Nimitz Class

by Patrick Robinson

  “He did?” said the President.

  “Oh, certainly. The Iraqis were never going to allow the Kilo to dock. I always assumed they would, in the end, scuttle it, and we’d just find a bit of wreckage. Adnam, however, went a step further. He didn’t scuttle it. He didn’t have to. He got you to do it for him, with one, short, simple, air-mail letter from Cairo to Fort Meade.”

  “Jesus,” said the President. “That little sonofabitch. He’s been one jump ahead of us all the way.”

  “Not just one jump ahead of you. He’s been one jump ahead of everyone involved. One jump ahead of us, who misguidedly taught him. One jump ahead of the Mossad, one jump ahead of the Russians…three jumps ahead, I suspect, of the Iranians, the sworn enemies of his country. And a jump ahead of the United States. Tricky little bastard, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Clever, tricky little bastard.”

  “And the really worrying thing is, sir, there is not that much a great power can do about these bloody terrorist people. You could of course declare war, or even make a preemptive nuclear strike against Iraq. But it’s awfully messy. Half of the international community would go off its rocker with indignation. The damned media would be full of pictures of destroyed Iraqi hospitals and schools. You know what it would be like.”

  “I’m afraid I do, Admiral. All too well. In the end I suppose we just have to accept that if we are to police the world, with a dozen Carrier Battle Groups, we are going to end up, sometime, somewhere, losing one. It’s a terrible price, but the alternative is world chaos. And I am afraid the curse of the twenty-first century might very well be weapons of mass destruction in the hands of fanatics. Maniacs.”

  “Yessir. However, we are not powerless. We can persuade the Russians to cooperate by not selling those damned Kilos to nations of unstable government. But I hardly think you, Mr. President, could make a general policy to wipe out any small foreign submarine fleet you may consider to be a menace to the free world.”

  “No. We cannot go on doing that. But as you may have guessed, we did partly attend to that problem.”

  “I did guess that, sir. More or less the moment I heard about it.”

  “Meanwhile, there is not much more we can do, militarily, without admitting what happened to the carrier, which we will not do.”

  “There is of course the option of the dams,” said Sir Iain.

  “Which dams?” asked Scott Dunsmore.

  “The ones on the Tigris. The ones the Iranians were trying to blow up during their war with Iraq.”

  “I remember that,” said the President. “One of them was called the Samarra Barrage, correct?”

  “That’s it, sir,” replied Admiral MacLean. “Back at home, I shoot a few grouse with a chap who works on the Iraqi desk in the Foreign Office. He was telling me about it quite recently.”

  The admiral outlined, as well as he remembered, the facts about the two great Iraqi dams—the Samarra Barrage, which stands 115 miles north of Baghdad and holds 85 billion cubic meters of water. The second one, five times as big, is called the Darband-I-Khan Reservoir, and holds three cubic kilometres of water. This one is situated on a tributary of the Tigris, 130 miles northeast of the city, near the mountain town of Halabjah, right on Iran’s border, where three rivers converge.

  “It was the huge Darband Reservoir the Iranians tried to blow,” said the admiral. “But the Iraqis somehow found out and counter attack…that was the battle of Halabjah. It later transpired the Iranians were also on their way to the Samarra Barrage, but they never got there either.”

  “Yes,” said the President. “As I recall there was some talk of us taking one of those dams out during the Gulf War, but it was rejected because no one quite had the stomach to drown several million Iraqis. Matter of fact, I would not do that either.”

  “Quite so, Mr. President,” replied Sir Iain. “But my chap at the Foreign Office says these things have been studied much more scientifically recently. They do not assess the loss of life would be anything like so great as the Iranians hoped if they blew the dams. Maybe even minimal. But it would certainly wreck the Iraqi economy for years.”

  “How difficult to do?” asked the President.

