Barracuda 945

by Patrick Robinson

  He knew it would be futile to try to gain any information on the movement of any Chinese warships. The Beijing military were not hostile, but they were not friendly to the United States either. And they seemed to operate independently from their own government.

  Twice in the past few years there had been a major standoff involving U.S. servicemen being held in Chinese military confinement after sorties in the South China Sea. And the recent uproar over Taiwan had done nothing for Sino-U.S. relations.

  Alternately, Russia was saying nothing. And the United States was, of course, unable, as ever, to have any proper rapport with the Islamic States, the atmosphere being altogether too fraught, too untrusting.

  Admiral Morgan paced his office. A new communiqué from the Washington State Environmental Protection Agency suggested the still-leaking pipeline had at least been shut down three miles back from the breach. But sea conditions were so bad it would be several days before they could begin their attempt to raise the fractured section and conduct the repairs.

  In California, the Governor was conducting a daylong, highly classified meeting in Sacramento, the state capital, attended only by those officials who understood the razor’s edge upon which their electricty supplies now rested. Jack Smith, the President’s Energy Secretary, had flown in on Air Force II from Washington, D.C., and was listening intently as officials from the Lompoc power station outlined the situation at the newest, most efficient electricity plant in the United States.

  Built to take the heat off the rest of California’s 1,023 major power stations (one-tenth of a megawatt or larger), Lompoc operated solely on government-subsidized, inexpensive refined fuel oil coming out of Grays Harbor. Transportation to the power station was strictly railroad, straight out of Washington State, down the Union Pacific’s permanent way to San Francisco, and then along the valley of the Salinas River to the scenic peninsula, where the railroad starts to hug the coast.

  Lompoc lies six miles inland, right in that triangle-shaped peninsula, 125 miles northwest of Los Angeles, 240 miles south of San Francisco. Its nearest coastline forms the northern shore of the Santa Barbara Channel.

  The Union Pacific Railroad runs all the way around that peninsula on its way down to Los Angeles, but there is a spur line into Lompoc, expanded in the year 2007 to run into the new power station, and form the life-giving artery to virtually all the electric power for San Francisco and Los Angeles.

  According to the best calculations, the Lompoc power station was sufficiently well supplied to keep pumping out electricity for three more weeks, possibly four. The problem was, it was not on a seaward terminus where tankers could bring in emergency supplies, if necessary, from the Gulf of Mexico.

  It was simply not geared for road transportation to bring in refined fuel oil. Lompoc and the railroad were bound together, and right now the last two tanker freight trains were rumbling south, one just north of Monterey, the other west of San Luis Obispo, forty miles north of the power station. Thanks to General Rashood, there would, of course, be no more deliveries in the forseeable future.

  Right now it looked almost impossible to hook up the massive Lompoc outward power lines to the statewide electricity grid. At least it looked impossible to achieve in under four months.

  Lompoc had been built as a separate entity, to function alone, ensuring that the state’s two giant commercial centers could keep running, no matter how many blackouts and brownouts afflicted the rest of the state. Equally, Lompoc’s very existence considerably reduced the pressure on all of the other California power stations, which had been devoid of shortages for several weeks.

  With no refined fuel oil from Alaska, the only solution had to be road transportation. The state of California could spare hardly anything itself without putting the lights out in several citites, so oil would have to come from the Gulf, through the Panama Canal, and up the West Coast into the great artifical harbor of Los Angeles, a ponderous journey of close to 4,500 miles…assuming no delays in the canal, almost two weeks.

  The Governor’s emergency conference in Sacramento was racking its collective brain trying to find solutions. But there were no solutions, only ways to try and paper over the cracks, and to keep the lights on, more or less constantly, until the Alaska and Grays Harbor catastrophes were repaired. If the power station at Lompoc failed, and the great cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles went dark, it would be a national calamity of gigantic proportions.

