Barracuda 945 (58 page)

The electronic pulse flashed unseen across the dark water, hit the little aerials, and simultaneously detonated all six of the 400-pound bombs. They blew with staggering force, and with a deafening roar, which kicked a twenty-foot wave back into the lake,
where the Zodiac carrying Bill, Chris, and the boys was making forty knots, southwest.

The blast annihilated the great iron hinges and blew both lock gates fifty feet into the night air. At which point a wall of water, with a forward motion of zillions of tons, over sixty feet high, thundered into the empty chamber like the mother of all previously known tidal waves.

It slammed into the second gates with the kind of force that would have flattened the Pentagon. They gave way as if they were made of cardboard, and the thunderous torrent, now driven by another zillion tons of water surging in from the lake, reached the hapless 9,000-ton
Qingdao,
ripped it from the chains of the locomotive and hurled it forward.

The sharp, pointed bow of the Chinese warship cleared the gates of the second chamber some thirty feet higher than it should have been and it was the keel and propellers that splintered the giant lock doors, smashing them off their hinges.

By now the torrent was gathering strength, and as the new water drove into the old, surging through the narrow reinforced concrete channel, it drove the destroyer’s bow upward, sending it through the second chamber at an angle of fifty degrees from the horizontal, the propellers tearing along the concrete bottom.

It hit the end gates like a gigantic battering ram, never even slowed as it ripped straight through the channel to the last chamber, slammed into those gates, cannoned off the sides, and then smashed its way forward through the last gates and crashed down the final twenty-eight feet into the Caribbean Sea.

Patrick Rougeau mentioned to his colleagues they had just watched the fastest transit in the entire ninety-four-year history of the Panama Canal, the final two chambers having been negotiated by the
Qingdao
in a little under forty-five seconds!

It was by no means over. There was no way of stopping the tidal surge from Gatún Lake. The wall of water just kept coming, cascading through the locks, thundering downward, picking up the
Qingdao
and hurling it clear of the channel out into deep water, holed, battered, many dead and injured, but still floating.

Meanwhile, 164 square miles of deep lake water just kept roaring. And it would continue to do so for seven days, until the lake was almost entirely drained.

The SEALs? They came racing into their landing beach, loaded up the helicopters, with everything except the far too heavy inflatables. These they sent out toward the middle of the lake, tossing a hand grenade into each one as it went. Then they all hit the beach and watched the little boats explode some sixty yards offshore, before scrambling aboard the Sea Stallions and heading back to the
Eisenhower.

Lt. Comdr. Bill Peavey’s signal was concise.
“Mission accomplished. Panama Canal destroyed. Casualties zero.”

R
AVI AND SHAKIRA
sat companionably with a couple of cold beers at their favorite corner table overlooking Martyrs’ Square. Their short visit to the Librairie Avicenne bookstore had yielded two American film magazines, a copy of the
London Sunday Telegraph,
and Tuesday’s
New York Times.

Shakira was staring at a big cover photo of Troy Ramford, with the Irish writer Edna Casey, clasped in each other’s arms, at a private ceremony at the Headquarters of the Screen Actors Guild where Troy finally collected his Oscar for
Timeshare.

The caption read:
Troy gets his statue one month after the lights went out. Edna gets her man.
Shakira was riveted.

She knew, of course, that the lights had gone out on the American West Coast. They’d been home now for almost two weeks and the newspapers in the Middle East had been full of the story. But the Iranian Government had prudently forbidden Hamas to claim responsibility.

It was her own stunning, precision timing that brought a huge smile to the face of Shakira Rashood now basking in the
knowledge of her shocking impact on the climax to the 2008 Oscars ceremony. Here was old Troy picking up the statue in a private office, and all because of her.

Ravi, on the other hand, was equally riveted by the
New York Times,
which led its front page with the headline:

IT’S OFFICIAL—THE U.S.A. TAKES OVER

THE PANAMA CANAL

Bloodless Coup as Panamanian President

Signs 1,000-Year Treaty

What followed was an almost-unheard-of interview with the President’s National Security Adviser, Admiral Arnold Morgan, who declared in the third paragraph:

According to the
Times,
there were U.S. Army gunships seen circling the Presidential Palace last week, and a total news
blackout was imposed throughout Panama City. The
Times
reporter, trying to operate from twenty miles away, claimed information has been extremely sketchy.

From the White House, Admiral Morgan would only say, “I have no knowledge of any aggressive acts by the U.S. military in the Republic of Panama.”

General Rashood smiled. “No, Admiral. I suppose not. You unprincipled, vicious bastard.”

Lt. Comdr. Jimmy Ramshawe sat before the Big Man while he read the latest CIA report of the highly classified U.S. investigation into the ruined
Barracuda 945,
eventually located in the Gatún Lake, half sunk, its intakes choked with mud, its active days over. Soon the mud would suck it down completely, without trace.

The CIA report ran to forty-six pages, and the main good news was that the Panamanians had willingly led the Americans by helicopter to carry out their investigations on the shores of Pelican Island. The reason for the delay was the water was now too shallow for a boat and too much like a quicksand for a vehicle. The rain forest offered no clearing for a helicopter and they just had to wait for the mud to firm up.

When it did, the Americans swarmed all over the submarine for a week, finding practically nothing in the now silent hulk. No papers, no documents, no fingerprints, no clothing. There were six missiles left, Ravi and Shakira having fired eighteen of the twenty-four RADUGAs, and the boat contained no other weapons. Arnold guessed they had jettisoned everything out in the Pacific long before they entered the Canal.

What, of course, they did find was the body of Joe Morris of Wilmington, Delaware, with his two companions, Skip and Ronnie, laying underwater near the base of the periscope, passports and documents still readable, the only papers left in the ship.

The report of their deaths was concise. Skip and Ronnie had half their heads blown away with bursts from a Russian-built AK-47 automatic. Joe Morris had died in a most unusual way, the skull bone between his eyes, an inch and a half above the bridge of his nose, had been smashed with a plainly round object. The central bone of his nose had been driven with incredible force into his brain.

Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe had highlighted that with a fluorescent green marker pen. And that was where Arnold Morgan stopped.

“Christ,” he breathed. “It was him, eh, Jimmy? Our old buddy Major Ray Kerman, expert in unarmed combat.”

“Yes, sir. Yes, it was. One SAS NCO, one British Member of Parliament, one unknown American visitor. All killed identically—unmistakable professionalism. Special Forces.”

“And we don’t know where the hell he is.”

“No, sir. And we’ve been using that exact phrase for a damned long time…. We don’t know where he is.”

“I tell you what, though,” growled Arnold. “We sure as hell know where he’s been.”