Kilo Class (2 page)

At the entrance to the West Wing, four more of the thirty-five White House duty agents were waiting. As the men from the Pentagon stepped from the cars, each was issued a personal identification badge, except for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs himself, Admiral Scott F. Dunsmore, who has a permanent pass. From the same limousine stepped the towering figure of Admiral Joseph Mulligan, the former commanding officer of a Trident nuclear submarine, who now occupied the chair of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), the professional head of the US Navy. He was followed by Vice Admiral Arnold Morgan, the brilliant, irascible Director of the super-secret National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland.

The second staff car contained the two senior submarine Flag Officers in the US Navy — Vice Admiral John F. Dixon, Commander Submarines Atlantic Fleet, and Rear Admiral Johnny Barry, Commander Submarines Pacific Fleet. Both men had been summoned to Washington in the small hours of that morning. It was now 1630, and there was a semblance of cool in the late afternoon air.

It was unusual to see five such senior military officers, fully uniformed, at the White House at one time. The Chairman, flanked on either side by senior commanders, exuded authority. In many countries the gathering might have given the appearance of an impending military coup. Here, in the home of the President of the United States, their presence merely caused much subservient nodding of heads from the Secret Service agents.

Although the President carries the title of Commander in Chief, these were the men who operated the front line muscle of United States military power: the great Carrier Battle Groups, which patrol the world’s oceans with their air strike forces and nuclear submarine strike forces.

These men also had much to do with the operation of the Presidency. The Navy itself runs Camp David and is entrusted with the life of the President, controlling directly the private, bullet-proof presidential suite at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, in the event of an emergency. The Eighty-ninth Airlift Wing, under the control of Air Mobility Command, runs the private presidential aircraft, the Boeing 747
Air Force One
. The US Marines provide all presidential helicopters. The US Army provides all White House cars and drivers. The Defense Department provides all communications.

When the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs arrives, accompanied by his senior Commanders, they are not mere visitors. These are the most trusted men in the United States, men whose standing and authority will survive political upheaval, even a change of president. They are men who are not intimidated by civilian power.

On this sunlit late summer afternoon, the forty-third US President stood before the motionless flags of the Navy, the Marines, and the Air Force to greet them with due deference as they entered the Oval Office. He smiled and addressed each of them by first name, including the Pacific submarine commander whom he had not met. To him he extended his right hand and said warmly, “Johnny, I’ve heard a great deal about you. Delighted to meet you at last.”

The men took their seats in five wooden captain’s chairs arrayed before the great desk of America’s Chief Executive.

“Mr. President,” Admiral Dunsmore said as he sat down, “we got a problem.”

“I guessed as much, Scott. Tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s an issue we’ve touched on before, but never with any degree of urgency, because basically we thought it wouldn’t happen. But right now it’s happening.”

“Continue.”

“The ten Russian Kilo Class submarines ordered by China.”

“Two of which have been delivered in five years, right?”

“Yessir. We now think the rest will be delivered in the next nine months. Eight of them, all of which are well on their way to completion in various Russian shipyards.”

“Can we live with just the two already in place?”

“Yessir. Just. They are unlikely to have more than one operational at a time. But no more. If they take delivery of the final eight they will be capable of blockading the Taiwan Strait with a fleet of three or even five Kilos on permanent operational duty. That would shut everyone out, including us. They could retake and occupy Taiwan in a matter of months.”

“Jesus.”

“If those Kilos are there,” said Admiral Mulligan, “we wouldn’t dare send a carrier in. They’d be waiting. They could actually hit us, then plead we were invading Chinese waters with a Battle Group, that we had no right to be in there.”

“Hmmm. Do we have a solution?”

“Yessir. The Chinese must not be allowed to take delivery of the final eight Kilos.”

“We persuade the Russians not to fulfill the order?”

“Nossir,” said Admiral Morgan. “That is unlikely to work. We’ve been trying. It’s like trying to persuade a goddamned drug addict he doesn’t need a fix.”

“Then what do we do?”

“We use other methods of persuasion, sir. Until they abandon the idea of Russian submarines.”

“You mean…”

“Yessir.”

“That will cause an international uproar.”

“It would, sir,” replied Admiral Morgan. “If anyone knew who had done what, to whom. But they’re not going to know.”

