Authors: Patrick Robinson
The chart looked like an obstacle course—fishing banned, anchoring banned, oil pipelines, Naval waters. Endless patrol boats. Rocks, wrecks, sandbars, and constant “forbidden entry” signs. Don’t even think about it. The Chinese, with a nuclear shipbuilding program in full operation on the distant shores to the north, had much to protect from the West, indeed much to hide.
Even the friendly little North Korean freighter
Yongdo
would have a Navy escort in the small hours of Friday morning. As would the
Barracuda
several hours later.
The
Yongdo
was there first, by midnight on Friday, with the
Barracuda
charging along behind, gaining with every hour. Still underwater, in 26 fathoms, Ben Badr knew he would shortly have to come to periscope depth as the sea shelved up into the Strait and then to the dead-end section of the Yellow Sea.
With every mile they covered, he was more and more pleased with his crew. Everyone had learned an enormous amount in the previous two years—the training with the Russians in Araguba, the endless courses in nuclear physics, nuclear reactors, turbines, propulsion, engineering, electronics, hydrology, weapons and guidance systems.
And alongside him, there were no longer rookies, but seasoned submariners. There was his number two, the Executive Officer, Capt. Ali Akbar Mohtaj, the former reactor room engineer who had commanded this very ship halfway around the world.
There was Commander Abbas Shafii, another engineer, nuclear specialist from General Rashood’s home province of Kerman. He would take overall command of the control area. There was the Chief of Boat, Chief Petty Officer (CPD) Ali Zahedi, and CPO Ardeshir Tikku, who would take overall command of the top three computer panels in the reactor control room.
A first-class electronics Lieutenant Commander from Tehran who had three tours of duty in Iran’s Kilo-Class diesel-electrics was also onboard; and he was highly valued since he had sailed with Captain Mohtaj from Araguba to Zhanjiang the previous year.
In addition to the always-comforting presence of General Rashood, there was his cheerful personal bodyguard Ahmed Sabah, who acted as a huge help in crew relations, cheerfully complimenting the men on their work. It was as if his words came from the Hamas military boss himself, and Ben Badr knew it served great purpose towards the general morale of people working under stress, spending weeks on end without laying eyes on the world outside.
And then, of course, the beautiful, slender, steely-eyed Shakira, the General’s wife, Ahmed’s sister, one of the most trusted operatives in the entire Hamas organization, the Palestinian freedom fighter who had saved the life of Maj. Ray Kerman when he was hopelessly trapped in a murderous shoot-out in the wrong end of Hebron.
In return, General Rashood had allowed free rein to his wife’s talent, encouraging her to develop her principal strength—the gathering and ordering of immense detail, mainly in the area of maps, charts, and topology. In Ravi’s view, no one could plot and plan with greater detail than Shakira, especially cruise missile navigation. In the end, he had caved in to her demands to be allowed to serve onboard the submarine. And a wise decision it had been.
This lovely, black-haired Arabian woman, now twenty-seven years old, had a mind like a bear trap. And her performance in
Barracuda I
in the missile programming area had been flawless.
So flawless that Ravi had almost forgotten her final summing up before he permitted her to become the first woman ever to serve in a submarine—
“Either we both go, or no one goes. You’re not dying without me…”
And now she awaited them in the port of Huludao, and Admiral Badr greatly looked forward to seeing her, though perhaps not quite as intensely as North Korea’s big customer, sharing the bridge with Ahmed Sabah in comfortable silence, staring at the endless waters of the Yellow Sea, a couple of hundred miles to the north.
For both ships, the journey passed without incident. Escorted through the Strait, no one hit, or even dodged, anything. The
Barracuda
docked at around 1900 on Saturday evening. The
Yongdo
came in twelve hours later on Sunday morning.
Chinese customs, all in Naval uniform, boarded her before anyone was permitted to leave the ship. And they insisted on inspecting at least two of the new missiles and having them identified with the full paperwork provided by the owner, General Rashood.
Two of the crates were unbolted, one of them containing the missile that would include one of the nuclear warheads sealed in the bright stainless-steel flasks lashed down for’ard of the freight deck.
