Barracuda 945 (2003)

by Patrick Robinson

  "We should," he told an expectant nation, "be on top of the situation inside another two weeks. This will be a huge strain on our tanker facilities, but you have my word we're gonna be seeing the price of oil per barrel dropping firmly within a very few days.

  "I have requested American tankers from all over the globe to bring crude oil into the Texas facilities on the Gulf of Mexico. No matter the cost, no matter the effect on profits, now is the time for this nation to rally round, and get the fuel oil to the places where we need it."

  Again he took the greatest care to insure no mention was made of the submarine the Pentagon believed had opened fire on the United States.

  Meanwhile, deep in the lower-level Situation Room in the West Wing, Admiral Morgan continued to preside over meeting after meeting with Security and Service Chiefs, probing every last inch of the incoming data that might throw some light on the submarine.

  Right now the Navy had two more Los Angeles Class submarines, the Boise and the Montpelier, crossing the Caribbean toward the Panama Canal. Once clear of the pilots on the Pacific side, they would head north toward San Diego, at first 200 miles off the coast of Central America, and then as part of the Navy's search line making sweep after sweep along the Mexico/California coast.

  But nothing was shaking loose in this baffling jigsaw puzzle, and morale was suffering everywhere, especially in the Pentagon. All day and most of the night, the surveillance officers checked the systems, checked to see whether the Barracuda had left Zhanjiang, checked on every submarine movement in the world, checked satellite pictures from Bandar Abbas to Beijing, and pored over the prints from the eastern reaches of the Pacific.

  There was nothing until the morning of April 11, when the Boise, on the surface now and clear of Panama's Chinese pilots, dived and headed for the deeper waters of the Pacific beyond the confines of the Gulf of Panama. At 11:43 her Sonar Room picked up a Russian nuclear boat heading slowly north at twelve knots, periscope depth, eight miles south of the main channel, in the Pacific Extension of the merchant ship Anchorage.

  The Boise's CO had received no change to his standard COMSUBPAC rules of engagement—fire only in self-defense. And he knew the consequences of torpedoing a Russian nuclear submarine in Panamanian territorial waters: dire, especially if it turned out to be the wrong one. And, anyway, it was headed direct to the Canal where everyone would see it.

  In accordance with his orders, he immediately put a signal on the satellite, which relayed it to Pacific Fleet Headquarters, Pearl Harbor, and to the Base at San Diego simultaneously. From there it was beamed into the Ops Room of the 9,000-ton guided-missile destroyer USS Roosevelt, Arleigh Burke Class, one of the most lethal fighting ships in the world. Heavily gunned, bristling with missiles and torpedoes, she carried on her stern two Lamps-Ill combat helicopters, both equipped with Penguin and Hellfire missiles.

  The Roosevelt was headed north, having taken a swing along the northern coast of Colombia, to keep the local drug barons on their mettle. She was now some three hours from the Anchorage, clipping along at thirty knots. Her satellite orders from CINCPAC were clear: Locate Russian nuclear boat Sierra I Barracuda Class Type 945, detected by the submarine USS Boise . . . believed to be headed into the Panama Canal. . . track through Canal to Atlantic Anchorage . . . rendezvous with two escorts . . . both Los Angeles Class ships, the San Juan and the Key West patrolling six miles northwest of Cristobal Harbor West Breakwater. . .

  The Roosevelt adjusted course to nor'nor'west and headed for the Gulf of Panama. Her commanding officer, Capt. Butch Howarth, ordered flank speed. Meanwhile, Capt. Ben Badr kept moving north toward his rendezvous with the Chinese fast patrol boat, the seventy-eight-foot twin-gunned Gong Bian 4405 (Chinese Border Security Force—Maritime Command). The ships were, loosely, on a collision course.

  By one o'clock, the Barracuda was on the surface, with the Roosevelt still making all speed sixty miles to the southeast. Up ahead, silhouetted against the bright blue water, Ben Badr could see the buoy that marked the start of the dead-straight, six-mile dredged channel up to Balboa Harbor, and the gateway to the canal. The Chinese gateway.

