Nimitz Class

right away.”

“I agree. I’ll order four SSNs into the South Atlantic immediately.”

Admiral Morgan paced the office restlessly while the CNO alerted his senior Atlantic Flag Officers. He spoke to the Commander of the Second Fleet, Vice Admiral Ray Mapleton. And he spoke with even more urgency to the Commander of the Atlantic Submarine Force, Vice Admiral Joseph Mulligan.

Arnold Morgan heard him order all four of the submarines he had placed in readiness for a possible mission to clear Norfolk as soon as possible. It was going to take them two weeks to get down to the Falkland Islands, almost eight and a half thousand miles away. The big nuclear boats would run underwater at twenty-five-plus knots, night and day, covering six hundred miles every twenty-four hours. That would put three of them off the southern coast of Argentina early on September 24. The Kilo was due to show the following day, probably at the earliest.

It was, Admiral Morgan knew, critical they arrive on station well before Commander Adnam’s Kilo. That way they would have time to settle into the area, and become used to the normal sounds of the underwater jungle.

The Intelligence officer was enjoying the experience of listening to the CNO in action. He was crisp, economical, and decisive, recommending Admiral Mulligan consider a three-boat submarine trap, north to south, barring the way to the eastern entrance to the Magellan Strait, and the southern route to Cape Horn.

It was made clear to Joe Mulligan that the boss thought only one U.S. nuclear boat, the fourth, should be deployed in the Falkland Islands area.

Admiral Morgan also heard Admiral Dunsmore end the conversation with the diplomacy and tact for which he was renowned. “Very well, Joe. Just a few thoughts. Take them for what they are worth, and I’ll leave the rest to you. Keep in touch, g’bye.”

The CNO turned back. “Oh yes, Arnold, I forgot to mention. We’re taking Bill Baldridge and Admiral MacLean off Unseen by helicopter in the next couple of hours. We’ve got a Spruance Class destroyer, Fletcher, in the area. She’ll run them into Athens. They’ll both fly direct to London from there.”

“Any thoughts about getting Baldridge down to the South Atlantic as our official observer?”

“I hadn’t quite got to that yet, Arnold, but plainly he ought to be there. What do you think?”

“Oh, very definitely. First because of the official report. Second, he may be pretty damned useful. He knows more about Adnam than anyone else. And he’s just spent a lot of time with his Teacher.”

“Agreed. Let’s get him down to Roosevelt Roads. He can pick up Columbia right there. It’s hardly out of the submarine’s way. Bill needs the London-Miami flight, then American Airlines to Puerto Rico. I’ll have Jay fix it.”

“Perfect. Before I leave, sir, there are just two other things I wanted to mention. Admiral MacLean was the sonar officer in the Royal Navy submarine which sank the Belgrano in the Falklands War. It took place right down there somewhere south of the islands, exactly where we’re going. I think someone should get his input. The man’s a submarine scholar.”

“Agreed. Lieutenant Commander Baldridge can do that immediately. We’ll get a detoailed report of our action plan to the Fletcher, and Bill can debrief Sir Iain on the way to Athens. We’ll detail Columbia to make the Falkland Islands patrol, and Bill can give the captain the benefit of the admiral’s knowledge on the way down.”

“The last thing, sir. Should we put the CIA onto the Iraqi money situation in Chile? If that Kilo is really on the course the note is telling us, there’s gotta be a big bank somewhere near Punta Arenas with a lot of Iraqi cash in it. Unless the entire submarine is stuffed with hundred-dollar bills.”

“For the moment I’m going to say not. Let’s just concentrate, very quietly, on slamming the boat which destroyed our aircraft carrier. Meanwhile I had better give the President the news.”

At 1400 on Tuesday afternoon, September 10, three American nuclear submarines, each of them 362 feet long, weighing seven thousand tons dived, with a crew of 133 men, 13 of them officers, began to head out of the Norfolk Navy shipyard into the Hampton Roads. In the space of two hours they had all made the familiar warship exit, out through the wide ocean gap, beneath which the road bridge becomes a tunnel, then on through a near identical gap in the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.

