Nimitz Class

by Patrick Robinson

  “The Brits, however, have trained foreign nationals. And their command qualification course is the best in the world. And they use diesels. I did hear they trained a couple of Saudi Arabian officers a coupla years ago when they were considering selling submarines to old King Fahd. I am not certain about this, but I think they also trained a few Israelis and Indians for the same reason. We should talk to the Brits, in my opinion.”

  “I suppose you are right, Bill. I’ll admit I have been trying to avoid the subject. Because once we take the massive step of confiding in another government that we are possibly searching for the greatest terrorist in history, then we lay ourselves open to press leaks and God knows what else. You can imagine, damaging speculation by ‘specialist’ journalists, who always know just sufficient to be downright dangerous, but brutally unhelpful.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Nonetheless, I am afraid we are going to have to step up to the problem, just as you have done. By the way, why did you select Faslane in Scotland as being the site of the dirty deed?”

  “Ah, now I was just coming to that. Shall we go next door and get into some supper and another drink? Then I’ll tell you my theory.”

  “Good call, Bill. Want another Scotch or a glass of wine?”

  “Wine, I expect, if it’s a selection from your cellar.”

  The two men walked across the big downstairs hall of the great house, where the guard was still on duty and snapped, “Sir!” as the admiral and the lieutenant commander walked by, both in uniform. “Evening, Johnny,” replied the CNO. Inside the red-walled book-lined study—known as the Scarlet Nightclub to friends of the Dunsmores—Bill Baldridge picked up the empty, decanted wine bottle, and muttered, “Jesus! Haut-Brion ’61. The favorite wine of your fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson. Pretty special.”

  Admiral Dunsmore poured them each a generous glass, declined to remind the younger officer that it was he who had first told him about Jefferson’s love of Haut-Brion, and just said, sadly, “I don’t think we should drink to Jack’s memory in anything much less, do you?”

  “Nossir. Nothing less.”

  And so, they touched their glasses lightly, and the admiral said solemnly, “To the memory of a great Naval officer, Captain Jack Baldridge.” And for both of them the room was filled with a thousand memories, and they drank the forty-one-year-old, deep purple wine from the Graves district of Bordeaux. “And,” said Lieutenant Commander Bill Baldridge, “I am going to run to ground the guy who presumed to take away the life of my big brother.”

  Scott Dunsmore was about to mention, “Faslane?” when the private telephone line next to his armchair rang. Bill could hear only snatches of the conversation and he could see the CNO scribbling notes on a pad. “Hi, Arnold, everything shipshape?

  “They what?…Where?…Was he dead?…Well, yeah I guess he would have been. Did you talk to anyone yet?…Oh yeah, four in the morning…What correlates…? Maybe the guy was on vacation?…Yeah…yeah…Damned interesting…Call me first thing, willya…Yup…Great…Bye, Arnold.

  “Billy boy. The plot thickens.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “That was Admiral Morgan, still in his office. He just received a call from one of the monitoring guys at the intelligence office in Suitland, who has heard from one of our guys in Athens. There’s a small story running in the Greek papers. The body of a Russian seaman has washed up on the southern shore of a small island called Kithira, which sits around sixty miles northwest of the eastern end of Crete.

  “According to Arnold, the papers are saying the body had been in the water for a couple of months—they actually thought the man had been dead for around ten weeks. God knows how they work these things out. Anyway, the guy still had his dog tags on. The Naval attaché in the Russian embassy in Athens has apparently confirmed that he was a submariner.

  “They didn’t really have much choice—the cop on Kithira had made a notation of the rank and number, and photographed the guy’s metal submarine insignia, which was still attached to his jersey.

  “Arnold says it was pretty amazing anyone found him. The body was apparently in a really lonely spot jammed between a couple of rocks—some fisherman found him while they were looking for a trawl net which had got away and fouled the same rocks.”

  “I’m not absolutely certain how this ties in with us,” said Bill. “The Russians have submarines all over the place, don’t they? It’s not all that unusual for a man to be washed overboard in that particular Navy, is it?”

