Understrike

by James Barrington

  ‘Maybe that’s it,’ Barber said. ‘Maybe that’s what the Russians have got planned. That would definitely be classed as unconventional.’

  Richter shook his head.

  ‘That’s what I thought at first, but we have to look at the practicalities. As far as I’ve been able to find out, you can’t use an explosion, not even a nuclear explosion, to trigger an eruption. It just can’t happen. Even if they mounted a rig on the top of Cumbre Vieja and drilled a hole right down into it, and then dropped a nuke down it, pretty much nothing would happen. Because of the temperatures inside a volcano, a conventional nuke probably wouldn’t explode because the firing circuits and the plutonium would be melted almost instantly by the heat, and if they somehow could get it to detonate, even a serious multi-megaton weapon simply wouldn’t have the power to blow the volcano apart, and that’s what they’d have to do for this to work. All volcanoes are made of solid compacted rock, and exploding a device inside the cone would have no effect at all because the mass of rock would simply contain it. For the explosives to do any good – or rather any harm – they would have to be right down in the magma chamber, and that can easily be three or four miles underground, maybe even deeper, way down under the cone of the volcano, where there would be an even greater thickness of rock. It would be like doing an underground nuclear test. There’d be a kind of a thump, seismograph needles around the world would jump about a bit, and that would be more or less it.’

  ‘But,’ Barber insisted,’ if they had worked out some way of doing it, that would definitely be classed as an unconventional attack. Maybe we need to get some specialist advice.’

  Right then, Richter was prepared to look at anything, any idea, that might move them forward, and he nodded.

  ‘I’ll give my boss a bell,’ he replied. ‘At least we can ask the questions and see if anyone can come up with a sensible answer.’

  Chapter 31

  Saturday

  MV Semyon Timoshenko, at sea

  Captain Vadim Pankin was very pleased with the way the automated weapon release modifications were going. He was very aware that the ship was so far away from the regular transoceanic traffic routes that the chances of seeing another vessel were comparatively slim, and so his crew could work on and around the double container without very much risk of being spotted, solving every minor difficulty as soon as they encountered it. And even if a ship or aircraft did somehow get within visual range of the ship, maintainers working on the deck, or even on the containers stacked on that deck, was not a particularly noteworthy sight.

  With less than 72 hours to go before the originally planned deployment of the device, a deployment that would now occur a short time later than expected, he was more convinced than ever that automating the operation was the right thing to do. And he was certain that nothing would go wrong on the day, as long as the chief engineer’s modifications functioned as he believed they would.

  The other factor which had been brought to his attention by the navigating officer was that deployment was planned for Tuesday afternoon, at their current modified and rather slower rate of progress and assuming that the weather forecast was accurate. That meant the launch of the device would have to take place in daylight and very close to the Canary Islands, and with a strong possibility that other vessels, most likely merchant ships that would include cargo vessels, inter-island ferries and perhaps even cruise ships, would be in the vicinity when deployment was scheduled to take place. That in itself would not be a problem, because the revised deployment system would take under five minutes to rotate the container whilst simultaneously prepping the device, opening the doors in front of the weapon and beginning the launch sequence, which was a little more than half the best time the crew had ever achieved while performing the evolution manually. So all that needed to happen the following Tuesday afternoon was for the starboard side of the Semyon Timoshenko to be out of sight of all other vessels for five minutes, or ten minutes to allow a margin for error, and then the launch could go ahead.

  And the launch position itself was also not critical. An optimum location had been plotted, but the planning team had emphasized that the launch could actually take place anywhere within a theoretical patch of ocean roughly ten miles long and three miles wide, and clearly the ship’s speed and heading could be altered on the day to ensure that the vessel could enter the area and deploy the device without their activity being seen by any third party.

  The other thing that the captain was now insisting upon, with the culmination of their voyage rapidly approaching, was that the Spetsnaz soldiers, on board to provide protection for the vessel against boarding by anyone from pirates – a remote eventuality in the Atlantic – to enemy soldiers, were fully alert and familiar with all their weapons. These dozen men were armed with pistols – all Glock 9-millimetre semiautomatic weapons to ensure commonality in terms of ammunition – and Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles with plenty of spare magazines. However, those were only their personal weapons.

  Although they were reasonably certain that their entirely covert mission was still just that – entirely covert – they also had five Verba 9K333 MANPADS (Man-Portable Air Defence Systems), NATO reporting name SA-25 Willow, stowed below decks but close enough to be accessed within a matter of seconds, just in case they were threatened from the air. Probably the most effective portable air defence weapon in the world, the Verba fires the 9K336 missile, which carries a warhead weighing over three pounds and can engage high-speed targets at ranges of between 500 and 6,500 metres at heights of up to 4,500 metres. The missile travels at a speed of 500 metres a second, powered by a solid fuel rocket motor and incorporates a three-channel seeker head working in the ultraviolet, near-infrared and mid-infrared ranges. And in case the threat came from a surface ship rather than an aircraft, they also had half a dozen of the old but effective and reliable RPG-7 rocket propelled grenade launchers, fitted with OG-7V fragmentation grenades and a couple of Vampir RPG-29 launchers as well, firing TBG-29 thermobaric rockets. Each RPG also had one reload.

