In those lanes, the chart informed them, there was no impediment to safe navigation. Not even man-made…no artificial island or structure, fixed or permanent. It added that it was not mandatory to use the “fairway,” but recommended.
“Thanks, old chap,” said Ravi, in a sudden spasm of homesickness. “I’m with you all the way.”
But Ravi’s chart showed there was a shallow area, two miles long, in the middle of the fairway, under eighty feet at its worst, and fine for surface ships. But it was not fine for submarines that wished to stay undetected. It was possible, because most of the sandbank was ninety feet deep, but it was not advisable. Without putting a mast up, the Barracuda was fifty-five feet high from the top of its sail to the keel. Ben Badr would want twenty-foot clearance from the seabed, because to hit the bottom would be a crisis of diabolical proportions.
It was simply begging for trouble to make a slowish run at periscope depth, with the mast jutting out of the water, probably in the slavering teeth of powerful U.S. radar. Ben Badr did not like it, and was actually considering making a fast run for it, on the surface, in the dead of night, and then heading for deep water.
General Rashood, however, considered this had an edge of hysteria to it, and was quite certain it would have given any ultra-cautious SAS Commanding Officer a heart attack. He said quietly, “Ben, I have been taught to back off, any time I find myself weighing up a risk that will threaten my ‘mission critical.’”
“So have I,” said Ben. “But in this godforsaken place, we must have a ninety percent chance of getting away with a fast surface run, for maybe five minutes. They’d probably think we were a fishing boat, or a freighter.”
“Don’t like the odds,” said Ravi. “Forget it. Anyway, I think I have a better plan.”
“I should hope so,” replied Captain Badr, grinning. “You’re in charge.”
“When I was in Araguba, a Russian officer, who I think had drunk a little too much, told me, and he probably shouldn’t have, about a Russian submarine—he though it was a Kilo Class boat—that went right through the Bosporus submerged, and was never detected by heavy Turkish radar.”
“He did? That’s incredible,” said the CO. “Every submariner knows the Bosporus is impossible, with all that fast freight traffic, and terrible currents, sandbanks, wrecks, and God knows what.”
“I know. But this Russian told me it was done. And you know what? He told me how it was done.”
“He did?” said Ben, eyes wide open.
“Yes. Dead simple, really. He went through in the wake of a big freighter, right up his backside. The stern wake confused the radar so badly, they never saw the periscope.”
“Is that right?” said Ben Badr, even more incredulously. “But I wonder what would have happened if the surface ship had stopped?”
“Funny. That’s what I asked. But the old Russian just smiled and told me a good submarine captain would be on high alert for that. No problem.”
“Are you saying that’s what we should do, Ravi?”
“Why not? We’ll hang around waiting for a big freighter, and follow it through. Much less dangerous here—the channel’s wide, and just about deserted. If that Russian could follow a ship through the confined area of the Bosporus, we ought to be able to chase one through a safety fairway, in the middle of a seaway nearly ten miles wide.”
“Yes. I suppose we could. I’m not sure how long we’ll have to wait. We’ll come to PD every half hour and see what’s going on, keep our speed right down, and then get in close.”
The trouble was, throughout the day, there were several small ships moving through the Pass, but no big ones. It was quite late in the afternoon, almost dark up here in those latitudes, when the veteran Kilo CPO, Ali Amiri, Chief of the Boat, called from the periscope:
“Captain, sir…. I have a possible…three-three-zero…twelve thousand yards…. I’m about thirty on his starboard bow…. He’s got a commercial nav radar….”
“I’m turning toward it for a better look—before the light gives out on us.” Captain Badr was all business now.
“UP PERISCOPE. All-round look.”
Seconds later—”DOWN!”
“Bearing?”
“Three-three-five…bearing that. Range that…on twenty-four meters…seven and a half thousand yards, sir…. Put me twenty-five on his starboard bow…target course…one-two-zero…distance off track three thousand five hundred yards.
“Come right to zero-six-zero…down periscope…make your speed five knots.”
