Barracuda 945 (2003)

by Patrick Robinson

  "To whom shall I tell them to address the billions of dollars' worth of lawsuits, all aimed at the man who turned off the navigation system that lights up the world?"

  "Fuck," said the President. "I think you got me."

  "Sir, I know you can't cancel GPS worldwide for the reasons Harcourt just succinctly put forward. Couldn't even put it back to one hundred fifty meters without due warning— there'd be people drowning all over the globe. But it is a problem. We should look at it. Because that's how this bastard in the submarine is finding his targets with such complete accuracy."

  "If he'd had only one hundred fifty meters accuracy, would he have missed the refinery?"

  "Probably most of it," replied Arnold Morgan. "I doubt he would have nailed the big fractioning towers, and that would have reduced the damage by around ninety percent."

  "I guess that's one more thing for which we have to thank my predecessor," said the President thoughtfully.

  "Absolutely," said Arnold Morgan.

  "Liberal shithead," confirmed the President.

  11

  By midnight on that Friday, Admiral Vitaly Rankov had not returned yet another call from Admiral Morgan. It was now plain that no one was telling the United States of America whether the second Barracuda was operational, or where it was, or indeed whether Russia still owned it.

  Arnold Morgan was not pleased. And in the small hours of the following morning he summoned to the encrypted telephone the sleeping Chief of the CIA's Russian desk.

  "Tommy, hi. Morgan here. We still got that good guy in Murmansk?"

  Tom Rayburn, an old friend of the Admiral's, was quickly into his stride. "Hi, Arnie. Just. But he's about to retire. Probably coming to live here."

  "Think he'd have time for one more mission? Nothing dangerous. Just inquiries."

  "Oh sure. Old Nikolai's always been expensive but cooperative."

  "Okay. I'm looking for a nuclear submarine. A Sierra I, Barracuda Class. Type 945. Hull K-240. We think it was never quite completed, never went to sea, and was subsequently laid up in the yards at Araguba, north of Severomorsk. I need to find out whether it's still there, in a covered dry dock. Apparently, they were using it for spare parts for the one Barracuda that was operational. That's Hull K-239."

  Tom Rayburn took his notes carefully. "Where's that one, just so we don't get confused?"

  "I'm not sure," replied the Admiral. "But you may assume it's a fucking long way from Murmansk."

  The CIA man guffawed. Arnold Morgan's manner had not changed in the twenty years he had known him. "OK, boss," he said. "I'll get on it. You want to know whether the Barracuda's still in Araguba, and if not, where it is?"

  "And especially whether they've sold it."

  "You got it. Gimme twenty-four hours."

  At precisely the same time, 1:00 a.m. in Fort Meade, Lt. Comdr. Jimmy Ramshawe was poring over a report from the office of the Energy Department detailing progress from the undersea repair team north of Graham Island.

  The pipeline valves had been turned off, and after the tremendous crude oil leakage into the sea, they had successfully capped the breach in the line at the Overfall Shoal. It was difficult, but made easier by the shallowness of the water. The operation had entailed lifting both damaged sections of the pipe on cranes and making the repair onboard a service ship, before lowering the entire section, using two ships, back onto the seabed.

  It was then, of course, necessary to open several valves to make sure the repair, made on one of the major couplings, was tight. When the oil flowed again, the frogmen reported no leakage and everything seemed fine. However, to their horror, three hours later, another huge slick was seen developing about a half mile to the north. And this was much more difficult to repair because the water was much, much deeper.

  All valves were turned off again, but this time they needed to send down an unmanned minisubmarine to inspect the further damage, which no one had known about. And this was again terrible news because the television photographs being relayed to the surface showed a shattering rupture in the pipe, nowhere near a coupling joint. This meant they would need to lift two entire sections off the floor of the ocean, using two giant "camels."

  This would be an immensely expensive and challenging operation. The Dixon Entrance is in a remote part of the world, and in early March sea conditions can be very rough. They were looking at possibly six weeks to two months when no oil would be carried down the pipeline from Yakutat Bay. And neither did it matter much whether the crude oil arrived in mainland United States or not, since the refinery at Grays Harbor was destroyed. And neither would there be any tankers heading south out of Prince William Sound, where there were currently no crude supplies whatsoever.

  If this fight between General Rashood's Fundamentalists and the American West Coast's oil industry had been fought under Marquess of Queensberry Rules, the referee would have stopped it.

  Jimmy Ramshawe stared at the report, and contemplated the colossal damage. He also pulled up and checked out the inflammatory words of Professor Jethro Flint of the University of Colorado. . . They will never have tested that pipeline with those kind of real-life pressures. . . When you subject something to stresses it's never undergone before, it can rupture. . . They've overloaded the pipeline, somewhat thoughtlessly, and it's come unraveled.

  "Wrong, professor. Wrong," muttered Jimmy. "If you were right, the pipeline would have ruptured at the joint, its weakest part, and that would have released the pressure instantly, with the bloody oil gushing out in a huge jet, underwater. There would have been no second breach, especially right in the middle of the pipe away from the joints.

