H.M.S. Unseen (27 page)

By 0820, he had finished his coffee and was preparing to attend a meeting in Bob MacPherson’s office, when the phone rang. It was Admiral Morris again from Fort Meade.

“Arnold? George.
Air Force Three
’s down in the Atlantic. No survivors. It was hit by a missile. The pilot saw it, and he had time to broadcast it. I got a recording. Last known position 53 North, 20 West. I’m sticking right here.”

Admiral Morgan felt the blood draining from his face. His mouth went dry, and there was a tremble deep within him. He could find no words. He just stood in the middle of the room, in total shock. Kathy O’Brien came back through the door, and she thought he was having a heart attack. “My God! Arnold, what’s the matter? Here, come and sit down.”

The admiral walked to his desk and sat down with his head in his hands. “Just please tell me if you’re ill,” she said. “Shall I get a doctor?”

“No. No. I’m okay. But I just heard
Air Force Three
has been hit by a guided missile, right where I’m guessing Adnam is, on the chart. The Boeing’s down in the North Atlantic. No survivors.”

“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” said the Irish redhead. “Please tell me this is a joke. Was Martin on board?”

“The whole team was on board. Al Jaxtimer had time to broadcast. He saw the missile that killed everyone.”

Just then the admiral’s private line to the Oval Office lit up red, the signal for the national security advisor to report to the President immediately. Arnold Morgan pulled on his jacket, grabbed the chart he had been working on, and walked swiftly to the private office of the Chief Executive.

The great man was alone, pacing the room, his face, like the admiral’s, displayed only numb shock and sadness. However, he had not summoned his senior security advisor to join him in grief. And Admiral Morgan knew that. Before the door was closed, he heard the President say, “Well, Arnold, that’s that. You were right. That theory of yours has panned out. There’s someone out there shooting down airliners. I don’t think any reasonable person could arrive at any other conclusion.”

“Nossir. And they have to be doing it from a submarine. And there’s only one submarine that could be doing it, and that’s the missing one from the Royal Navy. As you know, sir, in my opinion there’s also only one man who could be doing it. And he’s not as dead as we thought.”

The admiral laid out his Navy chart on the table. And he pointed at longitude 20 West. “Twenty minutes before
Air Force Three
was hit, sir, right down here, our listening station in Iceland picked him up on SOSUS. They couldn’t be accurate about position, and the boat was too far away to put up engine lines. But they thought it worth reporting as a possible submarine running through the water, I should think quite fast, for eleven minutes only. It had to be him, sir….”

Just then, one of the private phones rang, and the president picked it up. Then he handed it to the admiral. “It’s for you.”

“Morgan. Hi, George…yup…yup…what was it?…merchant ship…Jesus Christ! We’re gonna have trouble keeping this one quiet.”

He replaced the receiver, and said, “This is developing into an even bigger horror story. A British merchant ship in the area, running 20 miles due south of the datum, reported in on the air-sea rescue band, that they saw the smoke trails from two missiles, one of which seemed to have exploded right above the water. Then they saw a much longer trail going very high…. Then they thought they saw fire and wreckage falling toward the water. They’re heading into the area right now. That means the Irish and Brits know something diabolical has happened.”

“They’re right, too. It has. But you and I alone, Arnold, cannot have the luxury of grief. Not right now. We have to get this into line. And we have to stop this sonofabitch. I mean…. Jesus…he can’t just park himself in the middle of the Atlantic and keep firing missiles at passenger jets.”

“Yes he can, sir. He can in that submarine. It’s just like the Russian Kilo. If he stays deep and slow, we might not find him in a year. Not if he can find a way to refuel without us catching him…which he obviously has done, several times already. If he can find his way to relatively shallow inshore waters, which is what that submarine was designed for, we might
never
find him. The ocean’s just too fucking big, and that boat is too damned stealthy.”

“Arnold, there has to be a way.”

