Barracuda 945 (2003)

by Patrick Robinson

  "Jesus," said the President. "But whose submarine?"

  "Well, that's where it becomes somewhat complicated," said the Vice Admiral. "And if I may, I'd like just to continue to the next hit, which, as you know, happened a few hours ago. Suddenly we got the same scenario. BAM! Up goes another huge oil installation, this time the biggest fucking refinery in the country. Grays Harbor.

  "What did it? Don't know. Evidence? None. Except once more I'm hearing about two separate sets of detonations. One knocked out two fractioning towers, then something slammed into the fuel farm. Again no warships, again no aircraft, and again no possibilities over the land.

  "Sir, whatever wiped out the refinery was big and powerful, and it must have been launched from a ship. Because there is no cruise missile in the world, so far as we know, with the range to get either Alaska or California from land.

  Unless it was ballistic, in which case we'd have tracked it and shot it down.

  "Right here we're talking about the fucking Marie Celeste. Because there was no ship. Again, sir, I come back to the likelihood of submerged launch missiles from a submarine. And I come back to it because I'm a devotee of Sherlock Holmes. When you have eliminated the impossible, only the truth remains."

  "Arnie, have we established, among everyone at this table, that the damage inflicted on Valdez, the pipeline, and Grays Harbor, must have been military?"

  "Well, I haven't had time to ask everyone, sir. But there's no doubt in my mind. Whatever hit us packed an unbelievable wallop, and the delivery of such a device could scarcely have been achieved by a civilian."

  Everyone nodded in agreement. "Which brings us to the next subject," said Arnold. "Timing. Which, as in all crimes, is critical. OK, now the missiles were fired at Valdez a little after midnight on Friday morning. The pipeline blew probably just before midnight on Sunday. That's a gap of about seventy-two hours, all day Friday, all day Saturday, pipeline busts late Sunday.

  "We have to assume the pipeline was hit by a sticky bomb or sea mine of some kind. And it was obviously primed around twenty-four hours before it exploded. Anyone with a lick of sense would be as far away as possible from the spot they inserted their frogmen.

  "We're probably looking at maybe thirty-eight hours from the datum between firing and fixing the stickies, right?"

  Again everyone nodded in agreement. "So, whoever fired at Valdez fired from within a couple of hundred miles of the hit point on the pipe, because, believe me, that submarine is moving real slow. And they had a lot of preparation for the insertion of the frogmen.

  "So, gentlemen, we got a fucking interloper right near the coast of Canada. At least, we know exactly where he was at midnight on Saturday, right near the Overfall Shoal. And next thing we know, there's a major hit at Grays Harbor this morning—that's a little over seven degrees of latitude south, 430 nautical miles, plus eighty miles to get out of the Dixon Entrance . . . that's 510 miles."

  The Vice Admiral rose to his feet and walked to the computerized chart. "I'm talking right here," he said, pointing to the shoal. "And right here," he added pointing to Grays Harbor. "And the time difference between the pipe burst and the refinery hit is just about five days—at five knots, he makes 120 nautical miles a day. That's four days and then some. But he's not stopping at latitude forty-seven, is he?"

  "Why not?" asked the President. "He wants to be near the target for his missiles, right?"

  "Sir, his missiles can be accurately fired from one thousand miles away, so he'll almost certain go further south than he needs just to get distance from the hit. No one wants to be near an uproar zone. He's probably another hundred miles further south, which would take him almost exactly five days to the hour. Down here somewhere . . ."

  Arnold pointed further down the chart and added, "He'll want to be well offshore maybe one hundred fifty or two hundred miles. So my guess is, he was somewhere in here when he launched. From our point of view, right on time."

  He described a circle on the chart with his right hand. Then he stepped back and spread both hands apart, pausing for a moment, before saying, "Christ knows where he is now. That was possibly accurate five hours ago. I'd guess he was still real slow, but I have not the slightest idea where he is now."

  "You mean he could have fired these things from the middle of the Pacific?" asked the President.

  "Sure could, sir. But I don't think so. He came inshore for the Alaska attacks. And he came south for the refinery. My guess is he's now headed inshore to noisy water, staying as deep as he can, and as slow as he can."

  "What the hell's noisy water?" asked the Secretary of State.

  "Oh, that part of the Pacific is very awkward, Harcourt," replied Arnold. "Cold currents from the north, warm currents from the south . . . produces some strange thermal effects, currents which 'bend' the sonar rays. And it's always much more noisy near the shore. . . creates a kind of audio 'fog' effect. . . hard to hear anything. He'll probably creep along the coast, with one hundred feet under his keel, and if he's slow enough no one will detect him.

  "Right now, gentlemen, we're kind of stuck with what I call the 'flaming datum'—that means we cannot do a damn thing in the way of finding this bastard until he does something else. And those darned missiles of his allow him to stand right off, and hurl his punches long-distance. It's the nightmare of submarine warfare. . . and remember, gentlemen, we've never had a terrorist in a nuclear boat before. But we got one now. I'm damn certain about that."

