Arctic Firepath (Sean Quinlan Book 2)

by Dominic Conlon

  ‘Get ready.’ The plane continued to shake violently.

  The co-pilot studied his instruments and pushed the button. ‘First bombs away!’

  They both felt the plane lighten as each bomb left its hardpoint. The pilot pulled the stick up sharply to get above the weather.

  The co-pilot checked the fuel level. ‘We’ve exceeded our loiter time.’

  ‘We’ll have to complete a second run. If we go home with unused ordnance there’ll be hell to pay.’

  ‘We could ditch them on the way back.’

  The pilot shook his head. ‘No. Don’t forget about the armaments control recorder. He turned to regard his colleague seated next to him. ‘This time we’ll approach from a different angle. Also, I want to extend the interval to one second between bombs.’

  ‘What about the fuel?’

  ‘We’ll have to pick an alternative airfield.’

  They descended through the clouds again. The buffeting was less violent and it was easier to estimate the distance of the American base.

  ‘Get ready.’

  The co-pilot double checked his instruments and pushed the button. ‘Bomb away!’

  The aircraft jolted as the missile left its hardpoint.

  ‘Second bomb away!’

  There was a longer pause. A red light blinked on the console. After a second the pilot asked, ‘What’s the holdup?’

  The co-pilot checked the readouts frantically. The last bomb still remained on its hardpoint. He toggled the arming switch, then jabbed the firing button again. After a slight hesitation, the bomb released.

  ‘Bomb away!’

  ‘Good. Let’s go home.’ The pilot pulled back the stick and set a course for the mainland.

  On board LK-80 the freezing rain obscured Captain Grigori’s view of the American base. But the sound of the Russian jet could be heard above the storm. It was turning back. Shortly afterwards he counted three explosions coming from the direction of the base.

  They had bombed the Americans! Grigori strove to find the warplane through the mix of sleet and hail, but it was impossible. However, the jet appeared to be turning towards him because the engine noise increased. A minute later he heard another explosion. Thinking that the bombing had finished, he started to make his way to the equipment hatch where he could crawl inside to hide and get warm.

  The whole ship lifted up. Smoke and debris hurled upwards in a geyser from the middle deck. Grigori shouted into his radio for the pilot to stop.

  ‘LK-80 has been hit, repeat, hit!’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ‘Get that chief engineer and bring him to me,’ barked Colonel Grey to one of the SEALs. They were in the aft saloon. Alarms rang throughout the ship and the Russian crew were showing signs of agitation. The SEAL dived into the crowd and pulled out Feliks Chayka.

  ‘We may have to abandon ship,’ said the Colonel. ‘I want you to prepare all Russian hands. You will need to issue life jackets, remove covers from the lifeboats and ensure all your crew are accounted for. They should present themselves to their assigned lifeboat section and be checked off. They should wait there until further orders. The situation is urgent - can you do that?’

  ‘Yes Colonel. But what about your men?’

  ‘I will make alternative arrangements for them.’

  Feliks wondered what they might be but didn’t have time to ponder. He hurried out to the bridge where he could use the tannoy to warn the crew.

  Colonel Grey turned to Major Pierce from the SEAL group. ‘Bring the RIBs alongside the ship. Alert everyone else on board we may have to abandon ship. They should be ready to evacuate immediately I give the order - but not until I give it. Then come back here. Understood?’

  Pierce didn’t even bother to reply, disappearing quickly from the room.

  ‘Cooke. Contact base. Find out what has happened there. Tell them we have taken a hit and are preparing to leave the ship. Oh, if they are in good shape, ask them if they can patch me through to the White House.’

  ‘Sir!’

  The public broadcast speakers burst into life with orders in Russian for the crew of LK-80 to muster to their stations.

  Colonel Grey caught a SEAL, about to leave the saloon. ‘Find the SRDRS program manager. Tell him to report to me immediately!’

  ‘Sir!’ The man wheeled smartly and double timed to the door. Even in the heat of the crisis Colonel Grey found time to admire the SEALs alertness and crisp reactions to orders.

  Lieutenant Colonel Cooke re-appeared. ‘I’ve made contact with base. It came under attack from a single Russian warplane. The strike was unprovoked. Altogether five bombs were released, but luckily there were no direct hits on the huts, and no fatalities. All the bombs were way wild of the target.’

  ‘Good. What about the patch to the situation room?’

  Cooke spoke into his handset. ‘Putting you through now.’ He handed over the phone.

  In a few short sentences Colonel Grey summarised the situation, adding ‘we need backup Mr Secretary.’

  ‘Tell me what you need.’ The voice of the Secretary of Defence, Brindle Harris, was faint but unmistakable.

  ‘We will need air cover in case there’s another attack. The next time there could be a squadron or more - who knows.’

  ‘Right, anything else?’

