landed the Russian weapons system in total secrecy when it arrived in March. The freighter had waited in the strait, right off the eastern tip of the Island of Qeshm, then run in fast across the shallows, right between satellite passes.

  Admiral Badr was amused at the success of the operation, but seethed inwardly at the humiliating fact that he and his Navy had to behave in this way because of the Great Satan. It was, he said, unconscionable that a foreign nation should subjugate the ancient rights of Iran to defend herself in any way she so wished.

  But all was well. One complete Russian Grumble missile system was safely installed in the workshop area at the deep-set end of the dry dock; the other three were being set up as part of the Naval air defense system. The new dock’s cranes were in place, as were the long galleries that would enable engineers easy access to the submarine. High, heavy-load-lifting apparatus crisscrossed the upper airspace right below the thick concrete ceiling. There were 50 guards on duty outside night and day. The barbed wire was in closer. And there was a second notice board erected right outside. It read, like the one near the main gate:

  AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

  INTRUDERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT.

  Admiral Badr’s missile engineers had checked the system right through and, as far as they could tell, it was flawlessly constructed. It was brand-new, tried and tested over many months by the Russians in the Black Sea in their 10,000-ton guided-missile cruiser Azov. All that mattered now was Ben’s safe return with the submarine.

  The Russian freighter had delivered a stockpile of 96 weapons, which ought to be ample for their purposes, since Commander Adnam would require only six. And the Iranian admiral looked forward to the Mission of Justice with great anticipation.

  070100JUN05. 26.57N, 56.19E. Speed 2.

  Racetrack pattern in 150 feet of water.

  Unseen moved 50 feet below the surface, slowly, through the warm waters of the Strait of Hormuz, just to the east of Qeshm, waiting for the American satellite to slide away through the heavens.

  At 0130 Commander Adnam issued the orders to surface and head up to Bandar Abbas at 12 knots on course three-three-eight.

  And with that the ex–Royal Navy submarine came barreling out of the ocean, shaking the blue water from her decks in a cloud of white spray, the batteries driving her forward on her single shaft, the fastest she had moved since leaving Plymouth sixty-eight days previously.

  Ben Adnam and his navigation officer, Lieutenant Commander Rajavi, were on the bridge as they raced across the bay, the hot night air in their faces. Up ahead they could already see the lights from the Iranian Naval station, and soon they could spot the green light high on the right-hand wall of the harbor. The CO ordered a reduction in speed just outside the entrance, and at 0245 Unseen ran fair down the northerly channel into the arms of her new Iranian masters.

  They made the hard 90-degree turn to the right, at the end of the harbor wall, and two small tugs maneuvered the 230-foot hull toward the dry dock. Ben Adnam stayed on the bridge, checking the tugs. At 0256 they slid into the new dock, way in, safely away from the vigilant photographer that would drift silently past, in nineteen minutes, miles above. The massive steel double doors were now closed across the entrance to shield the lights inside, where a small team of Navy personnel were waiting to welcome Unseen home. The outside door was constructed to take the full force of an incoming cruise missile without caving in.

  Ben Adnam walked across the gangplank onto dry land for the first time in four months. Admiral Badr was waiting, and the two men embraced, kissing on both cheeks several times in the old Muslim way.

  “How are you, Ben?” asked the Iranian submarine chief.

  “I’m tired,” he replied. “It’s been a long haul.”

  The admiral led him outside through a small side door to a waiting staff car, and they drove to his house. The journey was only six minutes, but the commander was asleep by the time they arrived. Admiral Badr awakened him and carried his sea bag past the six guards patrolling outside. Once inside, there were four young Iranian men to assist him.

  They removed his Brazilian uniform, undershorts, and socks, the only kind of clothes he had worn since March 29, and carefully placed his knife on the table. Then they led him to a hot bath full of exotic restorative oils. Ben just managed to wash himself with a bar of jasmine soap, but he fell asleep three times in the bright steamy bathroom. Two of the servants shaved the rough dark stubble from his face. Finally, they just let the water out and helped him to his feet, drying him off with big, soft, orange towels. Then they sprayed him with scented water, dusted him with jasmine talcum powder, and helped him into a pressed white-cotton robe.

  Ben Adnam fell into bed in the large air-conditioned room, where he slept for thirty hours, guarded like a pasha, protected like Fort Knox.

