Hunter Killer (48 page)

At 80,000 tons she was small enough to make the transit through the Suez Canal, and from there it was a six-day run up to the huge underground terminal for liquid petroleum gas in the port of Marseille.

U.S.S.
Hawaii
had spotted her on radar ninety minutes previously, but there had been three other paints on the screen at that time. Only now, at 0730, with the sun climbing out of the desert to the east, was it possible to make a POSIDENT. The red hull of the
Moselle
was bright in the morning light, and the sun glinted off those huge bronze holding domes.

“We got her, sir,” called the XO, as he ordered,
DOWN PERISCOPE.
And then,
We’re about a mile off her starboard bow. Steer course two-seven-zero until we can read her name.

The ESM mast slid down, and the comms room confirmed there were no further signals on the satellite. The orders were unchanged.

As the
North Carolina
had done on the previous day tracking the
Voltaire
, the
Hawaii
moved in closer, but only a few hundred yards, because the light here was much better. The periscope went up one final time, and it was possible to see the huge white letters on her hull, L N G. Right below the safety rail on her starboard bow was the word,
MOSELLE
.

Temporarily, the
Hawaii
turned away, back south at twenty knots. But only for six minutes. Then she returned to PD for her final visual check. And the
Moselle
was still on course.

“Missile Director final checks,” ordered Captain Schnider.

“Both weapons primed, sir. Pre-programmed navigation data correct. Course three-three-zero. Launchers one and two ready.”

“FIRE ONE!”
snapped David Schnider.
“FIRE TWO!”

Seconds later, the two Harpoons came hurtling out of the calm water, one hundred yards apart, swerved as they hit the air, and then settled onto their course, both making a direct line toward the
Moselle
, one hundred feet above the surface.

Thirty-five seconds later they slammed into the starboard hull of the
Moselle
, around twenty feet above the waterline. The steel plates on this side of the double hull, both layers, were blasted apart and there was a firestorm of sparks and explosive inside the ship.

The reinforced aluminum of number two dome at first held, and then ruptured, and 20,000 tons of the most flammable gas in the world, packed with methane and propane, flooded out into the air—air that was two hundred degrees Celsius warmer than its refrigerated environment. Instantly it flashed off into vaporized gas, and exploded with a deafening
W-H-O-O-O-O-M!
Dome three split asunder, both from where the Harpoon had smashed into its shell and from the enormous explosion from dome two. This blew the for’ard dome, and before the Captain of the tanker could even issue a command, the entire ship was an inferno, flames reaching 1,000 feet into the sky, the entire front end of the ship a tangled wreckage of ruptured, melting steel.

Again, as in the tanker, the crew was, to a man, in the aft section, in the control room, the engine room, and the accommodation block. The Captain issued the totally unnecessary order to abandon her within one minute of the blast. He had not the slightest idea what had happened, and the crew who were able would have to leave in the two lifeboats on davits at the stern.

The whole length of
Moselle
’s starboard side was a blowtorch of gas, rising up off the water and fed by thousands of tons of liquid petroleum cascading out of the hull from the aft dome, which had not yet exploded but was somehow setting fire to the Red Sea.

The sheer size of the fire was already causing other ships to move in for a search-and-rescue operation, and a few men who failed to make the lifeboats were jumping off the stern, like in a scene from
Titanic
. But the waters were clear, warm, and deep, and the tide was carrying the gas on the surface to the north, away from them. Almost every one of the seamen who had crewed the
Moselle
would survive.

But the inquiries would be long and painstaking. She was the only LPG carrier ever to have a serious fire, except for one in the Persian Gulf a few years earlier that had hit a contact mine.

By the time the order to abandon ship was given, the
Hawaii
had gone deep, 400 feet below the surface, making twenty-five knots away from the staggering scene of maritime destruction. Captain Schnider had only two miles at this depth and this speed, after which he would slide into the regular south-running shipping lane, and make his secretive exit through the Strait, only 100 feet below the surface at six knots.

His satellite signal to SUBLANT in Norfolk, Virginia, would not be transmitted until they were safely in the much deeper water of the Gulf of Aden. Just one word:
GASLIGHT
.

