Kilo Class
KILO CLASS
PATRICK ROBINSON
This book is respectfully dedicated to the
US Navy’s Submarine Service—
to the men who wear the dolphins
and who operate in the
deepest waters
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MY PRINCIPAL ADVISER FOR THIS SECOND novel was Admiral Sir John “Sandy” Woodward, the Battle Group Commander of the Royal Navy Task Force in the 1982 Battle for the Falkland Islands. After the war in the South Atlantic, he was Flag Officer Submarines, and in later years he became Commander in Chief, Navy Home Command. It would scarcely have been possible to work with a more knowledgeable and experienced officer, the only man to have commanded in a major sea battle in the last forty years.
Kilo Class is a thriller about submarines, and it required months and months of planning. My office was permanently engulfed by charts, maps, and reference books, in the middle of which stood Admiral Sandy, relishing the weaving of the various plots. I was actually quite surprised at his devious cunning and careful attention to the smallest detail. Generally speaking I think the West should be profoundly glad he’s not Chinese.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to Lesley Chamberlain, the English author of the most beautifully written, scholarly book about Russia, Volga Volga. Lesley guided me and my Kilo Class submarines all along the great river and was more than generous recounting her memories of days spent as a lecturer in the tour ships of the Russian lakes.
In the USA I was assisted by a great many Naval officers, many of them still serving. I am deeply grateful for the many hours they all spent checking my work, correcting my errors, keeping me “real.”
To them, I owe much. But to Admiral Sandy, I owe the book.
—PATRICK ROBINSON
CAST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
Senior Command
The President of the United States (Commander in Chief US Armed Forces)
Vice-Admiral Arnold Morgan (National Security Adviser)
Admiral Scott F. Dunsmore (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs)
Harcourt Travis (Secretary of State)
Rear-Admiral George R. Morris (Director, National Security Agency)
US Navy Senior Command
Admiral Joseph Mulligan (Chief of Naval Operations)
Vice Admiral John F. Dixon (Commander Atlantic Submarine Force)
Rear Admiral John Bergstrom (Commander, Special War Command, SPECWARCOM)
USS Columbia
Commander Cale “Boomer” Dunning (Commanding Officer)
Lieutenant Commander Mike Krause (Executive Officer)
Lieutenant Commander Lee O’Brien (Marine Engineering Officer)
Chief Petty Officer Rick Ames (Lieutenant Commander O’Brien’s Number Two)
Petty Officer Earl Connard (Chief Mechanic)
Lieutenant Commander Jerry Curran (Combat Systems Officer)
Lieutenant Bobby Ramsden (Sonar Officer)
Lieutenant David Wingate (Navigation Officer)
Lieutenant Abe Dickson (Officer of the Deck)
US Navy SEALs
Lieutenant Commander Rick Hunter (SEAL Team Leader and Mission Controller)
Lieutenant Junior Grade Ray Schaeffer
Chief Petty Officer Fred Cernic
Petty Officer Harry Starck
Seaman Jason Murray
US Air Force B-52H Bomber
Lieutenant Colonel Al Jaxtimer (Pilot, Fifth Bomb Wing, Minot Air Base, North Dakota)
Major Mike Parker (Copilot)
Lieutenant Chuck Ryder (Navigator)
Central Intelligence Agency
Frank Reidel (Head of the Far Eastern Desk)
Carl Chimei (Field Agent, Taiwan Submarine Base)
Angela Rivera (Field Agent, Eastern Europe and Moscow)
Military High Command of China
The Paramount Ruler (Commander in Chief, People’s Liberation Army)
General Qiao Jiyun (Chief of General Staff)
Admiral Zhang Yushu (Commander in Chief, People’s Liberation Army-Navy, PLAN)
Vice Admiral Sang Ye (Chief of Naval Staff)
Vice Admiral Yibo Yunsheng (Commander, East Sea Fleet)
Vice Admiral Zu Jicai (Commander, South Sea Fleet)
