Barracuda 945 (2003)

by Patrick Robinson

  They ate superb blinis, the delicious little Russian buckwheat pancakes served with caviar and sour cream. The former Major Kerman delighted his Russian hosts by telling them the allegedly true story of the visiting Texan and his family who dined at the Dorchester Hotel in London and had not tasted Russian caviar before.

  Just what is this stuff, worth a hundred bucks a shot? How could it cost that much?

  "Well, sir, it's something of a ritual," said the headwaiter. "We serve it with finely chopped egg, and onion, and small pancakes, plus a generous glass of the finest Smirnoff vodka, chilled, the favorite of the last Czar of Russia."

  Yeah, but what is caviar? What's it look like?

  "Sir, it's the eggs of the sturgeon."

  "That right? Beautiful. Lemme have two. Sunnyside up."

  This was greeted by roars of laughter, and glasses of vodka, since no one was likely to be going to sea for a couple of days.

  But then the conversation returned to the deadly serious nature of the visit. And two ex-Soviet nuclear Captains were detailed to supply notes on the differences and similarities in the ship, beyond the reactor room.

  You got a SAM missile system you're all going to recognize, the old SA-N 5/8, plus a Strela portable launcher. . . the SSM Novator Alfa SS-N-27 on the new Kilos is not much different from the A/S Novator 15 Starfish Tsakra on the Barracuda . . . 53 cm tubes, nuclear warhead or regular Type 40. Whatever. Anyway the big missile on this ship is the long-range RADUGA . . . the SS-N-21 Sampson Granat. . . that's a cruise . . . flies at 0.7 Mach, around 200 meters above the surface. . . 1,600 miles. It's just been in overhaul. Top of the range.

  Torpedoes. Hardly any difference. Mostly 21-inch tubes, 53 cm weapons.

  Countermeasures . . . some similarities. ESM, Rim Hat/Bald Head intercept with radar warning on this ship. You're probably more used to the Squid Head on the Kilos. But they're much the same.

  Radars: same . . . surface search Snoop Pair . . . back-to-back ESM aerials.

  Sonars: the Barracuda has regular Shark Gill hull-mounted passive/active search and attack, low to medium frequency . . . you're used to the more modern Shark Tooth and Shark Fin, the MGK-400 system. But there's not much difference . . . and we have the same Mouse Roar system . . . hull-mounted active attack, normal high frequency.

  You'll notice a V-shaped casing on the port side of the sail—that's to cover the releasable escape chambers. . . That bulbous casing on the after-end of the sail is for a towed communications buoy . . . very useful.

  They retired to bed at ten o'clock, and reconvened at five in the morning for a further tour of the ship. To the east, out into the Barents Sea, they could see a glow along the horizon, but there was no daylight and nor would there be daylight for another two weeks.

  Admiral Badr and General Rashood took time to inspect the second Barracuda they had purchased, hull number K-240. But it was in a floating covered dry dock, with several large plates currently being fitted into the underside of the hull. It would plainly be a few weeks before she was seaworthy, but the other one, Hull K-239, had already been in Sea Trials and would resume in late May when the new RADUGA missile system was complete.

  They left at noon, the same way they had arrived, car to Polyarny, patrol boat to Severomorsk, military aircraft south to Moscow. Commercial jet to Ankara, then change for Tehran, Navy jet to Bandar Abbas. General Rashood would not complete his 2,800-mile journey back to Damascus for four more days.

  But the news was excellent. The first Barracuda would clear Araguba by July 20, in time to make the summertime easterly route along the north coast of Siberia, south of the ice pack. She would be accompanied by an Udaloy Type 1 frigate, and the gigantic 23,500-ton ex-Soviet Arktika Class icebreaker Ural, a triple-shafted nuclear-powered monster with a reinforced steel bow, enabling her to ride up, and then bear down on ice, as much as eight feet thick, and smash it assunder.

