by Mike Maden
“Poseidons?” Adler asked.
“Nuclear-powered drone torpedoes with an estimated range of over six thousand miles, and an operational depth of up to ten thousand feet,” the admiral said. “The Russians claim that Poseidon can reach underwater speeds of a hundred knots whether it’s carrying a hundred-megaton nuclear or a conventional warhead.”
“Poseidon sounds like a doomsday machine,” Arnie said.
“It’s meant to sound like one,” Talbot said. “In reality, their speed and payloads are probably less than advertised. But even so, they can evade our defenses, which makes them a formidable weapon.”
“Do you think the Poseidon is the most likely weapon?” Foley asked.
“No, ma’am. It’s too new and too expensive for them to waste on something like sinking cargo ships.”
“What other subs do they have in the area?” Ryan asked.
“The Glazov was launched six weeks ago and assigned to the Pacific Fleet. It’s an improved Kilo-class diesel-electric boat. Probably the quietest boat they’ve ever put in the water, SSK or otherwise.”
“How quiet?” Foley asked.
“Remember the Krasnodar incident a few years back?” Talbot said. “That boat was also an improved Kilo class, only this new one is even better.”
Ryan shook his head, frustrated at the memory.
President Yermilov had announced to the world, and to NATO in particular, the launch of the Krasnodar and its mission to fire its Kalibr cruise missiles into Syria. NATO tracked the boat—which conveniently ran on the surface—all the way from its home port in the Baltic to the Mediterranean Sea. Somewhere off the coast of Libya, it submerged and disappeared. It was only found again after it launched its cruise missiles at targets in Syria. It then resurfaced and headed for its new home base in the Crimea. NATO had taken to calling the Krasnodar “the Black Hole.”
“Where is the Glazov now?”
“We’re not sure, sir. NRO satellites tracked it leaving port six weeks ago, and passed it off to the Japanese. They assigned the Toryu to keep an eye on it. The Toryu is one of Japan’s new lithium-ion AIP diesel-electric boats—the most advanced in the world. But three days later, the Glazov submerged and slipped the leash. We’re not exactly sure where it is now but it was last seen heading in the general direction of the area in question.”
Ryan pointed at the map. “Given its operational capabilities and the locations of the sunken vessels, you think the Glazov is the most likely culprit?”
“Right now, it’s the only candidate. The fact it carries Kalibr-M cruise missiles and supercavitating Shkval torpedoes doesn’t exactly fit with a whale-watching mission profile.”
SecDef Burgess held up his hands. “I’m sorry, I’m just not buying this. Are we saying the Russian government has gone into the piracy business?”
“If by ‘piracy’ you mean we’re chasing a bunch of Ivans with parrots and peg legs, my guess would be no,” Ryan said. “But given Buck Logan’s experience, I’m comfortable calling these criminal actions ‘piracy.’” Ryan scanned the table. “But if anybody here says ‘arrr’ I’m canceling lunch.”
That elicited a much-needed chuckle around the table.
“But it seems odd for the Russians to engage in this kind of behavior,” SecState Adler said.
“Could be a cover or a feint. Could be they want us to believe we’re chasing pirates instead of Russian subs,” Arnie suggested.
“Why? What cover? What feint?”
Arnie shrugged. “Testing new weapons systems—or testing ours? Or a feint to draw us into this area while they do something else on the other side of the globe? Or trying to throw confusion into our ranks?”
“I think the President already alluded to the real reason,” SecDef Burgess said. “We’ve put economic sanctions on them for years. Loss of trade hurts them. Perhaps this is their way to dry up global trade on our end. Tit for tat.”
“I’ve got a better reason,” Ryan said. He pointed at Admiral Talbot. “You’re the one that brought up the Krasnodar. At the time, we all agreed Yermilov pulled that publicity stunt to embarrass NATO. But we figured out a little later it was actually a piece of theater meant to sell the improved Kilos to Third World customers like Egypt and India.”
“That’s right. And it worked. We put sanctions on the Russians, and they turn around and sell their Black Hole Kilos to every regional competitor who can cough up the rubles. Makes our job a whole helluva lot harder.”
“So, this Glazov sub is doing the same thing? Sinking commercial ships to prove its worth?” Arnie said.
“It’s only a theory,” Ryan said. “And right now, five bucks and my theory will only buy you a cup of burnt coffee. And there’s one other little problem.”
“What’s that?” Arnie asked.
“How in the hell do you find an unfindable boat?”
* * *
—
“So let’s continue the ‘who’ conversation,” Ryan said. “Someone tell me why it’s not the Russians.”
“What if the sinkings weren’t caused by a sub?” Arnie asked. “What if it was done with an explosive device smuggled on board? That could be the work of a terrorist organization.”
“But no terror demands have been made,” the SecDef countered.
“Cash has been demanded—lots of it—and those assholes need a shit-ton of loot to carry out their operations. We’ve done a good job of drying up their primary funding sources. Maybe this is their response to our efforts,” Arnie said.