Vice Admiral Yang Zhenying (Political Commissar)
Captain Kan Yu-fang (Senior Submarine Commanding Officer)
Russian Navy
Admiral Vitaly Rankov (Chief of the Main Staff)
Lieutenant Commander Levitsky
Lieutenant Commander Kazakov
Russian Seamen
Captain Igor Volkov (Master of the Tolkach)
Ivan Volkov (his son and for’ard helmsman)
Colonel Borsov (former KGB staff, senior officer on the Yuri Andropov)
Pieter (wine steward)
Torbin (head waiter)
Passengers on Russian Tour Ships
Jane Westenholz (from Greenwich, Connecticut)
Cathy Westenholz (her daughter)
Boris Andrews (Bloomington, Minnesota)
Sten Nichols (his brother-in-law)
Andre Maklov (White Bear Lake, Minnesota)
Tomas Rabovitz (Coon Rapids, Minnesota)
Nurse Edith Dubranin (Chicago)
Russian Diplomat
Nikolai Ryabinin (Ambassador to Washington)
Taiwan Nuclear Planning Group
The President of Taiwan
General Jin-chung Chou (Minister for National Defence)
Professor Liao Lee (National Taiwan University)
Chiang Yi (construction mogul, Taipei)
Commander Taiwan Marines (Head of Security, Southern Ocean)
Officers and Guests Yonder
Commander Dunning (CO)
Jo Dunning (his wife)
Lieutenant Commander Bill Baldridge (Kansas rancher and navigator)
Laura Anderson (his fiancée)
Ship’s Company Cuttyhunk
Captain Tug Mottram (Senior Commanding Officer, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute)
Bob Lander (Second in Command)
Kit Berens (Navigator)
Dick Elkins (Radio Operator)
Scientists Cuttyhunk
Professor Henry Townsend (Team Leader)
Professor Roger Deakins (Senior Oceanographer)
Dr. Kate Goodwin (MIT/Woods Hole)
Newspaper Reporter
Frederick J. Goodwin (Cape Cod Times)
AUTHOR’S NOTE
SHE WAS ONCE A FAMILIAR SIGHT ON THE ocean waters surrounding the European coastline—the 240-foot-long Soviet-built Kilo Class patrol submarine. Barreling along the surface, her ESM mast raised, she was a jet black symbol of Soviet sea power.
Throughout the final ten years of the Cold War, the Kilo was deployed in all Russian waters, and sometimes far beyond. She patrolled the Baltic, the North Atlantic, the White Sea, the Barents Sea, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and even the Pacific, the Bering Sea, and the Sea of Japan.
At three thousand tons dived, the Kilo was by no means a big submarine—the Soviet Typhoons were twenty-one-thousand-tonners. But there was a menace about this robust diesel-electric SSK because, carefully handled, she could be as quiet as the grave.
Stealth is the watchword of all submarines. And of all the underwater warriors, the Kilo is one of the most stealthy. Unlike a big nuclear boat, she has no reactor requiring the support of numerous mechanical subsystems, which are all potential noisemakers.
The Kilo can run, unseen, beneath the surface at speeds up to seventeen knots, on electric motors powered by her huge battery. At low speeds, the soft hum of her power unit is almost indiscernible. In fact the only time the Russian Kilo is at any serious risk of detection—save by active sonar—is when she comes to periscope depth
to recharge her battery.
When she executes this operation, she runs her diesel engines—a process known as “snorkeling,” or, in the Royal Navy, “snorting.” At this point she is most vulnerable to detection: she can be heard; she can be picked up on radar; the ions in her diesel exhaust can be “sniffed”; and she can even be seen. And there is little she can do about it.
Just as a car engine needs an intake of oxygen, so do the two internal combustion diesel generators in a submarine. She must have air. And she must come up to periscope depth, at least, in order to get it. A patroling Kilo, in hostile waters, will snorkel only when she must. She will snorkel only at night—to reduce the chance of being seen—and for the shortest possible time—to minimize the chance of being heard and pinpointed for attack.