General Ravi knew they were looking at one of the two nuclear cruises, because he could see the lettering near the stern, in English, denoting it was a Mark-2 Submarine-Launched weapon, custom-built for a designated submarine.
The missile had been named by Shakira, in honor of the ancient curved blade of the Muslims, the sword forged in Damascus and carried by Saladin himself when he faced the Lionheart’s Christians at the gates of Jerusalem in the twelfth century.
The name was clear, painted at Shakira’s request in letters of gold. They stood stark against the gunmetal-gray curve of the missile’s casing—
SCIMITAR SL-2.
1130, June 4, 2009
National Security Agency
Fort Meade, Maryland.
T
HE LIEUTENANT COMMANDER’S OFFICE
looked as if it had been ransacked. There were sheets of paper covering literally every square inch of the area—on the desk, on the “research table” next to the printer, on the printer, and all over the floor. There were big piles, little piles, and single pieces. There was colored paper and plain. There was stuff in files, stuff wrapped in rubber bands. Stuff crammed between the pages of books. There was
SECRET, TOP SECRET, CLASSIFIED, HIGHLY CLASSIFIED
. The last pile was the largest.
Contrary to first impression, however, the place had not been ransacked—merely Ramshawed. Every office space he had ever occupied looked the same. His boss, the National Security Director, Rear Adm. George Morris, put it down to an active mind. Ramshawe mostly operated on around seventeen fronts. Damned efficiently.
“I try,” he once said, “to keep tabs on important matters, plus a few others that might become significant.”
Right now he was into one highly significant matter, and another that had elbowed its way forward from the back burner. The “highly significant” item required attention today as it involved a potential enemy’s nuclear submarine. The envelope from the “back burner” required action yesterday, because it had just arrived from Adm. Arnold Morgan.
The very name of the now-retired National Security Adviser still sent a tremor through the entire Fort Meade complex.
Jimmy Ramshawe had just sliced open the envelope with a wide-bladed hunting knife with a bound kangaroo-hide handle that would have raised the pulse of Crocodile Dundee.
Inside the outer envelope was a plain white file containing six 10 x 8 black-and-white photographs. Attached was a brief note from the Admiral—
Four towelheads photographed on top of a volcano in the Canary Islands. When you’ve got a moment, try to identify them. I think it might be useful—A.M
.
Jimmy studied the pictures. There were four men in each frame. The pictures had been taken high on a cliff top with the ocean in the background. Three of the men were very clear, one was less so. But even this fourth image was well focused and showed the man in stark profile, from either side. The last one was snapped from his “seven o’clock,” as the Admiral might have said,
right on his portside quarter
.
If the request had come from anywhere else, Jimmy Ramshawe would have put it in the nether regions of all back burners. But requests from Admiral Morgan, though rare, did not even count as requests. These were orders.
Jimmy picked up the envelope and headed to the office of his immediate boss, Admiral Morris, who was alone at his desk reading one of the endless stacks of field reports.
“G’day, chief,” said the Lieutenant Commander. “Just got an envelope from the Big Man, thought you might like to see it…”
Admiral Morris was instantly on alert. “What does he need?” he asked, already pulling the pictures from the file.
“Only the impossible,” replied Jimmy. “ ‘Please identify four towelheads out of a world population of about seven billion,
spread through nineteen countries of their own, and about five hundred belonging to other nations.”
“Hmmmm,” said the Admiral. “I guess he thinks they may be prominent, or at least a couple of them may be. He wouldn’t ask us to identify a group of camel drovers, would he?”
George Morris studied the pictures for a moment and nodded. “Well, they’re good-quality shots, which means that Arnie didn’t take ’em himself. With something like a modern camera, he’d have an attention span of about five and a half seconds…Right. These would be the work of Harry. Remember the ones from the Admiral’s farewell party?”
“Yeah. Couldn’t forget ’em. There was one Jane said made me look like a bloody swag man, hair floppy, shirt out, holding a pint of Fosters, asking Mrs. Morgan for a dance.”
“Yes. I saw that one. And here’s four more guys who look like they didn’t want to be photographed. Again in very sharp focus. More dignified than you, of course, but very finely focused.”
They both chuckled. But Admiral Morris was not taking this lightly. “Okay, Jimmy,” he said. “Get these copied. Let’s have fifty sets. Then draft a note and we’ll send them through the regular mail to places we might get some feedback.”