“Terrorists aren’t out of the question,” Foley said. “But it’s kind of a reach, if we’re talking about the usual suspects.”
“Even Houthis are flying aerial drones these days,” Arnie said.
“Not in the South Pacific.”
“What about the Chi-Comms? They have deepwater boats, don’t they?” Arnie asked.
“We have all of their submarines accounted for,” Talbot said.
“How?”
Talbot smiled and winked. “Sorry, Arnie, but you’re not cleared for that one.”
A few chuckles burbled around the table.
Slightly irritated, Arnie pushed back. “What about the NORKs? Those assholes are always up to something, and as I recall, they have over six hundred combat vessels in their fleet, including subs.”
“All true, Mr. van Damm, but most of their surface fleet is limited to coastal operations—gunboats, patrol boats, and amphibs. We estimate they have seventy operational diesel subs and some of those have deepwater capability. But most of those are Soviet and Chi-Comm surplus, which I wouldn’t trust to sail the Potomac. I wouldn’t rule them out entirely, given their tenacity, but I wouldn’t put them anywhere near the top of the list.”
“What about regular, run-of-the-mill pirates?” Foley said. “They’ve been quite active over the last decade.”
Talbot spoke as he flashed his pointer at the piracy hotspots on the coasts of Africa, the Gulf of Oman near the Arabian Peninsula, the Strait of Malacca, and the South China Sea.
“Pirates are typically indigenous locals. Their SOP is to seize vessels or hostages for ransom, and their weapons inventory is limited to small arms. Given the location of the incidents in the South Pacific and the catastrophic destruction of the vessels and crew, I’d rule them out.”
“So where does that leave us?” the President asked.
“The fact that only cargo vessels have been targeted intrigues me,” Foley said. “There’s a lot of money in the oil industry. I’m surprised they aren’t hitting tankers. Some of the big ones now carry in excess of five hundred thousand deadweight tons of petroleum.”
“According to Logan’s ransom letter, these jokers want to keep things out of the public eye.” Ryan leaned on the desk. “Remember the Exxon Valdez? Imagine the global outrage if it was known that our pirates sank an oil ta
nker and destroyed an entire coral reef? There would be instant demand to find and prosecute them.”
“So it’s just cargo ships,” Foley said. “Under what flags?”
“Panama, Liberia, the Marshall Islands, Cyprus, and Moldova. Owners can avoid union wages and Western labor and environmental regulations.”
“Not Chinese-flagged? Or Russian?” the SecDef asked.
“Not to my knowledge, though several carried goods manufactured in China. One vessel was carrying a shipment of Chinese antibiotics.”
Ryan’s eyes narrowed. That was a sore subject with him, and one he’d been raising with the American pharmaceutical industry over the last year. Nearly eighty percent of all pharmaceuticals globally were now made in China, including prescription drugs, antibiotics, and over-the-counter medicines, along with the chemical precursors needed for just about everything else. Not a single penicillin factory existed in the United States anymore.
“So why not Chinese- or Russian-flagged ships? Is it just because our pirates don’t want to pick a fight with a real fighting navy?” Ryan asked. “Or does the fact that Russia and China haven’t been hit make them our leading suspects after all?”
* * *
—
“Wait a sec,” Ryan said. He turned toward the admiral. “Didn’t you say Glazov put to sea six weeks ago? And it’s still out there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what kind of underwater endurance does it have?”
Talbot pulled up a file on Glazov and flashed its photos and specs on a monitor.
“Our estimate is that they can stay under for two weeks without surfacing, and have a patrol range of forty-five days before they need to restock and refuel.”
Ryan jumped to his feet. He marched over to the other monitor still displaying the locations of the sunken ships in the South Pacific.
“Okay, let’s assume just for the sake of argument that the Glazov is our culprit. If it’s operating in this area and it’s at the end of its forty-five-day endurance, where the hell does it resupply out here in the middle of nowhere? There aren’t any Russian naval bases in the area.”
“Good question,” Talbot said. He stared at the map for a moment. “There’s gotta be a sub tender in the area.”
“Is there?” Ryan asked.
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Can you change back to the live screen and zoom in here?” Ryan pointed at a spot in the remotest part of the South Pacific.
“Roger that.” Talbot pulled up all of the ships broadcasting AIS signals.
Ryan touched one of the arrowheads with his finger. “What’s this?”
Talbot put his pointer on the arrowhead. A text box appeared. “That’s the Penza. It’s Russian-flagged and registered out of Vladivostok.” There weren’t any other specs on the readout. The Penza AIS only put out what it wanted to communicate.
“Give me just one minute,” Talbot said as he snatched up his tablet and tapped a few virtual keys searching a database. When he slid his finger across the tablet it threw a still photo of the Penza onto another wall monitor. A black-and-red rusted cargo ship. The white multistory bridge stood on the aft end. The deck featured two powerful cranes.
“The Penza’s a multipurpose vessel. One hundred meters long, nearly eleven thousand tons’ displacement. Transports wet and dry cargo. You can see the two twenty-five-ton derricks for lifting.”
