Reaching across the table, Wilson retrieved the letter and read it again, still finding it impossible to believe. They had been ordered to hunt down one of their own. One of his own, in a macabre scenario beyond comprehension. Disbelief, anger, and frustration swirled within as he struggled to come to terms with the president’s directive and Stanbury’s request. Professionally, he could follow through. But personally … The thought of the Kentucky engaged in a duel to the death with another U.S. submarine churned his stomach. Even if the Kentucky prevailed, they would just send in another fast attack, and another. The end result was not in doubt. He tried not to think about the men aboard the ballistic missile submarine as the cold water dragged the crew—including his son—down to their watery tomb.
Finally, Wilson spoke. “There has to be another way.”
Stanbury searched Wilson’s eyes for a moment before replying. “That’s one of the reasons you’re here. The last thing I want is to sink one of our own submarines. I need options. Anything that will allow me to carry out the intent of my orders”—Stanbury picked up the folder and waved it in the air—“without sinking the Kentucky. But we have to stop her from launching.”
Wilson let out a deep breath, realizing Stanbury had opened the door to alternatives. Now he needed to find one. His mind shifted into analytical mode, and it wasn’t long before he latched on to a solution.
“We’ll vector a couple of fast attacks into the Kentucky’s moving haven, and after they locate her, instead of attacking, they’ll communicate with her via underwater comms, telling her she’s had a Radio Room casualty and COMSUBPAC has ordered her to return to port.”
Wilson waited for Stanbury’s reaction. He knew it was a long shot. Trident crews were well trained. Once a launch order was received, nothing would stop them from launching except a Termination order. Not even underwater communications from a friendly fast attack. But it was worth a try.
“Good idea,” Stanbury said as he placed the folder back on the table. “However, the fast attacks need to be weapons-free, in case the Kentucky ignores them and tries to slip away. This may be our only opportunity.”
Wilson nodded somberly. “I’ll take care of it.”
“One more thing,” Stanbury added. “I need a plan for the rest of the fleet in case your fast-attack plan fails. I’ll be briefing Admiral Herrell at PAC Fleet later this morning. There’s one additional complication, however. Our orders are clear—we’re to minimize the number of personnel who know the ship we’ve been directed to sink is a U.S. submarine. By no means can we tell the entire fleet their target is the Kentucky. But if we don’t tell them the truth, and they classify the target as a Trident submarine, what then?”
“We don’t need to worry about the surface ships and aircraft,” Wilson answered. “Once they detect a submarine, they’ll attack immediately and not wait to determine what class it is. Our fast-attack submarines, on the other hand, could be a problem. It’s possible one of them will recognize the Kentucky’s frequency tonals as a Trident.”
Stanbury agreed. “The last thing we want is an attack aborted because there’s confusion over whether they’re prosecuting the desired contact. Do you have any suggestions?”
Wilson contemplated the quandary, searching for a solution. And then it dawned on him. “I think I have a plan, Admiral.”
18
WASHINGTON, D.C.
As the early afternoon light filtered through the tall colonnade windows in the Oval Office, Kevin Hardison struggled to avoid staring at the woman in the chair next to him, across from the president’s desk. She was, without a doubt, the most attractive woman he had ever met. His eyes kept returning for brief glimpses, lingering only for an appropriate period of time, until he finally decided to take advantage of her conversation with the president, giving him the opportunity to thoroughly admire her body. She shifted in her chair, crossing her right leg over her left, revealing well-defined calves, her skirt inching up her thighs, exposing lean, muscular legs. Her hair fell across the front of her shoulders, drawing Hardison’s eyes toward the opening of her blouse, the rounded flesh hinting at full, and undoubtedly firm, breasts.
Even in a conservative business suit, she was undeniably beautiful, and when she arrived at the occasional White House state dinner wearing a formal evening dress that hugged the curves of her body, every head turned, men and women alike forgetting the position she held and the influence she wielded. She would normally wear her hair up, pulled back to reveal the sleek lines of her neck, drawing admiring stares up toward her high cheekbones and glittering blue eyes.