“Like where?” said Lt. Comdr. Ramshawe.
“Well, we could start with our embassies in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, all the Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel. Then we’ll get the Pentagon to make some more copies and check out the commanding officers in all our Military and Naval Bases around the Middle East. We’ll get the FBI on the case, and the CIA. We’ll ask the Brits, MI5, MI6, Scotland Yard…”
“Christ, that’s a lot of trouble to go to, sir.”
“Happily we are assisted by a very large staff. I suggest we avoid putting anything on the networks. No Internet, no computers or E-mails, other than internal secure. The pictures are, after all, taken by a private citizen. And there is no suggestion of urgency. Arnold’s honeymoon was five months ago. It’s taken him
that long to send them. But if the Big Man wants a check, we give him that check. As well as we can.”
“Okay, sir. I’ll take care of it right away.” And Jimmy Ramshawe retreated to his paper-strewn lair, muttering, “Some bloody private citizen. Takes a few holiday snaps, sticks ’em in the mail, and half the world goes into free fall.”
He picked his way through the piles of paper, and studied the photographs again in a thoroughly Ramshavian way…
Well, they were taken on top of a volcano, but we can’t see it…We can only see the top of this cliff…a very high one…right on the shoreline of the Canary Islands…So the volcano must be behind the photographer…Wonder what it looks like…Suppose it’s dormant…They wouldn’t be standing around on top of it, not if the bastard was chucking molten lava all over the place…I didn’t even know they had volcanoes in the Canary Islands.
But he had no time for reveries. He called for someone to come and make copies and for someone else to draw up a list of all the U.S. Embassies in the Middle East. He buzzed U.S. Army Capt. Scott Wade down in the Military Intelligence Division and asked him how to circulate the pictures to the U.S. Middle East Bases. Then he summoned Lt. Jim Perry and asked him to put the whole thing into action.
He drafted the letter of request himself, E-mailed it to Jim, and told him to download, print, and distribute it, together with the pictures, as soon as they were ready tomorrow morning. Then he turned his attention to something he thought might really matter.
Fresh from the National Surveillance Office there was a satellite shot of a Russian-built
Barracuda
nuclear submarine making its way north through the Yellow Sea, presumably to the Chinese naval base at Huludao, because there’s not much else at the dead end of the Yellow Sea to interest anyone.
He also had a three-day-old picture of the
Barracuda
clearing the breakwater outside the base at Zhanjiang, headquarters of China’s Southern Fleet.
The satellite had taken two shots of the submarine, the second one about 25 miles out of the base, just before she dived. The next snapshots of that stretch of ocean showed absolutely nothing, and Jimmy had wondered where the hell the ship was going.
There was only one operational
Barracuda
in all the world, and the new photograph of the submarine cruising north on the surface meant this one in the Yellow Sea was the same that had cleared Zhanjiang four days ago.
He still did not know who owned it. The Russians had been evasive, claiming they had sold it to the Chinese, and the Chinese flatly refused to reveal anything about their submarine fleet to a Western power, even to the U.S.A. whose money they so coveted.
Thus, there were unlikely to be any definitive answers. Jimmy Ramshawe would write a brief report and keep a sharp eye on the photographs from northeast Asia, ready for the moment the
Barracuda
sailed south again heading for God knows where.
Again he pondered the mystery of the
Barracuda
. Why the hell’s the damn thing going to Huludao anyway…
That’s their nuclear missile base, where they built their two oversized, primarily useless
Xia-Class
ICBM boats. Beats the shit out of me. The ole ’Cuda’s too small for an ICBM. Maybe the Russians are really selling her this time.
But then, they could just as easily have sold her in Zhanjiang. Why take her north for 2,500 miles? What’s in Huludao that the
Barracuda
might need…Maybe specialist engineering for her nuclear reactor…Maybe, and more likely, missiles. The Chinese make cruises up there…I don’t know…but I’d better watch out for her if she leaves port…
He scanned the photographs again, pulling up a close-up of Huludao and its docks and jetties. It was a busy place, full of merchant ships in a seaport geared to handle well over a million tons of cargo per year. The place was groaning with tankers and merchant freighters.