  There was often a small holding area 1,000 yards northeast of the buoy where ships, mostly merchantmen and tankers, lined up to make the journey through to the Atlantic. Today, there appeared to be no traffic, though Captain Badr could see three stationary tankers a mile away on the edge of the Anchorage.

  The Gong Bian was waiting, and her captain pulled her alongside the Barracuda, offered a greeting and a welcome, then instructed the submarine to track the Chinese patrol slowly down the channel, red buoys to the right, and then to follow them into the harbor where the Chinese pilot would come on board to see her safely through the narrow waterway.

  Captain Badr, joined now by General Rashood and Lieutenant Commander Shakira, issued commands to his helmsman and navigator from the bridge. And together, the three most wanted terrorists in the world stood and breathed their first fresh air, in the first warm sunlight, any of them had seen for sixty-two days, since they left the freezing Russian Naval Base of Petropavlovsk. The Barracuda had almost 7,000 miles under its keel since then, and its commanders had not yet made a mistake.

  Behind a light bow wave, and before a mild headwind, the jet black 8,000-ton outlaw of the eastern Pacific moved gently northwest, steering three-two-two, in the wake of the Gong Bian, leaving the treacherous San Jose rock to starboard. Four hundred yards further, at the end of a two-mile-long causeway from Balboa, they passed the cluster of islands—Flamenco, Perico, Paos, and Culebra—where the Panama Canal Railway, all the way through the jungle from the Atlantic coast, finally ends.

  The Americans constructed that as well, back in the mid-nineteenth century. The causeway itself was also American built, in 1912, when the United States established the fabled Fort Grant complex on all four islands. It was the most powerful military defensive fortress in the world, guarding the Pacific entrance to the Canal, and once housing two massive fourteen-inch guns with a thirty-mile range, which could be swiftly transported through the jungle on their own railroad cars, in case of trouble at the Atlantic end.

  All this crumbled history, has today come under the control of the Chinese, with the historic old railroad joining China's two great Panamanian dockyards at either end of the Canal. All because of a President who never much cared for America's achievements, especially the military ones, or indeed for what America ought to stand for, in an often inferior world.

  Two miles beyond the island railhead, the imposing span of the Thatcher Ferry Bridge sweeps the Inter-American Highway straight over the Canal from Panama City and on to Mexico. The Barracuda chugged slowly beneath the bridge and on to the Balboa pilot station, where Ravi and Ben would hand over command of the submarine to the elite corps of Chinese canal navigators.

  The Panama Canal is the only place in the world where military Commanders are required to hand over navigational control of warships to a foreign operator.

  The Chinese pilot came on board and took over, issuing instructions in English to the Islamic terrorists. Three and a half miles later, they arrived at the towering Miraflores Locks, the first of the three on the Pacific side.

  The waterway divides here, so the 1,000-foot-long lock chambers can operate independently to both incoming and outgoing traffic, quite often with one lock lowering and the other raising 80,000-ton ships only yards apart, with 50 million gallons of water emptying and flooding every time.

  The Miraflores Locks comprises two sets of chambers that raise or lower ships in two steps fifty-four feet to or from sea level. And as the Barracuda approached the first 800-ton lock gates, locomotives were attached to haul the submarine through. These engineering stalwarts represent another coup for the Orient. They cost $2 million each and are all made by Mitsubishi, and they help make millions and millions of dollars each year.

  It took Captain Badr's ship a half hour to make this first ascent up to the short mile-and-a-half-long Miraflore
s Lake, which runs to the final, Pacific-side lock, the Pedro Miguel. And as the submarine eased its way through the narrow, flat waters, the Roosevelt came thundering into the Merchant Ship Anchorage, almost ten miles in arrears and fifty-four feet lower.

  Captain Howarth was ordered to halt out alongside the three tankers that Ravi and Ben had seen and to wait in line for entry to the Canal. The U.S. Commanding Officer hit the radio immediately, and the Chinese Control Room in Balboa pretended not to understand.