  When the submarine commander finally surfaced it was 1000 on June 9. Admiral Badr had issued orders he was to be in
formed as soon as Ben returned from the undead. Shaved and sharp now, he was ready to come out at the bell, and he greeted Mohammed Badr in their private dining room, which was situated in Ben’s house.

  “We followed much of your progress through the English newspapers,” he said. “Benjamin, you may leave no footprints, but you are very adroit at causing chaos.”

  “I hope so, sir. By the way, under the terms of our agreement I am now owed $750,000, which I shall require before we move further.”

  “I am aware of that. The wire transfer was made yesterday morning to your numbered account in Switzerland. I have here the document of confirmation, signed by the bank. You are at liberty to check with your own bank now if you wish, on that telephone, to ensure I am telling the truth.”

  “That will not be necessary, Admiral,” replied the commander, nodding. “And I thank you for your meticulousness and punctuality.”

  “As indeed we thank you, Benjamin,” smiled Mohammed Badr. “Any problems with the boat? All of our engineers report her in excellent shape. Just routine maintenance, minor leak in the seal around the shaft. She’s electronically perfect as far as we can tell.”

  “She ran fine all the way. The operation was conducted with the utmost professionalism. I expect the Royal Navy was quite confused by the entire thing.”

  “They have not said so, Ben. Indeed, the search goes on in the Channel. But I hear some rumblings that senior officers are beginning to wonder if she is there at all. However, nothing has been said publicly.”

  “No, they won’t do that.”

  “Ben, what I really want to discuss with you is the Russian missile system. It’s very large and very complicated to fit on a submarine. We could be refitting for a year.”

  “Look, Admiral. If we were trying to fit a medium-range SAM system for use against military aircraft, you’d be absolutely correct. Because we’d need large complicated radar and control systems to cope with military aircraft, trying to evade, ducking and diving, using amazing decoys and jammers. But we’re not doing that. We’re dumbing down a very sophisticated system…we can actually bolt the parts we need onto the submarine, right up on the casing behind the fin. Our targets are much simpler, highly predictable, with steady course, speed, and height. No defensive systems.

  “We will make one modification as I mentioned before, to ensure simple, active radar homing…just enough to allow front-lobe approach to the target. We can’t rely, for instance, on infrared, rear-lobe homing. This weapon has to go to the height we tell it, then turn to meet its target head-on. Then it must acquire the target with its own radar homing system…then lock on and hit, at a closing speed of perhaps Mach-4.”

  “Mmmmm. Still, I’ve never seen so many radar systems as these.”

  “But we don’t need them on the submarine. Those are intended to give the weapon considerable guidance-update information from its surface firing platform while it is in mid-flight. I intend to feed it all the information it needs to find its target before it’s fired. I’m after a sitting duck, not a swerving teal. We’re going to mount our missile launcher in a specially constructed pressure-tight box, and bolt it onto the rear end of the fin. The submarine’s regular radar will have to be tweaked up for long-range aircraft detection. And we need it to provide basic preflight guidance instructions for the missile. Then, in trade terms, we just ‘fire and forget.’ If the target’s not too fast, we should have time to get a second bird away, should the first one fail.”

  “Ben, I’ve mentioned this before. You are a very clever man.”

  “Still breathing, Admiral. In my game that’s a major plus.”

  “I have a distinct feeling you’re likely to go on breathing for a long time. So long as you always stay a couple of steps ahead of the enemy.”

  “I hope to, but right now I’d like to conclude this topic by making certain you follow our principal problem, that is fitting the ‘box’ to the submarine without dangerously reducing her surface stability. Like she might be so top-heavy she rolls right over. But that’s easily solved with a couple of buoyancy tanks, regular saddle tanks on either side of the hull.

  “Our only other problem is to build our own fairly simple fire-control system to work from inside the hull. Then we need just to connect them up on a permanent and reliable basis, despite the difficulties of the underwater environment.”

  “And you truly believe we can manage all that?”

  “Certainly I do. Otherwise, I would never have begun the project.”

  “But it’s never been done before, has it? Not by any navy?”

  “No. But only because there’s never been an operational requirement for it. If there had been, every major maritime power would have such a system. It’s just that submarines have never been sufficiently under threat from aircraft. They still aren’t.”

  222000JUN05. 30.30N, 49.05E. Course 90. Speed 2.