He tracked the activity at the Huludao base for the next two days, and was pleased with the NSO’s very clear photograph of
the
Barracuda
arriving, and heading straight into a covered dock.
The next set of prints showed the unusual sight of a civilian freighter, with a longish flat cargo deck parked bang on the submarine jetties.
Must be bringing in spare parts,
he thought, not knowing that the
Yongdo
’s lethal illegal cargo had been unloaded in another covered dock, two hours before the satellite passed.
He fired in a request, purely routine, for the CIA to identify that ship, but did not have much luck. Langley said it was a pretty old vessel, probably Japanese Navy in origin, but converted like so many old warships in the Far East for civilian freight. They were uncertain of the owners, but guessed it was either still Japanese, if not, North Korean.
Probably bringing in a couple of fucking atom bombs for onward shipment to the Arabs,
he thought, sardonically.
Nothing serious. Only the end of the bloody world.
Another week went by without event. The
Barracuda
had not been seen since, and no one had been able to identify the Japanese-built freighter in the submarine yards at Huludao. And then something fascinating happened. The United States ambassador in Dubai, who had previously served in the embassy in Tehran, sent a note to say that he recognized
two
of the four men in Admiral Morgan’s photograph.
His Excellency Mark Vollmer, a career diplomat from Marble-head, Massachusetts, was absolutely certain. According to his note:
During my tenure in Iran I was personally asked to process the visa applications from two extremely eminent professors from the Department of Earth Physics at the University of Tehran. One of them was Fatahi Mohammed Reza, the other was Hatami Jamshid, both natives of Tehran
.
Ambassador Vollmer recalled that they had each accepted a one-year degree course at the University of California in Santa Cruz. Both men were specialists in volcanology and in the ensuing landslides that could devastate areas in the immediate vicinity after an eruption. He had thoughtfully marked on the photographs which prof was which. Jimmy Ramshawe guessed from
the men’s body language that Professor Hatami was the senior man, and the serious, frowning look of Professor Fatahi suggested he too was an expert in his field.
Ambassador Vollmer’s phone call to the University of Tehran confirmed that they were both back in Iran, members of the faculty, and lecturing at the Department of Earth Physics. Both were resident in Tehran, and traveled widely, observing and researching the behavior of the subterranean forces that occasionally change the shape of the planet.
“Wow,” said Jimmy. “That Vollmer ought to be working here, not scratching around in the bloody desert with a bunch of nomads.”
He was both relieved and amazed that the matter had been so easily cleared up, and with some slight feeling of pride, he drafted a note to the Big Man.
His E-mail ended with a flourish…
A couple of volcano professors doing their thing…here endeth the mystery of the Arabs on the mountain.
Kathy picked up the E-mail, as she always did. Her new husband was always threatening to hurl the expensive laptop computer into the Potomac—
It was so goddamned slow.
Arnold read the note with great interest and thanked Jimmy, asking him to keep a careful watch for any information on the other two anonymous figures in Harry’s cliff-top snaps.
“Typical Admiral Arnie,” Jimmy reported to George Morris later in the day. “He gets a ten-million-to-one triumph, and
still
wants to know more. You’da thought the two professors would be plenty. Cleared it all up. Just four volcano academics having a careful look at their subject.”
“You know him nearly as well as I do,” said George. “It’s not his fault. It’s his brain. The damn thing is unable to relax while there are questions to be answered. And he wants to know who those other two guys are…Can’t help himself.”
“He’ll be lucky,” replied Jimmy.
Prophetic words indeed.
Four days later an encrypted signal from the CIA landed on Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe’s desk. It was the cyber note heard round the world…
MI5 London passed on your request of June 5 to British Army Special Forces. Colonel Russell Makin, Commanding Officer 22 SAS, says the figure on the far right, not facing the camera, is the missing SAS Maj. Ray Kerman. Four other SAS personnel confirm. Mr. and Mrs. Richard Kerman driving to Stirling Lines tomorrow. Please forward date, time, and place of photographs soonest.
Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe nearly jumped out of his skin.
He strode along the corridor, knocked and barged into the office of Rear Adm. George Morris. The room was empty, so he stormed out again and found the Admiral’s secretary.