Kilo Class (34 page)

He could see the guard hanging on to one of the great wooden blocks that held the submarine in place. Suddenly there was another thunderous roar from under the keel, and the front barge twisted farther to starboard. As it did, two-and-a-half thousand tons of Kilo Class submarine swayed, and then toppled sideways, smashing into the barge’s deck edge before hitting the water with a gigantic splash, and disappearing almost immediately beneath the surface.

But the Kilo vanished for only a split second before it surged upward again with terrifying force, like a giant breaching whale, before settling on the soft bottom of the canal, with the lead barge capsized on top of it. Deep beneath the surface the waters of the canal rushed through the huge split in the submarine’s hull caused by the impact with the deck edge and began to fill the Kilo with water.

But Captain Volkov had more immediate worries. The lead Tolkach had now broached, and the clockwise pressure on the coupling that attached his own rear barge was immense. They were swinging right across the canal, and he could feel his ship twisting to starboard. She lurched right just as the force on the coupling became too great. The entire barge rolled right over, in massive slow motion, sending the Captain hurtling to his death, across the deck and into the tortured, fractured coupling area under the bow. More spectacularly, the second Kilo hurtled off the deck onto the right-hand eastern wall of the canal.

The Kilo hit the bank with crushing force, smashing the concrete and destroying the hull. The submarine rolled back into the side of the barge, then down into the water with an impact almost equal to that of the first one. Split wide open below the sail, she lay half submerged, with water gushing in, pinned to the bottom to the great Tolkach that had carried her halfway across Russia. Ivan Volkov had somehow survived and fought his way to the shore, not yet knowing that his father had died.

He clambered out just in time to hear the muffled underwater roar of Lieutenant Ray Schaeffer’s slightly later Semtex charges blast eight gaping holes along the underside hull of the rear Tolkach. He heard the dull thunder, as his father had done four minutes earlier, and then he stood and stared as the six-hundred-foot following barge began to list and then to lurch dramatically as the water rushed in below. She seemed to rise, and then groan her way onto her port side, just as John Bergstrom had planned.

From Ivan’s perspective, the barge seemed to roll with agonizing slowness, and he watched in horror as the rear Kilo wobbled, then crashed majestically, plunging down from her keel blocks, twenty feet above the water. The Kilo hit the surface of the Belomorski Canal with breathtaking reverberations before rebounding back into the water with a gaping hole behind her tower, and a giant split all the way aft, through which water gushed, short-circuiting and wrecking the battery, flooding the diesels, ruining the computerized firing systems, wiping out the sonar, the radar, the operations center, and flooding every compartment.

No crane would ever be able to lift even one of the Kilos out of the water. In under six minutes the explosives set by Admiral Bergstrom’s SEALs had destroyed three Kilo Class submarines worth $900 million, sunk three of the biggest freighters in Russia, and completely blocked the Belomorski Canal for months, or even a year. At least until the Russians could begin to bring in frogmen, lifting “camels,” and start raising the hulls off the bottom.

Ivan Volkov was the sole survivor. As he stood on the chilly, battered banks of the canal, shivering with cold and shock, miles from anywhere, the waters settled slowly and quietly over the wreckage. To the northeast he could see the sun, glowing pink at 3
AM
, on the distant horizon. But there was no movement anywhere, and he knew instinctively that no human being could have survived such a crash.

He also knew now why he had survived. As his Tolkach had listed to starboard, he had sensed the danger and dived straight over the bow of the lead barge, from the area directly in front of his wheelhouse. He had plunged into the dark water, out to the left, swimming away from the hull, kicking off his boots as he did so. At the moment she capsized, he was forty yards clear… and safe.

In all of Russia’s northern territories, Ivan was the only man who knew the disaster could
not
have been an accident. He had heard the thunder beneath the surface, not only on the articulated “double” barge, which he was himself steering, but also from the quite separate rear barge. Young Volkov
knew
something diabolical was afoot. Someone had blown up the convoy. Of that he was certain.