MONDAY, APRIL 12, 0900 (LOCAL)
FOREIGN OFFICE
PARIS

There was an air of foreboding on the Quai d’Orsay. News of the
Moselle
’s demise was raging around government corridors. The President was furious, the military was demanding orders, and Pierre St. Martin was trying to prevent himself doing something that might ultimately be judged as rash.

And, of course, the dark, satanic cloud of the United States of America hung heavily over the entire scenario. Had Uncle Sam just whacked out a couple of French oil tankers? Or had there just been two ghastly, coincidental accidents?

Pierre St. Martin, as a lifelong career politician, knew it would be futile to ask the United States if their Navy had been responsible. And even if they answered, the Americans would certainly use the question to berate France:
not every nation is willing to use destructive firepower in the cause of its own interests…do not judge others by your own infamous conduct…

No. St. Martin could see no earthly reason to contact the United States. He paced his elegant office, uncertain what to advise the President, uncertain what, if anything, he could do.

He was not helped by the simple fact that no one onboard either the
Voltaire
or the
Moselle
had any idea what had taken place. So far as both commanding officers were concerned, their ships had suddenly, for no discernible reason, exploded and burst into uncontrollable flames. Which did not assist St. Martin one iota.

His tenure as Foreign Minister had always been cushioned by the comfort and elegance of the job, and its many, many
accoutrements,
not to mention the priceless antiques and furnishings from bygone days of French glory that perpetually surrounded him as France’s frontline executive in the global community.

But now the whole thing was turning sour. Everything possible was going wrong. He felt powerless and vulnerable. He turned to the portrait of Napoléon, with that smug expression on his round, complacent face. And St. Martin understood, vaguely, how the Emperor must have felt as he prepared to depart for his final exile in St. Helena.

The trouble was, at this level of government, there was nowhere to hide. Worse yet, there was no one to whom he could turn. The President, at 7:30 this morning, had been incandescent with rage.
“All I have ever asked for is secrecy…and what do I get? Some jackass French officer from the Pyrenees having his photograph taken on
the front of a tank! It’s probably framed now in the U.S. Embassy.

“I get incompetence, betrayal. I ask for my massive highly paid security forces to guard one slim French lady and two children, not a group of terrorists. And they can’t even do that. And now I have America, which appears to know everything about us, blowing French ships out of the water, and you tell me I cannot even remonstrate! Pierre, this is intolerable!”

Pierre tried to calm himself. He picked up the telephone and asked to be connected to Gaston Savary over at La Piscine. And to him he repeated the words of the President, “Gaston, this is intolerable.”

But he was preaching to a man on his way back up the road from Tarsus. Savary knew that everything about this mission had turned out to be intolerable. And like the Foreign Minister and the President, he too believed that the U.S. Navy was banging French tankers out of the water.

“Is it your opinion that we should cease all oil shipments from Gulf ports to France?” asked Pierre St. Martin.

“Quite frankly, yes,” said Savary. “Because if we lost another one, and a lot of people were to be killed, there would be a major uproar in France. The people would accuse the government of callous indifference to poor, hardworking sailors, who now leave widows and fatherless children, because of our own ambitions. Pierre, we cannot afford to lose another big ship. The risks are too great.”

“Can nothing stop a U.S. Navy submarine from doing its worst?”

“Not really. Those things can stay underwater for eight years, if necessary. At least their nuclear reactors can run for that long, supplying all the heat, light, fresh air, fresh water, and power they need. They only come up for food when it runs out.”

“And what about sonar? We have zillions of euros’ worth of sonar on our ships. Can’t we find the American submarine?”

“Not much chance. A nuclear boat can be anywhere, very quickly…you could be searching in the Atlantic and she’s in the Indian Ocean. You could be searching in the Pacific and she’s six thousand miles away. Give it up, sir. They think we’ve smashed the world’s economy, and they’re taking revenge. And there is not too much we can do about it, short of war with the United States, which we would swiftly lose.”

“So your advice is simply to stop all tankers traveling from the Arabian loading docks to France?”