  "Jesus Christ," said the President. "You mean we're powerless?"

  "Just about, sir, I'm afraid."

  "Well, we have a massive Navy that is always asking me for more money. Why can't they organize a goddamned search or something?"

  "Sir, I expect you've heard of a needle in a haystack," said Arnold. "We'd be goddamned lucky to find the haystack, never mind the needle. We're looking at an area of maybe three hundred miles by four hundred miles in which he could be anywhere. . .we don't even know whether he turned east, west, north, or south. That's over one hundred thousand square miles. . . and we can't see him or hear him. He could pick a spot in deepish water, park his ship one thousand five hundred feet below the surface and stay there for a fucking year, then go home, wherever the hell that might be."

  "Sir," interjected Admiral Dickson. "I have to say on behalf of our very expensive Navy that this kind of wide search is absolutely futile. A total waste of time, money, and effort. If we pulled out the entire Pacific fleet, their chances of finding an elusive nuclear submarine would be about a million to one. That's why we have so many of them ourselves. Submarines are the single most dangerous weapon on earth, as the residents of Grays Harbor have just found out."

  "OK, OK, I got it." The President was becoming visibly rattled. "But, Arnie, you're always telling me we have a handle on every moving submarine in the world. And the first time we need real information, hell, we've got a damned great nuclear ship on the loose, smashing up the U.S. of A.—and no one knows where it is, where it lives, or who owns the bastard. I mean, give me a break, willya? The Navy costs about a billion bucks an hour to run, and you're telling me we have to sit here like a bunch of Cub Scouts watching this fucking maniac beat us to death?"

  "Sir," said Admiral Morgan. "In the end, we'll probably have to nail the archer, not the arrow."

  "What kind of a goddamned riddle is that?" retorted the President.

  "A pretty easy one because right here we're looking at terrorism on the same scale as 9/11, except with hardly any death, but identical ramifications. And it's state sponsored. Which narrows the field down. I doubt if even the old Al-Qaeda could have managed a nuclear submarine. Guys dressed in fucking bedsheets don't usually drive 'em. But somewhere at the back of all this is a foreign State or Republic, maybe even two. That's who we're after."

  "That might be who you're after, Arnie," snapped the President, now visibly furious. "But I'm after this fucking nutcase who's knocking down oil refineries. . ."

  "Sir, we are not w
ithout a few clues here," replied the Admiral. "And it would be better if we could avoid all-out global war. But we suspect the submarine is Russian built, but flying the flag of a third party, very possibly China. . ."

  "CHINA!" yelled the President. "Then you are talking global warfare! Jesus Christ!"

  "Sir, so far as we can tell, there is only one submarine in all the world that could somehow have crept through Arctic waters, across the Pacific, and hit Alaska. It's a twenty-year-old Russian Sierra I, Barracuda Class, Type 945. We've accounted for every other submarine ever built."

  The President hated playing cat-and-mouse with Arnold Morgan because he always ended up looking like a goddamned child.-Especially in front of his top people. He wanted to say, "Well, go find it, smartass, right now, and stop bothering me with details." But he knew better.

  Instead, he muttered, "Please go on, Admiral."

  "Well, they recently transferred this ship from their Northern Fleet to the Pacific Fleet and parked it in Petropavlovsk. . ."

  "Where the hell's that?" asked the President, impatiently.

  "Southern end of the Kamchatka Peninsula," said Arnold. "Big Russian Navy base in Eastern Siberia, ass-end of nowhere. We had already tracked that ship every mile of the way on its Fleet Transfer from the Murmansk area, but we now know it had been sold to the Chinese, because it was too expensive to run."

  "Well, where is it now?" Again the President seemed rattled.

  "We watched it sail from the Russian Base on Saturday morning, February ninth. Saw it turn south, and the Russians say it was almost certainly bound for Southern Fleet Headquarters in Zhanjiang. However, we have reason to believe the Barracuda dived ten miles offshore and then turned north."

  "Why did it?"

  "Sir, do you really want to know that detail?"

  "No. I believe you. It turned north. Then what?"

  "Big cruise missiles slam into Valdez twenty days later."

  "And all the priceless surveillance in our expensive Navy heard nothing?"

  "Correct. Not a whisper."

  "Well, why the hell not?"

  "Because it was creeping along like a sneaky little bastard, sir. When nuclear boats go very, very slowly no one can hear them. 'Specially if they navigate away from obvious areas we might patrol."

  "Has anyone seen anything that could have been a submarine?"

  "Not on this side of the Pacific, sir. But we know it was there. And in my opinion, it still is. I imagine my colleagues around the table agree?"

  "I don't think there's much doubt about it," said the CNO. General Scannell nodded and so did Admiral Morris and Bob MacPherson.

  "Which leaves us with the option of the 'flaming datum.' We stay on high alert and wait for him to strike again."

  The President looked, felt, and was totally exasperated. "Well, how many cruise missiles could he have?" he asked.

  Admiral Morgan shook his head. "We think a total of twenty-four, so far as we have ever known."

