Nimitz Class

by Patrick Robinson

  “If their helmsman makes even one minor mistake, he’s going to break this submarine into two very large pieces,” muttered the captain.

  It was a passive maneuver, and the more courageous for that. But it was their only option. Within seconds they heard the propeller of the big tanker come thrashing down their port side, missing them not by the two hundred yards Admiral MacLean had estimated—cutting his normal safety margin by 60 percent—but by about forty yards.

  The swirling turbulence in the wake of this massive hull, twenty thousand tons of steel barging through the narrow waterway, threw the submarine well off-course. She swiveled fifteen degrees to port before she steadied. “Ah yes, we’re heading straight toward Asia now—that was rather a novel way of doing it,” the admiral muttered.

  “Not so bad, sir,” said the navigator. “We’re a bit late for our turn to the south round this bend anyway. I’m happy on the western side of the channel. The water’s deeper.”

  Just then, a new call rang out in the Royal Navy submarine, which was still making like a “dead pig,” with only her periscope showing intermittently. “Control Sonar…new contact! Designated track four-three. Bearing one-eight-five.”

  “Christ!” snapped the CO. “This is a big bastard and we’re right ahead of him, bang in his path. Put him at seven hundred yards. Give him twelve knots. Bloody hell, he’s in the wrong lane.”

  “We’ll have to go deep,” snapped Admiral MacLean. “Jeremy…half ahead…four zero revolutions…five down…thirty meters…call out the speed.”

  “Sir…”

  “Two knots.”

  “Christ. He’s turning. Midships. Starboard thirty.”

  The CO barked, “Down all masts. Ease to ten…steer one-eight-three…thirty-one meters.”

  “Twenty-five, sir.”

  Then the sounder called the depth below the keel, “Sounding ten meters, sir.”

  “Slow ahead.”

  “Still one-eight-five. He’s louder. All other contacts blanked.”

  “Thirty-one meters, sir.”

  “Sounding five meters, sir.”

  The admiral: “Yes, here he comes, Jeremy. That’s his bow pressure pushing us down. Foreplanes full rise.”

  “Sounding two meters, sir.”

  “Nice and level, Jeremy. Don’t want to put the propeller in the mud.”

  “Right, sir. Depth holding…that’s the suction along his hull.”

  The admiral gave out his last commands: “Half-ahead. Four zero revolutions. Seventeen and a half meters…but keep her level at first, Jeremy.”

  The words of the sounding operator—“Two meters, sir”—were almost drowned out in the roar of the big freighter’s props as she thundered overhead, charging through the water at twelve knots.

  “Track four-three right astern. Bearing zero-zero-four, sir. Very loud. Doppler low. Same revolutions, one-two-four.”

  Admiral MacLean stepped aside as the submarine headed back up toward the surface of the mile-wide and now deeper waters of the harbor of Istanbul. Slowly Unseen climbed to periscope depth as she silently entered safer waters.

  Fifteen minutes after the near-miss, life was just about back to normal in the control room and plainly the worst was over. Captain Shaw handed over to his first lieutenant, joined the admiral and Baldridge for a cup of tea in the wardroom.

  “I’m sorry I was a bit pushy there, Jeremy,” said Admiral MacLean. “But I reckoned I’d seen a lot more of those shallow-water, close-quarters situations than you had.”

  “Absolutely, sir. I was getting a bit mesmerized looking through the periscope. Anyway I think I had missed the navigator’s clue that we were in deeper water, and could go under him. Thank you, sir.”

  Unseen headed out of the wide southerly channel which flowed past the eastern shoreline of the old city of Istanbul. There was more than fifty meters of water here, and less than three miles to the open reaches of the Sea of Marmara.

  Jeremy Shaw wondered when they should send in a satellite message to the duty officer in Northwood. “And one to Washington?”

  “I’d say we ought to do it right away,” said the admiral. “We’ve done it. And that’s that.”

  “Do you have a code word for a successful mission, Bill?” asked the captain.