“Yes, sir. That’s my advice.”

“Then I shall have to seek further help from the Navy, Gaston.
Bonjour, mon ami.
”

Adm. Marc Romanet, in his office in Brest, besieged by government departments wondering what to do, or say, about the latest American outrage, was marginally more optimistic. “Foreign Minister,” he said, “the Navy could provide an escort to the tankers, as the British did for the Atlantic convoys against the u-boats in World War Two.”

“You mean each tanker leaving the Gulf and bound for a French port would be accompanied by a battleship?”

“Sir, we don’t have battleships as such. I was thinking of a destroyer.”

“La même chose,”
said the slightly precious Foreign Minister haughtily. “Very large, very smelly, very noisy ships loaded with guns and shells and angry young men in badly pressed uniforms.”

Admiral Romanet was deeply unimpressed by St. Martin’s grasp of the French Navy. “Not these days, sir,” he said briskly. “Very large, pristinely clean, guided-missile ships fitted with state-of-theart electronics incomprehensible to a civilian and crewed by very calm, very educated young men in immaculately pressed uniforms.”

Severely put in his place by one of the Navy’s favorite sons and the head of the entire submarine service, Pierre St. Martin beat a very fast retreat. “Just joking, Admiral,” he said.

“I very much hope so, sir,” replied Admiral Romanet. “Because in the final reckoning, should we ever come under attack, your life will very probably be in the hands of those young men in the pressed uniforms.”

“Of course,” replied the Minister. “I was only teasing.”

“Naturally,” said the Admiral. But he was not smiling. “To continue,” he added, “we have our newest Tourville-class destroyer, the
De Grasse
, exercising in the northern Arabian Sea at present. She’s our specialist antisubmarine warfare ship. If anything can protect a tanker against attack, she can.”

“Against torpedoes? Which I believe is what the Americans used against the tankers.”

“Tell the truth, sir, I don’t think they did. The fires were too big and too sudden, in both ships. My guess is they hit them with missiles. But the
De Grasse
is a specialist. She’s loaded with her own missiles, but her torpedo capacity is formidable, ten ECAN L5 antisubmarine active/passive, homing to six miles—with a hundred-fifty-kilogram warhead.

“She also carries two Lynx Mk 4 antisubmarine helicopters. She has towed-array torpedo warning, radar warnings, jammers, and decoys. You want a ship to protect a tanker from underwater attack, I’d request the
De Grasse
, if I were you.”

“Admiral, I thank you for this advice, which I will pass on to the President. But I must ask you: can you guarantee this destroyer will keep the tanker safe?”

“There’s no guarantees in my business,” said the Admiral.

“And, perhaps, unlike politicians, we do not like to say there are when there are not. But I’d give the
De Grasse
a fighting chance against any enemy.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” said the Foreign Minister, who had not enjoyed sparring with a very senior officer in the French Navy who had managed to make him feel faintly absurd.

Nonetheless, he called back the President, and, attempting a career-saving final throw of the dice, told him he could absolutely guarantee the safety of French tankers on the high seas if they were accompanied by French Navy warships, particularly Tourville-class destroyers like the
De Grasse
.

“Perhaps organize them into half a dozen groups,” he said ambitiously. “Six of these Tourvilles would probably do the trick,” he added jauntily. “Antisubmarine specialists, of course.”

The President did not know any better than St. Martin that the French Navy owned only two of the Tourvilles, and the other one was on sea trials in the north Atlantic. Instead he trusted the word of his Foreign Minister, which would not do him much good. Meanwhile, St. Martin continued his rock-steady progress toward the gallows.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 1430 (LOCAL)
STRAIT OF HORMUZ

Capt. Bat Stimpson had the
North Carolina
in the identical position he occupied on Sunday morning just before he sank the
Voltaire
. The Virginia-class hunter-killer was steaming slowly up the Strait of Hormuz, two hundred feet below the surface, awaiting the arrival of another tanker, chartered by TRANSEURO, this time a ULCC, the 400,000-ton
Victor Hugo
, fully laden with Abu Dhabi sweet crude bound for Cherbourg.