Kilo Class (1998) Page 5

  The two submariners sat down in opposite armchairs, each one uncertain about bringing up the subject they were both here to discuss. Admiral Morgan had requested the meeting and would essentially take charge of it. He had also suggested that Admiral Mulligan invite Commander Dunning. The two men had never met.

  Now Morgan elected not to broach the topic of the Chinese submarines until the CNO arrived. He glanced at the open pages of the Post and asked Commander Dunning if there were any unusually hideous distortions in the paper.

  “Not that I’ve hit on so far, sir,” said Boomer, grinning. “Matter of fact I’ve been reading a long article in here about that Woods Hole research ship that vanished last year. I’ve read some stuff about it before by the same guy—Frederick J. Goodwin. Seems to know a lot about it.”

  “That’d make a change for a newspaper reporter,” growled the Admiral. “Normally they know just about enough to be a goddamned nuisance.”

  Boomer chuckled. “Well, sir, he’s been down to that French island where the ship disappeared. Found the first bit of wreckage, a hunk from a bright red styrene life buoy. Had the letters C-U-T on it. He’s checked back at the base. Cuttyhunk was equipped with life buoys that seem to fit that description.”

  “I guess that more or less proves she went to the bottom, eh?”

  “This guy thinks not. He’s saying that if she went down, there would have been wreckage all over the place. And since the Navy sent a frigate in to search they must have found something. It was just a few days after the incident.”

  “That was kind of unusual. Our frigate was down there sniffing around for three months. Still found zilch. What does he say about the attack that was mentioned in the final message?”

  “That’s really his whole point, Admiral. He reckons they were attacked, and that a crew member made a desperate last-ditch attempt to alert the outside world by dropping a Cuttyhunk life belt over the side. He says there’s no other explanation for the otherwise total lack of wreckage.”

  “Yes there is.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The guys who sunk her hung around for a couple of days and cleared everything up. By the time our frigate got there the place was empty.”

  “Right. Except for one little bit of one life belt that got away.”

  “That’s it. Where did they find it, by the way?”

  “That’s another interesting bit of deduction by Mr. Goodwin. He says it was trapped in the windward side of a large rock, not quite big enough to be called an island. He says the position of the life buoy strongly suggests it did not come in from the open sea, but from the fjord itself.”

  “Well, our frigate captain was of the opinion the Cuttyhunk did not sink in the fjord. They found absolutely nothing, you know. I wonder how they missed the life buoy?”

  “Goodwin thinks the frigate captain would almost certainly have avoided that particular bit of water. It’s apparently very close to a big kelp bed, and the channel there is narrow and rocky. He doesn’t think any Navy captain in his right mind would want to go through there in a warship.”

  “Guess not, Boomer. Better to miss the old life buoy than get that stuff in your intakes and end up getting towed out of there two weeks later.”

  “Yessir. I’m with the captain on that one.”

  “So what’s Mr. Goodwin’s conclusion? Does he think Cuttyhunk sank or not?”

  “He thinks not, sir. He thinks she’s still floating somewhere, but he does not offer much of an opinion about the crew or the scientists on board. He just thinks it unlikely that our frigate would not have got some firm indication from somewhere that they were steaming right over the wreck of the Woods Hole ship.”

  “Sounds like he’s getting overexcited. I hate mysteries, you know. But I read this report pretty thoroughly at the time. It is possible she sank out in the bay in six hundred feet. Then you really might not find her.”

  “That’s true, Admiral. But Goodwin says the flow of the water, and the prevailing westerlies, make it a nautical impossibility for that life buoy to have ended up where it did.”

  “I doubt there’s much accounting for which way the wind blows inshore there, whatever the hell it’s doing out at sea. So I suppose we’ll just have to let the matter rest. Pity.”

  “Admiral, I don’t think this character Goodwin is very anxious to let it rest. He’s writing about the subject for the next three days. Tomorrow’s piece is entitled ‘The Menace of Kerguelen.’”

  Just then the door flew open and Admiral Joe Mulligan came in still wearing his big Navy greatcoat. “Gentlemen,” he said immediately, “I am really sorry about this. Hi, Boomer, Admiral. Yet another problem with that new carrier. She’s supposed to be commissioned in March, but God knows how that’s ever gonna happen. She’s supposed to be on station in the Indian Ocean by midsummer—I can’t leave the Washington out there any longer. I guess I’ll have to use Lincoln, but she’s due for refit. I wish to Christ we still had the Jefferson in service.”

  “So do I, Joe,” said Admiral Morgan slowly.

  He smiled at the ex-submariner who now occupied the highest chair in the United States Navy. Arnold Morgan and Joe Mulligan had known each other for many years, way back since the Academy, and to Arnold at least, it had been obvious for some time that the Boston Irishman was being groomed for the highest office in the Navy.

