“Precisely. The chances are nothing will be found. So what does that leave?”
“Sabotage,” said Jimmy. “By a local person, or persons. Or an enemy attack with at least two missiles, which no one saw.”
“Fired from where, Jimmy?”
“Well, not from the land. Not from the air. And not from a surface ship.”
“Why not from the land?”
“Have you seen the size of those storage tanks, sir? And the area that’s burning? You couldn’t cause that much catastrophe with a handheld missile like a Stinger. If the fires were caused by a missile strike, it was a big, highly explosive, unbelievably accurate guided weapon. Sophisticated military. Nothing less. You don’t keep that kind of stuff in a bloody cave.”
“And you can’t fire that kind of stuff from a bloody cave,” said the Vice Admiral. “There is only one place from which you can fire that kind of stuff. It’s known as a warship.”
“And there wasn’t one of them within hundreds of miles, sir.”
“Not one that we could see, James. Not one we could see.”
Ramshawe smiled his lopsided Aussie grin. “I was just thinking you might get around to that, sir,” he said.
“Likewise,” replied Arnold Morgan. “And this is my real question…. When I arrived in this office you were too preoccupied to care whether it was me, the President of United States, or Jesus Christ. Whatever you were working on was extremely important to you. What was it?”
“Sir, I don’t want to be accused of irrelevance. Not on a day like this.”
“Jimmy,” said Admiral Morgan, walking across to the window and staring out over the gigantic parking lot, “what was it?”
“Well, sir. I arrived at the conclusion that if the culprit was a salvo of big guided missiles, they must have been unleashed from a warship, one that we somehow couldn’t see.
“I’ve actually been here all night, sir, because I’ve been working on a minor problem since yesterday evening…. It keeps running through my mind. I’ve pulled a file up in hard copy, and I’ve been reading it carefully. When the fires broke out, and the guys on the radio kept saying it could not have happened, I found myself putting two and two together and making about three hundred ninety-five.”
“I know the feeling,” said Arnold. “Tell me the minor problem.”
“OK…lemme get these papers in order…. Right…. On February twenty-first, our Naval attaché in the Tokyo Embassy receives an inquiry from the Japanese Government about U.S. submarine patrols off the Kamchatka Peninsula. In particular, about patrols off the Bay of Avacinskiy, you know, sir, that godforsaken place in front of Petropavlovsk?
“Got it. Go on.”
“Well, our man in Tokyo makes a few inquiries and discovers no American submarine has been on patrol in the Western Pacific for at least three months. Nothing nearer than the southern waters of the Aleutians. But being a careful and cunning diplomat, he doesn’t tell this to the old Japanese. He decides to withhold all information until he finds out why the hell they want to know.”
“Good man,” said Arnold. “Rear Admiral Whitehouse, I believe?”
“That’s him, sir,” said Jimmy, long accustomed to Arnold Morgan’s encyclopedic memory. “He tells the Japanese Government they can count on full U.S. cooperation, but first they have to explain why they want classified Naval information. We don’t just bandy this stuff around, right?
“Anyway, he gets what he asks for. The Japanese Ministry tells him they have received a very large claim for compensation from the master of a one thousand five hundred-ton trawler out of Ishinomaki, that’s Honshu. The Japs not only tell him, they enclose full, signed affidavits from Captain Kouisei Kuno and his senior crew members, who all claim they were damned nearly dragged to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean by a submarine that charged straight into their trawl net.”
“What made them think we were the prime suspects?”
“That’s the thing, sir. They didn’t. They went straight to the Russians, and got a surprisingly fast and comprehensive reply. The Pacific Fleet Commander immediately cited a Sierra Class Barracuda nuclear boat that they said left Petropavlovsk early that very morning, 9 February, bound for the South China Sea.
“Their memorandum said the ship had turned south, immediately beyond their restricted area, outside the bay, and could not possibly have collided with any fishing boat some fifteen or twenty miles north of the Petropavlovsk area. And it just so happens I’ve been watching that particular ship for several months—followed it on the satellite all the way from Murmansk—and right here, sir, I have a dated photograph.”
