Scimitar SL-2 (43 page)

When they did discover there were no GPS satellite coordinates, they would need to creep to the south of Grand Canaria, in the area the
Elrod
and the
Taylor
patrolled, before running toward the south coast of Tenerife, and then into the inshore waters around Gomera. From there they would need to regroup, then get a good visual fix and then move in towards La Palma for the launch.

The
Elrod
and the
Taylor
had a chance of detecting the
Barracuda
as it made its way in from the open ocean, running south of all the islands towards the North African shore. They definitely had a shot at an early detection while the men from Hamas had a
mast up while trying to access the GPS. And there would be another opportunity if and when the
Barracuda
began a move west towards Gomera.

The U.S. sea operation consisted of four ships inshore, and six standing off, 25 miles out. Admiral Gillmore had done his geometry. Each TA frigate would need to patrol in a radius of 10 to 20 nautical miles…the area measured from the volcano itself to cover the entire band out to 25 miles from the work of the inshore group. The distance around such a circle is about 150 nautical miles. And this would allow the six frigates to cover the entire area continuously. If the
Barracuda
somehow strayed into those waters, life could quickly become extremely tense for Ben Badr and his men.

This left Admiral Gillmore with two other frigates, Capt. Clint Sammons’s
Klakring
and Comdr. Joe Wickman’s
Simpson
. He would use these to extend the search area whenever it might become necessary, or to prosecute nearby towed-array contacts, or even to thicken up radar coverage inshore. In such a complex operation, George Gillmore knew better than to leave himself without flexibility. At this stage, his task orders were, of course, extremely narrow—sink the
Barracuda
, however, wherever, whenever, but soon.

Situated 20 miles to his east was the
Ronald Reagan
CVBG. The massive aircraft carrier was preparing to rendezvous with the
Harry S. Truman
, and essentially exchange its fixed-wing aircraft for ASW helicopters. The Battle Group arrived with two LA-class nuclear submarines, but Frank Doran was not anxious to use them in any kind of an underwater hunt.

Admiral Gillmore was aware of that, and both men felt the destruction of the
Barracuda
would be achieved by the ASW helicopters. The
Truman
was expected to arrive on Monday morning, and the exchange operation would begin immediately. As the sun came blazing out of the clear African skies to the east, there was still no sign of the second carrier, but they knew it was under 100 miles away. And the
Elrod
and the
Taylor
were already on their way to their inshore search areas.

By 0900, the
Truman
had made its Atlantic crossing and was 30 miles off the northwest coast of La Palma, steaming east towards the rendezvous with the
Ronald Reagan
. The sea was calm, and a brisk, warm southeast wind blew off the coast of Africa. In the next three hours, this was forecast to shift southwest and bring in a succession of rainsqualls throughout the afternoon. Which was not perfect for the large-scale carrier-to-carrier transfer of aircraft, scheduled to begin at 1400.

Shortly before 1030, Admiral Gillmore completed his deployment of ships for the offshore operation, and, led by USS
Hawes
, under Comdr. Derek DeCarlo, the six frigates set off for their respective search circles in the wide band of ocean between the islands of La Palma and Hierro and the 25-mile outer limit of their operations area.

The
Kauffman
and the
Nicholas
made their way into the inshore waters of La Palma and Hierro, where they would move slowly around the coastlines, mapping the ocean bottom and recording the appearance of sudden shoals of fish or the perfectly stationary sea ridges. Then they would move on to Gomera and Tenerife, always watching the computer screen, which would betray a creeping nuclear submarine.

0800, Monday, October 5

Mid-Atlantic, 27.30N 24.50W.

The
Barracuda
still ran slowly, at just under six knots, still 500 feet under the surface, transmitting nothing. Adm. Ben Badr checked their position and noted that they were 240 miles out from the most westerly Canary Islands, La Palma and Hierro, around 18.50W. They were on a due easterly course, which would take them 20 miles south of the seven volcanic islands that jutted up separately from the ocean bed.

So far, they had heard no searching submarines, no warships. They had twice ventured to periscope depth to make certain the
GPS was in sound working order, and found no problems. They had two more days to run before they slid quietly into the area that Admiral Gillmore’s ships were currently combing.