  Joe stood six feet four inches tall. He had a craggy face carved with laugh lines. His wit was sharp, and both his hair and his eyes were battleship gray. In his youth, Joe had been a good football player, tight end for the Midshipmen in the Army game 1966. He was a submariner through and through and never wanted to operate in any other field. Former commanding officer of a Polaris boat up in Holy Loch, Scotland, Joe Mulligan ended up in one of the most sought after operational positions in the entire United States Navy—Captain of the 18,500-ton Trident submarine Ohio in the 1980s when President Reagan was attempting to frighten the life out of the Russians.

  The men who drove the Tridents were regarded as the elite commanders of the US Navy—in some ways even more important than the admirals in charge of the Carrier Battle Groups. Each one of them had been blessed with that near-mystical ability not only to handle and run their giant underwater ships with chilling efficiency, but also to understand the greater picture of both the undersea world and the political world that surrounded them. They were men of stealth, ruthlessness, and absolute certainty in their own abilities.

  Captain Joseph Mulligan was widely considered to have been the best of the Trident commanders. His promotional path to become a vice admiral and then Commander Submarine Force, Atlantic Fleet and Allied Command (Atlantic), had nevertheless taken many people by surprise. When Admiral Scott Dunsmore predictably moved up to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, there were three admirals in line to become the new Chief of Naval Operations. The outsider among them was Joe Mulligan, and when he was appointed over the other two more senior men, a lot of people were very surprised.

  Arnold Morgan was not among them. He regarded Admiral Mulligan as an outstanding Naval strategist and administrator. He also knew him to be an expert on modern guided missile systems with a degree in nuclear physics. What Morgan really admired however was the new CNO’s deeply cynical view of the motives of all other nations. The two men shared an unshakable view of the proper supremacy of the United States of America.

  Admiral Mulligan motioned for the President’s new Security Adviser to join him in the inner office, leaving the Commander outside for a while. He issued strict instructions that they were not to be disturbed, short of an outbreak of war, mutiny, or fire, and could someone please bring in some hot coffee and a few cookies.

  Admiral Mulligan’s desk did not look too big for the head of the United States Navy, and Mulligan looked like a man who had been born to occupy the large office. Arnold Morgan smiled as the CNO growled, “Right, Arnie. What are we gonna do about these Chinese pricks?”

  He then pulled a classifie
d file out of his locked desk drawer, thumbed through the pages, and said he thought he would like his old buddy first to brief him thoroughly on the political background of the present situation.

  “Okay, Joe. I want to go through this very carefully because I have a feeling there has been some kinda blockage in the flow of information. Either that, or things which I regard as critically important are not so regarded by others, which means we are dealing with a bunch of dumb-ass sonsabitches, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Now, this is going to take me a few minutes, Joe, so bear with me, will you? I have two points of departure, the first when I was in Fort Meade, the second now that I have the ear of the President. I guess this all began back in 1993 when the Chinese Navy first placed an order with the dying Soviet Navy for one of those Kilo Class submarines of theirs.

  “Well, the Chinese Navy, even then, was in an expansionist mood, and no one got terribly excited. We were much more interested in the fact that the Iranians were in the process of ordering two or three of the same class.

  “Then, in 1995, a few things began to happen, which we did not like. In January, China took delivery of her first Kilo. It arrived on a transport vessel registered in Cyprus. Took six weeks, but the important thing was, it arrived.

  “Then, in mid-September, a second Kilo left the Baltic bound for China, and that arrived as well. Then, at the beginning of 1996, the Chinese confirmed they had ordered a total of eight more of Kilo Class boats. Just a few weeks later they began a series of Naval exercises in the Taiwan Strait that were clearly intended to unnerve the Taiwanese military. They started loosing off missiles very close to the Taiwan coastline, and right then we were obliged to sit up and take serious notice.

  “I guess you remember we sent a CVBG in to remind them of our interest. It slowed them down a bit, and from then on, we had to keep a very careful watch on the situation. You know how gravely we would view any action by the Chinese that threatened not only our own position in the Taiwan Strait, but also that of the rest of the world’s peaceable shipping trade along those Far Eastern routes.

  “Well, for a few years after that things went somewhat quiet, I suspect because the Russians were unable to get further Kilos built. You know what a goddamned mess they are in. Since the breakup of the old Soviet Navy, the shipyards have been just about moribund, especially in the Baltic. So far as we know there have been very few deliveries of any submarines.

  “It is just possible that the Russians have taken note of our repeated warnings that they should not fulfill the Chinese order, but I doubt it. We stepped the pressure up this year when the Chinese exercised their Eastern Fleet far too close to Taiwan—so close you’ll remember it almost caused an international incident between a couple of our DDG’s and a group of their aging frigates. Would have been a nightmare if we’d had to sink ’em, but at least they did not have a submarine out there.

  “Since then, we have called the Russian ambassador in, a half-dozen times, explaining how seriously we would view the situation if China suddenly had an efficient submarine flotilla patrolling the Strait of Taiwan. We know what damage a top-class commander in one of those boats can do. If China had a total of ten of them she could deploy three or more in the Strait. That would effectively shut us out.