“Sir, whether there’s a way or not, we sure as hell have to try. I was about to call Joe Mulligan and give him the new search datum. I’m assuming the Royal Navy is sending in a couple of ships to try and locate whatever floating wreckage there may be. I’m afraid we’re running out of deep-submergence submarines. At this rate we need a new one every couple of weeks. Do you have to broadcast, sir?”

“I’m not certain. But I guess so. Tonight.”

“Well, sir, I better go and establish who knows what, and who has already said what to whom. Will we reconvene in, say, one hour.”

“Yes. Come right back here…make it ten o’clock. Give me a little time to chat with Dick Stafford and Harcourt. Jesus, this is unbelievable.”

The admiral’s inquiries seemed to be overtaken by a new development every five minutes. But he noted the hard, salient facts down in his log in the manner of an ex–nuclear submarine commander.

1. 261304(GMT)FEB06. 53N, 20W app.
   Air Force Three
   hit by guided missile fired from sea level. Destroyed. Plainly no survivors.
   
2. Oceanic Control, Shannon, has tape of Colonel Jaxtimer’s voice confirming missile sighting. Tape removed by station chief in accordance with international airline agreements. Now held securely, pending arrival of U.S. ambassador from Dublin and U.S. naval attaché from London.
   
3. Shannon alerted all air-sea rescue networks to crash. They estimate it took place 470 miles due west of Galway.
   
4. The Irish and British press found out that
   Air Force Three
   was down at approximately 1330GMT. U.S. press picked up news flashes 1340 (GMT), 0840 (EST).
   
5. Gander ATC not involved.
   AF3
   had not yet checked in.
   
6. One Irish operator, and one supervisor heard Colonel Jaxtimer’s last words. Both men reputedly senior, and reliable, and bound by classified-information rules inherent in their job. Nonetheless, they know, and they are not under our control.
   
7. British merchant ship saw two missile smoke trails. Broadcast this information on air-sea rescue networks. May have been heard by several ships, but we have not located
   any
   ships in the area. British captain bound for Cardiff docks, South Wales.
   
8. MOD, Whitehall, unhopeful of cast-iron secrecy even if no one else did hear merchantman’s broadcast. But the captain will be met in Cardiff by MI5 agents, plus reps from U.S. Embassy, London. The captain was ex–Royal Navy, former surface ship lieutenant, which is hopeful.
   
9. Assessment of chances of keeping the missile attack secret—not high. We must plan for it to leak out inside a week.
   
10. Assessment press angle when they find out—they’ll go for terrorism since we are not at war.
    

At which point the admiral closed his book, and called Admiral Mulligan for the third time in forty-five minutes.

“Hi, Arnold. We got two L.A.-Class boats up that way, both attached to the
John C Stennis
CVBG. They’ve been heading north up the Atlantic for a few days now, but they’re within twelve hours of the datum. I put the whole group on high alert. But we have no idea which way the submarine will run…north, south, east, or west.”

“I know. It’s a fucking frustration, right?”

“Yeah. That, and the fact that in twelve hours, even if he’s only making 5 knots, deep and quiet, he’s still going to be somewhere in a circle radius of 60 miles, or, somewhere in the middle of 10,000 square miles. If he makes a fast run for it, which I don’t think he’ll do because of SOSUS, you could very quickly double that.”

“Why do you think they heard him, Joe, just before he fired?”

“I’d say he wasn’t happy with his position off track, and with the Boeing charging in toward him, he had to make his adjustment very fast. He took the risk, ran the boat flat out to get into the best firing position, and they caught him. But then he went slow again. And they never heard him again.”

“You know the problem with this bastard, Joe? He’s a perfectionist in a submarine. Hardly ever takes a chance, never makes a mistake. I must say I’m filled with foreboding about this…but we have to catch him, Joe. I’m just afraid he’ll strike again before we do.”

T
HE DEATH OF MARTIN BECKMAN WAS A STAGGERING
blow to the morale of the Western world. The United States was stunned, coast to coast, and it was the kind of public grief hitherto reserved for John F. Kennedy, and his brother Robert, and for Martin Luther King, Jr. For men whose vision had given great swaths of the populace a reason for hope, and optimism. No Vice President in the entire history of the nation had ever come close, in death, to causing such a widespread outpouring of mass despair. In London, the former New Jersey senator had touched a chord of high, unselfish principle and reasoned promise, just as the Kennedy brothers, and the Reverend King did, most every time they spoke publicly.