  Live firing of any of the weapons was clearly not an option, because they only had a certain amount of ammunition, but the NCO in charge drilled the soldiers constantly, insisting on them practising field stripping their pistols and assault rifles by day and by night, so that they could do it by touch and feel alone. That was merely an extension and a reminder of their original training, and they also practised with the RPGs and with the Verba until they were as familiar with handling the heavier weapons as they were with their sidearms.

  In reality, they expected to use none of the hardware, and the captain had already tentatively formulated a plan to sell at least some of the weapons they had on board to some of the local warlords they expected to encounter during their voyage around Africa and might meet in some of the ports they visited. A state-of-the-art anti-aircraft weapon, he was quite sure, would be worth a significant amount of money, and Kalashnikovs and RPGs were popular almost everywhere.

  Once the mission had been completed, he doubted very much if his masters in Moscow and St Petersburg would be particularly bothered about what amounted to minor inventory errors in the ship’s armament records.

  Chapter 32

  Saturday

  RV Thomas G Thompson, at sea

  The ship’s satellite communication system again ensured a clear line to Hammersmith on Richter’s mobile.

  ‘Progress?’ Simpson asked, the moment the call was connected.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ Richter replied. ‘I need to talk to a volcanologist.’

  ‘Did you say an archaeologist? What the hell do you want to talk to one of those for?’

  ‘Not an archaeologist, Simpson. A volcanologist, a bloke who knows about volcanoes.’

  ‘Why?’ Simpson asked, then apparently changed his mind. ‘Don’t bother answering that. I’ll find one somewhere and then get back to you. Maybe there’s a shop called "Volcanologists-R-Us" where they have them neatly lined up on the shelves.’ />
  ‘He’ll track one down,’ Richter said, ending the call, ‘but I still think this is a blind alley. Any other ideas?’

  Barber shook his head, but Pavlov didn’t, and when the Russian said anything, Richter had already decided that he was worth listening to, because he knew the contents of the recordings better than anyone else. And his English was completely fluent, which meant there would be no misunderstandings.

  ‘Dmitri?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s one other thing that stuck in my mind, but again it doesn’t seem to make sense. A couple of times I heard those people say the name of a former Marshal of the Soviet Union under Stalin, a man named Semyon Timoshenko. But he died in about 1970, I think, so I have no idea why his name came up. And a bit like the "we can help" remark, I couldn’t get any kind of context.’

  ‘I heard the name in the recordings,’ Richter replied, ‘and I remember thinking it struck a chord, but that’s about all. Was there anything special about him? Did he use particular battlefield tactics or anything like that?’

  ‘Not really. He was involved in most of the conflicts in Russia, starting off as a cavalryman during the First World War, and then the Russian Civil War, where he became a friend of Stalin, which did him and his career no harm at all. I think he was a competent army officer, but his troops did suffer a serious defeat in 1942 at the hands of the Germans, and then he kind of fell out of favour with Stalin. But he continued his military career after the war, and even appeared on one of our postage stamps. I think he was more of a traditionalist than an innovator, and as far as I’m aware he had nothing to do with unconventional warfare or tactics.’

  That didn’t help at all, as far as he could see. About ten minutes later Richter’s mobile rang, and he instantly recognized Simpson’s voice.

  ‘Right, Richter, the next voice you hear will be Professor Alan Cross, who claims to know about these things. Go ahead, Cross.’

  Simpson had never been a great respecter of titles or academic excellence. A couple of times in the past he had remarked to Richter that academic training was the last bastion of the entirely untalented and usually unwashed.

  A group of the ship’s scientists, all talking noisily together, entered the mess at the same time, and he stepped outside so that he could hear the call clearly.

  ‘Professor Cross?’

  ‘I’m here. How can I help you?’

  ‘This is what I hope is a theoretical question, Professor,’ Richter said, ‘but in your opinion is it possible to use a large quantity of explosives, perhaps even a nuclear weapon, to cause a volcanic eruption?’

  ‘I can’t imagine why anyone would want to do that,’ Cross replied.

  ‘Unfortunately I can,’ Richter said, ‘but what we need to know is whether or not it’s possible.’

  Cross didn’t reply for a few moments, presumably considering his response.

  ‘The short answer is no,’ he said. ‘I know you military people think that the most powerful forces on the surface of this planet are nuclear weapons, but they are utterly insignificant compared to the forces that nature can muster. Unless you were picking on a very small volcano, and that is more or less a contradiction in terms, and using a very large nuclear weapon, I doubt if the explosion could do much more than slightly alter the shape of the cone. The driving force behind every volcano is the magma, and the magma chamber is so far below ground in every case that getting a nuclear weapon into it would be impossible, and even if you could achieve that, it would almost certainly melt before the detonation sequence had completed, or had even started. In short, it wouldn’t explode.’ He paused for a moment before asking a question of his own. ‘Did you have a particular volcano in mind for this interesting experiment?’