He handed the Admiral a black-and-white ten-by-eight-inch print. “See that, sir—it did leave Petropavlovsk on that day, very early because we take satellite photographs at around 0730. And it did turn south—there it is, right there, sir. Check the GPS. It really was exactly where and when they said it was.”
“Then what did the Japanese do?”
“They checked with the Chinese, who told them they have not had a submarine in that area for more than six months. Nothing beyond the Yellow Sea.”
“So what’s vexing you, Jimmy? As if I don’t know.”
“That’s right, sir. I’ve checked the boards. I’ve had Naval Intelligence check every goddamned submarine in the world. And they’ve found them all. Either the Japanese fishermen are lying, just because they lost their net, or something bloody weird is going on.”
“And then you sat here twisting and turning over what hit the oil tanks, and you couldn’t get that phantom submarine out of your mind, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
Just then a waiter tapped on the door, and entered bearing the coffee and muffins. These were immediately followed by the entry of the Director himself, George Morris, clutching a sheaf of papers, every last one of them containing statements by Alaskan oil execs who were unable to come up with a reason between them as to how the oil fires could possibly have started.
Arnold Morgan himself filled in the details of the discussion for Admiral Morris, who nodded thoughtfully. “If it was one fire in one place,” he said, “we’d be pursuing the accident theory. Two fires, in two places, same time, same area, doesn’t make any sense. If it wasn’t sabotage, someone just hit us. Simple as that.”
“I don’t think sabotage is entirely out of the question. Possibly someone in the pay of a terrorist organization….” Arnold Morgan was pensive.
“Sir, when the bloody fires cool off,” said Jimmy, “there’s gonna be some evidence of some kind of incendiary device. If it’s a couple of bombs there should be something for the forensic guys to identify. Missiles are more difficult because they tend to blow themselves into much smaller pieces. Plus the heat from those fires will melt everything—but they’ll probably find clues.”
“As far as I am concerned,” said Admiral Morgan, “we should already, between ourselves, as the senior Military Intelligence academics in this country, be considering the possibility of a military strike against us as an absolute priority. We should also accept that if we were hit, we were hit by missiles fired from an enemy submarine. And that possibility will magnify over the next few days when we discover exactly how far away the nearest foreign warship was.”
“Which makes the word of the Captain of the Mayajima another priority,” added Jimmy. “I’ve read a translation of his evidence, and it’s pretty convincing. He has produced the broken end of the warp that held the trawl net—snapped about fifty feet from the boat, way underwater, plastic reinforced by steel, almost two inches thick. You couldn’t break that stuff with a buzz saw, never mind pull it clean in half.”
“What else does he say?” asked Admiral Morgan.
“Plenty,” replied Jimmy. “He wants $200,000 compensation. Says he lost his trawl net, and his entire catch, because he had to let go the remaining warp. He says the submarine was dragging them backward at more than twelve knots, pulling the stern of his ship down. He says water was piling in o
ver the stern, flooding some interior areas. He enclosed Polaroid photographs that he took immediately after the ship righted itself.”
“I suppose the other crew members confirm his story?” said George Morris.
“Of course they do, sir. And on the face of it, you’d have to believe them. The question is, what submarine was it? Because a submarine it most certainly was. There’s no doubt in my mind.”
“Nor mine,” said Admiral Morgan. “That was a submarine, all right. It’s got all the classic signs of what happens when a big underwater ship hits someone’s net. Doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s pretty well obvious.”
“But according to the Russians, the only submarine within hundreds of miles was their own Barracuda. And that was almost twenty miles from the datum, and definitely headed the wrong way.”
“Just remember one thing, young James…the words of my old friend Admiral Sandy Woodward, the Royal Navy Commander who won the Falklands War for the Brits in 1982. He was giving evidence about the sinking of the General Belgrano, and he faced questions from some half-assed know-nothing politician who was telling him the Belgrano was 180 miles away, and going slowly in the wrong direction, anyway, away from the Royal Navy Fleet.
