Barracuda 945 (2003)

by Patrick Robinson

  By Thursday morning, March 13, General Rashood and Captain Badr were creeping down the pristine central coast waters off some of the loneliest beaches in California. They were just beginning to move out into deeper water 130 miles off Los Angeles and were making a quiet five-knot course to the southwest.

  The Barracuda, now a month out of Petropavlovsk, was running perfectly, the reactor ticking along at low pressure, the turbines at cruising speed. The only discordant note in the entire submarine mechanism was the slightly arched converstaion between General Rashood and Lt. Comdr. Shakira Rashood.

  The world's first lady submarine officer was quite certain they should continue with the policy of sending in missiles on a roundabout route to the American mainland, disguising at all costs the true direction and launch point of the RADUGAs. Shakira's point was simple. It has worked well for us so far, no one has come after us, and no one knows we're here. We should continue with a successful policy.

  General Rashood held no such illusions. And he told his wife so in the gentlest possible terms.

  "Shakira," he said, "the Americans will have been momemtarily baffled by our opening attack in Prince William Sound. But someone will have seen something, and the Pentagon will by now know the oil terminus was hit by an incoming cruise missile. They will also have known we were very close indeed to the spot where the oil pipeline was breached on the Overfall Shoal.

  "When we hit the refinery in Grays Harbor—if indeed we did hit the refinery—they will know of our existence. The big military brains will have worked out the missiles were most certainly fired from a submarine because there was nowhere else they could have come from.

  "I would be surprised if they had not found out this Barracuda was missing from the Russian Naval Base. They will know that someone dragged the fishing net off that Japanese trawler and it must have been the Barracuda. . ."

  "Yes, but what about the Chinese diversionary plan to help us?" she asked.

  "Forget it. Because nothing will happen until tomorrow, and that's not important, anyway. What is important is that the Americans will know for sure and certain that the total destruction of the refinery at Grays Harbor was the work of a terrorist firing missiles from a nuclear boat. . ."

  "But how will. . ." she interrupted.

  "Trust me, my darling," he said. "We are playing a game of cat and mouse with some of the biggest brains in the world, particularly the U.S. President's National Security Adviser. Believe me, they know what's happening. And it won't make one lick of difference whether the missiles come howling in to Lompoc from out of the San Rafael Mountains or straight down the freeway from Santa Maria. It doesn't matter what we do, they'll know."

  "But surely they'd be better coming in from the east, the unexpected route . . . like the others?"

  "Negative. Everywhere's unexpected. Our only advantage, and it's a big one, is that they have no idea within, say, five hundred miles where we are. My orders will be to fire a salvo of four RADUGAs' straight at the Lompoc power station, straight out of the ocean, direct at the furnace and the turbines, from about two hundred miles out, a twenty-minute missile run, then hightail it south before the missiles even reach their target."

  "You mean fast?"

  "Oh no, never fast. Just quietly offshore, in a million square miles of ocean, one thousand feet below the surface, chugging our way to safety. When the first of those missiles hits, every major military brain in the Pentagon is going to know what we've done. I just hope to spread enough confusion to allow us a clean getaway."

  "You mean my missile deception program is obsolete as of now?"

  "Absolutely. This is our last throw, Shakira. And it's a punch that will come in straight and hard, at two of the most sensitive areas any great power has. Its competence and its pride. And the United States has a ton of both."

  "So have I. And I sense you have just fired me. Would you like me to leave?"

  "No. But I might ask you to take off your uniform," chuckled Ravi. "Once we find somewhere private."

  Shakira punched her Commanding Officer playfully on the arm. "That's my punch," she said, laughing. "Straight and hard. Did I ever mention how inappropriate you are?"

  "I believe so. But right now I'd like you to be my wife rather than my missile planner. Hop below and organize a couple of cups of tea and some toast, would you? I've been here since two o'clock this morning."