If that wasn’t enough, her incredible physique was easily matched by her intelligence. The woman spoke with the president as an equal, he respecting her opinion, she absorbing his. Confidence was reflected in the tone of her voice, competence in the words she employed and the information she conveyed. The president nodded as she expertly explained the situation at hand. Hardison caught a faint smile on her lips as the president agreed with her assessment; a smile she seemed to reserve for others and not him, a smile that brightened her face, enhancing her almost irresistible attractiveness. Without a doubt, Hardison mused as he examined her body again, she was easily the most intelligent and beautiful woman he had ever met. Unfortunately, there was the issue of the woman’s personality.
If only she weren’t such an obstinate bitch.
Christine turned her head toward Hardison, catching him staring at her breasts. She threw him a withering look as she tugged the lapels of her suit jacket together across her chest. Her icy stare, combined with the vague recollection of someone mentioning his name, brought Hardison’s thoughts back to their discussion. He’d been asked a question, and his mind dragged the words from his subconscious, piecing together the president’s query. “I agree,” Hardison finally answered. “A Chinese ballistic missile submarine is a reasonable proposition.”
“It’s a perfect cover story,” added Brackman, who was seated on the other side of Christine. “The idea is to create a fictional target that has the same sound characteristics as a Trident submarine, so if our fast attacks correlate the frequencies to a Trident, it won’t be a surprise to them.”
“Why Chinese?” the president asked.
“Because the Chinese are notorious for stealing our military secrets,” Brackman replied. “They’ve already stolen designs for some of our older nuclear warheads, and they’ve been seeking submarine construction details for years. Their new Yuan-class is a copy of the Russian Kilo, and it’s not a stretch to believe they’ve finally collected the necessary information to build an indigenous variant of our Trident submarine. Our first Trident entered service over thirty years ago, so that’s certainly enough time for them to conduct the necessary espionage.”
“Our fast-attack submarines will be informed the target is a replica of our Trident submarine,” Brackman added, “and they’ll be instructed to search for standard Trident tonals. It’s an ingenious solution.”
“Only for the time being,” the president clarified. “When the Kentucky doesn’t return from patrol, what then?”
There was a long silence before Hardison replied, “We haven’t thought that part through yet.”
8 DAYS REMAINING
19
USS SAN FRANCISCO
Twelve hundred miles west of the Hawaiian Islands and just north of the Tropic of Cancer, the USS San Francisco surged eastward at ahead full, four hundred feet beneath the ocean’s surface, returning home after her six-month WESTPAC deployment. Inside the submarine’s sonar shack, Petty Officer 1st Class Tom Bradner studied the sonar screens in front of him. Resting his chin on his hand, Bradner tried to concentrate on the random static from the spherical array in the ship’s bow and the towed array streaming a half mile behind the submarine. They were far from the shipping lanes and hadn’t held a contact for the better part of a day.
Bradner ran his finger along the thin scar running down his left cheek to the base of his jaw, drawing his
thoughts back to the day, in this very sonar shack, when warm flesh had been sliced open by cold metal. They had been on a routine transit to Australia, at ahead flank a hundred feet deeper than they were now, catching up with the middle of their moving haven after falling behind during drills. There had been no warning. Only his body suddenly flying through the air, slamming into the console in the forward part of the shack as the seven-thousand-ton submarine slowed from ahead flank to dead stop in a mere three seconds.
Pacific Ocean charts were notoriously inaccurate, and they had run into an uncharted mountain, even though the water depth was listed as six thousand feet. The watchstanders in Control picked themselves up and recovered quickly, initiating an Emergency Blow. As blood ran down Bradner’s face, pain was overshadowed by fear as the submarine began to tilt, the stern lifting upward, the bow remaining on the ocean floor. The forward main ballast tanks had been damaged in the collision, and precious Emergency Blow air was escaping from the ruptured tanks instead of pushing the water out, trapping the San Francisco on the ocean bottom. Luckily, the bow broke free from the ocean floor, and the San Francisco rose slowly upward.