“Admiral Woodward just said, ‘The speed and direction of any enemy ship is irrelevant, because both can change in a matter of seconds.’”
“Jesus. That’s right too,” said Jimmy. “Are you suggesting, sir, the Barracuda could have dived, turned around, and headed northeast.”
“Yes, I am. Because it easily could have. And there was no other submarine that could possibly have hit the trawl net. There is no other explanation. And nor can there ever be. If missiles hit Valdez, they must have been fired from that Barracuda. One sneaky little bastard, I think we’ll discover.”
1:00 A.M., Sunday, March 2, 200853.15’ N 131.39’ W, The Dixon Entrance
North of Graham Island
Lt. Arash Azhari and his six highly trained members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were making their exit from the submarine, which was positioned thirty feet below the pitch-black surface of the water. One by one they went into the exit chamber, which flooded down, and then opened, allowing them to float out onto the casing of the motionless Barracuda.
Each man carried black French-made scuba gear, and a frog-man’s suit distingushed by extra-large flippers and a working flashlight set onto the tight-fitting rubber helmet. They were unarmed, save for fighting knives, but four of them carried strapped to their backs below the breathing equipment a powerful “sticky” bomb, magnetized, with a twenty-four-hour timing device.
By 1:15 all six frogmen grouped in the icy water, around twelve feet below the surface, right on the escarpment of the underwater cliff that forms the Overfall Shoal. They were just 300 yards from the south-running pipeline out of Yakutat. And if they swam due east, they must run over it sooner or later. This was the choke point, the narrow waters over the shoal, across which the pipe must run, according to the minute calculations of Mrs. Shakira Rashood.
Lieutenant Azhari led the way, checking his wristwatch compass every three minutes. They kicked long, hard, slow strokes with the big flippers, conserving their air, heading for the shallowest part of the shoal. And shortly before 1:30, the beam of Azhari’s flashlight picked out a wide, dark shape on the seabed, more or less where Shakira’s map said it would be, snaking out of the Dixon Entrance and down the Hecate Strait.
All the men could see down through the clear, unpolluted water, and the pipeline still rising toward the surface. Right now it was around eighteen feet below them, and Arazhi gave the signal for two of the men with bombs to join him almost directly below. Like the other four, they were experts in underwater demolition.
Swiftly, they kicked down eighteen more feet, and then they unclipped the two bombs and set both timers for twenty-two hours. The four-foot-wide pipeline was encased in steel and carried no barnacles in these very cold waters. The first bomb clamped on magnetically with a dull clump sound.
The second was placed exactly opposite on the other side of the pipe, the timer reversed three minutes and twenty-one seconds, the precise time Lieutenant Azhari’s stopwatch measured between the fixes. The bombs would detonate simultaneously, shortly before midnight tomorrow.
ALASKA AND THE NORTHWEST—THE BARRACUDA’S PRINCIPAL TARGET AREA
They joined their three colleagues and showed the leader the time on the stopwatch, which showed the start of the twenty-two-hour cycle. Then the second three men broke away and began swimming downhill, following the pipeline back north, into deeper water, down the escarpment of the shoal.
They kept going for 1,000 yards, and unclipped the last two bombs, placing the first one on the steel pipe and taking a total of 17 minutes off the 22-hour setting. Then they clamped the fourth and final bomb on the precise opposite side of the pipe, set the timer for 21 hours, 39 minutes, and 14 seconds, and turned back west.
They were almost 100 feet deep here, and as they swam back westward, they kicked toward the surface, settling 12 feet below the waves for the final 200 yards, back to the submarine, which was now emitting a slow beeeep every twenty seconds to guide them back.
When they arrived, Lieutenant Azhari was waiting, the other two frogmen having already boarded through the wet-hatch. Ten minutes later they were all inboard, and the giant U.S. oil pipeline from Yakutat was doomed in this part of the ocean, barring a zillion-to-one fluke.