  "My last humiliation. From Lieutenant Commander to steward. Right here in the middle of the Pacific. Demotion for the great mind that suggested Lompoc in the first place."

  General Rashood smiled and watched his wife turn out of the control room. "Just another couple of days," he said. "And we're on our way home."

  The Barracuda continued slowly westward into deep, silent waters, way off the coast of California, her great turbines moving her 8,000-ton weight effortlessly, under the deft guidance of Captain Ben Badr.

  Meanwhile, California went about its business. Aside from the endless tensions in the Governor's Mansion, and the near panic gripping the electric industry, life continued as normal.

  The only other pressure spot was around the junction of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue in northwest Los Angeles, where streets were being closed and blocked off in preparation for the movie world's annual extravaganza on Sunday evening—the 80th Academy Awards ceremony, with its modest little worldwide audience of about a billion people. Shakira Rashood would have given almost anything to be there, dressed to kill, on the arm of her handsome, iron man husband. Though, in a rather different sense, she would be. So would her iron man husband.

  For weeks now, they had been preparing the spectacular $100 million Kodak Theatre, the world's largest television studio, smack-dab in the middle of one of the grandest new shopping malls on earth.

  Right here in Hollywood, in the permanent twenty-first-century home of the Oscars, there were more electricians per square mile than would-be actors. The bustling Hollywood Boulevard

  was actually closed down for five days. On the night, they would block off Highland Avenue, Orange

  Drive, Franklin Avenue

  , and a dozen other streets.

  The fabulous shopping complex of the five-level Hollywood and Highland Mall contains seventy upmarket retailers, restaurants, nightclubs, and the new 640-room Renaissance Hollywood Hotel. On this Thursday afternoon, anything open was seething with sightseers, flocking into the custom-built H&H train stop, directly off a fifteen-minute ride on Metro Rail's Red Line from Union Station in downtown Los Angeles.

  The actual Kodak Theatre, resplendent at the top of forty wide, marble steps, is situated to the east of the six-screen, ornate Grauman's Chinese Theatre. The Kodak stands at the head of Award Walk with its elegant plaques, mounted on pillars, commemorating eighty years of acting brilliance, an exclusive little garrison for the living and dead immortals of the screen.

  Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda, Burt Lancaster, Sidney Poitier, Gene Hackman, John Wayne, Paul Newman, Al Pa-cino, Jack Nicholson and Tom Hanks; Susan Hayward, Kate Hepburn, Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep, and the rest. Their momentous achievements will once more pervade the complex on Sunday night, when this year's nominated make the 500-foot Sunday-night strut along a red carpet, five boulevard traffic lanes wide, to the electronic wonderland of the Kodak Theatre.

  There the 3,300 guests will assemble beneath the massive silver-leafed tiara of a ceiling, based on Michelangelo's Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome. More than one hundred television cameras, inside and out, earthbound and raised, on gantries and bridges, tucked into alcoves, would be zooming in on the main stage and the audience, striving for the best pictures.

  All through the theater, concealed cableways are hidden in the actual support beams and balcony fronts, ready to cope with the demands of television lighting and sound equipment on the big night. The theater's own sound system uses as much electric power as a space shuttle launch. There is an entire catwalk for rigging and lights; even the orchestra pit is an electronic elevator.<
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  There is every kind of lighting, designed to flood, flash, or pinpoint. These searing theater lights can irradiate in white, red, purple, blue, or any other hue. The Kodak will illuminate the hopes and dreams of every actor, director, producer, costar, and writer in the audience. When they hit the "on" switch for this lot, the Lompoc power station shudders.

  7 p.m., Friday, March 14, 2008

  South China Sea, East of Hainan

  Barracuda II, under the command of Captain Ali Akbar Mohtaj, was almost at the end of her long, around-the-world journey. The brand-new Russian-built submarine, which had left Araguba on January 31, had not been seen or heard since the American SOSUS operators in Pembrokeshire, South Wales, picked her up south of the Rockall Trench off the Irish coast on the evening of February 7.