  The waters ought not to be frozen at all in July, but there would be ice floes, and the Russians proposed to take no chances whatsoever with the safe delivery of the first Barracuda. Not with $200 million awaiting them in the port of Petropavlovsk. You can pay a lot of electricity bills with that.

  On the journey home, Admiral Badr could hardly contain his excitement about the new purchase. And he talked ceaselessly about her speed, her lethal missiles, and, above all, her ability to run endlessly in near silence through all of the world's oceans, without ever needing to surface, either for oxygen, water, or fuel.

  He was also aware that any missions mounted by the Barracuda would enjoy the clandestine protection of both the Russians and Chinese, both in the release of misinformation regarding their whereabouts, and in the case of China, a hiding place not yet revealed but one so secret, so unexpected, it was entirely possible they would never be located. Not in a thousand years.

  Even the somewhat taciturn, closemouthed Ravi thought that last part was pretty nifty. Though he was unsure whether the men from the Pentagon would accept defeat that lightly. He doubted it, but China was still one hell of an ally.

  And he looked forward to hot, peaceful spring and summer months with Shakira, interspersed by short planning visits to Bandar Abbas, before he returned to northern Russia to join the Barracuda on the long, working journey all along the icy waters of the northern coastline, and into the Bering Strait.

  Right there they would begin their deep-run down the Pacific, south along the barren wasteland of the Kamchatka Peninsula to Petropavlovsk, where they would put the finishing touches to the plan for a sophisticated attack on the United States that would never be forgotten.

  "Are you looking forward to our adventure?" asked Admiral Badr.

  "Yes, Mohammed. I am. And may Allah go with us."

  7

  General Ravi headed back to the cold north of Russia in the last week of July 2007 with no further price upon his head. The twin murders of Alf Rowan and Rupert Studley-Bryce were never solved in London, indeed the Brits never even admitted to the faintest suspicion that the Member of Parliament had been taken out by a professional. At least, they never admitted anything publicly. Neither, however, did they remove their constant surveillance and permanent phone-tapping at 86, The Bishop's Avenue.

  As Vice Admiral Arnold Morgan was often at pains to point out. . . the Brits talk funny, and because of their weird upbringing, they find it damn near impossible to speak plainly. . . but stupid they ain't. So don't underestimate 'em. Ever.

  In fact, MI5 had interviewed Richard and Naz Kerman on eight different occasions in the past twelve months, but the Iranian-born couple had revealed nothing, and flatly denied they had ever laid eyes on their only son, not since he was posted to Israel and then vanished in the Jerusalem Road, Hebron

  , more than three years ago. MI5 even tried telling the Kermans they knew, beyond any doubt, that Ray Kerman had attended Royal Ascot. Richard and Naz said if he did, they never saw him. For the record, MI5 did not believe them.

  There it remained, at a strange and frustrating standstill. Two SAS men murdered in Hebron, two gigantic bank robberies in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the incredible liberation of every important political prisoner in Israel, and a brutal double murder in London: the same man suspected of committing each and every one of those crimes; the same man everyone knew, but no one knew.

  Lt. Jimmy Ramshawe had essentially blown the whistle six times, every time. And everyone believed him, at least everyone who mattered at the National Security Agency in Fort Meade believed him. And they had relayed their deductions to MI5, and MI5 believed him as well. MI5 was even on close speaking terms with his mom and dad.

  But no one even knew his name. Not now. And no one ever found him. No one ever even saw him, except for Alf Rowan. And no one really knew whether he was dead or alive, which country he was in, or which hemisphere. Nor what he might do next. The Mossad offered nothing. Jordan offered nothing. Neither did Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia. But they wouldn't, would they? MI5 had even had the Queen's Ascot Representative
search the offices in St. James's Palace for any badge application for a Major R. Kerman, and of course they drew a blank.

