Barracuda 945 (2003)

by Patrick Robinson

  Barracuda 945 (2003)

  By: Patrick Robinson

  He was one of the world's most skilful submariners. Trained by the best in the business - the Royal Navy - and now at the peak of his powers and skill, he finally comes into his own. Because for years, he has been a sleeper for the enemies of the West. He has been given his orders and will carry them out with brutal efficiency, or die in the attempt. His target? The oil-supply lines that carry America's life blood from the frozen wastes of Alaska to the power-hungry refineries of America's West Coast. His weapon? A lethal submarine - Barracuda 945 - that he hijacks before setting off in search of the pipelines he will destroy. And the Barracuda, like the shark it is named after, is swift, silent and deadly. Who can stop him? Only the Special Forces and the submariners of the West's navies, but only if they can trace him in the first place and eliminate him before he destroys the oil supply routes. Barracuda 945 is Patrick Robinson's sixth breathtaking thriller. Terrorism rears its death-dealing head in a way that has become all too real since the events of September 11th 2001.

  The enemy from within. . .

  Iranian-born British Commando Major Ray Kerman was a rising star is the SAS. . .until he abruptly switched loyalties while on a mission in the Middle East. Fanatically determined to employ his brilliant talents and training in the destruction of those he once swore to protect, he is now General Ravi Rashood, leader of the world’s most vicious terrorist organization. . .and he has found his ultimate weapon: Barracuda 945. A sleek and silent Russian hunter-killer nuclear submarine that can fire land-attack guided missiles from below the ocean’s surface, it is invisible to all pursuers and virtually impossible to track. Yet Admiral Arnold Morgan, the President’s National Security Adviser, must somehow marshal America’s forces and hunt down this 8,000-ton nightmare of modern warfare before it unleashes its fire and death. . .or the first target to fall will be California.

  Prologue

  Sunday, February 19,1995

  Captain Ray Kerman was shivering. Frozen half to death, he was shaking uncontrollably, lying down on the frigid concrete floor of his cell. He had assumed the fetal position, curled up tightly, striving for warmth, his backside resting in a three-inch-deep puddle of cold water, or worse.

  They had taken off the hood, but the Captain wore no boots, just ripped, bloodstained socks. His pants and shirt were coated in mud. His warm military jacket had been confiscated. And now the hallucinations were growing worse, and he was drifting along in a no-man's-land, somewhere between reality and mirage. He could no longer ascertain whether his eyes were open or closed in the icy darkness of the cell.

  There was a jug of water somewhere, but he was too afraid to grope around to find it, in case he knocked it over. And so he remained tightly coiled, his mouth parched, his entire body racked by cold so painful he thought it might freeze his heart and cause it to stop beating.

  They came for him at two in the morning, dragging him up, shoving him down a corridor, and throwing him into a room. Both of his captors wore the uniform of some eastern European army, and now they aimed an arc light into his eyes. Two young officers marched in, wearing similar foreign uniforms, and one of them cupped his hand under Ray's chin and said in heavily accented English, "You will tell us your mission and that will save you being beaten half to death. . . that's my specialty. I beat sniveling little spies . . . WHAT WERE YOU DOING OUT THERE ON THE MOOR. . . ?"

  "I'm 538624, Captain Ray Kerman . . ." Number, rank, and name.

  The officer moved to the back of the room and returned with a wooden truncheon. "You see this. . . I'm going to deliver one blow with this. . . straight across your mouth and you're never going to look the same again."

  He raised it high across his body and screamed, 'TELL ME. . .OR I'LL REARRANGE YOUR UGLY FACE. . ."

  "I'm 538624, Captain Ray Kerman."

  They kept him there for three hours, alternately threatening and bargaining. Threatening to execute his companions, threatening to jail him for twenty years. Bargaining for his knowledge about the Abbey.

  After one hour they dragged him back to his cell, bound him again, and placed the hood over his head. At midnight, he heard the sound of marching feet, then the unmistakable sounds of a man being punched, beaten, the sound of a fist smacking against the flesh of a face. Then thumps of boots slamming into a human body. Moans, then screams, terrible screams, a pleading voice, "Please, no. . . please, no . . . please, no."

  Then someone booted his cell door open. And hands grabbed him, and the hood was removed, and someone took him by the hair, firmly but hard. "Right, and now we try something different."

  The screams along the corridor grew louder. And now the unseen man was begging, begging for them not to beat him again.

  "I'm 538624, Captain Ray Kerman . . ."

  All through the night, they kept him awake, firing questions, demanding, threatening, always threatening. The same officer marched about with the truncheon. Another swished a riding crop. They gave him water, but nothing else.

  They threatened to torture Andy. They told him it hardly mattered anyway because Charlie had broken down and told them everything. They just wanted his confirmation as the officer. Just the details of the mission on the moor.

  "I'm 538624, Captain Kerman . . ."

  They took him back to his cell at seven o'clock. Gave him stale bread. And then awakened him every half hour until midnight, making thirty-four different entries into his cell. Then at midnight, they piped earth-shattering music into the cell, cheap rock and roll. Ray had to sit with his fingers pressed into his ears to lock out the sound.

