Nimitz Class

by Patrick Robinson

  The admiral looked pleased with his inescapable logic. He studied the map, mentally ruling out the seaports down the western coast—those near the mouth of the Danube in Rumania, and others down on the Bulgarian coast which sprawled to the Turkish border. “And I’d stay the hell out of there, too,” he added. “Countries too long under the Soviet fist. Too much suspicion, too many spooks.”

  He looked at the ocean off the northeast coast of Turkey, on the European side. “No good there, either. The real deep water’s too far out. You’d have to run out to meet the submarine, maybe sixty miles off shore. Too far. Too much risk of being stopped by a patrol boat. That’s Turkish water. They might find you, with all that cash, and probably a gun. They might even spot the Russian submarine, way off course, and on the surface. Very bad news.”

  He switched his survey to the other side of the Bosporus, to the east. And he trawled his magnifying glass along the shoreline, stopping suddenly at a seaport on a peninsula. Sinop. The admiral skimmed through his big suite of chart drawers. Pulling one out, he stabbed it with his dividers, took a reading on his steel ruler, and saw with some satisfaction that the peninsula jutted out into very deep water. It was, by miles, the closest point on the entire coast to a possible submarine waiting area. A gentle twenty-five-minute journey to deep water.

  He checked again, then he pulled out a guidebook which told him that Sinop was a shipbuilding and fishing port with fine beaches, a secluded harbor, and many inexpensive hotels. Sinop was accessible by bus, three-hundred-odd miles from Istanbul. It was the birthplace of Diogenes, the cynic philosopher. That settled it. Admiral Morgan was at home among cynics.

  “That’s what I’d do,” he announced solemnly. “I’d make my deal with the Russian captain, drive south down the coast to Georgia, and go by sea to Trabzon. From there I’d take the bus to Sinop. I’d park myself in one of those little hotels with a radio pack, and I’d wait for a signal from my Russian captain.

  “Then I’d slip down to the harbor, and get aboard the deserted thirty-foot yacht I had scoped out, and sail quietly beyond the harbor wall on a little journey about fourteen miles out, using my little GPS to put me at 35.3E, 42.1N. As an experienced submariner I’d get alongside the waiting sub, bang a hole in the yacht’s bilge, grab my suitcase, and board the Kilo real quick. Then I’d take effective command of the Russian submarine through her C.O. as agreed previously with him.”

  Admiral Morgan realized he might not be right, but he liked having a starting point. To his keen eye the little seaport of Sinop had stuck out “like the balls on a Texas longhorn.” That was what he liked, a strong start-point. For the moment, he would assume Sinop was where Commander Ben Adnam had holed up.

  Admiral Morgan would never know how close he was to the truth. And what concerned him, as he marched out of the building toward his car, was the destiny of the submarine after its secret pickup.

  Did it creep back west, running deep in a thousand fathoms, to the yawning northern entrance of the Bosporus? And did Commander Adnam then calmly order his Russian captain to steer left rudder, course two-one-zero, into pitch-black, unknown depths, through the great gap in the underwater cliffs, where no submarine had ever ventured?

  11

  0700 Monday, August 5.

  BILL BALDRIDGE WAS STILL REHEARSING THE UNPRECEDENTED request he was about to make of the Royal Navy as the British Airways Boeing 747 banked over London and turned due west for Heath row. “Oh, good morning, Admiral, I was wondering whether you’d lend me a brand-new Upholder-Class diesel-electric submarine which we will probably wreck in the middle of Istanbul Harbor?”

  No. Too harsh. Perhaps something a little more subtle. How about, “Good morning, Admiral, I wonder if you’d be decent enough to let us borrow one of your submarines for a few weeks. We’ll look after it. By the way, do you keep a salvage squad in Istanbul?”