Late Sunday afternoon, in churches of every denomination, all over the country, services were concluded with renderings of John Lennon’s everlasting song. And all through that night, thousands and thousands of ordinary American people would keep a candlelit peace vigil outside the White House. By six o’clock the vast crowd was already massed all the way back to the Washington Monument. Huddled together in coats, parkas, scarves, gloves, and fur hats, they crowded the icy acres of West Potomac Park, along the Reflecting Pool, right to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. And each time the bells of nearby St. John’s Church behind the White House tolled out the hour, a thunderous chorus of the dead Vice President’s beloved anthem lifted up through the black winter skies of the American capital….
“ALL WE ARE SA-A-YING is GIVE PEACE A CHANCE.”

Martin Beckman had touched the soul of a nation. Those people, gathered on that freezing evening, believed that somewhere out there, perhaps on the mystic foothills of heaven’s Mount Olympus, the Great Champion of Peace still stood tall. And they believed that his voice would never be silenced, just as the voice of the Reverend King had never died away. They believed the memory of Martin Beckman would always remind the most powerful nations of an iron-clad world, to listen to his plea…for the plight of the Third World poor, in the name of God, to the plain, heartrending face of stark, human misery.

Perhaps in death, the Vice President’s avowed cause would grow even greater. But back in the Oval Office, where the President, his national security advisor, Bob MacPherson, and Admirals Dunsmore and Mulligan, wracked their collective brains, the talk was not of peace. It involved the massed resources of the United States Armed Forces taking up secret battle stations against the great underwater terrorist from a distant desert.

It was Secretary of State Harcourt Travis who would now bring the voice of the cold-blooded detective to the meeting. Apprised that evening, once again, of the suspicions of Admirals Morgan and Mulligan, this time he did not dissent, but he did suggest an organized short list of suspects be produced, just to demonstrate, if necessary, that things were not being run in a haphazard way.

Admiral Morgan’s face betrayed a hint of irritation as he replied, “I got it right here, Harcourt. Been updating it every four hours for three weeks. I’ll read it to you and give you a copy. Sometimes I forget that politicians spend at least a third of their time covering their asses. In my game you don’t always have time for that.”

“If this situation should somehow get out of hand, you might be grateful to me,” replied the Secretary of State, smiling thinly.

The national security advisor grinned back, no more warmly. “Goddamned bureaucrat,” he muttered. “
Now pay attention.
There are four nations that have submarines out there, which we cannot locate at present, and have not located during the entire period of the three crashes.

“One. A French strategic missile boat, 14,500-ton
Le Temeraire
, commissioned in 1999, based in Brest. She’s probably on patrol in the Bay of Biscay, but we discount her as a suspect. We’d have picked her up if she’d been in the middle of the Atlantic.

“Two. The Royal Navy has a Trident SSBN out there somewhere, HMS
Vengeance
. She’s bigger, 16,000 tons, also commissioned in 1999. If we ask the Brits where she is, they’ll tell us, but I don’t think that’s necessary in the light of our close association with them in this matter.

“Three. The Russians have two that we cannot locate. The first is TK-17. That’s one of those 21,000-ton Typhoons out of the Northern fleet, Litsa Guba. She was damaged by fire in 1994, but they repaired her. She’s a strategic missile boat. Most unlikely, but possible, although I’m damned sure we’da got her if she’d been in the area. The other is a Delta IV, K-18, 13,500 tons, out of Saida Guba, again the Northern fleet. We’ll probably pick her up in the next few days. She’s another strategic missile boat, and no more likely to have avoided detection than the Typhoon. But I am planning to touch base with Moscow tomorrow, just to check.

