Nimitz Class

East experts, and Bill Baldridge, who arrived just ahead of Sam Haynes.

Bill’s immediate boss, Schnider, seemed somewhat surprised to see him. Even more so when the President looked up and said cheerfully, “Hi, Bill. Sleep okay? Good to see you.”

With the two waiters dismissed, the President began, “Gentlemen, this is an off-the-record discussion. And I want to put my cards on the table even before we think of talking to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I believe it is possible that the Thomas Jefferson was actually hit by an enemy torpedo armed with a nuclear warhead.”

He paused, let his words sink in. Then he said, “In Bill Baldridge here we have one of the best nuclear physicists in the country — a Naval officer with a doctorate from MIT. Bill has told me he believes it is impossible that a nuclear warhead could ever detonate accidentally, much less while it is stored, dormant, in the ordnance area of an aircraft carrier. So what’s left? Only the possibility of a hit against us. And for the purpose of this discussion, I want you to tell me, by whom, how, and why?”

“Well,” said Secretary MacPherson, “not many of the nations in that area have such a capability. Our intelligence says no terrorist group could make such an attack without significant help from a nuclear weapon state.”

“Bob, I’d be happier with elimination. Start by telling me who could have, but probably wouldn’t want to.”

“Forget the Brits. Forget France. Forget Pakistan. Forget Israel. They all have nuclear weapons, but would not use them, nor make them available to anyone else. Forget India. Their weapons are pretty basic, and they are not particularly fanatical about protecting their oceans. That only leaves the Russians, who are a possible source of weapons, and the Chinese, who we dismiss for several reasons. We are not of course sure about nuclear-weapon security in Russia and the Ukraine.

“But the weapon which may have destroyed the carrier had to be compatible to the system which launched it. That means the Russians would have to have supplied both.

“How about little guys with submarines — Algeria, Rumania, Poland,” interjected Admiral Morgan. “Not to mention Iran.”

“Yeah, how about those guys?” said Dick Stafford. “I guess they count as potential enemies of the USA.”

“May I have first who, then how and why?” asked the President.

“Sir,” said Harcourt Travis, another tall, steel-haired ex-Harvard professor. “The Jefferson was operational in the Arabian Sea, and she was probably going to enter the Gulf at least once. We should look at which nations would like America out of the Gulf, for whatever reasons. I suggest the answer must be both Iran, which wants to dominate the area, and Iraq, for more obvious reasons — insane regime, plus known animosity toward the U.S.A. I cannot think of any other nation which hates us sufficiently to try to pull off something close to genocide, which the sinking of a carrier is.”

Admiral Morgan interrupted. “I am assuming you all consider this must have been achieved by a submarine, rather than a surface ship.”

“I guess that would be the Navy thinking right now,” said the President, recalling the previous night’s discussions. “They believe the Battle Group would easily have stopped, and at the very least reported, any incoming missile delivered from an aircraft or surface ship. We’d know.”

“I am certain that is true,” said Admiral Morgan. “Also, sir, I checked this morning — no foreign ships were anywhere near the carrier on any of the radar screens. We have those reports in-house, sir. Captain Barry is in the air himself now, on his way to San Diego. He should be in Washington by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Okay. No advances on the submarine theory?”

“Well, sir, if I may speak as an ex-weapons officer in a Boomer,” said Baldridge, “I would think an incoming warhead would have been delivered in a torpedo rather than an air-flight missile. Fired from a range of say five thousand yards. I think I mentioned last night, get much closer to the bang, you got a real shot at blowing yourself up, as well as the target.

“Also it’s impossible for a big nuclear submarine to get anywhere near the center of a CVBG without being detected. We’ve tried. At high speed we pick ’em up passive in the deep field. If they’re slow — our active sonars pick up all big hulls. Period. In fair conditions the CVBG’ll get ’em at around thirty miles, no sweat. It wasn’t a nuke. It must have been a really quiet, modern, ocean going diesel boat.”

“So, who has ’em?” asked the President.

“Several nations,” said Baldridge. “The British, the French, the Russians, the Chinese. God knows who else. But I’m betting Admiral Morgan knows where every one of them is right at this moment.”

The admiral looked up and did not smile. “We gotta pretty good handle on them,” he said. “And as for feasibility, the only nation I could suggest might have tried, successfully, to pull off something like this would be Iran. First of all, they want us out of the Gulf. Their government is filled with Islamic fundamentalists.

“And they do own three Russian-built Kilo Class submarines, all stationed down at their Naval base in Bandar Abbas, only around four hundred miles from where the Thomas Jefferson was operating.

“The Iranians have been struggling to buy and organize a submarine fleet for several years now. They bought two secondhand Kilos from the Russian Black Sea Fleet, then they got their hands on a third, much newer one in 1996. We spotted all three of them on the satellite five days ago in Bandar Abbas. The latest pictures are in the Pentagon right now. I have checked. No one saw any one of them move. So I guess the latest pictures will still show all three in the same place.”

“And if they don’t? If one of them is missing?” asked the President.

“Then we have a live suspect,” said Admiral Morgan. “They have the motive. And the submarine.”

“How about Iraq?” said the President. “Could they have one of these Kilos?”

“They could, I suppose, in theory. But they have a serious problem with harbors. They have no infrastructure to run submarines. If they had, we’d have seen it. There’s nothing. If we assume they did somehow buy or rent such a boat from the Russian Black Sea Fleet, then they must have driven it out through the Bosporus, right under the eyes of our satellites, and the Turks.

“Then they must have driven all through the Med, past our surveillance at Gibraltar, then five thousand miles south, right around Africa, finding a way to refuel, then up into the Indian Ocean, north to the Arabian Sea, dodged through all of our Battle Group defenses and blown up the carrier with a nuclear-headed torpedo.

“At the conclusion of which, gentlemen, they would have no home port. They’d have to get rid of the submarine. In which case we, or someone else, will find something, or at least someone.”

The audience sat fascinated. Finally Defense Secretary MacPherson said, “Arnold, does this mean you write off the possibility of Iraq?”

“Well, not quite. I suppose they could—just — have pulled off what I just outlined, but I seriously doubt it. Submarines are very complex machines. For a long operational run, you need a real expert. I can’t see an Iraqi masterminding something like this. You see, we’re not talking even about the very best of the breed. We’re talking fucking genius. I hope we could produce one or two such commanders. The Brits probably have a couple too. After that you got yourself an empty cookie jar. Iraq? Forget it.”

“Stated like that, I guess so,” said the President. “It would have to be a million to one. What are the odds about Iran?”

“Well,” said Admiral Morgan. “I’d say if all three of their known submarines are still safely in port when we get the latest satellite pictures — then they probably did not do it. Because they would have needed to pull off exactly the moves I described for the Iraqis — and I cannot imagine an Iranian captain in the control room of a submarine on such a mission.”

“Okay,” said the President, through a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “Then what happened to the Jefferson?”

The City of San Diego was in shock last night as news of the lost aircraft carrier became known. The Naval base was stunned — more than 3,000 families were suddenly without fathers, some without sons, wives without husbands. For many it will be a night without end. The Navy’s worst ever peacetime disaster took a toll on this city from which it may never recover. San Diego alone has four times more bereaved families than San Francisco had in the earthquake of 1906.