  “Not really. But Arnold’s guys in Gibraltar believe they heard a mystery diesel-electric boat in the Strait of Gibraltar in the small hours of May 5. They have an accurate record of the contact. Only transient. But in their opinion a solid detection of a non-nuclear submarine. Arnold’s just dug it all up on his computer. At the time he was sufficiently mystified to contact Moscow.

  “But the thing that’s getting to him now is this: Gibraltar is a little less than sixteen hundred miles from Kithira. Ten weeks ago, when the pathologist says the Russian sailor drowned, was somewhere between the twenty-sixth and twenty-eighth of April. According to Arnold, if that Greek physician is more or less accurate, and that submarine was making eight knots, or two hundred miles a day, the guy who fell off the boat, fell off the same boat our surveillance guys heard eight days later in the strait. He’s checking it all out, and talking to Moscow first thing.”

  “Holy shit!” said Bill Baldridge.

  “Yes. Well stated,” replied the admiral, pouring another couple of glasses of Bordeaux. “Meanwhile we can’t elaborate much more until we hear from Arnold again in the A.M. Now, tell me about Faslane.”

  “Right. Now, I expect you already know exactly where it is—on a lonely Scottish loch, west of Glasgow, with access to the Clyde Estuary, and then, beyond the Western Isles, to the Atlantic.

  “Faslane is just a short ride across the water from Holy Loch where we ran a Polaris Squadron for thirty years. This area is serious submarine country, with the most exacting standards of excellence in the world—and that includes all of our own bases here in the U.S. Of course both the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy were as thick as thieves up there. There’s a lotta respect.

  “Faslane is also home to the toughest training on earth for officers who wish to become underwater commanders. It is known formally as the Submarine Commanding Officers Course, usually shortened to ‘The Periscope Course.’ Actually, the Brits always call it ‘The Perisher.’ And they jog the word around a bit. They say, ‘Failed his Perisher’ or ‘He did a bloody good Perisher.’ The guy in charge is called the Teacher, and he would refer to ‘One of my best Perishers.’”

  Baldridge took a long and appreciative swig of his Haut-Brion. He savored the deep vintage wine, took a long breath, and said, “Pops, the man we want was a Perisher, and an exceptional one, in that he was both foreign and brilliant.

  “I am nearly 100-percent certain about that. And I want you to fix it for me to go over there and find out who he was. Get me some clearance, and I’ll leave in a few days.”

  “Given the scale of the damage inflicted upon us, I’m tempted to suggest the Brits think of a new name for their Periscope Course,” replied the CNO.

  “No need, the whole program was ended in the Tory government’s defense cuts of 1994. A lot of people think it will never be adequately replaced. It had a 20-percent failure rate. Gave some guys nervous breakdowns it was so tough and dangerous. There is no place else in the world our Arab commander could have learned his trade the way the Royal Navy taught it in Faslane.”

  The admiral pondered for a few moments. Then he said briskly, “Done. I’ll have someone call the British submarine chief in London and get you some cooperation. I’m just trying to avoid going too high on this. You know what happens, the Brits’ bureaucracy is worse than ours. I call the First Sea Lord, he touches base with the Minister of Defense, he talks to the goddamned Prime Minister, he clears it with the monarch, who presumably checks wit
h the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he with God, whom they all assume to be British.

  “Before you know it, the whole place will be seething with chatter—everyone trying to find out what we are doing. Then someone will. Better to keep this relatively low level. I will tell them little, just enough for you to get in to the submarine boss. He’ll be Admiral Sir Someone or other. Then I want you to tell him the absolute minimum, if you can. The Brits are inclined to be very cynical, and you will be pressed for information. But in the end, their hearts are always in the right place. And they’re always on our side. They’ll help.”

  The two men talked on, rehashing the ground they had already covered. It must have been Iran, and whoever commanded the submarine had most likely been taught in Scotland.