Of the 137 men aboard, 98 were injured to some extent, with 23 injured seriously enough they were unable to stand watch during the submarine’s return to Guam. There was one fatality: Bradner’s best friend, Joe Ashley, a machinist mate who was thrown twenty feet into the eight-foot-tall drain pump, fracturing his skull. It was a miracle the San Francisco itself wasn’t destroyed. The submarine’s pressure hull survived intact, buffered by the ship’s forward main ballast tanks as they crumpled into the mountain peak.
After the submarine limped back to port, the engineers determined the San Francisco’s bow was a complete loss. There was no way to fix the hull and have any confidence in the durability and life span of the repaired ship. If the San Francisco hadn’t completed a reactor refueling a few months earlier, together with a complete modernization of her tactical systems, Bradner was sure the ship would have been scrapped. But the Navy had invested too much money to throw the ship away. So they cut off the bow of the USS Honolulu on its way through decommissioning, welding it onto the front of the San Francisco in place of its mangled counterpart. The San Franlulu, as the ship was now nicknamed, was back in business, the most modern and capable, if a bit schizophrenic, Los Angeles–class submarine in the fleet.
The Officer of the Deck’s voice booming across the 27-MC brought Bradner’s thoughts back to the present, the OOD’s announcement sending him back to the past just as quickly. The submarine was coming right, increasing speed to ahead flank, changing depth to five hundred feet, the same depth and speed they had been operating at when they ran into the submerged mountain. Bradner acknowledged, wondering what was going on.
* * *
“Helm, steady course one-one-zero.”
The San Francisco’s Officer of the Deck turned to the ship’s Captain, Commander Ken Tyler. “How long on this course and speed, sir?”
Leaning over the navigation display in Control, Tyler did the mental calculations. “Fourteen hours. Do not slow for soundings. We don’t have time.”
The Officer of the Deck raised his eyebrows, keenly aware of the peril of traveling at ahead flank without soundings. But what concerned him even more was the Captain’s next order.
“Load all torpedo tubes.”
20
PEARL HARBOR, HAWAII
It was two hours before midnight when Murray Wilson reached the deserted waterfront, headed toward the Operations Center in the N7 building. He had never seen the naval base so empty, devoid of its surface and subsurface warships, the lonely shore power cables swaying gently back and forth in the trade wind. Across the channel, pierside lamps pushed weak yellow light across the black water, the surface of Southeast Loch shimmering in the night as the water lapped against the concrete pilings. As Wilson walked along the quiet submarine wharves, he passed a darkened Lockwood Hall on his right, where seventy years earlier, festive bands had played, celebrating the return of submarine crews from successful war patrols. Wives and children had waited on the pier, leis in their hands, welcoming their loved ones home.
Wilson had headed home only an hour ago, finding a welcome plate of food waiting on the dining room table. Claire sat across from him while he ate in silence. Rumors had been flying since the early morning recall of every warship crew in Pearl Harbor, until a press release was issued explaining it was nothing more than a surprise training exercise, testing the fleet’s ability to surge in response to an unexpected wartime threat. Wilson could tell Claire was waiting for him to explain what was really going on, but he simply said he’d be heading back to the sub base and wouldn’t return until morning. He could see the concern in her eyes as he kissed her good-bye. He desperately hoped she hadn’t seen right through him, hadn’t sensed he’d been asked to kill their only son. He told himself for the thousandth time he had no choice. The life of his son could not outweigh the lives of millions.
Reaching the N7 building, Wilson climbed the staircase on the south side to the second level and entered the cold air-conditioned hallway. Halfway down the corridor, he entered his code into the cipher lock, took a deep breath to steady himself, then stepped inside the Operations Center, domain of the Watch Officers responsible for Water Space Management, a fancy term for underwater traffic cops. Inside the Operations Center, two lieutenants and a lieutenant commander stood watch, monitoring the movement of the submarines under way, their positions displayed on an eight-by-ten-foot monitor on the front wall.