  It would certainly bring down the California Governor, and it could threaten the Republican Administration in Washington, where the GOP would be accused of pushing forward with vast moneymaking programs mostly beneficial to big oil companies, with no thought whatsoever to solutions, if the grand schemes failed.

  There had been, of course, many citizens of Lompoc and its environs who had been vehemently opposed to the power station right from the start. The beautiful Lompoc Valley is known as the Valley of Flowers, thanks to its century-old flower seed industry, and the very idea of a power station in the middle of all that floral splendor had caused a political battle that raged for more than a year.

  Only the intervention of the military, at nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base, had finally pushed the power plant through. Vandenberg was the first missile base of the U.S. Air Force. The immediate closing of the West Shuttle Program after the Challenger crash at Kennedy Space Center in Florida had caused a major recession in Lompoc. But now, in 2008, more than twenty years later, they were preparing for the California Spaceport, and there were major advantages to having a huge power station close by, not the least of which was the sharing of a big refined fuel terminal right on the Union Pacific Railroad.

  The environtmental lobby still opposed it—all of it—and continued to hurl invectives at “money-grubbing industrialists and politicians” hell-bent on profits at all costs, never mind the destruction of the Valley of Flowers.

  Their objections had a plaintive ring of truth to them, but none of them true, or justified. The President’s entire Energy Program, masterminded by Jack Smith and his staff, was in fact a work of great brilliance, dispelling at a stroke America’s reliance on Arab oil.

  The unpalatable truth was, and is, a huge industrialized Western country like the United States happens to be vulnerable to grand-scale, State-sponsored terrorism. The Senators in Washington did not yet know it, but they had much to be thankful for—namely that General Rashood did not approve of mass killing and would not indulge in it. However, the Senators did not know of the existence of General Rashood or the steely determination with which the Hamas military chief intended to drive the United States, and the State of Israel, from the Middle East forever.

  By Thursday morning, March 13, General Rashood and Captain Badr were creeping down the pristine central coast waters off some of the loneliest beaches in California. They were just beginning to move out into deeper water 130 miles off Los Angeles and were making a quiet five-knot course to the southwest.

  The Barracuda, now a month out of Petropavlovsk, was running perfectly, the reactor ticking along at low pressure, the turbines at cruising speed. The only discordant note in the entire submarine mechanism was the slightly arched converstaion between General Rashood and Lt. Comdr. Shakira Rashood.

  The world’s first lady submarine officer was quite certain they should continue with the policy of sending in missiles on a roundabout route to the American mainland, disguising at all costs the true direction and launch point of the RADUGAs. Shakira’s point was simple. It has worked well for us so far, no one has come after us, and no one knows we’re here. We should continue with a successful policy.

  General Rashood held no such illusions. And he told his wife so in the gentlest possible terms.

  “Shakira,” he said, “the Americans will have been momemtarily baffled by our opening attack in Prince William Sound. But someone will have seen something, and the Pentagon will by now know the oil terminus was hit by an incoming cruise missile. They will also have known we were very
close indeed to the spot where the oil pipeline was breached on the Overfall Shoal.

  “When we hit the refinery in Grays Harbor—if indeed we did hit the refinery—they will know of our existence. The big military brains will have worked out the missiles were most certainly fired from a submarine because there was nowhere else they could have come from.

  “I would be surprised if they had not found out this Barracuda was missing from the Russian Naval Base. They will know the someone dragged the fishing net off that Japanese trawler and it must have been the Barracuda….”

  “Yes, but what about the Chinese diversionary plan to help us?” she asked.

  “Forget it. Because nothing will happen until tomorrow, and that’s not important, anyway. What is important is that the Americans will know for sure and certain that the total destruction of the refinery at Grays Harbor was the work of a terrorist firing missiles from a nuclear boat…”

  “But how will…” she interrupted.

  “Trust me, my darling,” he said. “We are playing a game of cat and mouse with some of the biggest brains in the world, particularly the U.S. President’s National Security Adviser. Believe me, they know what’s happening. And it won’t make one lick of difference whether the missiles come howling in to Lompoc from out of the San Rafael Mountains or straight down the freeway from Santa Maria. It doesn’t matter what we do, they’ll know.”