  “Sure do—home run—that’s what they’re waiting for. Straight to Admiral Morgan, Fort Meade, Maryland. It’s nine o’clock at night there, but he’ll be around in his office, waiting to hear.”

  The CO sent for a messenger to take a drafted signal for transmission. Then he left the wardroom, leaving the admiral and Bill alone.

  “Let me ask you something, sir. Would you have done it, if you had known in advance what it was going to be like?”

  “No, Bill. I would not. I understood the risks, but I did not think we would run out of luck quite so often! We were nearly killed twice in ten minutes. That first freighter that nearly hit us was closer than I have ever been to death. I actually thought the second one was going right through us.”

  “If it hadn’t been for you, sir, she might have.”

  “Oh, I expect Jeremy would have thought of something in time.”

  “Well, I was pretty glad we did not have to hang around and find that out, sir. You saved us. So did Jeremy. And all you have to show for it is a bit of history. Senior officer in the first submarine ever to transit the Bosporus underwater.”

  “Not even that, Bill. We were the second.”

  Admiral Arnold Morgan received the signal with delight. “Home run.” They’re through. He called Scott Dunsmore to break the news. In turn the CNO called General Josh Paul, who informed him the President awaited his call, and that the admiral should make it personally. One minute later, the President stepped out of a formal dinner to speak on the telephone to his Chief of Naval Operations.

  “They did it?…Good…Yes, you have my full authorization to commit resources to find and destroy the Russian Kilo, using whatever means you must…I’ll leave that entirely to you…”

  Admiral Dunsmore replied, “Thank you, Mr. President.”

  “Go get ’em, Scott,” said the Chief Executive.

  13

  2200 Monday, September 9.

  THE EVENING OF SEPTEMBER 9 WAS ONE OF TOE-CURLING anxiety for Arnold Morgan. Trapped in his office, still awaiting the satellite signal from the south end of Istanbul Harbor, he had rampaged through his beef sandwich, spilled coffee on his diary, and growled at everyone still working in the building. Happily there were not many, but his general mood of tightly wound exasperation was sufficient to encourage the late-night staffers to stay the hell out of his way, if possible.

  The “home-run” signal had restored the rueful grin to his face. And in the following four minutes he had passed on the information to Admiral Dunsmore, and then burned rubber on the driveway en route to a rendezvous with General David Gavron, in the cool privacy of the Israeli embassy.

  The general had made the telephone call to Fort Meade personally, and the admiral found himself worried about the edgy demeanor of the urbane and gracious Israeli officer. He always enjoyed their talks, but tonight General Gavron had not been relaxed, and the admiral sensed tension and worry in the Israeli’s words. And whatever that worry was, it was plainly something to do with Benjamin Adnam. Otherwise David would not have requested this meeting.

  Inside the gates of the embassy, he was joined by an Israeli guard who escorted him to the upstairs room with the big burgundy-colored chairs, where he and the general had first come to terms. General Gavron was sitting back, holding a glass of white wine, and smoking a rare cigarette.

  “Hi, David,” the admiral said. “Sorry to be so late. It seems to get harder rather than easier to get out of my factory these days.”

  “Welcome, Arnold,” replied the general. “Let me pour you a glass of that dessert wine you liked so much. I have things to tell you.”

  “What’s on your mind?” said the admiral.

  “As I expect you
have guessed, it’s about Commander Benjamin Adnam. I am afraid, Arnold, that circumstances may have overtaken us. Let me backtrack for a moment. You remember you told me a couple of weeks ago that your man Jeff Zepeda was working on the outskirts of a major Iraqi Intelligence cell in Cairo?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Well, we have been onto that for several years. In fact we have had a man working deep inside it, in place since 1998. He’s an Iraqi, with Jewish grandparents. We established this cell right after the Gulf War, with some of our top guys operating on the outside. It has been an invaluable source of intelligence on the inner workings of the Iraqi Government. I do not need to elaborate upon the extreme danger our case officer is permanently in.”

  “You do not.”