  They changed his cell, and pushed and shoved him down into a cellar with deeper puddles of freezing water. They left him to his misery, and short fitful sleep, for two more hours, then hauled him out again, and poured a bucket of ice-cold water over him, and dragged him back to the interrogation room. Ray was trembling uncontrollably.

  This time there were four lights aimed at his eyes. And two men, one obsequious, reasonable, bargaining, the other, an unshaven monster, threatening violence and torture. He kept hold of Ray's chin, staring at him, insulting him, yelling at him.

  Ray just kept saying over and over, "I'm 538624, Captain Kerman . . ."

  Now he had no idea whether it was night or day. He no longer had a grip on time. He had no idea what day it was, where he was, whether he was. Stripped of his dignity and most of his clothes, starving hungry, shaking with the cold, no longer with any grip on his words or actions, he knew he was on the verge of breakdown.

  All he had left was defiance. Obdurate, hard-nosed, stubborn defiance. They could not beat it out of him. But they kept trying, marching him to the interrogation room. Shouting and screaming, taking him back to the cellar, throwing him down in the water, which seemed unaccountably deeper. There was nowhere dry to sit, and he just lay there, shivering, trying to sleep, trying to ignore the screams of the tortured men, the ones who now ventured into his dreams.

  He thought it was dark when the two interrogators came clumping down the stairs and booted the door open. But he could not tell, and they manhandled him to his feet, dragged him up the stairs, and stripped off his hood. He found himself facing the senior officer, crisp in a different uniform.

  Hallucinating quite badly now, he answered instinctively, unaware of whether he was in a dream or reality, muttering, "I'm 538624, Captain Kerman . . ."

  To his amazement, the officer held out his hand. "Hello, Ray," he said. "Welcome to the SAS . . . and will someone turn off those bloody recordings out there. . . ?

  "Now, Ray. Come on down to the officers' mess. It's 0500. You can have a bath, and some breakfast, and then sleep for the day. We have a clean uniform ready for you, and I thou
ght we'd fly back to Hereford at around 1630.

  "You've done very well. . . very well indeed. . .but I regret it was not a vintage intake . . .of the eighty men who applied, only five made it."

  Ray could barely gather his thoughts but managed to ask, "Anyone I know?"

  "Yes. That young Paratroop Officer you started with, Lieutenant James, stuck it out. So did that Corporal you were on the moor with, Charlie Rider. . . we lost a lot of chaps towing them across the moor behind the jeep. Your other pal, the Sergeant, Bob, I think, cracked about two hours ago under interrogation."

  "Jesus, you guys know how to put someone through hell. . ."

  "We also know what we're looking for. And no one pretends that courage on this scale is all that common."

  "No, sir. . . I suppose not."

  10 a.m. Monday, February 20, 1995

  CO's Office,

  Stirling Lines, Hereford

  Captain Ray Kerman stood to attention in front of Lieutenant Colonel Russell Makin, the Commanding Officer of 22 SAS. "It is my very great pleasure to welcome you to this Regiment, Captain Kerman. I see from your record that you won The Sword at Sandhurst a few years back, so you are used to excelling. And I am sure you will find ample outlets for your undoubted talents here in the Special Air Service."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "You have seen from your training and indoctrination process what we demand. And I hope it will be of some reassurance that every single man here has passed the courses that you have just undergone. We are not like other Regiments, but when the bugle sounds, for our style of warfare, I think you will find yourself working among the supreme practitioners of our profession."

  "Yes, sir. I am sure that is so."

  The Colonel then stepped forward and handed to Captain Ray Kerman the distinctive, coveted beige beret of the SAS. On the front was the cloth badge of the Regiment, the upright winged dagger. Beneath it were the words who dares, wins.

  Thus at four minutes after ten on that Monday morning, Captain Raymond Kerman was accepted into one of the two top fighting military units in the world, the other being the U.S. Navy SEALs, four members of which were in residence at Hereford when Ray wore the beret for the first time.

  He saluted the Colonel, made an about turn, and left the room. No one else had been present to see the little ceremony, and only those who had served in the SAS would have understood its significance—but a soldier's own soul is an iron taskmaster, and there was a smile on the face of Ray Kerman.

  1

  7 p.m. Wednesday, May 12,2004

  SAS Training Camp (Counterterrorist)

  Southern Israel (Location: Classified)

  Major Ray Kerman, on his second tour of duty with the Regiment, stared westward out toward the desert city of Beersheba. In the setting sun, the heat still rose shimmering along the foothills of the Dimona Mountains, despite the eternal wind. A long line of Bedouin camels heading for the last oasis north of the river moved symmetrically across the sandy wastes, not 100 yards from the SAS stronghold.

  Ray Kerman stood almost in the long shadows of the caravan. He watched the black-hooded men, swaying to the tireless rhythm of the camels, their wide hooves making no sound on the soft desert floor. The nomads of the Negev Desert turned neither right nor left, acknowledging nothing, especially a swarthy broad-shouldered Army officer in an Israeli uniform. But Ray could feel their hard, dark eyes upon him, and he understood he would be forever an intruder to the West Bank Bedouins.