The Barracuda moved forward in the water, running slowly toward the track of the oncoming freighter. They took another look closer in, and assessed her as a 6,000-tonner, Japan registered, heading straight into the Pass, nicely on a steady relative bearing as it approached.
For the next ten minutes they hectically worked the periscope up and then down, until finally Captain Badr ordered a gentle starboard turn, falling in hard behind the freighter.
With her bow right behind the merchantman’s prop, range locked on the stern light, the Barracuda matched speed precisely with the leader.
Eighty-five revolutions…speed over the ground 8.8 by GPS…8.3 through the water, sir.
Only 100 yards of choppy, foaming water separated the two ships as they made their way down the narrow safety fairway. No one, obviously, in the Japanese ship had the slightest idea they were being closely tracked by a nuclear submarine. A rogue submarine at that.
The team in the Barracuda kept station to the nearest few yards, watching the angle between the horizon and the freighter’s stern light, knowing if it increased they were too close. If it decreased, they were falling behind, out of the broiling wake that was protecting them from U.S. radar.
The Japanese ship held a far steadier course than the last one they had encountered, the Mayajima. It set its speed and held course for mile after mile. It probably drew only around twenty feet, so it was not in any way neurotic about ocean-depth, just kept rolling through the Pass, on course to a distant land. “Probably full of computers,” said Ravi. “Though I can’t imagine where they were coming from up there in the Arctic. Unless it was Prudhoe Bay…they’ve got a lot of electronic kit up there.”
It was twenty-five miles to the shallowest point of the Pass, and it took two and a half hours. And all the way across the shoal, Ben Badr’s men kept calling out the depth of water beneath the keel. It only once went under twenty feet—all the way to fourteen feet, which made the CO somewhat nervous. But within fifteen minutes they were hearing the ocean bottom was shelving down again.
Ninety feet, sir…now one hundred…
They were positioned at 54.15’ N 165.30’ W—and no longer required their Japanese escort. Sixty miles southeast of Sanak Island they made a course change to due east, running deep now, straight along the 54th parallel, away from the great volcanic arc of the Aleutian Islands, into the Gulf of Alaska.
9
FOR FIVE DAYS and five nights the Barracuda ran deep beneath the windswept waters of the Gulf of Alaska. Captain Badr never let her speed rise above six knots, nor her depth above 500 feet. She tiptoed past the menace of the U.S. Navy’s SOSUS arrays and stuck to the shallowest water she could find at that depth.
A lot of very large oil tankers rumbled overhead on the high-octane highway to and from Prince William Sound and the terminal at Valdez. But no one heard the near silent thrum of the Russian turbines, carrying the marauders from the Middle East toward the spectacular archipelago of Alaska’s southeastern islands and fiords.
On Thursday afternoon, February 28, the submarine arrived in 500 feet of water, west of miniscule Forester Island. Ben Badr’s log book read 54.47’ N 133.45’ W. The Barracuda was thirty miles off the coast of Prince of Wales Island, the third-largest in all the Americas, and that includes Hawaii.
The Commanding Officer put his ship into a slow racetrack pattern, moving at only three knots through the water, now 300 feet below the surface. As it grew dark, there was heighte
ned activity in the missile compartment, as eight big RADUGAs were moved into firing position.
Two decks above, in the navigation area, Shakira Rashood was locked into her charts, preferring the sprawling Admiralty layouts to the smaller neater versions that appeared on the computer screens. She used dividers, a three-foot-long clear plastic ruler, a protractor, and calculator. Ravi stood next to her, mildly amused at his wife’s capacity to turn his own broad outlines and objectives into careful details. She was, he thought, at heart, a natural-born civil servant, which was unusual for a terrorist.
From the moment he had explained to her his objectives, she had set about turning ideas into concrete plans. She had studied the success/failure rate of the RADUGA and the defenses, both probable and certain, of the targets in the United States. She plotted routes, changed them, suggested positions for the launch platform, and finally presented her work in carefully drawn diagrams, in thin blue lines on her charts.