“Four. China also has one missing, her newest, 093. She’s a medium-sized 6,500-ton cruise missile attack boat commissioned in 2003. Received a new missile system up in Huladao back in 1998. But she’s based on the other side of the world. I suppose this is a possibility, but highly unlikely. That Chinese boat is way behind Western technology, and would be even less likely than the Russian Delta to avoid SOSUS. And I doubt the Chinese would wanna operate so close to us and so far from home. Remember, in the past two or three years, they have lost…er…some of their…er…top guys.”

Admiral Morgan then paused, and he peered over the half spectacles he used for reading. He was peering at the United States Secretary of State. “The other possibility, Mr. Travis,” he said, elaborately, “is called HMS
Unseen.
And for me, she’s fucking well named.”

“Thank you, Arnold. Just checking,” he replied, brightly, still smiling.

The President then asked the critical question. “How long do you think we have, to locate and destroy this fucking submarine before the world starts to speculate, then finds out about it? ”

“Not long, sir,” Admirals Morgan and Mulligan answered in unison. And the national security advisor added, “In my view probably less than two weeks. I think the media will stick to their theory that there’s a ‘Bermuda Triangle’ out on the edge of space…until it finally sinks in that
Air Force Three
was downed from a much lower altitude, in a very different place. Then they’re going to try and connect all three crashes in some other way…all with big U.S. interests. No other nation harmed, except the Brits, who are considered by our enemies anyway to be the fifty-first state. All the flights were easy to locate by departure times etc….

“Then there’s going to be one tiny whisper out of somewhere that Concorde’s pilot tried to shout ‘MISSILE.’ Then there’ll be a tiny leak of the last call from
Air Force Three.
Then there’ll be a barrage of inquiries demanding to know if there was
anywhere
the missile could have been fired from. Then the captain of that merchant ship will sell his story to a tabloid and the headline will read: ‘WERE ALL THREE AIRCRAFT SHOT DOWN BY MISSILES?’ Then one of the defense correspondent guys will actually wonder whether it could have been launched from a disappearing submarine.

“At which point we would have to run the risk of looking very, very foolish if we dismiss that as a possibility. That’s a worst-case scenario, but we want to be ready.”

“That, Arnold is not good. Not good at all.” The President was frowning deeply, his face displaying profound worry. “The ramifications are simply horrific. Imagine the press arriving at the conclusion that there is a rogue submarine, undetected, out in the middle of the Atlantic, knocking down passenger airliners. The mere fact that they got to that conclusion before we did will make us look criminally careless.

“Then they will go after us, dumb-ass military, dumb-ass politicians, etc. Then there will be a real crisis of confidence. There will be calls for my resignation and probably all of yours, too. Then there will follow a world airline crisis, with some passenger carriers refusing to make the North Atlantic run. That kind of stuff can bankrupt airlines, and passengers will cancel flights wholesale.

“That will cause a stock-market crash of every industry connected with airlines. You’ll see big, publicly held stocks cave in; corporations who build planes and aircraft parts will see staggering losses. Banks who are owed big sums of money from airlines and plane makers will go into a collective tailspin, if you’ll excuse the pun. The whole thing could turn into your worst nightmare.”

“Specially if that bastard Adnam bangs out another one,” growled Morgan.

“Jesus Christ,” groaned the President. “And you know the media are gonna just love it. They’ll come at us like a pack of starved dogs. And they’ll demonstrate all their familiar traits…ignorance, naïveté, innocence dressed up as ferocity. I guess they’ll never learn that the games governments play are usually much deeper than the games they pretend to play.”

“Nossir,” replied the national security advisor. “They won’t ever learn that. But they’ll always love wading in and upsetting the applecart. Despite the obvious fact that any damn-fool hack can upset an applecart. That’s easy. It’s understanding the entire picture, then acting carefully, that’s hard. And anyway, the press don’t have time for that.”

Admiral Dunsmore, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, spoke next in his usual calm and thoughtful way. “Despite our general disapproval of the way the media are about to behave,” he said, “I think we can be sure they won’t do much tomorrow. They’ll be too busy handling the news story. But we should take very definite steps to keep the lid on this for as long as possible. No good can possibly come out of a public uproar.