“Will I know?”

“Not necessarily. We probably would not bother you about the mysterious disappearance of a few foreign diesel-electric submarines.”

“Gentlemen, I believe this is what you describe as a Black Operation?”

“Yessir. Nonattributable,” replied the CNO.

“Do you require my official permission?”

“We need you to be with us, sir,” said Admiral Dunsmore. “If you were to forbid such a course of action, we would of course respect that. If you approve, we will in time require something official, however. Right before we move.”

“Gentlemen, I trust your judgment. Please proceed as you think fit. Scott, keep me posted.”

And with that, the President terminated the conversation. He rose and shook hands with each of his five senior commanders. And he watched them walk from the Oval Office, feeling himself, as ever, not quite an equal in the presence of such men. And he pondered again the terrible responsibilities that were visited upon him in this place.

C
APTAIN TUG MOTTRAM COULD ALMOST FEEL the barometric pressure rising. The wind had roared for two days out of the northwest at around forty knots and was now suddenly increasing to fifty knots and more as it backed. The first snow flurries were already being blown across the heaving, rearing lead-colored sea, and every forty seconds gigantic ocean swells a half-mile across surged up behind. The wind and the mountainous, confused sea had moved from user-friendly to lethal in under fifteen minutes, as it often does in the fickle atmospherics of the Southern Ocean — particularly along the howling outer corridor of the Roaring Forties where
Cuttyhunk
now ran crosswind, gallantly, toward the southeast.

Tug Mottram had ordered the ship battened down two days ago. All watertight doors were closed and clipped. Fan intakes were shut off. No one was permitted on the upper deck aft of the bridge. The Captain gazed out ahead, through snow that suddenly became sleet, slashing sideways across his already small horizon. The wipers on the big wheelhouse windows could cope. Just. But astern the situation was deteriorating as the huge seas from the northwest, made more menacing by the violent cross-seas from the beam, now seemed intent on engulfing the 279-foot steel-hulled research ship from Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

“Decrease speed to twelve knots,” Mottram said. “We don’t wanna run even one knot faster than the sea. Not with the rear end design of this bastard.”

“You ever broached, sir?” the young navigation officer, Kit Berens, asked, his dark, handsome features set in a deep frown.

“Damn right. In a sea like this. Going just too fast.”

“Christ. Did the wave break right over you?”

“Sure did. Pooped her right out. About a billion tons of green water crashed over the stern, buried the rear gun deck and the flight deck, then flooded down the starboard side. Swung us right around, with the rudders clear out of the water. Next wave hit us amidships. I thought we were gone.”

“Jesus. What kind of a ship was it?”

“US Navy destroyer.
Spruance
. Eight thousand tons. I was driving her. Matter of fact it makes me downright nervous even to think about it. Twelve years later.”

“Was it down here in the Antarctic, sir? Like us?”

“Uh-uh. We were in the Pacific. Far south. But not this far.”

“How the hell did she survive it?”

“Oh, those Navy warships are unbelievably stable. She heeled right over, plowed forward, and came up again right way. Not like this baby. She’ll go straight to the bottom if we fuck it up.”

“Jesus,” Kit said, gazing with awe at the giant wall of water that towered above
Cuttyhunk
’s highly vulnerable, low-slung aft section. “We’re just a cork compared to a destroyer. What d’we do?”

“We just keep running. A coupla knots slower than the sea. Stay in tight control of the rudders. Keep ’em under. Hold her course, stern on to the bigger swells. Look for shelter in the lee of the islands.”

Outside, the wind was gusting violently up to seventy knots as the deep, low-pressure area sweeping eastward around the Antarctic continued to cause the daylong almost friendly northwester to back around, first to the west, and now, in the last five minutes, to the cold southwest.

The sea was at once huge and confused, the prevailing ocean swells from the northwest colliding with the rising storm conditions from the southwest. The area of these fiercely rough seas was relatively small given the vastness of the Southern Ocean, but that was little comfort to Tug Mottram and his men as they climbed eighty-foot waves.
Cuttyhunk
was right in the middle of it, and she was taking a serious pounding.