  “But surely they’d be better coming in from the east, the unexpected route…like the others?”

  “Negative. Everywhere’s unexpected. Our only advantage, and it’s a big one, is that they have no idea within, say, five hundred miles where we are. My orders will be to fire a salvo of four RADUGAs straight at the Lompoc power station, straight out of the ocean, direct at the furnace and the turbines, from about two hundred miles out, a twenty-minute missile run, then hightail it south before the missiles even reach their target.”

  “You mean fast?”

  “Oh no, never fast. Just quietly offshore, in a million square miles of ocean, one thousand feet below the surface, chugging our way to safety. When the first of those missiles hits, every major military brain in the Pentagon is going to know what we’ve done. I just hope to spread enough confusion to allow us a clean getaway.”

  “You mean my missile deception program is obsolete as of now?”

  “Absolutely. This is our last throw, Shakira. And it’s a punch that will come in straight and hard, at two of the most sensitive areas any great power has. Its competence and its pride. And the United States has a ton of both.”

  “So have I. And I sense you have just fired me. Would you like me to leave?”

  “No. But I might ask you to take off your uniform,” chuckled Ravi. “Once we find somewhere private.”

  Shakira punched her Commanding Officer playfully on the arm. “That’s my punch,” she said, laughing. “Straight and hard. Did I ever mention how inappropriate you are?”

  “I believe so. But right now I’d like you to be my wife rather than my missile planner. Hop below and organize a couple of cups of tea and some toast, would you? I’ve been here since two o’clock this morning.”

  “My last humiliation. From Lieutenant Commander to steward. Right here in the middle of the Pacific. Demotion for the great mind that suggested Lompoc in the first place.”

  General Rashood smiled and watched his wife turn out of the control room. “Just another couple of days,” he said. “And we’re on our way home.”

  The Barracuda continued slowly westward into deep, silent waters, way off the coast of California, her great turbines moving her 8,000-ton weight effortlessly, under the deft guidance of Captain Ben Badr.

  Meanwhile, California went about its business. Aside from the endless tensions in the Governor’s Mansion, and the near panic gripping the electric industry, life continued as normal.

  The only other pressure spot was around the junction of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue in northwest Los Angeles, where streets were being closed and blocked off in preparation for the movie world’s annual extravaganza on Sunday evening—the 80th Academy Awards ceremony, with its modest little worldwide audience of about a billion people. Shakira Rashood would have given almost anything to be there, dressed to kill, on the arm of her handsome, iron man husband. Though, in a rather different sense, she would be. So would her iron man husband.

  For weeks now, they had been preparing the spectacular $100 million Kodak Theatre, the world’s largest television studio, smack-dab in the middle of one of the grandest new shopping malls on earth.

  Right here in Hollywood, in the permanent twenty-first-century home of the Oscars, there were more electricians per square mile than would-be actors. The bustling Hollywood Boulevard was actually closed down for five days. On the night, they would block off Highland Avenue, Orange Drive, Franklin Avenue, and a dozen other streets.

  The fabulous shopping complex of the five-level Hollywood and Highland Mall contains seventy upmarket retailers, restaurants, nightclubs, and the new 640-room Renaissance Hollywood Hotel. On this Thursday afternoon, anything open was seething with sightseers, flocking into the custom-built H&H train stop, directly off a fifteen-minute ride on Metro Rail’s Red Line from Union Station in downtown Los Angeles.

  The actual Kodak Theatre, resplendent at the top of forty wide, marble steps, is situated to the east of the six-screen, ornate Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. The Kodak stands at the head of Award Walk with its elegant plaques, mounted on pillars, commemorating eighty years of acting brilliance, an exclusive little garrison for the living and dead immortals of the screen.

  Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda, Burt Lancaster, Sidney Poitier, Gene Hackman, John Wayne, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson and Tom Hanks; Susan Hayward, Kate Hepburn, Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep, and the rest. Their momentous achievements will once more pervade the complex on Sunday night, when this year’s nominated make the 500-foot Sunday-night strut along a red carpet, five boulevard traffic lanes wide, to the electronic wonderland of the Kodak Theatre.

  There the 3,300 guests will assemble beneath the massive silver-leafed tiara of a ceiling, based on Michelangelo’s Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome. More than one hundred television cameras, inside and out, earthbound and raised, on gantries and bridges, tucked into alcoves, would be zooming in on the main stage and the audience, striving for the best pictures.

  All through the theater, concealed cableways are hidden in the actual support beams and balcony fronts, ready to cope with the demands of television lighting and sound equipment on the big night. The theater’s own sound system uses as much electric power as a space shuttle launch. There is an entire catwalk for rigging and lights; even the orchestra pit is an electronic elevator.

  There is every kind of lighting, designed to flood, flash, or pinpoint. These searing theater lights can irradiate in white, red, purple, blue, or any other hue. The Kodak will illuminate the hopes and dreams of every actor, director, producer, costar, and writer in the audience. When they hit the “on” switch for this lot, the Lompoc power station shudders.

  7 P. M., Friday, March 14, 2008

  South China Sea, East of Hainan

  Barracuda II, under the command of Captain Ali Akbar Mohtaj, was almost at the end of her long, around-the-world journey. The brand-new Russian-built submarine, which had left Araguba on January 31, had not been seen or heard since the American SOSUS operators in Pembrokeshire, South Wales, picked her up south of the Rockall Trench off the Irish coast on the evening of February 7.

  Since then she had traveled underwater, fast down the Atlantic coast of Africa, slower across the Indian Ocean, the long way around Indonesia and the islands, and then north up the Pacific, off the east coast of the Philippines.

  Now she had made passage through the Luzon Strait, which separates the northern headland of the islands from Taiwan. She was was dawdling, waiting for the correct timing, early tomorrow morning, Saturday. Only then would she come to the surface at first light, right
on longitude 111°, cut her speed, and move slowly across the sunlit surface of the South China Sea. She would head straight to the Zhanjiang Headquarters of China’s Southern Fleet, directly beneath the pass of the twice-daily Big Bird, America’s silently penetrating photographic satellite, 22,000 miles above.

  She had been at sea for six weeks, all of it dived. No one had seen the sun rise or set. Captain Mohtaj’s orders were unbending, to stay out of sight, out of contact all the way. And he had carried them out to the letter, except for that one carelessly placed tool-box off the coast of Ireland.

  Even then the American SOSUS operators had no time to make an positive identification. Like his coconspirator Captain Ben Badr, the Commanding Officer of Barracuda II, had made no contact with the outside world. Everyone was in the dark. And neither of them knew the extent or failure of the Iranian mission to the coastlines of Alaska and the mainland United States.

  At six o’clock on Saturday morning, Barracuda II came up through the shining blue waters of the South China Sea, and burst onto the surface, blowing ballast. Ali Akbar Mohtaj was fifty miles from Zhanjiang, north of the subtropical beaches of Hainan, hoping fervently to have his photograph taken.

  9:00 A.M., Saturday, March 15, 2008

  National Security Agency

  Fort Meade, Maryland

  Admiral Morris was awaiting the arrival of the Big Man, and he had already vacated his chair and desk in anticipation of the event. Dead on time the door swished open in a near cyclone of air current as Arnold Morgan made his entrance and strode across the office floor. The flag of the United States rippled in his slipstream.

  “GEORGE, THESE BASTARDS ARE UP TO SOMETHING!”

  “Sir?” said Admiral Morris.

  “DON’T SIR ME, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE. I’VE GOT ENOUGH FUCKING TROUBLE WITHOUT MY OLDEST FRIEND GOING FUCKING OBSEQUIOUS ON ME!”