  His hope that Scott Dunsmore had prepared the way for him before he arrived at Northwood to make what was, by any standards, an outrageous request of the Royal Navy showed that Lieutenant Commander Baldridge had much to learn about the intricacies of inter-Navy politics. The American CNO and Britain’s First Sea Lord could almost operate by telepathy, each perfectly prepared to be edged into something he did not really want to do. Just so long as the favor was returned. Preferably in spades.

  Baldridge arrived at Northwood just before 0900 in FOSM’s personal staff car, which had been sent to meet him. The territory was familiar to him now, and he greeted young Andrew Waites with cheerful informality.

  “Morning, sir,” said the Flag Lieutenant. “Found that Perisher yet?”

  “Not yet, but we’re moving on him.”

  Bill was led immediately into the office of the Flag Officer Submarines (FOSM), and Vice Admiral Sir Peter Elliott stood immediately to greet him. “Lieutenant Commander, glad to see you again. Good flight?”

  “Pretty painless,” he replied. “Everything been moving smoothly since I left?”

  The British admiral chuckled at the junior officer’s jaunty manner and put it down to American spontaneity. “Well, no one in my flotilla has collided, run aground, burned, got lost, or mutinied lately, so I suppose we’re just about winning,” he replied.

  Just then the door opened and Captain Dick Greenwood walked in, late but unflustered. “Morning, sir. Morning, Lieutenant Commander. I have those notes you wanted.”

  “Barrow?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Very well. Now, if Andrew will bring us some coffee, we may as well get down to business. The subject is very complicated, and very important to the United States.”

  He looked over at Bill and added, “I spoke to the First Sea Lord last night, who has had a long conversation with your CNO. In the broadest terms I understand you want to borrow one of our diesel-electric submarines, and transit the Bosporus underwater, which as we all know is illegal. Do I have the general gist of the exercise?”

  Bill Baldridge was relieved not to be obliged to make the speech he had been rehearsing on the aircraft. He said simply, “Yessir, you do.”

  “Then, since I am keenly aware of my own point of view, and that of the Royal Navy, why don’t you outline for me the point of view of the United States, with which I am not quite so familiar?”

  “Certainly, sir. As you know we have now spent almost a month trying to find out what happened to the Thomas Jefferson. And every path we take is leading us to the same conclusion—that the carrier was hit by a torpedo fired from a non-nuclear submarine which belonged to one of the hostile Gulf nations.

  “We do not think they used a submarine from their own inventory, but nonetheless the boat was a Russian Kilo. If our deductions are right, the sub must therefore have come out of the Black Sea, through the Bosporus. And the Turks say they saw nothing. We believe it came through under the surface.”

  “Yes, that all adds up to me. But why do you now want to do the same thing? One of your television shows organized a contest?”

  Bill laughed. “Not yet, sir. That’s probably next. No, the truth is our President is perfectly prepared to order a global hunt for the boat only if someone proves conclusively that it is possible to transit the Bosporus, north to south, underwater. The main trouble being that several dozen people have already told him it cannot be done. By anyone.”

  “Yes, global hunts are apt to become obsessional,” said Admiral Elliott. “And once started they run away with money, and people, on a rather alarming scale. Your President is wise to be cautious.”

  “Yessir. Almost all of his political advisers are urging him not to stray publicly from the ‘accident’ theory. And if we make the Bosporus journey, and there is any kind of a problem, he is going to stick to the only theory he has, and the only one he will ever admit.”

  “Of course,” said the admiral. “Although that might turn out to be rather shortsighted if your Muslim enemy should strike again. The one good thing about losing an aircraft carrier was that it wasn’t two aircraft ca
rriers.”

  “Well, that’s the view of most of our senior Intelligence men, and the submariners, sir. But I guess you see the President’s point of view. In a way, we think he’s being reasonable given the circumstances. He’s just saying that if we want to conduct a massive search operation, costing probably a couple of billion dollars, he wants to know we are working on a premise which is at least possible.”

  “Very Presidential,” replied the admiral. “Unless they hit again. Then he will be blamed, and slaughtered by his opponents for failing to take the grimmer advice of his senior military commanders.”