Captain Ben Badr turned his ship slowly west, and they headed back out through the Dixon Entrance, into the 12,000-foot-deep waters of the Gulf of Alaska, where they could run 1,000 feet below the surface, and where they would be virtually impossible to find. They were headed due south.
Noon, Sunday, March 2, 2008
Ops Room, Valdez Police Department
Officer Kip Callaghan’s telephone never stopped ringing. Local people were literally in line to give information, ask for information, or just to talk about the savage roaring blaze, which still thundered into the smoky skies on two sides of their town.
It had taken almost twenty hours to stop the flow of crude oil flooding out of the inflow pipe from the north, directly into the terminus, and igniting with the rest of the stored fuel. The electronic control center was still completely out of action, but they had managed to turn off a huge valve on the pipeline, by hand, some two miles north of the city.
Wearily, Officer Callaghan picked up the ringing phone again. “Valdez Police—Situation Room.”
“Sir, I’m calling from Glennallen with a little information you may want.”
“OK, sir. Just give me your full name and address, and age. Plus the number you are calling from.”
“Cal Foster, P.O. Box 58, Glennallen. I’m twenty-one, and I’m calling from 907-555-3677.”
“Thank you, sir. Please tell me your information.”
“Well, I’m really calling about a UFO I saw in the sky on Friday morning around 1:30.”
“A UFO! You mean a kinda flying saucer, sir?”
“Well, kind of.”
“Sir, this is the Situation Room for the fire catastrophe. You’d probably be better to let the main Police Department know about a flying saucer. Right here, I’m strictly in the combustion area.”
“Officer, I’m in the right department. I may have a connection to the fire.”
“OK, sir. Tell me.”
“Well, me and my buddy, Harry Roberts, had just stopped on the Glenn Highway on our way home, and we were, like taking a leak, facing north, when I saw this missile flying through the sky. Real quick, right above us. I could see a flame coming from the back, and it made a kinda growling noise. It was heading directly south to the mountains and Valdez….
“Then, just about a half minute later, I saw another one, maybe a mile to the east, but going the same way. Just as quick. Identical. I was thinking they could have been missiles—you know, aimed at the oil terminal…and maybe they started the fire.”
�
��Sir, did your buddy also see the objects?”
“He wasn’t in time to see the first one. But I yelled when I saw the second one, and he saw that, all right. Mind you, he didn’t really believe it was a missile. He thought it was a low-flying aircraft, and he might have been right. But I don’t think so. I ain’t never seen anything go so fast through the air, not that low to the ground. That was no aircraft. Nossir.”
“You took a while to let us know. How come?”
“Well, I never knew about the fire until the middle of the day Friday, and I’d kinda forgotten about the rockets I’d seen. Then I got to thinking about ’em, and last night I suddenly thought there might be a connection.”
“Sir, I’d like to speak to your buddy Harry.”
“Well, right now he’s up at the Caribou Cafe.”
“They got a phone?”
“Sure. It’s 822-3656. Don’t listen if he tells you it was a 747 or something. It wasn’t.”
“Okay, Cal. I’m gonna try to get this corroborated. I’ll call you back….”
Officer Callaghan called the Caribou and asked to speak to a customer named Harry Roberts. Half a minute later, the reluctant spotter of the UFO was on the line.
“I saw it. Yes sir. I definitely saw it. And Cal was right. It was traveling real quick. And I saw it much later than he did, only seconds, but it was going away from us time I turned around.”
“You didn’t see the first one at all?”
“Nossir. Cal just caught it as it went over us. I wasn’t in time. But I saw the second one. Flying straight for the mountains.”
“Well, your buddy Cal thinks those rockets might have been headed for the oil terminal, and were the cause of the fires.”
“Coulda been…coulda been…”
“Do you think they were kinda mysterious? Like not an aircraft, more like a missile?”
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