  Since then she had traveled underwater, fast down the Atlantic coast of Africa, slower across the Indian Ocean, the long way around Indonesia and the islands, and then north up the Pacific, off the east coast of the Philippines.

  Now she had made passage through the Luzon Strait, which separates the northern headland of the islands from Taiwan. She was dawdling, waiting for the correct timing, early tomorrow morning, Saturday. Only then would she come to the surface at first light, right on longitude 111°, cut her speed, and move slowly across the sunlit, surface of the South China Sea. She would head straight to the Zhanjiang Headquarters of China's Southern Fleet, directly beneath the pass of the twice-daily Big Bird, America's silently penetrating photographic satellite, 22,000 miles above.

  She had been at sea for six weeks, all of it dived. No one had seen the sun rise or set. Captain Mohtaj's orders were unbending, to stay out of sight, out of contact all the way. And he had carried them out to the letter, except for that one carelessly placed toolbox off the coast of Ireland.

  Even then the American SOSUS operators had no time to make a positive identification. Like his coconspirator Captain Ben Badr, the Commanding Officer of Barracuda II had made no contact with the outside world. Everyone was in the dark. And neither of them knew the extent or failure of the Iranian mission to the coastlines of Alaska and the mainland United States.

  At six o'clock on Saturday morning, Barracuda II came up through the shining blue waters of the South China Sea, and burst onto the surface, blowing ballast. Ali Akbar Mohtaj was fifty miles from Zhanjiang, north of the subtropical beaches of Hainan, hoping fervently to have his photograph taken.

  9:00 a.m., Saturday, March 15, 2008

  National Security Agency

  Fort Meade, Maryland

  Admiral Morris was awaiting the arrival of the Big Man, and he had already vacated his chair and desk in anticipation of the event. Dead on time the door swished open in a near cyclone of air current as Arnold Morgan made his entrance and strode across the office floor. The flag of the United States rippled in his slipstream.

  "GEORGE, THESE BASTARDS ARE UP TO SOMETHING!"

  "Sir?" said Admiral Morris.

  "DON'T SIR ME, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. I'VE GOT ENOUGH FUCKING TROUBLE WITHOUT MY OLDEST FRIEND GOING FUCKING OBSEQUIOUS ON ME!"

  In Admiral Morris's view, this was going to be a somewhat unpredictable meeting. "You got it, Arnie. I'm ready. . . What's new?"

  "New? New? Nothing's new. The precise same crew of homicidal maniacs is still waiting off the shores of California trying to blow the fucking country up. Nothing's new. It's just the same old routine bullshit. Another death blow to Uncle Sam coming up, another chance the whole fucking place will be in the pitch dark before we're much older."

  "You want some coffee?"

  "Damn right I want some coffee. I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to continue while you sit there not giving a shit, one way or another, whether I die of thirst."

  Enough. Both men chuckled. George Morris ordered the coffee, and Arnold moved into serious business. "George, I heard back from the CIA's man in Murmansk. That second Barracuda, Hull K-240, the one the Russians never put to sea, has gone. So far as we can tell it has not left the yards at Araguba for years, but one of our top Naval observers in that part of the world says it's no longer there. But he was wary of the answers his contact was giving. Said he had a sense there was a lot more to it. But nothing he was going to be told."

  "Do we have evidence they did complete the ship? Our last report said it was in no state to become operational, may even have been used to provide spares for their other Barracuda."

  "In my experience, George, the only way submarines ever go anywhere is under their own steam. If the fucker was still in pieces, it would still be in Araguba, right? Well, our man Nikolai says it's gone. And since even the Russians don't transport 8,000-ton nuclear submarines on trucks, my guess is the bastard's floating.

  "And if it's floating, and not in the harbor, it's steaming somewhere. And since we can't locate it, and neither, it seems, can anyone else, it's being very secretive. And I want to know where it is, mainly because I'm afraid it might be bombarding U.S. oil refineries."