  They did find an application for an R. Kerman, Esq. from the Syrian Embassy. But the highest possible government authority in Damascus told them it was for a professor of poetry named Dr. Rani Kerman, who was writing an ode to Hafiz al-Assad. They even enclosed a photograph of the man, and his address and office phone at the university in Damascus. MI5 never even followed up on this exercise in futility. Neither did they wholly believe the Syrians.

  Jimmy Ramshawe, on receipt of the information in Fort Meade, summed it up with Australian terseness. . . "Lying towel head bastards." And the fact remained clear in his mind: "The NSA and MI5 are trying to find a Bloody Phantom. And they know it."

  Which made it all the more astounding that the Bloody Phantom was right now striding, large as life, across the jetty in the top-secret Russian Naval Base in Araguba, which stands behind several miles of razor wire, out on the frozen edge of the universe. He was accompanied by two Admirals, ex-Soviet Captains, and three Commanding Officers, one of them the son of the Commander-in-Chief of the Iranian Navy. The Bloody Phantom had just popped in to inspect a $300 million cruise-missile nuclear submarine someone had just bought for him.

  Ben Badr, after almost eight months in Araguba, was delighted to see Ravi, and keen to regale him with his expertise on the workings of a nuclear-powered warship. For the journey to Petropavlovsk, along the Siberian coast, Captain Gregor Vanislav would be in command, and Ben would be his number two, the Executive Officer of the Barracuda. Ravi himself would be given no rank during this 4,000-mile voyage of learning. But the next time she sailed, he would be her Operations Director.

  When they boarded the submarine, the entire party headed straight for the torpedo-proof Reactor Room, constructed on all sides with walls of lead, eight inches thick, the area containing the power plant of the ship, the impenetrable stainless steel, domed nuclear reactor, its core of U-235 uranium, the business end of a nuclear bomb.

  The reactor is the steel heart of the pressurized water system, which creates the steam to drive the turbines of the submarine almost endlessly, requiring only water to keep moving along on full power. The pressure inside that system heats the water to a searing 200 degrees centigrade, under a phenomenal two thousand five hundred pounds pressure per square inch. As a point of comparison, we live in fifteen pounds pressure per square inch.

  Ben Badr led them immediately to the reactor control room where Captain Gregor Vanislav awaited them. He was standing quietly behind three watchkeepers, all Petty Officers, who were operating separate panels of the keyboard control, each one containing six computer screens. The three areas under such close observation were the propulsion system, the reactor itself, and the auxiliary panel.

  One of the screens in this latter group records the tests that reveal the efficiency of the condenser. This is the machinery that turns seawater into fresh water of the purest type, hopefully devoid of every molecule of the dreaded, ultracorrosive NaCl, sodium chloride. Two parts NaCl per million in the pure water system of a nuclear reactor is two parts too many. Way too many.

  It was this screen to which Gregor Vanislav was turned when Ben Badr led his team into the Control Room. "Hello, Gregor," he said, cheerfully. "Always checking on our purity, eh? Pristine water to make us run good, the first concern of a nuclear engineer."

  Captain Vanislav turned to Ravi and smiled. "You see, I teach him priorities, months ago. And he never forget. You got a good man here, General. Young Ben Badr. I like him. Make no mistakes, hah? That's the trick, you wanna stay alive."

  "Yes. I've often found that myself," said Ravi, smiling back. "But I'm afraid you'll have to be more patient with me. I know very little, and I have to learn fast."

  "Right here's a very good place to start," replied the Russian Captain. "These screens show you the quality and temperature of the water flowing into the reactor. But I think Ben should be your professor. That way I can listen to him, make sure he's learned everything good."

  Commander Badr nodded, and stepped up to his task. "Okay, Ravi," he said in English. "I start by telling you the danger of sodium chloride. It's just salt, of course. Seawater is full of it, and we have to get rid of it because it's probably the most corrosive stuff on the planet. You get that stuff in our water system, it seeks out little crevices, maybe in the joints, or the welding, and it builds up, weakening the steel, until one day, under the terrific pressure, it blows. Blows a damned big hole, and a blast of pressurized scalding water rips out of the fracture into the room, flashes off into wet steam of terrific heat."