  ‘Yes.’ He checked his watch. ‘There are still four hours to go before the Russian deadline expires. Why did the Russians renege on the agreement?’

  ‘We don’t know. The raid came as much as a surprise to us as it did to you.’

  ‘Perhaps you could put pressure on the Russians to call off any new strike? We’re still bringing up men from the USS Montana.’

  ‘You bet we will be doing just that, Colonel. Keep me up to date.’

  ‘Yes sir, and thank you sir.’

  Grey handed the phone back to Cooke, and looked up as the SRDRS program manager arrived. ‘Dan. Sitrep please.’

  ‘We were about to send the PRM down again. We’ve had to call a halt when we took the hit.’

  ‘How many more trips?’

  ‘Three more sir. If it wasn’t for the bomb, we would be finished in about three hours. Now we have to assess the equipment to see if anything got damaged. As far as we can tell, nothing is broken but we’ll have to determine if the A-frame was strained beyond the allowed tolerances.’

  ‘Colonel Grey frowned. Could we continue anyway?’

  ‘We might lose the whole PRM, and sixteen people inside it, if we continued without checking.’

  Grey sighed. ‘Right, Dan. As quickly as you can please.’

  By now the saloon was almost deserted. Major Pierce arrived with one man in tow.

  ‘What have you got here Pierce?’

  ‘Thought you should hear what he has to say. He’s one of the two experts looking after the reactor.’

  Grey nodded and turned to the man. ‘I gather you had a lucky escape?’

  ‘Yes sir. We were in the reactor control centre when the bomb dropped. The room was untouched, but the bomb pierced the steel deck of the reactor hall. My partner is in there assessing the damage.’

  Grey drew his fingers through his hair. ‘What’s your opinion?’

  ‘Well the bomb plunged through several levels, but stopped short of holing the hull. We think the ultra-strong steel outer plates prevented a breech.’

  ‘Is there anything else?’

  ‘Yes sir. We’re still examining the systems in the Nuclear Power Plant, so the full extent of the situation won’t be known for some time. However, what we do know is that the effect of the bomb exploding in the confined space has damaged at least one of the reactor’s safety systems.’

  ‘Could you be more specific? Will we have to abandon the ship?’

  ‘At some point we might have to.’

  ‘In the next hour or two?’

  The engineer nodded. ‘The reactor seals had already been damaged by toxic contamination. We put in an urgent request for expert he
lp to be flown out.’

  ‘Expert help? But you’re the expert.’

  The man hunched his shoulders. ‘We’re the experts when it comes to American built Pressurised Water Reactors. The Russian versions are different.’

  ‘They can’t be that different, surely?’

  ‘Yes they can sir - especially the backup safety systems. We don’t have any experience of them. They’re, ah, largely untried and we certainly don’t have enough time or experience to understand them, let alone operate them.’

  The Colonel stared at him. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘We could cause the reactor to go into meltdown.’

  ‘You mean, it could explode?’ The Colonel’s face lost some of its colour.

  ‘No, Colonel. But the end result might be the same.’

  ‘Jesus, man. Make sense. Why can’t you just shut the thing down?’

  ‘When the missile dropped, the first safety system activated automatically. Normally it would force the absorber rods into the core and quench the nuclear fission process.’ The engineer curled the fingers of one hand into a fist, leaving a small hole. He used two fingers on his other hand to slide them in. ‘However the explosion caused several of the control rods to be bent out of alignment and they could not be forced down their guide channels.’ Withdrawing the fingers, he curled them and tried to reinsert them, demonstrating how they became blocked.

  ‘Sir, the reactor cannot be SCRAMMED, meaning that unless one of the other safety systems are operated successfully, the temperature will continue to rise and it will reach meltdown.’

  ‘What happens then?’

  ‘The Uranium fuel rods will melt. That would happen at about 2,700 degrees Celsius - just over half the surface temperature of the Sun.’

  ‘Good God. I suppose at that temperature it would melt through anything.’

  ‘Correct. After a period it would melt through its containment vessel. But it wouldn’t stop there. It would burn through the floor plates and the bilge, and carry on through the hull of the ship.’

  ‘What would happen then?’

  The man avoided eye contact. ‘The molten uranium would react with the seawater. There would be a huge explosion producing a radioactive steam cloud that would cover most of the Arctic. Some of the fallout would be dispersed by the wind, but the strength of the explosion would force most of the contamination into the high atmosphere. It would come down eventually and settle on the ice and waters of the Arctic Ocean.’

  Colonel Grey was quiet for a moment. ‘How bad would the explosion be?’

  The engineer thought for a second. ‘Two of the biggest explosions from a meltdown came from Chernobyl, and the second from the Fukushima Daiichi plant which suffered multiple meltdowns. In both cases when the melt burned through containment it sank into the earth to a depth of about 50 feet.’