  Captain Howarth, like all U.S. Commanding Officers working anywhere near the Canal, had the wording of the Treaty on the Ops Room computer. "EXPEDITIOUS PASSAGE!" he snapped. "We demand priority, under the terms of the 1977 Treaty, signed by the President of Panama and the President of the United States of America."

  The Chinese controller understood neither "expeditious," prompt, nor buzzing. "Control now run by us," he said. "Not President of United States. Panama give us rights. And right now canal is closed. For very big repair. May take all day, all night. Sorry. You wait now."

  "CLOSED!" yelled Captain Howarth. "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN, CLOSED!"

  "Canal closed," said the Chinese voice. "That what I mean. Closed. No entry for you. Lock gates shut."

  "But you let a Russian submarine through there in the last hour," said Captain Howarth, an edge to his voice.

  "Canal not closed then. Canal closed now. Different."

  "Now listen to me," said the American CO. "If I have to, I'll have the President of the United States call the President of Panama. But first I shall need you to tell me your name, rank, and number, since you appear unaware you may be causing an international incident right here."

  "No need for you to know name," said the Chinese voice blandly. "I'm a civilian. No rank or number. Presidents of countries not run this canal. East China and Pacific Shipping run canal. And we say who goes through and who stays out. Right now canal closed. You stay out till we say you come in."

  Captain Howarth knew he was beaten. It requires the opening of six different sets of lock gates to make one complete transit of the canal. Three sets up. Three down. If these Chinese bastards elected to slam them shut and refuse to open them, there was not a whole lot anyone could do about it. At least not quickly, or expeditiously. He slammed down the telephone and dictated a satellite signal for immediate transmission to the San Diego Base.

  "Chinese gatekeepers closed Panama Canal at approximately 1435 (local) “for repairs." Barracuda

  entered 1345. Transit should take eight hours minimum. Stand by Atlantic exit 112230APR08. Roosevelt will

  stand guard Pacific End, Merchant Ship Anchorage, in case of Barracuda course change. Await further

  orders. Howarth."

  Inside the Canal, up on the two-thirds height level, leading to the Pedro Miguel Lock, Ravi and Ben stood with the pilots on the bridge, watching the shallow waters of the lake slip by on either side of the channel. Ahead they could see the great portals of the lock, and the huge gates that guard the entrance to the chamber, the one in which the water level would shortly rise and lift the Barracuda the final thirty-one feet to the uppermost reaches of the Canal.

  As they made their approach, the gates came slowly open.

  The pilots paused for the chains of the locomotives to be passed behind the sail, and then, engines cut, they were pulled into the chamber, for the ten-minute elevator ride to the heights. Captain Badr ordered the Barracuda's nuclear reactor shut down, the rods were dropped in, and for the first time since the Kamchatka Peninsula, the heat from the reactor began to die.

  Reaching the top, the gates for'ard of the submarine's bow opened, and the great nuclear ship was now under tow. A waiting Chinese Navy tug was attached and pulled her out into the sunlit waterway of the Cukaracha Reach, which forms the Pacific end of the Gaillard Cut.

  Brilliant engineering and rawboned United States muscle had hacked a nine-and-a-half-mile channel clean through here, through the Continental dividing range, the terrible mountainous spine of the isthmus, to send the waterway down to the Pacific.

  The banks rise up steeply through here, and the channel makes a series of left-right zigzags, a testament to the near impossibility of cleaving a seaway through the jungle foothills of the mountains, the landslides, the rockfalls, the murderous heat, rain-forest fevers, and disease. Thousands and thousands of Frenchmen died along here. And it was no picnic for the Americans, who were tougher and a lot better at it.

  The sight of the Chinese pilot on the bridge of the Barracuda, somehow in command of this thoroughly American enterprise, created one of the deepest enigmas in modern geopolitics. There was also an element of the surreal in the fact that former British SAS Major Ray Kerman was right now trying to make an Iranian terrorist's getaway in a Russian submarine with Chinese help.