  The big Iranian naval barge, edged along by a following tugboat had reached its destination now, 600 miles north up the coast from Bandar Abbas in the Gulf of Iran, a little more than 40 miles offshore. Commander Adnam, Admiral Badr, and the missile director from Unseen’s crew were all on the barge, on the bow of which was bolted the modified version of the Russian Grumble Rif missile system, securely covered, and surrounded by four engineers. The night was clear and moonlit, with the stars shining brightly above. The test site was close to perfect.

  They took the covers off the consoles, which were situated right back on the stern, and the missile director sat in the bolted-down chair in front of it. There was little swell on the ocean that hot Arabian night, and everyone was in shirtsleeves. The radar on the barge scanned the skies for aircraft but found nothing within a radius of 100 miles.

  Ben Adnam checked his watch, which now showed 2025, and he knew that the pilotless target aircraft was off the ground above Bandar Abbas, banking out over the Gulf, then back along the coast, climbing all the while to a huge altitude of 60,000 feet. Soon it would head north for around 100 miles, or seventeen minutes, then turn south for the final time and come racing back at 600 mph toward the skies above the barge.

  They picked it up on the search radar on the southern leg of its journey, and the missile director found it again, incoming from 40 miles out. His fingers flew over the keys as he programmed in the information to the missile’s guidance system.

  “Climb out position in.”

  “Target course and speed set.”

  “Target height preset at 60,000.”

  “Weapon One ready.”

  At two minutes before 2100 he called: “Stand by.”

  Then he hit the launch key, and the big Russian Grumble-Class SAM missile, in a thunder of flame and exhaust, ripped out of the launcher, dead vertical, and screamed straight up into the sky. Everyone watched it, like a huge firework, and they all saw it change course after twenty-five seconds, reaching its 11.5 miles altitude.

  They saw it swerve north toward the target, still making 1,700 mph And they watched it obliterate the incoming empty aircraft in dark, but crystal-clear skies more than 20 miles from where they stood. A great sheet of flame seemed to light up the universe. It was a perfect front-lobe attack, of such awesome speed and power, no one felt able to say anything for a few moments.

  Except for Commander Adnam, who said crisply, “Thank you, gentlemen. That will do very nicely. I think we can go home now.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the 275-ton Kaman-Class fast-attack craft Shamshir came alongside to take off the admiral, the commander, and the missile officer. The engineers and the Navy guards would remain on the barge for the long slow journey home.

  Admiral Badr and his submariners would be in Bandar Abbas in twenty hours. They would dine on board while the French-built Iranian ship sped through the Gulf at 30 knots all the way.

  Conversation at dinner, during which the admiral and Commander Adnam sat alone, had an edge of elation to it. The system had worked, which, of course, at $300 million, was only to be expected.
But the question of time was important. Unseen needed to be back in the North Atlantic by early January, which meant the work had to be completed and tested by late October.

  Ben’s view was sanguine. “I cannot see it taking that long, sir. The hardest part is behind us. The modifications to the submarine are comparatively simple. It’s just a matter of ordinary submarine engineering, nothing very complicated.”

  “And the dates, Ben, are you happy with them?”

  “Well, I’m happy with one, January 17, the fifteenth anniversary of the day the allies attacked Iraq for the first time. But thereafter I think we’ll avoid anniversaries. I’m afraid it might look as if Iraq were being set up. And that would lead the Americans right to us. The missing submarine, the big new submarine dry dock in Bandar Abbas, into which they cannot see. Three hits against the West plainly designed to get Iraq blamed.

  “No, Admiral, I think January 17 would be nicely subtle. It might take everyone a while to figure that out, but there are better ways to persuade the Americans that Iraq is responsible. Incidentally, we must not forget to put the new Kilo back in the new dock, as soon as I sail…and make sure we’re seen doing it for a few minutes right at the beginning of a satellite pass.”

  241000JUN05.

  The Special Ops Room. Bandar Abbas Navy Base.

  Commander Adnam had drafted a totally bogus signal, to be transmitted from Navy Headquarters in Bandar Abbas to an Iranian Navy patrol craft in the northern end of the Gulf. The message ran as follows:

  Intelligence received of Iraqi surface-to-air missile test in area east of Qal At Salih. Four missiles flown. One at fast high-altitude airborne target—apparently successful at time 222101JUN05. Launch platform unknown. Investigate. 240100JUN06.

  It was encoded in a comparatively low-level operational system. And, as Ben Adnam had anticipated, it was intercepted by local American radio surveillance at the time of transmission. Fort Meade had decrypted it three hours later. Langley had a copy one hour after that. And the CIA’s chief field officers in both Jordan and Kuwait had it soon afterward