Every fast-attack submarine in the United States Pacific Fleet was at sea tonight, except for three submarines in dry dock undergoing deep maintenance. Even the submarines whose availability was advertised as “one week after notification” had loaded the necessary supplies and cast off their lines. A total of twenty-nine fast attacks were under way, twenty-one headed west from their home ports or local waters, plus five deployed submarines and three more from Guam screaming east, the San Francisco in the lead, already halfway home. As the San Francisco and the two leading fast attacks from Pearl Harbor approached the Kentucky’s position, not even the Watch Officers in the Operations Center knew what was about to occur.
Upon entering the Submarine Service, Wilson had been surprised at how tightly underwater movements were controlled. On the surface, submarines were allowed the freedom to determine what route to take to get from point A to point B. Once submerged, however, they were told where to go, and no two submarines were allowed to operate in the same area, except during carefully controlled training engagements or transits. In those cases, one submarine would be restricted shallow and the other deep, one submarine passing above the other on its transit or as it attempted to detect and engage its simulated adversary below.
The reason for this was the complexity of tracking contacts while submerged. On the surface, radar and the human eye easily conveyed the information required to avoid another ship, but not so underwater. Unlike radar, passive sonar could determine only the direction of the contact, not how far away it was. With only the bearing to the contact, determining its course, speed, and range took time; time during which a contact could approach dangerously close. It was not uncommon for submarines, particularly during the cold war, to collide as one trailed the other in a high-tech game of cat and mouse, guessing wrong at what new speed and course the lead submarine had maneuvered to before the crew sorted it out.
As a result, submarine underwater movements were carefully managed from the COMSUBPAC Operations Center and its sister facility at SUBLANT. Submarines in transit to their patrol or deployment areas were allowed to submerge only within a rectangular box called a moving haven, which moved forward on a particular course and speed. Inside the moving haven, the submarine was free to go in any direction and speed, running to the front of the box and then slowing down for drills or for a trip to periscope depth.
Even ballistic missile submarines were assigned moving havens as they travele
d to and from their patrol areas. Most patrol areas, assigned the names of precious jewels such as Emerald, Sapphire, Ruby, and Diamond, covered over a million square miles. Finding a submarine inside its moving haven was child’s play compared to searching out a patrol area.
Wilson looked up at the display, examining the three 688-class submarines moving into attack position. The rectangular box representing the Kentucky’s moving haven was advancing steadily to the west, with the San Francisco heading east on her way home, about to pass north of the Kentucky. Meanwhile, two 688s to the south, one behind the other, were rapidly catching up to the ballistic missile submarine’s moving haven. In an effort to conceal what the three submarines had been tasked with, Wilson had drafted their MOVEORDs himself, restricting access to his eyes only. Up to now, it would appear they were following normal transit orders. Wilson checked his watch. It was almost time.
“Everyone out!” he announced.
The three Watch Officers looked up in surprise. “Sir?” one of them asked.
“Go home, and inform the midwatch they have the night off. I’ve got the watch until six A.M.”
The Watch Officers exchanged confused glances until Wilson made it perfectly clear. “Now!”
The Watch Officers logged off their computers and left, leaving Wilson alone in the Operations Center, staring at the monitor. A few minutes later, exactly on time, the San Francisco veered to the south while the two 688s below turned north. The San Francisco would cut through the center of the Kentucky’s moving haven, while the other 688s sliced through the leading and trailing thirds.
In the effort to ensure all three submarines arrived at the same time, Wilson had routed the San Francisco at ahead flank, slowing her only a few miles before engaging. Under normal circumstances, this would have been a critical flaw in Wilson’s plan, as the Kentucky might detect the San Francisco before she slowed. But Murray was confident the crew of the Kentucky played no part in the plot to launch their missiles at Iran; they were merely pawns.
The Trident Deception Page 12