As soon as the
Barracuda
slipped by its first landfall, the island of Hierro, it would be within 19 miles of the
Nicholas
, unless Capt. Eric Nielsen had already moved on to the southern coast of Tenerife, into the waters once scanned so thoroughly by the honeymooning Admiral Arnold Morgan.

If the
Nicholas
moved, the chances of the
Barracuda
remaining undetected were doubled, because even the south shore of Tenerife lay 25 miles farther north than Hierro. This would put the
Barracuda
44 miles south of the nearest U.S. warship, but the day, and the game, were both still young.

Three and a half thousand miles away on the U.S. East Coast, the sun was battling its way out of the Atlantic into cloudy skies. And it was not just the big cities that were trying to empty themselves, but all along the seaboard, rural communities were frantically making their preparations to escape the wrath of the coming tidal wave.

It was cold on the rocky, tree-lined islands off the coast of Maine, and most of the summer people had stored their boats and vanished south to escape the notoriously chilly Maine fall. Inland, the cold was, if anything, worse. There’s usually snow in the outfield by the first week of November at the University of Maine baseball park, home of the Black Bears.

The islands were effectively left to the Maine lobstermen, one of the most intrepid breed of cold-water fishermen in the world. Yet there was not a single safe harbor along this coast.

It was essential to either haul the lobster boats and get them to higher ground or, more daringly, anchor them in the western lee of one of the 3,000 islands that guard the downeast coast. These rocky, spruce-darkened islands are mostly hilly—great granite rises from the ocean, which may not stop a tidal wave but would definitely give it a mild jolt. On the sheltered side it was just about possible that the tsunami might roll right by, perhaps leaving a
high surge in its wake, but not dumping and smashing large boats on beaches 10 miles away.

The seamen of the Maine islands were accustomed, more than any other fishermen on the East Coast, to terrible weather. And for three days now, they had been moving the endlessly scattered fleet of lobster boats to anchorages out of harm’s way.

Boats from Monhegan, North Haven, Vinalhaven, Port Clyde, Tennants Harbor, Carver’s Harbor, Frenchboro, Isleboro, and Mount Desert headed inshore, their owners praying that if the giant wave came, the islands, with their huge granite ramparts, would somehow reduce the power of the waves.

Similar prayers on precisely the same subject were almost certainly being offered by somewhat less robust people—librarians, politicians, and accountants, 600 miles south in Washington, D.C. The Library of Congress was also made out of granite from the Mount Desert area. So was the House of Representatives and the Treasury Building.

Out in the deep water, 15 miles from the coast, the three great seaward guardians of Maine’s stern and mighty shoreline—the remote and lonely lighthouses of Matinicus Rock, Mount Desert Rock, and Machias Seal Island—were left to face the coming onslaught single-handedly. According to local scientists, the mega-tsunami would sweep more than 100 feet above them. Whether they would still be there when the water flattened out was anyone’s guess.

Meanwhile, the fishermen and their families were being ferried on to the mainland, where relatives, friends, and volunteers were lined in packed parking lots, waiting to drive them to safety. Maine is a tight-knit, insular community off-season, with fewer than one million residents. At a time like this, they were all brothers and sisters.

In far, far greater danger was Provincetown, the outermost town on Cape Cod, 120 miles to the south across the Gulf of Maine. This small artistic community, set in the huge left-hand
sweep of the Cape, is protected strictly by low sand dunes and grass. By that Monday afternoon, it was a ghost town. Those who could, towed their boats down the mid-Cape highway and onto the mainland. The rest just hit the road west and hoped their homes and boats would somehow survive. Lloyds of London was not hugely looking forward to future correspondence with regard to Cape Cod.

All along the narrow land, every resident had to leave. Massachusetts State Police were already supervising the evacuation. All roads leading from all the little cape towns to Route 6A were designated one-way systems—Wellfleet, Truro, Orleans, Chatham, Brewster, Denisport, Yarmouth, Hyannis, Osterville, Cotuit, and Falmouth. No one was to come back until the danger had cleared.