He had no recollection of having passed any sign of life in the previous few miles before the barges overturned, so he decided to walk north to look for help, taking off his soaking-wet shirt and jacket, deeply regretting losing his boots. Sometimes he walked, sometimes he ran, trying to keep his circulation going until he reached a waterside village. But it was a long way.

Meanwhile, moving slowly north up the canal, some twenty-two miles south of the disaster, was the 1,700-ton river cargo ship
Baltica
, laden to her gunwales with timber from the central Volga and bound for the northern shipyards. It took her more than four hours to reach the site of the catastrophe, and it was shortly after 0730 when the first mate spotted the completely unexpected wreckage in the water nearly a mile up ahead. He called for the Captain to return to the bridge: “Look out, sir… what the hell’s that… in the water right on our bow?”

“Where?” asked the Captain, peering north at the jutting hull of the rear Tolkach. “JESUS!… FULL ASTERN!”

The freighter was slow to stop when she was empty, even at seven knots. But now, weighed down by hundreds of tons of timber, she was almost impossible to bring to a halt in the short distance remaining. Her ancient engines slowed, then stopped, then restarted in reverse, seeming to take forever. The ship shuddered from end to end as her screw fought to slow her forward momentum as she slid inexorably toward the half-exposed propeller of the rear Tolkach. She bumped hard, hardly saved by the heavy tractor half-tires Captain Perov had fixed on his bow to avoid damage in the often-crowded Russian trading ports. The engine pulled her off, and there was no real harm done, but the Captain and his small crew were completely overwhelmed by the sight before them. There was wreckage all over the surface of the water. There was another colossal barge overturned on its side just up ahead. There was yet another, jutting out of the water still farther ahead. And on the left near side of the canal was the unmistakable shape of a
submarine
, its stern visible, slammed against the obliterated bank of the canal.

To the right Captain Perov could see a second submarine. Sunk, but with her stern, after planes, rudders, and screw out of the water, she rested against the eastern bank, which looked as if it had been blasted by a mine. On the same side, but farther forward, there was yet a third hull, rigid and still. He did not know that this was another submarine, hard aground on its own sail, which was dug into the bottom of the canal. Its hull was split, and it was full of water. The lead Tolkach was pinning it upside down. If Captain Perov had not known better he would have assumed he was in a war zone.

Of life, there was no sign. And for a river cargo captain there was but one salient point… the Belomorski Canal was completely blocked. Both ways. And it was liable to stay that way for some time. Captain Perov picked up the radio handset and contacted the river police. It was 0736 on the morning of June 12.

By 0900, news of the devastation on the canal had reached the Kremlin. In the office of the Chief of the Main Navy Staff there was an atmosphere of scarcely controlled fury. Vitaly Rankov, the massive ex-Soviet international oarsman, was a full Admiral now, and he wielded enormous power. As Chief of the Main Staff, he was the third most important man in the entire Russian Navy. He was right behind the C in C, who also held the position of Deputy Minister of Defense; and the Deputy C in C of the Navy.

Each of the two men who outranked Admiral Rankov was involved in the machinations of the various ex-Soviet fleets in the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Pacific, and the North. But in the day-to-day running of the 270,000-strong Russian Navy, Admiral Rankov was the name most feared above all others. Straightforward situations, where major decisions needed to be made, ended up on his desk very quickly indeed. Situations where any threat to national security was suspected arrived for his attention instantly. And now the ex-Naval Intelligence Chief sat staring at the brief report in front of him… the wrecked Tolkach barges, the ruined Kilo submarines, the blocked canal.

There were a thousand questions to be asked, and most of them, he suspected, would never be satisfactorily answered. But there was one question he could answer immediately, though he might have trouble proving it.

Who was responsible for this outrage?

The answer, he knew, was: Admiral Arnold Morgan, National Security Adviser to the President of the United States of America. “I KNOW THAT BASTARD,” thundered the Admiral to the vast and empty room. “He virtually threatened our Ambassador in Washington… THAT FUCKING MANIAC HAS DESTROYED A TOTAL OF FIVE KILO CLASS SUBMARINES. TWO IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC, AND NOW THREE IN THE CANAL.”