Talbot’s face broke into a wide grin.
“Son of a gun. That’s the tender.”
Ryan nodded. “And if that’s a tender, then the Glazov is our boat.”
* * *
—
“What are our chances of finding a ‘Black Hole’ boat like the Glazov?” Ryan asked the admiral.
“The Glazov is relatively small and optimized for silent operations. We’d have a better chance of pulling a winning lottery ticket once a day for seven days in a row than we do finding it. But you know what they say—you can’t win if you don’t play.”
Ryan smiled. “Then let’s play. Where are the Theodore Roosevelt and CSG-9 right now?”
“The Roosevelt carrier strike group is one hundred and fifty miles southwest of Hawaii.”
“That’s Admiral Pike’s command, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. David’s top drawer.” Talbot was pleased but not surprised that his commander in chief knew the names of his most important commanders in the field.
“How long to get them to the area in question?”
“At thirty knots, I’d estimate three days.”
“Unless you can think of a reason not to, let’s send them that way. Putting seventy-five-hundred pairs of eyes on the situation can only be a good thing, not to mention the ASW capabilities they’ll bring with them.”
“Roger that, sir. Admiral Pike will jump all over this. A French attack sub sank his boat and most of his CSG off the coast of Florida in an exercise in 2015. The French bragged about it on Twitter until we made them pull it down. He’s never gotten over it. He’ll be glad for the rematch—in real time. May I make one other suggestion?”
“Shoot.”
Talbot highlighted another arrowhead sailing halfway between Chile and New Zealand. “That’s the Luzon, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, one of our newest. She has ASW capabilities, including two Seahawk helicopters. We can divert Luzon into the area to start a search almost immediately.”
“Do it.”
The President crossed over to his chair and laid his hands on the headrest. “I think we’ve taken a pretty good first swing at this thing. Now we have to wait until the Luzon reports back. I wish this was the only thing on our plates today, but we all have other things to attend to, so I’m calling it for now. Thank you all again for your time and input.”
With the meeting declared over, Ryan’s team shuffled out. Before the SecState exited the room, Ryan called after him.
“Scott, a word, if you don’t mind? I have one other idea.”
23
“What can I do for you, Mr. President?” SecState Adler said.
“Scott, I want you to set up an appointment with that new Russian ambassador ASAP.”
“You mean Christyakov? The one whose credentials you haven’t accepted yet?”
“Yeah. That one.” Ryan rolled his eyes. The chief of protocol had vetted the man. Christyakov was apparently no more odious or problematic than the other ambassadors in Yermilov’s diplomatic corps. Ryan wasn’t eager to accommodate yet another crony of the Russian president, even if he was Yermilov’s most important diplomatic officer.
“If you don’t mind my asking, why the change of heart? And why now?”
“I want his rear end in a chair across from the Resolute desk so I can get the measure of him. If the Russians really are up to something in the South Pacific, he might know something about it, and with any luck, I can shake it out of him.”
“Not literally, I hope.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
Yermilov had just appointed the nephew of Russia’s largest petroleum conglomerate, GazNeft, to the American post, a man with no diplomatic experience whatsoever. That was fine with Ryan. He was more than happy to steal candy from a spoiled Russian baby.
“My people on the Russia desk say there’s more to him than meets the eye. He might be harder to rattle than you suppose.”
“A diplomatic credential does not a diplomat make.”
“That’s just the thing. He’s not like most diplomats.”
“Then it should be an interesting conversation. If a Russian sub is behind all of this mess, I intend to find out, and convince him to tell Yermilov to back off. Frankly, Scott, I’m worried about the bigger picture here.”
“Are you referring to the Snow Dragon exercise next week?”
“Yeah. And that’s just one piece of a larger puzzle.”
In the relationship—Ryan likened it to a shotgun wedding between the Hatfields and McCoys—Russia brought to bear its technological and engineering expertise in Arctic oil and gas production. China brought its enormous banking and credit reserves to fund those operations, including a GazNeft facility now pumping over sixteen million tons of super-cooled liquefied natural gas from beneath the polar ice.
The Chinese Politburo had released an official white paper six months earlier outlining their plan to create the “Polar Silk Road,” an extension of its global Belt and Road Initiative. The BRI was China’s grand strategic plan to bring about a Eurasian economic zone. This would ultimately lead to political and military integration of the Eurasian landmass, an existential threat not only to the United States but also the rest of the world.
The Polar Silk Road through the Arctic would shorten the sea route from Shanghai to Hamburg by more than three thousand miles. A major military exercise in the Bering Sea within shooting distance of Alaska gave a whole new meaning to the idea of a new “cold” war.
“Let’s get this Christyakov his papers, and then we’ll see what he’s made of.”
“I’ll get right on it, Mr. President. Any chance I can watch? I’ve never seen two scorpions in a bottle fight it out before.”
“It’s better if I handle this on my own. It won’t take long for either of us to find out who has the bigger stinger.”
24