“So far as I can tell, we have two objectives. One, to seek and destroy HMS
Unseen
before she strikes again. Two, to bottle up the situation, tight, until we do so. Even then we might never be able to announce what has happened.”

“Expertly stated, Scott,” said the President. “Please continue.”

“Thus I think we should have patrols organized around Iceland and right across the GIUK Gap. We should keep the
John C Stennis
group in the area and have them work east from 30 West, then move south for maybe 200 miles before heading west again. That way we might just push
Unseen
into an area covered by SOSUS. I would also like to see three more frigates up there, and I suggest Joe Mulligan and I have a strategy meeting as soon as possible.

“In regard to keeping the story tight, I think we should have our ambassador in Dublin pull a few strings to ensure the Irish understand that it was
our
Vice President who died,
our
two senators who were lost, that the aircraft was U.S. military, and that the entire matter is regarded as classified by both ourselves and the UK.

“I think we should also prevail on the Brits to shut up that merchant ship captain. That may take a threat, but Whitehall is very expert at that. I believe we have the black-box recording from Concorde under tight control, so if we are careful, we might be more successful than Arnold believes at shutting this story down.”

“Christ, I hope so, Scott,” replied Morgan. “Also I have instructed George Morris to beef up our satellite surveillance on that part of the Atlantic, and SOSUS is already fully in the picture. Trouble is,
Unseen
is undetectable if she stays slow and deep. Even when she snorkels she’s a whole lot quieter than a Kilo. And if she’s being driven by Adnam, there’re gonna be no mistakes. He won’t even snorkel in good SOSUS water if he can help it.”

“What are your instructions to our commanding officers, Joe?”

“Uncompromising and closely controlled, sir. If they locate a diesel-electric boat showing an unequivocal Upholder-Class signature, anywhere near the area, sink it.”

“Christ, what if they sink the wrong one? The owners will be seriously pissed off.”

Admiral Mulligan chuckled. “Sir, the Royal Navy have no diesel-electrics at sea. They only owned four of these boats. They sold one to Israel, and we know that’s in Haifa. Two are out of commission in Barrow-in-Furness. The last of the four is
Unseen.
I’ve already spoken to the First Sea Lord. The Royal Navy has its own frigates out there as well. If they trip over a diesel-electric with a U-Class signature,
they’ll sink it.”

Arnold Morgan interjected, “Sir, it would be better to hunt the boat to exhaustion, then capture it on the surface. That way we could catch Adnam and his crew and hang the fucking Iraqis out to dry. That way no one would object to whatever reprisals we may wish to take. But we may prefer not to risk that with this bastard, sir. He’s too slippery. We just might lose him.”

“Yes, Arnold. I do see that. By the way, what precisely do you mean by ‘hunt to exhaustion’? I’m not familiar with that.”

“It’s a submariners phrase, sir. It means setting out a kind of dragnet on the surface, using a mass of radar, and keeping the target submarine submerged, with his battery getting lower and lower. Every time he comes to periscope depth, he picks up a surface ship or aircraft ready to detect his snorkel mast. He has no option but to go deep and hope that the coast will be clear when he comes up later. But his battery will eventually get very low, and he’ll have to come up again. He may get lucky, maybe snorkel for twenty minutes, until he is caught again. But it’s not enough…he can’t submerge for long enough to get away…someone’ll catch him on radar. Then the real hunt is on. You bring in a surface ship, real close, something that can knock off his snorkel mast, cut off the air supply to the engines.

“Right then, he’s nearly finished. He has to surface. And that’s when we bang a couple of shells through his sail, as a gesture of our interest. Then we’d accept her surrender, board the submarine, and interrogate the crew.”

“Well, if I was driving the submarine, gentlemen, I’d sink the surface ship with a torpedo,” said the President.

“Sir,” said Admiral Mulligan, “we have many ways of avoiding torpedoes if we have good prior warning. Especially if we know precisely where our enemy is located. In such a case, if our commanding officer believed there was a real danger from the submarine, we would simply attack first. Those are the orders my men have at this moment. And to me they make military sense.