  "I am afraid, old mate, your bloody academic theory is right up the chute. That wasn't pressure that bust the pipe, that was a couple of terrorist bombs, delivered by frogmen from a submarine."

  He drafted off a hard-copy note to Admiral Morris, pointing out the obvious and fatal flaw in the argument of Professor Flint.

  He ended with a flourish. "Would you like me to circulate these findings on the E-mail to the FBI, CNO, Bob MacPherson, and Admiral Morgan? Because they sure as hell just blew Fred Flintstone out of the water, right?"

  Admiral Morris answered in the affirmative.

  It was the weekend, and the markets were closed. Which left the media to run riot all over the world, piecing together the undeniable truth that there had been three massive accidents in the Alaska oil industry. Were they really accidents? Are they connected? Is this industrial sabotage on the grandest scale? If so, who? Is there someone out there trying to bring the United States to its knees?

  These were scare stories way up there on the Richter scale. And there were seismic shocks in every area of public life. Gas was already at $6 a gallon at many West Coast stations, and every newspaper and television screen from San Diego to the Alaskan coast was trumpeting about the fuel oil shortages that must begin to bite immediately.

  The further north the city, the bigger the headlines, as the newspapers cited all of their usual sources of doom for maximum disquiet among the populace. They forecast power stations grinding to a halt . . . hospital emergency equipment without electricity (people may die). . . no gasoline . . .senior citizens dying of cold and starvation. . .schools closed. . .government offices blacked out . . . no power. . . no computers. . .no Social Security pensions. . . no baseball games . . . floodlights . . . traffic lights . . . strobe lights . . . neon lights.

  The list was hysterical and endless. Hysterical, and accurate, bang on the money. This was a pending crisis the likes of which no one had ever imagined. Because not only was Grays Harbor, the largest refinery in the country, starved of product and out of action, but there was no fuel oil running south to feed the biggest power station in California, Lompoc, custom built to cope easily and exclusively with the power demands of the gigantic urban sprawls of both San Francisco and Los Angeles.

  For once in their lives, the media had it absolutely right, putting two and two together to make a pre
cise and pristine four, rather than five, or eighty-seven.

  What they did not know was a truth more chilling than anything in the imagination of even their most erratic editors. Out there, somewhere in the eastern Pacific, was a seasoned, dazzling Special Forces battle Commander leading a group of highly trained Islamic fanatics in a brilliantly efficient nuclear submarine, which appeared capable of striking the United States at will. And may not be finished yet.

  At 9 o'clock on Saturday morning, Vice Admiral Morgan read with equanimity Jimmy Ramshawe's note about the repairs on the pipeline. Every word confirmed what he already believed, knew. That there was someone out there, packing a serious wallop, with another "X-minus" possible weapons in his magazine. And neither he, Arnold, nor any of the top military brains in the U.S. Armed Forces had the slightest idea how to proceed.

  The Admiral was bewildered, along with the rest of them. He had never felt so vulnerable. In his mind, he knew that their enemy was virtually undetectable. The world was indeed the bastard's oyster; he could do anything.

  All previous run-ins with terrorists paled before this. Even when the massed maniacs of Al-Qaeda had pranced about announcing they would fight to the death, they had at least presented a target somewhere in the remote hills of Afghanistan. It was difficult, but nonetheless tangible, and well within the massive capability of the U.S. military, which proceeded to pulverize their foe.

  "But this," growled the Admiral. "This is fucking preposterous. I don't know if our enemy is Russia, China, or one of the towel-head states. But I do know this is terrorism, the most modern terrorism, and there is NO defense against it, because we don't know where it's coming from . . . or who is committing it."

  He had, of course, entirely ignored the point that this was also his own favorite type of warfare, to slam an opponent to the ground, kick him to death if necessary, and then act as if it was nothing whatsoever to do with America. Who me? Nah. Sorry, pal, don't know anything about it. Can't help this time. Stay in touch.

  Right now he had never been in such a dilemma. Alan Dickson had the Pacific Fleet on full alert. Two submarines coming in off patrol were watching and listening for any submarine from any nation that might be on the loose. But Arnold held out little hope. If he's out there, and he's as goddamned brilliant as I think he is, the West Coast needs a hard hat and a goddamned lotta luck. I just hope to Christ he doesn't go for the Navy Base in San Diego.

  He knew it would be futile to try to gain any information on the movement of any Chinese warships. The Beijing military were not hostile, but they were not friendly to the United States either. And they seemed to operate independently from their own government.

  Twice in the past few years there had been a major standoff involving U.S. servicemen being held in Chinese military confinement after sorties in the South China Sea. And the recent uproar over Taiwan had done nothing for Sino-U.S. relations.

  Alternately, Russia was saying nothing. And the United States was, of course, unable, as ever, to have any proper rapport with the Islamic States, the atmosphere being altogether too fraught, too untrusting.