  “You know there is a strong feeling in the Navy that we ought not to place those big carriers in harm’s way without real good reason. And the President is very aware that if the Chinese have an operational patrol of several Kilos in there, that argument would begin to sound very, very persuasive.”

  “Yeah. It sure would, Arnie. It would be very bad for the Navy, and that means bad for the USA. And the President knows that better than anyone.”

  “Right, Joe. You said it. Now let me recap some of the events of September fifth, two days before our first meeting with the President. I was right in the thick of it—started about 0100 hours our time. One of our guys in South China reported in, unscheduled, something he had not seen before: the arrival of a big Russian military aircraft, landing, apparently empty, at the airport in Xiamen early in the morning. Xiamen is the Chinese Naval Base city in the very south of Fujian Province.

  “They refueled it, and within an hour, a Navy bus arrived with about twenty Chinese Navy personnel, who boarded the aircraft. It took off right away, heading north.

  “Then, we get another report into Fort Meade about two hours later. The Russian has landed at Hongqiao Airport, Shanghai. Another of our guys sees two large Navy buses arrive—about 1300 their time—and this time sixty to seventy guys get out and board the aircraft.

  “Then at 0500 our time, we get another call reporting that the Russian military aircraft has shown up in Beijing. Came in direct from Shanghai. And fifteen more guys joined it. These were fairly senior officers. In uniform. Right after that it went quiet until midday, when a CIA guy from the embassy got a message through to Fort Meade that a Russian military aircraft with about a hundred Chinese Naval personnel on board had landed at the Sheremetyevo II airport in Moscow shortly after 1900. That’s unusual for a military plane, but the embassy guy says there was quite a serious welcoming group of Russians at the airport.

  “Anyhow, I ran the routine checks, aircraft numbers, time of journey, etc. It was obviously the same aircraft—and, equally obvious, crew for the two Kilos which we have known were nearing completion at Severodvinsk.

  “Now, Joe, I took this matter very seriously. I made a report detailing how important I thought this was. But I think my predecessor as National Security Adviser did not recommend any of my concerns to the President. Not even when we confirmed the hundred-Chinese crew had in fact arrived in Severodvinsk and were beginning to work on the two submarines.”

  “Jesus, my predecessor left me nothing on this.”

  “Joe, I actually find the whole fucking thing unbelievable. I have been going on about this crap for months, and my reports are getting shelved by some goddamned political shithead who doesn’t know his ass from his fucking elbow. Nor does he know how dangerous these Chinese motherfuckers actually are.

  “Anyhow, mid-October, the two Kilos remained alongside, probably doing harbor exercises and trials we think, and the next thing I’m hearing is the overheads have picked ’em up heading out of the White Sea apparently going home. We tracked ’em up toward Murmansk five hundred miles to the northwest. They were obviously getting the hell out of the White Sea before it freezes and locks ’em in there for five months.

  “Well, then I really blew the whistle. I actually called the President, the hell with fucking protocol, and told him these bastards were on the move, and if we were not damned careful, by my count, the Chinese would have four Kilos bang in the Taiwan Strait, in the very foreseeable future. He was extremely concerned and told me to keep him personally appraised of the situation.

  “And this did not take long. The two Kilos headed right into the Russian submarine base at Pol’arnyj—that’s the one close to the head of the bay, before you get farther down to Severomorsk and Murmansk.

  “And that’s where they’ve been ever since. Just doing harbor exercises. They’ve never dived and never been out for more than about forty-eight hours, which means to me they’re probably going home sometime in the near future, on the surface. I have suggested to the President that we may have to arrange for them not to arrive home. Not ever. Devious Chinese pricks.”

  Admiral Joe Mulligan did not smile. “Now I know why you recommended Commander Boomer Dunning join us this morning. I’d like to bring him in now, if it’s okay with you?”

  “Absolutely. Get him in here. Because today there’s been another development, which I think all three of us should discuss.”

  Joe Mulligan picked up a telephone and summoned Boomer into his office. The nuclear commanding officer entered and awaited permission to be seated.

  Admiral Morgan was succinct. “Boomer,” he said, “you may know that China has taken delivery of two of those Russian Kilo submarines. They ha
ve ordered eight more. Two of these are right now being worked-up in the Barents Sea near Murmansk and are expected to leave for China quite soon. We are fairly relaxed about this because neither boat has ever dived, and they seem to be preparing to make the journey on the surface, which is good, because we can watch the bastards. And then act when we’re good and ready.

  “However, today, December fourth, a new situation developed, which we are now watching with considerable interest. The overhead just picked up, in the last twenty-four hours, a suspicious-looking freighter making her way through the Malacca Strait. We apparently spotted her before, off the west coast of Africa, heading south. So we kept an eye on her. Couldn’t quite work out her cargo or destination. We have now established she’s Dutch, and under that big cover on her main deck is what looks like a submarine. Her course on clearing Singapore looks like she’s bound for China.”

  “Christ,” said Mulligan. “Are you going to tell me how you found out about all this?”