  “Just a bit. But no more so than removing the Ayatollah’s submarines. More important is the timing. To put Baghdad completely out of action my chap assesses both dams would have to go at the same time. It would have to be right when the winter snow melt in the mountains was happening, when there was maximum water. Then you could take Iraq right out of the world trouble equation for years and years. They’d be crippled financially, and probably emotionally.”

  “Then I guess we’ve got three months to consider whether the men of the Thomas Jefferson should be thoroughly avenged.”

  “Yessir. You do. But I won’t be able to help much then. You won’t need submarines….”

  The President was thoughtful. And Admiral MacLean spoke again. “You know, sir, I’d be inclined to rethink the whole procedure of Carrier Battle Groups. Let’s face it, we’ve just been shown, quite conclusively, that in these dangerous days, the big American police-man, on his world patrol, can be killed by a relatively unsophisticated knifeman. Because all defensive measures leak. No system is 100-percent certain.

  “Perhaps we should put smaller, cheaper units up front, which will allow us to retain our military capacity less densely.

  “If the guerrilla fanatic is going to strike at us, let’s give him a lesser target…not a multibillion-dollar carrier with six thousand people on board. That perhaps should be kept further back, safe and ready, for when we decide to punish the aggressor.

  “I expect you will have read, in the old days of Empire, we Brits always put a completely expendable gunboat up front, as a ‘mark of our interest.’ The battleship only showed up if the gunboat was attacked.

  “Sir, if we have a troublesome area in a city, we send in police patrols. We do not send in the chief of police.”

  The President’s face lit up as he cottoned on to the political advantages in such a new strategy. Admiral Dunsmore himself said, “Yes. It’s an interesting and often-considered thought. A few years back I personally doubted the wisdom of placing a huge carrier right between Taiwan and China….”

  But just then a uniformed security guard came through the door with a message for Admiral MacLean to call his daughter, Laura, at ten the following morning.

  “It’s a fairly local call, sir,” he said, conditioned by years of parsimony in the Royal Navy. “She took a few days off to visit a friend in New York. They’re going to a couple of operas or something. I think she’s staying outside the city with friends, Connecticut or New Jersey, I suppose. It’s a three-one-six area code.”

  “She sure is outside the city, Admiral,” replied the President. “Three-one-six is just to the west of New York. About fifteen hundred miles, out near my country, in the southern half of the great American state of Kansas.”

  “Oh dear,” said the admiral, wearily. “I was rather afraid of that. Her mother will be absolutely thrilled.”

  December 14. Fort Meade, Maryland.

  Admiral Morgan carefully slit open the special-delivery package which had arrived on his desk. It contained a small newspaper cutting, mounted on a sheet of crested diplomatic paper from the Israeli embassy.

  CAIRO. Monday. The body of a man in his early forties, wearing Arab dress, was discovered by Cairo police in the precincts of the Citadel early this morning.

  According to Police Chief Hamdi, the man had been shot once through the back of the head. His officers were acting on information received by telephone shortly after midnight. No murder weapon has yet been found, but police are still searching the area around the Mohammed Ali Mosque where the body was found.

  Chief Hamdi said that the incident bore the marks of a professional killing, carried out by a person or persons unknown. The body, in his opinion, had been robbed. It contained no documents, identification, or credit cards. There was, however, “con
siderable cash.” Police inquiries are continuing.

  Admiral Morgan delved deeper into the outer package, and pulled out a slim leather cigarette case. Inside the case was a small military badge, an anchor entwined with a heraldic vine, set upon a silver submarine—the coveted insignia of the Israeli Submarine Service. Looking closely Arnold Morgan could make out faded initials in the leather, “BA.”

  The accompanying white card brought a smile to the face of Admiral Morgan. Scrawled upon it were the words, “Just to remind him he was still a commander! Arrogant little bugger, wasn’t he? Best wishes, DG.”

  Admiral Morgan sat and thought. The leather cigarette case he would keep in his personal little military museum, which was comprised mostly of souvenirs from missions fought and won.