  ‘Yes, but what is your point?’ asked Grey impatiently.

  ‘The point is that the explosions occurred when the melt reacted with the small amount of groundwater in the soil. In this particular case there is only water underneath the keel, so the explosion would be much greater.’

  ‘How much bigger?’

  The man shrugged his shoulders. ‘I can only begin to guess. We could be looking at a detonation creating a hole in the Arctic ten to twenty kilometres wide. But that isn’t the worst part.’

  Colonel Grey was visibly struggling to keep calm. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Most of the nasty contaminants like strontium-90, americium-241 and various plutonium isotopes didn’t escape at Fukushima because the plant had good containment structures. Once the melt reaches the seawater under LK-80, there will be no containment.’

  ‘Oh God. How long would the fallout last?’

  ‘The half-life of strontium is nearly 30 years.’

  Grey was stunned into silence.

  ‘Perhaps now you understand why we need an expert on this reactor.’ The engineer lifted his eyes to regard the Colonel. ‘We need the person who designed the safety systems to stop it happening.’

  ‘How long have we got?’

  ‘The reactor temperature is rising rapidly.’ The engineer inspected his watch. ‘We have about three hours.’ He caught the horrified look on the Colonel’s face and added, ‘we can pump some seawater into the primary coolant loop, which might delay things.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Twelve hours, maybe a little longer. We’re not sure. Unless we talk to the man who designed the reactor, we are all going to die.’

  At the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, Peter Lint was about to go for his lunch when a colleague caught him. ‘Call for you sir.’

  Lint frowned ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s from the CIA’s Special Activities Division.’

  Peter signalled he would take it in one of the offices surrounding the open plan work area. He closed the door carefully, not wanting anyone to overhear the conversation.

  He picked up the handset. ‘Go.’

  The person at the other end gave a brief background to the rescue of USS Montana, and the plight of the reactor in LK-80.

  ‘Wait a moment.’ Peter went to the window and beckoned to his assistant. As soon as she entered the room he briefed her, then turned back to the phone.

  ‘John, I’m putting you on conference. I have Sarah Giles here. She knows more about LK-80 than I do.’

  ‘Hello Sarah,’ said the caller. ‘This is urgent and top secret. Tell me what you know about this ship.’

  ‘It’s an Arktika-class icebreaker,’ replied Sarah without hesitation. ‘That means it’s nuclear powered, has a double hull up to 5 cms thick in places. Let me see.’ She tapped the tablet she had brought with her. ‘Length 150 metres, beam 50 metres, draft 6 metres; it’s a monster. It has two power plants, type KLT-80C, which are pressurised light-water reactors. Top speed is 25 knots. Crew is normally 14.’

  Peter regarded Sarah with surprise; she was on the ball today.

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘I’ve been tracking it since it left port in Arkhangelsk. It began by following the North-East Passage, but turned north on a heading for the pole. That raised some questions here; hence our interest.’

  ‘Good. Now for the most important question. We need to know who designed the reactors in that ship. It’s vital we track him down urgently.’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Sarah tapped her tablet. ‘The reactor was designed by NuclearAtomProm. It’s a state-owned Russian holding company.’

  ‘And the chief designer?’

  ‘Sir, this might take a little while longer. Hold on please.’ Sarah moved to the terminal on the table and began to tap queries on the keyboard. Peter Lint watched the clock as it ticked off a full minute and a half.

  ‘Got it sir!’ Sarah said triumphantly. ‘He is Alexei Khostov. He works at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia.’

  ‘Thank you Sarah. I have to go now, but I will speak to Peter later.’

  The line went dead. Peter moved around the table so he could see Sarah properly.

  ‘Sarah.’

  ‘Yes sir?’

  ‘That was remarkable. I’m really surprised - and delighted - at how you handled that call.’

  ‘Thank you. I promised you I would study hard.’

  The place stank. A potent mixture of urine, vomit and excrement assailed Lomax’s nostrils. He had the cell to himself, and sat with his injured leg resting full length on the steel bed frame. The thin blanket underneath was the only item in the room that wasn’t bolted to the floor. From time to time he could hear Russian voices swearing and the metallic clink of chains.

  The sound of footsteps approaching sent a shiver up his spine. The bolts were withdrawn with a resounding clang, and his interrogator entered. He was a tall man with a large lopsided head, and he carried a metal tray. Stooping to lay the tray on the table, he sat on the only chair.

  ‘I hope you are feeling better.’

&n
bsp; Lomax sighed. ‘Yes, thank you Serge.’ A white coated medic had inspected his wound and removed the bullet. ‘The doctor wasn’t very forthcoming. Does he speak English?’

  Serge Zlotnik smiled. ‘His English is excellent. You have a complaint?’

  ‘He’s really good. I watched him. He’s skilled in cleaning and stitching injuries; just not very talkative.’