  He usually found the tribesmen were different, trading at the Bedouin market in Beersheba, where the hand of friendship was frequently offered to any prospective buyer. But as his Sergeant, Fred O'Hara, had mentioned, "These blokes would rush up and French-kiss Moshe Dayan if they thought they could sell him a secondhand carrot."

  Ray, however, saw them differently. Before making his first tour of duty to the Near East he had read the works of the important Arabist, Wilfred Thesiger. He had arrived in the Israeli desert filled with an unspoken admiration for the natives of the wide, hot, near-empty Negev Desert. . . men who could, if necessary, go without food or water for seven days, who could not be burned by the pitiless sun nor frozen by the harsh winter nights. Men who could suffer the most shocking deprivations yet still stand unbowed. They were men who accepted certain death only upon the collapse of their camels.

  The English officer had not forgotten the first tribesman he had met in Beersheba, a tall robed nomad, trading goats and sheep in the market. The man had been introduced, and he had stared hard, without speaking, into Ray's eyes, the traditional manner of contact in the desert.

  Finally, he had touched his forehead and gracefully arched his hand downward in the Muslim greeting. Softly, he had said, "As salam alaikum, Major. Peace be upon you. I am Rasheed. I am a Bedouin."

  In that split second, Ray Kerman knew what Wilfred Thesiger had meant when he had written about the Bedouin's courtesy, his courage and endurance, his patience and light-hearted gallantry. "Among no other people," Thesiger once wrote, "have I felt the same sense of personal inferiority."

  Ray recognized that as high praise. Not only had Thesiger been one of only two white men ever to make the murderous journey across the burning wastes of the "Empty Quarter" in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula, he had won a boxing Blue at Oxford University, and served in the SAS during the war. More telling yet, the craggy, teak-tough Thesiger had been educated at Eton, England's school for its highborn, a place which in 560 years had never produced a pupil who felt personally inferior to anyone, never mind a camel driver. Ray knew about Etonians.

  He had attended Eton's "upstart" rival public school, Harrow, alma mater of Sir Winston Churchill, founded as recently as 1571 as a Protestant school in the reign of England's first Protestant Queen, Elizabeth I.

  Ray stood watching the camel train head westward, into the shifting sands, into the silence. He knew they would remain at the oasis overnight, before heading into the market at first light. He held his Heckler & Koch machine gun lightly in his right hand, the barrel downward, and he shook his head as he contemplated tonight's mission.

  He thought, I really don't want to end up shooting these people. I wonder if I ever should have accepted this command?

  The truth was Major Kerman, with his immaculate SAS record, and inescapably Jewish surname, was not precisely what he seemed. Major Kerman's parents had both been Iranian, brought up as Muslims, and descended from nomadic Arabs in the southern city of Kerman, on the edge of Iran's vast southern desert, Dasht-e Lut.

  But when the downfall of the ruling Shah appeared to be inevitable, back in the early seventies, the wealthy couple had emigrated with their toddler son, Ravi, to London. And there they began importing from the family's carpet manufacturing business in their home city.

  The booming British economy during the premiership of Margaret Thatcher was perfect for the family. Mr. and Mrs. Reza Rashood quickly became Mr. and Mrs. Richard Kerman, taking a new name from an old place in the manner of many Middle Eastern families far from home.

  While dozens of tribesmen stitched and wove the elegant patterns in the hilly regions north of Bandar Abbas, Richard Kerman opened a string of warehouses in southern England, and then invested in a small shipping line to transport the costly wool and silk floor coverings up through the Suez Canal and on through the Mediterranean to Southampton.

  His Iranian carpets led him to expand his importing empire. Richard's seagoing freighters led him to oil tankers, and to the gigantic profits that were commonplace during the 1980s. He also began shipping superb Iranian dates out of Bandar Abbas. Tons and tons of them, all grown in another town in the Kerman region, the tree-lined twelfth-century citadel of Bam. Most of the dates were cultivated by his Rashood relatives.

  Soon the Kermans owned an expansive gabled house on North London's fabled Millionaire's Row, The Bishop's Avenue, next to the old Cambodian Embassy.

  Twin Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts occupied the garages. Not so far away, fifty
-five miles west down the M4 motorway in the Berkshire village of Lambourn, six highly bred thoroughbred flat horses were expensively in training, doing battle during the summer months under Richard Kerman's jet black and scarlet-sashed silks.

  Young Ravi, whose first sight of the world had been the hot, dusty streets of the depressed urban sprawl of his hometown in the desert, was renamed Raymond.

  Raymond Kerman, after a six-year junior education in one of the most expensive preparatory schools in London, now owned a British passport and at the age of thirteen, would enter Harrow, known, even by Etonians, as probably the second-best fee-paying school in the country, and a long-established haven for the sons of Middle Eastern ruling families.

  On the entry form, Richard Kerman had declared the boy's religion as Church of England. In the space for birthplace, he had filled out Hampstead, London. No formal birth certificate had been required. Nothing to reveal that Raymond Kerman was really Ravi Rashood, born Iranian from the southeast of that country. It was Richard Kerman's view that in England it was unwise to be different from the majority. The more patrician tribes of London society found it disquieting.