  "What was the latest from Rankov?"

  "He promised he'd find out for me if it was still in Araguba. But he didn't get back."

  "You think that proves it's out there?"

  "Well, it proves what I already know, that Rankov is a lying, devious, Russian prick. But I think it's almost decisive. Barracuda II, wherever it may be, is up to something."

  Just then, two things happened. The waiter arrived with coffee, and Admiral Morris answered his internal line to hear Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe's voice asking to see him right away.

  He replaced the receiver and said, "Ramshawe's on his way, says he has two things—one of them hot."

  When Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe arrived, he said, "Hello, sir . . . oh, g'day, Admiral. . . didn't know you were here, but I'm glad you are. I've got a very interesting satellite picture right here."

  He laid out on the desk of Admiral Morris a blowup print of a shot taken that morning outside the Chinese Naval Base in Zhanjiang. There, large as life, on the surface, was the Barracuda, thirty-five days and 3,500 miles out of Petropavlovsk. In the South China Sea, exactly where the Russians had said it was going.

  "Have the Navy guys confirmed this is definitely a Barracuda Class Sierra? A genuine Type 945V asked Admiral Morgan.

  "Yes, sir. No doubts. One hundred percent. That's the Barracuda."

  "Well, we think it fired a salvo of missiles at Grays Harbor in the early morning of Friday, March seventh," said Arnold. "That's eight days ago, and the Pacific Ocean is damn nearly seven thousand miles across from our northwest coast to south China. So he must have made damn nearly forty knots all the way, which he can't. And he must have set off about seventy-three SOSUS alarms at that speed, which he didn't.

  "That ship outside Zhanjiang, gentlemen, did not do the deed. That much is obvious. Which leaves our calculations in disarray."

  "Bloody oath, it does, Admiral," said Jimmy. "Where do we go from here?"

  "Well, Lieutenant, as you know, the Russians did build a second Barracuda, which spent all of its life in dry dock in Araguba. And I came here this morning to inform Admiral Morris that it had gone . . ."

  "Gone, sir!"

  "Gone. Vamoosed. Not there."

  "Christ. That puts a different light on it, wouldn't you say? I mean, that ship outside Zhenjiang might be the second one, right? And the first one, the Barracuda that hooked the sushi net, might still be where we think it is. Off California."

  "That, Jimmy, is what is causing me deep concern. And the more I think of it, the less I like it. You know why?"

  "Sir?"

  "Because the Chinese obviously do not wish us to know they have bought TWO Barracudas at $300 million each, or whatever. And in those circumstances they should have crept into Zhanjiang much more carefully, surfacing at the very last moment, and then crept into the jetties during the dark hours of the night, when they know we have no satellite pass."

  Jimmy Ramshawe was silent. He just sat there staring into space. He actually s
at there for almost a minute without replying.

  "Jimmy?" said Admiral Morris, concerned his Aussie assistant had gone into shock, or some kind of a trance.

  But Jimmy ignored him, just shook his head, and then exclaimed, "H-O-L-E-E SHIT!"

  Admiral Morgan looked quizzical.

  Then James Ramshawe punched the air. "You just said $300 million apiece, sir? The submarines China has plainly bought. AND THAT'S IT, SIR. THAT'S BLOODY IT! OLD RAZORMOUTH 600 CONFIRMED . . . that's the bloody message we picked up off the Chinese satellite. It was telling someone Russia had accepted $600 million for TWO Barracudas. If you don't mind my saying so, sir, you're a bloody genius."

  Arnold Morgan, genuinely smiling for the first time in more than a week, replied, "And if you don't mind my saying so, Lieutenant, you're not so fucking dusty yourself."

  "And another thing, sir. What about that SOSUS detection last month, off the coast of Ireland—they thought it could have been a Russian nuke creeping down the Atlantic. Does that make sense?"