As far as Ravi could see, her strategy, and geographic understanding were without flaw. For weeks he had put up with a lot…. How far is this?…What about this?…What about that?…Too far…. Too direct…. No possibility of working…. Absolutely not…. There’s a U.S. listening station right here…. You can’t take a submarine in there, they’d hear you…. It’s too shallow…. Too busy…Too close to the shore…Too far out…too near the main tanker lanes…too near this Coast Guard patrol area…
Shakira was tireless. Thorough, intelligent, and cautious. But still tireless. Grand strategy was not her game. It was the minutiae that absorbed her. And long ago, Ravi had considered that minutiae might keep them safe from discovery and attack.
She had no personal ambition to be seen as brilliant. Indeed, she checked with her beloved Ravi every step of the way. Shakira’s ambition was to help produce a perfectly executed operation, eliminating mistakes, catching miscalculations, listing snags, drawbacks, and dangers.
Ravi had never met a better executive working in a confined area like maps and missiles. And during that long Thursday evening he watched her, working with the Missile Director, the two of them checking the distances, the flight trajectories, and courses. And he thanked God for the long weeks his missile team had spent in Petropavlovsk, mastering the big cruises that would now strike a blow for Allah deep in the heart of the Great Satan’s Power base.
Even if all failed, and they should be caught and eliminated by the U.S. Navy, nothing could now prevent the strike. The power grid of the West Coast of the United States was at their mercy.
At ten o’clock that evening, Ravi ordered the Barracuda to alter course to ninety degrees, to face east, toward Mecca, across the great frozen prairies of Canada to the Atlantic. And then he took the ship’s broadcast system and asked every man to spend a few moments in prayer. Those who could, knelt in the Muslim fashion.
He reminded them their immediate actions may bring about the coming turmoil, and that they would hear the Angels sound the trumpet three times. And that when God read the Angel’s reports, the righteous would cross the bridge, into Paradise. And that surely all of His children now dwelling in this great weapon, built to carry out Allah’s will, would be among the righteous.
“I have turned my face,” said Ravi, “only toward the Supreme Being who has created the skies and the earth, and I am not one of those who ascribes a partner to God. To you be glory, and with this praise I begin this prayer. Yours is the most auspicious name. You are exalted and none other than you is worthy of worship.”
He prayed for guidance in their great adventure and he ended with these lines from the Koran….
…from thee alone do we ask help.
Guide us on the straight path,
The path of those upon whom is thy favor.
…Light upon light,
God guides whom He will, to His light….
At which point he ordered the ship back around to the west, and he summoned the Missile Director to the control room, checking one last time the prefiring routines and settings. The program was immaculate. Only missile malfunction or unexpected enemy action could stop them now. The big RADUGAs, the guidance programs preset, were ready to go, straight along the route Shakira Rashood had masterminded.
At eleven o’clock, Ravi gave the order. “STAND BY TUBES ONE TO EIGHT.”
Then, seconds later…“TUBE ONE LAUNCH!”
The first of the opening salvo of four nine-foot-long steel guided missiles blew out of the launcher, arrowed up to the surface, and ripped out of the water as its engine ignited.
It roared upward into the black night sky, with a fiery trail crackling out behind it. At 200 meters above the surface, its cruise altitude, the missile adjusted course to 290 degrees and hit flying speed of 600 knots. The gas turbines cut in, eliminating the telltale trail in the sky. And the RADUGA was on its way.
Right behind it, the second one was in the launch process, out of the tube and on its way to the surface. The third was only seconds from ignition, and the fourth was already under the control of the launch sequencer.
There would be variations in each of the four designated indirect routes to Valdez, but they would arrive on target twenty seconds apart, no matter what. And now they fanned out, streaking above the night waves of the Gulf of Alaska, growling surprisingly softly as they sliced through the wind and scattered low clouds.
The initial 860 miles took the salvo ninety minutes, and it took them more than 200 miles past the natural right turn up into Prince William Sound on longitude 146.20’ W. It also took them far south of the U.S. Navy radar that sweeps the Sound night and day.