  Shortly before midnight they had a glass of port, and Bill Baldridge made one final request. “Pops, do you think you could arrange me a ride to the airport in the morning, and let me leave my car here? I’m going out to Kansas, just to see Mom and Ray and the family. Then I’ll go straight to London. No sense leaving on Friday. I’ll go Sunday night, get a full week in with the Navy if I need it.”

  “No trouble, Billy. Let’s just see what Arnold Morgan has for us first thing in the morning, then you get on your way. You got enough stuff with you?”

  “Yup. Suitcase packed. I kinda expected to be gone awhile when I first came to Washington.”

  “Cash?”

  “Arnold’s wiring it to Kansas. I told his office I thought I might be on a transatlantic trip before I arrived here.”

  “Good. Travel on scheduled airlines as unobtrusively as possible. I will ask the Royal Navy to meet you at Heath row—just enough concern to let ’em know you’re my man, but not enough to arouse suspicions of top-level secrecy. Just play it nice and low-key, and tell ’em nothing unless you have to.”

  “Check. Arnold’s office will let your guys know my flight number. I’ll leave Sunday night, arrive Heath row early Monday morning.”

  The two men walked across the hall together. “We’ll meet at 0800 on the terrace,” said the admiral, and Bill Baldridge prepared to walk up the old familiar staircase to the big bright spare room on the third floor, the one where he always slept, the one in which he and Elizabeth had spent so many nights together. It seemed like a long time ago.

  Before he went, he turned once more to the admiral, and said formally, “Sir, for one final time. Are you, personally, absolutely certain in your own mind that none of the other somewhat hostile Middle East nations could have pulled this off?”

  “Certain. Syria and Libya had both decommissioned their Soviet submarines by the end of 1995 because of a chronic lack of spares and technical support. According to the Mossad, there was a total of thirteen Arab boats deactivated at around that time. Most of ’em lost their ‘safe to dive’ certificates. One of the Syrians sank on its moorings!

  “Right now Syria is trying to buy three Kilos, but you need hard cash these days. There’s no military credit in Moscow. The Libyan situation with submarines has always been a bit like a Chinese fire drill. They haven’t dived below the surface for eight years, according to Fort Meade—despite owning six boats. The fact is they are all tragically inefficient.”

  “Good night, Admiral,” said Bill. “There is no doubt really that it was Iran, is there?”

  “Just a little bit,” replied Scott Dunsmore. “But not enough for you to concern yourself with.”

  And so the lieutenant commander climbed the stairs wearily, and went to bed all alone in his lovely room overlooking the broad river. But he dreamed his worst dream that night, the one where the giant black submarine pursues him along the seabed, trying to pin him and engulf him in evil. Evil under the water. He awoke sweating and breathless. Those kinds of dreams are commonplace among the submarine fraternity, caused, according to Navy psychiatrists, by years of suppression of terror, trying to avoid imagining the worst fate that can befall a submariner: death below the surface in a submarine that will no longer obey commands—death by suffocation or drowning. The imagination finds it almost impossible to shake away the ever-present proximity of death, which is the lot of the submarine officer.

  101000JUL02. 18N, 59E.

  Course 224. Speed 7. Depth 150 meters.

  260 miles southwest of the datum; due east Suqrah Bay, Oman.

  “Ben, we suffer many small problem, but big leak on main shaft hull gland getting very bad. Engineer say pumps not holding—wants to stop, then surface, and repair packing. Water pouring in.”

  “You tell your engineer, Georgy, that he may think he has problems down here, but they would probably be ten times worse on the surface.”

  “Ben, pumps working flat-out. A foot of water in the bilge. Spray everywhere. Crew very worried. Some younger ones very scared.”

  “I don’t care how much water is coming in as long as it’s not sinking us. Right now I am trying to balance the risk. You just have to answer one question: Are the pumps getting rid of as much water as we are shipping?”

  “Working flat-out, Ben, just. But draining battery.”

  “Then we stay submerged, but come above the layer, slowly to periscope depth. That will reduce the leak rate by nine tenths. If we stay shallow, we can stay out of sight without killing the battery. I’d like four hundred miles between us and the datum. Because, if we surface, and they catch us, we are dead men. All of us.”

