He produced a large white, blue, and yellow chart, which showed the ocean well south of the Aleutians, the sprawling undersea area known as the Great Pacific Basin.
'This large plateau,' he said, 'is loaded with U.S. SOSUS surveillance, which means we cannot go anywhere near it. But since we have to move from one end of the Aleutians to the other, we have to go somewhere. Now look at these depths here… All through the Basin, for miles and miles, north, south, east, and west, we're looking at 5,000 meters. The whole place is lethal. Because during the Cold War the Americans were paranoid about Russian submarines crossing that stretch of the Pacific into American waters.
'And you both know the Americans. When they want something, they make sure they get it. What they got here was an impenetrable area, in which no one could move without U.S. surveillance picking them up instantly. What they could not do was operate the same system to the north, close in to the islands.
'Here… look at these depths. Heading north from the Basin, we move into a sudden decline, where the seabed reaches a kind of cliff edge and then plunges rapidly down to depths of over 7,000 meters, and stays there for several miles.
'Then,' he continued, 'right here, still heading north, over the deepest part, the ocean floor starts to rise steeply… here… 6,000… 5,000… 4,000… 3,000… 2,000… then 1,000… then way under, 500 feet… three hundred off Attu Island. We just crossed a very large ditch, the Aleutian Trench. It's the one place the U.S. Navy cannot operate SOSUS. It's too deep, too steep. The U.S. equipment on the great plateau of the Basin cannot see across the ditch.'
'I know it can't see across, but why can't it?' asked Shakira.
'The undersea cliffs are too steep. SOSUS does not like looking up walls,' replied Ben. 'And that's why they almost certainly have a submarine patrol in there. If you've got billions of dollars' worth of equipment guarding your western approaches, you wouldn't begrudge yourself a nuclear submarine to try and make it foolproof, would you?'
'I guess not,' said Shakira.
'And where does that put us, in your estimation?' asked Ravi.
'It puts me right with Shakira's original argument, that it would be folly to try to run south of the Islands, because we'd almost certainly get detected by any U.S. submarine that happened to be in the area. They may not catch us, but they'd sound an alarm that would be heard all the way to the Pentagon. And I don't think we'd like that very much.'
'There could even be two submarines in there,' said Ravi, thoughtfully.
'I would not disagree with that either,' said Ben. 'Because even if they have SOSUS arrays on the ocean floor inshore, from eighty miles all the way to the beach, it's awfully difficult to listen 'uphill,' especially out here.'
'How do you mean?' asked Ravi.
'Well, in this area, coming from the Basin up to the Trench, there are some huge swells, which have been building for a thousand miles. The weather is bad, force eight-nine gales, pretty big seas. There's a ton of noise from the sea hitting the underwater cliffs. A lot of turbulence, water bouncing around, strong currents sluicing in and out of deep underwater holes.
'This is bloody awful antisubmarine country. There's cold water running past the islands from the north, warm from the south, forming marked thermoclines. It's appalling for SOSUS, and a whole lot easier to simply put a patrol in there, right in the middle. If I were in charge of U.S. surveillance I'd have a patrol right here, at 51.10' N 179' E, off the island of Amchitka. I'd probably have an air patrol lurking around as well, just in case we found something and wanted to force it to the surface.'
'You mean it could be just one submarine, or maybe even two?' said Shakira.
'Correct. But everything is telling me we want to stay out of the south.'
'That's what it was telling me,' said Shakira. 'And I only have about one hundredth of your knowledge.'
'Agreed?' said Ben.
'Absolutely,' said Ravi. 'We'll take the north route.'
'Meanwhile, can someone give me the latest on the U.S. Loran stations, so I can fill my chart in?' said Ben.
'Well, I don't have that much,' Shakira replied. 'But I've entered everything I found. There's something definite for Attu Island, and I also had a mark on Amchitka. That's about 240 miles east of Attu, next to the wide seaway here… right through the islands.'
'Got it,' said the CO. 'We'll be way north of there, in water a mile deep. Here, just north of this sandbank — the Petrel Bank, it's called — there's only one hundred feet in the middle, another forty miles east.'
'OK,' said Shakira, 'I have a definite U.S. Naval facility on Atka Island, 52.30' N 174' E. And a possible, another couple of hundred miles on, Chuginadak Island. Not definite, just possible. Then I have two definite U.S. Naval facilities — one on Umnak Island, right here… the other on Unalaska.'
'I can see four flashing beacons in this group,' said Ben. 'If we can see them through the periscope, we're probably too close.'
'I realize this sounds a little naive,' said Shakira. 'But somewhere, somehow we have to cut through the islands, from the the northern route back into the southern, right? Has anyone thought of where we might do that?'
'I have,' said Ravi. 'I'm not enough of a Naval Officer to select the correct side of the Aleutians to take a submarine, but I am enough of a Military Officer to realize that if we go north, we must eventually come south again. The main route for cargo ships is through the fairly busy Unimak Pass. I took the trouble to get hold of a very detailed chart on the area, better than anything we've seen so far.'
'I'm glad you did that, Ravi. I have good charts, but not excellent ones,' said Ben. 'And when we cut through the Aleutians, we must be very careful. If we're going to be detected anywhere, it'll be in there, surrounded by U.S. radar and sonar, and unknown SOSUS cables.'
'Better that than a big armed Los Angeles Class nuclear ship,' replied Ravi. 'Because that American bastard will probably open fire on sight.'
They checked the Global Positioning System (GPS) in the early afternoon and found themselves in precisely the right place, 53.45' N 170.30' E, ninety miles west nor'west of the northern shoals of Attu Island. Captain Badr ordered an immediate reduction in speed because they now had no idea which SOSUS arrays were in place, and which weren't.
Ben erred on the side of caution. He was steaming in more than 9,000 feet of water, and he ordered the Barracuda to 800 feet… speed five… course one-one zero. The possibility of them being heard at that depth running so slowly was close to zero.
At this rate it would take them almost a day to cover 100 miles, and Ben Badr wanted to go no faster. It would thus be eight days before they were in the approaches to the Unimak Pass, eight days of stealth, cunning, and restraint. Ravi was especially good at all those things. General Rashood was confident.
They crept slowly forward, easing their way along the northern route, about five miles offshore. They stayed in minimum depth all the way, and eight times the sun tried to struggle out of the Bering Sea in front of them, and eight times it failed. The weather on the surface remained stormy and rough, but no one saw it. The Barracuda never came to the surface, only to periscope depth for a fast GPS update. They just kept going along, the big reactor running sweetly, providing all the heat, fresh water, fresh air, light, and power they needed. The Hamas terrorists were breaching the outer defenses of the United States in the utmost comfort, given the circumstances.
They never knew it, but only once in the entire run did they come close to being heard. That was about thirty miles north of the eastern headland of Unalaska Island. A big fishing boat out of nearby Dutch Harbor somewhat unnerved the sonar room when it suddenly hauled full nets noisily, and close, perhaps hurrying to make home port before the weather.
The Officer of the Deck (OOD) already had the Barracuda cutting the coastline somewhat fine, and he had no wish to get tangled in another fishing net. He desperately wanted to turn away, but this was a bigger problem than it might seem — hard rudder turns are noisy, well capable of giving a four- or five-second transient on U.S. detection equipment. The U.S. operators would not know this was a submarine. In fact, they'd probably blame the trawler suddenly speeding up, and classify it as such.
But the OOD knew that any detection was bad, and somewhat rashly elected to come to PD (Periscope