  "Unbelievable," said Ravi.

  "You know what happens then?"

  "Not really."

  "Well, remember the whole system works on stability. Inside the nuclear reactor, the core consists of these cleverly shaped and machined slugs of highly active uranium, and in general terms, the neutrons split away, millions of them, and if they were allowed to just get on with it, they'd collide with U-235 atoms, hitting and splitting, causing a too-rapid chain reaction, generating colossal heat, until you had, in a very few minutes, a core meltdown. However, we don't allow this. . ."

  "Oh, good," said Ravi.

  "No. We have a system of rods inside the reactor. They're made of some stuff called hafnium, which absorbs the neutrons, stops the reaction running out of control. So when all these rods are down, deep in the uranium, the activity is neglible. Just a quiet, scarcely active, hunk of machinery.

  "Then we want to get going, right? So we begin to 'pull the rods'—lifting first one group and then another out of the uranium core. And as we do so the neutrons have more and more freedom to split and cause further fissions. And as this happens, the system gets wanner. But we have total control of the process, and we create the heat precisely as we wish—a self-sustaining critical mass."

  "Okay," said Ravi. "I'm with you."

  "But remember," said Ben Badr. "This is a circuit. The pressurized water is pumped out of the reactor, into a simple steam generator, and this surges off down the pipeline to drive the turbines. The whole thing is just a steam engine. But we control how much steam goes to the turbines, and we control how much turns back into water and surges around the circuit, back into the reactor to begin the process all over again. It's called the Carnot Cycle, the difference between water temperature coming out of the reactor and going back into the reactor... this is the power factor driving the ship."

  "When the water flows into the reactor, does it actually touch the uranium?"

  "Oh, yes," replied Ben. "It flows right over the solid U-235, and the temperature of the water is absolutely critical. If it's a little too cold, the neutrons react, speed up, and get hotter. And in my view the really scary thing about a nuclear reactor is that the hotter it gets, the hotter it wants to get."

  "So we get a corrosion leak, like you just said," asked Ravi, "and the pressure drops and the water cools, and comes in at too low a temperature, we have big trouble?"

  "With a leak like that in the prime circuit, the core loses its water flow and rapidly starts to overheat."

  "I imagine you have some kind of 'fail-safe' in there, right?"

  "Absolutely. The rods crash straight back in, all of them, immediately reducing the activity of the core. But in a submarine, you have a problem right there. The rods actually stop the reactor. It's called a reactor SCRAM. But at that moment the submarine's power plant is dead. That means we soon have no propulsion, no fresh water plant, no fresh air system, and no heat. Should we be one thousand feet below the surface this is relatively bad news."

  "There's an emergency system, I suppose?" said Ravi.

  "Yes. One to keep the now inactive reactor cool, and a diesel engine, which we immediately fire up, once we get back to periscope-depth or on the surface."

  At this point Captain Vanislav interrupted. "Remember, General," he said. "Ben is speaking to you as a submarine officer, not a scientist. A
nd you don't need to be a scientist to command an SSN. But you do need to understand the system, and you need to know what those screens are telling you. But most of all, you need the ability to recognize a problem and to know what action to take. You will have very knowledgeable nuclear engineers down here in this part of the ship. They will keep you well informed. But you must be aware of the potential snags, and how to react to them."

  "Have you taught Ben everything during sea trials?" asked Ravi.

  "Oh no. We have a superb simulator on shore, and all of our future submarine officers learn the profession in there. Ben has spent literally weeks in that simulator, just like an airline pilot studying big passenger jets. He's been right through the entire course, from the smallest emergency to core meltdown."

  "I'm not sure I like the sound of that last part," replied Ravi.