  “Arnold, he has disappeared. We have heard nothing from him for nine days. He has always operated on a one-week contact cycle. He’s never missed his Saturday check-in. Even when he has nothing to say.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Nothing really. It’s just that two weeks ago I gave an instruction to him, that if he came up with anything about Commander Adnam, or indeed the missing Kilo, I wanted to know ASAP.

  “He never uses electronic equipment for obvious reasons. And I’m wondering whether you have received anything, anonymous of course, from Cairo. Because if you have, it might just be a last-ditch effort from our man.”

  “No. I have not received anything. And I’ll let you know if I do. Do you think his disappearance has something to do with the Jefferson incident?”

  “Yes. Mainly because I imagine that everything is heightened in Iraqi Intelligence right now. I am sure they have guessed that you hit the Iranian submarines in retaliation. They must know they might be next. I think anyone asking questions about the Jefferson operation would be in a high degree of danger. The Iraqis may seem irrational. But they are quite ruthless.”

  “Yes. I agree with all that.”

  “If our agent did find something, and somehow managed to tip the Americans off, he might already have been fingered. Anyway, he did not even have time to call for help from us. But he knows how urgently we want Adnam back. The man is a deserter and a senior officer of the Israeli Navy with access to highly sensitive information. We’d like him alive, to find out how badly we have been betrayed. Then we’ll know what to change.”

  “He may be a deserter to you, General. But he’s an international terrorist to me. And I want him first. Dead or alive.”

  “We do not care who finally kills him, but we’d most certainly like to pick him apart first.”

  It was long after midnight when Arnold Morgan left the Israeli embassy. He drove home slowly, slept for three and a half hours, then showered, dressed, and drove to his office, where his daily special delivery mail package was waiting for him.

  At 0515, he found it.

  Admiral Scott Dunsmore thought he was ready for anything. He had four Los Angeles–Class nuclear attack submarines on warning for special ops in Norfolk, Virginia. And he had one at Diego Garcia and two more at Pearl. In tenuous anticipation of the Kilo making a break across the South Atlantic en route to South America, satellite observation points had been adjusted, on the off-chance that one might betray the sudden surface appearance of a Russian Kilo in strange waters.

  What the admiral was not ready for was a phone call at 0520. Not even from Arnold Morgan, whose careless disregard for time was fabled, even among submariners. The CNO reached out of his bed for the phone, and was unsure whether to be furious at the sharp, daytime tones of the Director of National Security, or merely appreciative of the sheer devotion to duty of the senior U.S. Navy Intelligence officer.

  Admiral Morgan, as ever, wasted no time. “Sir,” he said, “we may have found the Kilo. Tip-off. I’m leaving now for your office. See you there.” The line went dead.

  Admiral Dunsmore’s feet had hit the carpet even before the line cut off. He opened the bedroom door and yelled downstairs for someone to have his car outside and ready to exit the Navy Yard in eight minutes.

  Morgan beat him into the Pentagon by minutes, having knocked twenty-three seconds off his own all-time record from Fort Meade to the military headquarters of the United States. It was a little after0600.

  He had already organized coffee—black with buckshot—for both of them. And in his hand he held a sheet of expensive, cream-colored writing paper, which he handed to the boss. “Came this morning. Air mail letter postmarked from Cairo, Egypt. Addressed to the Director, Office of National Security, Fort Meade, Maryland. USA. No zip.”

  In the center of the almost empty sheet there were just four very short lines, composed on a word processor:

  120630APR024436N3332E.

  050438MAY023557N0548W.

  082103JUL021992N6395E.

  251200SEP025440S6000W.

  Nothing else. No date. No signature. No address. “I get the mail before everyone else,” said Admiral Morgan, irrelevantly.

  “Yes, I had realized that,” replied the CNO. “What is it? Dates and times, written in Navy style. Plus chart positions.”

  “That’s correct, sir. It was the second line which got me. That “050438MAY02.” That’s the exact date and time we heard the submarine in the Gibraltar Strait. Those numbers are written on my heart, 050438. I almost did not have to check the map reference…35.57 North, and 05.48 West. It’s in the probability zone given for its detection.