  “Yessir,” replied the Kansan. “Guess that’s just about what will happen. And some of us think they might easily be preparing to strike again.”

  “In these matters, Bill, as with legal contracts, you are never actually discussing what will happen. You must always be considering what could happen. However unlikely. In military matters, when you are dealing with a potential catastrophic loss of life, you must operate assuming the worst-case scenario. There is no other course. And in my experience, politicians have the utmost difficulty grasping that.”

  At this point Captain Greenwood entered the conversation. “Can you tell me, Lieutenant Commander, why you are so sure it was a Russian Kilo?”

  “I can, sir. We have checked the whereabouts of every other submarine in everyone’s Navy, including those from the Third World, which were either in refit, out of commission, or even sunk in the harbor in the cases of both Syria and Libya….”

  “Sorry to interrupt,” said the admiral, looking up at Bill, with a half-smile, and one raised eyebrow, “but didn’t the Iranians have a similar problem a couple of days ago…?”

  “I don’t really know about that,” replied the American.

  “Of course not,” said the admiral, still wearing his half-smile…. “Do continue, won’t you?”

  “Yessir. Well, having run all the checks we could, we came up with only one possibility. There was a Russian Kilo, which cleared Sevastopol in April, and was reported sunk in the Black Sea two weeks later. The Russians admit that they cannot find it after a long search, and they have reason to believe it may have escaped. Right now they are admitting it just vanished.”

  “Well, I suppose it could have just sunk in an awkward place and they have not been able to find it. These things do happen,” said Captain Greenwood.

  “Yessir. But if you were us, what would you believe?”

  “I’d believe it might have attacked my carrier.”

  “Yessir. It was the only submarine which could have. Which brings us right back to the President’s insistence that we prove the Bosporus underwater passage is possible.”

  “Before you bring out the big guns, correct?” said Greenwood.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised if there were a few senior officers in the Iranian Navy who consider that’s already happened,” said Admiral Elliott.

  Lieutenant Commander Baldridge said nothing, noticed that the admiral still wore his knowing half-smile.

  “It seems to me,” said Captain Greenwood, “that you are proposing something which is entirely unnecessary. Why risk a boat and her crew to establish such an outlandish possibility? Even if we were to do it, and were successful, it would merely tell us that a first-class boat, manned by the best possible crew, could exit the Black Sea underwater.

  “You could decide that, quite reputably, in this room, and save a lot of trouble with an extremely dangerous mission. In any event I doubt the rewards. Not to mention the fact that it’s against international law, and we could lose the boat in about thirty different kinds of accident, possibly drowning several dozen sailors.”

  “I did forget to mention, Bill,” said the admiral, “that Captain Greenwood is my personal devil’s advocate. I need one of those, because there are a lot of people who think I am only happy when I’m tackling something which could not, or should not, be done. Not true of course, but nevertheless a part of my reputation with which I have to live.”

  “Absolutely, sir,” said Bill Baldridge. “But the answers to Captain Greenwood’s concerns are simple. The President of the United States has spoken. He wants this journey made, in order to justify to Congress and to the Senate why he is about to spend untold billions trying to find an enemy which may not exist.

  “This is one of the best Presidents we’ve ever had. He’s a friend of the military and tries to understand the subject. He’s tough. He’s brilliantly clever, and always on our side. What he is trying to avoid is some smart-ass congressman second-guessing him about the Bosporus under the water, and a decision to spend billions of taxpayer dollars.”

  “Yes,” said the admiral, thoughtfully. “I see. He needs proof of it.”

  Captain Greenwood was beginning to look despondent as he saw the boss warming to the subject, and he spoke up again. “Why don’t you use a boat of your own?” he asked.

  “That’s easy,” replied Baldridge. “We haven’t had one for twenty years.”

