Nimitz Class

too had cheated death, but like Port Royal, were making painfully slow progress back to Diego Garcia.

According to Captain Barry, the nuclear contamination had moved in the classic manner, down range, opening up into a fifty-mile-long trumpet shape. Several ships had not been in the path of the lethal radioactivity. Nonetheless, it had been an extremely difficult night, with Captain Barry operating in the pitch dark and fog, with unreliable communications.

Somehow he had managed to round up a couple of working helicopters to fly surgeons to the stricken ships, two of which were operating on small emergency lights only. There had also been a shortage of nursing staff, since the main hospital facilities had been on the carrier herself. None of the senior officers in the Pentagon envied Captain Barry his task that night.

Admiral Dunsmore called the meeting to order and briefly recapped the preliminary report from Captain Barry, which confirmed that a nuclear blast had destroyed the carrier, and very nearly taken two other warships with her. The report also contained information from the CIC of USS Hayler, in which the Anti- Submarine Warfare Officer had recorded the fleeting event of 11:45 A.M. on the morning of July 7, the day before the explosion, when one of his operators had come up with a new track, 5136, a disappearing radar contact, picked up on four sweeps but with no opportunity to discern course or speed.

As the CNO spoke, Admiral Morgan looked up sharply. “Did they put it on the link?” he asked, almost brusquely.

“Sure did,” replied Admiral Dunsmore. “Captain Baldridge acted on it too. Sent up two Seahawks, scanned the area to the stern of the carrier, dropped a sonobuoy barrier into the water — according to this, eighteen active buoys went down. All our ships in the area were alerted, but the line was never broken. Nothing came through, which suggests it was probably a whale.”

“Unless it was a diesel-electric submarine on battery power, at periscope depth,” interjected Baldridge. “A little further astern than we thought, and they actually saw one of the buoys, then turned away. To wait.”

“Surely, if they’d been at periscope depth, we would’ve picked them up on radar?” said Jeff Zepeda.

“We did,” replied Baldridge softly. “Track 5136, I believe.”

A profound silence suddenly enveloped the huge table deep in the Pentagon. There was something unreal about the young lieutenant commander’s words. How on earth could any submarine have got this close to the carrier and not been nailed? The two CIA men glanced at each other grimly. The commanders from the Pacific Fleet stared at their reports. Admiral Morgan glowered, and Scott Dunsmore frowned.

The CNO was about to speak when a Marine guard opened the door, slammed his heels together, and announced, “The President of the United States.” The Chief Executive entered accompanied by his security chief, and the Secretary of Defense. This particular President was in and out of the Pentagon more than any of his immediate predecessors. Not since Eisenhower had an occupant of the White House taken such a fervent interest in military affairs. And none of them had ever faced a more nerve-racking crisis than the one unfolding right here in Washington in the high summer of 2002.

“Sorry to be a couple of hours early,” he said. “But right now this thing is taking over. I may broadcast again either tonight or tomorrow, and I want to stay right on top of the situation. Fill me in, please?”

“Well, sir,” said Admiral Dunsmore. “We were just going over Captain Barry’s report, which mentions a radar contact on the previous day, spotted by one of our destroyers and checked out by our helicopters. Nothing very strong. The operators picked up on only four sweeps.”

“That’s about what you’d expect with a top guy,” said Baldridge, with a sudden urgency in his voice, and absolutely no regard for protocol. The President, however, was getting used to the careless but calculating manner of Jack Baldridge’s kid brother.

All eyes were now on the lieutenant commander. But the President spoke first. “Elaborate on that, Bill?”

“Well, sir, any submarine, on such a mission, is going to operate in a very clandestine way. I’d guess she would be moving at no more than three knots, at which speed a Russian Kilo is totally silent. Picture this: she is listening to the sounds of the U.S. Battle Group. She can hear the networks, pick up the sounds of the propeller shafts, especially the giant one which is louder than the rest, and belongs to the carrier.”

Right here, Admiral Morgan, the ex — nuclear submarine commander, interjected, “The submarine knows in which direction the surface ships are, but not precisely how far away the carrier is. With time, he will develop a fair idea of their course and speed. But only when he thinks he might see something will he slide up to periscope depth.

“The captain takes a good look down the sonar bearing in less than seven seconds. In the monsoon conditions, visibility’s poor. He probably sees nothing. He may then try the ESM to see if there’s radar anywhere on the bearing, but only for three seconds. This is very dangerous for him, because he might be spotted. He lowers the mast, real fast, and goes deep again, at which point the submarine has vanished without trace.

“Remember, if you will, her radio masts were never exposed for more than seven seconds; which translates, roughly, to four sweeps on Hayler’s radar. That’s when she picked up just two feet of the submarine’s big search periscope jutting out of the water. Then nothing…but she’s still there.”

“Shit,” said the President.

“Yeah, and that’s not all,” added Admiral Morgan. “Remember how slowly she’s going, silently at three knots, probably in a racecourse pattern over about four miles. If her commander is as smart as I think he is, he will just position himself upwind of the carrier, always upwind…because if the carrier is flying aircraft, she must be heading upwind for takeoff and landings. If the submarine stays upwind, the carrier will eventually come to him.

“When Captain Baldridge ordered up the choppers and dropped the buoys, the submarine commander may have heard them. He may even have seen them doing it. But more likely he came back in, a couple of hours later, came to periscope depth and actually saw one of the buoys, or even heard it transmitting. He just turned away again. And waited, perhaps for twenty hours, while the buoys ran out of steam and sank to the bottom. Then he came in again, moving closer to the carrier.”

“Jesus Christ,” said the President.

“Yessir,” said Morgan, adding, “I am not describing anything magical. I am just describing advanced operational procedures by atop class submarine commanding officer. The problem, at the beginning of this thing, was the same as it is now. Where the hell did the goddamned Arabs get such a man? I’m just afraid he might be American. Or British. No one else could possibly be that good.”

Admiral Dunsmore interrupted. “Thank you, Arnold. I am sure the President would prefer now to get into his own agenda, since we are all agreed that for the purposes of public announcement, this was an accident. I do not want anyone to forget that.”

“Actually, Scott,” said the President, “I am finding this all very instructive. If there are any technical points you think should be aired, please go ahead. For the moment, I would like you to run the meeting as you think fit.”

“Okay, sir. Anyone else have anything relevant to this meeting regarding procedures and actions on the ships?”

Admiral Dunsmore’s deputy, Admiral Freddy Roberts, had thus far been silent. But now he spoke up. “Sir, just this…I have been glancing through the list of radar contacts picked up that day, and transmitted on the link, as laid out in Captain Barry’s report. There were a total of fifteen, some of ’em big fish, maybe flocks of birds. Five of ’em from one ship, four from another. But there was nothing else from Hayler.

“Ships which report everything have historically jumpy ops rooms. Nothing wrong with that. Better safe than sorry. But I know the ASWO in Hayler, real good man, very experienced, Lieutenant Commander Chuck Freeburg. The point is, he thought it was something. That’s why he mentioned it and put a report on the link. I think we should definitely assume there was something. Chuck’s a very unjumpy guy.”

“Okay, Freddy. Thank you. Mr. President, I am, of course, bearing in mind that we are announcing only an accident. But, on the other theory, there is just one other point I would like Admiral Roberts to put forward, and it has to do with the time and weather.”

“Okay, sir. As you know I served some time out there myself in a destroyer, and I can tell you that by the end of June, the southwestern monsoon is beginning to sweep in from the African coast and throughout July and August