  The little badge he resolved to give to the President, as a souvenir of the fight to bring to justice the killer of the Thomas Jefferson. In the end, Boomer Dunning’s torpedo and the Mossad’s bullet had provided an extreme form of rough justice. But nonetheless justice.

  Midday. December 20. The White House.

  The two Marine guards shut the door softly, leaving Bill Baldridge in the Oval Office, face to face with the President.

  “Hey, Bill. Glad you could come,” he said, striding around his desk to shake hands. “I’ve arranged a little lunch for us, with Admiral Dunsmore and Admiral Morgan. I wanted the opportunity to thank all three of you in private for a damned difficult job conducted with just super professionalism.”

  “Thank you, sir,” replied Bill. “I appreciate that. Very much.”

  The President was silent for a moment, and then he said: “As you know, the operation was black, strictly nonattributable so there’s nothing I can really do about a reward. I can’t have you promoted, since you’ve retired from the Navy, and I cannot decorate anyone for their part in such a mission.” He grinned and added, “So I guess you’re just going to have to make do with my heartfelt personal thanks.”

  “That, sir, would be more than sufficient.”

  The President motioned for Bill to be seated and then he walked around to his desk once more. “Bill,” he said. “I am not quite as stupid as some people think. I remember it was you who blew the whistle on the accident theory.”

  “Yessir. At the time it was a pretty lonely spot to be in.”

  “I know it was. I also know it was you who insisted that the Arab commander of that Kilo must have somehow left a trail. You went and found him, identified him for the Mossad. Had you not found him, we might still be scratching our heads.”

  “I was lucky in Northwood, sir.”

  “I also remember it was you who warned me that Adnam was not in the Kilo when we hit it.”

  “Crazy Ivan, right?”

  “Crazy Ivan. The same words that wonderful Scottish admiral used. You got him for us too. And you were in Columbia at the final moment when we hit the Russian boat. Bill, I’d like to make you the youngest goddamned admiral in the Navy. But I can’t.”

  “Don’t worry, sir. There’s not that many warships on the prairie.”

  The President smiled. And then he produced from his desk drawer a small package, which he gave to the rancher from Kansas. “Open this, will you? I’m just going to the next office for a few minutes, then I’ll be back, and we’ll go and meet Scott and Arnold.”

  The President left, and Bill Baldridge stood alone in the Oval Office. He removed the wrapping, and held a flat, black jewelry box in his hands. When he opened it, he saw only a sheet of official White House paper, on which was inscribed a careful handwritten note from the President, signed only with his first name.

  The words were simple: “For Bill. Because you were brave enough to warn me. And because you are my friend.”

  Beneath the paper, pinned to the deep red velvet of the box, was a small military badge, an anchor, entwined with a heraldic vine, set upon a silver submarine.

  Afterword

  By Admiral Sir John Woodward

  I SHOULD PERHAPS DECLARE MY PERSONAL INTEREST IN this book, written by Patrick Robinson, who assisted me in the writing of my own autobiography back in 1991.

  For Nimitz Class, he asked me for technical advice on submarine operations—a request for me to wear again the hat of Flag Officer Submarines, rather than that of the Falkland Islands Battle Group Commander.

  He now informs me there is a senior retired admiral featured prominently within the pages of Nimitz Class who may be somewhat familiar both to me and to those who served under my command. However, I am happy to say that his fictional admiral does not coincide with my own personal view of myself. I’m not even sure I would have recognized him!

  Nonetheless my purpose in writing these introductory words is to express my approval for this book, and the very real, you might say terrible, issues it raises.

  Patrick Robinson used several consultants both in the U.K. and in the United States Navy during the two years it took to prepare—and I do know that every one was acutely aware of the enormity of the subject and the consequent dangers under which the U.S. Navy operates.

  The author has turned this “worst-case” scenario into a pageturning thriller. He has not, however, strayed from the grim reality of terrorism on the grandest scale: the vulnerability of the modern military commander to the sly and cunning knifeman.