  "And how many has he fired?"

  "Don't know. At least accurately we don't know, because we are still investigating Alaska. But we think he could have fired a total of fourteen—possibly eight at Valdez, almost certainly six at Grays Harbor."

  "So we are looking at one more attack, at least?"

  "I guess so."

  The coffee and English muffins arrived at a timely moment, drawing the sting out of yet another Presidential riposte. But the Chief Executive now waited until it was served, until the man in the white coat had inquired formally of Admiral Morgan, "Buckshot, sir?"

  Then he demanded, "But what about the Navy—there must be some kind of a protective barrier we can throw up?" He said it almost plaintively.

  "It's a waste of time, sir," said Admiral Dickson. "By the time we put to sea, he could be anywhere."

  "I can see no option but to wait," said Admiral Morgan. "But I am worried about the Navy . . ."

  "How do you mean?" asked the CNO.

  "Well, the sub looks rather as if it is moving south, and there are a lot of ships in the San Diego Base. It would be terrible if he fired a cruise missile, or even a torpedo at a carrier."

  "Are you kidding me, or what?" said the President, eyebrows raised.

  "Well, he just leveled an oil refinery that is a whole lot bigger than six carriers, and he didn't have much trouble doing that."

  "But surely there's some defense. . ."

  "An incoming cruise," said Admiral Dickson. "Launched from out of the sea, traveling at six hundred knots, ten miles a minute, two hundred feet above the surface, unexpected, in the middle of the night. The odds are heavily with the attacker."

  "The only defense is to keep moving the goddamned ships around," said Admiral Morgan. "Foreign countries have daily satellite pictures of all our Bases, and this joker can very easily access and receive that data by sticking his mast a few feet out of the water for around seven seconds when he knows the ocean is deserted.

  "Then he programs the GPS into the missile, and throws it straight at us, down the bearing, following the GPS data. It can't miss, and he's gone. . ."

  "And moving the ships around would be a huge pain in the ass," said Admiral Dickson. "Sir, they are in the dockyard for several reasons, most of them to give the men some shore leave after months at sea, but also for refit and servicing. It takes about a thousand people to move a big aircraft carrier. It would cause havoc if we had to move them all every two days."

  "Hell, I guess so," agreed the President. "But there is one other thing I wanted to ask about the cruise missile. Can it adjust its course during flight?"

  "Sure," said Arnold. "You just feed in a few different numbers before you launch it. But you can't change the flight plan after launch. Ultimately, it homes in on the GPS data, the position it received from the satellite picture, accurate to three meters."

  "Smart little steel bastard," said the President.

  "Actually, sir," said Arnold, "I do hate to seem pedantic, but I am afraid the cruise missile is a particularly dumb little bastard. It's entire guidance system depends one hundred percent on the GPS, which, as you know, is operated from one of our own military satellites. It allows everyone in the goddamned world to get an accurate fix to within three meters of accuracy."

  "WELL, WHAT'S EVERYONE IN THE GODDAMNED WORLD DOING ON OUR SATELLITES?" said the President, literally shouting now.

  "Because your esteemed left-wing asshole predecessor decided to make it available to everyone, in his usual devious, dishonest, know-nothing, liberal shithead manner."

  Even in moments of near-paralyzing tension, Admiral Morgan's ability to bring the house down remained undiminished.

  General Scannell, Admiral Morris, and Bob MacPherson burst into laughter. The President, chuckling, hesitated and then asked, "No seriously, how come everyone, even this lunatic hurling missiles at us, can have access to the satellite?"

  "Sir, it used to be that the GPS was strictly military, for our use only. Then it was decided the system was such a navigational help, it would make all kinds of human activity much easier. You know, sailing, trekking, mountaineering, rallying, merchant marine, everything. . .

  "So we opened it up. BUT—and this is a big BUT—the military insisted that while we retained the cutting edge of accuracy to three meters, everyone else could have accuracy to one hundred fifty meters."

  "You mean," said the President, "if you were that far off course, you deserved to hit the beach in your brand-new Chesapeake cabin cruiser?"

  "Correct, sir. If one hundred fifty meters wasn't good enough, go buy yourself a sextant and learn some navigation skills."

  "Well, then what?"

  "I guess there was a whole lot of pressure from boat builders and navigational-aid manufacturers," said Arnold. "And your predecessor gave in, and said he did not see anything wrong with providing accurate navigational aid to everyone."

  "Christ, the military must have objected?"

  "They actually raised hell, sir, because of to
day's obvious reasons."

  "And?"

  "Your predecessor ignored them, as he ignored everything they ever said, except if he needed them for some diversionary tactic."

  "You mean if we switched off the satellite that feeds the GPS, they could no longer guide those missiles long distance."

  "Yes. That's what I mean."

  "Well switch the fucker off then," said the President.

  "OK," said Arnold.

  "Hold on," said Harcourt. "You can't just do that. There'd be about twenty shipwrecks on the first day. Huge merchant freighters and tankers don't have the first idea how to navigate without GPS."

  "Tough," replied the President.