  “Then I checked the first line. And that’s the exact date and time of the Kilo’s departure from its home port, according to Baldridge’s report, which he based on information from Admiral Rankov. April 12, first light. The position, 44.36 North, 33.32 East, is that of Sevastopol.

  “The third line is the precise date and time of the sinking of the Jefferson…July 8, three minutes after 2100. The map reference is slightly more refined than ours, but identical.”

  “So, Arnold, is the fourth line, which begins with a date fifteen days from now, where we might expect the Kilo to show up next? Or, where the writer would like us to think the Kilo will show up next?”

  “Precisely, sir. I do have some idea of where the note came from, but nonetheless, it is anonymous. The interesting part is its information, because most of it has been available to only very few of us. Line one, the departure time and date, was known to several people, although not to us, until Baldridge found out three weeks ago.

  “Line two, date, time, and position of the Kilo in the strait. The time is exact to the minute. Well, a few of our people might have known what was heard, but there you’d be talking about a hoax. And I don’t see any U.S. serviceman joking about this. No, sir. The only people who knew the time and date and position of the ship when that noise was made were the guys who made it.”

  Admiral Dunsmore nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said. “And they also knew the time, date, and departure from Sevastopol.”

  “Correct. None of us knew that before Baldridge told us. And since then, only you and I, and maybe two or three staff members, were acquainted with his report. It’s never left Fort Meade, except with me.”

  “Right. That narrows things down a bit.”

  “Which brings us to line three, the Jefferson, date, time, and position at the moment of destruction. The accuracy in this note is precise, it’s possibly better than our own.

  “Now, our accident analysis guys have worked on this, and they know the position of the carrier. But not one of the analysis people is connected in any way with the information path involving the sonar contact in the Gibraltar Strait. That leaves us with very few suspects among ourselves—six altogether, you, me, Baldridge, your Lieutenant Commander Jay Bamberg and his assistant. And my lieutenant. I exclude them all, categorically.”

  “So do I. That means we’re looking for people outside who could have known all of these things.”

  “Sir, there’s no place else to look. The author must have been aware of the doubts expressed about the lost Kilo; he must have known it made a detectable noise off Gib
raltar; and he must have known the precise time, and precise place, where the Jefferson was hit. My conclusion is that the author of this note was either in that submarine, or was in possession of a full report from that submarine.”

  “That’s just about where I was getting to, Arnie.”

  “Kinda obvious, really. Which means they intended it to be obvious. The author established impeccable credentials in the first three lines, in order to establish his fourth line as that of an unimpeachable source.”

  “Has he done it?”

  “I think he has. His intention is plainly to make us believe that the Kilo will be found on September 25, at the time and position he gives in statement four.”

  “I see it’s in the South Atlantic. Where exactly?”

  “It’s about a hundred miles due south of the Falkland Islands. Four hundred from Cape Horn, east-nor’east. Now, I haven’t the slightest idea where the Kilo’s headed, but it must be going to South America somewhere. Which makes sense, I guess, if you happen to be the most wanted ship’s company in history.”

  “Yes. It does. And since all of our evidence suggests they have been operating on behalf of Iraq, we might wonder whether that old alliance between Iraq and Chile could be at the heart of their escape route.”

  “Well, sir, I’d rule out any Argentinean Navy base. They’re too far south for that. The obvious port that Kilo’s heading for would be Punta Arenas, which is in Chile, right opposite the northwest end of Tierra del Fuego.

  “That way, its route would be around Cape Horn into the Pacific, then north up the South American coast, turning east after about 250 miles, into the Cockburn Channel. Then on into the Magellan Strait. Punta Arenas is right in there, sheltered, with a lot of deep water. It’s also full of deserted little islands. If ever you wanted a great place to hide out in a submarine, staying underwater, coming up to the surface just to let guys off, every coupla days, that’s the spot.”