The evacuation, all the way down that historic coastline, was total. The whaling port of New Bedford was deserted by Monday evening, and the flat eastern lowlands of Rhode Island, a myriad of bay shores and islands, were going to be a write-off, if Admiral Badr’s missiles made it to the volcano.

In the shadow of the towering edifice of Newport Bridge, the little sailing town was on the verge of a collective nervous breakdown. Some of the most expensive yachts ever built were home here for the autumn, and many of them had not yet been hauled or had not yet departed for the Caribbean or Florida.

The New York Yacht Club’s headquarters, gazing out onto the harbor, would probably be the first to go if the tidal wave came rolling in past Brenton Point. Offshore, Block Island had been evacuated completely by Sunday night, and whether Newport Bridge itself could survive was touch-and-go.

Farther up the coast, there were obvious areas of impending disaster in the long, narrow New England state of Connecticut. The shoreline was beset by wealthy little seaports, the closer they were to New York, the more plutocratic. Bridgeport, Norwalk, Stamford, Darien, and Greenwich—Connecticut’s Golden Suburbs, all along the narrowing waters of Long Island Sound. Billions of
dollars’ worth of manicured property and people, all hoping against hope that central Long Island itself, around 15 miles wide, would bear the brunt of the tsunami.

But it was the northern seaport of New London that was causing the most concern in the state of Connecticut. This is one of the United States Navy’s great submarine bases, and home of the Electric Boat Company, which builds them. It is a traditional Navy town, and there had been ferocious activity since before the weekend, all along the jetties, preparing the big nuclear boats to make all speed south to the west coast of Florida. Unfinished ships were being towed 10 miles upriver—anywhere that might be beyond the reach of the tsunami after it hit the helpless north shore of Long Island Sound.

South of New York, the flat sweep of the Jersey shore, with its miles and miles of vacation homes, was defenseless. So was the entire eastern shore of Maryland, which was nothing but a flat coastal plain on both sides of the Chesapeake Estuary, with no elevation higher than 100 feet and nothing to stop the thunderous tidal wave but the flimsiest of outer islands, not much higher than sand bars beyond the long waters of Chincoteague Bay.

By Monday afternoon, the entire area was almost deserted, hundreds of cars still heading north, joined by another huge convoy from neighboring Delaware, which shared the same long shoreline and was equally defenseless.

South of Virginia, the coastal plain of North Carolina was, if anything, even more vulnerable than Maryland. The Tidewater area was flat, poorly drained, and marshy, meandering out to a chain of low barrier islands—the Outer Banks—separated from the mainland by lagoons and salt marshes. Out on the peninsula of Beaufort, Pamlico, and Cateret Counties, which lie between the two wide rivers the Neuse and the Pamlico, the issue was not whether the giant tsunami would hit and flood, but whether the little seaports would ever stick their heads above the Atlantic again.

Myrtle Beach Air Force Station, right on the coast of South Carolina, was playing a huge role in the evacuation of the coastal region, with a fleet of helicopters in the skies assisting the police with traffic. Hundreds of Air Force personnel were helping evacuate the beautiful city of Charleston, one of the most historic ports in the United States and home of Fort Sumter, where the Civil War began.

Right on the border lies the oldest city in Georgia, the port of Savannah. There were 10,000 troops assisting in the evacuation there, and no one even dared think about the wreckage of this perfect colonial city, so carefully preserved over the centuries, yet so unprotected from the ravages of the ocean.

Florida was, of course, another story, with its 400-mile-long east coast open to the Atlantic, largely devoid of hills and of mountains, all the way south to Miami, Fernandina Beach in the north, then Jacksonville Beach, Daytona and Cocoa Beach, Indian Harbor, Vero Beach, Hobe Sound, Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami.

Stretching out to the south were the low-lying resorts of the Florida Keys, all the way across the Everglades, right down to the yachtsmen’s paradise of Key West. Although every one of the Keys had borne the wrath of Atlantic hurricanes before, they hadn’t seen a tsunami since long before the Pharaohs ruled Egypt.