25
Gulf of Mexico
Hectic dock activity began to subside. The ambulances left with their patients, and the first trucks with stores going to and from the ship had left the pier. The second truck of Prowfish stores was just pulling out, destined for the naval laboratory testing facility.
Fuel lines were in final stages of topping off. The two intelligence officers meeting with Captain Hodges walked passed the New Orleans crew, each carrying large leather folders. Their driver in the unmarked black car waited for them on the upper deck with doors opened. Chief Wilks came over and introduced Ensign Chambers to the New Orleans crew. Chambers had a clip board and papers he was reading and said, “I have your berth assignments here.” Holding out his chart, “You can start loading your gear as soon as these electrical cables have been moved.”
He handed his clipboard to the one of the New Orleans crew, and they gathered around to see where their names appeared. As Chief Wilks had indicated, Wade and one other member of their crew were assigned to the forward torpedo room; the other crew members had been assigned throughout the boat. With the electrical cables now out of the way, the crew began filing to the gangplank, saluting the flag at the stern of the ship as they boarded. Wade went to the forward hatch with one crew member. The others separated to the aft hatch. In submarines, you stored everything except your ditty bag and the clothes on your body in compartments with numbers matching your bunk number.
Shore lines were soon cast off, and the boat slowly pulled away on the incoming tide toward the open Gulf. As the boat passed the concrete breakwater, the night sky was clearer due to the sub’s having passed the fog bank that had settled near shore. Wade’s duty schedule did not start until the next morning at 0600, and he settled into his assigned bunk on the starboard upper level atop one of the torpedoes. He could see the Chief’s bunk on the lower and more preferred level, just opposite and down from Wade’s bunk.
The Prowfish SS-438 was a boat originally built for World War II. It had been commissioned in 1943 and had a distinguished career in the North Atlantic, coming face-to-face with a number of German wolf pack U-boats and defeating them. The Prowfish had been refurbished many times, starting in the 1950s. Its last refurbishment took place just two years prior at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard where it received its streamlined conning tower, rounded front end to accommodate the latest more advanced electronics and sonar gear, new engines, and updated operating systems. The Prowfish is a Tench Class submarine which was build as part of 30 similar class boats making up the Naval conventional submarine fleet in that class.
Trench Class submarines are the refurbished predecessors of the current U.S. nuclear designated Hunter-Killer class submarines. The Prowfish did not carry missiles or a deck gun, and served as a submarine tracker, picket defense, surveillance and anti-submarine warfare vessel. It had a low draft, which meant it could get close to shore to support ground operations. For its type of submarine, it was considered fast and quiet, the qualities most desirable for this and any class of submarine. Its speed came from new and improved diesel electric engines, which produced much greater horsepower, consumed less fuel, and ran much quieter than its original engines. The advanced classes of converted diesel subs of the time could not generally compete with emerging classes of nuclear submarines, which had suffered from a number of operating problems in the early years.
The bunks in Wade’s compartment were only half filled. This was due to the missing men from the illness and the fact that the other men who occupied those bunks (called, “hot-bunking”) were on duty. Wade was tired from his trip from New Orleans and all the unloading duties on the pier. He lay back in his bunk with his eyes closed. He did not immediately fall asleep. His sensory memory kicked in to the smells and sounds of his new boat plowing through quiet waters, still on the surface. As the Prowfish pulled past the calm waters behind the concrete and stone breakwater, Wade could hear and feel the slight change in rhythm as heavier waves of the Gulf broke against the bow. The Gulf waters set a new tempo of sound and slow pitch as the bow found more resistance moving forward. Just as the Gulf pitch settled into its new rhythm, Wade heard the click in the boat’s intercom speaker.
“This is the Captain. We were a little late in getting underway, but I want to thank everyone for doing a find job on shore. Sixteen of our shipmates and friends who came down with this illness are now in the hospital being cared for. We don’t yet know the source of this illness or how it got on board. We have been disinfected by the Naval Medivac Unit, and all of our new stores have been carefully checked by a Navy hazard control unit and repacked and sealed. We should be okay with our food stores. Intelligence is looking into different possible identifications for this illness, but until further testing is done, I’m not going to speculate. I’ll be receiving regular updates on our shipmates’ condition and will pass information along to you as it comes in.” Captain Hodges briefly pauses.
“For those of you who don’t know it yet, we’re fortunate to have a partial replacement crew from New Orleans who will be helping us, along with our six members of SEAL Team Two from Key West, who have also agreed to jump in and help with boat operations. I want our regular crew to welcome our new members. We’re still short-handed with our crew. We lost fourteen crew members and two officers and only have six replacement crew from New Orleans, plus our SEAL team. Everyone is going to be pulling extra duty and may be asked to do things they haven’t done before. This includes our SEAL team.”
“The one thing I will tell you is this boat is full of the latest and most up-to-date electronic and sonar gear available, and much of it is extremely sensitive. If you don’t know what a piece of equipment is used for or are not familiar with what a lever or button does, don’t touch it until you get permission. We’re headed back to the area where we encountered our Russian Target. I think we have a pretty good idea where that Target is, and the XO is calculating those intercept coordinates now.”