It took them to a point high above St. Augustine’s Island at the gateway to the Cook Inlet, which leads up to Anchorage. At the island, the missiles made a sharp adjustment, swerving right onto a northerly course of thirty-five degrees, straight up the wide Inlet, and then over the Alaskan mainland for 375 miles.
Shakira had programmed a complete about-face at this point. And the missiles now made a 150-degree turn to the south, hurtling still at Mach 0.7 toward Valdez from a direction no one could reasonably predict.
1:15 A.M., Friday, February 29, 2008
On the Glenn Highway, Central Alaska
Harry Roberts, and his hunting buddy, Cal Foster, ought not to have been driving. It was pitch black, the lights on their old truck had seen brighter days, and they had drunk about nine pints of Alaska Ambler apiece.
Both of them were twenty-one, the legal drinking age in the state with the highest level of alcoholism in the country. Fortunately, the highway was just about deserted at this time of night, which left Harry to execute a few free swerves and steering corrections without actually killing anyone.
They were around four miles from the town of Glennallen, when Cal announced from the passenger seat that he had a desperate need to unload a half gallon of Alaska Ambler, and the truck had to pull over right away.
Harry understood the feeling, and drove onto the hard shoulder, narrowly avoiding driving headlong into the ditch. They both stumbled out of the cab and positioned themselves for one of the great pees of their young lives.
Cal held his head back and belched luxuriously into the night, unleashing a shattering bark that could have petrified a bull moose. He reopened his eyes and it was then that he saw it, coming toward him, high above in the clear skies. At first he thought it was a shooting star, then he realized it was an aircraft of some type. Then it went by, directly overhead, with that soft growl, and a swiiissshh of disturbed air.
“Harry!” he said. “Did you see that? A fucking UFO just flew straight over mah pecker.”
“What are you talking about?” replied Harry, swaying but still aiming steadily into the wilderness.
“I just saw a UFO. Straight up there. Flew over us. I saw it, heard it. Honest. Like something from that movie—what was it?—Close Encounters of the Most Fucking Awful Kind.”
“Never heard of that movie,” said Harry, distractedly.
“Harry. I’m te
lling you. I just saw a fucking spaceship fly straight over us.”
“You’re hal-lu-ci-na-tat-ing.”
“I’M NOT! Hey, look, Christ! There’s another one. Look over there. To the right,” he added, pointing left.
Harry stared up the wrong way. But Cal was still yelling, “LOOK! LOOK! LOOK! UP THERE…THAT LIGHT IN THE SKY…SHIT! IS THAT BABY MOVING…!”
Harry turned and looked left. And he saw it too. “Christ! What is it?”
“It’s a UFO, whaddya think it is?”
“What’s a UFO?” said Harry, slurring his words.
“Unidentifiable fucking object in the sky, asshole,” said Cal.
“You can’t spell,” grunted Harry. “It was just a regular plane, maybe a little late for something.”
“You ever see a regular plane go that fast, that low? Jesus Christ, I could hear it swishing through the air. Ain’t never heard nothin’ like that before. Nossir.”
The oil terminus of Valdez lies at the end of a twenty-four-mile-long deepwater fiord in the northeastern corner of Prince William Sound. It is beautifully sheltered, standing in the seaward foothills of the 5,000-foot-high Mount Hogan, located northwest of the giant clusters of storage tanks.
These great steel structures, thirty of them, glinting in the starlight of this bitterly cold February night, stood in groups of four and six, all over the terminus, each one thirty feet high and sixty feet across. They are essentially connected at one end to the inflowing crude pipeline from the Prudhoe Bay, and at the other to a further galaxy of pipelines stretching only a few hundred feet, but leading out to the shipping berths where the world’s largest tankers wait in line, to fill up and then head south. Valdez is the most northerly ice-free port in the Western Hemisphere.
The Valdez terminal never sleeps, and neither do the waters of Prince William Sound freeze. The crude keeps right on flowing, summer and winter, seven days a week, night and day. The natural protective geography of the place is the result of modern thinking, because the entire city of Valdez was constructed after 1964, when the Good Friday Earthquake practically wiped the place out, including many citizens.
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