Before them were the broad reaches of the Atlantic, and one by one they turned southeast…USS Asheville, USS Springfield, USS Charlotte. They were all Los Angeles Class, all armed with torpedoes, Tomahawk and Harpoon guided missiles. All were capable of speeds over thirty knots. They were approximately twice as fast and twice the size of the Russian-built Kilo they sought.

USS Columbia was the newest of the four SSNs allocated to the task and was scheduled to leave five hours later at 1900, bound for Puerto Rico, then to the Falklands. Built by General Dynamics in Groton, Connecticut, she was launched in 1994. The big single-shafter operated on two nuclear-powered turbines which generated thirty-five thousand hp. The submarine was capable of operating a thousand feet below the surface.

The U.S. Navy owns sixty of these ultramodern attack nuclear boats. They are the workhorses of America’s underwater strike force, range unlimited. Nine of them were on active duty in the Gulf War.

Columbia’s commanding officer was Commander Cale “Boomer” Dunning, a forty- year-old career officer from Cape Cod, Massachusetts. As his nickname suggested, “Boomer” had spent a working lifetime devoted to nuclear submarines. He had completed a two-year spell in Holy Loch, Scotland, in the Poseidon program back in the late eighties, and had been promoted to commander in 1997.

CommanderDunning was a fair-skinned, burly-looking man who might have appeared more at home grinding in the mainsheet on an America’s Cup yacht. He had big shoulders and forearms, and tree-trunk legs. He was an excellent, lifelong racing sailor, when he had the chance, and still kept a beautiful wooden skiff at his parents’ home on the Cape, to which he and his wife would most certainly retire one day.

Boomer was married to a perfectly lovely, failed television actress, named Jo, whose father ran a boatyard in New Hampshire. They were, in the most generous sense of the phrase, a family of sea dogs. Boomer was a wizard at the helm of any boat, from a little skiff to a big racing yacht. His reputation in a nuclear submarine was, if anything, higher.

Serving under Boomer Dunning, tactical expert, sonar expert, weapons expert, navigation and nuclear engineering expert, was to serve under the command of the best of the breed. The 132 men who worked for him in Columbia had grown in confidence with every passing month. Generally speaking, they reckoned they were the best nuclear boat in the Navy. When they learned they had been selected for a secret mission in the South Atlantic, on direct orders of the Navy High Command, they assumed that High Command knew precisely what it was doing.

As ever, Commander Dunning had his ship in top order. All of the electronic combat systems had been checked and rechecked. She carried fourteen Gould Mk 48 wire-guided torpedoes of the old, but reliable, ADCAP type (Advanced Capability), tube-launched. Internally she carried eight Tomahawk missiles, with a 1,400-mile range, plus four Harpoon missiles with active radar-homing warheads.

If the Kilo should get off an underwater shot at them, Columbia had an arsenal of decoys, Emerson Electric Mk 2’s, plus a MOSS-based Mk 48 with a noisemaker, designed to seduce any incoming weapon away from the submarine. Her IBM sonars were the BQQ 5D/E type, passive/active search and attack. On station, Columbia would use a low-frequency, passive, towed-array, designed to pick up the heartbeat of any prowler, which Commander Boomer Dunning, and his sonar team, would then designate either harmless or hostile.

Columbia’s Combat Systems Officer was Lieutenant Commander Jerry Curran, a tall, bespectacled, slightly stooped figure from Connecticut, who had a master’s degree in electronics and computer systems from Fordham University. According to Commander Dunning, “Jerry’s the best bridge player in the Navy.”

With only four hours to go before Columbia sailed, Lieutenant Commander Curran was below talking to the sonar chief. The navigator, twenty-nine-year-old Lieutenant David Wingate, was poring over his deep-water charts of the South Atlantic near the Falkland Islands.

It was back in the nuclear area where the activity was still intense. The Marine Engineering Officer, Lieutenant Commander Lee O’Brien, and his team had taken the nuclear reactor critical some hours previously, or