“I want to remind everyone when we run silent, it means silent. When we are in Silent One I don’t want any of you so much as talking or taking a footstep. If you have to communicate, you put your mouth to the person’s ear and whisper softly. I also better not hear a flush sound from the head. Silent means silent, and our lives will depend on maintaining that condition.”
“For those of you in the forward and aft torpedo rooms we will be running hot on our fish. Our orders are to follow and track, and not engage the target unless we are in imminent danger of being fired upon. I don’t want any happy triggers. You wait until you clearly hear the command to fire from me or the XO. The duty schedules are almost ready and will be passed out as soon as the Ensign finishes. Good sailing, gentleman.”
After the captain’s announcement, Wade drifted off into deep sleep, not even hearing the dive horn in the early morning hours. When he awoke for duty, his boat was 80 meters below the Gulf.
26
Washington, D.C.
The Task Force was in full swing when Marks and Simon returned to Washington from their meeting with Captain Hodges. A meeting of Task Force members was called to discuss and analyze the Soviet submarine data collected by Hodges. After the meeting, Marks and Simon discussed their next strategy.
Simon felt strongly that it was now time to take custody of one or more of the three undercover agents released by the Russian submarine. Since their arrival in Mississippi, the three Soviet trained operatives had been followed by Simon’s agents.
They were now in Miami and had joined the organizations they were assigned to infiltrate. Each had already become active members of three separate Cuban organizations. Marks and Simon were in agreement. After Simon reviewed the intelligence reports on the three Russian-trained subjects, he selected two to be picked up for interrogation. Simon’s operatives selected the best time to pick up each man.
After one of the subjects finished a meal at a fast food restaurant with other members of his new Cuban organization, he proceeded to walk ba
ck to his apartment three blocks away. He was overtaken by Simon’s operatives and injected with a mild drug. He was loaded into an unmarked white van that had been following two blocks behind. The subject’s hands were cuffed and a blackout hood put over his head.
The second man was apprehended in a similar fashion. Each subject was brought to a separate empty warehouse, in a quiet, older industrial development on the outskirts of Miami. Simon immediately left Washington for Miami to supervise the interrogations.
Simon was no stranger to interrogation. He had run his own covert operations in Central America, which included extensive interrogation for the CIA. Simon knew well the captive’s mental state. When Simon was a CIA undercover operative, he had been held captive by a Central American guerilla group with Russian advisors for nine months. During that experience he was beaten, interrogated, and tortured. He had a keen sense of a man’s breaking point, and he knew when pressure had to be applied.
Each subject was interrogated alone in separate locations with a different interrogation team. At first both subjects gave the standard responses taught in course 101 on “How to answer questions in the event of capture.” Simon wasn’t playing that game and turned up the heat.
After twelve hours of straight interrogation, Simon came into the room where one of the captives was detained and sat in front of the captive with a file. He spoke only in Spanish. Simon told the captive he wanted him to see what he had in his file and slowly opened the file in front of the witness. There were recent pictures of the captive’s wife, children, brothers, sisters, and parents.
Simon stressed that no harm would come to any family members if he cooperated. In turn Simon described in great detail what would happen in the event of non-cooperation. He emphasized that his men were already in place in their country, and paused to show the captive the addresses of loved ones and photographs of their homes. Simon then got up and left the room for his men to continue the interrogation in English.
Simon proceeded to address the second captive in the same manner.
The two captives finally broke, within three hours of each other. Simon was called in by his operatives to attend this part of the interrogation in the hope that critical information would be forthcoming. He kept the two men separated so he could compare details and determine if they were telling the unrehearsed truth. Simon’s wish for critical information from the subjects was granted. The new information also confirmed his worst expectations.
Both men admitted having been brought to the U.S. by the same Russian submarine. One boarded three miles off the coast of Ecuador, the other off the coast of Nicaragua. Both boarded in the middle of the night, as the Russian sub headed north for U.S. waters.
The two men gave detailed descriptions of the interior of the Russian submarine, including where certain operations were performed. One of the subjects even drew a diagram of the sub’s interior and identified the location of various electronic devices and operating systems. The other man was given the same diagram without the identifying names and asked to fill in and name the various systems.
The second subject’s response was identical to that of the first. Simon was focused on details. He knew a slip-up would come in the details if the captive’s stories had been rehearsed. Simon found out where they ate and what they ate during their voyage. He obtained where they slept and even how the toilets worked. Simon had enough interrogation experience to know whether a suspect was telling the truth.
It was his opinion that the men were well trained, but young, and had not been professional spies for very long. He didn’t feel either had been captured before. Both men came from very poor families and the Russians were good at selecting these types of men and filling them with indoctrination on the “evil western powers.” With a little money and time in a Russian-led training camp, they could become Central American Soviet-trained agents within months.