  He referred to the old diesel-electrics which had been abandoned in a succession of defense cuts. U.S. strategists have long believed that America needed only big, powerful, long-range nuclear submarines as her operations were always across oceans.

  “Matter of fact I thought there was a lot of sense in what the Americans did,” said Admiral Elliott. “They really do need their long-range SSNs, and they only require a stealthy inshore boat on the rarest of occasions.

  “Politicians here in the U.K. think we can do the same but they are incorrect because we live in different geographical circumstances. We need to be able to operate right around the European coastline, with expert inshore submariners in command. Those little boats can be lethal to an enemy, which is why the Russians are still making and selling them. Dammit.

  “Our own situation is not much short of absurd.”

  “How do you mean, sir?” asked Baldridge.

  “Well, in recent years we spent about 1 billion pounds on four Upholder Class submarines which are roughly the equivalent of a Russian Kilo. That included all the development costs, and they were going to get progressively cheaper.

  “Then, from out of the blue, the politicians decided we did not need them, not even to keep under wraps for the day when we might. So in order to avoid any running costs whatsoever, however minor, they decided to sell ’em off cheaply to anyone who would buy. The Israelis already have one in operational service. The Brazilians are just starting workup. Followed by God knows who else.

  “They are being sold for peanuts, and in the view of the Submarine Service this is a criminal waste of the taxpayers’ money, and it shows an almost criminal lack of military foresight by our government.

  “Lieutenant Commander Baldridge, you come to me not as a bloody nuisance, which others might think. But as a particularly interesting opportunity.”

  “Yessir. I understand. Because we now have a reason to get one of those babies up and running, carrying out an important joint operation between our two countries.”

  “Precisely. And we all know this may be a major Naval emergency on a global scale. And the only way we can help our principal military ally is with our maligned little Upholder submarine, whose case we have been pleading, unsuccessfully, for a very long time.”

  “Well, sir, for our part, there was only one nation we could possibly come to. Not just for help, but for discretion and loyalty.”

  “Matter of fact, I wouldn’t mind going myself,” added the admiral predictably.

  “Absolutely out of the question, sir,” said Captain Greenwood, interjecting swiftly. “You simply could not be out of touch for that long, and also there would be an uproar if there was an accident and anything happened to you. No one could ever reasonably explain what you were doing on such a dangerous mission.”

  “Well, of course I wouldn’t much care then, would I?” replied the Flag Officer. “But I suppose you’re right. Still, the submarine would have to sail under British command.”

&nb
sp; “We assumed a British commanding officer,” said Baldridge. “But my President requires me to be on board.”

  “Right. That’s not a problem. The problem is the short notice. My U Class qualified COs are simply not up to it. And there’s no time to get them up to it. Whoever we appoint as captain will need a topman right at his elbow—a very experienced, conventional submariner.”

  Captain Greenwood interjected. “What about Admiral MacLean, sir? If he can’t do it, then it can’t be done.”

  “What a bloody good idea!” said the Flag Officer. “We might have to persuade him, though. He goes grouse-shooting for the last part of August. But I think he’d do it. The old boy has a strong sense of history—it just might appeal to him.”

  “He’s not that old, sir. What would he be…fifty-six?”

  “He’d definitely consider himself young enough to have a shot at becoming the first man ever to make the underwater passage through the Bosporus,” replied Admiral Elliott. “Or the second.”

  “May I now assume you are leaning toward proceeding with this entire operation, sir? I mean the preliminary stages?”

  “Well, Dick, I am looking at some very interesting possibilities. From our own point of view it is obviously very good—one in the eye for the government, for trying to give away our extremely valuable hulls for petty cash. If we succeed in the mission it might even persuade them to allow us to keep at least two of the Upholders in the fleet, ready for the day when we may need them.

  “From the Turks’ point of view it will provide them with some very valuable new information, should we wish to share with them.

  “And, in the long term, the Americans will be pleased to see the Turks increase security around the Bosporus. You never quite know when the Russian Navy might rise again.