  But that's what was happening. While Captain Howarth fumed out in the Merchant Ship Anchorage, the Pentagon rumbled with fury upon receipt of his satellite signal, and Vice Admiral Morgan was fit to be tied, as he paced his office in the West Wing.

  "KATHY!" he bawled. "Get the Chinese Ambassador in here inside a half hour. And have an ambulance parked in the Rose Garden in case I murder the little fucker."

  Kathy rolled her eyes heavenward, but she did not consider her boss was overreacting. Rarely had she felt such tension in the White House as during the last half hour, since the news came in that China had closed the Panama Canal.

  Harcourt Travis, the Secretary of State, was on the line to the Panamanian President, who was secretly terrified of the United States—ever since December 20, 1989, when 26,000 U.S. troops landed in Panama with guns blazing, tanks rolling, and aircraft strafing in Operation Just Cause. Their mission was to capture the corrupt drug czar and President, Gen. Manuel Noriega, who had somewhat rashly declared war on the United States five days previously.

  The President of Panama was quite prepared to accept Chinese cash and more or less do their bidding over matters concerning the Canal so long as his country received a fair rake-off from the enormous profits. But he did not much envy General Noriega's present status in a Florida jail, and the thought of an angry United States was apt to strip him of his manhood.

  He was occasionally nervous about the ruthless way the Chinese conducted their business. But he was coldbloodedly scared of the United States, especially when they had a Republican President surrounded by tough men who could not give a damn for left-wing rhetoric, Third World demands, and the empty rantings of various national leaders who threatened to "fight the United States to the death" but could not possibly match Washington's military might. At last count, the number of world nations that could perhaps raise even five percent of Washington's military might added up to one large, fat zero.

  The Panamanian President now had a smooth, teak-tough ex-Harvard law professor on the wire telling him it would be a pity if the President of the United States were to get very cross with Panama, because that might prove unproductive to Panama.

  The Panamanian was not fluent in the English language, but the icy tone of Harcourt Travis left him in no doubt the Chinese were playing with fire, but the first ass that was going to get kicked was his.

  "But, Mr. Travis," he protested. "You know full well we handed over control of the Canal to East China and Pacific Shipping, and that we gave them a very free hand to run it efficiently, and as they wished. There is little I can do while that contract is in existence."

  Harcourt Travis sighed and said softly, "The fact that your predecessor made the unhappy mistake of double-crossing a somewhat witless former President of my country with an illegal agreement with Red China is unlikely to cut much ice with the White House Administration of today. Might I simplify this for you: Mr. President, we want that canal open within two hours, or else."

  "Or else what?" asked the President haplessly. But the line was already dead. And in the mind of the elected leader of the Panamanian nation, there was but one thought, and it involved 26,000 troops landing and opening fire, Ame
rican tanks rolling through the streets of Panama City, fighter-bombers screaming overhead, helicopter gunships clattering above the street.

  He'd seen it before, run for his own life before the 1989 U.S. onslaught. "Merde," breathed the Panamanian leader, in the unmistakable Spanish of south Central America.

  He summoned his Ministers and then put in a call to the Chinese Ambassador on his direct Embassy line in the ritzy Punta Paitilla area of the city.

  The connection took less than three minutes, and the Ambassador was as helpful as the President knew he would be. I understand there is some difficulty at the Miraflores Lock. . . Yes, yes, I realize Americans may be displeased. . . 1 am afraid there is nothing I can do. . . Canal operates entirely independently of Chinese Government. . . Their contract is with you, not China. . . Our policy is never to intervene in matters of private companies. . .I am simply not authorized to utilize my country's Embassy in that way . . . I'm sorry, Mr. President, but I can't help.

  By now the Panamanian leader was becoming personally rattled. He knew, like everyone else in Panama, that the Chinese Government had plainly decided to close the Canal for big reasons and would continue to stonewall his own government until they were good and ready to open it up.