Both men confirmed that the Russian submarine surfaced off the coast of Mississippi on the date and location Simon had suspected. The men were brought to shore on a shrimp boat. The two men told interrogators there were three possible shrimp boats that could meet them. Simon already knew the names of two of the shrimp boats. The existence of a third shrimp boat by the name of Bonnie Q was new information. Simon immediately put the Bonnie Q under surveillance.
The two captives provided the name of the Russian submarine captain. They also confirmed that at one point the Russian captain knew they had been detected by a U.S. submarine. Following the sub’s detection, the two subjects separately recounted that two Russian crewmen dressed in “biological suits” released canisters containing biological material out of the aft torpedoes tubes.
Each man detailed his mission of infiltration and misinformation within his assigned organizations after reaching shore. Both subjects gave the interrogators names and locations of places where they were to make contact with Russian agents in Miami for drops and additional orders. The captives gave information about the Russian training camps in their countries, including locations, who ran them, and how they were staffed and guarded.
When the interrogations were complete, the captives were given water and food and turned over to the FBI, arrested, and charged with espionage. The third member of their team was picked up by the FBI shortly after and charged with the same crimes. With the information from the interrogations, combined with other information obtained from Simon’s covert operatives, the leaders of many of the subversive Cuban organizations were arrested and the organizations were shut down.
Information from the interrogations quickly reached the Task Force. One segment of the Intelligence Task Force was able to piece together the mysterious Soviet submarine puzzle. The target submarine was one of three experimental submarines secretly built to test a new hull design for the Soviets’ new hunter-killer class nuclear submarine that was to become part of Russian’s November Project 627 Kit Class. Of the three experimental submarines, one was lost due to mechanical failure, leaving the Cuban Target sub and her sister boat still on active duty.
The Task Force learned that the sister boat was in a different part of the world. It was immediately added to the Naval tracking system. The Task Force confirmed the Soviet-Cuban Target sub did not carry missiles but was well armed with torpedoes and the latest Russian electronic equipment.
Naval Intelligence still believed that the Russian undersea electronic equipment was not as good as U.S. undersea electronics at the time. The target sub had a shallow draft, which allowed her to get close to shore and display a low profile when on the surface. The three boats were built at the highest Soviet security level under a covered dock at the Russian Severodvinsk Naval Yard.
Naval Intelligence learned that after the Russian submarines had been constructed, the boats were brought out of the covered dock facility submerged under the hull of a surface ship, at night, which shielded them from any possible aircraft surveillance. The Task Force team did not have an explanation as to how the Cuban target sub penetrated the Pensacola, New Iberia, Louisiana, and Key West AWS patrols or the SOSUS system of underwater detection buoys. Members of the Task Force were hard at work trying to find answers to these questions.
While the Miami interrogations were being conducted, information from the Naval Medical Research Laboratory reached Marks, and it was not good news. The new report showed the cause of the infection was a new and particularly virulent strain of botulism which was resistant to antibiotics and which seemed impervious to salt water. In fact, the bacteria thrived in sea water, which meant it could be released from undersea canisters.
The recovery prospects for some of the crew members were not good. After receiving the initial call, Marks turned the information over to Task Force members working on the hazardous material component of the incident for follow-up.
The team learned that the strain of the botulism bacteria was grown on a supportive extracellular matrix biofilm which provided a strong binding substance, allowing it to adhere to the hull of t
he Prowfish. In the case of the Prowfish incident, the biofilm and its bacterial host were genetically engineered, replicating a substance found on the foot of sea urchins. This substance allows sea urchins, corals, and tubeworms to adhere strongly to rocks on the sea floor or the hulls of ships. The “syringe” antennae produced by the matrix provided the ideal medium for botulism bacteria to quickly grow.
Simon immediately returned to Washington. He and Marks met to discuss the next steps. Marks said to Simon, “Hodges is about to deploy SEAL Team Bravo. Do we make any changes to his orders?”
“No. We need Bravo in place in case the Russian’s don’t back down from the president’s upcoming position. Hodges will soon be tracking the Russian sub again, and I’m wondering how much of the new information should be communicated to him.”
Marks said, “He needs some of the new information to complete his mission, but I don’t think we should communicate details he doesn’t need to know.”
Simon agreed and Marks asked Simon to draft the message to Hodges. Simon said he would be back with a draft within the hour.
After their meeting Marks pondered, “We now know what the Russian sub’s mission was. Where the hell is it now and what is its current mission?”
27
Gulf of Mexico
Hanna was near the end of his duty watch when XO Benson handed Captain Hodges two decoded message from CNO. Hodges opened and read the messages aloud in ear shot of those in the control room. The first message read, “AIRBORNE RECOGNIZANCE IDENTIFIED RUSSIAN MINE SWEEPER OPERATING IN SECTOR 16. VESSEL IS BELIEVED TO BE LAYING MINES ALONG CUBAN SHORE SECTION 16. PROCEED WITH EXTREME CAUTION.”
Silent Sanction: A Novel Page 17