Running slowly and silently, the Kilo has a range of some four hundred miles before she needs to recharge. She can travel six thousand miles “snorkeling” before she needs to refuel. It takes a crew of only fifty-two, including thirteen officers, to run her as a front-line fighting unit. She carries up to twenty-four torpedoes, as well as a small battery of short-range surface-to-air missiles. Two of the torpedoes are routinely fitted with nuclear warheads.
Today the Kilo is rarely seen on the world’s oceans. At least she is rarely seen anymore flying the Russian flag. Since the shocking demise of the Soviet Navy in the early 1990s, the Kilo has mostly been confined to moribund Russian Navy yards. There are only two Kilos in the Black Sea, two in the Baltic, six in the Northern Fleet, and some fourteen in the Pacific Fleet.
And yet this sinister little submarine still serves her country. She is now being built almost entirely for export, and no warship in all the world is more in demand. The huge income derived from the sale of the Kilo pays a lot of bills for a near-bankrupt Russian Navy and keeps a small section of the Russian fleet mobile.
The Russians, however, have demonstrated a somewhat alarming tendency: to sell the Kilo Class submarine to anyone with a large enough checkbook—they cost $300 million each.
While no one particularly minded when Poland and Romania each bought one, nor indeed when Algeria bought a couple secondhand, a few eyebrows were raised when India ordered eight Kilos. But India is not seen as a potential threat to the West.
It was Iran that caused worry. Despite a bold attempt at intervention by the Americans, the ayatollahs managed to get ahold of two Kilos, which were mysteriously delivered by the Russians. Iran immediately ordered a third, which has arrived in the Gulf port of Bandar Abbas.
This buildup, however, pales when compared to the activities of a new and deadly serious player in the international Navy buildup game. This nation built the world’s third largest fleet of warships in less than twenty years—a nation with 250,000 personnel in her Navy yards, and an unbridled ambition to join the superpowers.
This is a nation with a known capacity to operate submarines, and a known capacity to produce a sophisticated nuclear warhead small enough to fit into a torpedo.
A nation that suddenly, against the expressed wishes of the United States of America, ordered ten Russian-built Kilo Class diesel-electric submarines.
China.
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CAST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PROLOGUE
The four-car motorcade scarcely slowed as it turned into the…
ONE
Captain Tug Mottram could almost feel the barometric pressure rising…
TWO
Vice Admiral Arnold Morgan, at age fifty-eight, was wryly amused…
THREE
Jo Dunning was not having much luck attempting to back…
FOUR
A Biting Northwester was sweeping through the Gate of Supreme…
FIVE
Boomer Dunning took the helm of Yonder shortly after first…
SIX
Admiral George Morris was not normally light on his feet…
SEVEN
The Lake was fifty miles wide here, and the Mikhail…
EIGHT
Fred Cernic was essentially a prisoner in his cabin. He…
NINE
Captain Volkov moved the Kilos northeast across Lake Onega at…
TEN
The sharply worded message summoning Admiral Zhang Yushu back to…
ELEVEN
A warm, subtropical rain swept across the narrow two-mile-long causeway…
TWELVE
Arnold Morgan left fort Meade in a hurry, taking the…
THIRTEEN
Columbia ran quietly through the Bering Strait late on the…
FOURTEEN
The staff car drew up to the locked corner gate…
EPILOGUE
Port-Aux-Français, Kerguelen. November 24. The mystery of the vanished Woods…
AFTERWORD
Kilo Class is Patrick Robinson’s second novel, and once more…
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BOOKS BY PATRICK ROBINSON
CREDITS
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
PROLOGUE
September 7, 2003
THE FOUR-CAR MOTORCADE SCARCELY SLOWED as it turned into the West Executive Avenue entrance to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Guards waved the cars through, and the four Secret Service agents in the lead automobile nodded curtly. Behind followed two Pentagon staff limousines. A carload of Secret Service agents brought up the rear.
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.”