The sleet changed back to snow, and within moments small white drifts gathered on the gunwales on the starboard bow. But they were only fleeting; the great sea continued to hurl tons of frigid water onto the foredeck. In the split second it took for the ocean spray to fly against the for’ard bulkhead, it turned to ice. Peering through the window, Tug Mottram could see the tiny bright particles ricochet off the port-side winch. He guessed the still-air temperature on deck had dropped to around minus five degrees C. With the windchill of a force-ten gale, the real temperature out there was probably fifteen below zero.

Cuttyhunk
pitched slowly forward into the receding slope of a swell, and Tug could see Kit Berens in the doorway to the communications room, stating their precise position. “Right now, forty-eight south, sixty-seven east, heading southeast, just about a hundred miles northwest Kerguelen Island…”

He watched his twenty-three-year-old navigator, sensed his uneasiness, and muttered to no one in particular, “This thing is built for a head sea. If we have a problem, it’s right back there over the stern.” Then, louder and clearer now, “Watch those new swells coming in from the beam, Bob. I’d hate to have one of them slew us around.”

“Aye, sir,” replied Bob Lander, who was, like Tug himself, a former US Navy lieutenant commander. The main difference between them was that the Captain had been coaxed out of the Navy at the age of thirty-eight to become the senior commanding officer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Whereas Bob, ten years older, had merely run out his time in dark blue, retiring as a lieutenant commander, and was now second in command of the
Cuttyhunk
. They were both big, powerful men, natives of Cape Cod, lifelong seamen, lifelong friends.
Cuttyhunk
, named after the most westerly of the Elizabeth Islands, was in safe hands, despite the terrifying claws of the gale that was currently howling out of the Antarctic.

“Kinda breezy out there now,” said Lander. “You want me to nip down and offer a few encouraging words to the eggheads?”

“Good call,” said Mottram, “Tell ’em we’re fine.
Cuttyhunk
’s made for this weather. For Christ’s sake don’t tell ’em we could roll over any minute if we don’t watch ourselves. This goddamned cross-sea is the worst I’ve seen in quite a while. There ain’t a good course we can heave-to on. Tell ’em I expect to be behind the islands before long.”

Down below, the scientists had ceased work. The slightly built bespectacled Professor Henry Townsend and his team were sitting together in a spacious guest lounge that had been deliberately constructed in the middle of the ship to minimize the rise-and-fall effect of a big sea. Townsend’s senior oceanographer, Roger Deakins, a man more accustomed to operating in a deep-diving research submarine, was already feeling a bit queasy.

The sudden change in weather had taken them all by surprise. Kate Goodwin, a tall, thoughtful scientist with a doctorate from the joint MIT/Woods Hole Oceanography Program, was belatedly dispensing tablets for seasickness to those in need.

“I’ll take a half-pound of ’em,” said Deakins.

“You only need one,” said Kate, laughing.

“You don’t know how I feel,” he replied.

“No. Thank God,” she said, a bit wryly. Their banter was interrupted by an icy blast through the aft door and the dramatic appearance of a snowman wearing Bob Lander’s cheerful face.

“Nothing to worry about, guys,” he said, shaking snow all over the carpet. “Just one of those sudden storms you get down here, but we should find shelter tonight. Best stay below right now, till the motion eases. And don’t worry about the banging and thumping you can hear up front — we’re in a very uneven sea, waves hitting us from different directions. Just remember this thing’s an icebreaker. She’ll bust her way through anything.”

“Thanks, Bob,” said Kate. “Want some coffee?”

“Christ, that’s a good idea,” he said. “Black with sugar, if it’s no trouble. Can I take one up to the Captain, same way?”

“Yessir,” she said. “Why don’t I give you a pot of it? I’ll clip it down, save you throwing it all over the deck.”

Bob Lander chatted to Professor Townsend for a few minutes while he waited for the coffee, but he wasn’t really listening to the American expert on the unstable southern ozone layer. He was preoccupied with the grim Antarctic storm and by the thumps against the bow, the dull, shuddering rhythmic thud of the big waves. There were too many of them. And a couple of times Bob sensed a more hollow clang, although the sound was muffled in this part of the ship. It was the pattern that bothered him, not the noise. He quickly excused himself, telling Kate he’d be right back, and stepped out into the gale, making his way up the companionway toward the bridge.