  “How long, Ben? I must tell them something.”

  “Look, Georgy, this problem is mathematical. One hour from the datum there is a search area, in which we could be lurking, of around one hundred and fifty square miles, roughly twelve miles by twelve, a small patch for a dozen ships all looking for one submarine. But after six hours, running at seven knots, it becomes fifty-five hundred square miles. When we have gone four hundred miles the square becomes impossible, and that’s when we know we’re going to live, understand?

  “Go to the surface and we may be finished. The American surveillance is good when they are relaxed. Today it may be superhuman. If they suspect anything. Tell the crew, Georgy. We stay at periscope depth, and we keep running at seven knots, until either we are sinking, or our battery’s dying on us.”

  “Okay, Ben, you win. Your superman Teacher again, hah?”

  “As you say, Georgy. But restrict yourself to Superbrain Teacher.”

  Two hours after the eastern sun had fought its way above the Maryland horizon, Bill Baldridge and Scott Dunsmore sipped orange juice and ate toast and preserves, the younger man silent, while the admiral apprised him of Admiral Morgan’s findings.

  “He’s been on to Moscow, who are not admitting the drowned sailor was a member of the crew of the Kilo they thought had sunk in the Black Sea in April. Morgan’s men reckon it would just have been possible for a bottle to have washed through the Bosporus, across the Sea of Marmara, and down to the Greek Islands—but not a body, which would have been eaten. Doesn’t tally.

  “The Russians say they told Admiral Morgan the submarine had sunk when he made his inquiry back in May because they honestly believed it had. There was some debris, but nothing significant, and they searched for a month. But they never found the hull. The body of their crewman ought to confirm what they must have suspected, that the Kilo broke out of the Black Sea with its crew and has not been seen since. However, for reasons only they know, Moscow is not ready to confirm what Morgan now believes is the obvious truth.”

  “Holy shit!” said Baldridge.

  “Furthermore, if it was making eight knots through the Med it could very easily have been the boat one of Arnold’s men heard in the Gibraltar surveillance post in the early morning of May 5. The dates fit accurately with the Greek pathologist’s assessment of the time of death.”

  “How come no one else ever heard the damn thing?”

  “I would guess they were being very stealthy and then made a mistake. Arnold says our man heard them for less than thirty seconds—single shaft, five blades, sudden sharp acceleration. Th
en silence. He was damn sure it was a submarine. That’s why he made the report. He even said it was probably non-nuclear. He thought it was a diesel. Admiral Morgan thinks he was dead right.”

  “Sounds pretty decisive to me,” said Baldridge.

  “Things usually do when they fit as we want them to fit,” replied the admiral, thoughtfully. “But there is yet another piece to this jigsaw.”

  “Which is?”

  “The satellite pictures are showing only two of Iran’s three Kilos in residence at Bandar Abbas. That’s been so since Friday, July 5.”

  “Well, if one of ’em left, how come we did not see it immediately, and then track it?”

  “Good question. The fact is no one did see it leave. No one has seen it at all.”

  “Do you think it could have just crept out without anyone knowing, and then blown up the carrier?”

  “Search me. The experts say not a chance. But it’s still missing.”

  “If you ask me, that makes the Iranians doubly suspicious. They could have just moved the submarine to throw us off the scent of the one they hired in the Black Sea—the real culprit.”

  “Possibly. But Admiral Morgan’s men believe it would have been impossible for them to have got the Kilo out through the Strait of Hormuz without us knowing. We have the KH-11 satellite camera trained on that stretch of water night and day. Every day. I think they just moved it or hid it to confuse us. Either way they are beginning right now to look very, very guilty.”

  “No doubt about that.”

  “Go see your mom, Billy. Then hit the gas pedal for Scotland. Let’s get busy.”

  They walked around to the front of the house, climbed into the rear of the Navy staff car, and headed north up the parkway to the Pentagon. Admiral Dunsmore jumped out in the garage and was met by a Marine guard, who escorted him into the private elevator and to General Paul’s office.