  Richter also didn’t respond immediately, wondering if there was any point in continuing the conversation. What the professor had told him precisely matched the information he had already discovered. Then he gave a mental shrug and answered the professor’s question.

  ‘Cumbre Vieja,’ he said.

  ‘Ah. In that case, the answer is definitely no. That’s not a big volcano. In fact, it’s a very big and very old volcano. The name Cumbre Vieja in Spanish means "old summit" and there’s also a new summit – Cumbre Nueva – on the island as well. It has a number of visible craters, and the whole volcanic area covers about two thirds of the island of La Palma. From end to end it measures about fifteen miles, so there would be no point in detonating a nuclear weapon in it. You’d need to explode a whole series of them to cover the entire length, and there’s almost no possibility that such a mass explosion would have any effect at all upon the volcano. Nuclear weapons may be very good at levelling man-made structures like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but they’re no good at all at flattening mountains.’

  Again, that sounded like another door closing, an unequivocal statement that really should have ended all speculation there and then. But there was one other question that Richter wanted to ask.

  ‘Thank you for that, Professor. One last thing, if I may. Could you explain – briefly – what is meant by the term "phreatic"? The word came up in a related matter.’

  ‘I think what you probably mean is that it came up in relation to this matter, because it is relevant to Cumbre Vieja. What the term means is the heating of underground water, usually something like an aquifer or a river, by a volcanic heat source. As you might already have guessed, magma and water don’t mix. Or rather, when they do mix, the result is almost always an explosion, called a phreatic eruption. The word "phreatic" is derived from the Greek phrear, which means a spring or a well. The explosion results because the very high temperature of the magma – it can be well over one thousand degrees centigrade – vaporises the water almost instantly, and it expands explosively in all directions, taking with it ash, rock and steam. If the explosive material also contains molten magma, then it’s known as a phreatomagmatic eruption.’

  That was actually rather more information than Richter thought he needed, and the follow-up question to the professor’s explanation was fairly obvious, so he asked it.

  ‘You said the word phreatic was relevant to Cumbre Vieja. Could you tell me why?’

  ‘Let me give you a short history lesson. On 24 June 1949 a shepherd tending his sheep on La Palma at a geographical feature called the Nambroque was frightened when he heard noises, followed by the eruption of material, from the Duraznero vent. That was the precursor to a series of eruption events that ended on the thirtieth of July the same year. Most of this volcanic activity was comparatively mild in nature, but on both the first and the second of July there were a couple of strong earthquakes. Later investigation showed that these had caused a crack a little over one and a half miles in length to open up between the Duraznero vent and a feature called the Hoyo Negro or the Black Hole. Not only was the surface of the volcano cracked, but later measurements showed that the entire western side of the ridge of Cumbre Vieja had slipped about one metre sideways and roughly two metres downwards, though in some places it had dropped as much as four metres.

  ‘That gave rise to very obvious fears that the western side of the ridge could possibly break off and tumble into the Atlantic Ocean. If it did, it would create a hell of a splash, because the displaced material could amount to about five hundred cubic kilometres, depending on what parameters were used to calculate its volume, and if that landed more or less in a lump, or slid down the side of the island fairly quickly, the result would be a mega-tsunami.

  ‘One team of researchers calculated that it could have an initial amplitude of over six hundred metres – that’s about two thousand feet – and travel at four hundred and fifty miles per hour, only a little bit slower than a modern passenger jet aircraft. That means it would hit the south coast of Britain in about three and a half hours, and the American eastern seaboard in six, and at that stage, even after crossing the Atlantic, the waves could still be as high as two hundred feet. As they encountered the slopes of the coastal shelf, it was c
alculated that the amplitude would greatly increase, to several hundred metres in height, and the waves could penetrate over fifteen miles inland, which would wipe out virtually every city on the American East Coast with a catastrophic loss of life.’

  That was a close match for what Richter had found in his own researches, but it was one thing to read it as a conspiracy theory or whatever the correct term was on the web, and then to hear a professional volcanologist voicing the same theory.

  ‘Are you serious?’ he asked. ‘Could that happen?’

  ‘I am, yes,’ Professor Cross replied, ‘but I’m not entirely certain how serious the people who produced this report were. Or what they’d been imbibing.’

  ‘You mean it’s not accurate?’

  ‘In my considered and professional opinion, it’s complete nonsense, even if back in 2000 the bloody BBC did its best to terrify everyone with a typically biased explanation of what might happen if the west flank did slip into the ocean.’

  ‘Biased how?’ Richter interrupted.

  ‘Almost all of the so-called factual programmes on the BBC, and most other TV channels, come to that, have an agenda, some specific point the director is trying to make. So in this case they concentrated on interviewing scientists who believed the event would be catastrophic, and they produced descriptions and simulations to support that view and ignored everything said by anyone who didn’t agree with it. And they did a follow-up programme in 2013 that came to pretty much the same conclusion.’