It took him a full ten minutes to regain his composure, pacing from one end of his great vaulted office to the other, the steel tips on the heels of his polished shoes clicking on the marble floor as he walked. He tried to order his thoughts coherently. Politically, he had no idea what would be decided, and plainly it would be absurd to alarm the populace with wild accusations involving the USA. At least it would without a great deal of hard evidence.

No, that was all out of the question. The entire matter must be treated as an accident, and maybe it would not be necessary to make anything public, except for news of a cataclysmic crash in the canal. There were after all very few casualties, and the entire incident happened in an extremely remote area. IT WAS JUST THE SHEER BRASS BALLS OF THAT LUNATIC IN THE WHITE HOUSE… THAT WAS THE INFURIATING PART.

Worse yet in the mind of Admiral Rankov was the possibility that Arnold Morgan was going to believe he had gotten away with the entire escapade. And when his fury had subsided, he picked up the telephone and told the Kremlin operator to get through to the White House switchboard, and patch him through to Admiral Morgan on a matter of extreme urgency.

“You do realize, it is 0100 in the morning in Washington, sir,” asked the operator politely.

“I do,” replied Admiral Rankov, forcing a smile at the prospect of awakening Admiral Morgan, as the American security chief had done so often to him.

It took only three minutes. The White House switchboard was able to put the call straight through to Fort Meade, where the Admiral was still chatting to George Morris.

“VITALY! MY OLD BUDDY… HOW THE HELL ARE YOU?”

“Good morning, Arnold. Should I apologize for the lateness of the hour?”

“Hell, no. I’ve always told you. If you want me, call me, never mind the time. That’s the way I operate.”

“Yes. I have noticed,” replied the Russian coldly.

“Now, old pal, what can I do for you?”

“Arnold, we were transporting three Kilo Class submarines up the Belomorski Canal this morning when all three barges carrying them suddenly overturned. The resulting wreckage was just about total. More than a billion dollars’ worth of damage. The canal will be closed for at least six months.”

“No kidding? Hey, that’s awful.”

“Arnold, I wondered whether you might not know something about this disaster. You made it so clear to Nikolai Ryabinin that you did not wish our export order to China to proceed.”

“You mean these three Kilos were on their way to China?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, I can’t say I personally have any knowledge about them… I mean, I haven’t really left my desk much today. But let me get this clear… you think someone tipped over your barges and smashed up the submarines, bang in the middle of Russia, right under the eyes of your security network. Who’s your first suspect… King Kong?”

“Arnold, we are old friends. And you sometimes make me laugh. But not today. The United States has the
motive
to orchestrate such an ‘accident.’ And I am also going to warn you, formally, on behalf of the Russian Navy, that I will not rest until I get to the bottom of it. If I discover the hand of America behind this, I will personally ensure that the entire world views you as a bunch of selfish, lawless, vicious bastards, and we will take a resolution to the United Nations insisting that you be required to make full and total compensation to us for loss of lives and all repairs, and that you publicly apologize for bringing this world to the brink of war. I know you think we are some kind of a backward, Third World country compared to the mighty USA. But we are not powerless, remember that.”

“Now come on, Vitaly. We do not think this. We certainly do not regard you as backward, or Third World, or powerless. We are not your enemy. We didn’t want the Kilos delivered, that’s true. But we would
never
do something like you describe. Anyway, how could we? How could any outsider pull off an operation like that? You think someone blew ’em up?”

“No, Arnold. Not
someone
. I think you blew them up.”

“No. No. No. I would regard that as an unacceptable act between friendly nations. I might consider it… but I’d never carry it out.”

“Arnold. I just had to hear your formal denial.”

“Well, you got that, old pal. If I were you, I’d take a careful look at some of your other enemies. How ’bout those Chechen characters, they’re still pretty fed up with you guys. And I’ll tell you, it would be a whole hell of a lot easier for them, than us, to knock a few holes in a big freighter. Sounds to me like a classic inside job.”

“Thank you, Arnold. I appreciate your concern. But don’t take me for a fool.”

“Would I do that, Vitaly? We’re friends, and anything I can do to help, lemme know. By the way, you got any kinda security forces in that canal? I mean, what type of guards and surveillance do you have up there?”