  Admiral Morgan paced his office. A new communiqué from the Washington State Environmental Protection Agency suggested the still-leaking pipeline had at least been shut down three miles back from the breach. But sea conditions were so bad it would be several days before they could begin their attempt to raise the fractured section and conduct the repairs.

  In California, the Governor was conducting a daylong, highly classified meeting in Sacramento, the state capital, attended only by those officials who understood the razor's edge upon which their electricity supplies now rested. Jack Smith, the President's Energy Secretary, had flown in on Air Force II from Washington, D.C., and was listening intently as officials from the Lompoc power station outlined the situation at the newest, most efficient electricity plant in the United States.

  Built to take the heat off the rest of California's 1,023 major power stations (one-tenth of a megawatt or larger), Lompoc operated solely on government-subsidized, inexpensive refined fuel oil coming out of Grays Harbor. Transportation to the power station was strictly railroad, straight out of Washington State, down the Union Pacific's permanent way to San Francisco, and then along the valley of the Salinas River to the scenic peninsula, where the railroad starts to hug the coast.

  Lompoc lies six miles inland, right in that triangle-shaped peninsula, 125 miles northwest of Los Angeles, 240 miles south of San Francisco. Its nearest coastline forms the northern shore of the Santa Barbara Channel.

  The Union Pacific Railroad runs all the way around that peninsula on its way down to Los Angeles, but there is a spur line into Lompoc, expanded in the year 2007 to run into the new power station, and form the life-giving artery to virtually all the electric power for San Francisco and Los Angeles.

  According to the best calculations, the Lompoc power station was sufficiently well supplied to keep pumping out electricity for three more weeks, possibly four. The problem was, it was not on a seaward terminus where tankers could bring in emergency supplies, if necessary, from the Gulf of Mexico.

  It was simply not geared for road transportation to bring in refined fuel oil. Lompoc and the railroad were bound together, and right now the last two tanker freight trains were rumbling south, one just north of Monterey, the other west of San Luis Obispo, forty miles north of the power station. Thanks to General Rashood, there would, of course, be no more deliveries in the forseeable future.

  Right now it looked almost impossible to hook up the massive Lompoc outward power lines to the statewide electricity grid. At least it looked impossible to achieve in under four months.

  Lompoc had been built as a separate entity, to function alone, ensuring that the state's two giant commercial centers could keep running, no matter how many blackouts and brownouts afflicted the rest of the state. Equally, Lompoc's very existence considerably reduced the pressure on all of the other California power stations, which had been devoid of shortages for several weeks.

  With no refined fuel oil from Alaska, the only solution had to be road transportation. The state of California could spare hardly anything itself without putting the lights out in several cities, so oil would have to come from the Gulf, through the Panama Canal, and up the West Coast into the great artificial harbor of Los Angeles, a ponderous journey of close to 4,500 miles... assuming no delays in the canal, almost two weeks.

  The Governor's emergency conference in Sacramento was racking its collective brain trying to find solutions. But there were no solutions, only ways to try and paper over the cracks, and to keep the lights on, more or less constantly, until the Alaska and Grays Harbor catastrophes were repaired. If the power station at Lompoc failed, and the great cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles went dark, it would be a national calamity of gigantic proportions.

  It would certainly bring down the California Governor, and it could threaten the Republican Administration in Washington, where the GOP would be accused of pushing forward with vast moneymaking programs mostly beneficial to big oil companies, with no thought whatsoever to solutions, if the grand schemes failed.

  There had been, of course, many citizens of Lompoc and its environs who had been vehemently opposed to the power station right from the start. The beautiful Lompoc Valley is known as the Valley of Flowers, thanks to its century-old flower seed industry, and the very idea of a power station in the middle of all that floral splendor had caused a political battle that raged for more than a year.

  Only the intervention of the military, at nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base, had finally pushed the power plant through. Vandenberg was the first missile base of the U.S. Air Force. The immediate closing of the West Shuttle Program after the Challenger crash at Kennedy Space Center in Florida had caused a major recession in Lompoc. But now, in 2008, more than twenty years later, they were preparing for the California Spaceport, and there were major advantages to having a huge power station close by, not the least of which w
as the sharing of a big refined fuel terminal right on the Union Pacific Railroad.

  The environtmental lobby still opposed it—all of it—and continued to hurl invectives at "money-grubbing industrialists and politicians" hell-bent on profits at all costs, never mind the destruction of the Valley of Flowers.

  Their objections had a plaintive ring of truth to them, but none of them were true, or justified. The President's entire Energy Program, masterminded by Jack Smith and his staff, was in fact a work of great brilliance, dispelling at a stroke America's reliance on Arab oil.

  The unpalatable truth was, and is, a huge industrialized Western country like the United States happens to be vulnerable to grand-scale, State-sponsored terrorism. The Senators in Washington did not yet know it, but they had much to be thankful for—namely that General Rashood did not approve of mass killing and would not indulge in it. However, the Senators did not know of the existence of General Rashood or the steely determination with which the Hamas military chief intended to drive the United States, and the State of Israel, from the Middle East forever.