  What happens in Nimitz Class could happen in the real world, with momentous consequences for us all. The U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy are all too aware of the threat. But even now, certain politicians on both sides of the Atlantic seem perfectly prepared to cut defense budgets regardless of stern warnings from the military.

  I should perhaps remind them all that when countries such as Great Britain and the United States lower their guard in any way whatsoever, they end up paying for it, in blood, sorrow, and tears.

  Margaret Thatcher, out of office now, but frequently still in our minds, remains a far-seeing politician of an entirely different class. In her historic lecture at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, on March 9, 1996, she told her American audience:

  The Soviet collapse has also aggravated the single most awesome threat of modern times: the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These weapons—and the ability to develop and deliver them—are today acquired by middle-income countries with modest populations, such as Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Syria…acquired sometimes from other powers like China and North Korea, but most ominously from former Soviet arsenals.

  She reminded her audience that by the end of the decade we could see twenty countries with ballistic missiles. Nine with nuclear weapons. Ten with biological weapons. Thirty with chemical weapons.

  “On present trends,” she said, “a direct threat to American shores is likely to mature early in the next century.

  “Add weapons of mass destruction to rogue states,” said Margaret Thatcher, “and you have a highly toxic compound.”

  She pointed out that many such states are led by “megalomaniacs and strongmen of proven inhumanity, or by weak, unstable or illegitimate governments.” She added that the potential capabilities at the command of these unpredictable figures, “may be even more destructive than the Soviet threat to the West in the 1960s.”

  Patrick Robinson’s book vividly illustrates precisely what the lady means. And in its pages it also raises the question of how, in a turbulent and dangerous world, we make our resolution plain, without excessive cost in both materiel and, more particularly, people.

  Nimitz Class will, I hope, bring home to an even broader public the extreme pressures under which the Armed Services continue to operate. In particular I would suggest that serving Naval officers read it, perhaps especially Navy cadets, who may have ambitions to join the Submarine Services on either side of the Atlantic.

  —SANDY WOODWARD

  Acknowledgments

  MY CHIEF ADVISER THROUGHOUT THE LONG MONTHS OF writing this novel was Admiral Sir John (“Sandy”) Woodward, the Royal Navy’s senior Task Group Commander in the South Atlantic d
uring the battle for the Falkland Islands in 1982. There are some who consider this former naval Commander-in-Chief one of the best naval strategists of recent times. Perhaps more widely held is the view that Admiral Woodward was also one of the better submarine specialists the Royal Navy ever had. “My task for the Nimitz Class,” he once said, “is to keep the story feasible, to keep it within the boundaries of possibility, where fiction has to be less strange than truth.”

  His advice was as careful as it was thorough. Somewhat miraculously, the admiral is still in my corner.

  On the infrequent occasions when Sandy was unavailable, I turned for technical expertise to my friend, Captain David Hart Dyke, another retired Royal Navy officer who also faced the guns and bombs of the Argentinean Air Force in the South Atlantic in1982.

  Captain Peter O’Connor, the former Commanding Officer of the guided missile cruiser USS Yorktown, was my principal U.S. Naval adviser. He has my enduring thanks for his time and patience. Another Virginian, retired Vice Admiral Robert F. Dunn, generously provided me with superb data on the day-to-day operations in a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier.

  There were many other serving officers, both submariners and surface ship executives on both sides of the Atlantic, who were more than happy to guide me through the techniques of command, and I thank them all, and wish I could name them personally.

  I thank, too, Alan Friedman, author of Spider’s Web, for his careful advice about the banking tactics of the more dubious Middle Eastern regimes.

  Finally, I would like to thank my longtime friend and colleague, Joe Farrell of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, who read the manuscript meticulously, separating American and English phrases and the military jargon which enters a book such as this. He says he was given the task of preventing American fighter pilots from sounding like Winston Churchill.

  Since he also arranged my introduction to Captain O’Connor, I’ll forgive his irreverence.